What They Wanted (15 page)

It was another seven years before I saw either Trapp or Ben again. It was the beginning of summer and I’d been to the post office for Mother. Instead of the road, I’d taken the shoreline back home, climbing around the outcropping of rock that separated Hampden from our house on the other side. The base of the outcropping could be navigated only during low tide, and was chancy even then, with wet kelp and rioting waters that licked coldly at my ankles each time my foot slipped into a crevice. With the surf and a relentless wind pummelling past my ears I didn’t hear their voices till I was nearly upon them.

They were in a slight inlet, sitting in a dory that was bobbing on the water and tied to a rock with a short rope. Trapp sat the closest to me, wearing the same straw-coloured mane, but with ruffs of chin hair and sideburns that gleamed like copper in the strong summer sun. He was slight like a girl, yet his arms were long and ropy as he hung them outside the boat, paddling his hands through the water.

Sprawled in the stern of the boat, absorbed by something he was drawing or writing on a notepad, was Ben, all knees and elbows, the slight edge of a moustache lining his upper lip and tight, dark curls capping his head.

I’d heard bits and pieces about them both through the years from Suze during her visits with Mother. Trapp—even his kinfolk called him by his last name—had shown himself to be the smartest of the clan, and according to Ben, Suze reluctantly reported, he was the smartest student from that part of the bay, and amongst the smartest in Memorial University of Newfoundland, where he’d been on the dean’s list.

And Ben, Suze was always quick to say, was the nicest, sweetest boy, whose dark, shiny curls were a draw for women and girls alike, and who, despite his having grown up, was still taking tea with old ladies after church and drawing them pictures of their cats. The fact that Ben and Trapp had become like brothers made for a bad taste in Suze’s mouth, one she was always spitting out in disparaging Trapp’s
cagey
look or his
sly
look or his
shifty
-eyed look. Equally incensing for Suze was that ever since that old man shot Trapp’s dog, Ben was always dragging the bugger home for supper, for Sundays, for sleeping over—and on and on Suze would rhyme off the ways Trapp unnerved her when he was in her house, watching her, watching the youngsters, watching Ben, watching everything that moved, as though he’d never seen the insides of a house before, or them that lived there, having a chat and busying about.

Crouching behind a slate of rock, I watched them, just as I had all those years ago on the beach in Ragged Rock. Their dubious fit was never more apparent than in this moment, Ben sitting studious over his notepad and Trapp sitting restless, rocking the boat, his lips skimmed back into a grin as he flicked droplets of water into the air, hunching his shoulders skittishly as they rained back onto him and Ben.

“Bugger off,” Ben muttered, brushing the water off his hair. Trapp gave his flat hahaha laugh that after all these years still prickled my skin like needles. He flicked another handful of water into the air, then crouched back with the skulking look of a banned pet as Ben leapt to his feet and grabbed a paddle, darting it threateningly at Trapp.

“Out!” yelled Ben. “Out, out,” and raised the paddle as though readying to strike. Trapp, with another hahaha, leapt out of the boat. Slipping on a sliver of kelp, he fell to his knees.

Laughing, Ben slapped the water with the broad side of his paddle, sousing Trapp’s backside and sending him skittering over the rock towards the slate ridge beyond which I crouched. I ducked down, but within the second Trapp was leaning across the ridge, his pointy face sniffing at me, his green eyes ignited by the sharp sunlight.

“Boo,” he said lightly.

I scuttled backwards, slipped, fell hard on my backside. I got quickly back on my feet, ignoring the hand Trapp offered, as unnerved as Suze by his cagey look, his skulking grin, and that long ago memory of panic he’d set off inside of me. Tossing back his head, he leapt over the rocks towards Hampden, his form lithe, his limbs fluid, his crazy ha ha ha’s caterwauling out like a rutting cat.

Ben, oblivious of my presence, was settled back into the stern of the boat, his notebook positioned on his knee, his head held back, gazing up at the sky. Curious, and disarmed by the softened contours of his face, I crept towards him, my movements muffled by the sea grappling with the rocks. I drew within an arm’s reach of his dark, curly head. From my slightly elevated vantage point I saw over his shoulder to his fingers cramped around a pencil, posed motionless over what I now saw to be a sketch pad. Centred on the page in thick heavy lines was the fat, fluffy cloud hanging overhead.

