chapter 1

Chapter One

It had been a cruel day, and it was going to prove to be even a more bitter night. The frustration of it was worsened by the fact that the circumstances of it all were so typical. Everything that ever ended up bad in my life followed the same pattern. It seemed as if there was some personality behind it that carefully and relentlessly plotted against me. Mocking me with its repetitiveness, and always following the same pattern, even when I saw it coming, like I had seen it a thousand times before, and even so, after all these years of trying, and I am powerless to stop it.
This time was no different, I saw it coming a mile away, and even though I could see the future like some old sitcom rerun, those around me lived in the bliss of ignorance. Like every other time, my experience was worthless; I knew nothing till all those around me knew it as well. It was supposed to be a simple transaction, but for some reason some banker type did some kind of typical banker thing that delayed the deal for six weeks, and some how, of course, it was my fault. I had either used the wrong banker lingo when talking to those damn banker types, or I didn’t fill out the right forms. But the truth was my suit and tie offended them. They knew that suit didn't hang well on me, I'm sure it looked as uncomfortable on me as I felt in it.
They knew I was not one of them, to them I was barely human, so they felt totally justified. It was my money, all they had to do was transfer it, take it out of the term deposit, and I would pay the fees and penalties. It should have been all straightforward, but those banker types, they didn’t have the nerve to steal my money, but if they could hold it up long enough to sour any deals I made they would, just to show me who's boss.
They just can't stop themselves, it is as if they thought that if I could spend my money on whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, it might foil some eternal plan, and they took it upon themselves to protect that plan. I can hear them laughing at me, safe in their back room offices; from there they are heckling me; "If you can't afford to wait for your money, then you are nobody! Ha ha!" Nevertheless, heaven forbid their money to arrive a penny low or a day late! Hypocrites! The frustration made me cry out in a groan, how diabolical the chain of events that would lead to my death this night.
The moment one recognizes that his death is imminent a curious thing occurs, all emotions are bypassed to acceptance, normally this would only last for a moment as in the next moment they are dead, like when someone falls from a great height just before they hit the ground. Once one reaches acceptance there is no turning back, even if you get out alive you will never be the same, never really convinced that there will be another tomorrow again.
In my case however this time period would be not too much longer, I knew that I was going to die, it was just a matter of exactly how, and exactly when, and in no more than hours to be sure. Acceptance does not mean that you give up, just that all your options are exhausted and the outcome is most obviously grim. The thought of it is simply overwhelming; it was best to try not to think about it.
Six weeks would have made all the difference, those damn banker types had committed the perfect murder, but this would never be connected to them in a million years, but I had no doubt about whom killed me. The weather in the arctic changes a lot in six weeks, the difference between summer weather and winter weather can occur in just such a time frame. I couldn't help wondering; how diabolical are they? Did they know what it was they were doing to me?
Perhaps I should have waited until next year to make the trip, but, I was anxious, I couldn’t stand to wait a whole year. Once I got something in my mind and determined to do it, I did it. So now I am, the victim of my own obsessions, so I guess it's my fault that I got caught in an early winter storm in the Bering Strait, trapped in the over turned hull of my capsized cabin cruiser. Blaming myself doesn't help; it just seems to make me angrier. It's easier to blame those damn bankers, it seemed curiously soothing to build up a grudge against them, after all, they put me in such a predicament, where each breath is numbered, and pointless, serving only to prolong my agony.
There was a good-sized air pocket and I had made my way onto to the plywood under side of one of the bunks. I was cold, wet, and getting ill from the gas fumes collecting in my air pocket as fuel leaked from the carburetor of the six cylinder Gray marine engine that was the power plant for this small vintage yacht. I was either going to drown, or suffocate from gas fumes, or lack of oxygen, or succumb to hypothermia. My options were exhausted, if I was to get out from under the boat I would surely freeze to death in the water or sitting on top of the capsized hull. At least inside the hull I was out of the wind and blowing snow. At least this is what I told myself, but in truth, I could not distinguish between the lesser of the two evils. However, I was stuck with where I was, so I convinced myself it was for the best, or rather, “the least worse.”
This all started because I am a sucker for irony and coincidences that are too incredible to be real. It all started in Yellowknife North West Territories, a small city on the shores of Great Slave Lake in Canada’s high north. I was there because I had heard that the Lady Susan was there. My younger Sister Shirley had seen it there and said it was fully restored and beautiful, but the name had been changed to "The Sally Look". Nevertheless, she was certain that it was the Lady Susan. That was three years ago, so this spring I had decided to make the trip to Yellowknife to see for myself. If it were actually the Lady Susan then this would be a very strange turn of events; a mystery of either coincidence or irony, I do not know which.
Where do I begin? The Lady Susan was a thirty-foot pleasure cruiser that my dad had bought when I was no more than nine or ten years old. It replaced the Peg Third, the legendary boat of the before time, a time when I was not yet born or at least too young to form memories. Although I do have one memory of that boat, it was of my mother putting me to sleep as a baby on the top bunk in the forward cabin. It is a real memory although my mother and siblings have all said that it could not be as I was much too young to be able to remember.
Nevertheless, I can still see it, in the first person, it is one of my oldest memories, still in vivid full color, and the smell, and I can even smell the damp musty air, sweet and warm in my nostrils. A twelve-volt light fixture draped the cabin in a dim mantle, I can see my mothers face in its creamy glow, she is much younger than the mother I have known, and she is putting me to sleep on the top bunk. There is some kind of warm cozy loving and happy feeling emanating from everyone, and I think that must be what triggered the memory to be formed. It would be several years later before I would have another such stored memory, but those are less clear, and less real to me.
I recall learning to form memories, each time I would file them with the last stored memory and realize that a lot of time had passed and I had no recollection of anything occurring in-between. It was much like awakening from long sleeps. Eventually, when I was probably younger than three or four, I remember deciding to make an effort to recall things that happened in the days before, and some time after that, normal memory function began occurring. Part of growing up I guess.
I was so excited when my dad bought the Lady Susan, and before we even went to pick it up, before I ever saw it, I had sailed her hundreds of times in my dreams. From the moment my dad came home and told us he had bought a cabin cruiser, I hounded him for every detail. I made him describe what it looked like over and over, until he drew a picture of it. I copied that picture over and over. I just couldn't wait till that weekend; I counted the days till Saturday came, but it is some kind of a cruel trick of the space-time continuum that time actually passes even more slowly in the presence of anticipation. I thought Saturday would never come. We packed and left first thing in the morning and drove north to Keswick marina. I jumped out of the car and ran along the gray weather faded planking of the boardwalks past several slips and moored yachts and stopped at our boat. It was just like the pictures that dad drew, it was everything I imagined. My dad commented on how it was that I had known which boat it was from such a rudimentary chicken scratch drawing. The truth was, the real thing didn’t look much better than his original chicken scratched drawing, she was a fixer upper for sure, but back then I couldn’t see it, to me she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
We sailed it from Cooks Bay on the southern arm of Lake Simcoe to our cottage on the Talbot River that same day. It was the first time I had been so far out on the water that I had any memory of. The water was bluer than I had suspected it could ever possibly be. It seemed to glow a dark blue, shimmering on its millions of facets like some great jewel. I hung my head over the bow and watched it cutting through the waves, splitting the blue water open like a razor through soft silk. The spray of sheeting water arching back into the water mesmerized me for hours.
