Mouse Page 3

  Good morning, Mouse. You gaze at me like I’m ignoring you when everything thing about these taps and pings, the way I smush my face about a word or curse the dictionary for a spelling I can’t find, is all for you. It’s you in every line.

  Today, lifting the cover off the Underwood, I fight the urge to reread the pages I typed yesterday, begin again and say it better. With different eyes, I might not see the point at all. I promised you I wouldn’t quit. I won’t. Last night I stayed up wondering if and when you’ll finally see these words. Will you be in your twenties or your thirties or maybe even forties? Will I even be alive? And what will you have figured out about your dad by then? How much will even be of interest? So how am I supposed to know which things you’ll understand and which you won’t, what stories you’ll have heard before or which would maybe shock you? Better safe than sorry. I guess it's better to repeate rather than leave things blank that might confuse or misinform you.

  Like being shy for instance. How well would you know that?

  I won’t be tongue-tied around you, I’m fairly sure, but meet David Taylor age thirteen in Junior High School. It’s the night before Homecoming in a town perfumed with burning piles of autumn leaves. Ten of us show up at Sharon Burt’s to make the homeroom float. I’m only conscious of one of them—Barb Jackson—but Sharon is the belle of the ball; she’s the leader, the chair of the Float Committee—popular, responsible, committed. I’m an outsider—the “class artist.” Maybe that’s why Sharon asks me for my help even though I never ever hang out with any of her crowd. The project doesn’t call for “art” per se, but here I am, eager to help wherever I can. That’s what I think when I arrive, but it isn’t long before I question whether Sharon might have other reasons to involve me, motives I haven’t yet considered.

  “You guys paint the banner, okay? I’ve got everybody else stuffing Kleenex in the chicken wire for the skirt.”

  That sounds reasonable to me. Her voice is causal enough. Sharon puts two jars of poster paint on the garage floor and unrolls a length of white craft paper. That’s what I imagine the chair of a junior high school committee is supposed to do: delegate responsibility, assign the right people to the right job, then get out of their way so the work can get done on time.

  “The planners already made up the slogan. They penciled out the letters too, but if you think something should be changed just do it. This all has to be finished by midnight or we’ll be working at lunch hour tomorrow.” Then she closes the garage door and leaves me all alone with Barb Jackson to paint within the lines. It’s very straightforward, suspiciously simple, but I’m not suspicious until she closes the door. Until then I haven’t thought beyond the painting. But once we are alone, Barb and I looking at the jars of paint, it hits me maybe this is more than a coincidence. Maybe Sharon is more clever than I thought. Maybe she is being mean.

  I stare at the jars—one red, one black—as paralysis spreads slowly from my stomach to my throat. Red and black are the school colours. I suddenly find it hard to breath. I study the paint as if it were the only question on the Math final exam, and I’m about to fail. All at once the choice is critical. It feels like I’m wearing blinders to keep me from peeking at Barb.

  This could have been a dream come true: alone with Barb, a chance to get to know her, the opportunity to let her know whatever it is I want her to know, to for god’s sake at least mumble a weak, “Hello.” Anything. Sharon did for me what I’ve been dreaming of for months: find that perfect opportunity to ask Barb Jackson for a date. In my mind, never in the history of the world has any naive young never-been-kissed adolescent been more head over heels in love. Never has anyone on the planet dialled half of a phone number so many times only to chicken out. In my mind right then it’s an anatomical anomaly that my throat chokes with sawdust every time I start to say, “Excuse me” or “Hello” or “What’s up with you?” And right until I find myself staring down a jar of poster paint, I truly believe my secret crush is still a secret, one I could carry to my grave. Sharon Burt has somehow changed it all. She’s set the stage. She’s set me up. She and seven of her friends are waiting for me to do something, say something. Whether this is a crude attempt at matchmaking or a cruel wager or an amusing piece of theatre really doesn’t matter. Even if it is an incredible coincidence, it doesn’t matter as long as my tongue stays tied. This is going to be the all time most embarrassing moment of my life, and all I can do is try to breathe, try to remain conscious.

