“There’s a gash in the canoe,” and he pointed to the canvas near the keel. “Is there anything I can do to help fix it?”
Jack wasn’t volunteering so much as he was asking, to find out how such a thing might be done, since they had no tar to make a patch and seal it, like they did back at the house.
Malcolm had obviously noticed as well. He didn’t need to look where Jack was pointing. “Spruce gum and bear grease,” was all he said. He didn’t elaborate on just how he proposed to get bear grease, and Jack knew better than to ask. His dad was more of a doer than an explainer.
Jack realized he was hungry when the fish he’d warmed actually started to taste good. He was about to throw the scraps of skin and tail into the fire when his dad intercepted them.
“I’ve got a use for this stuff,” he said without any further explanation, as he added it to the scraps he’d put aside from the fish he had eaten.
After they’d finished their tea, Malcolm picked up his ax and the fish scraps and headed into the bush toward the creek. Jack heard the ax off in the distance a little while later. He wondered about it, but figured he’d find out about it soon enough. He was used to his dad not explaining a lot of things.
Jack’s mind was really on the Athabasca. He was curious to see what it looked like. He hoped the trail would be dry enough for him to go down without too much difficulty.
23
“Holy!” Jack whistled, while his mind went through a lot more words he might have used. The kind of words his mom frowned upon.
It was his reaction to seeing the river after he’d finally picked his way down to it. He’d seen the crest of a spring break-up, and he’d stood away from its high water back home. But this was more than any of that. Whole trees of every size and variety were scattered along both shores of the river, well above the normal high-water marks. Even the place where they’d first camped was hard to find because of all the erosion and changes to the riverbank.
Jack understood what his dad had meant when he said the river would dictate when they might head back. There was no way they would be able to paddle in that rushing current, and there would be no way to fight their way back up the voyageur channel. Not yet. Even the place where his dad had fished, in a quiet backwater, now seemed to be a part of the mainstream.
But that did prompt a question once he got back to the campfire. “Were you building a platform to fish from?” Jack asked. He imagined there might be some trout in that creek and that his dad needed a platform from which to fish.
“No, but that’s not a bad idea. Those fish you cured and smoked won’t last for long.”
It was about mid afternoon when they heard a big crash from the direction of the creek. In the silence of the bush, anything unusual in the way of noise seemed to be amplified.
“You made a deadfall!” Jack said with a certain degree of admiration for his dad’s trapping ability. “That’s why you needed those fish scraps. They were the bait!” Then, remembering the comment about needing bear grease, he asked, “Do you think it’s a bear? Or a cub?”
“Shhh!” was Malcolm’s only response.
And Jack understood.
But there was no other sound. Nothing scurrying or crashing off through the bush. The trap seemed to have done its job completely.
A few more minutes and Malcolm picked up his ax to check on his handiwork. Jack understood why he wasn’t invited to come along. He rubbed the splint on his arm as he waited.
“Supper, and then some,” Malcolm said, trying not to sound excited, as he held up a big raccoon on his return. “Not as exciting as a black bear, but probably better eating at this time of year.” He then continued down to the river to skin and clean the animal.
An hour later, a ten-pound raccoon was dangling beside the fire, and Malcolm was rolling up its pelt to add to next winter’s harvest. “Fifty cents for this pelt will make the work worthwhile,” he commented as he joined Jack at the fire.
Malcolm placed a small sheet-metal frying pan that was seldom used for cooking anymore under the dangling, roasting raccoon to catch the grease that was beginning to drip from it. “You do the other part,” he said, nodding over to the bush. “You should be able to scrape together some dried spruce gum so we can patch up our canoe. We don’t need much. But we may as well make up some extra to take along with us, just in case.”
Jack found a big old spruce tree, and was gathering some dried gum by prying it off from around a gash, when he realized something. He called it our canoe, he thought to himself. Not my canoe, not the canoe, but ours.
Jack wondered about that as he scraped at the spruce gum.
24
When Jack got back with enough spruce gum to half-fill the little frying pan, grease from the raccoon was starting to drip steadily into it. Malcolm had also placed the cooking tin by the fire, with several handfuls of dried beans to boil.
“We’re down to voyageur rations for our eating,” Malcolm said. “Fish, game, and beans. Although I think they often had salt pork to add to their beans.”
“And they would have had rifles for hunting, wouldn’t they?” Jack asked.
“Probably.” Then, as if he was getting restless, Malcolm added, “I think I’ll take a look at the river. You mind the fire.”
Jack didn’t wonder about that. The river was the big, active, and natural thing that wove its way through their lives. It was the only way in and out of the wilderness where they lived. It was the only existing way for bringing things in and out. But Jack also wondered if his dad saw the river the way he did—if he saw it as a practical solution to something—like he did when he sat at his lookout and watched the eagles. The eagles had urged him into the future. The river had provided the way.
The raccoon grease spluttered when Jack added more dried spruce gum to it. He was careful not to let the fire get too close. There’s a balance to everything, Jack mused, as he found a clean stick to stir the simmering mess while he waited for his dad to return.
