Spit Delaney's Island (11 page)

The bumper of her own car, like a chrome-plated hand, caught in the
back of her dress and dragged her forward in the gravel. She fought,
thrashed her hands about and kicked her feet, but it was as if she were
fighting a monster she couldn't see, as if all the world was on her back.
Pieces of gravel got into her mouth, stones scratched her legs, dust clogged
her eyes. A tooth broke and the flesh on one arm peeled back like a wet
sleeve. Then, almost gently, the car nudged her over the bank and pushed
her ahead of it down the slope like an insistent policeman to the creek,
gaining speed, and then rolled ahead to rest one tire in the middle of her
back. The other front tire sat in the water and lost air through a hole punctured by a sharp piece of stone.

Mrs. Wright got out of her pickup and ran to the edge of the bridge, the
edge of the world. “What is it? What is it?” she screamed at the dark. But
no answer came from all that empty space, and below there was nothing
to see but slow water, moving like thick brown syrup through the circle of
light thrown by the one unbroken headlight. Then, somewhere, there was
the sound of trees rustling and something—perhaps a deer leaping free—
moved through the night away from her, so close she could hear breathing.

She went back to the pickup and got a flashlight from the glove compartment, then picked her way carefully down the bank to the edge of the
creek and shone the light on Mrs. Starbuck's face.

One of Mrs. Starbuck's eyes was under water; the other, a dull plastic
ball, stared swollen and incredulous up at Mrs. Wright as if Mrs. Starbuck
in the last failing moment had seen something she badly needed to tell
about. But from her open mouth only dark fluid bubbled out and was carried away by the moving water. Mrs. Wright snapped off the flashlight
and let the dark fall around her again like a collapsing tent.

“I can't believe it,” she told Charlene later, when she had used the
Porters' phone to call the police. She sat down at the kitchen table as if the
knowledge was too heavy for such a small person to carry standing up.
“And yet I saw she wasn't right. I could see there was something wrong
with her. That's why I was headed over to her place tonight, to see what I
could do.”

Charlene watched the little woman's tight scaly fingers bend and
straighten. “Wasn't anything wrong with her,” she said. “She just didn't
know what was what.”

They looked at each other for a moment, like two women who did
know what was what, and then their eyes slid away and towards the window that faced the road. As if both hoped to find Mrs. Starbuck out there
in that dark, coming towards them, shouting that it was all right now, that
it had all been a mistake.

“But the boy!” Charlene cried, suddenly remembering.

Mrs. Wright eyes jumped. “What boy? What are you talking about?”

Charlene put her hand over her mouth. “You didn't even know about
him?” she said. “She never told you?”

“About who?” Mrs. Wright folded her little arms and sat back. “All I
know is what I see. How am I supposed to know anything else?”

And, staring into that window which in the night was only an inferior
sort of mirror, she contemplated the two pale reflections of their startled
faces.

Macken this, Macken that.
Gerry Mack had had enough. Why should he
waste his life riding ferries to weddings and family reunions? There were
already too many things you were forced to do in this world whether you
liked them or not. “And I've hated those family gatherings for as long as I
can remember,” he said. “Why else would I move away?”

The problem was that Gerry's Aunt Nora Macken really did believe
family was important. She used to tell how the Mackens first settled on the
north slope of the valley more than fifty years ago when Black Alex, her
father, brought the whole dozen of his children onto the Island in his touring car and started hacking a farm out of what had for centuries been pure
timber land. And would tell, too, that by now there was hardly a household left in all the valley that wasn't related to them in one way or another.
What Aunt Nora called The Immediate Family had grown to include
more than four hundred people, three-quarters of whom were named
Smith or O'Brien or Laitenen though she called them all the Mackens.

There wasn't any real substitute for having a lot of relatives, she said.
And the people who knew her best, this tall big-footed old maid living out
on that useless farm, said that yes, she was right, there was no substitute
for family.

And because Nora Macken lived on those three hundred acres of farmland which had gone back already in two generations to second-growth
timber, she thought it her duty every time there was a wedding or a funeral
to call a reunion of The Immediate Family the day after the ceremony.
More than three hundred relatives gathered. The older people, her own
generation, spent the day in the house telling each other stories about Black
Alex, reassuring one another that he really was as mean and miserable as
they remembered, but that it couldn't be denied he was a bit of a character,
too, all the same.