“Clouds should be shaded,” I said after a moment’s watching.

“Oh? How’s that now?” I flushed to my roots as he leaned back his head, seeing me upside down through eyes the clear grey of a winter’s sea. “Well, then?”he challenged.

“Clouds are always shifting,” I replied.

“That’s why I nail’em to a page. Else it’s the shape of the wind I’m sketching, not clouds—you think?” he asked with a grin.

I grinned in return.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Sylvia. Sylvie. Called after my father, Sylvanus.”

“Ahh—well now, haven’t you grown.” He gave me the once-over, then, with an appreciative nod, toed the thwart before him with the tip of his boot. “Climb in,” he coaxed. “Sure you can,” he said to my reluctant look. “I’ll draw your face. Or your hands. You can lay them on the gunnel, or clutch a paddle. Wonk me if I moves the wrong way. You have a brother, don’t you?”

“Two,” I said.

“Right, two. And one of them draws strange stuff. So says Mother.”

“What do you draw?”

“Stick-dogs is all. And clouds sometimes. Coming aboard? I won’t hurt you. Aren’t you our god-girl, god-baby, or something?”

“Your mother’s my godmother. And my mother’s your sister’s godmother.”

“Egads. I think I got it. So, how old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

“Fifteen.”He eyed me again. “You look older. All right, you can still sit aboard. He won’t be back,” he said as I looked back along the shore where Trapp had gone. “He don’t like being chased off.”

“Why are you here?”

“Visiting my aunts. And working the sawmill with Trapp and his uncles.”

“For the summer?” I asked.

“Yup. For the summer. What do you think?” he held up the cloud, thickly edged and caught in a moment’s stillness. “Think I nailed it? What about that hand of yours—gonna model it for me? Fine, then. I’ll sever me own—will you strap it around the paddle after I’m done? Can’t do much with one hand.”

I laughed and climbed into his boat, thinking later how easy it had been to sit chatting with him as he sketched my hand resting on the paddle, sharing with him stories of Chris, and his long, slender fingers, at the age of three, drawing ant’s tracks across his room walls, and now at the age of thirteen, drawing blue clouds on a red sky with a blazing purple sun and no fear of its right or wrongness.

“This I got to see,” said Ben, and in that creaky, leaking boat kept afloat by a mother’s prayers he rowed us around the outcropping and up to the house, where Chris was slouched, his legs dangling over the side of the wharf.

Scoffing at Chris’s shyness, I ran inside and was back out in a second toting a stack of his drawings. Like a proud mother, Ben said of me as I stood flashing them before him, all loving and admiring, pronouncing, “See, he can draw, can’t he—and look, all dream stuff—even when he was three he was drawing dream stuff.”

“Nooo, ohhh, shut up—give them back,” Chris kept interjecting, face flushed as he snatched at the papers I was passing to Ben.

“Hold on now, buddy, let’s see,” said Ben. Holding Chris back, he peered intently at the mesh of lines on each page, their half-formed images of eyes fading through hazy skies, rain splattering into weeds amongst rocks, women raising their hands to walls of fire, and, his latest, the vein-ridden throat of a horse stretching off the page.

“Where the hell do you get this stuff?” asked Ben. He lowered the drawings, looking to Chris, staring, as I often did myself, at his wide-mouth smile, his shimmering brown eyes, his quick little shrugs. “Pablo,” Ben said quietly, “we’ve our own little Pabs.”

Given that he worked just up the hill at the sawmill, he was to return quite a number of times during the rest of that summer, loitering during his lunch hour, having a quick chat with Mother, Gran. But mostly he lazed about the wharf, eating thick ham sandwiches his mother made for him and sitting with Chris, their backs resting against a grump, sketch pads on their knees, and Ben, awed by Chris’s quick manner of sketching, making games so’s to quicken his own crude hand.

