Our Homesick Songs Page 16

  OK, said Finn. That makes sense, OK.

  And, Finn? All the potatoes were eaten off his father’s plate, and all the sauce, too, but still Aidan kept running his fork along and around, in case one last bit was left somewhere, hidden.

  Yeah?

  You have permission to use any of my things when I’m in Alberta. Any of my sweaters or boots or anything. To save you trouble of asking.

  OK, Dad, thanks.

  Anything, any time.

  OK, Dad, thanks.

  •  •  •

  After dinner Finn took his accordion back to the Italy! house and practiced “The Bog Flower Waltz” until the sun went down. He watched it through the window, sinking like a slow-motion stone until there was nothing left. Then he stopped playing, took off his accordion and went out into the Beggs’ yard. They’d left two old bicycles out there, both with flat tires and one with no chain; and one old, small, wooden dory with the hull rotting through where the rain had gathered and stayed. Finn started with the smaller of the two bikes. He rolled it, bumpily, flatly, down and around the front of the house, then down the short track to the shore. It was too dark to properly see where the dips and splits were as he maneuvered the bike up onto and across the rocks. They jutted far enough out that the water around them was black, but Finn could sense it moving. He got a good, firm footing, toes curling in and out in the cold, lifted the bike and threw it out into the water as far as he could.

  Its splash startled no one because there was no one around to startle. It sank straightaway, handlebars first, and, just like that, was gone.

  Sorry, Finn said to himself, to the night.

  Then he scrambled back across the rocks and back up the track to get the next bike.

  With the boat it was slightly different. When he got it down to the rocks, he hefted it around so it was upside down and found a rock just bigger than his fist with a rounded point at one end. He remembered his father’s words, Gently and Carefully. Sorry, sorry, he said, and brought down the rock in the middle of the weak bit of hull. Sorry, sorry, as he did it again and again, until the wood gave way and a hole opened up, first small, then bigger and bigger until the rock could fit right through.

  Still, the boat took longer to sink than the bikes, trying to do its job, do its best, even though it was upside down with a gap in its very middle. It sank slow like the sun. Sorry, sorry, said Finn. Before going back to the Beggs’, he built up a small cairn on the rock, a memorial for his growing sunken fleet, a marker for the new homes he was making.

  Back in the house, Finn filled in more of his list:

  THINGS TAKEN

  Truck one (red)

  Car one (gray)

  Car two (blue)

  Truck two (black)

  Car three (red)

  Van

  Bike one (smaller)

  Bike two (no chain)

  Dory

  And the pack ice pushed in and out and in, and every few nights the thaw spread and his fleet got closer and closer to shore and Finn would go to another house and take what had been left, drag or carry or roll it across the rocks and ice as far as liquid water and push or drop or throw it in and watch it sink. He filled in his list: Stroller, Lawn mower, Toboggan, Kitchen Chairs (4), Dories/Punts/Other small boats (25). He built cairns and apologized to them, Sorry, sorry, sorry.

  And then, one warmer day when there was sun behind and between the bouts of frozen rain and clear water almost all the way up to the shore, behind and between the bits of moving ice, there, in the green and rusted mailbox of South Africa!, was another reused envelope. Inside, there was another piece of paper with the top ripped off. It said:

  Liewe Finn,

  Moet nie oor my bekommerd wees nie.

  Ek het nou twee honde. Ek dink jy sal van hulle hou.

  Groete,

  Cora

  It definitely wasn’t Italian. And not English. Finn looked up to the stuffed lion Cora had stapled to the sofa. South African? he asked it. The lion said nothing. Finn folded the letter, put it back into its envelope, then slipped it down his shirt with the other, Italian one. He pulled on his sweaters and ran back home.

  Aidan was in the kitchen, had all the Tupperware out in various piles, big, small, lids, orphans.

  Dad, said Finn, what’s the South African language?

  What? said Aidan. He had two lids in his hands. Neither of them fit anything.

  The South African language, said Finn again. Do you know what it is?