I had grown up not only hearing about the great adventures of the Peg Third, but every time we would go to the cottage it was there. Broken and rotting in her slip, she had given her all and gotten everyone back safely on that last day of her sea going life, but she would never leave port again. A victim of a broken skeg, she had struck a rather solid "dead head" submerged beneath the surface of the water. Such an anti climactic end for such a storied vessel it went out with barely a whimper. The Lady Susan would never live up to the legend of the Peg Three, but at least this time it might include me.
The Taylor Brothers built both the Peg Three and the Lady Susan. Both were about thirty feet long, all mahogany and teak construction. Built some time in the nineteen thirties; they were both powered by six cylinder Gray marine engines, and had a top speed of about fifteen knots. The Peg third had a very round duck belly shaped displacement hull making her very stable in even the worst weather. The Lady Susan had more of a square chine and streamlined look to the hull, but was not as sure footed in a storm. Built from choice mahogany they both were beautiful examples of fine craftsmanship.
The day when I boarded that boat and we sailed her to the cottage from the Keswick marina was at that point the most exciting day of my life so far. It was one of those rare occasions when unimaginable anticipation was matched by the actual event. All those years of watching the Peg Three hung in her hoist chains, rotting away in her slip, and I, having never experienced her hay day had left me wanting. But in the end, the Lady Susan proved to become a lot more work than pleasure, and the next six years of my life would contain countless hours of work on her. Yet still we never would get her up to the standard she deserved. I was still glad for every minute I was on her decks, although no new legends were to be written in her name.

I could feel the ice cold water slowly creeping up along the plywood surface of the underside of the bunk as she slowly slipped deeper into the sea. The water in the hull had gotten deep enough now that as the boat rolled in the swells the frigid water was sloshing up onto me and I was getting colder and colder. I was scared, but the thing I was most afraid of was dying, not death, I had no real understanding of what death was, it didn't seem to relate to any of my previous experiences. It was the dying that worried me, that in-between part, would it hurt? The closest thing I could imagine it being like is suffocation. If it was like that, I feared the panic of those last few moments while the life was being sucked out my nostrils. The following death hopefully would relieve me of those symptoms.
I jammed my foot against the bunk and my back against the bulkhead to the head to try to stay above the water. The water was rising higher by the minute, and I was scrambling to find a foothold that would keep me alive till the last possible moment. Now I knew how all those ants felt that I had chased down with a magnifying glass when I was just a boy. It intrigued me how hard they tried to preserve their worthless little lives. Now I was struggling to survive and preserve my slightly more valuable life. I must be worth at least my own weight in ants. I reasoned as if someone was thinking this was some kind of poetic justice; because it’s not. Of all the things to come back and bite me in the butt, this has got to be the worst.

My dad died when I was fifteen, and a year later I left home for what I thought would be a summer Job in Yellowknife, it's been more than forty years later and I am yet to return home. While I was gone the Lady Susan was stolen from my mother, that is to say she sold it to someone and she trusted too much. This low life thought that he had an easy mark, my mom, a recent widow, with all her son's thousands of miles away was an easy victim. He was right; he swindled it away from her and sailed it away never to be seen by us again without a dime ever changing hands. If there is any justice in the world, that man never went a hoars head peacefully down to his grave. However, on the other hand, for all our sakes, let’s hope there is no justice in this world.
I had spent my teenage years in Yellowknife, My father dead, and my mother thousands of miles away I appeared very independent to my peers. With a job and a nice truck I thought that in the future things would come a lot easier than they did. Those were good years; I would choose to do those again if I had a choice. Even though, I was young, foolish, and thought I was lot wiser than I was. But that is just the acceptable excess of youth, without that, we would have learned nothing at all about life.
Yellowknife was the city I became a man in, I was cool, and I mean I was always cool, I knew that, but in Yellowknife, they told you when you were cool. I showed up there a sixteen year-old young buck, and I was cock of the walk. I dressed better than I ever had or have since; I was in great shape and of course as handsome as all get out. I cruised those streets all day and all night, if the sun didn't set, then neither did I. Sally and I would cruise around, we were what was going on, if you wanted to be in on the in, you rode with us. Ilene, Sally's best friend, was a little blonde bombshell that rarely left my side all summer. We were the in crowd. When the question was asked; "Where is everybody?" No matter who said it, if you looked around, we were the only ones missing; it was us we were "everybody."
All this added to the irony, my dads boat, thirty years later shows up in Yellowknife, and its new name, “The Sally Look, and how did it get to Yellowknife? …What are the odds that someone I once knew was connected with it now?" It seemed strange to think that Sally had been involved with this boat completely unaware of its origin, and the fact that I was connected with it so intimately. What stories would she tell? Did she and Ilene spend time on her decks, sunbathing and swimming in the cold Lake water? I doubt she would have named it after herself, so who named it after her? A boyfriend? A husband? Whoever it was, I had no idea; I have a bad habit of not keeping in touch with old friends. There were so many unanswered questions.
So this spring I flew to Yellowknife to see for myself. I sat at the back of the seven thirty seven, and dreamed of days gone by, soothed by the serenade of the roaring jet engines. It would be strange to see the legendary city of the north again. I wondered if it remembered me, in truth, I never wondered at all, surely it had been awaiting my return all these years. The hole left by my absence would soon be filled; the city would be complete once again. I grabbed a taxi and took a ride into town. "Strange Range" is all I told the cabby.
He immediately knew I was a Yellowknifer; the Gold Range was the oldest and most popular pub in town, but true Yellowknifer's affectionately knew it as the Strange Range. But the truth is that the pub is not what I was referring to, I knew the cabby thought so, he just hangs on the fringe, and like all fringers' think it’s the bar that earned the name Strange Range. But us true grit Yellowknifer’s; those of us who remember when a car wreck on the city streets stayed there for days until the wrecker driver sobered up. When we said Strange Range we referred to the café next door to the bar. That was our touchstone, it was how we knew each other, if you meant the bar you were a fringer. The Gold Range café was the first business in the city to open in the morning and the last to close at night. If you knew Yellowknife, you knew that was a recipe for strange.
The old Bristle Cargo plane was still displayed on top of a post as a monument. "That brings back a lot of memories," I told the cabby, but he didn't respond. "No, don’t take the Old Airport road, take the other way!" I instructed him.
"But it's the fastest way! That way takes a lot longer!" He spoke up protesting my suggestion while forming exaggerated gestures with his hands to emphasize his point.
"I know, but I want to take the scenic route, it's been a while since I have been here." Yellowknife is beautiful in the summer, the weather is almost always hot and sunny, and the sun doesn't set on her days. I could see that the city had grown without me, it hadn't frozen in time like it had in my memory and inside I felt somewhat slighted. Every foot of road held the memory of some night of my youth, "I ran all the way from the top of that hill to past the airport carrying a five gallon jerry can full of gas. When I was a teenager I ran out of gas and had to run all the way to town and all the way back, I for some reason forgot to just put a couple of bucks worth of gas in the can, but filled it right up to the brim! But I still ran the whole way none stop, the girls waiting in back at my truck couldn't believe how fast I had gotten back!"
