The wind tore at him, the waves washed over him, the pain down his side throbbed and pierced. Before long, he wasn’t thinking of anything, wasn’t aware of anything. Kick, stroke. Kick, stroke. Get help. Get help.
“Ben.” A hand touched his shoulder. George Harvey was beside him, treading water. He was a broad-shouldered man and a fine swimmer, and he was looking at Ben.
“You have to let go of Hank.”
“What?” Ben jerked his head left, and gasped. Henry’s eyes were open. A wave washed over them, but Henry didn’t blink. His skin was gray-white, his mouth slack-jawed.
“Henry!” Ben grabbed his shoulder and shook him, treading water, ignoring the pain. “Henry, come on, wake up!”
“Ben!” Harvey grabbed him. “He’s gone. Come on. He’s gone. You can’t help him. Let him go.”
“No!” Ben cried. “Henry, come on! Wake up!”
Ben yelled, Harvey yelled, the wind screamed.
Then Ben stopped yelling. Henry hadn’t heard any of it. The grip on the board was a death grip. He was dead. Henry was dead.
“Ben.” George Harvey looked him in the eye. “You have to swim.” He let go of Ben’s arm, and then started to swim away, looking back. “Come on.”
Henry’s right arm was floating in the water. Ben draped it over the wooden board. He wouldn’t leave Henry without the board. He wouldn’t do that.
“Henry …” Ben was sobbing. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Ben!” Harvey was already twenty feet away. “Come ON!”
“I’m sorry.” Ben let go of the board. The next wave pushed Henry away from him. The next wave pushed him farther still. “I’m sorry.” Then he turned away and began to swim. But he didn’t know if he even wanted to live.
Henry. I’m so sorry. Forgive me.
It was easier, for awhile. He could use both arms, and he wasn’t trying to pull another body along with him. He looked up after a couple of minutes, and the island seemed a little bit closer. Before, every time he’d looked, it had almost seemed farther away.
But pain coursed up and down his left arm, and it was weak, unable to plough as strongly through the waves. And his wool pants and heavy flannel shirt weighed him down, and the chill water had already numbed his toes and fingers, and the numbness was spreading deeper.
“Come on, everyone, we’re halfway there!” Harvey shouted to the others.
“We’ll make it, you’ll see!” Saulter shouted back.
“Damn right we will!” Bob Bonnis yelled. Ben said nothing. He hurt. He was tired. He was numb.
Stroke, kick. Stroke, kick. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
Every few minutes, someone would yell in encouragement, and others would yell back. Ben stopped listening. He focused on the pain of his left arm, on the waves washing over him, on the black blur ahead. Minutes passed, tens of minutes. He was so tired, so tired.
“Come on, Ben! You can do it!”
“Swim for it, Ben!”
“You’ll make it, Ben!”
Ben looked up. He had fallen behind the others, maybe thirty feet or more. They were looking back, yelling at him, trying to encourage him.
“Come on, son, you can do it!”
“Swim for it, Ben!”
But his arm hurt, and he was tired. And Henry was back there. He had left Henry.
“Come on, we’re almost there!”
Ben stopped swimming, squinted, rubbed the water off his face. The island was closer. Not a blur anymore, but pines and rocks you could see. George Harvey, leading the pack, was maybe only a couple of hundred yards from shore.
“Don’t give up, Ben!”
“Swim for it!”
The swim to Pine Island wasn’t any longer. It would be like swimming over to her dock. He was tired. But he wanted to live. Yes, he wanted to live.
He started swimming again, head down, forcing his left arm to work, refusing to give in to the pain, kicking his heels, turning his face to the side, grabbing air, then plunging it under water, then turning to the other side, grabbing air. He was swimming so slowly, so slowly. But he wanted to live. He wanted to live. Come on, you swim or you die. Breathe, breathe. It hurts. I’m so tired. Come on, come on …
“Come on! Come on!”
He looked up. The rocks were in front of him, maybe ten yards out. The other men were already on shore. George Harvey was holding the branch of a birch tree out over the water.
“You’re here. Just a little farther. Come on!”
He yelled out loud, in anger, in defiance, and stroked toward the branch, so close, now closer, even closer … Yes!
He was pulled toward the rocks, and then arms grabbed his shoulders. He cried out in pain, but the others ignored the cry and heaved him out, and suddenly he was on land, curled up, shivering.
“Hang on, Ben. Bob’s breaking into the cottage. We’ll get a fire going.”
Ben knew there was a stove in there. He’d delivered the wood.
The others left him, made their way toward the cabin inside the woods. Ben didn’t move. He sat huddled, his knees under his chin, looking out over the gray waves, searching for a head above water, a miracle, something, somehow.
There was nothing there.
Finally, the others came back for him and carried him inside.
