The Shore Girl

by Fran Kimmel

  I knew my arm was no good for fishing even if I had my rod, but the beer was cold and I’d have the place to myself. Except I rounded the corner marking the end of the road and there was an old van parked badly in the middle tent spot, like it had run out of gas and coughed to a halt. I memorized the license plate number. This is something I do — memorize license plate numbers. I guess I got shamed into it after that fiasco as a witness. The cops kept saying, can’t you remember anything, like the colour of the car or how many men inside? I was just a little kid standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, but it stuck with me, that dummy feeling.

  Whoever owned the van had been there awhile. An orange tarp stretched from tree to tree, making a roof for the picnic table. The table was covered with a bright blue tablecloth, plus several boxes, plastic containers, water jugs, and books lined up one side. A bouquet of wild flowers sat in a water-filled jar beside candles stuck onto tinfoil clumps. Large pillows, stacked on the grass; chairs and TV tables arranged around the fire pit like a pretend home. There were girl things strung along a rope tied between two trees: panties, bathing suit tops, thin white socks. No signs of fishing gear. No tent. No people. But shoes lined up on a mat outside the back van door.

  I saw all this before I got out of the truck. This had been my fishing hole, mine and Matt’s, for as long as I could remember. Now it had squatters, probably pot-soaked tax dodgers who couldn’t tell a whitefish from a rainbow. I cut the engine, opened a beer and drained it. I wanted the satisfaction of meeting them.

  The truck heated like a furnace under the muggy sky and when the squatters still didn’t show, I cracked a second beer, eased myself down to the ground and limped along the riverbank. The river was low, a trickle of its usual self. A person could easily cross from one bank to the other on the giant pink stones. It must have been an unusually dry winter. The hills to the west looked brown and patchy and the dull silver leaves of the willows had curled into themselves, like they’d given up on rain for the season. I could have called Matt while I was gone, chatted about the weather, asked how he was doing. He always talked Mexico. Maybe he was decked out on a beach somewhere in his undershirt and shorts, a tequila bottle propped in sand near his feet, skinny white thighs baking brown.

  I could hear their voices long before I saw them, cheerful birdlike chatter blending in with the forest noises and echoing off the water. I found a solid tree stump near some small spruce and sat and waited. Two girls waded through the river. The one in front was in tight blue jean shorts and a tank top, long hair streaked with golds and reds, like Christmas ribbon. A younger girl followed her, a springy little thing in a floppy blue hat and rolled-up overalls, a sandal sticking out from each pocket. She carried a walking stick. I thought they’d wade right by without noticing, but the taller one saw me on my stump.

  “Hello,” she said. She looked fearless. Like she’d been expecting me all along. I knew that look. A person had to have been through a whole lot of crap to stand before a stranger that way.

  She waded towards me, came right over.

  “Hello.” I stood, requiring several separate movements to get myself upright while managing to hang onto my beer. “You all right?” She was out of the water by then, hardly pausing as her bare feet slipped along the jagged rocks. The young girl pulled her sandals from her pockets, bent down to put them on, then picked up her stick and followed closely, floppy hat down. The first one looked older than she did from a distance, more sturdy, like she could climb a mountain and not lose her breath. This must be mother and daughter.

  “I see you’ve found my spot.” I moved away from my stump towards her.

  “I was about to say the same to you.” She smiled wide. Her whole face transformed into a child’s, her hair like amber glass.

  “I’ve been fishing the spot for years. Never met anyone here until now.”

  “And you’re our first tourist. We’ve walked up and down this river. Haven’t seen any fish.”

  The young girl poked her head from around her mother, folded back her hat and looked straight at me. She had a pretty face with almond-shaped, frightened eyes. They were full of questions. The kid had more sense than her mother; I knew her look, too. What were they doing out here in the middle of nowhere? I gave the kid my best smile, but she didn’t look convinced, hugging her stick closely and leaning into her mother.

  We walked towards their campsite, me trying to keep up. The woman looked back every ten paces or so, obviously tracking me.