"Yeah, gas is real expensive, that’s why we use propane to power the taxis!" He responded, completely missing the point of my story.
We made a right turn onto the Ingram Trail and drove down and up through the little valley that protected the north border of the city. As soon as we reached the first strip of concrete sidewalk I told the cabby to let me out; it was a beautiful day I wanted to walk. I strolled my way towards the main drag, I looked down at the sidewalk cement, and it showed no special response to my steps, it too had no clue whom I was. Black top sneakers were replaced by soft-soled leather shoes, but I was the only one who would notice that. I had at some level at least hoped that there was some evidence of me some where in the wear on the surface of those concrete slabs. I turned onto the main drag; I was only a few blocks from the Gold Range. I passed all the old buildings that were surely there when I was there, but I didn't recognize them, I sort of did, but I had remembered them being in different places than they were, it was as if they had moved around, or traded places with each other.
I thought that I would find the hole my absence had created and slip into it. But this was not so, I saw hole's, but they were the holes left by the absence of anything familiar walking the streets that once knew me so well. I tried to catch the eye of every passer by on the sidewalk, hoping to see something, or someone I once knew, but I recognized nothing. These people were all strangers, my city had filled with strangers, these people thought this was their city; they had no clue who I was. Didn't they know this was my city?
I stopped in front of the Gold Range and paused for a moment. I looked once again onto the sidewalk, I was probably guilty of stepping on every square inch of that concrete in front of this place a million times, but there was not one shred of evidence to convict me of it. It was as if I was never there. It came to me that the past was as indifferent and hard and cold as that sidewalk. I had walked on it, I had spit on it, and I had bled on it, but it was not even affected in the slightest way. It seemed almost cruel, but it was just what it was, it was nothing more. Time and concrete, we can walk forward on it with all those we know, with all that we think we are, but if we go back in time on that Grey ribbon, we go alone.
I entered the café with all my expectations now as low as they should be, and so I was not disappointed. But some things did stay the same, the general layout of the place was identical, but the tables and counters had changed, however they were still old, I expected as much. The jukebox was also new, with songs I didn't recognize on it. There were some teenagers occupying the choicest corner table, that table was my table, when I was the man around here, I wore the cool duds, I had all the smooth moves, I was where everybody wanted to be, but now I am just the old man around here. No one gave me a second look, when I was young like those guys; I was noticed when I entered this place. But now, I am as invisible as those old guys that came in here were when I was a young buck. I wondered if those old guys that graced this place when I was young thought of me the same way. Impossible, I started cool; there was no cool before I showed up, I convinced myself.
I didn't feel like eating so I only ordered a coffee, like I had a million or more times before in this very restaurant. I didn't recognize anyone, I hoped that someone I knew would come walking in, but they didn't. I finished the coffee and opted not to have any of their free refills. I made my way to a rental car place and picked up a little red Oldsmobile. I toured the town for a while, cruising up and down my old haunts, hoping I might see something that would bring me back into my glory years. But there was nothing, I thought we had left a bigger impression on this place than we had. I decided to go find what I had come here for, and drove down the long hill towards the bridge to Latham Island. I drove around the island past the old wildcat café, I used to drive pretty fast around this Island, few people if any could keep up with me through there, but this time I was taking it slow. I decided to cruise the docks to see if I could find the cabin cruiser tied up somewhere.
I found her docked in Back Bay. She had been fully restored; she was in the best shape I had ever seen her in. In fact, she was so well restored that there was nothing left for me to recognize her as the original Lady Susan. Taylor Brothers had built at least two identical boats, the Lady Susan being one of them; this could be the sister ship to the Lady Susan. Even still, it would be a remarkable coincidence even if the sister ship to the Lady Susan had some how found it's way to Yellowknife.
I waited for a while to see if anyone would walk up to her, but it seemed that no one was coming. If I did board her and try to get into the cabin it would be then for sure that the owner would walk up and catch me. I waited a little longer, making use of the time to give the hull a close inspection, I read the registration numbers: 2E 2669, I couldn't tell if they were familiar, I wrote them down, if nothing else perhaps I could look it up some where. No one seemed to be coming; I did want not to leave without knowing for sure. I climbed on board and tried the cabin door, but it was locked. But I knew all about this boat, I knew that the engine access panel could be easily removed and that I could get into the cabin that way. I was nervous; I would be in big trouble if I got caught. I hesitated, getting caught breaking into the cabin would be hard to explain, and I was already feeling guilty just thinking about it. My nerves were on edge; I quickly climbed out of the boat and onto the dock. I looked around, no one had seen me, but I didn't have the nerve to break into the cabin.
I pictured myself climbing on that jet and leaving without knowing for sure, what I would feel like then? Like some kid who never had the nerve to tell the girl he had such a huge crush on her that he can’t even eat anymore, then for the rest of his life wondering what might have been? Well maybe something like that, still I had to know. I steeled all my nerve and climbed back onto the boat. I removed the panel and crawled into the cabin. I searched carefully every corner, board, or nick for something I would recognize. Then I looked inside the cubbyhole under the navigator’s chair and pulled out ten shiny chromed letters, they were pitted with a small amount of rust pits, showing their age. I arranged them quickly on the floor of the cabin and they spelled out "Lady Susan." I sat down for a while marveling at the fact that I was in my fathers boat after more than forty years. Uncontrollably, I felt my eyes swell up and tear. I stared down at the floor where the letters were displayed, seeing the span of time that had passed in that image. "How different now" I muttered.
What events had conspired to preserve her and bring her here? And how did her name become Sally Look? These questions intrigued me, it was all too incredible, and it left me feeling that I had missed something, that I had made some wrong turn, that some how my life was looking for me, and I had missed it. The connection I felt with this boat seemed stronger now than it ever had; it was as if she was an old friend, who relentlessly tried to reunite with me. But she was not mine, I had no business even being on her decks, I had to reconcile myself to that fact, but I was trespassing on my own father’s boat. Everything in the universe seemed wrong if that was true, but there it was, and I had better get out of there before I got caught.
I had scarcely replaced the engine access panel and got back onto the dock when a man walked up the dock past me and onto the boat and pulled his keys out to unlock the cabin door. Perhaps I would get my answer. “Excuse me sir!” I called out to him.
“Can I help you?” Came his startled reply as he turned to see who was speaking to him.
“Yes, I…uh see you have a pretty nice boat here…. I was sorta wonderin' where it was you got it from?”
"Why do you want to know?" He questioned me; he seemed more suspicious than I had expected, like somehow he was not willing to share more about it than he had to. I didn't want to tell him the story of how this was a boat that was stolen from my mother, in case he was in on it. Even though after all these years it seemed doubtful that he would be connected with the guy who stole it off my mom.
"Well, it's just that I know this boat was not built up here, its vintage is way back from the twenties or thirties, so I was curious how it got all the way up here?" I answered him.
"Yeah, she an oldie, but a goody, I bought it about four years ago, she was in pretty rough shape…. But I spent a lot of time and money on her; I just about got her restored to original condition…so I am kind of proud of how she turned out! I mean ya should have seen her when I got her, she was in bad shape!” He responded enthusiastically, but I sensed he was being a little too defensive, as if he was hiding something, his eyes were scanning me suspiciously, I sensed he was straining to carry on a friendly conversation with me.