  Um, he said. I’m not sure. I think there are a few. More than one. Dutch, maybe? I think one is Dutch . . . or, like Dutch.

  Dutch? said Finn.

  Like Dutch, said his father.

  •  •  •

  The Dutch–English dictionary was still there, in the library boat. Some of the words in the letter weren’t in it so Finn had to guess and allow for changes in spelling.

  Lovely Finn,

  Do not worry about me.

  I have two dogs now. You will enjoy them.

  Regards,

  Cora

  Two dogs, whispered Finn. Wow. If Cora had two dogs she would be OK, she must be OK.

  And then, a week later, another letter, in what was probably Finnish:

  Dear Finn,

  I have not seen a bear yet, but I think I will soon.

  And, little by little, the snow and ice melted off the boulders and soaked back into the bogs and marshes and trickled down into the bay and the ice pans broke and cracked and floated back and away and back and away, smaller and smaller.

  And little by little, Finn emptied the houses and filled the sea.

  There was a big, main cafeteria in the middle of camp, but Cora never went there. She got her own food from the Camp West Off-Base Supplies and Snack Van, run by a thin and quiet man with DARWIISH embroidered on the breast pocket of all his shirts. He served buns with hamburger, buns with egg or buns with tomatoes, as well as the Deal of the Day!, which was always a Styrofoam bowl of brown-red beans mixed with sugar and butter. Cora got an egg bun for breakfast and a hamburger bun with tomato for lunch and the Deal of the Day! for dinner. Darwiish never said anything, just nodded at her when she arrived, and took her order and money and nodded when she took her food. Behind him, stuck to the sides of the minifridge and microwave and freezer, were photos of children. Children smiling, somewhere hot. Darwiish was in a couple of them too, but mostly he wasn’t.

  Breakfast and lunch she ate as she walked, half-worried, half-hoping the scent would attract a bear. At night she’d take her Deal of the Day! back to her room and eat it there, watching reflective vests and helmets move across the dark of her window like fish in water.

  •  •  •

  One day, after buying her Deal of the Day!, Cora asked Darwiish, Do you have any paper? She had used up the half pad she’d found in her room, and the idea of not having any, of not writing to Finn, scared her more than the thought of a bear.

  Darwiish stopped, still holding her money in his hand, thought for a few seconds, then nodded and turned around, back into his van. When he returned he had a brand-new Deep Wood Energy and Industry notepad. It said WHERE WORK AND SAFETY MEET along the top.

  How much? said Cora.

  Darwiish made his hand into an O and handed her the pad.

  There was never anyone else at the Camp West Off-Base Supplies and Snack Van. Cora wondered if anyone else even knew it was there.

  All the deep ice, all the real ice, was gone now. All the vehicles were melted under, sunk down. Vehicles and chairs and bicycles and strollers and boats and everything else. Finn imagined them all, waiting, ready, as he paddled his way through the ice back to Mrs. Callaghan’s at last. She was standing at her door, waiting for him.

  Inside, Finn unlatched and opened up his accordion and Mrs. Callaghan looked it over closely, ran her fingers up and down its creases, sniffed the air between them, had him hold it on its side and let half drop.

  Ah good, she said. Won’
t have to build you a new one after all.

  It’s OK? said Finn.

  It’s probably OK, said Mrs. Callaghan. Now, play.

  Finn played “The Ballad of the Newfoundland Black Bear” and “The Bog Flower Waltz” and “The Northern Long-Eared Bat Reel” and Mrs. Callaghan listened and shook her head and moved his fingers and listened and shook her head and tapped her finger on his shoulder, one two, one two, and had him sing along to the tunes even though most of them didn’t have words. If you can sing it you can play it, she said and listened and shook her head. Good, good, good, she said, and sang along too.

  •  •  •

  Don’t come next week if it’s storming or looking like storming or if your dad says it might be storming later, said Mrs. Callaghan as Finn latched his accordion back up. Or if there’s ice back.

  OK, said Finn.

