Becca Fair and Foul

by Deirdre Baker

  She didn’t want to touch it, though.

  “But what if it floats?” asked Jane. “Then it won’t really be a sea burial.”

  “We’ll weight it down with something,” said Alicia. “Look, you want a knot that will hold tight but slip off when you’re ready.”

  With a piece of driftwood, she propped up one of the bear’s legs and pushed the end of the rope under.

  “Not a bowline, a slip knot,” she said, tying it. “Look at its claws! They’re like fingernails, long and curvy and good for scooping up salmon. And that long snout for nosing around in old rotten trees, and for snatching up fish. And the thick, thick fur — usually bears are good swimmers.”

  Somehow, Alicia talking about the bear so scientifically made everything friendlier.

  “Now let’s see if we can pull it into the water,” Alicia said.

  But the bear didn’t move.

  “It weighs a ton,” Alicia said. “I can’t believe it floated here.”

  “We can use wood and lever it into the water,” Becca said. “Oh, everything is grim! Eagles drowning and owls attacking and everything!”

  “Here,” said Jane, and she shoved a driftwood stick under the bear’s shoulder and heaved as hard as she could. Inch by inch they shifted the bear back into the sea.

  Finally it floated there, its fur fanning out softly, lifting and falling with the sea’s quiet breathing. For no reason Becca knew, it floated high in the water like an exceptionally real inflatable swim toy.

  “Hmm,” said Alicia. Becca could see that Alicia was having thoughts — thoughts of understanding about the condition of the bear, maybe, or about how it came to be floating in the sea.

  She made the line fast to the stern of Gull.

  “Come on,” Becca said, and she settled herself at the oars. Jane scrambled into the bow and Alicia sat in the stern, tending to the line. She had brought some rocks into the boat with her, and a tattered hunk of fishing net she’d gleaned from the beach.

  Becca rowed right out into the strait — almost to the very place Gull had been becalmed not so long ago.

  “If we get it out in the current it will drift away, won’t it?” Becca asked.

  “It should,” Alicia said. “And the rocks will help make it a proper sea burial. We don’t want it to drift back in and wash up again.”

  The line stretched out behind Gull, and at the end of it the bear floated serenely. Ripples spread in a V behind it, a calm and quiet wake in the sleepy sea. It no longer seemed so sad and alien. They were being friendly towards a fellow creature, that was all. Trying to give her or him a dignified end.

  The sea lay around them, and the sky bowed overhead. Astern was Camas Island, the light erect and dependable somehow, even though it was the middle of day and it wasn’t flashing.

  Alicia wrapped the rocks in the fishing net and tied it securely to the bear.

  She said, “You know, there’s a service for this. I mean, special prayers for a burial at sea.”

  But Becca didn’t know them, and neither did Jane or Alicia, so in the end, they made their own burial service.

  Becca thought about the eagle and the fish.

  “Goodbye, bear,” she said. “You are still part of life.”

  “Yes,” said Alicia. “You definitely are and we will never forget you.”

  “O bear, may the deep sea rock you in peace,” said Jane.

  Alicia loosed the line from the bear’s leg, and the bear sank slowly into the green depths.

  * * *

  “Well, that was very interesting,” Alicia said, after Becca had rowed them silently back to Gran’s bay.

  “It was sad,” Becca said. “I hate ‘nature’s-not-fair-or-unfair.’ Why can’t nature be nice?”

  “Neither fair nor foul,” said Alicia. “That’s what Gran would say, but it’s rotten sometimes. The poor bear!”

  Becca shipped the oars and pulled out the oarlocks.

  “I never knew doing a play would involve so much wildlife,” Alicia said.

  Then, when they’d carried Gull back up the beach, she said, “I guess if you can sea-bury a bear, I can be in The Tempest. I don’t really care about a boat and I don’t think you can earn enough even to get the tiniest used sailing dinghy, and it will all be a lot of work, but I can see that it won’t be boring. Probably. What role do you want me to play?”

  Becca couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  “Prospero,” said Jane.

  “Prospero! But he’s the main guy! A magician.”