“Who did you buy it from?” I asked, hoping to solve the mystery of how it got to where it was. He took a moment before answering, like he suspected it was a leading question.
“Oh some Frenchman in Hay River, I am not sure of his name, it was either Guy or Eve, it seems all Frenchmen are named Guy or Eve.” he answered, however I sensed a certain amount of evasiveness in his answer.
“Do you know anything about where it came from?” I probed, but trying to act genuinely curious, so as to help divert his suspicion. But inside I was feeling like something was not right, like this guy was hiding something, but what? Could it be that after all these years the connection to the guy who swindled it off my mother was still close to the boat?
“Apparently, the guy I bought it from said that his father had brought her all the way from Quebec some twenty years or so before I got it! He had taken her up through the Northwest Passage just for an adventure! He was planning to take it down to Vancouver Island, he came down the Mackenzie River just for the hell of it and put in at Hay River for the winter, but had a heart attack there and died.” he explained. I perceived that he was purposely distancing himself from the actual facts; I was sure he knew it was stolen, or at least he suspected it, he was hiding something. He knew more than he was willing to tell me. But I was too chicken to call him on it, and I hated myself for allowing fear to rule this part of me.
“His son, the guy I got it from, said he just came to Hay River to sell the boat and then he left, I saw it advertised in the Yellowknifer, the local paper here, and so I went down to Hay River an looked at her and bought her.” It seemed odd that he described the Yellowknifer as "the local paper" why did he think I did not know that? He had no way of knowing where I was from, I hadn't told him; or did I? I tried to recall.
“The name “Sally Look”, how did you come up with that name?” I asked, hoping to put some pieces of the puzzle together.
“That was the name of it when I bought it, I was going to change it but I never got around to thinking up a better one.” he responded. He still seemed worried, as if he had feared someone would come asking too many questions some day.
“Would you be interested in selling her?"
“No, no…she is not for sale, at least not now…maybe just give me your name and number… if I am ever looking for another project boat I might let this one go.” he said interrupting me. I never thought I would ever hear from him again, I was sure he just wanted my name to find out who I was.
As we were exchanging information I thought about what he had told me, it didn’t add up, this French guys father brought the boat to Hay River twenty years before his son came up to Hay River to sell it? Who had the boat those twenty years? There was a large piece of the puzzle missing. I didn’t want to make the guy feel like I was interrogating him but I had to know, so I asked: “Who had the boat for all those years in Hay River before you bought it?"
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Well if the father of this guy brought it to Hay River twenty years before you bought it, then it was in Hay River for twenty years, who had it then?”
“Hmm, I don’t know… never gave it much thought” he replied. “But why are you so interested?” His suspicions were becoming more evident by the way he put emphases on the word "you" in his questioning. I figured I would tell him some of the story, but leave out the part about it being swindled from my mom, hoping that this would put him more at ease.
“Well” I began, “I know something about this boat, it once belonged to my father, in Ontario more than forty years ago. We kept it in Lake Simcoe; I haven’t seen it since I was sixteen.” I watched his reaction as I told the story. I went on and explained the story of how relevant the boat was to my life and how incredible it was that it ended up in Yellowknife. He was very interested to hear the some of the history of the boat, and I was glad to tell him all I knew.
I also told him that the original name that I had known the boat by was “The Lady Susan” and that it had belonged to the federal finance minister of Canada; Mr. Marchant, “I can’t recall his first name.” I told him.
"Probably Guy or Eve!" he interjected with a laugh. I also explained the significance of its current name, “Sally Look’. He was quite intrigued, however I felt for certain he was expecting me to accuse him of stealing it at any breath, but I didn't mention that part of the story. After a while he offered too give me a tour of the boat, pointing out all the details of the work he had put into her. But the whole time he seemed uneasy, as if the taint of it being stolen from a widow was still strong in his nostrils, I was sure he knew more than he was letting on. I left Yellowknife and hoped he would contact me so I could buy back my dads boat, but it seemed unlikely.

The boat was now going down more by the stern; the angle of the upside down bunk was getting steeper in that direction. Now I had to prop my foot up against the bulkhead to keep from sliding down the length of the bunk and into the water rising at the foot of the bed. Fear was becoming more difficult to control; the sense of dread was at times overwhelming. There was now no denying it, I was going to die and part of me, and some subconscious part was reacting to that fact and I had no control over it. I was ready to face death, but the dying part still troubled me, and I fought against the onslaught of panic. All I could think of were times of gasping for air, how terrifying it was to be choking on something as a small child. The horrible feeling of being unable to draw a breath, is that what my last moments of life would be like? If so, I was not looking forward to it.
They say that when your about to die your whole life flashes before your eyes, I don’t know, but it did seem that I was remembering great details of things I had long since forgotten. It was as if my mind was searching for anything to think of so it could ignore the inevitable. Like how the anticipation of a good thing is always better than the thing hoped for, so was the inverse true? That is to say that the anticipation of death seemed worse than death it self, or at least I hoped that was true. To have just died in my sleep, to have been caught in the night asleep and drowned before I even awoke that would have been so much better. So this is how it ends… I thought to myself.
I had asked the question for that statement first when I was less than six years old. I think we must have had a pet die or something and I realized that some day I was going to die. I thought, Wow, someday I am going to die. What chain of events leads a man from birth till death? These were the questions that I had wondered about since then. Perhaps that’s why coincidence and irony intrigued me so much. I don’t know why but often I would see something or pass some point that at one time I had considered insignificant, and then find that a turn of events had made that very thing which I had not considered become prominent
Memories came flooding back to me; so clear it was as if I was there again. I tried to piece together the chain of events in my life that brought me over four thousand miles from where I was born to then just leave me bobbing in the Bering Strait waiting to die. How pointless my life seemed to be, I had done things, but nothing significant, the world would have gotten along fine having never known me, every one thinks that they must be here for some purpose. Often I have heard someone tell of how they escaped death by some miracle, and so they are convinced for the rest of their lives that they were spared for some great purpose, only to die in obscurity.
I have never had any such delusions, but at least I hoped that my presence would some how bend the span of time, change in some way the things of chance, at least in some way, some random difference would be detected. But it didn't seem like it, I tried to recall if I could spot anything that my being there would have changed. If nothing, at least it had been a good run; I recalled the pleasant memories first.

It was a summer’s day, the sky was bluer than it’s ever been, I remember we were all piled into my dads Cadillac, we were pulling out of the driveway, and we were so overloaded that the frame would scrape on the ground as we crossed the curb. The loud scrape noise would shut everyone up for a moment and then the din of children yelling and fussing would start up again. To say din is putting it mildly, how my dad could stand the racket I never knew. We were off to the cottage, leaving Saturday morning, just like we did every weekend. It seemed to take forever to get there, we would stop for ice cream cones at about the halfway point, two for a nickel, and even so my mother would complain about the cost. Shortly after getting the ice cream cones we would drive through Port Bolster, I would always say it out loud, "Port Bolster" I don’t know why; I guess I just liked the way it sounds.