  I want to say, “Would you rather paint the black or the red?” I don’t. I stick my paintbrush in the black and start painting in a letter. I want to say, “It’s nice weather.” I dribble paint on my jeans instead. I want to laugh and say, “I think we’re being had.” That would sound clever, honest, at least; it might have started a real conversation. I don’t say a word, and neither does she. Not one. It’s so quiet you can hear each brush stroke on the paper, and finally, after years have passed, Sharon breezes back into the garage with a giggle still lingering at the edge of her smile. “Those guys are cracking me up. Oh wow, you two did such a great job together. That’s going to be perfect. Are you ready to stuff some tissues now? We really have to hurry.”

  Right. That’s me, Mouse. I try to hurry.

  

  I run with the others—pounding up the road with the floodwater right behind us.

  It feels like I am running for my life. It feels like death is a possibility, but I’m preoccupied with the stitch in my side and the slippery patches on the muddy road and the gaping potholes that threaten to trip me. The pounding of my heart drowns the fact this chilly Friday afternoon starts my holiday.

  The Nunnery is closest to the riverbank, off to the right along the road—on slightly higher ground and two-stories tall. Sr. Theresa and the other nuns scurry up the wooden steps and disappear inside. It’s their good fortune; my home is another three hundred yards away. They vanish so fast I don’t think about trying to follow them. Whether it’s the feminine or the Catholic mystique of their cloistered quarters or the lack of a formal invitation, the nurses and I keep running, fighting a losing battle to stay ahead of the rising water, to keep our feet dry.

  I fight for air to feed my lungs; laboured chat with my two remaining companions ceases as we all sprint right past their residence on the left. The land there is lower, and the long, log Pan-Abode bunkhouse will probably leak like a sieve. The three of us run side by side, splashing through water over our shoe tops, until we pass the hospital. We make so much noise I’m surprised when they take a sharp turn, climb the steps laughing, then pause to cheer me on, wish me luck from the short entry porch before slipping inside to leave me alone on the road. The two-story cinder-block hospital was built by Catholic monks who obviously had some sense of what a flood could do in Orkney Post, of the advantage height might afford in a land as flat as a soccer pitch.

  I keep on running; the floodwater continues to rise. The school stands forty yards closer than my house, and I’m thinking clearly enough to stop there to let myself inside. My pulse still races, even after I climb the steps to the second floor to watch the swelling river from my classroom windows. Alone. The cavernous former residential school always has an eerie feeling to it. Abandoned dormitories and kitchens and dining rooms and laundries, all of them creak and whisper with the ghosts of former inmates. Shadows. The place is a warren of halls and locked doors and angry spirits that haunt the upper floors. I’m not only alone, but trapped here now; I find it hard to try to make some sense of what is happening down below me. Outside the window the peaceful landscape dissolves and recreates itself as something fierce and threatening.

  The airstrip disappears, submerges in a vast lake that stretches as far as I can see. Water laps at the walls of the terminal shed—maybe two feet up its sides. It’s hard to tell. The river might be pouring in the basement of the school, but the first floor was still dry when I passed through it. Still, the water spreading out across the land looks much less thr
eatening from my perch. It moves slower. It’s free of all but the smallest cakes of ice. It’s hard to tell, in fact, if it’s rising at all without checking and rechecking the distance between the water and the hospital’s front door or windows.

  A line of trees obscures the ice-filled creek and the village from my view. Looking out across the flat landscape, nothing resembles a hill in any direction as far as I can see. There is nothing, not a rock-face or a sandbag, nothing natural or man-made to stop the flood except the vastness of the muskeg. Water sloshes around the Hudson’s Bay store. The hospital and the school are islands now in a river that has turned itself into an ocean; an ominous waterscape replaces both muskeg and bush. I tell myself I’m safe here, but I’m not very convincing. Alone in the school, I imagine the water rising all the way to the clouds, the old buildings crumbling, me hanging onto a piece of driftwood, David Taylor drowning or slowly starving on the school roof with no one to record the event. In truth, I’m safe and mostly dry. In truth, I’m not the bravest soul on Earth in times of crisis.

  Whoever said fear itself is the only fear probably got it right. I might have let my panic drive me into some weird attempt at lighting signal fires or starting ark construction—were it not for Sr. Theresa. She saves me those embarrassments. I spend probably less than half an hour dithering and watching the water slowly inch its way toward the hospital porch when I see her head up the road toward the hospital in a bright red "paddle" canoe. (Mainlanders in Orkney call them that to differentiate them from the thirty-foot freighter canoes, which every Native family finds as essential as the yoke they use to haul pails of drinking water from the tap outside the Nunnery. The few paddle canoes here belong to nurses and teachers who use them for playing on the lake at the end of the runway. They fish or picnic. Freighters are for hunting, for transportation, for work.) When I see her paddling her canoe, I can’t help but laugh aloud.

