Surfacing (7 page)

It takes me a moment to understand what she means. My father, his work. “I don’t know,” I say, “Just, you know.”

She gives me an odd glance, as though I’ve violated a propriety, and I’m puzzled, she told me once you shouldn’t define yourself by your job but by who you are. When they ask her what she does she talks about fluidity and Being rather than Doing; though if she doesn’t like the person she just says “I’m David’s wife.”

“He was living,” I say. This is almost right, it satisfies her, she goes into the bedroom to change her clothes.

All at once I’m furious with him for vanishing like this, unresolved, leaving me with no answers to give them when they ask. If he was going to die he should have done it visibly, out in the open, so they could mark him with a stone and get it over with.

They must find it strange, a man his age staying alone the whole winter in a cabin ten miles from nowhere; I never questioned it, to me it was logical. They always intended to move here permanently as soon as they could, when he retired: isolation was to him desirable. He didn’t dislike people, he merely found them irrational; animals, he said, were more consistent, their behaviour at least was predictable. To him that’s what Hitler exemplified: not the triumph of evil but the failure of reason. He found war irrational too, both of my parents were pacifists, but he would have fought anyway, in defence of science perhaps, if he’d been permitted; this must be the only country where a botanist can be classified as crucial to the national defense.

As it was he withdrew; we could have lived all year in the company town but he split us between two anonymities, the city and the bush. In the city we lived in a succession of apartments and in the bush he picked the most remote lake he could find, when my brother was born there wasn’t yet a road to it. Even the village had too many people for him, he needed an island, a place where he could recreate not the settled farm life of his own father but that of the earliest ones who arrived when there was nothing but forest and no ideologies but the ones they brought with them. When they say Freedom they never quite mean it, what they mean is freedom from interference.

The stack of papers is still up on the shelf by the lamp. I’ve been avoiding it, looking through it would be an intrusion if he were still alive. But now I’ve admitted he’s dead I might as well find out what he left for me. Executor.

I was expecting a report of some kind, tree growth or diseases, unfinished business; but on the top page there’s only a crude drawing of a hand, done with a felt pen or a brush, and some notations: numbers, a name. I flip through the next few pages. More hands, then a stiff childish figure, faceless and minus the hands and feet, and on the next page a similar creature with two things like tree branches or antlers protruding from its head. On each of the pages are the numbers, and on some a few scrawled words:
LICHENS RED CLOTHING LEFT
. I can’t make sense out of them. The handwriting is my father’s, but changed, more hasty or careless.

Outside I hear the crunch of wood on wood as the canoe hits the dock, they’ve brought it in too fast; then their laughter. I reach the stack of papers back to the shelf, I don’t want them to see.

That’s what he was doing here all winter, he was shut up in this cabin making these unintelligible drawings. I sit at the table, my heart speeded up as if I’ve opened what I thought was an empty closet and found myself face to face with a thing that isn’t supposed to be there, like a claw or a bone. This is the forgotten possibility: he might have gone insane. Crazy, loony. Bushed, the trappers call it when you stay in the forest by yourself too long. And if insane, perhaps not dead: none of the rules would be the same.

Anna walks out of the bedroom, dressed in jeans and shirt again. She combs her hair in front of the mirror, light ends, dark roots, humming to herself, You Are My Sunshine; smoke twines up from her cigarette.
Help
, I think at her silently,
talk.
And she does.

“What’s for dinner?” she says; then, waving, “Here they come.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

At supper we finish off the beer. David wants to go fishing, it’s the last night, so I leave the dishes for Anna and go down to the garden with the shovel and the tin can saved from the peas.

I dig in the weediest part near the compost heap, lifting the earth and letting it crumble, sieving the worms out with my fingers. The soil is rich, the worms scramble, red ones and pink ones.

Nobody loves me
Everybody hates me
I’m going to the garden to eat worms.

They sang that back and forth at recess: it was an insult, but perhaps they are edible. They’re sold like apples in season,
VERS
5¢ on the roadside signs, sometimes
VERS
5¢, later
VERS
10¢, inflation. French class,
vers libre
, I translated it the first time as Free Worms and she thought I was being smart.

I put the worms in the can and some dirt for them. As I walk back to the cabin I hold my palm over the top; already they’re nudging with their head ends, trying to get out. I make them a cover from a piece of paper torn off the grocery bag, keeping it on with a rubber band. My mother was a saver: rubber bands, string, safety pins, jam jars, for her the Depression never ended.

David is fitting the sections of his borrowed fishing rod together; it’s fibreglass, I have no faith in it. I take the steel trolling rod from its hooks on the wall. “Come on,” I tell David, “you can use that one for still-fishing.”

“Show me how to light the lamp,” Anna says, “I’ll stay here and read.”

