by Bruce Fogle
And then I saw it. Amongst the foot deep seaweed the wind had dumped on the shore was Popeye’s wing. I felt a shiver start in my jaws, move to my shoulders then down my back. I tore seaweed away, strand by strand, revealing the gull’s plump body and finally its head. There was fishing line going into the bird’s beak. The line was knotted in the seaweed and I dug it all out. It was twice as long as the dock. Then I noticed. There was no red dot on the lower beak. It wasn’t Popeye, and I felt like dancing.
Now I wanted to know why the gull had a fishing line in its mouth. I finished separating the bird from its seaweed wrapping, washed it off in the lake, took it from the shore, placed it under the tree house and went to the bunkhouse to get my uncle.
‘There’s a seagull that died and I want to know why. It’s not Popeye,’ I shouted to my uncle through the bunkhouse screen door. ‘Bring your things. It’s under the tree house.’
Angus was sniffing the bird when I returned to it and soon we were joined by my uncle, still in his striped pyjamas.
‘Let’s move into the sunshine,’ he said. ‘It’s warmer there.’
I carried the solid bird to the middle of the front lawn.
‘It’s not Popeye,’ I said again.
‘You can tell?’ Uncle asked.
‘Popeye had a red spot on his beak chin. This seagull doesn’t.’
‘Why is it important to you it’s not Popeye?’ Uncle asked as he tugged on the fishing line coming from its beak.
‘Because Popeye’s my friend and this is any old seagull,’ I answered.
‘So we should be sad if one gull dies but not another?’ he asked.
‘Yes, because I fed Popeye and he once landed on my head,’ I replied.
‘I understand. You made a connection with Popeye, and if he was so relaxed he was willing to stand on your head, I think he also made a connection with you. There’s a lesson there, Brucie. You see the world a different way when you make connections. Now then, I think we can ascertain the cause of death without needing to do a post-mortem. This bird is heavy so it hasn’t starved to death. It swallowed a fishing hook so it died from an infection caused by the hook.’
‘How can you tell?’ I asked.
‘That’s what happens without penicillin.’
‘Shouldn’t it know not to eat fishing hooks?’ I asked.
‘I’m sure it did know not to eat hooks, but it didn’t know it was eating one. It thought it was eating a frog or a minnow. Looks like the gull took a fisherman’s bait by mistake and the fisherman cut his line when he saw what happened.’
‘But that’s not fair,’ I continued. ‘The bird didn’t do anything wrong. If God decides each year who lives and who dies, why did he decide the seagull should die now the way it did?’
Uncle answered, ‘Bruce, I simply don’t know why. Perhaps one day I will but I agree with you, how can a benevolent God, a good God, do such things to innocent creatures?’
‘If you’re a grown-up and you don’t believe in God then why should I?’ I asked and my uncle said, ‘Bruce, I’ll tell you something I’ve never told anyone else. In 1929, three years after I graduated in medicine, I was working at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. I developed a new way to remove tonsils from children, a safer way. That method saved hundreds, maybe thousands of lives. I was front-page news all over the United States and Canada. Then my mother, your grandmother, pricked her finger on a darning needle while repairing a hole in one of my father’s socks, and two weeks later she died in front of me. I was this famous young doctor and there was nothing I could do to save her. That’s when I stopped believing in God.’
‘But you’re still religious. You say the prayer over wine on Friday.’
‘Yes, but that’s not the same as believing in God. That’s respect for our traditions. I say the prayer because your mother feels better when I do. I’ve never told her I don’t believe in an intervening God. But I tell you this, Bruce. When I look at the beauty of the natural world I can’t help but think that once upon a time there was a benevolent force – call it God if you like – that created such splendour. Even the inside of that seagull is exquisite in its perfection although I can’t say I’m much good at bird anatomy. Or sewing them up afterwards.’