  “Have a seat,” she said and pointed to a chair near the fire pit. “You look like you should rest for a minute before you leave.” She walked over to the picnic table and straddled her long legs across the bench. The young girl went over to the other side and sat across from her mother.

  I sat. “Name’s Jake,” I offered.

  “I’m Harmony and this is Rebee,” the mother said.

  “Hello, Rebee. You like fishing?”

  The girl shrugged without looking up. I wanted her to take off her hat so I could see her face.

  “Odd choice for a vacation spot,” I said. “Just the two of you?”

  “I’d say it’s perfect. Up until now, we’ve had the place to ourselves. Rebee, make some sandwiches, will you, hon. I’ll make us some juice.”

  Harmony poured some crystals into a white plastic jug, then stood up again, leaving her daughter alone with me as she headed towards the water pump at the mouth of the campground, about 100 yards away. I watched her go as Rebee rooted through one of the boxes and pulled out a jar of peanut butter and a package of crackers.

  “Looks like you’ve settled in pretty good. You and your mom been here long?”

  Rebee spread thick chunks of peanut butter across a straight row of graham crackers lined on a paper towel. Under the orange tarp roof, her skin was the colour of a grapefruit. She glanced over at her retreating mother, and I figured she’d stay silent, but then she slipped off her hat, looked straight at me, and said, “A couple of weeks, I guess.”

  She didn’t correct me about the woman being her mother.

  “What you been doing here?”

  She shrugged again as though she couldn’t remember. I thought about the gang of giggling girls at the Shoppers that morning, probably at the outdoor pool by now, lying on towels, trying to catch the lifeguard’s eye.

  “We go berry-picking.” She licked the knife. “For saska-toons and raspberries. Or read books. Build fires.”

  “Rebee your real name?”

  “Yes.”

  “How old are you, Rebee?”

  “Eleven. No-twelve. I had my birthday last week.”

  “Twelve. Really? I would have thought you were thirteen at least.”

  It was a good thing to say. She smiled, a brief dimpling of her cheeks, then back to her wary look. I left my chair and shuffled over to the shade of the picnic table. Rebee had peanut butter on her cheek. She looked like she could use a bath.

  “Were you in a fight?” she asks.

  “Nope. An accident.”

  “A car accident?”

  “Fell off a rig. Bounced down two tiers right into the dirt. Pretty dumb, eh? Can’t work for awhile. Supposed to heal quietly while the doctors check my pulse. Mostly I think they’re afraid of a lawsuit. They’ve told me to stay here and rest.”

  “You mean stay here?” She’s looked around, frightened, as though this space would crumble under the weight of us all.

  “No, no, not here. In Canada. What do you figure I should do now that I can’t work?”

  Harmony walked back to us and placed the jug on the table. It was filled with frothy purple juice. Rebee stacked the slathered crackers three at a time and put them on a plastic plate.

  “Rebee, you’ve got peanut butter all over your face.”

  Rebee glanced at me quickly, wiping her cheek with the back of her hand to smear the brown muck away.

  “Want some lunch before you leave?” Harmony said, referring I guess to the cracker sandwich
es. She sat down beside me at the table, pulled her hair into a ponytail and tied it with a piece of thin leather, then poured juice into a plastic cup for Rebee, who gulped it down in one long swig.

  Only a thief would take food from that table.

  “I’ve got beer in the truck.”

  “Rebee, be a doll and go get the beer. Don’t drop it.”

  Rebee slid off the bench and went over to the truck. She struggled with the heavy cab door and came back, arms circling the case like a baby. Harmony pulled three from the box, popped off their tops, and handed one to Rebee and me. The kid took it without even blinking.

  “I’m looking for my brother. Thought he might have shown up here.”

  “Not since we’ve been around. Unless he’s a tight-assed warden with nothing better to do than harass campers. I told him, for seven bucks a night, we should at least get toilet paper.”

  Harmony lazily swatted at the flies crawling over the cracker plate. She examined me like a doctor, with eyes the colour of a Kenyan butter tree. She wore no makeup and the sun had freckled her nose and cheeks.

