Barefoot at the Lake

by Bruce Fogle

  ‘Do you mean sleep with her?’ Grace asked, but her big sister told her to keep quiet and listen, so Uncle continued.

  ‘Women understand the power they have over men and this beautiful woman was clever and wise and knew she could ask for whatever she wanted from the brothers. So she told them to show her what they were capable of doing and she would choose as her husband the one who pleased her the most.’

  ‘That’s how Mum picked Dad,’ Rob injected. ‘She had him build a cottage for her.’

  Uncle Reub continued.

  ‘The North Wind was absolutely confident that with his power and strength he would please her the most. He went hunting and brought back game for her – massive moose and meaty deer and fat geese and ducks, but because the North Wind was so cold and ruthless, everything he brought back turned to ice, and when he brought the game indoors their home became cold, and dark and lifeless.

  ‘The deafening West Wind beat on his drums. He sang and he danced and thundered and stomped on the earth, but because he was so flamboyant and loud and noisy, the house fell down, just like a farm in a Kansas tornado.

  ‘The lazy East Wind, well he did nothing at all. He just sat down and talked and talked, mostly about himself, about how happy he would be if he ever married, about how contented he would be, knowing he didn’t ever have to look for a wife again, about how pleased he would be, knowing that the beautiful woman was his. This bored the beautiful woman to tears. She felt like telling him to stop thinking only about himself and make something of himself.

  ‘Now the South Wind, he did exactly what you’d expect such a thoughtful brother to do. In the warm rays of the morning sunshine he searched for ravishing flowers for her. He gathered raspberries and blueberries. He built a fireplace in the home, gathered oak and cedar boughs and cut them into logs and made a roaring fire for her. He turned their house into a warm and bright and comforting home. The beautiful woman saw that the South Wind had done all of this for her and with a quiet and still and loving smile on her face, the radiant woman said she would marry him.’

  We sat in silence, captivated by Uncle Reub’s story. I wondered if there would be a happy ending or not, not knowing whether this would be one of his stories that suddenly meandered off in a different direction.

  ‘Well, the news that this fragrant beauty would marry the South Wind annoyed the North Wind enormously and he got very angry. He told the beautiful woman quite bluntly that as he was the oldest brother, and the strongest, and the most powerful, that she should marry him. The other brothers all disagreed and even though he was their elder, the West Wind and the East Wind both sided with the South Wind and the three of them decided to leave the North Wind and move away from the North Pole.

  ‘The West Wind moved to where the sun sets each day, beyond the forest across the lake from us. The East Wind moved to where the sun rises each day, beyond the elms and white pines behind the cottage. The South Wind, to get as far away as possible from his strong and powerful big brother, moved as far in the opposite direction from the North Wind’s home in the Far North as he could go, far, far beyond the bottom of Lake Chemong. His kid brother, the sparky little Whirlwind, well he didn’t have a say in anything because he was so small, so he tagged along with the South Wind although sometimes he stayed with the West Wind. He never stayed with the East Wind because that brother was no fun at all.’

  ‘Is that how the wind got to come from all directions?’ I asked.

  ‘It is, but the story continues and now it gets unpleasant. So they all left the North Pole, but as they departed the North Wind bellowed like a wounded bear and declared to his brothers that from that moment on he would forever fight them, to get even with them, and first of all, to get his revenge, he would turn the beautiful woman and her dress into rock hard blue ice.

  ‘“I will destroy beauty!” he roared.’

  We sat in rapt attention. Grace leaned forward so that she didn’t miss a word.

  ‘The North Wind exhaled his freezing breath all over the beautiful woman,’ Uncle went on, ‘but the gorgeous lady’s dress was magical. As the North Wind blew his icy air over her and her dress turned to ice, it became larger and larger and larger. It spread all over the earth and it protected her from being frozen to death by the evil North Wind.

  ‘Now, all the land was completely covered by the beautiful woman’s icy dress and her husband, the South Wind, could not see where she was. He called out to her and she answered from beneath her dress, but because it had spread so far she could not find her way out from under it and the South Wind could not find any way to get under it to rescue her.