I don’t want to leave her alone. What I’m afraid of is my father, hidden on the island somewhere and attracted by the light perhaps, looming up at the window like a huge ragged moth; or, if he’s still at all lucid, asking her who she is and ordering her out of his house. As long as there are four of us he’ll keep away, he never liked groups.

“Poor sport,” David says.

I tell her I need her in the canoe for extra weight, which is a lie as we’ll be too heavy already, but she takes my expert word.

While they’re getting into the canoe I return to the garden and catch a small leopard frog as an emergency weapon. I put it in a jam jar and punch a few airholes in the lid.

Tackle box, smelling of stale fish, old captures; worm can and frog bottle, knife and heap of bracken fronds for the fish to bleed on. Joe in the bow, Anna behind him on a life-jacket facing me, David on another life-jacket with his back to me and his legs tangled in amongst Anna’s. Before I push off I clip a silver and gold spinner with glass ruby eyes to David’s line and hook a worm on, looping its body seductively. Both ends twirl.

“Ech,” says Anna, who can see what I’m doing.

“It doesn’t hurt them,” my brother said, “they don’t feel it.” “Then why do they squirm?” I said. He said it was nervous tension.

“Whatever happens,” I tell them, “stay in the middle.” We move ponderously out of the bay. I’ve taken on too much: I haven’t been in a canoe for years, my muscles are shot, Joe paddles as though he’s stirring the lake with a ladle and we’re down by the bow. But none of them will know the difference. I think, it’s a good thing our lives don’t depend on catching a fish. Starvation, bite your arm and suck the blood, that’s what they do on lifeboats; or the Indian way, if there’s no bait try a chunk of your flesh.

The island shoreline recedes behind us, he can’t follow us here. Above the trees streaky mackerel clouds are spreading in over the sky, paint on a wet page; no wind at lake level, soft feel of the air before rain. The fish like this, the mosquitoes too, but I can’t use any bug spray because it would get on the bait and the fish would smell it.

I steer us along the mainland shore. A blue heron lifts from a bay where it’s been fishing and flaps overhead, neck and beak craning forward and long legs stretched back, winged snake. It notes us with a rasping pterodactyl croak and rises higher, heading southeast, there was a colony of them, it must still be there. But now I have to pay more attention to David. The copper line slants down, cutting the water, vibrating slightly.

“Any action?” I ask.

“It’s just sort of jigging.”

“That’s the spoon turning,” I say. “Keep the tip down; if you feel a nibble wait a second and then give it a sharp tug, okay?”

“Right,” he says.

My arms are tired. Behind me I can hear the tick tock of the frog hopping up and hitting its muzzle against the jar lid.

When we’re getting near the sheer cliff I tell him to reel in, we’ll still-fish and he can use his own rod.

“Lie down, Anna,” he says, “I’m gonna use my own rod.”

Anna says “Oh Christ, you have to do that about everything, don’t you?”

He chuckles at her and reels and the line comes in, the water slipping off it; the pale gleam of the spoon wavers up out of the lake. When it skips over the surface towards us I can see the worm is gone. On one hook is a shred of worm skin; I used to wonder how the lures with their crude African-idol eyes could deceive the fish, but perhaps they’ve learned.

We’re opposite the cliff, grey slab of rock straight as a monument, overhanging slightly, ledge like a step halfway up, brown rock-lichen growing in the fissures. I put a lead sinker and a different spoon and a fresh worm on David’s line and toss it over; the worm drops, pink, pink-brown, till it disappears in the shadow of the cliff. The dark torpedo shapes of the fish are seeing it, sniffing at it, prodding it with their noses. I believe in them the way other people believe in God: I can’t see them but I know they are there.

“Keep right still,” I say to Anna, who’s beginning to shift uncomfortably. They can hear.

Light fading, silence; back in the forest, liquid spiral thrush voice, they call at sunset. David’s arm moves up and down.

When nothing happens I tell him to reel in; the worm is gone again. I take out the little frog, the ultimate solution, and hook it on securely while it squeaks. Other people always did that for me.

“God you’re cold-blooded,” Anna says. The frog goes down through the water, kicking like a man swimming.

Everyone concentrates, even Anna: they sense this is my last trick. I stare into the water, it was always a kind of meditation. My brother fished by technique, he outguessed them, but I fished by prayer, listening.

Our father who art in heaven
Please let the fish be caught.

Later when I knew that wouldn’t work, just
Please be caught
, invocation or hypnosis. He got more fish but I could pretend mine were willing, they had chosen to die and forgiven me in advance.

I begin to think the frog has failed. But it’s still magic, the rod bends like a diviner’s and Anna shrieks with surprise.