  “Cracked ribs?”

  “For a start.”

  “He fell off a rig into the dirt,” Rebee piped up.

  Harmony looked hard at the girl, who blushed deep under her mother’s stare. Something dark passed between them and Rebee quit talking, just sipped on her beer and chipped away with her thumb at the table’s peeling paint. Her index finger bent at the tip like it was dislocated. I tried not to stare.

  “My brother’s an older guy. Name’s Matt. Harmless. He’d have his fishing pole.”

  “Haven’t seen him. Kinda hard to lose a brother, isn’t it?” “Apparently not.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t want to be found.”

  Something about the way she said this, so matter-of-factly, made me catch my breath. If she knew she was being hurtful, she didn’t let on. She was taking her crackers apart, eating one at a time.

  “Well, if your brother pops by, I’ll tell him you’re looking.”

  I wondered who she was running from to end up here.

  I had no view from that table. Tucked into the valley, I couldn’t see the wheat fields. Couldn’t see the sky. Even the pumpjack in my head had gone silent. I’d had enough of that place.

  “Gotta be off, I guess.”

  Harmony nodded her approval as I stepped away from the table.

  “Nice meeting you,” I said. “Enjoy the rest of your holiday.”

  Rebee looked up at me, like she might say something, but didn’t. I gritted my teeth to stop from staggering in front of these girls — the pain in my shoulder nearly toppling me — and counted the careful steps, nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, back to the truck. Rebee must have followed, because as I started the engine and was about to back up, she stood at my window, holding the beer case in her arms.

  “Harmony wants to know, do you want your beer?”

  “Na. You keep it.”

  She put the case down in the dirt and hung her arms at her sides, her finger crooked as all get out. She caught me staring at her hand and shoved it in her pocket.

  “Dollhouses.”

  “Sorry?”

  She glanced back once at her mother, then looked straight at me. “You asked me what you could do now you can’t work. Maybe you could start building dollhouses. I read about a guy who did that. In the laundromat.”

  “A guy built dollhouses in a laundromat?”

  “No,” Rebee blushed deeply, like she’d made a stupid mistake. “That’s just where I read about it. In a newspaper. In a laundromat.”

  “Right. Good idea. I’ll keep that in mind, Rebee.”

  I nodded reassuringly as I inched the truck backwards. This kid needed homemade chicken noodle soup in the worst way.

  * * *

  Between trips to the physio office, I’ve been airing out Matt’s trailer, leaving the windows open, propping the door with his hunting rifle. He’s squatted over this same patch of scrub grass for two decades now. For all that time, there’s little of Matt in here. Two cots at one end. A table, bench and two chairs at the other. In the middle, cupboards and a sink too small to dunk a pot. Matt never hooked up the water anyway. Most days, he’d plunge his head under the pumphouse tap. Once a week, he’d head over to the pool, pay his four dollars, and sit naked in the steam room for an hour at a time. Then he’d shower and shave and take his wrinkled pink skin back to the trailer. During his snowed-in months, he kept from freezing with a propane heater. That and his bourbon.

  Across from the sink there’s a small closet and a bank of drawers. I shoved what was left of him — four shirts, an old coat, two pairs of grey holey socks, a couple of undershirts and a pair of long underwear — into a garbage bag. Then I took the two drawers outside, one at a time, and weakly pounded the backs of them, scattering curled spiders. From the second drawer, a yellowed photo floated to the ground. I eased myself down and back up again; blew off the dust. A younger, clear-eyed Matt stood beside a woman, his arm around her shoulders, a grin taking over his face. He was shirtless, tall and lean. The woman wore a fancy dress, heeled shoes and patterned stockings. I couldn’t think where this picture would be taken. Couldn’t imagine my brother finding a day like this.

  Matt never cared for women, as far as I knew. Rita was no exception. I brought her to the trailer a few days after the Justice of the Peace ceremony. I wanted the three of us to drive over to the diner, sit like a family. Rita smiled, all teeth, and held out her hand. Matt just threw his fists into his pockets and stared her up and down. Legs, belly, breasts, belly.

