by Thomas King
“Call Louise. She said nine o’clock.”
My doorbell rang at seven o’clock. By the time I struggled out of bed, Harlen was already in the kitchen. “Hey, Will, where’d you put the coffee?”
Louise was standing in the front room with South Wing. “Can I use the bathroom, Will? South Wing needs to be changed.”
“Never mind,” said Harlen. “I found it.”
Louise came out of the bathroom. “Take a quick shower, and I’ll make you some breakfast. We’ve got to get going.”
“What happened to nine o’clock?”
“Big estate sale like this, we need to be there early. All the good things get sold first. Harlen said we should get there before nine.”
There was a cup of coffee and a bowl of cereal waiting for me on the back of the toilet when I stepped out of the shower.
“No need to shave, Will,” shouted Harlen. “We’ll meet you in the car.”
* * *
—
MY MOTHER WAS like that. Every Sunday, she’d drag us out of bed at around seven-thirty, and we’d be out the door by eight-thirty. We didn’t have a car, so we walked to the yard sales. My mother had short legs, but they moved relentlessly. She could walk for hours, and she never wasted a moment. Most times she could look in a garage or at a table and be able to tell with a glance if there was anything there that she wanted. James and me would hardly have a chance to look through the broken toys or the games before she’d give us a nod and head on down the street.
* * *
—
BY THE TIME we got to the estate sale, there were cars parked around the block. Couples were wandering along in front of the house, moving back and forth like sentries.
“See?” said Harlen. “Almost too late.”
By eight-thirty, the people had stopped walking and were just standing there on the sidewalk. At a quarter to nine, the garage doors opened, and a short fellow in a red windbreaker came out and said, “Most of the stuff is in the garage, but there’s some furniture and appliances in the house.”
Louise and Harlen all but ran into the garage. South Wing and I stayed by the curb and let the stampede pass us by. “Come on, honey,” I said to South Wing, and I took her hand. “Let’s go in the house and see what’s happening.”
There wasn’t much in the house. The guy in the red jacket was standing by the kitchen door.
“You have any couches for sale?”
“Afraid not,” he said. “Most of the good stuff went to my brothers and sisters. There are a couple of beds left. You need any beds?”
“I’ve got a bed.”
“My mother had a lot of antiques. You should have seen the place before we cleaned it up. There was stuff everywhere. She died last month. Took us three weeks just to organize it.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“What?”
“Your mother.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“I know how you feel.”
“Oh, yeah.”
* * *
—
I WAS IN TORONTO when my mother died. I didn’t even know she was sick. James didn’t know, either. She kept things like that to herself. James came home from work and found her in bed. She was just feeling tired, she said. James took her to the hospital that evening.
* * *
—
“WILL, WILL, WHERE YOU BEEN? Hey, come on out here.” Harlen was standing by the sliding glass door that led to the backyard. “You got to see what we found.”
I picked up South Wing, and we followed Harlen.
“Look at this, Will. What do you think?”
It was a canoe. There was some wood piled up against it, and it was covered with dirt. Most of it was painted orange or pink, but you could see that there were other, darker colours underneath.
“What do you think?”
“A canoe?”
“Sure. Hey, I’ve been wanting to go canoeing. It would be fun. You know, you and me out on a river. Just like our grandparents used to do.”
“The Blackfoot didn’t use canoes.”
“Sure they did. Some of the world’s greatest canoeists.”
The canoe was made out of wood and canvas, and it was in bad shape. The canvas had come loose in several places. One of the gunwales was cracked, and some of the ribs were broken.
“It’s your money,” I told Harlen.
“Not me,” said Harlen. “You need to buy it. Get you out of the house on the weekends. You could use the exercise.”
“I play basketball.”
“Sure, but there’s nothing like canoeing for the back and shoulders. Didn’t you use to canoe back in Toronto?”
“Harlen, this thing is falling apart.”
“Nothing we can’t fix.”
“I don’t need a canoe, Harlen.”
The guy in the red jacket came out. “That was my mother’s canoe. You know, she was still using it until she fell and broke her hip. Give you a good price on it.”
“Looks a little beat up,” said Harlen.
“Give you a good price on it.”
Harlen leaned up against my shoulder. “Offer him fifty dollars, Will.”
“I don’t need a canoe.” And I turned to Louise, who is always sensible in these matters. “I don’t need a canoe.”
Louise looked at the canoe and shrugged. “It might be fun.”
We got my truck and came back to pick up the canoe. The guy in the red jacket helped us load it.
“Here,” he said, “I found this in a box. You can have it. That’s a good canoe. My mother really liked it.”
“Look, Will,” said Harlen. “It’s a canoe book on the rivers around here. This is great. We can get the canoe fixed up and go canoeing next week.”
* * *
—
JAMES STAYED with my mother in the hospital. The first day she was there, he tried to call, but it was a weekend, and I was off with friends. “You know what she worried about, Will? Each time I got to her room, she’d tell me to turn down the lights because they were wasting electricity. You know, like she used to tell us to do at home.”