“The day after tomorrow,” was Malcolm’s verdict about the river and their own possibility for traveling. “There’s not much stuff still floating down.”
“What made the river do that? It was more than just rain, wasn’t it? We’ve had storms before.”
“It must have been dammed somewhere and then let loose.” Malcolm sat near the fire and checked on the beans, the raccoon, and the grease. He stirred the beans to break them up so they would cook faster. “Some beaver dams got busted up somewhere and added to it all.”
“How do you know?”
“Chewed beaver logs. A lot of them. Old and muddied.” Malcolm let the facts roll out slowly. “Either the river flooded up their valleys, or they just broke up and got added to all of this.”
“Cyril and I busted up an old beaver dam once,” Jack confessed, and chuckled at the memory of it. “There were no more beavers in the pond behind it. Just a lot of water.” He looked over to see his dad’s reaction.
Malcolm just nodded, thinking, remembering. “Beaver dams messed up some of our meadows at Whitecourt. Breaking them up and getting them to move was quite a job.”
“Why didn’t you just trap them?”
“Not enough to make it worthwhile. We were supposed to be farmers.”
“So, you didn’t trap them in the wintertime?” Jack asked. “Like now?”
Malcolm rearranged things around the fire so the spruce gum and grease would simmer more slowly, and the raccoon cook faster. He was getting hungry. He also needed a break from the talking. Jack had never asked him so many questions before. Or maybe he had never wanted to answer any questions. Jack, Cyril, and Amelia had always been more like Rose’s children when they were growing up. But growing up had to end sometime. Malcolm looked over at his son and tried to remember how old he was. He realized that no matter what Jack’s childhood might be, there wasn’t much left
of it.
“Lumber,” Malcolm said at last, as if that one word answered it all. “We used to cut lumber up in the bush every winter. There was a lot of demand for lumber. The railways needed ties, and there were a lot of houses being built. Probably in Edmonton.”
Jack looked over at his dad. They’d been talking. Passing the time. Waiting for a supper of beans and raccoon to cook. But they’d not looked at each other. Not eye to eye. Not really as man to man. Jack wondered if their lives, their worlds, would ever come together. Or if they even needed to. He’d left. And that was to have been the end of it. The young eagles did that. Only the old ones ever came back and stayed by the river, didn’t they?
“Why did you come downriver looking for me?” Jack asked after a while. And this time he did look up at his dad. Right through the rising, flickering flames.
It was not a question Malcolm had anticipated. It was not one he was prepared to answer. He couldn’t say that Rose had made him do it. The boy knew he was the boss and that he made the decisions about whatever needed to be done. Malcolm remembered the argument when he had left Whitecourt. He’d simply said he was needed elsewhere. That there was a war. There was always an excuse to leave if you wanted to, and very few reasons to stay if you thought your time to leave had come.
Finally, he looked over at the little canoe and stated flatly, “I use that canoe to take supplies up to where I trap.” Then, “I was going to go as far as Whitecourt.”
Jack wondered if that would have been the limit. If he would have been free if he had gotten beyond Whitecourt. He looked down at the birch-bark splint on his arm. It was starting to feel almost pain free if he didn’t move it. Could he, maybe, just have drifted downstream? He rubbed it a bit, and then grudgingly said, “I’m glad you came looking for me.”
Although he might have said more, Malcolm just shrugged, waited, and said, “It seemed like the right thing to do.”
Jack was feeling a bit uncomfortable. He really wasn’t familiar with conversation. Certainly not with his dad. He’d heard his mom and dad talk at times, but that had often been in whispers.
“Did you see anything of the big canoe when you went down to the river?” Jack asked after a while, overcoming the pall of silence by asking about something practical.
“Long gone,” Malcolm replied, probably relieved that he could revert to things he didn’t need to think about. “It rolled and got swamped by the water. It would have come apart under the pressure.”
Jack had no trouble understanding that and agreeing with it. He’d had an experience of his own. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s how this arm happened.” He looked over at the little canoe. “It rolled and swamped, and I tried to hang onto it in the little channel behind the island.”
Fighting with the river had been an experience the two of them had shared.
“At least you found my knife,” Malcolm said after a while.
Jack looked down and wondered how deep the gash in his hand really was, and just how long it might take to heal. It was not in a place that would scab over easily. Maybe it was a good thing his arm had to be kept immobile for a while.
Finally he said, by way of response and maybe to keep the conversation going, “It was right under the tree with a short piece of bowline still dangling from it.”
Malcolm shook his head slowly. “I meant earlier. When you found it to cut that rope.”
“Oh.”
Malcolm looked off to the west where the foothills were. “I was trapped by the canoe, the rushing water, and that rope.” He didn’t say any more. He didn’t need to. They both knew what he was talking about and maybe trying to say.
“I knew your knife was always in the sheath on your belt,” Jack said, glancing over at it through the flames. “And I still had one good arm.”
“I think you used both,” Malcolm said.
