Monkey Beach (20 page)

One of Mimayus’ friends was supposed to go to Bella Bella with her, but she chickened out. Mimayus waved as the gillnetter left the dock and promised to bring her friend some chocolates if she could find any.

Mimayus’ friend watched the two sets of boat lights getting farther away. As she was about to turn around and go back inside, she saw the lights in front blink out. Shivers ran down her back; she said she knew right then that Mimayus was gone.

Out on the water, hail came down. The couple in the troller were arguing. The wife wanted to turn back, but the husband said the hail wouldn’t last. It battered their boat for a few minutes, then stopped suddenly as a strong wind started. The wife looked up in time to see a funnel descending from the clouds like a black finger. The sound, the wife said, was like a thousand people screaming. Her husband immediately turned their boat around.

The wife looked back and saw the gillnetter struggling to turn, bobbing and dipping like a toy in the rough water. As the funnel touched down in front of Mimayus’ boat, the wife wanted to close her eyes but couldn’t. She watched in horror as the gillnetter was sucked into the air.

The couple made it back to Namu, but Mimayus and the gillnetter’s skipper were never found. Neither was the gillnetter, but its engine was discovered a week later, washed up on a nearby beach.

The rain is easing. Sea gulls circle and land on something between the logs on the rocky shore. A flock of sea gulls is called a squabble, and they are doing that right now, fighting for a place on whatever has washed up on shore. As my speedboat buzzes by, some of the
sea gulls hop away, revealing something dark, but then they cover it again. It must be big to have attracted so many. On the other side of the channel from me is a tanker on its way to Alcan’s dock. It moves with the ponderous weight of a loaded ship, is low in the water and oblivious to me. When we were kids, Jimmy and I used to watch the tankers through binoculars and try to decipher the names. Some were Russian or Japanese, or rusted beyond reading.

The crows wait at the outskirts of the squabble. They are little black dots that flutter and edge nearer to the corpse until the sea gulls drive them away. A flock of crows is called a murder.

Make your hand into a fist. This is roughly the size of your heart. If you could open up your own chest, you would find your heart behind your breastbone, nestled between your lungs. Each lung has a notch, the cardiac impression, that the heart fits into. Your heart sits on a slant, leaning into your left lung so that it is slightly smaller than your right lung. Reach into your chest cavity and pull your lungs away from your heart to fully appreciate the complexity of this organ.

The bottom of your heart rests on your diaphragm. The top of your heart sprouts a thick tangle of large tubes. Your heart is shrouded at the moment by a sac of tissue, a membrane called the pericardium, which acts like bubble wrap by both protecting your heart and holding it in place. Peel away this sac. Inside
is a watery lubricant that minimizes friction when your heart beats. Shooting down from the aorta—the large tube arching on top of your heart—are two large arteries that branch out like lightning forks over the heart muscle.

Behold, your heart. Touch it. Run your fingers across this strong, pulsating organ. Your brain does not completely control your heart. In the embryo, the heart starts beating even before it is supplied by nerves. The electrical currents that ripple across your heart causing it to contract are created by a small bundle of specialized muscle tissue on the upper right-hand corner of your heart.

The good thing about having a thirty-five-horsepower outboard motor is that it doesn’t need a whole lot of gas. You can go days on a couple of tanks. The bad thing is the putt-putt factor. It takes forever to get anywhere. Also, I travel by sightlines, aiming for one point, holding the boat steady until we get there and then picking another landmark.

Nic-fit. I’m dying for the extremely satisfying ritual of shaking a cigarette out of a pack, placing it between my lips and sucking in that first hot puff. Mmm. One lousy smoke left, but I’m saving it. Should have waited at the village and done a cigarette run. A bit too late now. I try to concentrate on other things. Technical terms I learned in biology.
“Atrium,”
from the Latin, meaning the central courtyard of a Roman house.
“Ventricle,”
Latin also, meaning belly or stomach.
“Septum,”
a partition; in the cardiovascular system, a partition between the right and left sides of the heart.
“Ischemia.” Isch-
, to hold back;
-emia
, a blood condition.
“Infarction,”
the death of cells.

The weather is inspiring my gloomy turn of thoughts. Or maybe it’s knowing that Mom and Dad will be in Namu today, hunting for Jimmy. Ah, irony. We’re all out on the water. The whole family is together.

