Barefoot at the Lake

by Bruce Fogle

  Dad raised the motor on his new boat, then pulled the boat by its stern rope around the front of the dock and manoeuvred it backwards into the boathouse, but he didn’t raise it out of the water just yet. He would be returning on his own on weekends until the fishing season ended.

  On the day of our departure, just before leaving, Mum pulled all the curtains shut. During the summer, closed curtains made me feel cosy but now they made the cottage lost and lonely. I watched and I thought she was drawing the curtains because the cottage had died and summer was no longer alive. It was like the end of a movie at Mr Yudin’s theatre. Dad opened the damper on the fireplace flue a little, in case it rusted shut over winter.

  The station wagon was loaded and Rob was already in the back when I said, ‘Wait,’ and I ran past the vegetable patch to the split cedar fence where the sweet peas grew, picked all the pink flowers that remained, and brought the bunch back to the car.

  ‘OK,’ I said.

  Dad started the engine and we left for the city.

  Grace had gone back to Toronto earlier that day. I thought I might give the sweet peas to her when I got there but I didn’t. I didn’t see Grace again until the next summer.

  A LATE VISIT

  In early November, my father returned to the cottage one last time and I was surprised that without my mum telling him to, he asked me to come along. When we got there we were greeted by Reg Muskratt.

  ‘Bit sharp,’ Mr Muskratt said as Dad and I got out of the car, and it was. There had been a hard frost overnight and the mounds of yellow poplar and red maple leaves that clothed the lawn like discarded summer clothing were still sparkling and crisp.

  I did what I always did when I got to the cottage. I raced around to the front to look at the lake and, although that morning’s honey-coloured sky had turned Caribbean blue, the lake looked cold, unfriendly, alone. There wasn’t a single boat on it but our old boat, now Mr Muskratt’s, was tied to the dock. Dad had written to him, asking him to come down to help winch the new boat out of the water and up into the boathouse for the winter.

  Dad could have asked Mr Nichols or another father visiting the point that weekend to help him, but he’d asked Reg Muskratt. Just as I appreciated why my father planted the poplars to hide the red brick house from his view, I was now aware why he asked Mr Muskratt to help him. Everything about Mr Muskratt, even his name, said ‘country’, and it was in the lakes and forests that my dad felt at ease with life. Reg Muskratt personified what my father really wanted to be, part of the natural world. Perhaps that was one of the reasons why he was a florist, not a huckster like some other dads.

  Frost had wilted most of the leaves in the vegetable patch, leaving a constellation of plump pumpkins nestling on the earth, and in that soil there were footprints from large animals. They must have been deer prints but some were so large I wondered whether a moose had visited the vegetable patch. I thought about what Uncle Reub had told us, that when we left and returned to the city the animals took back their land.

  I collected the five largest pumpkins in a pile beside the station wagon, to take back home for Mum to make pie. I left the watermelons, they were soft and rotting, but I harvested the remaining beetroots. I went up to Mrs Nichols’ and she showed me how well the calf had grown.

  ‘I call her Ruby,’ she said, and for a second I thought she’d named the calf after my Uncle Reub. Maybe she did.

  Eating the cookies she gave me, I walked up the point. The road and the cottage lawns looked like they had been sprinkled with confetti and I felt like I was walking through a carnival, what with the colours and the musty smells. What I saw made me smile – jewels and beads and ornaments like on a beautiful woman’s dress.

  ‘They didn’t give up!’ I thought and I felt as defiant as those leaves. Then I remembered another story Uncle Reub had told me about why leaves fall, that the grasses and herbs had no protection from the cold, but just when they thought they couldn’t survive any longer, the leaves from the trees came to help them, spreading like a warm blanket over their tender roots, offering a thick warm rug against the chill of winter. The Great Spirit saw how generous the leaves were, giving up their lives to protect the grasses, so he gave them vibrant red and yellow and crimson colours to make the rug as beautiful as possible.

  When I got back to the cottage, Mr Muskratt and Dad had taken the big white motor off the boat, hung it from a wooden stand Dad had made for it in the tool house, and were winching the boat out of the water. They had slung chains over rafters in the boathouse, then under the bow and stern of the boat, and both men were pulling in unison on the chains. I saw the chains strain against the wooden hull and wondered why the men had not done anything to prevent the damage I was seeing to the splashboards.

  In less than an hour they had completed their task. The two men stood quiet on the dock, content with their work, then Mr Muskratt said, ‘Some fishin’?’

  Dad said, ‘Sure.’

  His eyes danced. He’d always wanted to know where Mr Muskratt fished.

  We got rods, reels and lures from the tool shed and headed down the lake in Mr Muskratt’s boat, stopping near the shore where Grace and I had buried the heron. Mr Muskratt anchored there.

  Mr Muskratt used a jointed red-and-white wooden surface lure with two sets of triple hooks. Dad and I used similar lures but ours were green and black on top, white underneath.

  ‘What happens if we catch fish and the police catch us?’ I asked the grown-ups. The fishing season for everything except perch and sunfish had ended.

  ‘I’ll tell ’em it’s my catch,’ Mr Muskratt answered. Then he turned to my father. ‘Mrs Muskratt tells me to ask after your brother-in-law.’

  Dad replied, ‘He’s fine. Opened his doctor’s office. Good to have him back.’

  Then a silence descended on the boat for a while until Mr Muskratt asked, ‘Gonna be a fisherman when you grow up?’ and I told him I’d like to be a forest ranger.

  ‘Seasonal work,’ he replied, and we continued fishing.

