An Imperfect Librarian (10 page)

When I was a boy, Tatie told me fables and tales at bedtime. I'd fall asleep dreaming about powerful barons tricked by helpless peasants, mean husbands punished by spiteful wives or fools made wiser by encounters with tricksters. “
Fables and Tales of the Middle Ages.
Probably not great literature but they entertained me when I was a boy. They started as oral stories so it makes sense to learn them by heart.”

“In the middle ages,” she says, “people had better memories for stories. They had databases for brains.”

“I use databases every day at work.”

She stops then turns round. The top buttons on her shirt are undone. Her chest is shiny with sweat. “And when you're not working?”

“I only arrived at the end of last summer. Haven't got my bearings yet.”

“You're one degree closer to the equator than Paris is and 3.5 hours west of Greenwich. The.5 entitles us to our own time zone.”

“You're a geographer and a historian.”

“A wannabe meteorologist, a wannabe librarian, a wannabe biologist, a wannabe writer. I dibble and dabble.”

“Like a Renaissance woman?”

“Renaissance women aren't known for their rubber boots, knapsacks or Labrador retrievers. Come on guys,” she shouts to the dogs. The smallest one, Folio, runs up to us then hops on me with muddy paws. “Down, Folio!” Norah says. I take off my boot to see what's digging into my heel. Norah eyes the blister. “We'll have to ship you off to the pre-amputee ward where you'll be kept company by the half-legged birds on crutches.”

I put on my boot just as the other two dogs appear. Eventually, the hills give way to a slope, then to a plateau. The reliable terrain of the trail gives way to more unpredictable wet patches. We reach a fork. Norah points into the distance. “There's a tiny stretch of sand around that corner and a rowboat. I'll be gone for about a half-hour while I check on Ray's traps. Water that cold has restorative powers. Maybe you can restore your foot to its pre-blister stage.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I
T
'
S NOT AN ALUMINIUM OR
fibreglass rowboat; it can't hold more than two people at one time; it hasn't seen a paintbrush since it was first constructed; and it's probably not engineered, like modern vessels, for energy efficiency, but it's an ideal place to rest after a hike. It's lying part in the pond, part on the strip of shore. It doesn't rock when I climb in with the extra weight of my naked blister. I sit then lie across the centre seat with my hands clasped behind my head and my legs dangling over the side. I tease the water first with the tip of my toes, then submerge my feet all the way to the ankle.

Strips of fog float past, thin as sheets of onion paper. My feet feel numb in the glacial water but the rest of me is warm under the sun. The songbirds signal back and forth. I count the syllables, note the pattern of the long
Oh sweet
followed by three quick
Canadas
. Norah said it's a natural waltz rhythm. I remember when she put her hand on my waist then bent over to tighten her boot. I could see her breasts, plump like the top of a loaf of bread. I lie under the sun in the boat and think about
squeezing breasts, resting my head on breasts, poking my face between breasts, bouncing breasts, pressing up against breasts with my chest or–

There's a sound of someone or something moving through the bushes. I pull my soggy feet in from the water. They throb from the cold. A black dog like Norah's retriever leaps over the bushes towards me. He does a flip-flop on his first attempt to hop into the boat. I roll up the legs of my trousers, hold onto the side then lower one leg at a time into the water. The boggy bottom feels like partially melted ice cream.

A voice yells, “Raven! Raven!” The baseball hat appears first, then the red-and-black chequered jacket, then the rubber boots. The dog is standing on the shore barking at me. “Raven!” the man orders. “Come here.” The dog doesn't respond. He eyes me like there is a steak hanging over my head.

“Hello. Nice day. Those are my boots there on the shore. Would you mind passing them here?”

The man walks over to them, picks one up then throws it into the water next to me. I let go of the boat to shield myself from the splash.

“Raven!” he shouts. “Get it boy! Go on! Get the boot.”

It's floating away in the ripple created when it hit the water. My arms aren't long enough to hold onto both so I let go of the boat and grab the boot just before the dog does. I teeter for an instant then catch hold of the boat again.