Chaconne
Snow fell on the slate-gray water, and a sheen of ice crept out from shore. Ben shivered. It was cold, too cold to be going out on the lake. But this would be the last time.
His mother had gone back to the house, leaving him alone on the dock. She was delaying, trying to think of excuses not to leave.
“I’ll just have one more look around,” she had said before walking back up the hill. “To see if we’ve missed anything.”
But she had already had a dozen looks-around and more. There was nothing left. Their clothes, two pots, two pans, a few knives and forks and the like, a few pictures, an old kerosene lamp that his mother refused to part with were packed into two trunks that the two of them had lugged down to the launch, which would take them on one last trip into town. They would leave the boat at Greavette’s and take the train to Toronto, and then — well, neither of them knew exactly what would happen after that.
— — —
It had taken an hour before people realized that the Waome was so overdue that something had to be wrong, and another hour before a boat from Beaumaris reached the island, where the men — drier, thanks to a fire, but still in shock and disbelief — clambered in and huddled together, for the trip across a lake that was calm again. Ben wanted to go straight back to the Landing, but they were all taken instead to the little hospital in Bracebridge, where they were poked and prodded and someone put the kettle on for tea. The doctor, a fussy man, or so it seemed to Ben, put Ben’s arm in a sling and taped his chest — he’d bruised some ribs and pulled something in his shoulder; he wasn’t really listening. He sat in the corner, numb, saying nothing whenever someone came over to offer comfort and say they were sorry for his loss. It was mid-afternoon before his mother arrived — the Schultzes had a phone and had gone over in their old launch to tell her the news and take her to Bracebridge. When Ben saw his mother, he said nothing, stared at her, mute. Henry was dead. Her brother. It was his fault. He had tried, but not enough. It was his fault. She should blame him. He had failed Henry, failed her. But she looked at him for one moment, and then folded him into her arms, and he began to cry, and she was crying, and people left them alone.
The men found Henry’s body the next day, and they buried him the day after, the same day they buried Captain Henshaw and the minister and Art Thompson, the mate, who had been trapped with the minister inside the ship, where they drowned. The sinking was front-page news for a day, and then everyone moved on, leaving Ben and his mother alone at the Landing, with winter closing in. The night of the funer
al his mother had told him that she had decided to sell the Landing. Ben had stared at her, amazed.
“Sell?”
“We couldn’t keep it up, even if we wanted to, and we don’t want to.”
Ben didn’t want to, he’d never wanted to. But it was different for his mother.
“This is your place.”
She shook her head.
“I left this place once and had to come back. This time I’m not coming back.”
John Hotchkiss bought the Landing, for less than it was worth, of course. But that was the Hotchkiss way. He had money when others didn’t, and could make an offer when people just had to sell. Anyway, they both just wanted to get away from the place.
But there would be enough for them to live on for awhile in Toronto, and that’s where they were going. “I’ll find work,” his mother promised, “and you’ll find work, and you’ll take music lessons.”
“We can’t afford it.” Ben shook his head.
“Yes, we can.” She reached her arm across the table where they were sitting, a kerosene lamp the only light in the kitchen, and took his hand in hers. Before he would have flinched, and pulled away. Not now.
“You need to learn to play the violin as well as you can,” she told him. “That’s what matters now. So that’s what we’re going to do.”
Ben smiled. “And that’s all there is to it?”
She smiled back. “You’re learning.”
He had written to the professor that Ruth Chapman had told him about and had received a reply within a week, telling him to call when he reached Toronto to arrange an audition. His mother had been right after all. If you made yourself available, things happened. Ruth Chapman had changed his life in ways he still hadn’t worked through. But now he would be in Toronto, living in some basement apartment, probably, working all day at some job he hated, but playing his violin for real now, taking lessons from a real teacher and — and what? Who knew? Things were going in directions he had never expected them to go. It was frightening, and thrilling. And he had a New York widow who smoked two packs a day while drinking a bottle of gin and who swore and laughed and played him Sibelius and taught him how to pour wine to thank for it. He had so much to thank her for. Even if she had broken his heart, just a little.
He’d sent the checks she had given him to the address she had given him, with a note explaining what had happened. That was two weeks ago, but there’d been no reply. Maybe she was in Europe or something. Or maybe the lake had become the past for her, too.
Ben watched the snow falling on the water. Last night he’d woken up again, sweating, Henry’s lifeless face staring at him from his dreams. In a way, he accepted what the others were telling him, what his mother told him over and over: that Henry couldn’t swim, that he had lost too much blood from the cut on his head, that Ben had done everything he could, more than most men could have done, that it wasn’t his fault. Sure. But Henry was in his dreams at night and tugged at his thoughts through the day. The lake, the Landing, they were in Henry’s bones, they were his life. The Landing for Henry was like the violin for Ben. But Henry could never love the thing he was chained to, hated the truth of it, hated the truth that he could never leave it the way Ben and his mother were leaving it. They were abandoning the Landing the way Ben had abandoned Henry, Ben thought to himself. Henry would never have left the Landing. Would he have left Ben on the lake?