  But do come otherwise.

  OK.

  Now, do you want some kind of bun before you go? You look half-starved.

  They ate Chelsea buns and drank purple Kool-Aid sitting on Mrs. Callaghan’s front steps, facing the water, their fingers sticky and flecked with cinnamon. They watched a white bird circling out toward Big Running.

  Mrs. Callaghan, said Finn, the sunk boats, the Spanish wrecks, they worked, didn’t they? For the fish, to have a place to live and stay?

  Oh, did they, said Mrs. Callaghan. Did they ever. When the fish arrived they liked it so much they all stayed and had babies, hundreds of them, thousands of them, and they all stayed too and they all had babies and they all stayed and on and on. So much so that word of it spread and all the countries started sending boats. England and France and Spain again—

  And Ireland?

  And Ireland. Yes, yes, they came, they all came, and some of them sank too, but some didn’t. Many didn’t. The ships would come and they’d get help from the people living here, the ones who had always lived here, to bring in as many fish as they could and then they’d go back, back across the ocean to where they’d come from, ten feet lower in the water with the weight of the fish they’d caught. The sailors, they couldn’t believe it, they’d look down and see a moving silver sea within the sea. They couldn’t believe it.

  So they stayed?

  No. They weren’t allowed to stay. It was strictly forbidden, illegal, upon punishment of the worst punishment they could imagine. Their queens and kings wanted them back so they could keep sending them off, back and forth, keep bringing the fish in. But the sailors, they were so tempted, so very tempted. This place was so wild, so new, so full, full to bursting with things other than themselves.

  So they stayed?

  No. Not at first. At first they just wanted to. Went back to their ships with heavy hearts on fear of the worst punishment they could imagine, and of the wildness here too. They all went back. For a time. Until this one sailor, this one new, young sailor named Jesús showed up.

  Jesus?

  No, not Jesus, Jesús. Jesús wasn’t Jesus but was named after him by a Catholic mother hoping to make up for his bad start in life, for his nothing-but-some-sailor father. He was a good boy if fairly unremarkable, mostly dull-to-average except for the fact that he was an extraordinary sleepwalker. He’d get up and head toward light, like a moth, like a fish, more confident and strong in sleep than awake. And it was worse still on boats, something to do with the turn of the waves, probably. So, when sleeping at sea, he would take a length of sail rope and loop it around to fix himself to his bunk.

  Every night?

  Almost every night. There was one night, not long after they’d arrived on these shores and had taken in yet another miracle-like abundance of fish, when all the crew, men and boys, took to whiskey in celebration. They drank and sang and drank and danced and drank and one by one passed out in various places, sometimes their beds and sometimes not. A small fat one passed out draped over the soft wood of the stern railing, and a deeply romantic one who was always sad passed out among a pile of anchor chains, and Jesús, he passed out in one of the little runner dories that was fastened to the big ship, bobbing alongside. He curled up there like a baby in a cradle, his own blond and curly hair the only pillow he needed. And not he nor anyone else tied him safe with a rope when he did. And the moon, that night, the moon over Little Running was big and bright.

  So he sleepwalked?

  You bet he did. The waves rocked and his muscles twitched, and, finding no restraint, they stood him up and started him walking, up, toward the moonlight on the sea, still fast asleep. There wasn’t far to walk, though, in that little boat, so before no time Jesús was at the edge and just stepped over and out, out to the water.

  And then?

  And then he kept walking. Just kept walking. The fish, the capelin, the cod, were so thick in the water that he could step on and over them just like solid ground. He didn’t even get ankle-wet. And that would have been that, except that the noise of it woke Gabriel, the short fat sailor, who then went to relieve his whiskey-full bladder over the side of the boat and saw, there, out on the water, Jesús walking, walking right on top of it. He slapped his own face and still saw it, so he ran to wake up Cecil, the sad romantic in the nest of anchor chains, who came to see what Gabriel was raving about, and together they watched him. Watched Jesús walking on the water, the moonlight glowing through his hair like rapture. Gabriel crossed himself one two three times and Cecil cried slow, heavy tears and they both felt their hearts swell because there, right there, was a miracle, right there, right in this place wild and cold and holy, undoubtedly, terrifyingly holy. A miracle. A sign. How could they go home after that?

