Monkey Beach

by Eden Robinson

  I poured myself some Puffed Wheat and pushed them around my bowl, feeling time crawl slowly across my skin, an agonizing eternity of waiting for Mom to get ready. She finally came downstairs in carefully pressed jeans, a white shirt and jean jacket, and with a blue kerchief over her hair. Dad wiped his hands on his pants before he kissed her good morning and said she looked great.

  At the docks we had to wait for Aunt Edith, who was bringing fresh bread. Mom had mortally offended her a few months earlier by buying her a bread machine for Christmas. Dad tried to warn her, said she’d appreciate an electric knife a lot more, but Mom insisted because she knew Aunt Edith’s arthritis was getting worse. Just recently, she’d had to cut her long hair into a bob because she couldn’t braid it any more. Uncle Geordie conceded that Edith did use the machine for the kneading part, but everything else was still done the old-fashioned way. Her bread was absolutely the best: cotton-ball soft inside, so tender the butter almost made it dissolve, with a crust as flaky and golden brown as a croissant’s. Mom later got back in her good books, at Ma-ma-oo’s birthday party, by baking a slightly tough, heavy loaf and then casually asking what Aunt Edith thought she’d done wrong.

  Uncle Geordie’s rattly old truck pulled into the bay, and Mom shooed me and Jimmy inside the cabin, where we fought over the captain’s seat. Dad had bought the gillnetter, Lulu, for two hundred dollars. Lulu was long and heavy and so slow that the only way we’d run into anything was if it was trying to hit us. When we went anywhere, I could count the logs on the beach, the trees on the mountains, the waves in the ocean. Her only saving grace was that she was big enough to give us tons of elbow room. But the smell of the old boat was so strong that we’d have it in our clothes for weeks after we got home.

  Uncle Geordie came on board first. He looked fierce, with his eyebrows hanging over his eyes and his hollow cheekbones and his habit of frowning all the time, but whenever he baby-sat me he carved me little seiners and gillnetters out of corks. I told him he should sell them, but he always shook his head. Once we were under way, I sat in his lap while he explained the tides to me and let me steer Lulu. The engine was as loud as a jackhammer, and everyone had to yell to be heard. When I got bored of steering, I lay on the lower bunk under the bow and read a True Stories I’d filched from Mom’s bedroom. She said nine years old was too young to be reading trash, so I hid it behind my comic-book covers.

  Only when I was on the boat could I eat Spam. Dad fried it until it was crispy and served it with hash browns and ketchup. Uncle Geordie roasted marshmallows for us, and Aunt Edith brought out some canned crabapples.

  Mom forced Jimmy to come down for lunch and snacks, and he’d come scrambling back to use the PortaPotti, but he stayed on the bow most of the time, his camera ready in case any sasquatches appeared on the beach, scanning the shore for anything that looked like a large hairy monkey. Mom wanted him to take pictures of the mountains, but Jimmy wouldn’t—he didn’t even relent when some porpoises came and played around the bow.

  Dad and Uncle Geordie jigged while Mom and Aunt Edith took turns at the wheel. Dad wanted some halibut, and Uncle Geordie said he wanted something fresh so bad he wouldn’t even mind a sea cucumber.

  The summer had stretched itself into early September. When we finally arrived, the day was sweltering. I loved going to Monkey Beach, because you couldn’t take a step without crushing seashells, the crunch of your steps loud and satisfying. The water was so pure that you could see straight down to the bottom. You could watch crabs skittering sideways over discarded clam and cockleshells, and shiners flicking back and forth. Kelp the colour of brown beer bottles rose from the bottom, tall and thin with bulbs on top, each bulb with long strands growing out of it, as flat as noodles, waving in the tide.

  Dad and Uncle Geordie shoved the skiff into the water and rowed most of the gear to the beach. We stopped on the north side of Monkey Beach, where the shore is flatter and the beach a little longer than a football field. As they were rowing back to the gillnetter, Uncle Geordie yelled excitedly for Dad to give him the net, then grabbed it and dipped it into the water and brought up a crab.

  Aunt Edith clapped, then hollered, “Get me one with eggs!”

  Uncle Geordie waved at her.

