One Good Thing

by Rebecca Hendry

  It takes them four trips to bring everything to the old cabin site. It’s halfway across the island, but only five minutes of easy walking over the rocks. In the centre of the trees is a rickety platform with three walls and some rafters. Wood lies in scattered piles around it, crunching beneath their feet as they walk to the edge of the platform and deposit their goods on the ground.

  When they have all their gear, Jones stands back and looks at the cabin. Delilah scratches a mosquito bite on her arm. The cabin is small, maybe eight feet by eight feet. The remains of an ancient wood stove lie in a heap in one corner, and what might have been a table but is now missing legs leans against one of the walls. The plywood floor looks like it could cave in if a mouse ran across it.

  “Doesn’t it belong to somebody?” she asks. “Won’t they get mad?”

  He’s flipping through the wood he brought, his thin back to her. “No. Belongs to some guy who lives in an old folks’ home now. He was a miner like a hundred years ago. His family lives out east somewhere. My dad told me. Nobody will care.”

  “How can you fix it up with just this stuff? Is it enough?”

  “There’s wood here too.” He turns to her. “We’re not only doing it today. We have all summer. Today I want to put the tarp up. Like a roof. And we can use the canvas for the wall. And maybe fill in some of the holes.”

  She realizes she might be offending him. He had been excited to bring her there, and she might sound like she’s complaining, like she doesn’t think it’s good enough. It’s basically just going to be a fort. And as far as forts go, it’s pretty cool. The structure is there, it’s just been sitting too long not being used. In her mind, she sees the plywood bits Jones brought stitching together for the walls and the roof. Shingles recovered from the surrounding brush around their feet and nailed back up where they belong. New windows, maybe, from the junk shop by Weaver’s. She can see sunflowers blooming around the edges of the cabin. Daisies sprouting along a path made of lake stones. She wonders if she will be in Yellowknife long enough to finish the job before her parents make her leave.

  TWO HOURS LATER THEY are sweating despite the breeze. Delilah is sitting by a pile of wood scraps she salvaged from around the cabin site and is pulling out rusty nails and placing them in a pile on the lichen beside her. Her shorts are filthy, streaked with the rich black earth the bones of the old house rest on. Her knees are covered in two circles of muck from kneeling by the floor and holding the side of the canvas while Jones stretched it across to the other wall and nailed it to the corner beam.

  They have eaten all the food they packed—the entire box of cookies, both apples, and the Thermos of juice. Delilah is still starving, daydreaming about bread and butter and a giant chunk of cheddar cheese, but she doesn’t want to go yet. She looks up at what they’ve accomplished so far. Jones is inside, and she can’t see him because of the canvas stretched the length of the missing wall, almost to the height of where the roof should be, but she can hear him hammering something.

  She pulls the last nail from a shingle with her grimy finger and tosses it aside. She stands and brushes the twigs and dirt from the back of her shorts. Lifting the corner of the canvas left loose for a door, she ducks under. Jones is patching a hole by the floor under an old countertop.

  “You think it’s safe for me to come in too?”

  Jones stops hammering. He inspects the uneven floor, warped with time and decades of deep snow. There is a smear of mud across one freckled cheek, a dead leaf caught in the hair above his left ear. “Should be.”

  She steps over the ledge. The floor seems solid enough. She takes another step, pulls herself up, and lets the canvas drop behind her.

  “We need a door,” she says.

  “Yeah, I know.” He’s watching her walk, watching the way the floor gives a little under her sneakers. When she makes it halfway across, he turns back to his hammering.

  Standing in the centre, Delilah turns slowly in place. It almost looks like a real house, if you forget the sunlight is streaming in overhead and slanting across the floor by her feet. The counter is the only thing left standing, but Delilah sees Jones has gathered the pieces of the old table and put them in a pile to work on later. There’s room for a couple of chairs. Maybe they can find some at the junkyard and bring them in the canoe. And blankets. She could bring the giant fuzzy pink pillow she won at the pne in Vancouver. There are a lot of things they could bring.