  My father cast his lure from the bow, Mr Muskratt cast from the stern and, being especially careful with my casting, I fished in between them. I looked at the men and they were no longer the Lone Ranger and Tonto, they were twins. They didn’t look the same. Dad wore a thick brown coat and his trousers were dark gabardine, warm enough for trips to the North Pole. Mr Muskratt wore bibbed denim overalls under his red-checked lumber jacket. I thought they could be twins because both seemed so completely at ease in their own silence. So did I. In that silence the only noise was the whip of our lines being cast, our lures hitting the water and the soft purr of our reels as we slowly wound them back to the boat. Then Dad said, ‘I thought you wanted to be a doctor when you grow up?’

  ‘I did,’ I answered, ‘but I’d like to spend time outside with animals and that’s what forest rangers do.’

  ‘Don’t spend time with animals. They work for Lands and Forests spotting forest fires,’ Mr Muskratt interjected.

  ‘Then I’d like to be a vet,’ I said. ‘Uncle Reub says they do everything he does but he just looks after people and vets have to look after everything else.’

  ‘Good income,’ Mr Muskratt added.

  I never expected I would be the only one to catch a fish. When the bass struck, my rod bent almost in half.

  ‘Let it out,’ Mr Muskratt commanded and I let the bass run with my lure.

  ‘Reel slow,’ he said and I started to bring the fish towards me.

  ‘Out,’ he said and I stopped. And so it went on, for five minutes, then ten, then fifteen. When I fished with my father there was always a greater urgency to catch the fish.

  ‘Patience, boy,’ Mr Muskratt advised, something I never heard my father say, and after twenty minutes the tired bass was near enough for my dad to get a net under it.

  ‘Good fish,’ Mr Muskratt said, as we examined the bass flipping about in the net. He took a small wooden truncheon from the bottom of the boat, hit the fish on its head,
it quivered for a minute then it was still.

  ‘Good trophy,’ he said, and I looked at my father and saw sunshine sparkle.

  ‘Reg, do you think the taxidermist will do it at this time of year?’ Dad asked, and Mr Muskratt replied, ‘Money always talks.’

  I was so proud I caught that fish. I wanted to show it off to everyone but more than to my mum, or Perry or Rob, or even Uncle Reub, the person I wanted to show the fish to was Grace. I hadn’t seen her since the day we left the cottage at the end of August and now, on the lake, I really missed her.

  On the afternoon we left the cottage at the end of August, while I was stacking the remaining firewood under the cottage, Grace had run over.

  ‘We’re leaving now so goodbye,’ she said.

  ‘I thought you were going tomorrow,’ I replied.

  ‘Daddy’s going tomorrow. I’m going today with Mummy,’ she answered.

  ‘Will I see you in Toronto?’ I asked and she answered, ‘I don’t know.’

  Then she kissed me right on the lips, said ‘Bye’ and ran back to her cottage. It was nice, her kissing me on my lips, and I thought about that for a bit, but then I just got on with packing up.

  Each August summer at the lake ended this way. I didn’t want to go but I did. Angus didn’t want to go but he did. Grace and I didn’t want to stop seeing each other but we did. That’s just the way it was. I’d wished I’d said more to her, that I’d kissed her back.

  My father had that largemouth bass I caught, close to four pounds in weight, mounted on a cedar plank. He hung it on the wall of the cottage and to this day the first thing we see when we open the cottage door is that fish. Until that summer, really until that autumn when he brought that bass back from the taxidermist, I didn’t know that you might be silent but that didn’t mean you didn’t think, or didn’t love. Under the fish’s white belly, on a shiny brass plaque screwed into the varnished cedar there were words.

  ‘CAUGHT BY MY SON BEAST RANGER. THE BEST FISHERMAN ON LAKE CHEMONG.’

  POSTSCRIPT

  Uncle Reub returned to medical practice, where he moved from eye, ear, nose and throat into psychiatry. He married one of his patients, and when she died he had a further nervous breakdown. In his final years he lived in a nursing home. Perry, who became a publisher, was a constant visitor. Steve graduated in law and moved abroad, first to Switzerland, then to Costa Rica.

  Rob initially managed our father’s flower business. He became and still is a jazz disc jockey. He and his wife, Melissa, took on the responsibility for maintaining the cottage.

  The Blewetts sold their marina and in later years overwintered in Florida. The Nichols continued living in their farmhouse, but gave up farming. Dr Smith continued working as a vet. The hospital he set up is now 100 per cent small animals.

  In 1964 Mud Lake Indian Reservation Number 35 became the Curve Lake First Nation Territory. A few years later, the Whetung family opened the Whetung Ojibwa Crafts and Art Gallery, now one of the largest galleries of its kind in Canada. The annual powwow continues. The indigenous families, the Muskratts, Whetungs and Coppaways continue to live and work at Curve Lake.

  My father continued to spend all his spare time at his cottage. In his latter years, he and Mr Everett became mellow friends. My dad remained robust and healthy until he died at ninety-seven years of age. My mother, now a hundred years old, continues to visit the cottage each summer. She just scored 99 per cent on a cognition test, better than any of her children or grandchildren.

  I became a veterinarian. My parents thought that because of the length of the course I should become what they called ‘a real doctor’. Uncle Reub spoke with them on my behalf, saying it was a noble choice and one for me to make. After graduation I found myself in London, England, where I stayed, married and had children. Until they were in their teens my kids spent every summer at Lake Chemong. My son, Ben, now a writer and television presenter, says his summers at the lake were the most formative experiences of his childhood. My parents’ grandchildren now take their kids to the cottage.

  I lost contact with Grace fifty years ago.

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