The young adults drank beer outside in the grassy yard or on the verandah and talked about their jobs and their houses, and each of them tried to
find out how much money the others were earning. The children chased
each other between the dead orchard trees and climbed the rickety ladders
to the barn mow and fought over the sticky slices of cake Nora Macken
put outside on a folding card table in the sun.

As for someone like Gerry Mack, her nephew, who was the only member of The Immediate Family ever to move off Vancouver Island, these
events were more than he could bear.

When Gerry was twenty years old he very nearly married Karen
O'Brien, a pretty blonde he'd gone all the way through school with. They
went to movies together on Saturday nights and sometimes to dances, and
afterwards they parked up the gravel road to the city dump to kiss each
other until their mouths were raw. But Karen was already a member of
The Immediate Family and had half a dozen brothers eager to increase
the population. Gerry balked at marriage. He was the son of one of Nora's
older brothers and had wished since the time he was six years old that he'd
been an orphan.

Soon after dumping Karen O'Brien he met a stoop-shouldered secretary named April Klamp, who was plain-looking and very dull and wore
clothes that looked as if they were bought for someone else, perhaps her
mother. But she was an only child and had no relatives at all, only a pair
of doddering parents who didn't care very much what happened to her.
Gerry asked her to marry him a week after their first meeting and of
course she accepted. No one before had even given her so much as a second look.

Some members of The Immediate Family had a few words to say about
it. It seemed odd, they said, that a young man as vibrant as Gerry couldn't
find himself a wife who was more of a match. Aunt Nora, too, thought it
was unusual, but she'd given Gerry up long ago as not a real Macken at
heart. And besides, she said, it could have been worse. He could have married a churchgoer (something no Macken had ever done) or worse still,
remained a bachelor (something three of her brothers had done and
become cranky old grouches as a result). “Just watch him,” she said. “He'll
cut off his nose to spite his face.”

Gerry didn't particularly care what any of them thought. Before his
wedding he took two letters off his name and became Gerry Mack. He got
no argument from April, of course. She was quick to agree that having too
much family was worse than having none at all. She didn't even mind that
he insisted on getting married seventy miles down-island by a minister
she'd never met so that it would be impossible to have a reception afterwards. And when he told her they would live on the mainland she merely
nodded and said it was about time one of the Mackens showed a little
spunk. Personally, she said, she'd always hated living on an island. She
agreed with everything that Gerry Mack said and never took her eyes off
his face while he spoke. It was clear to everyone that when Gerry married
her what he got was not a separate person to live with but an extension of
himself. Aunt Nora said he could have gone out and bought a wooden leg
if that was all he wanted.

Though she added, “At least they won't ever get into a fight. An extra
limb doesn't talk back.”

Their intention was to move far inland, but Gerry hadn't driven a hundred miles up the Fraser Valley before he realized he couldn't stand to be
away from the coast. They turned back and settled in a little town on the
edge of the strait, facing across to the Island, directly across to the valley
where he had grown up. They bought a house fifty feet from the beach,
with huge plate-glass windows facing west, and began saving their money
to buy a small boat of their own so they could fish in the evenings.

Because he was a young man with a good rich voice and many opinions,
Gerry had no trouble getting a job as an open-line moderator for the new
radio station. He spent the first week voicing as many outlandish ideas as
he could think of and being as rude as he dared to people who phoned in,
so it didn't take long for him to draw most listeners away from the competing station. Within a month he had a large and faithful following on
both sides of the strait. People didn't say they listened to
CLCB
, they said
they listened to Gerry Mack's station.

What pleased him most was knowing that whether they liked it or not,
most of The Immediate Family would be listening to him every day. He
could imagine them in their houses, cringing whenever he was rude to
callers, and hoping no one else realized where he'd come from, and saying
Thank goodness he'd had the sense to change his name. He made a habit
of saying “So long, Nora” every day as a sign-off but didn't tell anyone
what it meant. People in the mainland town guessed that Nora must be
his wife's middle name or else the name of a grandmother who'd died
when he was a little boy. None of them ever guessed, of course, that Aunt
Nora Macken over on the Island sat by her radio every morning for the
whole time he was on and went red in the face when he signed off, and
told herself maybe he was the only real Macken in the lot after all, though
she could spank him for his cheek.

And that, he thought, will show you that here's one Macken who has
no need for family.

Though he did not know then, of course, that even the most weak-minded and agreeable wife could suddenly find a backbone and will in
herself when she became pregnant. He was sitting in the living room with
his feet up on the walnut coffee table looking for good controversial topics
in the newspaper when she handed him the wedding invitation that had
arrived in the mail that morning. “I think we should go,” she said.

