Becca Fair and Foul

by Deirdre Baker

  “Do you need help?” Becca asked.

  She remembered Frank roaring after the creature that ran under the house.

  When Gran finally came out, pushing herself along on her back, she had to cough for a long time.

  “We need someone smaller than I am,” she said. “Preferably someone with compromised olfactory organs.”

  “I’m smaller,” Becca said. “But what does the other thing mean?”

  “Someone with no sense of smell,” said Gran.

  “Is it worse than otters?” she asked.

  “Possibly,” said Gran. “It’s sort of fishy, but — I find I don’t want to describe it.”

  “My olfactory organs are fine,” said Becca.

  “That’s too bad,” said Gran, “but we’ll kit you out with a surgical mask.”

  She made Becca wear an old gardening shirt and gumboots and a toque, and rummaged in the shed for a mask. She held the gardening gloves open and Becca slipped her hands in.

  “It must be like this for Aunt Cat,” Becca said, “getting ready to operate on someone’s heart.”

  “I surely hope not,” said Gran. “In any case, whatever it is lives between the beams and joists under the bathroom floor. It’s not about the toilet, so don’t worry about that sort of thing. Just clear out as much of the dirt and insulation as you can. Drop it on the ground and we’ll get rid of it later. See if you can dig back to where the creature’s nesting.”

  Then she put her own headlamp on Becca’s head.

  “I don’t think it’s ferocious,” Gran said, and went to shut Frank in the cabin.

  It was interesting under Gran’s house. When her eyes adjusted, Becca gazed up at beams and joists, and white pipes and black pipes leading into the floor. Plywood stretched out around her, and above, where Gran had already pulled some wood away, were the insides of the cabin’s underside.

  Into the fluffy pink insulation ran a fist-sized hole.

  “It’s a tunnel,” she told Gran.

  “Can you get your arm in there?” Gran asked.

  “Almost,” Becca said. She pulled insulation away.

  “The tunnel goes on and on,” she reported. She shone the headlamp up.

  “Any signs of its species?” asked Gran.

  “Something small,” said Becca, “or that can make itself small.” She thought of the chittering and chattering that had startled her in the night.

  It could be a nest where something was having babies. Or where toddler animals were spending their preschool life. It could be the nest of a couple that didn’t get along. Of an animal that was at home, or of an animal that was not. Of an animal that was vegetarian, or one that was a raging meat-eater and liked to sink its teeth into the face of anyone who peeked into its nest.

  What if it was like one of Prospero’s sprites, the ones that were good at pinching, biting, hissing and stabbing?

  Whatever it was, no animal she’d ever heard of welcomed someone who was pulling its home apart.

  She pulled out more insulation. The tunnel went on, right into the next section of floor, but now she could hear a small, worried murmuring.

  “I think it’s at home,” she called to Gran.

  “That makes sense,” Gran said. “It’s probably nocturnal. Otherwise why would you have heard moving in the night?”

  Fine for her to be so calm, Becca thought. She wasn’t the one about to have her nose chewed off.

  Inside the mask, her face felt damp and itchy. Even though the mask kept dirt and bits of stuff from falling into her mouth, and the toque kept it from falling into her hair, everything about herself felt dirty.

  And she wished she had the qualification Gran described — no sense of smell. Now fumes were burning her eyeballs and nostrils. The more she pulled at the tunnel, the stronger the fumes grew. Tea-colored drips trickled and dropped all around her.

  It was worse than otters. They only smelled of partly digested fish.

  The worried murmuring was now an anxious chatter.

  It was true that Becca’s arm was smaller than Gran’s, but it didn’t stretch as far. She kept having to shove herself along in the earth and old leaves under the house, and she could feel dirt trickling into her boots and even down the back of her trousers.

  I must be at the end, she thought. The smell can’t possibly get worse.

  She shone her headlamp into the darkness. She heard tromp, tromp, tromp, and Alicia’s voice, and water gurgling in the pipe that ran along just beside her ear.

  Gran’s head appeared, looking under the cabin.

  “Alicia’s back,” she said.

  “I’m here,” the unknown creature — or creatures — seemed to be saying. And without warning, without alarms or screeches or cries of any kind, a pair of flat, shining eyes glared into Becca’s.

  Greeny-yellowy eyes, bright in the shine of her headlamp. Sharp pointy teeth bared in her face.

  The face Becca saw looked ready to tear her to pieces. This was the creature that Frank had chased under the woodshed. This was the creature that had cried out with blood-freezing rage.

  She barely registered the shine of two pairs of smaller eyes. Her mind filled with the sight of teeth as long and sharp as fairy-tale thorns; the red, red wetness of a mouth full of tongue; a bony, dark cavern of throat.

  Then she was pushing herself away, scrabbling and scuffling, her breath warm in her mask, her hands muffled in gloves, her head muffled in the toque that shifted and fell into her eyes.

  And all the while that hideous stench, the brownish, pungent, blistering drips, and now a squealing, growling scream of sound.

  The minks flitted past her like shadows —

  “Oh!” she heard Gran exclaim. “Babies!”