  She steers her sleek red craft down the former gravel road and slides it next to the hospital steps and ties it off to the railing. Then she gathers her habit around her knees, revealing olive drab hip waders as she nimbly disembarks and disappears into a building already bathed in late afternoon wheat and goldenrod. Five minutes later she is back on the porch again and into her canoe, this time paddling right below my windows without a glance up at her school, straight across the compound to my house. Once more she does the tie-up and pops onto my porch like she is stopping by for tea. She knocks, tries my door, and when she finds it locked, she heads for the school.

  Five minutes later she drips on my classroom floor. “M. Taylor. I’m glad to see you are safe. I was hoping you would not drown before I could get my boat in the water.” She can barely contain her glee. “I thought I would try dat phone call again. And I should let someone know the airstrip she is being sous l’eau. We are officially ‘isolate’, are we not?” She is jovial about the whole thing; I’m ready to burst into tears of relief.

  My head swirls. “Does the river always come up like this, Sister? Breakup. This is breakup, right?”

  Her eyes laugh at me. “Yes, M. Taylor. We are having breakup today. I believe I mentioned dat fact when I dismissed your class dis afternoon. And now you know why we did not want the children dawdling in the creek on their way home.”

  “Yes, Sister. But... You could have warned me. This... The ice is so... How high is the water going rise? Are you telling me I will need a canoe?”

  She shrugs. “Dere are things we cannot know, M. Taylor. Have faith.”

  “Of course. Is it always like this? Did you know this would happen?”

  “Every year she is a different year. It is exciting, no? Our spring she is the most interesting season. Our river is very wide—two, three miles at the least, I think. Dere are many islands, many how do you say channels, so many places for the ice to make the jam. Dere are floods sometimes, sometimes here; sometimes dere. Sometimes not at all.” Her hands make me dizzy sculpting the geography as she speaks.

  “That much ice? Each year?”

  “You are not Catholic, M. Taylor. You are religious at all, perhaps?”

  “That’s a complicated question, Sister. Is that the key to understanding this flood?”

  “Perhaps—for some of us. You would like the ride over to your house now? To keep your feet dry? Or you may rather to sleep here on the staffroom couch? The flood, it is probably over soon, but you never can be sure. It could happen you would get a little wet over dere. Our river is full of the surprise."

  Of course I choose the couch, a second story couch. It’s my nature, Mouse. The smartest path in a crisis is to sit down right in the middle of the path and wait things out. That’s more or less what I learned in boy scouts: if you get lost, stay put. Finding myself in the middle of a flood with no sign of help but a nun in a canoe certainly qualifies as “lost” to me. It doesn’t make the waiting any easier or the night any shorter or the couch any more comfortable. It does make me remember a time ten years ago when staying put was the only option I could fathom when everything was on the line. Yes, you need to know that too, Mouse. Forgive me for another interruption while I’m alone here with nothing but the flicker of spirits and phantoms haunting the empty school as night closes in and obscures my vigil over the rise and fall of the flood waters. I dream or daydream (or both) of Iowa.

  

  “You’re not going, Taylor.” My friend Teo blows on his bare hands and shivers in his patched, hooded sweatshirt. When he shakes his head his dreadlocks whip against his face and neck. Teo Jiminez, my fellow classmate, my biggest fan.

  We sit in the snow under a large ponderosa pine at the north end of William F. Cody Park, which abuts the west edge of the campus. As a rebuttal I pull the crumpled letter from my back pocket. I wave it at him, damp from being sat on. I point to the date: March 7, 1967.

  “You don’t have to do everything the Man tells you to do. Going over there, doing what they’ll make you do, that’d kill everything good inside you, dude. Listen up, Taylor. You’re just in shock. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “You’re right about the killing part. Thanks for the reminder.” I kick at the slush around me. It must look to Teo like I’m a child about to throw a tantrum. “You think I want to go?”

  Teo grabs at the letter. “This piece of shit? You’re making no sense to let them tell you what to do. You’re wasting your life, man. You got talent. You got more important stuff to do. Shooting gooks is not one of them. This is one plus one simple. You can’t let this happen. Get a grip on your life, man.”