  “Hurry up!” Jimmy yelled across the water, swatting horseflies away from his face. “Jeez, they’re taking long.”

  “Put some bug dope on,” Mom said to him.

  Jimmy leaned over the railing to dip his hand in the ocean. His legs dangled in the air. “The water’s still warm.”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Mom said, hauling him back in.

  “It’s not that far,” he said.

  “Your camera would get wrecked, dummy,” I said.

  Dad and Uncle Geordie caught two more crabs before finally rowing the rest of the way back to us. I was anxious to start hunting for cockles, bending down and looking for places where the sand bubbled. Those suckers moved fast. I’d always liked it when they stuck their tongues out, until Mom told me those were really their legs. As soon as we touched shore, Jimmy leaped off the boat and ran for the woods. Years of babysitting instinct kicked in, and I sprinted after him. Mom and Dad were shouting in the background, annoyed. I tackled Jimmy, and we both fell flat in the sand.

  Mom caught up to us and pulled Jimmy to his feet by his ears. “What do you think you’re doing, young man?”

  “Making us rich!” he said. “I—”

  “Lisa,” Mom said to me, “stay with him and make sure he doesn’t get into trouble.”

  “But—” Jimmy and I said at the same time.

  “Don’t argue with your mother,” Dad said, “or you can both go back on the boat.”

  Jimmy almost started crying. He was getting older though, less prone to throwing himself on the ground, kicking and screaming. When they started to set up a little camp, I dragged him down the beach to look for shells.

  We slept on the beach that night. We roasted more marshmallows and some hot dogs on the fire. Aunt Edith boiled hers, saying her stomach wasn’t what it used to be, and Uncle Geordie fell asleep without eating, snoring so loud that he sounded like the gillnetter.

  In the morning, Jimmy was gone. Dad and Mom hunted one way up the beach, and Aunt Edith and Uncle Geordie went the other. They shouted Jimmy’s name. I was supposed to stay at the camp, but I heard something crack in the trees.

  “Jimmy?” I said.

  I heard someone start to run.

  “I found him!” I shouted. “I found him!”

  Without waiting to see if anyone had heard me, I started to run after him. I’d catch glimpses of a brown shirt and hear Jimmy up ahead, but I couldn’t catch up to him. I chased him as hard as I could, until my side ached as if I’d been punched and I gasped for air. I could hear him ahead of me. I stopped, leaning over, consoling myself with the spanking Jimmy was going to get when we got back.

  Suddenly, every hair on my body prickled. The trees were thick, and beneath them everything was hushed. A raven croaked somewhere above. I couldn’t hear anyone calling for Jimmy. I could hear myself breathing. I could feel someone watching me. “Jimmy?”

  The sweat on my body was stinging cuts and scratches I hadn’t been aware of before, was drying fast, making my skin cold. I turned very slowly. No one was behind me. I turned back and saw him. Just for a moment, just a glimpse of a tall man, covered in brown fur. He gave me a wide, friendly smile, but he had too many teeth and they were all pointed. He backed into the shadows, then stepped behind a cedar tree and vanished.

  I couldn’t move. Then I heard myself screaming and I stood there, not moving. Jimmy came running with his camera ready. He broke through the bushes and started snapping pictures wildly, first of me screaming and then of the woods around us. Jimmy was wearing a grey sweatshirt. I stared at him, and he stared out at the bushes.

  “Where are they?” he said, excited.

  Doubt began to set in: it had happened so fast and had been so brief, I wondered if
I’d just imagined the whole thing.

  “Did you see them?” Jimmy said. “Which way did they go?”

  “Who?” I said.

  “The sasquatches!” Jimmy said.

  I thought about it, then pointed in the direction of our camp, and Jimmy started running back the way I’d come. I stayed for a moment longer, then turned around and left.

  On the way back, Jimmy looked tired and scared. He stayed close to me. I didn’t want to spook him, so I didn’t tell him about the man I’d seen disappearing behind the tree.

  “Did you follow right behind me?” he said.

  I nodded.

  He sighed. “I thought you were asleep.”