‘OK then. You don’t need to cut it open,’ I said, and carried the bird to the back of the cottage, beyond the vegetable patch and buried it there. As I dug the soft earth I wondered whether the fisherman who killed the seagull was sad. Or even that he knew it died. You’re not sad when you kill fish because you eat them. But no one kills seagulls to eat. I wondered why I was so upset when Dr Sweeting killed the raccoon and decided I was troubled by the cruel way he killed it. Then I thought maybe it’s better to die fast a cruel way, than to die slow the way the seagull must have. Then I thought it must be lunchtime and wondered whether Dad brought fresh bagels back with him from Toronto.
Popeye returned a few days later and took crusts that I gave him, but never landed on my head again.
ADULTS’
PARTIES
Every summer weekend the adults danced. Sometimes they went to The Pines in Bridgenorth on Saturday night, for a square dance or a round dance with a live band, but more often they gathered in one cottage or another, played their own music and sang their own songs. The mothers always organised the parties and got food ready but the fathers played all the instruments. I didn’t know why. That’s just how it was.
One Saturday the party was at my cottage so my mother had lots to do. She told Robert to clean out the stone fireplace on the front lawn and pile firewood beside it. He didn’t want to but he did. She told my father to go to the butchers on George Street and get twelve T-bone steaks. ‘If they don’t have enough, get sirloins,’ she shouted as he left. ‘And don’t forget the corn.’
She told me to get Grace and go to Mrs Nichols’ to collect twenty-four butter tarts and two peach pies. She handed me a ten dollar bill and said, ‘Don’t take any change from Mrs Nichols. If you do I’ll be cross with you. You and Grace can each have a butter tart.’ After I left she busied herself in the kitchen, making coleslaw. Grace’s mother was bringing fresh dill pickles.
I put a leash on Angus – we’d be crossing the highway and I needed something to tie him up with on Mrs Nichols’ veranda – and found Grace down on her dock fishing, and we all walked together up the hill to Mrs Nichols’ farmhouse. We enjoyed going there. Mrs Nichols had grey hair and was really old but there was something about her that made us feel good.
Grace knocked firmly on the screen door while I tied Angus’s leash to a rocking chair.
‘Children, you’re early,’ Mrs Nichols said. ‘Come,’ and we followed her through the hallway into the large kitchen at the back. The whole house, even the outside veranda, smelled like a delicious bakery and on the kitchen table were the peach pies and butter tarts.
‘Your mama told me you’d be picking up the baking,’ she said.
‘I’ve got something for you. Sit,’ and from a cream-coloured pitcher she poured each of us a glass of milk and gave us gingerbread men dressed in bathing suits. ‘Them’s you,’ she said, her eyes beaming.
I saw happiness in her eyes. I wanted to tell her I didn’t like gingerbread but knew that I shouldn’t, so I said, ‘Thank you. May I please take it home to show my mother?’ and she replied, ‘Yes.’
Everyone knew that Mrs Nichols’ peach pies were tastier than anything store bought, even tastier than anything bought from the bakery and on this visit Grace asked how she made them. Her recipe was simple. The crust was no more than flour, shortening, water and salt. The peaches were freestones from Niagara and her secret was that she never cooked them. Her other secret was her glaze. She made it from corn starch with a little squeezed peach juice and a few drops of vanilla. She always poured her glaze into the crust first then as it set pressed the peach slices into it until they were covered. Her pies looked as good as they tasted. Mrs Nichols’ peach pie with fresh vanilla ice cream from the local dai
ry was my favourite dessert in the whole world.
After Grace had eaten her gingerbread man and we both finished our milk, I gave Mrs Nichols the ten dollar bill I had in my bathing suit pocket. She got her purse and gave me two dollars change. I explained to her that Mum told me she would be angry if I came back with change and she put the dollar bills back in her purse.
‘Don’t wait ’til your mother sends you,’ she said as we left. ‘I make candy,’ and she waved a goodbye.
I carried the two pies in their glass Pyrex dishes and Grace carried the box of butter tarts and on the hill down to the cottages we sat down to eat the tarts we were promised. Angus wanted some but I didn’t give him any.
‘Your mother wouldn’t know if she gave you change. We’d each have a dollar,’ Grace said.
I thought about that for a while. I got an allowance, fifty cents a week, but I’d like to get a dollar. That’s what Rob got.