  “And my alternative is? Shit, I screwed myself royally. I fucking cut so many of Kaminski’s classes, he really didn’t have much choice.”

  “Fuck Kaminski. You’re an artist, not a writer. Who gives a fuck if you can string some fancy words into an essay? You’re a fucking painter, man. You’re pulling A’s in all your real classes. Screw him. Come on, Taylor, we’re late for Life class.”

  “You go. It doesn’t matter now. Comp was a requirement. You know that. And my draft board was waiting like a vulture for that F. It’s too fucking late. Read it. Notice from the Board. Report for your physical tomorrow, boy. We got travel plans for you, young man. See the world. Go, Teo. Get to Life. Or you’ll be going too. Save you a seat next to me on the bus to Fort Dix.”

  Teo squats next to me, looking up into the ceiling of evergreen and cloud above us. “Jesus, Taylor. You’re so pathetic, man. I respect you as an artist, but you are such a fucking Iowan.”

  “And that’s supposed to mean what? Big ass New York dudes don’t have to go to Nam?”

  “It means I won’t. I could fail every fucking course in this ass-backward cow college; I just won’t go. And if this weren’t corncob fucking Iowa and you weren’t a dumbass farmer, you wouldn’t be going either.”

  “Okay. So now this is all about the city mouse and the country mouse. You teach me, man. Tell me the score. How do I beat this rap?”

  I feel the pressure of his hand on
my shoulder. “Listen, country mouse, the only thing that kept me here the last two years was you.” In the pause that follows, a clutch of co-eds passes near us on the sidewalk heading toward their dorm, laughing about a prof’s meagre moustache. “That’s a fact, Dave. I really hated this place, but watching you do the things you were doing with paint, you inspired me, man. Don’t fucking laugh or I’ll fucking punch your face in. You did. I can’t let you do this to yourself.”

  “I’m not doing anything to myself, New York. They’re doing it to me. I’m out of choices. I’m just rolling with the punches now.”

  “No. You are doing something. Doing nothing is doing something. You’re giving up. That’s a way I never saw you act with a canvas. You were never scared of that big white.”

  “This isn’t any painting, New York.”

  “Go then. Get your arm shot off. Or shoot somebody else’s arms off. Shoot somebody’s dad or wife or son. Be my guest.”

  “Shit. What’s wrong with you? Are you hard of hearing? I’ve got no choice. It’s over, smartass. You tell me how to fix it, or better yet just get the fuck to class.”

  “It’s an easy fix, man. You want to leave it all up to me? Sure. I’ll take care of it. I got the minibus over in the lot. We can be in Toronto by tomorrow morning. Me? I’ll be back here for class on Monday. Nothing easier.”

  “No, man.” I shake my head back and forth in slow motion. “I can’t.”

  “Can’t?”

  “Toronto? Where is Toronto anyway? Man, I don’t even know. It’s like some foreign city, like in a different country anyway. How...”

  “Yes.”

  “What about money? Jobs? School? I won’t know anybody there, not a single person. I don’t have any place to stay. I don’t speak a word of French.”

  “Yes. Just like when the gesso is all dry on the canvas, and you’re ready to begin.”

  “Shit. It’s not a canvas.” I press my fists into my eyes. “It’s not that easy. You make it sound that way. Like all we have to do is get in the van and go. You’re serious, too, aren’t you?”

  “Straight.”

  “No. No way, Teo. This isn’t going to happen. That’s you; you could do that. Me? No way. You expect me to just walk away from everything? Family? School? Friends? You think I can just start over. You’re killing me here.”

  “You keep thinking about killing, don’t you, man? Well, don’t worry; you’ll get used to that.”

  “Fuck you. Just let me think. I need some time.”

  “No, you don’t. You don’t need time. You need guts.”

  “I need time. I can’t decide this in five minutes.”

  “You can think about it on the bus to boot camp if you want. Or you can do your thinking in the van with me. You’ll be thinking the same thing either way: What if you’d picked the other thing? The only difference will be where you’re headed—what your life is going to be, man—your whole life.”

  That’s when I stand and shake the slush from my sneakers. That’s when I shove my hand into my back pocket and check for my billfold, when I push all of the air out my lungs and inhale the turpentiney resin of the trees. When I finally break the long silence, I tell Teo, “Maybe we should stop by my place and pick up my wallet. Maybe I should pack a bag. Maybe we could hit the bank before it closes.”