  “So you got her knocked up,” he barked, dismissing Rita and glaring at me. Rita smoothed her dress in front and then clung to my arm.

  “Nice,” I said. “This is my wife.”

  We never got to the diner. Rita cried all the way back to our apartment and spread like dough on the bed. I tried to sit beside her but she flung out her arm, pushed me away and hissed, “What kind a family you come from? What you got me into?”

  I never liked Rita much. All those large teeth crowded into a small mouth and a duck voice that made people look in her direction every time she got going. When she told me she was pregnant, I was dumbstruck, couldn’t believe all that heaving and thrusting in her father’s house had led to a baby. We were hardly more than kids ourselves. Married only six weeks when she confessed, tears raining down her watermelon belly, the baby wasn’t mine, for sure it wasn’t, but Big Barry Chugg’s, the guy before me. She said she and Barry had been on the outs and she was scared of what her father would do if nobody came to claim her. Big Barry and Rita patched up their differences while I worked the night shift at the sawmill. I hugged her tightly when she asked for the divorce papers. I was so relieved at this second chance I got back-to-back speeding tickets on my way to the lawyer’s.

  After Rita left with Big Barry, I started checking on Matt again. He never did apologize, acted like Rita and the baby never were.

  “You should have treated her with more respect,” I said one night in front of the fire.

  “Yah, that would’ve been better.” He beat the flames with the metal poker. “I sometimes don’t think.”

  “I was trying to do right.”

  “What — by marrying her?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You try too hard, Jake,” he said in a gentle scolding voice.

  “Whadda you know about right and wrong?

  “What do you know about it?” I shot back.

  “Whad I know? I know that ‘right’ can sit on the butt end of feeling good. Sometimes you gotta turn a situation upside down to figure it out. That girl wasn’t yours. Never was. You’d a made her miserable, and she you, and then all your righteousness wouldn’t be worth a damn.”

  There was a sadness in his voice, a longing almost. I got the feeling his words were for him, not me and Rita; that he was remembering why he’d chosen a godforsaken trailer in the middle of scrub over a life with commitments
and improvements and plodding forward.

  Back in the trailer, I propped the photo against the Scotch, then I dragged Matt’s mattress, blankets, and shirts into the back of the truck, and out to the dump, paid my $4.50, and heaved them over the cliff and into the smoking heap. When I got back, drenched in sweat, I found the brace and Velcroed it to my arm, poured myself a tumbler, washed down three Tylenols and waited for the shakes to subside. I studied the photo, the light on their faces. I wanted to reach in and pull out the answers to my questions. Things I should have asked him. All his doing without. All his doing nothing to change.

  He should have asked, too. I’d worked the rigs for two decades, in countries so cold you were scared to take a piss, so hot you could lick up the salt pouring out of you. Bad equipment, bad conditions. Such lousy food I’d dream about Safeway — about sprawling on top of the lettuce display. In all that time, he never asked about any of it.

  Maybe falling off a rig is a wake-up call. Matt’s leaving, too. I wanted to think I was a part of his plan, even if I was only on the butt end of feeling good.

  * * *

  I musta looked pretty bad. The kid wearing the grocery store apron kept five feet between us and kept glancing at me sideways as he carried the bags to the truck. I got beer, wine, an assortment of pops, ice, three steaks, potatoes, corn on the cob, butter, a bumbleberry pie, toilet paper, a teen magazine and a giant roll of tinfoil.

  I rounded the corner a few minutes before four, groceries rattling on the seat beside me, dust trailing behind. When I spotted the van and the girls stretched out on those big pillows reading their books, I felt the muscles in my neck relax. I had no business going back. But after a week in the trailer with Matt’s ghost, I told myself I needed company; lightness and laughter and girl talk. I didn’t know if it was Harmony or Rebee I needed to see.

  All I knew was something had been rankling me ever since I found them. Their playing house beside a dried-up river, with their make-believe lunch of peanut butter and purple Kool-Aid, their rundown van, their washing hung like rags on a ratty rope, a whisper of trouble between them.