“Okay, the window by the door,” Ben would call out, pointing to the house, or “the gull on the grump” or “the can by the kelp,” and they’d hunch over their pencils and paper, drawing till I sounded a whistle, upon which they passed their sketches, without glancing at the other’s, for my judgment. Always Ben lost for his attempts at exactness, always Chris won for his embellishment.

“You favour Pabs,” Ben continually protested.

“Perhaps I’d rather the shape of the wind than a boring old cloud,” I taunted him once, after I’d given him another low grade for a particularly good likeness of Father’s boat.

“Is that right, now?” His sooty grey eyes appraised my face, and it felt like a bird fluttered to life in my chest. “Well, you listen to me, Mother Picasso, the wind’s a fine thing. But I like a clear line—everything nice and defined. Now then,” he pointed to the grump, “if you’d just sit over there and turn sideways, perhaps I could get a better look at your crooked nose. Chris, buddy, see your sister’s crooked nose? Let’s draw your sister’s crooked nose.”

I pulled a miffed look and sat on the grump, holding up my nose in an exaggerated profile. Afterwards I quickly denounced Chris’s hooklike portrayal, declaring Ben’s subtle tilt the winner.

“Proud,” snorted Chris, shunning the X drawn across his portrait, “she’s proud, Ben, that’s what she is, proud.”

“Yeah, that’s the way of women, buddy, proud,” said Ben. And then, ruffling my hair as though I were a youngster, he was off, strolling back to his summer job bundling up slab wood for the Trapps. I stared after him, the length of his stride, his tight jeans, the snug fit of his T-shirt across his shoulders, and the bird in my chest took flight.

One afternoon, after Ben had sauntered down from the mill chewing on a ham sandwich for lunch and commenting on my skinny knees, I yanked on his curls and was instantly deluged by the warm, springy feel of them. I darted inside the house with a sharp sense of embarrassment shooting through me, as though I had committed an act of intimacy against him, had touched his private self. Kyle was whimpering and snotting by the window, his face scabbed with chicken pox. I pulled him aside, taking his place.

Ben was dropping his lanky frame alongside Chris, who was slouched beneath the window, his legs dangling over the wharf, his mind no doubt engaged by his inner realm of wingless birds and feathered frogs. Disappointed that Ben hadn’t chased after me, I kept spying through the curtain, listening as he chatted with Chris, his voice rising and falling with the charm of a flute streamed by a summer’s breeze. When next I sauntered out the door, thinking of some inane thing to say, I stood before him mute, the words stuck in my throat like a river choked by weeds. Scarcely noticing my presence, Ben brushed the breadcrumbs off his mouth and took his lanky self back up the path to work.

THE MEMORIES OF BEN
broke off as I cleared the path past the sawmill and emerged onto a dirt road. Chris and Kyle were still behind me, their yelps having given way to a deep quiet. Slightly out of breath, I wandered to the tip of the brow and looked down at the tiny outport of Hampden, its houses rising tidily up the side of the hill, windows glowing into the softly darkening evening.

“Nice, hey,” said Chris, coming up behind me.

“Yeah, it’s nice,” I said.

“Miss it?” he asked.

I hesitated. “Yeah, I miss it. Although it’s never felt like home. Did it to you?”

He gave his quick little shrug. “Never thought about it.”

“What
do
you think about?”

“Not much. Either I’m sleeping, or like Mother says, gone off in a trance. Which feels like sleeping.”

“You don’t
really
go off in trances, do you?”

“Don’t know. Don’t remember. See this?” He flashed a big-faced wristwatch. “Got it set to beep every hour—just to check the time.” He grinned. “Hates missing supper. Mother’s always at me for missing supper.”

I kicked at his boot. “Big youngster, still letting Mother cook your supper.”

“Hey, growing boy,” he replied, patting his belly. “So, what feels like home to you—Cooney Arm, still?”

I looked pensively about the outport. For sure I never felt this place was home. Never wanted to be back in Cooney Arm, either—leastways, not after that last trip with Father. “Don’t know if I’ve ever really felt at home,” I replied. “In Gran’s house I was always looking to Mother’s, and then in Mother’s I was always looking to Gran’s. No matter whose table I was sitting at, or how sweet the jam, it always felt like I was just halfways home.”