  Then I fall in step behind my friend; I let him lead me toward the parking lot.

  

  I am pretty good at following orders, Mouse. That much about me hasn’t changed.

  In May, this far north, dawn comes early but somehow I sleep in, in spite of having neither blinds nor curtains on the staffroom windows. By the time my eyes fully, without the benefit of coffee, open, I realize the sudden flood has just as suddenly retreated—off the road and back into the banks from whence it came. From the school, I see the airstrip is still mostly underwater. There are puddles here and there around the compound. All the ditches still are full. But I have no difficulty at all walking home to rescue my limp carrots and make a meal of toast and eggs while I chew on yesterday. Yesterday I panicked. Observing from my classroom perch, I let my fears take over. I conjured up my watery demise, my unattended funeral while drying out my damp socks and sneakers. It’s possible I overreacted. Surviving the flood was not in the same league as trading Iowa for Toronto ten years ago; the danger here barely blinked an eye at me.

  After breakfast I walk down the road to the bank. There is a ridge of ice boulders along the side of the creek over which I cannot see. (Reminder, Mouse: I’m six foot two.) When I climb part of the way up, pulling myself from one giant slab to another, all I see is more slabs, a sea of slabs, dipping a bit in the middle. Boulders are piled on boulders, locked together now. Cracks and crevasses, charcoal shadows highlight a rainbow of pastels crossing the jam. Mud and clay scraped off the banks offer patches of brown and sienna. In the sunlight, there are flecks of purple and gold, reflected greens and ultramarine from trees and sky. For a while I am a painter instead of a gawking tenderfoot. Truly, colour not shape is the essence of this strange new world. The shapes are abstract, cubist; the colours, Jackson Pollack—a restrained, softer, gentler Jackson Pollack. The texture is cloudlike—one mass blending into the next like it’s been done in watercolours.

  “Can you see it, dat boat?” The voice from well behind me, safely on solid ground, belongs to Hélène Cooper, the Head Nurse at St. Marie’s Hospital. Dressed in her uniform she stands with two other nurses: Sr. Francis and Linda Armstrong, the former in her grey-brown habit, Linda in a sweater and jeans, all of them in gum boots.

  “What boat?” I ask without disguising my sarcasm. “There isn’t any water. There isn’t any boat unless it’s some driftwood wreck brought down here by the ice.”

  “Dey will be now just starting out from de village side. De patient she is coming.” Hélène directs this at me again. All eight of the nurses who staff the hospital are young: in their twenties, except for Sr. Francis who must be fifty or more who, as far as I can tell, speaks no English at all.

  I make no effort to hide my incredulity. Hélène is not, in my experience, stupid. The only explanation from my vantage point (and their view of the creek is blocked by the huge ridge of ice boulders) is that they haven’t yet seen what is self-evident to me. “Whoever it is, is not coming across that. Not today. Have you seen this Hélène? No way!”

  “Allez. Go up dere.” She points her chin toward me, but speaks to Linda. “He is not seeing so good for being de artist, eh?” She thinks this is funny; I can tell from her tone.

  I move to the top of the ridge. “I can’t see what can’t possibly be there.”

  It’s easy between us. In the winter, especially when Suzanne was too pregnant or too busy or too depressed to get out, I would cross-country ski or snowshoe with the nurses. Even stout and feisty Hélène would join in the fun—even when she lagged behind or was out of breath. They taught me how to do two sports I’d never tried before; they got me out onto the muskeg, showed me a side of Orkney Post I never would have discovered on my own. And now Linda, the tall redhead, climbs up the wall of ice blocks allowing me to offer her an outstretched hand.

  Many times I’ve felt the sting of Linda’s sharp tongue and this is my chance to even the score. “Maybe we should stroll over to the village and see what’s keeping them? Or ski? Or did no one but me notice the ice?”

  “Funny man, Dave. Okay, sharp eyes, look there.” She points.

  “Where?”

  “Look at the church steeple. Now just a hair to the left of that. Bring your eyes straight down slowly.”

  “Holy shit!”