  Delilah sits cross-legged in the middle of the floor. Above her are the dark rafters and the tops of trees outlined black against the sky. She can hear birds singing to each other out there, insistent and loud.

  “Jones?”

  “Yeah?” He finishes hammering and sits down with his back against the wall, facing her. He sweeps his arm across his damp forehead.

  “Do you think we could stay out here ever? Like, for more than a few hours?”

  “Overnight?” His green eyes catch hers and flicker away to study his hand. “Yeah, sure. Why not? It’s no different than camping. And we’ll have the roof on today.”

  Overnight. That wasn’t what she meant.

  “Oh,” she says. “I was just thinking . . .”

  Jones turns pink and bites the nail on his thumb. “Well, yeah. I know. But I was planning on staying out here sometimes. By myself. I was going to build a bed and bring out some old blankets for the mattress. Over there.” He points across to the canvas wall. “Right against there.”

  “You would stay out here by yourself?”

  He shrugs. “Why not?”

  Delilah thinks about this. She thinks about getting away from her house, from the fighting. From Annie.

  “I could stay out here too.”

  “Sure. There’s room.”

  They’re silent for a moment, looking up through the roof that isn’t there. Dust swirls around them, lit up like tiny fireflies.

  “SMASH IT, DELILAH. LIKE this.” Esther grabs a head of iceberg lettuce from the box and slams it core side down on the wooden butcher’s block in the kitchen of the Wildcat. She pulls the loosened leaves apart, tosses the core into the giant garbage can, and then wipes her hands on her round white chest.

  Delilah chooses the biggest lettuce out of the box. She slams it, hard, on the wood. The leaves fall apart in her hands. She looks to Esther for confirmation that she has done it right, but the cook, a large woman with unruly curls and little round John Lennon glasses, has already turned back to her gas range with the simmering pots. Delilah plucks the leaves methodically, drops them into the plastic bin with the others.

  She stops to scratch a blackfly bite behind her ear. It’s a big one. She had been riding out to the dump with Jones in the back of his dad’s truck. They were leaning against the old refrigerator Red was hauling out for some lady who lived uptown and didn’t have any family to do her dump runs for her. She had given Delilah and Jones a pop each, one of those generic colas that comes in the round little bottles. Red hit a bump and they both spilled some on the front of their T-shirts, which they thought was hilarious until Red stopped the truck and they were swarmed by an army of giant, bloodsucking flies.

  It wasn’t until she got home to the green shack and she was absently picking at her ear while she poured some fruit punch that she realized the damage. Her fingers caught on a scab the size of a dime and came back bloody. Blackflies aren’t polite like mosquitoes, Will had told her. They don’t just take a taste. They rip off a chunk and save some for later.

  Annie glides into the back of the café with a tray of loaded dishes. “They’re gone. Thank God for that. Friggin’ tourists. All wearing matching sweaters, and the blonde has a California tan and they’re carrying subarctic parkas. It’s June. There’s no snow. So sorry to tell you. They must be sweating like pigs out there.” She dumps her tray by the double sink. “Better wash your hands, Delilah,” she says over her shoulder. “Esther doesn’t want your scabs showing up in their moose burgers.” She starts running hot water.

&
nbsp; Annie is happy again, no trace of the heaviness that lingered on her for days and kept her buried under blankets. Delilah feels something frenetic about her mother today, buzzing, like she is a crackling spark about to ignite. At least she hasn’t said anything else about leaving.

  Annie wipes her hands on the dishtowel lying on the counter. “Delilah! Wake up! Did you hear me?” Delilah is still holding a piece of lettuce in one hand, scratching her ear absently with the other.

  Esther turns from her pot with a grin. “What the hell. Extra protein, hey?” She is seasoning the pots on the gas stove. The smell of caribou stew, sharp and meaty and wild, fills the small kitchen. The back door is open, letting in cool fresh air off the bay.

  Delilah drops the lettuce and walks over to the sink, dips her hands in the soapy water and then rinses them under the cold tap. Her mother takes the last plate from her tray and slides it into the water.

