No More Pranks (2 page)

Aunt Daisy looks like my mom—they both have this wild, curly, blond hair—but they're not at all alike in other ways. My mom would definitely flip out if she were discussing losing sensation in your extremities. Not Aunt Daisy. You'd think she was discussing a recipe for sugar pie, this dessert she makes. Aunt Daisy is the calm, collected type. Maybe
it's because she used to be a nurse. Up here though, she runs a bed-and-breakfast—The Whale's Tale—which is where she and Uncle Jean live—and where I'm staying.

It's funny about the St. Lawrence. I've spent my whole life in Montreal, and though the St. Lawrence is always there—underneath us when we cross one of the bridges into the city, or in the distance when we're up on Mount Royal—somehow, I never really noticed it till I got here. Man, that thing is massive. If you ask me, it's more like an ocean than a river.

Uncle Jean's got me working, which is all right, I guess. Otherwise, I don't know what else I'd do up here in Dullsville. How many times can a guy go to the whale museum and check out whalebones? Of course I don't have Uncle Jean's cushy job out on a kayak; I'm part of the cleanup crew. But I get minimum wage, which means I should end up with about a thousand big ones by the end of August.

The other guys on the crew are older than me. Most of them don't speak much English,
so it's a good thing I'm pretty much bilingual. As long as they don't talk too fast, I get most of what they say. I hate to admit it, but maybe all those years in French immersion schools weren't as big a waste as I thought.

One thing I notice is that I get all the crappy jobs. Like today, Réal—he's in charge when my uncle's not around—well, he made me hose down this mountain of boat shoes. They're these blue and silver nylon boots you're supposed to wear when you kayak. I guess they're meant to keep those extremities warm in case of a spill. You wouldn't believe how smelly those things get. I thought I'd pass out when I had a whiff of them.

Even though they didn't make a sound, I could tell that Réal and his pals were having a good laugh at my expense. “You okay,
petit anglo
?” they wanted to know when I was done.

I didn't mind their asking me how I was doing or their making reference to the fact that I speak English. What I didn't like was being called
petit
, which is French for “little.” I guess you could say I'm sensitive about my height.
I know they say a kid can still have a growth spurt when he's fifteen, or even sixteen, but frankly, I'm not holding my breath.

The best job around here is hanging up the life jackets at the end of the day. That's because people leave all sorts of stuff in the pockets. Sunglasses, suntan lotion, gum, sometimes even cash. And get this—last week, Réal found a condom. You gotta wonder about someone who packs a condom when he goes out for a two-hour kayak trip. If you ask me, it sounds like a case for Dr. Dingle.

There's a lost-and-found bin in the office and we're supposed to put anything we find in there. Truth is, most people who come to Tadoussac are only here for a day or two. By the time they discover their sunglasses are missing, they're already on the road to someplace else.

I came up with this idea while we were hanging up the life jackets. Instead of taking stuff
out
of the pockets, I thought, why not put something
into
them? Something kind of unusual—something no one would expect to
find in their pocket when they were out on the St. Lawrence.

Just when I was thinking about what I might put into one of the pockets, well, the answer just came to me. Literally. It jumped out from behind this rock where I was standing. A bullfrog. Not the best-looking specimen, either. This was a big fat guy with dark green blotches. They looked kind of like warts, only flat. It took a little effort to catch him, but I managed.

“What are you up to, Pierre?” Réal wanted to know. I could tell he was about to give me some other chore—till he spotted the bullfrog.

You should have heard Réal laugh when I slipped the frog into one of the life jackets. I didn't pick one of the orange and yellow ones. No, I picked one that was more unusual, a green and purple one. That's because I wanted to be able to keep an eye on it when the next group of kayakers went out. As for Réal, I thought he was going to keel over. I've got to admit that when one of my ideas makes someone laugh, I feel—well, I guess
you could say I feel tall. Like I'm six-foot-two or something.

