The Whirlpool (23 page)

T
he Old River Man was lying on his stomach on a huge flat rock which jutted out over the water. Around him stunning scenery – cliffs striped by the ice age and an expanse of water moving from the rapids to the whirlpool. To his left, carefully wedged between two smaller rocks, was the bottle, three-quarters empty now, the label ragged where his thumbnail had torn it, over and over, as he drank. Lying on Rattler Rock (Reptile Rock) in the sun.

It was rumoured that hundreds of years before, lizards and snakes had sunned themselves there in late summer, passing into the kind of lethargy only a reptile can muster. Only a reptile or a river man with a full bottle, emptying.

He was halfway through the quart when he spotted it out there, floating around and around. Instantly, the alcoholic fog left his brain, his eyes focused. He pulled himself to his feet with a groan.

The place where he kept his equipment was, fortunately, not far. He slipped between the two large rocks forming the enclosure. Even in the gloom, he was able to find exactly what he was looking for. He emerged a few moments later with several sturdy long poles, some wire, and rope, and a large hook.

Now he was back on the rock, on his stomach, with all the equipment wired together into a sort of enormous fishing
pole with a good length of rope, followed by the hook, at the end.

“Goddam my father’s black cat’s ass!” He missed the target for the fifth time. After the third time he had taken yet another generous swig from the bottle, licking the hand afterwards that he had used to wipe the spillage from his chin. This time he merely cursed and adjusted his position on the rock’s surface, waiting like a hunter for the next revolution of the whirlpool.

It mattered little to him whether the object he was after was animal or mineral, dead or alive. He had, in his day, performed many successful rescue missions, would have been a local hero if he could have played that role. But he wasn’t concerned with that. He was concerned with whiskey and the river. Essentially he felt it was the river he was rescuing by removing foreign objects from it.

The trees along the banks on the other side could fool you. They were at that stage when their colour was the same as in springtime. You might think they were beginning, instead of beginning to end. But the River Man knew that this was almost autumn… followed by winter and ice in the river. The water didn’t fool him either and it never had. That’s what made him different.

He flung the pole out into the whirlpool one more time. It was as if everything around him was drunk except for this small area of concentration. Everything was a blur except for this bundle of flesh and clothing caught in the current.

He felt a tug on his pole. The hook had made contact. “Easy does it, Charlie,” he whispered as he began to pull his equipment into shore.

His attention was now occupied by descending from Rattler Rock without letting his catch escape. One awkward move and the whole tedious process would begin over again. Once he had lost not only the body, but his equipment as well. At that point he had been angry enough to tear the whole goddamned escarpment down. But you never really
lost anything in the whirlpool forever. Eventually it came back around again. All it took was time, patience, and a new hook.

The body was coming in nicely…. The hook had connected, amazingly enough, with a belt buckle. The River Man shook his head. He had never seen this happen before. This way the body was being drawn forward from its centre, the rope looking like a thick umbilical cord, the limbs trailing loosely, slightly behind the torso.

On the opposite shore the River Man could see the red hat of a man who was fishing for a more conventional catch.

This one hadn’t been in the river long, he could see that. He hoisted the body up onto the stone beach and returned to the cave to fetch the old tarpaulin to cover it up. Three small boys appeared out of nowhere to watch his activities. “Keep an eye on it,” he said.

The River Man wrapped his fist firmly around his bottle and headed along the shore towards the path that would take him up the bank into the world.

O
n a stump outside the tent, Major David McDougal sat waiting for his wife. He was beginning to become concerned. Already half an hour past the dinner hour and no wife, never mind no food. Punctuality was a word that Major David McDougal had understood completely, it would seem, since the day he was born. Where was his wife?

She had wandered off before, of course, but never for this long. Often, she went to some distant part of the woods to write in that damned book of hers or to gather who knows what number or variety of flowers, and for who knows what reasons. But she understood his need for punctuality and always returned in time. Why should she choose this day to make an exception to rules she had learned so well?

Nothing, McDougal concluded, was predictable about women, including their predictability.

He rose and stomped testily into the tent, to look inside; something that had not occurred to him he should do until now. He would find that notebook of hers and read it. What
had
she been scribbling, anyway, all those afternoons at the edge of the bank? He looked all over the tent, even under the bed and in the laundry hamper, which he noticed had not yet received yesterday’s socks and underwear, and found no notebook. So, she was off somewhere writing, he decided. And her Browning books were gone as well. She was off
somewhere writing, reading Browning, and recording her elevated thoughts. Women had such vague and dreary ways of wasting time. He would give her the Laura Secord lecture when she returned. What if
she
had decided to mope dreamily around reading poetry instead of delivering messages. What would have happened
then
.

He imagined his wife’s contrite expression as he, kindly but firmly, pointed this out to her.

Back outside, he moved around to the opposite side of the tent to gaze at the frame of the carriage house. The sun threw a gridwork of straight timber shadows all over the foliage around him. Architecture making its geometric statement on the landscape. The solidity of the work pleased the major. He knew the beams weren’t going anywhere, that they would be there for a long, long time.