  They couldn’t?

  They couldn’t.

  So they stayed?

  So they stayed. They watched Jesús walk all the way to shore and curl up and go back to normal sleep there, on some moonlit rocks, and decided then and there and forever that they would stay. Them and everyone else on that ship. And then more, and more and more. Even though it wasn’t easy. Even though it was illegal, remember. They were deserters, they were punishable with the worst things they could imagine. So they had to hide out, in cracks between boulders, or inland with the caribou, or off with me.

  With you?

  Yes, with me.

  How did you find them?

  I didn’t. They found me. I painted a big pale green circle on my door that would catch and shine in the night and the day, like the moon on the sea. That was a symbol, then, so they knew they could come and be safe with me. And when the captains came knocking on my door, asking after their men and asking to have a look around, I hid the deserters in my bed, because that was the one place a decent captain would never dare to look, inside a strange woman’s bed. They were good men, those captains. I don’t blame them for trying to do their jobs, to keep a hold on order. Every now and then one would turn up for refuge himself and I’d have to hide him in my bed when the other captains came around. They were rough and wild and terrified and bewitched, all of them, the men and the captains. I did what I could. I painted the circle.

  That must have been a really long time ago.

  Oh, it was. Ages. Years and years and years and years.

  And then what? They couldn’t stay with you or out with the boulders and caribou forever . . .

  No, no, of course not. After a while, a few weeks or months or a year, their crews and their homes would forget them and move on. Then they’d find a place they could call their own and paint a green-white circle on the door and exhale and feel at home again, finally. They would fade out of belonging to one place and into another.

  They must have been lonely.

  Yes, of course. Lonely and afraid, but alive, Finn, so alive.

  •  •  •

  Finn stopped at the Beggs’ on his way home. He had all his library books there, held open to important passages by one of the many Italian things Cora had scattered around for ambience. 101 Fail-Proof Lures and Techniques was propped open with two very small coffee cups, one red a
nd one green, to page 117. Finn crouched over it and circled, twice, in heavy pencil:

  Chapter 11

  Swimming Toward the Light: Illuminate Your Situation!

  (With full glossary of applicable laws and by-laws by state and province)

  At home he found his father painting detail work onto the kitchen cabinets, some kind of leaves and vines. He watched him trace the curve of a vine, thin at first, then over again, thicker.

  Dad?

  Yes?

  You know how some ways of catching or attracting fish are OK, but some are illegal?

  Do I.

  Well, would they still be illegal if someone used them to attract the fish but not to catch them? Just to attract them and then leave them alone?

  Huh. Aidan put his paintbrush into a plastic bag, twisted the cap back onto the special art paint he was using and turned toward Finn. That’s a good question. I don’t suppose they would be then. No, I don’t suppose so.

  OK, said Finn. Good. Great. Also, Dad?

  Yeah?

  Do we have any batteries?

  •  •  •

  Most of the empty houses had at least one flashlight, and Finn also found headlamps and bike lights and some fake candles. But they didn’t all have working batteries; most of them didn’t. So Finn scavenged. From remote controls and radios, from alarm clocks and toys. He needed as many as he could find, enough for all the flashlights and headlamps and bike lights and candles six or seven times over, he figured, maybe more. As many as he could possibly get.

  It was time for part two of his plan. Out in the rain, from house to house, he gathered batteries like berry-picking in summer.

  Faallll

  On your kneeees

  Oh heeear

  The angel voi-ces

  Cora was making her rounds. Giannina and Giancarlo trotted a little bit ahead, taut but not tight on their leads. She didn’t see any bears. She never did. Though she was sure they saw her. Bears, and mountain lions too, probably. In the thickness of trees that surrounded them, watching her watching for them.

  But give me a boat