‘I think Mrs Nichols needs the money. The butter tarts are melting,’ I replied and Grace left it at that. When we returned to the cottage Mum gave each of us a quarter.
That evening Rob and I had sandwiches and coleslaw for supper and although we asked to stay up for the party we weren’t allowed to, and as darkness arrived we went to our bedrooms and bed.
At night, when the lights first go out, in the pitch black I saw nothing at all but then, ever so gradually, the room as always seemed to get lighter and soon I could see the walls, the dresser, even moths clinging to the white tiles on the ceiling. Moonlight shone through the curtains and the cowboys on their horses on the curtains seemed to move and the desert glisten. In early spring, when I visited the cottage with Dad, it was so cold getting into bed I pulled three blankets onto myself and, when I was still cold, the rag rug from the floor, until I fell asleep in my own warmth. Now in late summer, although nights should be fresh it was sultry, and I threw the blanket off and listened to the grown-ups through the thin plywood wall that separated my bedroom from where they all were.
I tried to stay awake and listen to everything. At the last party in July I had to go to the bathroom and on my way back I’d peeked out and everyone was dancing close together and smoking at the same time. Only the oil lamps were burning. The bright electric lights on the ceiling and the two on the wall had been turned off. Uncle was in the corner, an oil lamp on the table beside him, a smile on his face, his bald head shining like a full moon, reading some book or other.
‘Food’s almost ready.’ It was my father’s voice, and soon after that the giggling and shouting got softer and I fell asleep. I was awakened by a mighty clash. The music was thumping and the floor of the cottage actually bouncing and I wanted to know exactly what that clash was so I went to the bathroom and on my way back, opened the hall door a little and looked out. Angus was curious too. He got out of his basket in the clothes cupboard and also came to the hall door. Mr Yudin had two tin garbage can lids and was clashing them together. I recognised everything else, Dr Sweeting’s bass that he made from an aluminium washing basin, a broom handle and a rope, Grace’s father playing the clarinet, my dad playing the fiddle with Mum watching him, smiling, Perry’s father playing piano. And there was my uncle, playing the ukulele.
I smiled at that, Uncle Reub joining in the music. Angus stayed by the door but I went back to bed and the smell of steaks and rye and cigarette smoke followed me. I lay on my bed and recognised Dr Sweeting’s voice when he sang ‘Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby’. Then Mum sang ‘Paper Moon’ and everyone went quiet. Perry’s mother sang ‘Dancing Cheek to Cheek’ and when Perry’s father sang ‘Walking My Baby Back Home’ everyone joined in. They all sang ‘Hava Nagila’ together, faster and faster, laughing loud when they finished.
‘Reub, your turn,’ I heard my mother say and I heard my uncle’s high, gentle voice. All the other voices gradually fell away and through my father’s gentle violin I could hear my uncle sing.
When I remember every little thing you used to do
I’m so lonely!
Ev’ry road I walk along I’ve walked along with you.
No wonder I am lonely!
The sky is blue,
The night is cold.
The moon is new
But love is old.
And while I’m waiting here
This heart of mine is singing:
‘Lover, come back to me!’
The next morning I watched the new day arrive as I always did, gradually, first with a little light through the curtains, just enough for me to see the cowboys on their horses, then brighter light between the curtains. That told me it was time to draw them open and look for the birds that were singing, but that I never saw. Each summer day’s arrival was that peaceful. It was always a good way to decide what to do that day.
I got out of bed very carefully because I knew which floorboards were squeaky and which ones weren’t and I didn’t want to wake anyone up. I got dressed and went into the main room of the cottage. Angus vacuumed the floor for party leftovers. When I looked at the number of cigarette butts in the ashtrays I thought that the party must have got bigger after I fell asleep for the night. Quietly I collected the ashtrays and glasses and dessert dishes and took them to the kitchen. I went back and puffed up the cushions on the sofa and put the chairs back around the dining room table. When I returned to the kitchen Uncle Reub was there, in his dark trousers and his new coloured shirt.
‘I’ll wash. You dry,’ he whispered.
When Mum got up a few hours later she gave me such a hard squeeze I thought I’d never breathe again.