  ‘So the South Wind went to his brother the West Wind for help. They breathed their warm air on the dress, and as they warmed it, beads on the beautiful woman’s dress shone and sparkled in gorgeous greens and vibrant reds and striking yellows and brilliant orange. It was really something to behold. The little Whirlwind thought he was helping but he wasn’t. He just skipped about all over the dress, throwing things in the air, but his playful antics made the South Wind and the West Wind smile so they worked harder. The East Wind helped a little at first but then he said he was tired and he stopped.’

  ‘Just like Perry,’ Rob commented.

  ‘By the end of the day, the South Wind and the West Wind were completely exhausted and they both fell into a deep sleep. While they were dozing the North Wind returned and he froze the dress once more, making it hard and lustreless and cold. All the colourful and beautiful beads and ornaments that shone brightly during the day again became dull and covered in shards of ice. The little Whirlwind saw what his biggest brother was doing and tried to wake up the South Wind and the West Wind but they were so exhausted from their hard work they wouldn’t awaken. The little Whirlwind woke his brother the East Wind who, with considerable coaxing, was persuaded to go and help but he helped just a little and then sat back down. His real plan was to see who might win then take the side of the winner. Some people are like that.

  ‘When they awoke the next morning the South Wind and the West Wind saw what their elder brother had done overnight. Together they drove him away and once more they started warming the dress, but that night the North Wind returned again, embraced the dress and froze it once more, keeping the beautiful woman trapped beneath. So the South Wind and the West Wind had their work to do all over again and soon the beads and ornaments on the beautiful woman’s dress yet again shone with light, but the North Wind returned that night and all over again froze the garment on top of the earth, destroying its beauty.

  ‘Children, this went on, day after day, then year after year and eventually generation after generation, a relentless combat between the North Wind and the South Wind helped by the West Wind that has continued ever since. No one ever wins. It’s become an eternal struggle. That’s what’s happening outside this bunkhouse right now. In the coming months the North Wind will think he has won, that he has destroyed the exquisiteness of the beautiful woman and her gorgeous dress, but come spring the South Wind and the West Wind will overcome their brother once more, at least for a time, and the jewels and beads and ornaments of the beautiful woman’s gown will appear as herbs and flowers and shrubs and trees, as bushes and mosses everywhere. The beautiful woman will become mother to the earth but just when the good brothers think they have won, the North Wind will revive once more. That’s Canada. That’s what this country is.’

  Uncle’s story and the rain ended just about together. It was as if the South Wind and the West Wind had been listening but when we all went outside, although the sky was clearing now there was a fiercely cold wind blowing from the north, so cold you needed a sweater and coat. We went down to the lakeshore to see what damage the storm had done, but I decided I wanted to stay with Uncle Reub. I had a different question to ask him.

  Walking back to our cottage I asked my uncle, ‘Do you think Grace is beautiful?’

  Uncle replied, ‘Yes she is. Why do you ask?’

  ‘I like bein
g with her more than with Rob or Perry. They might think I don’t like them if I play with Grace instead of them.’

  ‘Here’s a thought then,’ Uncle said. ‘A great joy is just thinking about what you think is beautiful. It doesn’t matter what other people think. If you want to know if something’s really important, you can close your mind to other things. Just shut your eyes and everything else is gone and what’s important is even bigger. Try that, Bruce.’

  We stopped and in the crisp, fresh air that surrounded us I shut my eyes and soon everything was gone from my mind except the most important thing and I said, ‘I don’t want the summer to end. I want it to stay.’

  Uncle paused for a moment.

  ‘Bruce, I’m taking the Dayliner back to Toronto tomorrow. I’ve decided to re-open my medical office.’

  ‘Why did you close it?’ I asked.

  ‘Because when I shut my eyes, what I thought was most important really wasn’t.’

  ‘What was most important?’ I asked. Uncle Reub looked at me, straight into my eyes.

  ‘I’m told my son is now a doctor in Boston,’ Uncle replied quietly. Then he continued, ‘Will you see Grace in the city after you’ve gone back?’