When Réal calmed down, I brought my finger to my lips—a sign he shouldn't tell anyone else about my little surprise. Réal nodded. Then he said something in French that I didn't quite understand, but I'd say it must've been the French equivalent of “Way to go, kid.” Only this time he didn't call me “petit.”

The next group of kayakers was scheduled to leave at three—after Uncle Jean gave them their basic paddling lesson. What amazes me is that he doesn't get tired of teaching people how to kayak. I mean, he goes through the exact same lesson twice a day. He makes everyone line up in rows, and he stands at the front, demonstrating with this wooden paddle: “We use our shoulders, never our wrists.” Then he repeats the instruction in French. From the way he says it, you'd think he never thought of it before. I'm bored of his routine and I've only been here a week.

I felt a little bad when I saw who picked the green and purple life jacket. It was this
tall, thin woman in a big straw hat that looked like a lampshade. She was with her husband—a bald guy with a beer belly. “Are you sure this is a good idea, Bill?” she was asking him when they headed down to the beach.

One thing about pranks is that they kind of have a life of their own. Once a prank gets started, you can't just call it off. Especially when you've got a guy like Réal winking at you like crazy when you push the kayak with the lady and her hubby off from the shore. “Bon voyage!” I tell them—and I can't help thinking it may be more “bon” for me, watching from the shore, than for them.

You should have heard the woman scream. It was like what they describe in mystery books as bloodcurdling. Réal and I and the rest of the crew had a perfect view. We were out on the cliffs by the beach, and Réal had brought along the binoculars from the office. I was looking through them when I saw the husband pass the suntan lotion over to the wife. Then I saw her reach into her pocket and scream.

I saw the scream before I actually heard it. I guess that has something to do with how sound travels when you're out on the water. It's a good thing kayakers sit so low in the boat. Otherwise, I think the woman might have fallen in. And then who knows what could have happened to her extremities?

Uncle Jean paddled right over to see what was happening. I saw him talking to the woman. Then he looked up at the cliffs where we were. Which is when I put down the binoculars. Only, by then I knew it was too late.

One good thing about living in a B&B is that you don't get yelled at. Uncle Jean didn't even mention the frog-in-the-pocket incident. All he said was he wanted me to come out on the kayak with him at six this morning. It didn't sound like a punishment, even though getting up at 5:15 isn't exactly my idea of a good time. “It's the best time to see the whales,” Uncle Jean told me when we were
packing up to leave, “before those damned Zodiacs are out.”

Uncle Jean is a pretty laid-back guy. The only thing that seems to set him off are those Zodiacs. They're these little inflatable motor-boats that take groups of people out to see the whales. They leave all the time from the Tadoussac harbor. “They dump gasoline into the St. Lawrence, and some of them get much too close to the whales,” he told me.

There's a rule up here that boats aren't supposed to get any closer than 200 meters to a whale. Uncle Jean says there are plenty of captains who ignore it. “It's difficult to enforce; besides, there's pressure from the tourists. Everyone wants to go home and tell his neighbor, ‘I got this close to a whale.'” Uncle Jean stretched out his suntanned arm to show me what he meant. “If they want to get close to a whale, they should come out in a kayak. At least we don't bother the whales when we're on the water.”

Till now, Uncle Jean's been too busy to take me out in his kayak. We've had nothing but sunny days since I got here, and there've
been so many customers that Uncle Jean has had to turn some away.

Even though I'm not what you'd call the country type, there's something pretty beautiful about this place, especially early in the morning. Like today, when we first looked out at the river—you can see it from the kitchen at the Whale's Tale—there was this thick layer of mist over the water. It looked like cotton candy, only gray. But by the time we got into the kayak, the mist had disappeared, and the water was so clear and blue it was hard to tell where it ended and where the sky began.

At first, neither of us said a thing. We just paddled. I have to say it felt good to be quiet for a change. The morning air kind of whipped against my face, but that felt good too.

“Keep an eye out for low-flying cormorants,” Uncle Jean told me. He was sitting at the back of the kayak so he could navigate. Even though all he could see was my back, he must've known I was listening, because he kept talking.