“Get it, Raven! Get it!” the man cries.

Raven makes it to shore faster than I do. He jumps up at the boot. I hold it over my head.

“That's it,” the man says. “Go as fast as you can.”

The soft bog of the pond was easier on my feet than the sharp rocks on the shore. I can't go fast. Not without something on my feet. “I wasn't fishing if that's what you think.”

“Fishing?” he shouts behind me. “You better not be after
my trout. I stocked this pond five years ago. They're worth money now.”

Once I have the two boots, I don't stop to put them on my feet. I step away from the shore onto a grassier area. “I wouldn't even know what a trout looks like, let alone go fishing for it.” I look over my shoulder. “Why did you throw my boot in the water?”

He's following me. “Trespassers deserves what they gets.”

I pick up a stick off the path and hold it in the air. The dog notices instantly. I throw it as hard as I can in the direction opposite where I'm heading. Raven turns around and runs after it. Ray chases after him. Once they're out of sight, I put on one boot. It weighs a few pounds heavier. What's the point of paying more for waterproof boots if they're only waterproof from the outside? The blister's so big, it would need a boot of its own, so I go barefoot on one side and cradle the boot close to my chest.

Norah joins me on the trail not long after. She surveys me top to bottom. “I thought you were going to soak your heel.”

I give her the opposite of an abridged version of events.

“I'll run to the barn to get the horses. Won't take me long,” she says.

I've never been on a horse before but she's already well into the curves of the trail with the dogs in obedient pursuit before I can say no. I don't want to stay where I am because I might run into Ray and Raven. Regardless of where I go, it won't be fast, not with a wet boot, sock on one foot, and nothing more than a blister on the other. There's a detour that leads to a meadow. It's not where Norah went but it's grassy instead of rocky and muddy.

I sit on the ground with my back against a boulder like I'm in a front row seat in an open-air theatre. I dig into my pockets for the complimentary trail-mix bar they dropped in the shopping bag when I bought the boots that gave me the
complimentary trail blister. The foil wrapping has kept it dry but hasn't improved its taste. One bite and I throw what's left into the meadow. I poke the wrapper into my pocket. I watch the gulls cross above then below the horizon as if it was a rope tugged tightly at either end. A piece of an iceberg bobs around in the waves not far from shore. The scene reminds me I should trade my binoculars for a camera.

Elsa kept our camera, her camera, the one I gave her for Christmas three years ago. She took nice pictures of her yoga teacher in his poses at the gym, in the hot tub at his house, in his living room. The landscape pictures she brought back from her trip to India with him were colourful. She caught on to photography quickly. She was right when she said her yoga teacher was far more photogenic. I'd never look like him no matter how many weights I lifted or how many pretzel poses I distorted myself into.

I'm not in the meadow for long before a bank of fog creeps around the point and smothers everything in its path, including the sun. I roll over onto my knees then to my feet. A beady-eyed, bushy-tailed fox bolts to the side, just as startled as I am. His front paw is mangled as if he'd chewed it off. The foghorn blows and he darts off on three legs with the trail-mix bar hanging from his mouth. I hop up onto my feet while I lean onto the boulder for support. The horn blows again. I cut a path through the grass in the thick fog. It doesn't lead me where I expected. I remember Cyril's story about the man in Gros Morne park. He separated from the others to follow a side trail then the weather turned stormy. “The crows got him picked to the bone by now,” Cyril said.

Dogs bark.

“Here. I'm herererererere.” I shout until my breath expires while I'm hopping towards the barking. Something cuts into my blister. The dogs bark again. “I'm herererererere.” I stop
suddenly like I've hit a wall. The wall is a beast as big as a moose. The moose is wearing a saddle. Its reins are held by a man with a head of red hair that would make a fox jealous. We stare at each other.

“You scared me. I thought for a second it was a moose. I'm Carl. You must be with Norah.”

His forehead buckles when he squints at my feet, at my face, at my clothes then at my feet again. I realize I've left my other boot at the foot of the boulder. “Did you see the fox with the injured paw?” I ask. “Got caught in one of Ray Harding's traps, I suppose.”