My mother talked a lot there in the hospital. James said she remembered all sorts of things that we had done. “She went on and on about that big black dog that used to chase us, until she gave us those squirt bottles filled with vinegar. You remember that dog? She even remembered about Henry and you and me and that dryer. And that trip to Lake Pokagon…you know, when we sank.” James was with her each evening. “She talked about you a lot, Will.”
* * *
—
THE CANOE SAT in Harlen’s backyard for a month. I didn’t have any room for it at my place. We fixed the canvas and the ribs and put a few screws in the gunwales to keep it from cracking any more.
“We got to paint it, Will,” Harlen told me. “Not sure I want to be seen in a pink canoe.”
So we got some paint. Green. Dark green. Harlen had looked through some of the magazines at the Smoke Shop. “You get some that are yellow or blue, but the classy ones, Will, are all painted dark green.”
The canoe looked pretty good. Louise and South Wing were there the day it was finished.
“You ever been canoeing?” she asked me.
* * *
—
ONE YEAR, my mother saved up some money and took us to Lake Pokagon. There were some cabins you could rent, and we took some blankets and an old barbecue and some fruit and oil and salt and flour. We were going to rent a boat, my mother told us, and catch our own fish.
We wanted to rent a canoe, but my mother said a row-boat was safer. James and me got to row. My mother sat in the bow and gave directions. We were just beginning to row really good when we hit the rock.
We hit the rock hard, and it broke one of the planks in the boat. We sat there, the three of us, and the water began to pour in through the hole. We must have been a hundred yards from shore. James and me tried to paddle off the rock, but the boat was stuck and we were sta
rting to sink. I looked at my mother.
“We going to die?” asked James.
* * *
—
“NEXT WEEKEND,” said Harlen, with a big grin on his face. “Next weekend, we go canoeing. I got the place all picked out.”
The place was the upper part of the Medicine River where it cut through a long winding sandstone canyon. “‘The first four miles,’” Harlen read aloud, “‘are relatively easy with gentle and easily negotiated rapids. After you pass a farmhouse on the right, the river picks up speed and two- to three-foot standing waves are formed near the cliff face on the right….’ This sounds great, doesn’t it?”
“Sounds a little dangerous,” said Louise.
“Can’t take you on the first trip, Louise,” said Harlen. “Got to check it out and see if it’s safe.”
“Oh,” said Louise, and she shook her head. “I feel better already.”
“You can bring the lunch,” said Harlen.
Harlen always has a plan, and most of the time, the plan gets changed or postponed or lost. The plan was for Louise and South Wing and Harlen and me to drive to the old Springvale bridge. We’d put the canoe in there, and Louise and South Wing could watch us as we took off downstream.
After we were out of sight, Louise was to drive down to the blue bridge just north of Reynolds and wait for us there. There was a small beach near the bridge, and Louise and South Wing could play in the water or something until we got there. Louise listened to the plan.
“So you guys want me to make you a lunch and be your taxi service?”
“Doing it for your own safety,” said Harlen.
“I’ll drop you off and pick you up,” said Louise. “You can make your own lunch.”
Sunday was a bright, sunny day. We took off at ten o’clock and, using Harlen’s directions, were lost by eleven. We had to go back into Reynolds to try to find the right road.
“Never heard of that road,” the attendant at the Reynolds Petro-Can told us. “Maybe you want the Snake Road.”
We tried three or four of the gravel roads. We saw a skunk and some ducks and lots of horses and cows. It was three o’clock before we stumbled on the bridge.
“Here it is,” said Harlen.
“Thank God,” said Louise.
It took another half an hour to get the canoe and the life vests and the paddles down to the river. Harlen looked at the book again. “First four miles are easy, Will. We can practise our strokes, before we get into the hard stuff.”
Louise took South Wing by the hand. “We’re going to go up on the bluff, honey, so we can watch the boys play with their boat.”
“It’s only a canoe trip,” I said.
Louise stopped and smiled. South Wing had her arms around her mother’s neck and was smiling at me. “Be careful,” Louise said.
Harlen was bubbling with anticipation. “You get in the back, Will. The guy in the front should be more experienced. Has to call out all those critical turns, and watch out for the rocks.”
So I got in the back, and Harlen got in the front. “Paddle left,” Harlen shouted, and we were in the river. The first part was over a gravel bed, shallow and fast. I could see the bottom.
“Paddle right,” Harlen shouted.
The river deepened, and the canoe rolled in the heavy waves. We swung past a tree that had fallen into the water, and Harlen guided the canoe around it.
I looked back and could see Louise waving to us.
“Paddle right,” Harlen shouted. There was white water up ahead, but the waves didn’t look very big. “White water,” shouted Harlen. “Head left.”
The canoe shot forward, and the waves that hadn’t looked very big from a distance were suddenly hitting the bow. Everything happened quickly.
The first wave broke on the bow and poured in over us. The second followed the first.
“Bail!” shouted Harlen. “Bail! Will, bail!”
We didn’t have anything to bail with, and it was already too late. The canoe lurched and twisted over on its side, and both Harlen and me were thrown into the river and swept away by the current. Harlen was behind me, and as I looked to find him, I was driven onto a rock, trapped there for a moment by the force of the water, and then snatched away again. Harlen was in the swifter current. As he shot by me, I could see his eyes staring through the spray, his mouth open.
