He nudged my arm. I turned my head to see what he was staring at and glimpsed a black head bobbing in the waves. I stopped to watch the seal, but Mick kept
walking and I had to run to catch up, my feet sinking in the stones and then slipping, so I had to concentrate on each step or fall. He swung his arms and made the pails clunk together. I stayed beside him, panting with the effort of keeping up to his long strides. Near the end of the beach, we turned up into the trees and followed a trail to a small stream and then up to a clear, dark pool.
He sat down on a log that was green with moss and lichen. As he set his pails down, I sat beside him, the log squishing underneath me, soft with rot. Mick leaned over, hand on his knees. I kicked my feet back and forth, letting them thump against the log and bounce off. The stream was quiet, making whispery sounds.
Mick finally stood up and dipped his pails into the pool. I handed him mine, and he filled it halfway. The water was clear, but littered with twigs.
“Taste it,” Mick said.
I shook my head.
“It’s good.” As if to prove it, he leaned over the pool, and dipped his hand in the water. “Ahhh.”
He moved aside, and I cautiously copied him. It was burning cold and sweet with the taste of trees. He grinned. I drank a few more handfuls. Mick lifted his pails. They sloshed over and splashed his legs.
My pail was so heavy that I carried it with two hands. We walked along the beach closer to the trees, following hard-packed sand until it disappeared into the stones. Mick paused to let me catch up to him. My hands hurt where the metal handle bit into the flesh of my palms.
“Smoke break,” he said, putting his pails down.
I let my bucket fall and sank into the beach, yawning, suddenly tired. Mick crouched down and cupped his lighter. He sighed as he let go his first puff. Sweat cooled on my face. I yawned again, aching for bed.
“Me and your dad used to do this all the time,” he said. “We used to have contests.”
“Like what?”
“Kid stuff. Who could carry the most. Who could get it back the fastest.”
I closed my eyes and tried to picture Dad running around with pails. An owl hooted. When I opened my eyes, Mick was staring at nothing, looking sad. The breeze stopped blowing and everything became still. The water went black and glassy.
“Dinner’s probably ready,” Mick said, stubbing out his cigarette on a rock and standing up.
“You want to race?” I said.
He grinned. “I’ll give you a head start.”
Most of the water ended up on my pants, and Mom made me go upstairs to change. The house was lit with kerosene lamps that buzzed like the electric bug killer Dad had bought at a garage sale. Mom had made fried eggs and set them with the bacon on the long wooden table in the front room. It was surrounded by old squeaky chairs. Uncle Geordie and Aunt Edith were already there, concentrating on eating. “Bannock’s in the kitchen,” Aunt Edith said. “Hurry, while it’s hot.”
Now that it was dark, the idea of sleeping in a haunted house wasn’t as thrilling. I changed into my sweats in record time and raced back downstairs. I was so hungry, I didn’t even mind that we were having eggs
and gobbled some straight out of the frying pan on the table. Aunt Edith watched me with a sour expression.
While Mom and Mick ate, Aunt Edith opened her knitting bag and pulled out pieces of a sweater. Uncle Geordie tilted his chair back and filled his pipe. I hoped everyone was as tired as I was, so I wouldn’t have to go upstairs alone. I picked at a last piece of egg, squashing it with my fork.
Mick leaned over and whispered, “I think it’s dead.”
“Don’t play with your food,” Mom said automatically, not even looking at me.
“Remember the last time Al came up to the lake?” Mick was saying to Aunt Edith.
Everybody laughed.
“What happened?” I said.
Uncle Geordie chuckled. “Two years ago, wasn’t it?”
“Three, I think,” Mom said.” Jimmy was still in kindergar—”
“What
happened?”
“We went up the Kitlope, me and your dad. Why’d he come with me? I can’t remember.… Oh, yeah. We were bear hunting. Well, we spent the night on the beach. It was warm that night, so we didn’t bother putting up the tent, just spread our sleeping bags on the sand. Woke up the next morning and the whole beach was just covered in seals. One was sleeping on the zipper side of your dad’s bag, so he couldn’t move—big one too, almost a ton—and he kept yelling, ‘Mick! Shoot it! Shoot it!’ Another seal was sleeping on my gun. Then Al starts hooting and making these moaning sounds and I thought he was being crushed.…”
I waited for Mick to stop laughing.
“He was making whale calls,” Mom explained. “It worked. The seals left.”
Uncle Geordie made a whiny, fluty sound, and they cracked up again.
Mick put his arm around my shoulder. “ ‘Didn’t you notice a seal snuggling up to you?’ I asked him. ‘I thought it was Gladys,’ your dad said. ‘She always hogs the blankets.’ ”
“Ha ha ha,” Mom said, cuffing the back of his head.