THE NEW BOAT
I didn’t understand why my father was so restless that morning but later that day I just smiled and smiled. After helping Reg Muskratt salvage the abandoned boat on Kelly’s Island, Dad couldn’t get it out of his mind. Quite simply he had to have it, more than anything else he could think of.
Mum didn’t know what Dad had done but the previous Friday he’d left work early and instead of driving straight from the city to the cottage he drove past it, up to the Mud Lake Reserve where he met with Mr Muskratt and made a deal – a good deal for both of them. Mr Muskratt would haul the boat out of the water and sand and repaint the red keel. Then Dad would buy the freshly painted boat from him for cash and for our own fourteen footer with its Evinrude motor, a more practical boat for Mr Muskratt to go fishing in.
This morning, Dad had left the cottage just after dawn, picked up a brand-new Johnson forty-horsepower motor he’d ordered from the Bridgenorth marina, put it in the back of his station wagon and taken it up to Mud Lake, all before 9 a.m. When he got back to the cottage, he pretended that nothing much was happening although Mum and I and Uncle Reub knew that something or other was cooking. We could tell by Dad’s earnestness and urgency but we asked nothing, even when he said, as soon as he got back, that he was going fishing. After he left in the boat the grown-ups gossiped with each other trying to figure out what he was up to.
By the time he’d boated back up to the Reserve, Mr Muskratt and young James Coppaway had hung the new motor from the boat’s transom, attached the battery and the steering cables and had taken it out for a quick spin to make sure everything worked well. I knew that before he left the Reserve my father would have shaken hands with everyone who helped get the boat ready, doing his short bow that he always did when he shook someone’s hand. I was first to see the boat arriving and called everyone else. My father seemed happier than I had ever seen him – joyous really – when everyone found the new boat as beautiful as he and I did.
Dad had a new assistant at the flower store and stayed at the cottage all that week. He sanded and revarnished the boat’s inner cedar hull, the mahogany bow and rear decks and the maple dashboard. He installed a removable canopy, a chrome compass on the dashboard, two chrome rearview mirrors, a chrome port and starboard light with a flag staff in the middle for the bow deck, another chrome flag staff at the back and two more chrome port and starboard lights. He bought foam-rubber filled,
white, waterproof seats and made two licence plates, 32E12637, from aluminium letters mounted on varnished cedar plaques and used copper nails to mount the plaques on both sides of the bow. Dad told us that when we went to the powwow Mr Whetung had organised on the Mud Lake Reserve for late August, we would go by boat no matter what the weather was like.
On the day of the powwow, Lake Chemong was as smooth as oilcloth and my parents decided it would be a perfect day for a longer boat trip, to go blueberry picking and have a picnic up at the Buckhorn lock first, then return to the Reserve for the powwow.
I was as proud as my dad was of our new boat. The powerful engine roared like a lion but even so it was amazingly quiet compared to the old Evinrude. Uncle Reub decided to take along a length of rubber hosepipe and he used that to talk to anyone else in the boat as we cruised up the lake. At first, my father travelled very slowly close to shore, waving to any cottagers he saw on Long Point, then on Cedar Bay, then on Poplar Point. After that he accelerated out into the lake, raced past Kelly’s Island then through Harrington Narrows and into Buckhorn Lake. The boat sliced through the waters as if it was travelling on a velvet ribbon. For the final seven miles through Buckhorn Lake everyone sat quiet as we soaked in the beauty of the empty islands and lakeshore they raced by.
At Buckhorn we docked by the lock, took the apple baskets we brought with us, walked past the lock and the red-rocked rapids, crossed the highway and were in a landscape that to me was foreign and exciting, like a completely different country, all sparkling pink granite, white and green mosses, birch and pine trees. Blueberry country. The sun inched high in the sky and the cumulus clouds were whiter than cotton batting.
‘It’s really difficult, picking blueberries,’ I said to my uncle, as we both stood still and stared intently at the ground around us. ‘Picking raspberries is easy. Even the black ones are easy to see. You really have to look hard to see blueberries here. This is more serious than picking raspberries.’