I should have gone. I should be with them. They didn’t want me to go. It would be too much, they said, to have me there. They didn’t say “if something goes wrong,” but from the way they looked at me, they didn’t have to. I don’t know what I would have said when they found the life raft. But Jimmy isn’t stupid. Josh isn’t stupid. They are two smart men. Nonetheless, I want to be there right now. I ease off the throttle when the boat skitters. Since I’m riding with the tide, I’m not doing too badly. I tuck the throttle under one arm as I reach for my thermos and pour myself a cup of coffee. It steams and swishes in the thermos cap. I’ve put too much sugar in it, though, and the taste, burnt onto my tongue and tickling the back of my throat, is acidly sweet.

The first report cards came in. My grades hovered dangerously at a C—. Most of the comments read, “Doesn’t participate in class. Not working to full potential. Not concentrating, please set up an appointment to discuss study habits, etc.” Frank began
to hit me with snowballs at recess. Jimmy, on the other hand, made the honour roll every time. He’d even made it into the
Northern Sentinel
, holding up a swim medal with one hand, the other arm over a teammate’s shoulder. The caption read, “Future Olympic Hopeful Jimmy Hill Wins Regionale.”

Jimmy hadn’t really known Mick and he was so immersed in his swimming that an alien invasion couldn’t have distracted him from perfecting his stroke rate. Having no ambitions beyond getting through school, I had no way of understanding Jimmy. When the Olympics came on, he glued himself to the set, watching every single swimming event. Sometimes he went over to his teammates’ houses and watched with them, but he seemed to like it better by himself, absorbed. He would pore through the times set by little countries and announce that if he lived in Yukatuka-too, he’d have qualified for the one-hundred-metre butterfly. His games all ended with him getting a medal and placing it around his own neck.

Jimmy’s grades slipped a bit as he put everything into his swimming, but he tried, and that seemed to count for something. At school, we ignored each other. In his teammates, he had a ready-made circle of friends who had nothing to do with me. Most teachers were surprised we were siblings.

Nothing they taught me meant anything. None of the stories I read in English had anything to do with my life. As long as I could add and subtract, I didn’t feel a need to have any great math skills.

While browsing through some albums, I found what used to be my favourite ABBA collection. Disco
was officially dead, but just for old times’ sake, I put it on the record player and was boogying away in my bedroom when I noticed Jimmy and a bunch of his swimming friends goggling at me from the doorway like I was a loonie. The moment I noticed them, they smirked at each other. Jimmy stood stiffly in front of them, arms up as if he was trying to shield them from something hideous.

“She’s adopted,” Jimmy said to his snickering friends.

“Come on, Jimmy!” I said. “Do the hustle!”

“And brain-damaged.”

“Don’t be shy,” I said. I went over and grabbed his arm, but he jerked back like I had the plague.” Jimmy used to be a big ABBA fan, didn’t you? Remember that Frida poster you used—”

“I did not!” Jimmy said, face turning red.

“… to have up over your bed?”

“I didn’t,” he said to his friends. “She’s a big liar.”

“Wow, was he in love!”

“Shut up!”

“Of course, now he likes Boy George.”

“Let’s go,” Jimmy said, reaching around and slamming the door in my face.

I sang “Karma Chameleon” at the top of my voice.

That Friday at the breakfast table, Jimmy took his Walkman off long enough to say, “My friends are coming over this weekend.”

“Whoop-dee-doodle.”

“So don’t be a freak.”

I glared at him. “Like you’re not one.”

“Lisa—” He stopped, sighed and put his earphones
back on. He hunched over his cereal and chewed furiously. I stuck my tongue out at him. “Grow up,” he said.

He was too wiry to throw down on the floor and tickle like I used to do when we were younger. As I looked at him, an idea formed. Finding the copy of the monkey mask Dad had bought was hard. He kept it in a box stuffed away in the attic, which had never been organized. I had to clamber around for an hour before I found the right box. I shook out the dust, brought it downstairs and hid in Jimmy’s closet.

While I was waiting, it occurred to me that I might be making a mistake. But as I was reconsidering my plan, Jimmy and his friends came into the bedroom. I slowly lowered the mask over my face. It was heavy and the fur was itchy. Jimmy and his friends lay on his bed and pulled out their books.

Oh, man, I thought. This is going to take forever.

After what felt like hours, but was probably only fifteen minutes, Jimmy stood up and walked over to the closet. As he opened the door, I hopped out, roaring and waving my arms. Jimmy’s expression of horror, his complete and utter terror, was beyond anything I’d expected. His friends leaped off the bed and screamed like sissies. I raced out of the room with Jimmy and his friends in hot pursuit. I tossed the mask on the living-room chair, laughing as I headed outside, zipped down the steps and took off towards the rec centre.