  “You gonna waitress one day too, Delilah?” Esther carries a giant pot dripping tomato sauce remnants over to the sink. “Can’t keep a pretty girl like you hidden away in the kitchen.”

  Delilah glances out at the big rustic dining room that had been full of laughter and cigarette smoke and clanking dishes before the group of tourists left. She likes being in the kitchen where she can watch her mother glide from table to table, effortlessly charming, a hand on a shoulder, a smile while she tucks her hair behind her ear. Delilah knows she could never do that, that she would drop plates and forget orders, spill stew in someone’s lap. She picks up her broken lettuce head, starts separating the waxy leaves again.

  “Sure, yeah. Maybe someday.”

  Annie walks over, grabs a head of lettuce and bangs it roughly on the counter. “Like this,” she says. Delilah doesn’t like the dress her mother is wearing. The royal purple swirls and hot magenta paisleys are angry, almost violent.

  Esther returns to the stove with a clean pot full of water. “You know your mother makes more tips than any waitress I’ve ever had here? It’s no small feat to get those tight-fisted old-timers to cough up. But your mama has the golden touch.”

  Annie laughs and smashes another head of lettuce, her fingers flying as she separates the leaves. Delilah picks her own lettuce apart slowly. She sometimes feels like if she stays utterly calm she will somehow balance out her mother’s intensity. Neutralize it. Annie is spinning into her upward spiral.

  “I should get back out there,” Annie says. “My public is calling me. Gotta feed those hungry mouths. I’m saving up for my retirement in Mexico.” She tosses the last leaf into the bin and walks to the sink to scrub her hands.

  “You got a few years left before retirement, my dear,” Esther snorts, shaking a box of macaroni into the pot. “As for mine, you’re looking at it.”

  “Oh, I plan to retire early,” Annie says, drying her hands vigorously on a clean dishtowel. “Not going to be a working drone for the rest of my good years. No no no. Art on the beach, music by the fire. Fresh papayas every morning. That’s the life for me.” She winks at Delilah.

  “Dream on, dreamer,” Esther says, stirring the macaroni.

  The bell rings as a new customer enters the restaurant. Annie walks past and gives Delilah a nudge in the ribs. “Hard work, isn’t it?” Annie whispers to her, loud enough for Esther to hear. “That Esther, she’s an old battle-axe. Make sure she doesn’t rip you off at the end of the day.”

  Esther whoops from her pots. “Oh, I ain’t paying her! She’s a volunteer. Just doing it out of the goodness of her heart. Ain’t that right, Delilah?”

  Delilah turns, but sees only Esther’s broad back, her arm stirring, stirring the macaroni. “Umm . . .” she says. Two dollars an hour. That was the deal. Two hours a day whenever her mom has shifts. She’s saving for a pair of bell-bottom jeans.

  Her mom presses a long finger to the bridge of Delilah’s nose and gives it a gentle little stroke. Her finger shakes slightly, the faintest tremor in the tip. “She’s only messing with you,” Annie says. She picks up her tray and leans in to kiss Delilah’s cheek. It’s so faint she can hardly feel it.

  ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON AFTER the last day at school, Delilah and Jones buy pepperoni sticks and ripple chips at Weaver’s and head up on the rocks at the edge of Back Bay, climbing to the top and wandering around the low brush. They eat their picnic on the clifftop about twenty feet above the lake near a clearing sprouting with tiny blue wildflowers. Delilah finds a white bone nestled in the moss that Jones tells her is fox. The sun warms their bare arms, and Delilah can feel the prickle of a sunburn across her nose as they lie in the rough, lacy lichen studying the clouds. They are barefoot, their shoes in a pile by their food. She feels a lazy, joyful relief that this will be her life for the next two months. Outside with Jones, she is the calmest and most at ease she’s felt in years.

  “What’s asthma feel like?” Jones asks, out of the blue.

  Delilah considers this question. In a way, she is surprised he noticed she has asthma at all. She has tried to hide it from him like she does with everyone, but her surreptitious puffs from her inhaler when they’ve been running or after gym class aren’t always easy to hide. That’s nothing, though. Not compared to Vancouver with the hospital stays, the trips to ER. Here she can breathe better than she ever could. It’s the dryness, her mother said. Not as many types of pollen swirling around in the damp air like in Vancouver.