  * * *

  “I’ve cleaned up animals’ homes before,” said Gran. “There was a pack rat once …”

  She paused while she handed Becca clean insulation to stuff into the minks’ tunnel.

  “This is exceptional. Mind you, if you took your time … a close examination of the debris would reveal a diet of …”

  She fell silent.

  “Just think, Mum!” said Aunt Fifi, peering under the house. “If you washed more often this wouldn’t have happened! The noise of your feet in the tub would have scared them off.”

  Becca pushed insulation into the narrow spaces. Under the bathtub, she thought. The stinkiest place in the world.

  This had to be worse than any plumbing job.

  “What were they doing with babies so late in the season?” Gran wondered.

  “I hate mink,” said Auntie Meg when Becca finally emerged. “They eat everything — eggs, fish, snakes, hens, mice. Half the time they don’t even eat them! They just tear out their guts and leave them!”

  Becca thought of the animal bits that had fallen from the insulation. And the tea-colored drips.

  “I don’t want to know,” she said. “I’m going swimming and when I come back no more talking about it.”

  She washed herself in the sea. She washed every single thing she’d been wearing. She scrubbed her head as hard as she could. She breathed in gallons of sea air and cleaned the foul stink from her lungs, her mouth, her windpipe, her lips, her teeth. She scrubbed her palate with her fingers and swished her mouth out with seawater.

  “You’re so lucky!” Alicia said when Becca finally emerged. “I wish I’d found a mink’s nest. Why do interesting things always happen to you? It isn’t fair.”

  Fair! Becca thought.

  But there was this. She hadn’t thought about Aunt Fifi, Merlin or Ms. Spiky-hair all morning.

  14. The Bear

  “We still need to find somewhere to rehearse,” said Jane. “Away from stinky animals and attack birds. Away from chores. I still have slivers from piling wood!”

  “And Lucy still
has owl scabs all over her head,” said Becca.

  “Jane!” said Gran. “How are things at your cabin?”

  “Something still isn’t working. Dad and Mum and Merlin go on and on about the sewage pump and clogged pipes. And the place reeks! It’s so boring!”

  “Plumbing’s never boring,” Gran said. “Unfortunately. But if you girls want something fun to do, how about cleaning out the shed? Or chopping kindling? I think you’re old enough to learn to do that.”

  “We have to work on the play,” Becca said, although chopping kindling sounded attractive, as chores went. “We have to rush off for a meeting with Shakespeare.”

  “You could practice the Caliban scenes,” said Gran. “There’s still plenty of wood to move.”

  How did Gran know Caliban had to haul wood around?

  “I promised Annie the veg lady I’d help her in her garden,” said Lucy.

  “But what about the play?” Becca asked.

  “Next time,” Lucy said. “I promise!”

  * * *

  “We only have a few days,” said Becca.

  “We’ll make a list,” Jane said. “We’ll put on everything we have to do. Making posters, finding lights, everything.”

  “Getting Alicia to be Prospero.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Jane said. “But I don’t know …”

  “Practicing and practicing and practicing,” said Becca.

  Becca knew there was a sandy beach up ahead — a hidden one where they could rehearse without worrying about chores, or aunts who took axes to innocent clothing, or plumbers who showed up morning, noon and night and then kissed complete strangers in the market. A place without grouchy cousins, sad aunts, or Jane’s plumbing.

  Up near the high-tide line, all sorts of rubbish was tangled in the seaweed. Broken mussel shells, soggy milk cartons, crabs so dead they’d turned white — the debris of humans and the sea. It lay draped in rockweed and snaky kelp stems, poking out of seaweedy mounds that hid warm, salty ooze underneath.

  It smelled of the sea and life — a rich, complicated smell that Becca breathed in all the way to her toes.

  When they got to the beach, Jane washed her seaweedy feet and Becca found a piece of driftwood for them to lean against. It was comfortable, sort of, and the beach in front of them gradually widened — wet sand, rocks and seaweed glistening as the sea slowly retreated.

  It was a good place to rehearse being a shipwrecked king and his noblemen.

  Lucy was going to be the king, and Becca was her boring councillor. Jane was one of the treacherous noblemen.

  “But we need two of them,” Becca said. “They need each other to be treacherous.”

  “I can play both of them,” said Jane. “I’ll do it with my hat!”

  She turned the brim on her straw hat up.

  “Now I’m one traitor.”

  She tilted the hat and turned the brim down.

  “Now I’m the other,” she said.

  It wasn’t just the hat, Becca thought. It was Jane. Her eyes and shoulders changed, and she looked like two completely different people.

  In the little bay, the sea heaved quietly, as if it was breathing with sea-sleep. It sent soothing swishes onto the sand.

  Becca watched the small waves cream forth, then pull back gently into the sea.

  Bubbles formed and disappeared, formed and disappeared again.

  The swishes were so soothing that it was a moment before Becca noticed that they were swishing around something on the beach. A big, still mound humped up at the edge of the tide.

  What was it?

  It was too shapely for a mound of seaweed. Too solid. It rose up higher than the biggest drifts of seaweed and shone darkly with seawater.

  Becca jumped up.

  “Let’s go see.”

  * * *

  “It’s a bear!”