After dinner, I had to pee badly, but I didn’t want to go to the outhouse. It was only about twenty feet from the house, but I’d held my pee for what felt like hours so I wouldn’t have to go in the darkness. Mick said we were lucky it wasn’t summer, because the cold kept it smelling fresh.
“Mick,” I whispered. “Can you come with me to the outhouse?”
“Don’t baby her, Mick. You’re old enough to go to the outhouse alone.”
I gave Mick my most desperate look.
“Gladys—” Mick started to say.
“You’re spoiling her. There’s nothing out there but you and the mice, young lady.”
I got up slowly. Mick stood up too. “I’ll watch you from the porch.”
Mom gave a heavy, dramatic sigh.
“Thanks,” I whispered to him as we went through the kitchen and I dashed down the steps. I flung open the outhouse door, peed and didn’t even bother to wipe. When I got back to the porch, Mick was grinning at me, puffing away.
“I’m not a chicken,” I said.
“I know.”
“I’m not a baby either.”
“Didn’t say you were.”
“I just don’t like the ghosts.”
“Ghosts, huh?”
“Don’t you believe in ghosts?”
“Did you see them?”
I shook my head. “I just heard them laughing.”
Mick grunted.
Aunt Edith had left for bed by the time we went back inside. Mom had cleared off the table and was scraping the leftovers into a bag.
“She says she heard ghosts,” Mick said to Mom.
“Mick,” I said, glaring at him.
“Ghosts?” Mom said. “Dammit, what have you been telling her now?”
“Nothing!” Mick said, indignant.
“Right. Did you tell her about Ba-ba-oo?”
“No. Did you?”
“No. Lisa, has your dad been telling you stories?”
I sat in my chair and glared at my feet. No one ever believed me.
“Best way to keep ghosts away is to fart,” Uncle Geordie said.
“Na’
, don’t tell her that,” Mom said, suddenly smiling.
“It’s true,” Uncle Geordie insisted.
I looked at him hard to see if he was teasing me. He crossed his heart.
Mick started telling me about the time Ba-ba-oo went hunting mountain goats up the Kitlope but Mom shushed him.
“She’ll have nightmares,” she said. “If you tell her about Ba-ba-oo seeing ghosts, I’ll have to take her to the outhouse every time she wants to pee.”
“Ghosts, my ass,” Uncle Geordie said. “Old bugger was probably drunk as a skunk.”
“Bedtime,” Mom said.
Late that night, I dreamed I was at the docks watching Jimmy dive off the breakwater logs. I waited and waited for him to surface but the water was still and dark. I woke, heart hammering. I heard groans. I pulled the blankets tighter. The moaning was soft at first, then got louder.
“Mom,” I whispered. “Mom. Wake up.”
Mom is a heavy sleeper. I knew that if I wanted to wake her up, I’d have to get out of bed and take two steps, then hop into her bunk. I couldn’t do it. My muscles felt all soft and shivery. Even if the house caught fire, there was no way I could move.
“Cookie.” I recognized Mick’s voice. The wash of relief made me giggle. Mick was having a bad dream about cookies. He was moving around, thrashing.
“Cookie!” he shouted. “Cookie!”
I poked my head out from under my blanket, worried now. I’d never heard Uncle Mick sound afraid before. I went over and shook Mom’s shoulder. She was about to say something when Mick started shouting again. I heard Aunt Edith whispering to Uncle Geordie. Mom wrapped the blanket around her shoulders as she shuffled out of the room and went down the hall.
“Stay here,” she said. “Don’t say anything.”
Mom’s footsteps creaked across the floor, and I
heard her waking Mick up. Someone started to sob, deep, achy sounds that couldn’t be Mick because nothing made him cry. No one said anything, and when the light started to make the room grey, Mom came back. She bent over me.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
She put her finger to my lips. “Shh.”
“Wha—”
“Lisa, hush,” she whispered sternly. “This is grown-up stuff. Don’t ask him anything tomorrow. You hear?”
I nodded.
“Good girl,” she said, kissing my forehead. “Good girl.”
I woke to the sound of of rain against the roof, and Mick yelling. I slipped my shoes on and took the steps downstairs two at a time. Mick was in the front room, with Aunt Edith and Uncle Geordie staring at him, looking shocked.
“How?” Mick was shouting. “They were after numbers! That’s all they wanted! How many converts they could say they had. How many heathens they—”
“Mick,” Mom said, running in from the porch. “What’s wrong?”
“Wrong? What’s right?”