  ‘Do you have any more children?’ I asked, after a long pause.

  ‘No,’ was the reply.

  ‘He doesn’t live with you?’ I asked.

  ‘He did when he was young but after I separated I didn’t see him or his mother.’

  ‘For how long?’ I asked.

  ‘He was around your age when we divorced. Then I married again, and separated again.’

  My uncle put his hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Beast Ranger, if my son is willing to see me I don’t want to embarrass him.’

  GRADUATION

  It was the last Tuesday of August, our final swimming class, but today wasn’t a lesson, it was graduation. After we took our swimming tests the previous week, Mrs Blewett sent invitations home with us, inviting parents and friends to a picnic on the marina lawn, followed by a demonstration of synchronised swimming, and then the awards ceremony for those of us who passed our swimming tests. She was the test examiner and all summer I’d dreaded my test. I was completely relaxed sculling and treading water. I didn’t have any difficulty watching where Mrs Blewett threw a linen sugar sack with a round granite rock inside it into the lake for me to duck dive, find and carry on my chest back to the dock. I was good at my breaststroke, sidestroke and backstroke and mediocre at my back crawl, but I just couldn’t do a good front crawl. I breathed in too much water with my mouth.

  Rob splashed a lot when he did the crawl but it was his favourite stroke. Perry was practised and fluid. Grace was like a muskie. When she did the crawl she wasn’t just fast, there was hardly a ripple in the water. Everyone was faster than I was. But when I’d taken my test last week, the day was warm and the lake like glass and I was, if I may say, pretty good.

  The day before, our two mothers went into Peterborough and stocked up on hot dogs and buns, mustard and relish, serviettes, local Macintosh apples and freestone peaches from Niagara. We drove to Bridgenorth in Grace’s mother’s car, Grace’s family in front and, with Uncle Reub back in Toronto, just Rob, Mum and me in the back. Steve and Perry’s mum brought them and joined us on the lawn.

  Mr Blewett had embedded posts on the grass and hung red, white and blue bunting over the lawn. A Union Jack flew from the flagpole by his house and a Red Ensign from the flagpole by the shoreline. It was a real party.

  We picnicked together, Grace’s family, Perry’s family and mine, and while the mothers gossiped, Mr Blewett and his teenage son roasted our hot dogs on the barbecue and brought them to us when they were ready.

  ‘Your brother was very positive when he came over to say goodbye to me and the girls,’ Grace’s mother told my mum.

  ‘Yes, I was surprised. He walked all the way up to our cottage to say goodbye to my boys,’ Perry’s mother added. ‘He’s charm itself.’

  ‘He certainly is,’ my mum replied. ‘When he stops dreaming and thinking only about himself he’s the most fascinating man I know.’

  ‘He told me I should chase my dreams,’ Grace said.

  ‘Well, he told me I should look around me and be content with what I’ve got, exactly what I’ve been telling him all summer!’ my mother replied, and I heard a tenseness in her voice.

  ‘He told me the same thing,’ Grace’s mother said. ‘He said that what he learned from watching our families is that we have everything: good health, good husbands, good children. He said, if only our grandparents could see us.’

  ‘Before he left he asked Morris to go for a walk with him. Imagine!’ said Mum. ‘When I asked Morris what Reub wanted to talk about, he said Reub asked for help setting up his office. He’s doing that right now. But they talked about other things too. I’m sure of it. When they returned from their walk Morris kissed me and he was already at the cottage. And then he asked where Bruce was and said he was going to take him fishing.’

  I knew exactly what day she was talking about because I was amazed that Dad had asked me to go fishing without someone telling him he should. Now I knew why.

  I wanted to listen to more mother talk, it was interesting, but Mr Blewett announced on his megaphone that the ladies were ready to do their synchronised swimming display. All of us walked down to the floating docks, sections of the old floating bridge that acted as a barrier to protect the boats in the marina. There was Mrs Blewett, the postmistress; the lady from the general store; Mrs Bell the garage owner’s wife; and three more women I didn’t recognise all in blue bathing suits and white swimming caps, all with nose clips on, all lined up facing us, all ‘buxom’.