Eventually, we would make it to Beaverton, anticipation was building now, and I knew we were close to the cottage. Heading north for about fifteen minutes out of Beaverton we would come to a long sweeping turn to the right in the highway, this was magic time! We didn’t turn; we would drive straight and onto another road that was hidden by the banking of the highway for the turn. This road was in a different world, when we got onto this road everything was different, it was as if that big banked sweeping highway turn guarded this world from the outside world.
I would see the lake, “Look! White caps!” someone would shout. The blue water was dotted with white caps foaming atop the largest of the waves. Everything was different; the blue water was a color of blue unseen anywhere else. The air smelled different, it was fresh and clean. We would drive along parallel to a set of railway tracks that followed the shoreline. Then we would come to the end of it; turn left over the tracks, to our left was the sandy beach, filled with people enjoying the sun and the surf. My mother would always comment, “what with the way that the guys are growing there hair so long you cant tell the boys from the girls” I could never figure out what she meant, I would think to myself; That's easy, you just look for the bumps on their chest.
Then we would wind along the lakeshore road, cross one bridge over the river, and then to the swing bridge over the canal, sometimes it would be open, and some nice boat would cruise through. Then we would continue to follow the lakeshore, seeing all kinds of boats dashing to and fro on the water. As far as your eye could see there were people enjoying life, swimming in the lake, water skiing, barbecuing behind their cottages, or walking barefoot on the hot tarmac of the road. There was not a sad soul in sight. This is what life is all about, life works here, and it works well!
We would then turn right and drive away from the lake for about a mile, until we came to a little gravel single lane road, we would turn right and about a half-mile down the road we would come to the tree line. There was a hill down into the forest at the tree line, the trees all shrouded the road from the sun, and as you drove down that little hill the temperature would drop about five degrees, by this time we all had the windows down, the air-conditioning no longer important. The sweet smell of cedar and pine and spruce sap filled the car. About a half-mile into the bush we would come to the raised railroad tracks, these were the same tracks that paralleled the lake. They were raised to give enough height under the bridge where they crossed the canal. It formed a huge long berm that acted like a wall that protected us even more from the civilized world. Then we would wind along the gravel road to our cottage on the Talbot River.
This road was new; I could still recall when we just drove through the corn knocking a path to our cottage. Being a city slicker dad knocked a new path every trip, until Harry Furnas, the farm owner asked us if we could just knock one path through the corn, rather than several. Somewhere in the middle of that cornfield was an old CPR rail line, mom was always worried we would get stuck crossing those tracks because the car would scrape its undercarriage hard against the rails. But those tracks are long gone, and a deep ditch that follows the new road protects the cornfield.
Arriving at the cottage was an incredible feeling, all the fussing and carrying on going on in the car would stop and the doors would fly open. A half a dozen or more kids that had been crammed into the car came charging out, making a beeline for the river. Down the bank to the waters edge the first one to get there would dip their hand into the water and they would shriek “The waters warm!”
At this mom or dad would say “Help with the boxes before you go swimming!” but no one ever listened, and mom would carry the boxes in herself. I recall sometimes swimming till dark all weekend long, in fact sometimes we were still wet when it came time to pile in the car for the ride home. I would stay in the water so long that I thought I might grow fins, but that never happened, further proving Darwin wrong.
My very first goal I had set for myself as a small child was on the bank of that river. We were not allowed to go swimming anytime we wanted until we could swim all the way across the river and back. So my goal was to one day cross that river. The river was twenty feet deep and over ninety feet wide; it was about four feet deep till about fifteen feet from shore and then it dropped off to twenty feet over a shelf. We called this the cliff, “Don’t go over the cliff” we would say to new comers wading out into the water that were unsure of there swimming ability.
One weekend, encouraged on by my brother Dan, I made my attempt to swim all the way across the river; I did not think I was ready. Unknown to anyone was the fact that I had not really been able to swim at all yet. I would try to swim, but actually I was just pretending. I could scarcely swim two strokes without sinking; I was always pushing off the bottom in the shallows with my right foot just to keep my head above water. Dan had even asked if I was doing that, and I told him "No." So Dan said he thought I could swim good enough to try. So off I went unsure of what was really going to happen, I was the only one who knew I could not really swim. Dan swam along side to rescue me if some thing went wrong, but I made it, there and back! Now I could swim anytime I wanted! This was the first freedom I had ever earned. I felt that I had grown more in that weekend than I ever had before in my life, this was a real milepost for me.

Shivering in the cold dark wetness of my father’s boat, my now would-be tomb; was it ironic or was it just fitting that my father’s boat would kill me? I couldn’t tell, maybe neither, maybe both. All those years ago could anyone have predicted this? That happiest day in Keswick when I climbed aboard for the first time, was there even a whisper in the air that I had climbed aboard my own tomb? I don’t know why, but I always think of things like that, like there must be some hidden meaning in it all.
Those damn banker types, I could not help but blame them for the predicament I am in, I had planned everything so well, trust them to foul it all up. It really rubbed me the wrong way that some fat suit that pushed paper all day flying a desk could cause so much real world trouble for me. Because of them I was sitting in the dark shivering and now running out of oxygen. It was getting hard to breathe; that is to say each breath was getting less and less refreshing. Think! I have to think; where can I find oxygen? What about the drawers on the galley counter across from the bunk, maybe there was air trapped in them? I reached across in the dark, everything was upside down, and the boat was rocking in the swells, it was hard to stay orientated. I had to immerse part of my body into the ice cold water to do it but I was able to feel my way to one of the drawers and pull it open, all the stuff in it fell out, after all it was upside down. I managed to stick my face under the drawer, immersing more of my body into the water, and take a breath. Instantly I could tell that there was some good air in there. I was able to get about six good breaths out of that drawer, holding them in and slowly exhaling to get the maximum amount of “life minutes” out each breath.
There was only one good drawer that was above the water and I exhausted its air supply faster than I had hoped. Most of the galley storage is above the counter and in a cubby beside the galley and so was now all under water, and there would be no air pockets down there. I tried the cubby that was beside the galley and was able to find an air pocket that should hold me for at least five or ten minutes, maybe longer if I stay calm.
I was nearly totally immersed in the cold water now, and so I was shivering uncontrollably, I clamped my jaw tight to keep my teeth from chattering, and before long my jaw muscles were tight and sore. I could not last much longer, perhaps only minutes before I would succumb to the cold. Then the boat began to tilt, at first it was hard to notice because it was dark and I was partially buoyant in the water. I thought some thing in the boat was leaning over onto me, and then I realized that it was the whole boat moving. Then it moved fairly quickly, the stern sank, causing me to slide from my spot and submerge under the water. I clambered up, at first totally unsure what way was up. Then my head broke the surface. I drew a breath, it was poor air, and I did not get the amount of relief that I was hoping for. Now the boat was bobbing in the water stern down with only the bow sticking above the sea.
My head hit against the door of the head, the head is located at the very bow of the boat. I hoped that I would be able to open the head door and find more air. I managed to find the doorknob and turn it, the door fell open, but it would not open all the way, floating debris and my body was in the way. To get onto the other side of the door so it would swing past me I had to submerge myself and pull down on the door and squeeze up beside it before it trapped me down under the water. The door would not hang open, since it hit the surface of the water when it swung open. I had manually submerge it and hold it down so that it was open wide enough for me to squeeze through. I managed to get by it and poke my head up out of the water, the door started to float up again and trap me and I was beginning to slide down lower into the water.