“And you got us up the hill,” Jack added, remembering, acknowledging, and wondering what else there was to say. They had both done what was needed. They had reacted.
Jack remembered watching the young eagles learning how to fly. It was not an easy process.
Only the light from the fire was left when Malcolm finally said, “I think that raccoon is probably done.”
They ate in silence. Smoke from the fire had salted and flavored the rich red meat of the raccoon. They were both full by the time they’d thrown the bones from the hind quarters into the coals of the fire. Malcolm cut up the rest of the meat and put some in with the beans for the next day. The remainder he folded up in the oil cloth with the smoked fish.
Finally, by the light of some dried twigs Jack added to the fire, Malcolm plastered some of the spruce gum “tar” over the gash in the canoe’s canvas, placed a layer of birchbark over that, and repeated the process, placing the next layer at right angles to the first. He seemed to be satisfied when he smoothed down the edges and set what was left of the spruce gum “tar” aside for the future, if necessary.
“That should be set and cured by the time we need to travel,” was Malcolm’s end to the day, as he placed the small canoe back where Jack could sleep under it again.
25
The next day was clear. The weather had taken on its summer qualities. The warmth of the morning sun rather than the cold of the night seemed to wake both Malcolm and Jack at about the same time.
Jack gently rubbed his hand over the patch on the canoe as soon as he had a chance. “That patch seems to be as good as any of the ones made with real tar,” he commented.
“It should be ready for the water tomorrow,” Malcolm said. “That is, if the river’s ready. We’ll check after we’ve eaten.”
The beans were a thick, soupy gruel. Malcolm had added more water during the night to keep them from drying out and maybe burning. At least it had served to soften the beans some more. The small chunks of raccoon meat hardly needed chewing.
“How much beans do you have left in your pack?” Jack asked, thinking about the trip that would probably take them more than a few days to get back upriver.
“Two or three pounds. We can always fish.”
“Isn’t the river too silty for that right now?”
“That’s another reason to check on the river,” Malcolm explained. “Or maybe we’ll have to try that little creek for trout, if it hasn’t warmed up too much already.”
There was no rush. It was midmorning by the time the fire was down enough to be put out easily, and Malcolm got up and nodded toward the path that led down to the river.
Jack followed and noticed that his arm had stopped throbbing at every step. He wondered if the cut was starting to heal as well.
They were moving slowly down what was already becoming a well-worn trail, when Malcolm stopped at the place to where they’d managed to drag the big canoe. “We didn’t get too far up this steep slope, did we?”
Jack thought his dad was looking over to where he’d been snared by the big canoe’s rope. He seemed to be looking for some time at the short end of that rope, still hanging in the tree.
Jack looked around, too. But he was searching for the tree he’d managed to grab as the current threatened to drag him downstream. Or worse. Him and all the other things that weren’t rooted deep enough or strong enough to withstand the flood.
“You called me by a different name,” Jack said hesitantly as they stood and looked, and remembered. “When you came for me, you called me Billy a couple of times.”
Malcolm looked at Jack, then over at the poplar that his son, his boy, had managed to hang onto, and then down at the gray, silty mud that had dried on the ground and everything else, up to as high as the river had surged. The slope of that old river embankment was not the slope of a muddy trench in Belgium. Here the sky was clear. There was no sound of shelling, no rattle of guns. There was no yelling of orders, or the screams of horror and pain. It had only been a memory prompted
by the river.
Here and now, there was only the flash of sunshine shimmering down through the rattling of poplar leaves, stirred by the summer breeze. That, and the sound of the river hissing in the channel below. There was only him and his boy, his son, looking over at him, wondering and trying to come to terms with the war of his adolescent life.
“That was a long time ago,” Malcolm said, staring off to a place and a time somewhere beyond his son. “The river, and your yelling the other day, maybe reminded me.”
Down at the river, Malcolm walked out into the brown swirling water, wanting to test the current. “If it keeps going down,” he shouted back at Jack, “we should be all right tomorrow.” Then he looked upstream to where he could see the island and the Gooseneck rapids around it. “We’ll know we can make it home if we can get up above that island.”
They walked back up to the campsite in silence. Jack wondered if maybe he’d asked too many questions. Learning how to talk with someone was not easy. Especially since there had been too many years of silence. Silence, except for the orders, and those few conversations with his mom that were often cut short for some reason.
Malcolm strode ahead of Jack for the final rise to the campsite. By the time Jack caught up, Malcolm had already found what he was looking for in his pack. He held up some fine fishing line and said, “I’m going to try for some trout in that little creek.” Then he added, “We need some more firewood.”
Jack knew what was expected. It sounded like the old days, and he felt like he was ten again. Hearing that order served to shut him out of the world his dad seemed to occupy, and into which no one had ever really been invited. Although, as he stared into the rekindled fire, he wondered if he might have had a glimpse of his dad’s world as they talked that morning. Or, rather, as he had begun to ask some questions. And he wondered if maybe he had been prying, rather than his dad having invited him in.
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