Ben only knew that he missed Henry, missed him every day, and wanted him back.
His mother was still up at the house, trying to let go. Ben lifted the case that rested on top of one of the trunks, took out the violin and the bow, rested the violin on his shoulder up against his chin, tuned a couple of strings and began to play the chaconne, letting its long, slow, keening notes drift on the wind, through the snow over the gray November waters of his lake.
Historical Note
On October 6, 1934, late in the morning, the steamship Waome was struck by a sudden storm on Lake Muskoka, north of Toronto. The ship sank in less than a minute. There were three fatalities: Captain Bill Henshaw, Arthur Thompson, who was serving as mate, and the Reverend L.D.S. Coxon, a passenger.
A Note from the Author
My goal in writing The Landing was to craft a book that was faithful to the place where I grew up, and to the generation that raised my generation. To the extent that this work of fiction also tells a true story, others deserve much of the credit.
My mother, Phyllis Ibbitson, nee Boyd, grew up on a Muskoka farm during the Depression and learned to play the piano the way Ben learned to play the fiddle. I asked her countless questions, some ridiculously detailed, and she answered them all. Thanks, Mom.
I used to work for Jim Groh when I was in high school; in the decades since, we have been good friends. Jim grew up not far from where Ben grew up, and was able to fill in numerous gaps. Doug Chamberlain, whom I’ve known longer than almost anyone outside my own family, knows everything there is to know about cottage repair, including the rebuilding of stone steps. His father, Doug, Sr., allowed himself to be peppered with questions during a couple of fishing trips. Thanks to all of you, my friends.
Cyril and Marion Fry, Shirley Barlow and Cecil Porter are all dedicated to preserving and promoting the history of Gravenhurst and Muskoka. They read the manuscript, offering many valued suggestions for improvements and correcting dozens of minor historical errors. I am very grateful to them.
The people of Muskoka love to talk about their past, and write about it, too. I owe debts to the authors of The Light of Other Days; Gravenhurst: An Album of Memories and Mysteries; The Years Gone By: A History of Walker’s Point and Barlochan, Muskoka, 1870–1970; Through the Narrows on Lake Muskoka; Browning Island, Lake Muskoka: Cottagers Remember the Good Old Days; A Legacy Almost Gone: An Anthology of Kilworthy Country, among others. Many of these are privately published reminiscences compiled by dedicated but anonymous authors. They and others like them offer an invaluable record of the life of the district’s pioneers.
I owe an enormous debt to Richard Tatley. Not only did he write The Steamboat Era in the Muskokas (Erin, Ont.: Boston Mills, 1983–4, 2 vols.), but he also read my manuscript and corrected numerous errors. I also owe him an apology. When the Waome was struck by the storm, Richard observed, Ben could not have fallen into the lounge, as there was no door to the lounge on the starboard side of the ship. But that had to happen, for narrative purposes. So I invented a door, and also rearranged the location of people on the ship to put Ben in the lounge, alone. I know Richard understands, but I also know that this meticulous historian will regret such inaccuracies.
Alex Kehler is both an accomplished violinist and fine folk fiddler. His enthusiasm for the story, and his suggestions on making the passages about violin playing more accurate, helped enormously. After reading the manuscript, he says, he pulled out the complete Bach sonatas and partitas for solo violin and began playing through them, “as best I can.”
I have been trying to write a book about Muskoka my whole life. In 2001, in a midtown Manhattan bar, of all places, I worked out this story. But it was harder to write than to imagine; I tried several times to get it down, but the words just wouldn’t come. Finally, my agent, John Pearce, suggested I sit down and craft the most detailed outline I could. I did, and suddenly the book became possible. I owe you, John.
Sheila Barry, editor-in-chief of Kids Can Press, read that outline and immediately offered to publish the book and to edit it herself. Three drafts later, I can honestly say that there is not one sentence I could make better. That’s what the very best editors do. I am also grateful to Margaret Allen for her meticulous copy edit.
Finally and foremost, Grant Burke lived through the writing of this book and put up with its obsessed author, for which the author is, as for so many other things, deeply grateful.
All of these people came together to help make this story better than it wo
uld have been without them. Anything that is false or wrong is my doing.
There is one additional bit of artistic licence in The Landing. Jasha Heifitz’s landmark recording of the Sibelius violin concerto was released in 1935, a year after our story takes place. But I let Ben hear it anyway.
Washington, D.C.
November 11, 2007
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