Fortunately I was able get my arm up and grab the rim of the toilet. Pulling my self up with one arm and holding the door down with the other I tried to wiggle through the opening, but like a one way cog on a gear, the door resisted my ascension into the head. The cold water was causing my chest muscles to tighten; I rested for a minute as I hung by one arm. I forced myself to relax; I took a long deep breath, the head never smelled so good. I pulled myself up into the small cramped space of the head and reached down and found the doorknob and was able to pull the door shut and latch it. It felt surprisingly warm in the head, like all the warm air had been trapped in there.
As I lie exhausted and cold on the door of the head I tried to steady my breathing. I knew it was all futile, I knew that I was going to die no matter what I did. But I also knew that I would soon be standing in front of my maker, and somehow I was sure he was watching the drama of my plight and I wanted to put on a good show. As I lay shivering on that door I knew that I should not die without first forgiving those damn bankers, God would require that much of me. I pondered the thought of it: Can I forgive them and still blame them? Anyhow there was no way I was going to forgive them a minute sooner than I had to, I figure I still got at least twenty minutes of life left in me, they can wait.
I was not shivering so much any more, I knew this was not good, but it did seem warmer in the small space of the head, and it was certainly dryer. I got to think not give up; I will not yet lay down here and wait to die. I have always had a mechanical mind, and when in trouble I was well practiced at putting it in high gear. What do I have to work with? The only thing in here is a toilet. There was a pump on the toilet, operated by a long handle. It was a dual chamber diaphragm pump, when you pump the handle, the one chamber pumps the waste in the toilet to the holding tank, the other chambers pumps raw seawater into the toilet bowl to rinse it out at the same time.
All I had to do was pump on the handle. Hopefully the raw seawater intake of the pump would be above the water because of the way the boat was bobbing stern down. Would it pump fresh air in instead of water? It gave me a faint hope. There was something I was not sure of, that was if any part of the boat was still above water. For all I could tell we were on our way to the bottom of the ocean stern first, or was I at some submerged equilibrium, neither floating nor sinking, but just hanging under the surface of the thick dark sea?
Well here goes nothing! I thought. I gave the handle a pump; a spray of water came out of the toilet and soaked me. My heart sank, At least it’s not frozen, and I hadn’t thought of that but luckily it was not frozen, luckily that is, if the next pump on the handle pulled air. I pulled again but got more water. My heart sank; was I doomed? I had to analyze the situation; could it be just what is in the line? If I was under water any depth or sinking my ears should have felt the increase of the air pressure as it is compressed…also the water should have sprayed in with more pressure...wouldn’t it? Or would it balance it self-out? I couldn’t tell I must have been getting low on oxygen.
Just pump the handle again that’s all I can do! So I do, and again more water comes but then the handle frees up some and moves more easily. I pump it vigorously, "Fresh air! There is fresh air coming out of the toilet!" I mumbled to no one but myself. I never thought I would ever have said that anything fresh could come out of a toilet!
I positioned my self around so that I could lie on the closed door of the head Using the toilet for a pillow I rested my head against the cold rim. With my right arm I was able to comfortably reach up and stroke the pump with the handle. "That fuzzy toilet seat cover seems like it would have been a pretty good idea right now." My mind imagined some one taunting me. My whole life I hated fuzzy toilet seat covers…"stupid poetic justice" I muttered.
While I stroked the handle of the pump I was unsure if it was taking more air for me to stroke the pump than it was bringing in, I guess I would find out soon enough. I could feel the terror of my situation begin to tighten its grip. My breathing was becoming shallow and quick; I had to live for the moment, even for that very second, to look to the future brought on panic. I only found comfort by thinking of the past it seemed that my mind was quite able to provide me with distraction. Somehow, my memory was very clear, it was as though my life was flashing by in front of my eyes at great speed and vivid detail, but I had the luxury of being able to grab at those moments as they flew by and live them all over again. Perhaps I could live my whole life over right there in the head of that boat. I closed my eyes and immersed myself in the theatre of my own memories; this gave me great comfort.

It was dark and someone was pulling me up out of my slumber from where I was curled up in the back of my dad's car. It was my mother, "Come on now, were here," she said softly as I felt the damp night air rush in through the open car door. She sat me up in the seat to ease me into consciousness. I could smell the river, I inhaled deeply to take it all in, we were at the cottage! I stepped out of the car and sunk my foot into the soft dewy grass; rubbing the sleep from my eyes I could sea the glow of a quarter moon shimmering on the still surface of the river. I staggered toward the cottage door, but my mother stopped me before I could go inside; "you better go pee first"
She directed me toward a small tree that was standing in the middle of the lawn. "Here just go by the tree," she suggested. I swayed and struggled to keep my balance, the sound of millions of crickets and dozens of bullfrogs serenaded me as I relieved myself, she was right, I did need to go pee
My father had come home after working the nightshift at McLean Hunter and decided we should to go to the cottage. My mother had scooped me up and loaded me in the car while I was asleep. I loved it when that happened; it was such a novelty to arrive at the cottage in the middle of the night. Just being awakened in the middle of the night was something unknown to me, and so it added to the sense of novelty. I can still see the silhouette of the treetops against the night sky. Filled with billions of stars, the damp dew on the grass between my toes, and the smell of the moist warm air wafting off the river, and the croak of hundreds of bullfrogs, nearly drowned out by the thousands of cricket songs, it has stayed with me my whole life. During the time of this writing, in this place, it is images like that what sustains me, without that memory I might have gone mad by now. Do mothers know these things?
As she put me to bed and I got under the blankets I could feel they were cold, or damp, I could never tell. I would say; "Mom it’s wet."
But she would feel it and say; “No it's just still cool, it will warm up." I would fall asleep thinking of how exciting it would be to wake up and find myself at the cottage in the morning.
I woke up early; mom was getting a small fire going in the old-fashioned wood cook stove to make breakfast. I went out side and onto the dock where our cedar strip boat was tied up, the air was still cool but the sun was nice and warm. I don’t recall how old I would have been, but this was long before the Lady Susan arrived on the scene, I was less than four years old, give or take, but no older. I sat on the dock with my feet rocking the boat, and I imagined what it would be like driving it. I would put the shifter into reverse; I knew exactly how that was done. Hold the wheel straight, then turn it right hand down, this would swing the motor to the right. The propeller would pull us back slowly, smoothly, now begin to steer the other way, left hand down, then shift it into forward before you went to far, apply a little throttle and away we would go. I would then repeat the whole daydream a dozen times as I sat there. Years later, when I was allowed to drive the boat for the fist time they said I was a natural, I would never tell anyone, but I knew I was not, I had years of practice. The peace I felt sitting on the end of that dock was a kind that can never be matched, at the time, it was impossible to know that. The warmth of the sun on my face would never again feel so good.
The silence of the morning was broken by the sounds of my sisters Nancy, and Lynn and Cathy racing my big brother Dan to the water. “Last one in is a rotten egg!” they would shriek. "Then splash!" The water would boil at their bounding and leaping and jumping. Then slap! "O’ belly flop!" Some one would shout as one of them miscalculated the correct water entry trajectory. This did not slow anyone down for long though, and the splashing and diving and jumping would continue. It didn’t take too long before I was at my mother telling her I wanted to go swimming.