  Linda clears her throat and pokes me in the arm, then whispers, “Sr. Francis, dude. Be cool.” Then she turns to face Hélène. “Another fifteen minutes maybe? Half an hour? It’s too early to tell where they’ll come up the bank or how long it’ll take them. Does someone have the keys to Thomas’ truck?”

  Thomas does maintenance at the school and hospital and h
is pickup sometimes serves as the ambulance. It sounds as if he may be over in the village, but his truck is somehow still on this side.

  Hélène says, “I don’t need no key to start dat old piece of junk. No worry.”

  I could care less about a truck. Right now I’m watching what looks more and more like two figures pushing a big square backed freighter canoe from one ice chunk to the next. A third figure wrapped in blankets sits hunched over on the bow seat. Now one of the men (that’s an assumption I’m willing to risk, that they are male) walks to the front of the canoe and chops at the ice with a long stick. I assume he’s trying to determine what’s solid or maybe where the water level is under the ice.

  “Why didn’t they just go to the Health Centre?”

  Linda looks at me like I am seriously in need of special education. “Annika? She’s not allowed to put on a Band-Aid. She supposedly gives out healthy living information. She has nothing at the Centre but pamphlets and charts. It’s a waste if you ask me. What the people need for ‘healthy living’ is good food and clean water, and enough money for warm clothes, not literature in English and French which they freaking cannot read.”

  Then, “Bam!”

  I nearly lose my balance. My face must show my terror, because Linda grabs my arm and says, “No sweat. That’s nothing. It’s just a pressure crack. My guess is this ice is planning to stay here for awhile.”

  “Explain, please.”

  “If the water comes up, this might move out of here. If the water goes down, it might stay here till it melts.”

  “The explosion?”

  “Oh, that pressure crack? It’s like an ice cube tray, only bigger cubes. Not to worry. Not a problem.”

  “And when would this ice be melted if it doesn’t flush away?”

  “What am I, the weather girl? June? How would I know? Were you planning a fishing expedition up the creek once it melts?”

  I’m groping for a clever answer to that when Hélène takes charge of the conversation. “You stay right dere. Keep your eye peeling on dat boat. I will make sure if Rosemary she is ready at de hospital. I need to check on de radio, too. It’s out all night not working. And den I will get dat truck going. You keep me posted on de walkie-talkie, eh?”

  I stand on ice, ice that is resting on the bank. I try to imagine what it would be like to be picking my way across out there. Thirty feet up, three hundred yards across, no idea whether the next step is going to be solid ice or mush. Now, one of the men out on the ice (yes, they are men) jumps back in the canoe testing the ice on either side. Both of them are in parkas and hip waders. Yes, they are very brave men. Or else they are very insane.

  “You didn’t take the charter, Dave,” says Linda.

  We make eye contact. I fear what might come next, but either she is distracted by the drama on the ice or doesn’t find any humour in bugging me further about Suzanne. “No, I didn’t.”

  “I guess you didn’t want to miss a big extravaganza like this.” She smiles—warmly, without a trace of condemnation. I thank her silently.

  “It’s kind of amazing, isn’t it?” I offer.

  “Get us some popcorn. A blanket. A six-pack. You and me, dude, we could have a nice little party here.” She winks. It feels like a leer.

  Suddenly my mouth goes dry. She’s not serious; it’s just Linda’s way of teasing. I know for certain this is not a Barbara Jackson situation. Linda’s not the woman of my dreams; she’s never been a fantasy. It’s just her way, but I am tongue-tied, not knowing what to say or how to act. I’m just not good at flirting. I’m married anyway as Linda is aware—happily, I think. What am I thinking? Not dreaming up a cool response, a flashy comeback. The real question is who. The “who” that’s on my mind right now is Suz. I’m not quite sure how long I stand there dreaming of a different place and time: the Ottawa Valley in the spring of 1973.

 

  

  She runs right past my set-up. Everyone is running, but I notice only her, really just her hair: a red so muted it drifts into a carrot orange. She’s tall and slender. Nice legs shown off beneath a flowered yellow midi. She’s young, about my age, mid-twenties, but really, to tell you the truth, all I see is the flash of carrot through the sheets of falling rain. The rain comes down so suddenly, so hard I wonder if it will rip right through the canvas roof. But that would be someone else’s problem; I’ve borrowed the kitchen fly from a friend of a friend, another artist I know back in Toronto. Right now I’m just enjoying everyone else’s misery. I almost laugh aloud at the holiday weekend tourists getting drenched. It serves them right for stopping at the quaint village of Pleasant Falls on the TransCanada north of Algonquin Park, hoping to find a souvenir, a bargain piece of local art, something to match the colour of their drapes. Instead they’re getting soaked today—except the few who brought umbrellas. Whether it’s the spectacle of a sopping wet stampede of amateur art collectors or my bitterness at having sold nothing but a single tiny painting for a measly fifteen bucks, I find this quite entertaining—especially that single, extraordinary flash of colour.