I say “Keep the line tight,” but David is oblivious, he’s reeling like a mixmaster and saying “Wow, wow” to himself and it’s up to the surface, it jumps clear and hangs in the air like a framed photo over a bar only moving. It dives and pulls, the line slackens, it’s doubling back trying to shake loose; but when it jumps again David jerks the rod with his whole body and it sails across and flops into the canoe, a dumb move, he could’ve lost it, on top of Anna and she lurches, screaming “Get it off me! Get it off me!” and we almost tip. Joe says “Holy shit” and grabs at the side, I bend the other way, counterbalancing, David is snatching at it. It slithers over the canoe ribs, flippering and snapping.

“Here,” I say, “hit it back of the eyes.” I reach him the sheathed knife, I’d rather not kill it myself.

David swipes at it, misses; Anna cover her eyes and says “Ugh. Ugh.” It flops towards me and I step down on it with my foot and grab the knife and whack it quickly with the knife handle, crushing the skull, and it trembles stiffly all over, that’s done it.

“What is it?” David asks, amazed by what he’s caught but proud too. They are all laughing, joyful with victory and relief, like the newsreels of parades at the end of the war, and that makes me glad. Their voices bounce off the cliff.

“Walleye,” I say, “Pickerel. We’ll have it for breakfast.”

It’s a good size. I pick it up, fingers hooked under the gills and holding firmly, they can bite and jerk loose even when they’re dead. I put it on the bracken fronds and rinse my hand and the knife. One of its eyes is bulging out and I feel a little sick, it’s because I’ve killed something, made it dead; but I know that’s irrational, killing certain things is all right, food and enemies, fish and mosquitoes; and wasps, when there are too many of them you pour boiling water down their tunnels. “Don’t bother them and they won’t bother you,” our mother would say when they lit on our plates. That was before the house was built, we were living outside in tents. Our father said they went in cycles.

“Neat eh?” David says to the others; he’s excited, he wants praise. “Ugh,” says Anna, “it’s slimy, I’m not going to eat any of it.” Joe grunts, I wonder if he’s jealous.

David wants to try for another; it’s like gambling, you only stop if you lose. I don’t remind him I have no more magic frogs; I get out a worm for him and let him hook it on himself.

He fishes for a while but he’s having no luck. Just as Anna’s beginning to fidget again I hear a whine, motorboat. I listen, it may be going somewhere else, but it rounds a point and becomes a roar, homing in on us, big powerboat, the white water veeing from the bow. The engine cuts and it skids in beside us, its wash rocking us sharply. American flag on the front and another at the back, two irritated-looking businessmen with pug-dog faces and nifty outfits and a thin shabby man from the village, guiding. I see it’s Claude from the motel, he scowls at us, he feels we’re poaching on his preserve.

“Getting any?” one of the Americans yells, teeth bared, friendly as a shark.

I say “No” and nudge David with my foot. He’d want to tell, if only to spite them.

The other American throws his cigar butt over the side. “This don’t look like much of a place,” he says to Claude.

“Used to be,” Claude says.

“Next year I’m goin’ to Florida,” the first American says.

“Reel in,” I say to David. There’s no sense in staying here now. If they catch one they’ll be here all night, if they don’t get anything in fifteen minutes they’ll blast off and scream around the lake in their souped-up boat, deafening the fish. They’re the kind who catch more than they can eat and they’d do it with dynamite if they could get away with it.

We used to think they were harmless and funny and inept and faintly lovable, like President Eisenhower. We met two of them once on the way to the bass lake, they were carrying their tin motorboat and the motor over the portage so they wouldn’t have to paddle once they were on the inner lake; when we first heard them thrashing along through the underbrush we thought they were bears. Another one turned up with a spinning reel and stepped in our campfire, scorching his new boots; when he tried to cast he sent his plug, a real minnow sealed in transparent plastic, into the bushes on the other side of the bay. We laughed at him behind his back and asked if he was catching squirrels but he didn’t mind, he showed us his automatic firelighter and his cook set with detachable handles and his collapsible armchair. They liked everything collapsible.

On the way back we hug the shore, avoiding the open lake in case the Americans take it into their heads to zoom past us as close as possible, they sometimes do that for fun, their wake could tip us. But before we’re half the distance they whoosh away into nowhere like Martians in a late movie, and I relax.

When we get back I’ll hang up the fish and wash the scales and the salty armpit odour off my hands with soap. After that I’ll light the lamp and the fire and make some cocoa. Being here feels right to me for the first time, and I know it’s because we’re leaving tomorrow. My father will have the island to himself; madness is private, I respect that, however he may be living it’s better than an institution. Before we go I’ll burn his drawings, they’re evidence of the wrong sort.

The sun has set, we slide back through the gradual dusk. Loon voices in the distance; bats flitter past us, dipping over the water-surface, flat calm now, the shore things, white-grey rocks and dead trees, doubling themselves in the dark mirror. Around us the illusion of infinite space or of no space, ourselves and the obscure shore which it seems we could touch, the water between an absence. The canoe’s reflection floats with us, the paddles twin in the lake. It’s like moving on air, nothing beneath us holding us up; suspended, we drift home.