  ‘Girls, about face,’ Mrs Blewett said and they all turned clockwise and faced the slightly choppy lake.

  ‘Three, two, one, go,’ I heard her say, and simultaneously they dived into the lake, as gracefully as seven plump cormorants, not a splash from any of them. For the next ten minutes, the ladies of Bridgenorth gave us a display of synchronised swimming. They treaded water, then in unison disappeared, to reappear in a circle with their right arms raised high. Like spokes on a wheel they did overarm backstrokes, then back dives, and surfaced with all of them throwing Mrs Blewett straight up in the air. They sculled upside down with only their legs above water, like upside down fat parsnips in a bucket of water. They somersaulted. They duck dived and reappeared in a straight line of white bathing caps, linked by arms on their neighbours’ shoulders. Watching them swim, having such obvious fun together, I realised that the locals weren’t only there for us during the summer. They had their own interests and got on with their own lives, even when we invaded for the summer.

  After the display, Mrs Blewett towelled herself down, took off her bathing cap and, using her husband’s megaphone, invited us all up to receive our badges and medals. I was given my Intermediate Red Cross badge. So were Grace and Perry. Rob and Steve got their Senior Red Cross badges the year before, this year they were awarded their Royal Life Saving Society bronze medallions. In just a few years Rob would become a summer lifeguard at the lakeside park on Water Street in Peterborough and I’d become a Red Cross Instructor, helping Mrs Blewett at the marina in Bridgenorth.

  CLOSING THE

  COTTAGE

  Closing down the cottage was always a sombre and protracted event. On those days at the very end of August, my parents never smiled. They spoke little and when they did their sentences were short and brusque. Do this. Do that. That’s wrong. Hurry up. Don’t stand around. Not like that. Don’t pester. The weather didn’t help. On the day we were leaving, whitecaps rolled with menace on a black lake. They hit the shore and their power blew foam and strands of seaweed across the sand, into the spearmint and onto the cut grass.

  The day before, Dad had cut the grass for the last time, then he’d harvested every single cucumber and tomato in the vegetable patch, even the green tomatoes. Mum would pickle them with dill. He pulled the remainin
g carrots but left the beets. He’d harvest them on a later visit. His watermelons were the size of footballs but when he cut one open it was yellow-white inside so he left the rest. I knew he hoped that somehow they would ripen before he returned. They never did. After everything was picked, Dad covered the exhausted vegetable beds with banks of seaweed Rob and me wheelbarrowed up from the beach. He carried everything he didn’t want to the fireplace on the front lawn – pieces of lumber, cardboard boxes, newspapers, magazines, plastic buckets, all the surplus remains of summer, poured gasoline on it all, struck a match and in an explosion of flames, all those useless remnants turned to carbon.

  All day my parents busied themselves. Everything store bought, the tent, the lawn chairs, the tackle box, the garden tools, the water buckets, the axe, the crowbar, the sledge hammer (so heavy I could hardly lift it, but my father could swing it over his shoulder and crash it down on a stake with one hand), were brought into the cottage or the tool house or the bunkhouse.

  Along the point and the highway, red and yellow leaves had suddenly appeared, first on shrubs and now on single branches of maple and birch trees. There was no song in the air, but high in the sky hundreds of birds whirled in tight black flocks drifting towards the causeway and beyond to the south. I thought they were leaving because, with everyone going back to the city, the lake was no longer a happy place to be.

  Without my father asking, I decided to help stack the remaining firewood under the cottage while Dad oiled his saws and his vice and his pliers and stored them in the tool house.

  ‘Robert, you and Bruce bring the canoe and put it on the horses,’ our father told us and I felt good, that my dad thought I was big and strong enough to do a grown-up’s job. When it came to the rowboat, Rob and I carried one end and Dad the other, as we lifted it from the beach onto the grass then tipped it on it back, put a sawhorse under one end, then another under the other, and tied a tarpaulin around the boat. We tied another tarpaulin over the canoe, and in their brown shrouds both boats looked like giant slugs resting on green beds.