  “Sometimes it feels like you’re holding your breath underwater,” she says.

  He looks over. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Like when you go under and you hold your breath for a super long time until your lungs feel like they’re blowing up like balloons and you know if you take a breath you might drown. It kind of feels like that.”

  Jones looks intrigued. “Why is it any different than holding your breath?”

  “It’s . . . I don’t know. The pressure or something. Like you’re being squeezed by something outside yourself. You don’t get that when you just hold your breath.”

  He nods. “I know that feeling.”

  “You do?”

  He sits up. “Yeah.”

  He’s looking out toward the water. Something seems to be troubling him, but she can’t guess what. She sits up as he walks over to the edge of the rock and looks down. He whips off his T-shirt, takes a few steps back, and then runs to the edge and jumps high in the air.

  “Hey!” she calls, standing to watch him, laughing at his spontaneous leap.

  He hits the surface of the lake in a lazy cannonball, all folded skinny arms and legs, and disappears below. She watches the water for what feels like a long time, and a trickle of fear runs through her. Where is he? There are jagged rocks along the shore, she knows. Just under the surface. Maybe he didn’t jump far enough out?

  She climbs down the rock to the narrow beach beside the cliff, scraping her bare knee when she slips. Along the sand there is a trail of sandpiper tracks, like someone has pressed a broken fork onto the beach. She walks closer to the water until her sneakered toes are touching it.

  No bubbles. Nothing.

  A terrible feeling grows in her as she watches the passive lake, and she tries to talk herself out of it. Jones is a strong swimmer. He’ll be back up. There is no reason for this rush of panic. But still. Come back, she thinks.

  Seconds later there is a ripple and a splash and he flails his way to the shore. She steps back. Folds her arms across her tripping heart.

  At first, he’s gasping, and he can’t get his words out. He flops to the sand, and Delilah sits beside him, noting the bumps of gooseflesh on his thin white arms, his heaving chest.

  When he finally speaks, he says, “I held my breath until it hurt and I thought I was gonna die. Is that what it feels like?”

  She tries to keep her voice steady. “Yes. That’s what it feels like. Only difference is you just had to swim up for air when you needed it.”

  Jones shakes himself like a dog, sending lake water shooting out around him. “I guess. But it’s not a
ll bad, right? You get to miss school.”

  Delilah thinks about this. About the hospital stays in Vancouver where her mother brought her lasagna from the Greek restaurant so she didn’t have to eat the disgusting food, or how in Regina her dad once brought her a silver balloon and tied it to her bed rail, saying it was her silver cloud, which was even better than a cloud with a silver lining.

  “No,” she says. “It’s not all bad.”

  If she wasn’t worried about hurting his feelings she would tell him that holding his breath in the lake doesn’t come close to what it’s like in real life. How sometimes it feels like someone is stealing her breath away from her, someone mean and cold and angry. She wishes she could explain that it’s hard not to take it personally.

  JULY

  SKYNYRD’S “FREE BIRD” BLASTS from the eight-track deck in the front of the de Havilland Beaver as the plane dips lower over the tundra, gliding like a graceful duck to settle on the surface of the ruffled lake. Delilah knows the song well because her dad tried to learn it on the guitar. It sounded thin and sad when he sang it. He finally gave up, claiming it wasn’t the same on an acoustic. Muddy has been playing the song on repeat since they took off from Back Bay at the Old Town float plane base an hour earlier.

  Before they left, Annie had gone to work cheery and bright-eyed, a piece of buttered toast in her mouth as she pulled the screen door shut behind her after kissing them both on the head.

  Delilah, perched in her window seat now, can’t get over how the land changes so completely from one place to the next up north. Mac had tried to explain the Barrens to her before they left. He told her that when you’re flying over them you feel like no one has ever been there before. You’re the first ones, nestled in that small buzzing plane, about to embark on an adventure somewhere nobody has ever bothered with before.