“Will, Will,” he shouted, above the thunder of the rapids.
“I’m here, I’m here.” I tried to grab his life vest, but he was gone before I could reach him.
“Wiiiilllll,” he shouted, as he plunged on into the next set of waves. “Damn, Will, if this isn’t fun. Yahoooo!”
I floundered into smoother water, and my feet found the bottom. Louise was waving to me from the far bank. She was shouting something, but I couldn’t hear what it was. South Wing ran back and forth on the bluff, alive with excitement.
Harlen washed ashore near a small island out of the current. He lay there in the water on his back, laughing, looking like a great yellow and orange garbage bag.
“Yahooooo!”
I stood in the shallow water, dripping and shivering, and watched the river cut its way past the sandstone cliffs. Harlen came splashing across the rocks like a retriever.
“Hey, Will, wasn’t that great! What a ride!” He walked up on the bank, pulled his hair back, wrung out his hat and looked at the river. “Hey,” he said, “where’s the canoe?”
We found the canoe farther downstream, its nose buried in a sandbar, its green belly floating up in the sun. Both gunwales were broken and the canvas was ripped. We turned it over and emptied out the water.
“You know, Will,” Harlen said. “We should have stayed to the right. Next time we stay to the right.”
We dragged the canoe back up the river, stumbling and splashing and cursing and laughing. Harlen still had that book. It was soaking wet, the pages stuck together. “The first four miles,” Harlen roared, “are relatively easy with gentle and easily negotiated rapids….”
The sun dropped below the rim of the canyon, and the river was suddenly in deep shadows. The air cooled, and Harlen’s teeth began to chatter.
* * *
—
MY MOTHER DIED on a Tuesday in the early evening. My clearest memory of her was that day the row-boat sank in Lake Pokagon. I remember my fear of sinking into that lake. James wouldn’t let go of the side of the boat. I was sure we were going to die. And then my mother snorted as her short legs found the bottom. The lake wasn’t deep at all, at least not there. It hardly came above James’s chest, and it was warm. My mother shook her head. “Well, we ain’t going to die today.” And she laughed and told us to hold onto her hands.
* * *
—
AS HARLEN AND I pulled the canoe along, I could feel the large round stones under my feet, could hear the hollow roll they made as they rocked beneath me, and I thought about my mother and James and me, laughing and walking through the mud and the water to shore. James was with her when she died. I should have been there, too.
The river swirled around us, sucking at our feet, flashing at our legs as we went. Harlen began singing a forty-niner, beating out the rhythm on the gunwales. And we brought the canoe back through the dark water and into the light.
18
David Plume was arrested on Saturday. I heard about it on Monday from Big John Yellow Rabbit when Big John came in to pick up his passport pictures. He heard it from Sam Belly who was in Cardston buying a bag of cookies and a jar of marshmallow whip at the Red Rooster. Sam didn’t see it happen, but he saw the three police cars pull away from in front of the pizza parlour with their lights flashing. Sam Belly is almost as curious as Harlen, and as he walked up the street to see what was going on, he ran into Verna Green who had been in Paul’s Pizza Time when the RCMP arrived and arrested David and three of his friends.
“Verna told Sam that the boys had just sat down to eat,” Big John told me. “It was one of those specials Paul mak
es up with all the olives and tomatoes. Verna said the police made them leave the pizza there on the table. You’d think they’d let them eat the pizza. It’s probably David’s big mouth got him in trouble again.”
Late Tuesday morning, Harlen came by the studio. “Will, you alive back there? I brought us some lunch.” Which meant Harlen was going to stay for a while. Normally I didn’t mind, but the Christmas season was busy, and I was behind.
“We got a problem.”
Seasons had no effect on Harlen’s problems.
“I’ve already had lunch, Harlen.”
“Sausage,” said Harlen, “from the Warsaw. The hot ones with the peppercorns.”
The Warsaw’s sausages were tasty, and they were hot, and the last time I made the mistake of eating one, I had stomach cramps the rest of the day and gas all night. But the main problem was the peppercorns. There were probably a dozen rock-hard, pellet-sized black peppercorns in each sausage, and part of the adventure of eating a Warsaw sausage was in guessing where the peppercorns were. It was like walking through a minefield with your mouth.
By the time I got to the front, Harlen had arranged himself a modest place setting on the coffee table and had just cut off a piece of sausage. “You know, Will, whenever I’m feeling queasy, I get a Warsaw sausage, and the next day, I feel fine. You sure you don’t want one?”
I shook my head. “You want some coffee? Big John’s already told me about David Plume.”
“What about David Plume?”
“Didn’t you come by to tell me that David Flume got himself arrested over in Cardston?”
“Arrested?” And Harlen stopped eating.
Harlen had come to tell me that Billie Camp was pregnant. Pete Good Shield, Billie’s boyfriend and the father of the child, had come to Harlen to ask his help in breaking the news to Billie’s parents.
“What did David get arrested for this time?”
“What about Billie and Pete?”