“The birds feed on krill—the same shrimp-like creatures that whales eat. So if you spot birds flying close to the water, it's usually a good indication that there are whales close by. It's been a while, hasn't it, Pierrot, since you were out in a kayak?”

I let the “Pierrot” slip. If Uncle Jean wasn't going to get upset with me about my prank, I figured I couldn't very well complain about his calling me the name he used to call me when I was a kid. Last time I was up in Tadoussac was when I was about six. I know because there's a picture of me on the mantel at home. In it, I'm in a kayak, sitting in front, and my dad's where Uncle Jean is now. Anyway, it's so long ago all I can remember is remembering being here.

Suddenly a small brown head peeked out of the water, no more than ten feet ahead of us. “Look!” I called out, resting my paddle on the side of the kayak so I could get a better view. Whatever it was looked like a dog that had been left out in the rain. A moment later he slipped back underneath the water, leaving only some swirls on its surface.

“Harbor seal,” Uncle Jean said in a low voice. “They startle easily.”

He'd put his paddle down too, and for a few minutes we just floated on the still water.

“About the frog in that lady's life jacket,” Uncle Jean began in the same low voice he'd used before. So he was going to confront me, after all.

This time I was glad not to have to look at him.

“I'm sorry about that, Uncle Jean,” I said, trying to sound as sorry as possible. I hate apologizing—it makes me feel like an idiot who does everything wrong—but it was kind of a relief when the words were out.

“Look, your parents told me about the trouble they've been having with you. But I don't want to talk about that. When you came to stay with us in Tadoussac, it was a new start. But Pierrot, that lady could have had more than a shock. The kayak could have tipped over. Like this—”

And just then, before I could complain about being called Pierrot again, Uncle Jean
did the one thing you're
never
supposed to do in a kayak. He leaned over hard, so that all his weight bore down on one side of the kayak. And Uncle Jean is big. He's over six feet and not skinny either. I figure he must weigh about 250 pounds.

I tried to lean into the other side of the kayak, but it didn't make much of a difference. We were toppling over! As my body lurched to the left, I could feel the cold breeze coming off the water.

We were about to capsize. Aunt Daisy's words rang in my head, like a song you can't forget, no matter how hard you try. “Three minutes until you lose sensation in your extremities. Three minutes until…” Without meaning to, I wriggled my fingers and toes. While I still could.

Uncle Jean must be out of his mind. What was he trying to do? Drown us?

All at once the kayak regained its balance. Its prow lifted itself up from the murky water, covering me with a mist of watery droplets. Uncle Jean was laughing—so loud the sound echoed in the surrounding coves.

It was only then that I started to tremble, every part of my body shaking as if I had actually fallen into the icy waters of the St. Lawrence.

Then I heard Uncle Jean's voice. This time it was booming, not low the way it had been before. “You're not the only one who knows how to play pranks, Pierrot. When I was your age, I was pretty good at pranks myself. But there's one thing I want to tell you, and you've got to understand it—no more pranks! You got that?”

“I got—” I said, but I never finished my sentence. A huge, dark shadow was moving through the water right next to us.

“Look at that baby!” Uncle Jean whispered when the whale's head surfaced about eight feet ahead of us, and a plume of mist came spouting from its blowhole. Talk about getting close to a whale! For a second I'd been able to look right into the black of his eye.

I couldn't help feeling grateful to the creature. Thanks to him, I didn't have to make a promise—one I wasn't sure I could keep.

“See you later, Petit Fou!” Uncle Jean called out as the huge whale arched its back and dove back into the icy water, leaving a thick layer of foam on the water's surface.

I knew
fou
meant someone crazy, but I didn't get the
petit
part. There was nothing small about the whale we'd just seen. He was the size of a bus.

Uncle Jean seemed to know what I was thinking. “In French, we sometimes call
people—and animals—
petit
to show we like them. That whale—he's a humpback, an endangered species up here—is one of my favorites. He's been coming to Tadoussac every summer for about fifteen years.”