“Can one of you guys watch him if I let him go in?” She would ask. For a moment all the splashing and carrying on would cease. When the last drop of water had landed and the girls had removed the hair that had washed down from covering their face, I was caught in extreme anticipation. They looked like they were having way too much fun to want to be bothered with me, and I was fully expecting a not so enthusiastic reply. There was silence as they caught their breath, then came the reply “Yeah, sure!”
It was then a mad dash for the cottage to get my bathing suit on. I charged into the cottage and my little sister Shirley asked “Where you goin?”
“SWIMMING” I would shout with great emphasis.
"I’m goin too!" she would squeal in an excited 'or else' kind of tone. Who could blame her; this was swimming!
"Just jump all the way in!" my big brother Dan would say, “Going in slow like that is the worst thing you can do!” My big brother Dan was very smart; he knew everything. So I jumped in, and as usual, he was right.
I had to swim, or at least try to swim, parallel to the shoreline, always in fear of, and careful not to go over “the cliff”. I longed for the day I could swim at right angles to the shoreline. I would kick and stroke my arms in a swimming motion, then as I felt myself sinking I would lower one leg and push off the bottom to get me back up to the surface, if I strayed over the edge of the cliff I knew I was a goner. At some point we would get out of the water, usually not for very long though.
Behind the cottage were two opportunistically placed trees they were very tall and straight. There was a beam attaching the two together, I was sure this was the highest swing set in the world. Someone was pushing me; “You want to go higher?" they would ask.
"Yes!" I would vociferate; everyone else screamed or shrieked, but I was always slightly more sophisticated. In response to my beckoning they would push even harder.
“Do you want to go over the waterfalls?” Dan would ask. I had never heard of such a thing, they were pushing me higher than I think anyone has ever been pushed, I was grinning so hard it felt like someone was carrying me by the corners of my mouth, and; "Do you want to go over the waterfalls?" That sounded as if there was even something more exciting yet, it seemed hardly possible! I didn’t know what over the waterfalls was, but if it was even more, wanted it.
"Yes!" I beckoned, not sure if they could hear me while I was traveling so fast. I squeezed the chains on the swing as tight as I could; I was experiencing sensations I had never known before. Then it would happen, over the waterfalls! Dan would, instead of just push me, he would run with the push, and keep pushing as he ran for the whole length of the arc of the swing, then as I began to rise out of his reach he would give a mighty shove! If it were not for the fact that that swing was chained to those trees I would have made orbit, there is no doubt about that! Dan was very strong.
As the swing traveled back in its pendulum swing the world raced away from me, racing from my peripheral to a diminishing point in front of me. Everything was a blur, at some point I would become motionless and weightless in the air, and my stomach would rise up in an exciting kind of inward feeling like I had never had before, kind of like a tickle. I could not help but gasp, and at the same time laugh. The longer I hung there the faster the excitement would rise inside of me and I already was at the boiling point. At the exact moment when I had had more excitement than any man or beast could stand, the chains would become slacker, the little wooden board of a seat would become loose under my bottom and it would start to slip out from under me.
Time froze at that moment; I was beyond the sensory capacity of my little four-year-old body. Then the chains would jerk tight, jolting me down into the wooden board of a seat; my hands would feel the shock of the links clanging into one another. "More! Higher!" I would shout. We played on that swing all day. I am sure we took turns, but it felt like it was my turn the whole time, I don’t recall waiting my turn at all.
It was getting later in the day, my big brother Ron showed up from somewhere and he was cutting up big old logs and tree branches and building a bon fire, or is it bomb fire, I never knew. He was piling up the logs and chopping kindling, it was going to be the best fire ever, and I knew that for sure! No sooner had the daylight faded and the fire was roaring. The sparks flying upward against the dark night sky was mesmerizing; the cedar logs crackling in the fire mingled with pine and spruce and that magical white tree, the birch. They created their own distinct aroma, its distinctness unmatchable, like this day was.
Ron was whittling up some fine hot dog roasting sticks to cook our hot dogs and burn the marshmallows over the fire with. My mother came out of the cottage with some marshmallows and wieners. “Wait till the fire dies down! You can’t cook them on that big of a fire!” she would be voicing over crackling of the flames. My mother didn’t know nothing. Even I at four years old knew that if a small fire were good for cooking, a big fire would be much better. But we would humor her and wait till she went back into the cottage to get the fixing’s before we would stick our hot dogs and marshmallows into the roaring fire.
From way down the road came Mr. Furnas, he walked into the light of the bonfire, my dad was glad to see him, and gave him an enthusiastic greeting. Mr. Furnas was the man we had bought the cottage property from. He was a man that was impossible to offend. That should say it all. My dad always spoke highly of him, he always treated us with incredible grace, and we treated him as if he was graceful, that is to say, we probably tried his patience on many occasions.
“The first six rows of that cattle corn in the field beyond the forest edge is sweet corn, your welcome to help ya self if ya like.” he told us.
Before another word was said, Ron yells; "Great let's go!" and Dan and Ron, with me tagging along behind were on our way into the bush to make our way to the sweet corn. "Wait!" my mother called out to us; take a bag or something to carry it with!"
"Naw we got it okay" Ron called back to her as we disappeared into the forest.
The forest was darker than even the night was. There was no telling what kinds of creatures were waiting for us in there. But Ron just walked right into the bush without even so much as a slight restraint in his stride, Ron was scared of nothing, and for good reason, no mater what was in that forest, he was tougher. He knew it I knew it and Dan knew it, and if something messed with us they would know it too. Yeah I would like to see some old bear or wolf try an' mess with us, Ron would tear them to pieces!
We came back to the fire and the flames had died down a bit, Mr. Furnas was already gone. We each had an armload of corn on the cob and we dropped it all in a pile, it all looked so enchanting in the flickering light of the fire. We began to shuck the corn, is that right? Shuck? Anyway, we tore the husk off each cob, my mother came out with the biggest pot she had; it was more like a big washtub than it was a pot. Ron took it down to the river's edge; I followed him and watched him fill the tub with the river water. He submerged one corner of it and the river water came flooding in, as it did it nearly pulled him into the river. He called Dan to help pull the tub of water out of the river and carry it to the fire. Dan grabbed one of the handles and Ron the other and the two of them carried the pot to the fire. The Talbot River must be the heaviest of all water anywhere, but not too heavy for my big brothers.
My mother would stab at the corn with a fork in the boiling water till she hooked one and pulled it out; “Who wants this one?” she would call out. Before long all the food was gone and we would sit around the fire as it burned down into coals.
Ron would begin telling us stories, but these were not ghost stories, they were true. He would tell of the before time, when the Peg Three was still cruising proud and tall, when we first came to this place we now called cottage. Ron and my big brother Alex would be sleeping in the Peg Three while it was tied up in front of what is now the cottage. This was before we had a cottage there, when the place was no more than a bunch of thorn bushes and trees. There was no one else around, the river was largely undiscovered by the civilized world and we were the first ones here. Except for the famous explorer John Talbot, but he didn’t stay long, and he died long ago.