He tightens the saddle on the horse then watches the dogs chasing the scent of the fox in the meadow. When Norah arrives, she introduces us from on top of her horse. “Walter will help you mount,” she says. “Other foot, Carl. Give him a boost, Walter. Hang onto the horn, Carl.”

He's smaller than me but much stronger. He nearly catapults me over the top to the other side. He adjusts the stirrups. I haven't yet steadied myself in my seat when he gathers the reins, shifts the horse to face the other direction then leads us down the trail. Most of the time, I can't see anything because I have to duck to avoid boughs hitting me in the face. The swaying makes me nauseated. For a while, when I was a young boy, I wanted to be a cowboy when I grew up. “You'd be no good at it,” Papa told me. He was right.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I
MAKE USE OF HER SHOWER
to clean up before we eat. Her bathroom reminds me I should be searching for a new flat – one with a reliable shower where the water doesn't decide to change temperature when you're covered in soap. Most mornings, the hot water is cold because either the dishwasher or clothes washer is running or someone is in the upstairs shower. There's a portable heater in my bathroom. I used it once. The power went out in the entire house.

After the shower, I join her in the kitchen. The wood floor feels warm under my feet. “Here's some wine to kindle your insides,” she says. “The arctic char is in the oven: no goat meat tonight. If I'd known you were going to be in the pond, I would have asked you to fetch trout for supper.”

“How about some fox meat?” I tell her about the fox in the meadow.

She opens the oven, then reaches inside. “The foxes are harmless.”

“That's more than I can say for Ray Harding.”

She lays a hot platter on top of the stove then takes off her oven mitts. “I'll have a talk with him. I'm sure if he sees you there again, he'll treat you like one of the neighbours.”

“Is Walter your neighbour?”

“Walter lives next door in our old house. We moved there from the south coast when I was a teenager. Originally, he was one of my father's pupils. He took care of my grandmother and then my father until he died. He helps me around the property, ploughing my road in the winter, cutting hay in the fall, preparing the garden in the spring.”

“Has your father been dead long?”

She passes me two six-sided plates and two six-sided glasses for water. “Help me set the table. I'll tell you about him while we eat.”

She's the third person besides Edith or Mercedes and Cyril to invite me for a meal. I've had every type of delicacy including figgy duff, bakeapple bunts, caribou stir-fry, stuffed moose heart, fish and brewis, and barbequed cod tongues. This is my first arctic char in phyllo pastry with a partridgeberry-cognac sauce. We sit at the table. Steam rises off the fish. While I was in the shower, she changed into a sleeveless t-shirt with track pants. She's not wearing a–

“If my father was here,” she says, “you'd see the biggest man with the smallest voice, the most exhausted eyes from reading all the time, the most passionate intellect. Talk about superlatives. Reading was a religion to him, something he worshipped and proselytized about.” She serves me then runs back and forth to the fridge or cupboard for things she forgot to put on the table.

“When you meet someone new for the first time, you'll typically ask: ‘Where are you from?' or ‘What do you do?' William, Will for short, would ask, ‘What are you reading now?' So, Carl, what are you reading?”

“
Robinson Crusoe
.”

She holds up her glass of wine like she's toasting. “Will would have approved. He would have quoted from it or launched into a lecture on first-person narratives. You'd wonder if you were sitting in an English class listening to an absentminded professor.”

It's not easy to eat with the dogs staring at me through the glass door in the porch, drooling for table scraps. “He would have made a good librarian.”

“Libraries weren't common in outport Newfoundland, especially in the small communities where Will and his mother lived.”

“A bibliophile with no books?”

“He had books. Only a few at first, thousands eventually. His mother, Esther, was a midwife.”

“She gave birth to books?”

She pours more wine. “You could say that. The island's birth rate was one of the highest in the world back then. Esther travelled on coastal boats to communities where her services were needed. Will was always in tow. Most of the time, they paid her in-kind with firewood, plenty of eggs, vegetables, game, fish. Sometimes, in exchange for a service, she'd ask for a book or two. That's how Will became a collector.”