  “Don’t you like that?” Becca asked.

  Alicia said nothing for a moment.

  “I’m honored,” she said at last. “I thought you’d want me to be Caliban. Most days that’s who I feel like.”

  Becca looked at her — Alicia, with hair the color of island honey, with freckles and fashionable glasses, muscles from running cross-country and swimming, and a head full of cleverness. Who would have guessed she felt like a Caliban?

  “Well, anyway,” Becca said. “You are nothing like a fish. Or a man, really, as far as I know. And we already have an excellent Caliban. We need a Prospero.”

  “And fast,” said Jane. “The performance is in a week.”

  She looked at Becca and smiled.

  A miracle had happened.

  15. The Kinglet

  It was surprising how well Alicia knew the play.

  “I guess the copy at the bottom of her sleeping bag wasn’t just warming her toes,” muttered Jane.

  “Maybe it went into her dreams,” said Becca.

  It made rehearsals better. And Alicia was a good Prospero.

  “She likes to boss,” Lucy said.

  They decided they’d do the show with scripts, even though they could remember lots of it by heart now.

  “I told you it would be too much work,” said Alicia.

  But it made rehearsals so much easier that Alicia complained.

  “The whole reason I said I’d do it is because you were having adventures,” she said. “Now nothing’s happening but plain old rehearsals.”

  “Ride your bike down the hill with your eyes closed,” said Becca.

  “Put your hair in a ponytail and go running in the park,” said Jane.

  “Maybe I will,” said Alicia.

  “How’s that zipline?” asked Jane.

  “It needs work,” Lucy said. “And I think I’d better wear a helmet.”

  “Merlin said he’d finish it today or tomorrow,” said Alicia.

  “Keep that man away from your aunt and her opinions about Shakespeare,” warned Gran.

  “I know, I know,” said Alicia. “He’s the only plumber on the island!”

  “We can’t risk losing Merlin,” Gran insisted.

  “Merlin won’t let himself be lost,” said Lucy.

  He might be lost already, Becca thought.

  And something was wrong with Auntie Clare, too. She’d been sitting on Mermaid’s Rock for hours, and no one was able to cheer her.

  Even the tidy house with its sparkling windows, its vases of sweetpeas and roses, lavender and cosmos and bee balm and love-in-a-mist couldn’t make her smile.

  Becca had seen Auntie Clare’s face. Although it looked like she was gazing out to sea, her eyes were closed. Instead of smiling, her mouth drooped. Sometimes it seemed that even her cheeks drooped, as if a sorrow as strong as gravity was pulling every part of her towards the earth.

  Becca knew why. It was because of the people Auntie Clare and Uncle Clarence worked with, who were sick and dying. Auntie Clare worried about the grans who brought children to the clinic where she worked, children who came to visit their mums and dads who were sick. How would the grans take care of the kids when their mums and dads died?

  “Children preparing for orphanhood,”
Uncle Clarence had said.

  That was the phrase that made Becca forget for a while that she was beached and wanted a boat, and about rehearsals for The Tempest, and about Aunt Fifi and Merlin and Ms. Spiky-hair. It made her think about Auntie Meg and Uncle Martin, who would make such a good mum and dad.

  Mum and Dad weren’t with her, but she knew they’d show up for The Tempest. She could always go phone them if she missed them too much. She would feel their hugs again.

  What would it be like not to be able to do that?

  But even Gran’s bony hug couldn’t seem to cheer up Auntie Clare, and nor could Becca’s hug, or Auntie Meg’s or Aunt Fifi’s. Even a visit to the barred owls with Alicia and Uncle Clarence didn’t tempt her, or a morning swim.

  “What are we going to do?” wondered Gran and Auntie Meg, looking towards Mermaid’s Rock.

  Becca put six heaping spoonfuls of tea in the tea pot and let it steep for an extra long time.

  Auntie Clare took milk, so Becca poured some into a mug. She used the biggest mug she could find for Auntie Clare, and a small one for herself. Then she took the two mugs of tea out to Mermaid’s Rock.