  Happy Victoria Day, Mouse. Right now the most fortunate thing in my life is that both my art and myself are still dry. The camp cook fly, just a roof with three sides that roll down, is big enough for my display of oils and acrylics. It has protected me against both the rain and sun and discouraged the black flies somewhat. I’ve tried this twice before and I can safely promise myself it will be my last attempt at art in the park. Fake smiles, small talk, pretence at bartering, people who neither know nor care a thing about art but are all about haggling a dollar off the price. This isn’t me. It’s not what I do. I don’t see how it can lead to anything better. It depresses me and it feels destructive of the things I really want to do. Dragging all my work up here from the city was neither fun, nor profitable. Truly, it’s not conducive to anything creative in the slightest. I tried. I failed. The end.

  “Excuse me. Is it all right?” She stands in the entranceway, her incredible hair plastered to her forehead and neck and the front of a plastic raincoat. “Are you open?”

  “I’m here. Please. Feel free to look around.”

  “It’s really coming down.”

  “I see that.”

  “You’re the artist?”

  “David Taylor.”

  “I don’t think I’ve come across your work.”

  “I’m not surprised. My resume is—under construction.” She doesn’t look at me; her eyes fix on the figures I put along one side of the shelter. I see them as semi-abstract, hard-edged, yet painterly. I hope my respect of the female form is evident, hope she sees the softness I intend.

  “I like these.” Now she looks at me—actually makes eye contact. She smiles.

  I nearly make a lame comment about how she can stay here, out of the rain, as long as she wants, even if she hates the paintings, even if all she wants is something to match her drapes, but her smile stops me. I don’t say anything. Yes, probably I smile right back at her.

  “I like this one best,” she says. “But I can’t afford it. I mean it’s not like it’s priced too high. Actually I think it’s worth more than you’re asking. I just don’t have the money to invest in art right now. But I do like it. I hope that’s all right.”

  “That’s fine. As much as I enjoy a meal now and then, I’m foolish enough to think it’s better to be appreciated than collected.”

  “That’s an interesting way to put it, David Taylor. I don’t want to waste your time.”

  I shake my head. I bite my tongue. I don’t point out the droves of customers not lined up behind her or the obvious reason she’s huddling under my tent admiring my masterpieces.

  “You live in Pleasant Falls? I guess all the artists here are from the Valley, eh?”

  “Nowhere close.” I hesitate. “Toronto. For me this was kind of an experiment: testing the tourist market. Not what I’d consider a particularly successful experiment.”

  “Toronto? Really? I was just t
hinking about Toronto. I’m a teacher from Pembroke. I just turned in my resignation. I’ve been considering a change of scenery.”

  “Oh? The landscapes are over here.” I point.

  She starts to laugh. Stops. Then she looks at me to make sure that humour was intended. My lips press together and that gives me away and we both laugh.

  “So? A teacher, eh? You like it? Kids. Quiet. Everyone in rows.”

  “Rows are kind of standard in schools. I’m sorry. I have you at a disadvantage. I’m Suzanne Robinson. My real reason for stopping here today was to find an idea, hoping I’d see something I could use in class. I think what I really need is a miracle.”

  “Ideas are generally more plentiful than miracles. All I have is paintings, however, Suzanne Robinson.”

  “Well, I probably couldn’t afford an idea either—certainly not a miracle. I know it isn’t supposed to work like this. A teacher is supposed to have all the answers or the answer is supposed to be in a book on my desk at least. Maybe that’s why I resigned. I have an art class to teach tomorrow afternoon. It’s the first day back from the long weekend, spring is in the air, and I just know they’ll be higher than kites. And I hate art. Teaching it, I mean. And they do too, my students. Maybe they just hate the way I teach it. I don’t know.”

  “Slow down, Suzanne. How is it possible for a kid to hate art? You’re putting me on, right?”