  Jimmy got tanned, I got a lecture and we had to sleep on the boat that night instead of on the beach. Jimmy cried and cried, quietly. I knew he thought I was asleep, so I pretended to turn over and flop my arm across him. He didn’t move. His breathing steadied, he sniffed a few times, then he curled into me and went to sleep. I watched the stars as the gillnetter bobbed. I cringed when I imagined myself telling people I’d seen a b’gwus. They’d snicker about it the way they did when Ma-ma-oo insisted they were real. But if the Globe did pay a lot of money for a picture, I’d probably given up a chance to make us rich.

  I sigh. Maybe dreaming about Jimmy standing on Monkey Beach is simply regret at missed opportunities. Maybe it means I’m feeling guilty about withholding secrets. It could be a death sending, but those usually happen when you are awake.

  God knows what the crows are trying to say. La’es—go down to the bottom of the ocean, to get snagged in the bottom, like a halibut hook stuck on the ocean floor; a boat sinking, coming to rest on the bottom. The seiner sank? Mom and Dad are in danger if they go on a boat? I should go after him? I used to think that if I could talk to the spirit world, I’d get some answers. Ha bloody ha. I wish the dead would just come out and say what they mean instead of being so passive-aggressive about the whole thing.

  My mother gets up and pours herself a cup of coffee. She used to kick me out of the house when I smoked, but now she doesn’t care. All the same, out of habit, I go out to the back porch even though Dad is smoking in the kitchen. The wind has started up, it’s fast and cold, making whitecaps on the channel. It keeps blowing my lighter out, even when I cup the flame carefully. Mom bought me wind chimes last year for my nineteenth birthday, the expensive kind that sound like little gongs, and they’re ringing like crazy. For Christmas, she bought me a box of smoker’s chewing gum, foul and every kind of vile. I’ve tried tossing them in the garbage, but she sneaks them back in my desk.

  The first puff flows in and I sit back, leaning into the patio chair. In addition to all that coffee, I smoked for hours last night. My throat hurts and is phlegmy. The sun is low and the light is weak, but it makes the water glitter. The ocean looks black where there’s no light and dark green where the sun hits. A wave of lovely dizziness hits as the buzz kicks in. I have a moment of dislocation. I can separate myself from my memories and just be here, watching the clouds, ocean and light. I can feel my own nausea, the headache I’m getting, the tightness in my chest.

  I stood beside a ditch, looking down at a small, dark brown dog with white spots. I thought it was sleeping and climbed down to pet it. When I was near enough to touch it, I could see that the dog’s skin was crisscrossed by razor-thin cuts that were crusted with blood. It had bits of strange cloth tied to its fur. The dog whimpered and its legs jerked.

  Someone tsk-tsked. I looked up, and a little, dark man with bright red hair was crouching beside me.

  “Your doggy?” I said.

  He shook his head, then pointed towards my house.

  “Lisa!” Mom yelled from our front porch. “Lunchtime!”

  “Come see doggie!” I yelled back.

  “Lisa! Lunch! Now!”

  Later, I dragged Mom to the ditch to see the dog. The flies had found it. Their lazy, contented buzz and the ripe smell of rotting flesh filled the air.

  Dad opens the back door and I jerk awake, making our rusty patio furniture squeal.

  “Wind’s picking up. You coming in?” he says.

  “I’m going to sit for a while,” I say.

  “It’s getting cold.”

  “I’m okay.”

  Dad comes out and sits beside me. He pulls out his own pack of cigarettes and lights up. He holds the pack out for me and I take one. He stopped bugging me about smoking a long time ago. He’s like Uncle Mick that way, not one for arguing.

  I had my first cigarette about six or seven years ago. Tab and I had snuck behind the gym. She’d carefully pulled a squashed Marlboro out of her lunchbox. Giggling, she’d told me she’d stolen it from her mother. She’d showed me the elegant way to smoke, the cigarette low between your first two fingers, taking ladylike puffs and blowing the smoke upward. Much later, when Mom found out that I smoked, she’d blamed Uncle Mick for my nasty habit, until I pointed out that Dad smoked too. He’d glared at me. “What?” I’d said.

  My Uncle Mick used to smoke a brand called Sago. I tried them and they made me high on the first puff. He liked to roll them himself, a habit Mom found even more disgusting than smoking. When cigarette prices went up, Dad tried to buy loose stuff, but Mom handed him a fifty-dollar bill and said she’d rather buy the damn things herself than have him smoking hippie weeds.