“He’s gone crazy,” Uncle Geordie said.
“Crazy? I’m crazy? You look at your precious church. You look at what they did. You never went to residential school. You can’t tell me what I fucking went through and what I didn’t.”
“I wasn’t telling you anything!” Aunt Edith said. “I was saying grace!”
“You don’t get it. You really don’t get it. You’re buying into a religion that thought the best way to make us white was to fucking torture children—”
“Enough,” Mom said, standing in front of Mick. “We’re going to look for oolichans now. Go get your things, Mick.” Mom stared at him until he pushed past her. I stepped out of his way and he walked by me as if I wasn’t there.
“He started screaming at us for no reason,” Aunt Edith said when he was upstairs.
“It’s got nothing to do with you,” Mom said quietly. “Don’t take it to heart.” She smoothed her hair, then noticed me and smiled. “Come here, sweetheart.”
I went to her and she put an arm around me.
“You okay?”
I nodded.
“I’m going to take Mick up the lake to cool off. He’s going to be pretty grumpy today. You want to stay with Edith and Geordie?”
I shook my head.
“You sure?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Then let’s go get our things.”
“Can we camp out there tonight?”
Mom brushed back her hair, frowning thoughtfully. “That’s not a bad idea.”
At the beach, Mick announced he was going back to the village. Mom said that was fine, but we were going in the punt up to Kitlope Lake. Mick glared at her. She crossed her arms over her chest.
“I know what you’re doing,” he said.
“You go where you please. You always do.”
“That’s right, use a little more guilt, why don’t you?”
“I’m a mom. That’s what we do best.”
Mick growled, but hurled his things into the punt and we were off.
I spent most of the boat trip sitting on an overturned bucket, wishing I was anywhere but there, getting soaked to the bone, staring at mountain after mountain, the clouds getting lower and darker. Every once in a while, Mom would yell at me to bail and I would, feeling the bilge seep through a hole in my rubber boots. I tried talking to Mick to relieve my boredom, asking him questions, just wanting to chat, but he frowned and said sometimes people should just be quiet.
Mom slowed the punt to a crawl, pointing towards the shore. I didn’t see anything for a few moments, and then movement caught my eye. A black bear was on the shore, its head bent down. From this distance, it was tiny, no bigger than my hand. It swung its head back and forth, and pawed at the ground.
“What’s it doing?” I whispered.
She shrugged. “Uncle Geordie said every time he goes up the lake, it’s on that point.”
“Probably eating seaweed,” Mick said.
“Bears eat seaweed?” I said.
“Too early for seaweed,” Mom said.
“Not if you’re hungry enough.”
The bear raised its head. It spotted us, turned and sauntered up to the tree line and out of sight.
You can tell when you’re getting close to the Kitlope watershed because the water changes colour. At Kemano, the water is still a normal dark green, but
the closer you get to the Kitlope, the milkier the water becomes, until all around you the water is the colour of pale jade. Most of the mountains are rounded bald heads, scraped smooth by passing glaciers. Some of the bays still have icefields, and Mom said that when she was a kid they used to go bum-sliding on them.
The rain let up just as we got to the mouth of the Kitlope River. Mom leaned over and dipped her hand in the water, then washed her face. After stubbing out his cigarette, Mick did the same.
“When you go up the Kitlope,” Mom said, “you be polite and introduce yourself to the water.”
I didn’t see the point and said so.
“It’s so you can see it with fresh eyes,” Mick said.
“Over there,” Mom said, pointing to the left bank, “somewhere up in that part of the forest, there’s a village that was buried under a landslide about five hundred years ago.”
“Yeah?” I said, perking up. “Can we go see it?”
“No one knows where it is.”
The forest looked like all the other forests around. “Far-out.”
Most parts of the Kitlope River are as wide as a channel, but when you look over the edge of the boat, the riverbed is a few feet beneath you. Old logs stick out of the water like great, bleached finger bones. The ones you can see aren’t as dangerous as the ones submerged just below the surface, the deadheads, which can puncture your keel. Mick took over steering the punt, since he had more experience with the river. Mom went up to the bow to spot deadheads, but she wouldn’t let me join her because she said I’d be too
distracting. We started up the river, hugging the shore. The banks were covered in yellow, dry grass. I looked out for kermode bears, which are black bears that are cream-coloured, white or very pale brown. But I didn’t see any, just a pair of eagles that circled high above us, then lost interest and flew towards the ocean. The water was furiously foaming and surging, so we virtually crawled up the river. Mom would shout out if she saw a log or a deadhead in front of us, and use her hand to point which direction Mick should go.