“The hell you say,” he said, and read through the silver script. “We
hardly know them. Who's this Peter O'Brien to us?”

“A cousin,” she said. “But that doesn't matter. I think we should be
there for the reunion the next day.”

Gerry put down the newspaper and looked at his wife. She was rubbing
a hand over her round swollen belly. “What for?” he said. “I've been to a
million of them. They're all the same. I thought we moved over here to
get away from all that.”

She sat down beside him on the sofa and put her head against his shoulder. “It's been a year since we've even put a foot on the Island. Let's go just
for the fun.”

He looked down into her plain mousey hair, her white scalp. She had
never asked for a thing before. “We'll go,” he said, “but only on the condition that we leave the minute I can't stand any more.”

They took the two-hour ferry ride across the strait, and though he sat
with a book in his lap and tried to read, he found it hard to concentrate
and spent a lot of time watching the Island get closer and bigger and more
distinct. He hated sitting idle, he was a man who liked to be doing things,
and right now he would have preferred to be at work in the radio station
or digging in his garden.

Aunt Nora outdid herself. “Lord,” she said. “This must be the best reunion ever. There are three hundred and fifty people here, at least, and
listen to that racket! When the Mackens get together there's no such thing
as a lull in the conversation, there's never a moment when tongues have
ceased.”

“They do seem to have the gift of the gab,” April said.

“A Macken,” Aunt Nora said, smiling, “is a sociable person. A Macken
enjoys company and conversation.”

Macken this Macken that, Gerry thought.

His cousin George Smith put a bottle of beer in his hand and steered
him across the yard to lean up against someone's car. He said he couldn't
understand why Gerry put up with all the bullshit he had to listen to on
his show. He wanted to know why Gerry didn't just threaten to quit his
job if people wouldn't smarten up.

Gerry noticed that the whole back yard and orchard were filled with
parked cars, and that against nearly every car there was at least one pair
leaning and drinking beer and talking. Only the old ones were inside.
April was standing straighter than he'd ever seen her, laughing with a
bunch of women gathered beside a new Buick. “It doesn't matter a damn
to me what they say,” he told George Smith. “It's just part of my job to listen. Sometimes I tell them to go take a flying leap, but what the hell? Who
cares?”

George told him he'd cleared over fifteen hundred dollars last month,
working in the pulp and paper mill, most of it from overtime. He said he
couldn't understand why most of the rest of them worked in the logging
camp or in stores in town where there was hardly any overtime at all. It was
overtime, he said, that made it possible for him to buy this here little baby
they were leaning on. He pushed down on the front fender of the sports
car and rocked it gently and with great fondness. Then he asked Gerry if
a person working for a radio station got paid a salary or a wage, and what
kind of car was he driving anyways? Gerry pointed vaguely across the
yard and said as far as he was concerned it was just a way of getting places.
But George told him if he got enough overtime within the next few
months he intended to buy himself a truck and camper so he could take
more weekends off to go fishing up in the lakes. “Everybody's got one,” he
said. “One time I went up to Gooseneck Lake with Jim and Harriet and
there were sixteen truck-and-campers there already. Nine of them were
Mackens. Even old Uncle Morris was there, driving a brand-new Chev,
and he only makes the minimum wage at
his
job. I told him, I said How
could you afford a thing like that? and he said It pays to have a son in the
car-selling business. I said I bet you'll be paying for that thing for the rest
of your life.”

“And he said?” Gerry said.

“Nothing,” George said. “He just told me I was jealous. Ha!”

April came across the yard and led Gerry away towards a large group
of people sitting in lawn chairs in a circle and doing a lot of laughing. But
Aunt Nora, tall Aunt Nora with all her dyed-black hair piled up on top of
her head, intercepted them and took them inside so that Uncle Morgan,
who had been sick in the hospital the whole time they'd been engaged,
could meet April. “It won't do,” she said, “to have strangers in the same
family.” She pushed them right into her cluttered little living room and
made someone get up so April could have a comfortable chair. Gerry
leaned against the door frame and wondered if old Black Alex realized
when he was alive that the dozen kids he'd hauled onto the Island in his
touring car would eventually become these aging wrinkled people.

And of course it was Black Alex they were talking about. Uncle Morris
said, “I mind the time he said to me Get off that roof boy or I'll stuff you
down the chimney!” He laughed so hard at that he had to haul out a handkerchief to wipe the tears off his big red face.