  Dad gets up and goes inside. He comes back out with two blankets and hands one to me.

  Sometimes I want to share my peculiar dreams with him. But when I bring them up, he looks at me like I’ve taken off my shirt and danced topless in front of him. The memories are so old that I used to think the little man and the dog in the ditch were a dream. I’m sure that was the first time I saw the little man. That was the day before the tidal wave. The next time was when I was six. I woke up with the eerie feeling that someone was staring at me. I clutched my ratty teddy bear, Mr. Booboo. When I finally got up the courage to peek out of my blankets, I could see by the moonlight that there were no monsters ready to grab me and drag me into dark places and do terrible things to me. My eyelids were pulling closed and my death grip on Mr. Booboo was loosening when my jewellery box fell off my dresser. I jolted awake, heart thudding so hard I couldn’t breathe. My jewellery box’s tinkling, tinny music played, but I heard it only somewhere in the distance because I was staring open-mouthed at the red-haired man sitting cross-legged on the top of my dresser.

  His crinkling face arranged itself into a grin as he rolled backwards and stood. He tilted a head that was too large for his body, put one stubby finger to his lips and went “Shh.” Frozen where I lay, I couldn’t have made a sound. His green plaid shirt jingled with tiny bells as he bowed to me, then he straightened until he was standing again and stepped back into the wall.

  I didn’t move from under the covers until Mom knocked on my door and said it was time to get my lazy bones out of bed. I told her about the little man and she gave me a hug and said everyone had bad dreams and not to be scared of them—they were just dreams and they couldn’t hurt me.

  “But he was here,” I said.

  She smoothed my hair. “Some dreams feel very real. Come on, let’s get breakfast.”

  Dad came into the house as I was eating my cereal. He plopped a bulging burlap sack on the kitchen floor beside Mom. He looked very pleased with himself as he said, “Happy birthday, Gladys.”

  She opened the sack and peered inside. “Albert, you are just too romantic.” She pulled out one of the cockles and balanced it on the back of her hand. “Next year, I want a diamond this big.”

  “I can take them back,” he said, his smile growing fainter.

  “Don’t be silly,” she said, standing on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “I’m just teasing. It was very thoughtful.”

  He wasn’t looking reassured until she kissed him again. When he leaned in for a bigger kiss, I felt it was time to make gagging noises so they wouldn’t get too mushy in front of me.

  “Go watch cartoons with Ji
mmy,” Mom said.

  Jimmy had parked himself two feet from the TV and right in the centre and he yelled out “Mom!” when I shoved him over.

  “Lisa!” Mom said.

  “He’s hogging the TV!”

  Later in the morning, while Mom checked the seals on the jars of cockles, the doorbell rang. I jumped up to get it. When I opened the door, I was looking up at a tall, deeply tanned man with black hair pulled back in one long braid.

  “Hey, short stuff,” he said. “Your mommy home?”

  Mom came up behind me, stopping suddenly. I turned in time to see her smile freeze. “Oh my God.”

  The man held out a single pink salmonberry flower. “Surprise.”

  She kept staring at his face, mouth opening and closing soundlessly.

  “Did I get the day wrong?”

  “No, I, I thought you were … I mean, we heard the standoff went, um, well, badly and we thought …” Mom nervous was a new experience for me. I stared as she blushed and stepped back. “Come in,” she said. Then to me, “Go get your dad.”

  The man had a loping, bowlegged walk that made the fringe on his buckskin leather jacket sway as he strolled into the house.

  “Dad!” I yelled. “Dad! There’s a man here!”

  “I said go, I didn’t say scream,” Mom said, turning a darker shade of red. “Now go get your dad.”

  “I’m coming, I’m coming,” Dad said as he bounced up the basement steps. “How many times have I told you not to yell—” He stopped at the entrance to the hallway. The man took two steps and bear-hugged Dad so hard he lifted him off the ground.

  “Look at you,” the man said, thumping him back down and holding him at arm’s length. “I heard you had settled down, but I didn’t believe it.”

  “Jesus,” Dad said, leaning over like he’d been punched in the stomach. “Jesus.”