After nightfall his unease changed gears, shifted dramatically into panic. Something had happened, he was sure of it. He had already broken open his emergency supply of whiskey and his thoughts were becoming somewhat disjointed. He was having horrifying fantasies concerning treacherous acts involving male American tourists, whom, he believed, even while he was sober, you should never trust. Any American was bred to want to take over things; your water supply, your mineral deposits, your entire country, your wife. “The bastards,” he mumbled quietly to himself, ominously eyeing the 1812 musket he kept in a corner of the tent for just such occasions. And, even worse, the thought struck him suddenly, she might have been kidnapped by an American military historian who had heard about his work and was even now trying to obtain, by God knows what form of terrifying means, information concerning his views on the Siege of Fort Erie.

Either you tell me how many pages he has written, Madam, or I will rip open that muddy calico dress of yours from the neck to the knees
.

“The swine,” growled McDougal, promising himself to look into the matter of armed sentries at all border crossings.

By ten o’clock, he had finished his emergency supply of whiskey and was working on his emergency supply of gin. He was ready to declare war. Something American had happened to his wife… there was no other possible explanation.

A third of the way through the gin, he began to become embarrassed. How does one look for a lost wife? How does one admit to the authorities that she was left alone in the woods, a perfect lure for the ever-present enemy? How does one convince the authorities that something American has happened to your wife and that action would have to be taken immediately? It was hopeless. They would let the Yanks take anything, everything, and never bat an eyelash.

Large, angry tears filled his eyes. The tent became blurry. It was as though McDougal’s world were evaporating right before his eyes, cartwheeling vaguely away into another nationality, taking everything familiar with it.

The next morning he awoke abruptly from a dream concerning Robert Browning’s views of military life and realized his wife was gone. Because he had not undressed the night before, he was able to spring immediately from his bed, leave the tent and rush distractedly into the woods calling her name. Not expecting an answer by now, but calling nonetheless, as people do who have irrevocably lost something. He could actually feel her absence in the atmosphere, feel that the acre was making a statement about the improbability of her ever returning to the spot. It seemed to him absurd that when she was so undeniably gone the kettle and the dish pan should still be where she left them, that the hammock he had placed at the edge of the bank still remained.

Looking from this edge down towards the water, he could see the River Man, a tiny elf, fishing for something with his strange equipment. Then he could see him reeling in his
catch. Major McDougal turned away, disallowing the conclusion that was trying to gain entry into his mind. He decided instead to make a thorough search of the woods up and down the bank. Some time later he saw the men descend the bank with their wicker basket. Still he refused to look carefully at the information that was being given to him.

He searched behind every shrub and behind every thicket. He called and called with his best military voice, until his voice left him altogether. It was late in the afternoon before he decided that he would have to visit the funeral home.

As McDougal sat on the streetcar that would take him to Main Street and the undertaker’s, a sudden series of memories flashed through his mind concerning an old aunt of his, one he had known only superficially. He recalled, now, how she had died, slowly and in stages, not so much from disease as from withdrawal… the whole process taking years.

First, she had refused to visit Toronto ever again, giving up forever her spring and fall shopping trips. But, when several months later, she had decided not to venture beyond her own garden gate, relatives were called upon to do errands for her. David had been one of them. When winter came, she settled into her parlour and her daily path was reduced to that between kitchen and parlour and bedroom.

One day, when he arrived with a loaf of bread, he found her ensconced in her bedroom at two in the afternoon. Claiming that she felt just fine, she announced that the only way she would leave the room would be feet first. At this point she should have died, but she didn’t. This stage lasted five years, during which her sole occupation was the ordering of an endless series of bedjackets from Eaton’s and Simpsons catalogues. After her death, sixty-seven of these garments were discovered in her bedroom closet and dresser drawers.

Now it occurred to McDougal that his life had been moving down a path which would eventually carry him
through the door of his still-unconstructed house. And while he had imagined walking through the door of the house, he had never considered stepping back outside. The perimeter of his own life was shrinking. He was just like his barely remembered aunt.

When he arrived at Grady and Son he was startled to find that it was Patrick, rather than his wife, in the basket. The sorrow he had carried with him on the streetcar spilled out now and he began to weep.

“So young,” Maud commented sympathetically. “A real tragedy. Was he related to you? Whom should we contact?”

“I don’t know where she is,” replied McDougal. “I don’t know how to contact her at all.”

Leaving the undertaking establishment McDougal went directly to the museum to look at ammunition. Bullets, gunflints, grapeshot, cannon-balls, caged and harmless in their glass cabinets.

There was peace here, and the major knew it. Emptied of drama and emotion these artifacts would not be making any further statements, any further journeys. They would remain here now, stunningly innocent and clear, years after their complicated performances involving death and pain. They had become three-dimensional documents locked away in rooms.

McDougal was comforted by the sight of these objects carefully arranged on fabric, safely catalogued and housed. He stayed there with the tips of his fingers resting on the cool glass, looking over his shoulder only once when he thought he might have heard the rustle of a woman’s skirt on the oak floor.