  “It’s time for tea,” she said.

  She put the mug right into Auntie Clare’s hand.

  Auntie Clare’s eyes opened for a moment. “Thank you, Becca.”

  She sipped her tea. Becca sat snuggled against her and drank her own tea.

  “You wouldn’t guess it on a calm day like this, but unusual things happen here,” she said.

  Auntie Clare’s face barely twitched, so Becca went on to tell her about being becalmed and then beached by Gran, and about waking in the night and being talked at by otters, and about Lucy being attacked by a barred owl. She didn’t tell her about the eagle and the fish or the bear, but she told her about the stubborn eaglet and the mink family under the bathtub, and the little sloop in the big wind.

  But even the story of Aunt Fifi chopping up Merlin’s jeans didn’t make Auntie Clare smile. Then Becca told her about raising money to buy a boat, and about putting on the play and how hard it was to get all the actors together and how many interruptions they’d had.

  After a while Auntie Clare said, “I’m going to have to go in.”

  Becca looked at the giant mug. It was empty.

  She took the two empty mugs in one hand, and Auntie Clare’s hand in the other.

  * * *

  Later, Auntie Clare sat on the front deck, and Becca sat with her.

  The world grew quiet.

  Chickadees and nuthatches foraged in the pines in front of the deck, and ruby-throated hummingbirds sipped at the verbena in the hanging baskets. They buzzed in like giant bumblebees, but very fast.

  Even the big birds came looking for food.

  “Look,” Becca whispered. “A woodpecker.”

  On the snag in front of the deck an orange-headed woodpecker made ready to hammer into the rotten wood. It set its beak pounding at the wood like a tiny jackhammer. It made a rapid, hollow knocking noise and then slurped insects out with its long, long tongue.

  “Look at that!” said Auntie Clare softly. “I’ve never been close enough to see a woodpecker’s tongue before!”

  But the woodpecker must have heard her. It flapped off among the trees and left them in the company of little birds again. Down on the ground a fox sparrow pecked at the crumbs Becca had emptied off her toast plate, and in among the salal stalks the towhee cheeped its lost-sounding weep-weep, as if it felt just like Auntie Clare.

  “It’s peaceful here,” said Auntie Clare. “I’m sorry I’m so glum. I hate saying goodbye to women I’ll never see again. And to see the grandmothers struggling to take care of their own children’s children.”

  Becca didn’t know what to say, so she took Auntie Clare’s hand.

  “Some things are sad,” she said.

  At least Auntie Clare wasn’t on Mermaid’s Rock any more.

  “Look at those two flying together,” Auntie Clare said after a while.

  She and Becca watched a pair of kinglets swoop and dive in perfect unison up and around the trees, curving and lifting.

  “They’re flying like dancers,” Auntie Clare said. “Or lovers! Look at them!”

  And just as she exclaimed, the kinglets swooped down towards her, down towards the open door of the cabin and through it, up into the loft and on to the back of the house.

  Becca jumped up.

  “Where did they go?” She ran inside. “I can’t see them!”

  She ran through the cabin and up the stairs to the back loft. Auntie Clare followed her.

  “Oh, look,” said Auntie Clare. “It’s trying to get out.”

  One of the kinglets had flown right through to the back loft and was fluttering up against the skylight. Again and again it flew against the glass, trying to reach the blue sky and treetops beyond.

  Becca opened the screen on the sliding doors out to the back deck.

  “Maybe we can get it to go out this way,” she said.

  But the kinglet thought the skylight was the way to get out, even though it was a window that couldn’t open.

  Becca rattled down the stairs and found the only net on a stick Gran had — a piece of pantyhose on a hoop tied to a bamboo pole. Once it had been a tide-pooling tool, but now it would be a bird-rescuer.

  “We should cover the skylight,” said Auntie Clare. “As long as it sees the light, it will keep trying to get out that way. We have to make it so the open door is the only light it sees.”

  “What are you doing?” Aunt Fifi asked.

  “Can’t talk now,” said Auntie Clare, and she thundered down the stairs. “I have to get the ladder.”