  “They just want to fool around. And they say they’re no good at it, and they won’t even try.”

  “I don’t think it has to be that way. It never was for me.”

  “But you’re an artist. Of course you liked it.”

  “I was a kid for a long time before I was an artist. Look, this is a terrible place to have a conversation. There’s a coffee shop just down the street from here. Nobody is buying today. You’re the only interested, interesting customer I’ve had all weekend. That is, if you’d like to talk more about the art class...”

  True story. That’s pretty much the way our first conversation went—or the way it started. We packed the unsold paintings into plastic garbage bags and stowed them in the trunk of my loaner, rust bucket ’59 Buick.

  “I bet I could come up with something interesting for that lesson, Suzanne, if I gave it some thought.”

  “Really?”

  

  “David?”

  No longer Suzanne, of course; it’s Linda talking, wondering, I suppose, if I’d been kidnapped by aliens or fallen into an episode of Twilight Zone. How long have I been comatose? The rest of Suzanne’s amazing art lesson will have to wait until later. I won’t forget, Mouse, but this is important too.

  “Sure. A party. That would be really cool,” I mumble hoping our conversation hasn’t moved on to other things. I can see by the wrinkle in her nose I’m about to be humbled by yet another snappy putdown when I’m saved by a crackle from her walkie-talkie. Playfulness immediately evaporates from her eyes. She is a nurse again. The ongoing drama, in which I am only a brief and insignificant intermission, heats up again.

  “They’ll be here in a few minutes,” she shouts into the boxy device. “They should be coming up a little east of the road. Not sure exactly when. The river is looking iffy again. Not good at all. Over.”

  Ignoring me, she finds places to step and then jumps down off the ice ridge. I’m right behind her. In spite of her good looks, I’m not a big fan of Linda, but I am hooked on this amazing trip across the ice. Her voice is always commanding, her wit grating, her demeanour frightening, but she’s always been basically a good person when we skied or listened to music at the Nurses’ Residence. She’s a person that I trust. I find my voice and ask her tentatively, “It’s okay if I tag along?”

  “Suit yourself, dreamboat.”

  “I hope that patient is okay.”

  “We do what we do, David. It’s our job. I’m sure everything will be fine.” Her eyes, her attention aim downriver toward the road that once connected the mainland to the village, now buried under thirty feet of ice and water. I admire her confidence. It’s often vital here in Orkney Post. The nurses, all eight of them, work hard to keep us safe. Too often they are all that stands between comfort and pain, health and sickness, and even life and death, so much more so than nurses in the city because there’s just one doctor here, often just an intern who flies in once a month, arriving on the Tuesday sched and leaving on Thursday's. Nurses here have a lot of responsibility. Hélène can call for a medevac in an emergency. A plane is just an hour away. Of course, that depends on the radio working. It depends on conditions being right for flying. Now I add to the list of ifs: if the airstrip isn’t under water. Maybe for the first time, I can see things from Suzanne’s point of view. Maybe she did know best. “I hope they can use the radio now,” I say.

  “The radio is the least of our worries right now, dude.”

  I hesitate. They are careful about patient confidentiality in such a small community. Linda is ferocious about it. “Something’s wrong?”

  “You didn’t notice? The ice is pushing up. You should have seen it if you’d looked upstream when I told you. Pay attention. That means the water is rising again.”

  That comment should send me sprinting for the school once again, but we’ve arrived at the road and Thomas’ rusted blue 1950 Ford idles on the gravel. Hélène squats in the back of the truck, fiddling with blankets. Running for higher ground appears to be the last of her concerns.

  In her white uniform Rosemary Metatawabin, the only Aboriginal nurse in Orkney Post, stands up on the ice ridge. She uses an open palm up to her forehead to shade her eyes from the sun. Long braids draw heavy raven perpendiculars down her back. Her slender neck, the colour of toast, twists and she looks down at us. “They are almost here.” She turns back to the river.

  Linda has climbed only halfway up onto the ice barrier when the back of Rosemary’s raised hand slips to her mouth but doesn’t muffle her shout: “Hurry!” She doesn’t turn her head. She doesn’t have to. Her voice, a scalpel, makes a clean deep incision across my chest. There is no mistaking the gravity of her command. “The ice is moving! Get down there, David. They need your help. Right now! Go!”

  Chapter Three