  “A sad bear,” said Jane.

  “A dead bear,” Becca said.

  A bear! On Gran’s island!

  How had it come to be there?

  What had happened to it? It was greatly rotund — swollen, almost. Its fur was thick and dark, except where somehow, on the side of its face, it had all been rubbed away.

  There was something terrible and fascinating and wonderful about it. They could look at it all they liked — a bear!

  Becca had never seen one so close.

  “Its head is so … triangular,” she said. “I didn’t know bears’ heads were like that.”

  The bear’s legs and paws were stretched out as if it had flopped down to relax on the beach. But, Becca thought, it wasn’t relaxed. It was completely — she couldn’t even think of a word. Helpless? And so alone! It looked utterly dependent on the kindness of strangers for respectful treatment.

  And it had a face. That was bothersome, really.

  “It doesn’t seem right to leave it on the beach,” Becca said, even though part of her wanted to walk away and never come back.

  But it was an island. She’d have to come back. And other people would, and dogs, and otters probably, and little kids who might be scared by a dead bear. Or who might poke at it.

  She couldn’t stand it if that happened.

  “We should bury it,” she said. “We should give it a decent burial.” She looked at the grassy meadow above the beach. Even with all the grass tufting up, you could see rock poking through, sandstone and conglomerate.

  “We’d have to take it all the way into the forest,” said Jane. “That’s miles.”

  “And anyway, how would we get it up there?” Becca said.

  “I don’t think we could carry it,” said Jane.

  And Becca felt somehow that it would be wrong even to touch it, though that didn’t make sense.

  She put her hands in the pockets of her hoodie as she stood there, and something jingled.

  It was the paper bag Merlin had given her so many days ago.

  “Oarlocks,” she said. “We could bury it at sea.”

  “If you’ve got new oarlocks, we could tow it if we rowed out in Gull,” said Jane.

  “We’ll have to get help,” Becca said. “Some adult to come with us. We aren’t allowed to take the boat out by ourselves now. Remember?”

  * * *

  “Have you been crying?” Alicia asked. “Why do you look so funny? What are you doing with the boat?”

  “Just help us,” Becca said. She had to stop to wipe her nose on her sleeve.

  “But you’re not allowed to take the boat out without an adult. Don’t tell me you’re breaking the rules!”

  Alicia suddenly looked immensely pleased with Becca, and she picked up the bow of Gull with her strong teenager arms.

  “Where are we going?” she asked as they carried Gull over the sandstone and down to the sea. “Why do you two look so traumatized?”

  “We need an adult. Where is everybody?” Becca asked, as Alicia followed her back up to the shed where Becca collected oars and life jackets and a length of rope, while Jane pulled Gull the rest of the way into the water.

  “Doing errands, walking in the park, having coffee with Mrs. Barker, babysitting Jane’s plumbing. I’m the only one home.”

  “You’d count as an adult, wouldn’t you?” Becca asked. “Come with us. But we’ll go even if you don’t.”

  Alicia stared at her. Then, instead of being grumpy or bossy, she climbed into the boat. She didn’t even try to be skipper.

  Becca rowed. The new oarlocks were fancy bronze fittings with an open Y that the sleeves of the oars fitted into perfectly. Soon enough she heard the comforting chuckle of sea creaming on the bow, even if Gull was a gumboot of a boat.

  * * *

  “Are you kidding?” Alicia exclaimed. “That is so cool. A bear! A black bear.”

  It was still lying there. Well,
where else would it be? thought Becca. She must have secretly hoped that it would swim off, by some miracle.

  She sniffed a bit, and Alicia looked at her in amazement.

  “Oh, Becca. It’s perfectly natural. And this bear probably has a couple of brothers and sisters who are out reproducing right now. It’s not the end of the family line.”

  “I don’t care about natural,” Becca said. “And it’s too young — to have brothers and sisters doing that, I mean.”

  Alicia laughed.

  “I guess you’re right,” she said. “It looks like it’s just a kid bear. Not even a teenager! Lucky it. Well, not so lucky, I guess, considering …”

  “Why is everything dying?” Becca said. “There are so many dead things this summer!”

  “It’s only that you’re noticing it,” said Alicia. “You’re going places where you see it.”

  “Anyway, not everything is dying,” said Jane. “The otters are still squirming around, and they have about fifty-seven children. And the barred owls are fine. And the mink family.”

  Alicia walked all around the bear, eyeing it from every angle.

  “It’s weird to be so close to it,” she said. “I mean, it’s a ferocious creature, and it’s wild. But it’s so not ferocious now.”

  “I think we should get it off the beach,” Becca said. “It shouldn’t end up here, just like any old junk.”

  “We couldn’t figure out a way to get it into the woods,” said Jane.

  “And even if you did, you wouldn’t be able to dig a hole deep enough,” said Alicia. “When we tried to dig the new biffy, we hit sandstone half a meter down. Remember? And Lucy almost knocked her teeth out with the crowbar?”

  “We thought we’d give it a sea burial,” said Becca.

  She picked up the coil of line they’d stowed in the boat.

  “We thought if we looped this around its head or leg we could tow it out and sea-bury it properly.”