  Moments later she reappeared with the stepladder.

  “Watch out for Gran’s plaster!” Becca cried.

  Bang!

  “Ow, Clare,” Aunt Fifi said. “Mum’ll have a fit when she sees that!”

  But Auntie Clare didn’t seem to care that she’d bashed a dent in Gran’s plaster. She took the ladder straight out to the back deck and called, “Becca, get one of those big blankets from the loft.”

  Becca ran. Overhead, the anxious kinglet beat against the glass again and again and again.

  “Hold the ladder for me,” Auntie Clare ordered. “And don’t go away. You can let them know if I’m falling off the roof.”

  “What?” asked Gran, suddenly appearing. “What happened to the plaster?” She and Aunt Fifi stood with Becca at the foot of the ladder and watched Auntie Clare make her way up the roof.

  “Oh, Clare, be careful,” Gran said.

  “Mum, Fifi and I have been running around on this roof since we were ten years old. I think I’ll be fine. Becca, pass me the blanket.”

  Becca climbed the ladder to pass Auntie Clare the blanket. Even from there the roof looked alarming. She couldn’t believe Aunt Fifi and Auntie Clare used to run around on it. But Auntie Clare was determined, and bit by bit, her rubber soles steady on the cedar shakes, she crept up to its peak.

  She had to flap the blanket a few times. It blew in the wind and she shook it wide with a look of great concentration.

  In a few moments, she had spread it over the skylight.

  She crept back down the roof, onto the ladder and down to the deck.

  “Maybe it will work,” she said.

  But back in the house the kinglet was still beating against the glass even though it was darkened. And in a puff of breeze, the blanket Auntie Clare had worked so hard to put in place blew back, uncovering a piece of sky.

  The kinglet wouldn’t stop fluttering up against the window, pecking and scrabbling for the open space on the other side.

  “What happened to the other bird?” Becca wondered. “There were two of them.”

  Auntie Clare didn’t say anything. She just seized the panty
hose net and raised it quietly, stealthily towards the frantic kinglet.

  “It has wings the color of green olives,” Becca said. “Or sort of yellower.”

  She turned to look again in the loft and there was a quick rush of air like a song past her ears, like a dance by an invisible creature. It was the other kinglet making its way to freedom out the sliding door.

  “Well, at least we only have one to worry about now,” said Gran. “I don’t know how we’re going to do this.”

  “We’ll see,” Auntie Clare said.

  Again and again she moved the net up to the kinglet, but she couldn’t catch it. The bird crept up into the sharp angle of the skylight and its frame. It crouched there flapping its wings, trying to be safe from humans and the puzzling barrier to the sky.

  Aunt Fifi stood there watching Auntie Clare. Becca had never seen Aunt Fifi’s face look quite like that.

  “You can do it, fair Clare,” she said quietly, and she sat down on the stairs.

  Becca sat beside her. She heard Gran talking to Auntie Meg, and she heard Alicia and Uncle Clarence come in from their walk.

  Still Auntie Clare kept trying. She moved the pantyhose net this way and that, trying to get it under the bird’s feet. It was like it was Auntie Clare against the unfairness of the world or something.

  Becca heard Lucy laughing downstairs, and something about Annie’s carrots. She heard Gran ask if Lucy would be home for dinner.

  But the only thing that seemed important right now was Auntie Clare trying to free the little bird that was struggling to escape.

  “I have it,” Auntie Clare said, her voice sudden and low. She moved so quickly over to the sliding door and out of it that Becca hardly saw her. Becca and Aunt Fifi stood up of one accord and moved out the door themselves.

  Becca saw the tiny kinglet shake its olive-colored wings once and then soar, a swoop that seemed fueled by an instinct much fiercer than the urge to survive. She saw Auntie Clare look out into the empty air, as if its very emptiness was a joy.

  “Goodbye, kinglet,” Auntie Clare said.

  The bamboo pole with its pantyhose net dangled from her hand.

  She let out a big breath, opened her arms and hugged Aunt Fifi and Becca.