That particular day though, Alex was out in his small rowboat with his three-horse Viking engine on it. “The three horse Viking was one of the most efficient power to weight ratio out board motors ever built,” he would say, getting side tracked from his original story, and then we would interrupt him to get him back on track. I think he did that on purpose to get audience participation. What a showman!
Anyway Alex is out in his boat, and coming in from the lake down The Trent canal, he has caught a few fish for dinner and they are still squirming on the bottom of the boat. Alex has added a few buckets of lake water into the boat to keep the fish alive and fresher longer. It was about sunset, or even a little after dusk.
Then Alex notices along the shoreline something moving in the trees. At first he is not too concerned with it, but as he travels farther he sees that it is still with him. He watches intently for it in the dying light, and sees it yet again, this time it comes to the waters’ edge and lets out a low sort of growl. Alex is shocked to see what manner of beast it is. "It’s the dreaded wolverine!" Ron says in his most portentous sounding voice.
"What's a wolfereen?" I asked innocently, having never heard of such a thing: As it turns out the wolverine is the most ferocious, spiteful, vicious, cruel, brutal, nasty, fierce, violently aggressive animal on the planet! It never forgets a wrong, can remove the firing pin from your rifle while you sleep, can operate doorknobs, open locks and disable automobile engines to thwart all possible means of escape. “
"…And that’s why you never see them in any zoos!” He concluded. He was right; I hadn’t seen them in any zoos. That’s why Ron's stories were so credible; he always backed them up with concrete evidence.
As Alex got closer to where the Peg Three was tied up he realized that he did not want this thing following him home, "…so he pulled out the blunder bust!" I loved it whenever a story got to the point where the blunder bust was pulled out. No matter what the problem, the blunder bust could solve it! Alex had invented many things in his life: A mailbox that would swing out of the way as a snowplow came; a carburetor that gave his Chrysler nearly seventy miles to the gallon; a surge braking system for trailers, and a process of electroplating lead type so that it would last longer during the printing process for newspapers. He built the cottage that we are using now when he was only fourteen, in fact, that is why he and Ron were up here while all this was going on. He also built “the blunder bust”.
The blunder bust as you might have guessed was a crude gun; it consisted of a steel pipe with a cap on one end. Alex had poured hot lead down this pipe with the cap on it and laid the pipe on about a sixty-degree angle while the lead cooled. This provided a ramp at the plugged end of the pipe; He drilled a hole on the high side of the lead ramp.
Then he fashioned a crude wooden stock for it. Now at that time, the late fifties, it was possible for any kid to buy large firecrackers called canon crackers. He would slide a canon cracker down the barrel wick first. The ramped lead in the but of the barrel would tend to guide the wick towards the drilled hole, then using a bobby pin from mom’s ample collection for her hair; he would fish the wick out exposing it for ignition. Next he would jam a large lead slug down the barrel for a projectile. Pouring hot lead into moulds that had been made in plaster of Paris by using the shaft of a broom handle that fit the pipe barrel snugly made the slugs. Needless to say, it was a large caliber weapon.
Enough was enough, Alex already had the blunder bust loaded and at the ready, all he had to do was point and light the wick, wait for the wick to burn down and boom! It would fire. It was not the most accurate gun and he missed, still, he nearly killed it! When that big slug hit the dirt it was like a small mortar blast. This effectively sent the wolverine running. When Alex got back he told Ron all about what had happened.
"We better be careful tonight!" Alex cautioned Ron. "I think I might have made that wolverine pretty mad, it might come after us while were sleeping tonight!" Ron knew all about the dreaded wolverine. Alex had told him all about how it could sneak up and pull you right out of your bed while you were sleeping, Ron knew that the danger was real; the relentless wolverine would be looking for revenge. It would not have liked what Alex had done to it.
Before going to bed onboard the Peg Third, Alex loaded a cannon cracker and a slug into the blunder bust and set it at the ready. Later that night, Alex was sleeping soundly, but Ron was wide-awake on the top bunk of the Peg Third, he was carefully listening, in case the wolverine did come after them. Then Ron heard it jump onto the deck and walk around through the ceiling above him. As it walked back and forth on the deck he could hear the clatter of its long sharp claws that scratched on the hard surface of the deck with each footstep. Ron could feel the boat rock from side to side as it moved about on the deck, looking for a way inside. It was making low growling sounds as it walked and was sniffing the air, stopping momentarily directly above where Ron was sleeping. Ron was sure that it was just a matter of time before it decided to try to come inside cabin of the boat. He heard the front hatch rattle, he knew the wolverine could unlock it in minutes; he had to act fast.
Alex was still sleeping, so Ron grabbed the blunder bust, and moved as smoothly and quietly as he could. He didn't want the wolverine catching onto what he was doing. He slid the barrel out the porthole, which was at his bunk. He could not see anything, but he lit the wick and waited until the gun went off, the slug impacted the water about ten feet from the boat, there was a huge spray! It was like a torpedo had gone off out side his porthole. Immediately you could hear the claws of that wolverine digging into the deck to get as much traction as it could to jump off the boat and get away as fast as possible. Alex was in such a deep sleep that he never even woke up.
"So that scared him away for good huh?" I asked.
"Oh no, they never forget, they can hold a grudge, for their whole life! That’s why Alex can't come up here very often anymore." He was right again; Alex did not come up here anymore.
"That was a long time ago right?" I asked.
"Yeah, more than five years ago now."
"But how would the wolverine recognize him?" I asked.
"By our smell, a wolverine couldn’t tell if it was actually Alex, but by their sense of smell, but they could tell if you were in the same family, and a wolverine doesn’t care, that’s close enough for him, it will just attack and get its revenge! There are stories of old trappers and railway construction men that get a wolverine after them and it just won’t quit! One guy a wolverine was after got away, and the wolverine couldn’t find him, so it went right to his brothers home in the city and killed him instead, that was one angry wolverine!" Ron always added references to other actual events that he must have researched at some time, and so, we knew that these examples proved that what he was saying was true.
"This ones not that mad is it?"
"No I don’t think so…if you haven’t heard any strange noises at night when your sleeping we should be ok" Ron reassured us. I thought back, there were times when I had heard something outside in the middle of the night. Mom always said it was just the wind or something, but what would she know? I didn't want to worry Ron, so I never told him about it.
"It's probably died of old age by now anyway right?" I hoped.
"No it's still alive, I am sure of that," he answered. "But don’t worry about, it, the best thing to do is when your going to sleep at night…cause that’s when they like to get you… while your sleeping; just lie very still and quiet, and listen to every little sound. Make sure that it’s not sneaking up on you or trying to unlock the door!" I took this piece of advice to heart; I knew Ron wanted me to be as safe as possible. No longer would I carelessly drift off to sleep, I would first listen to every sound, and try to imagine if it was possible that a wolverine might be sneaking up on us.
As moiré would have it, that very night I heard it walking around outside the cottage looking for a way in, the wolverine was being very quiet, but I listened carefully and I could hear it sneaking around outside in the dark. I woke Ron up. "It’s out side!" I would whisper to him so the wolverine wouldn’t hear me.
Ron would listen for a moment and then say, "I don’t hear anything", and then go back to sleep. This animal was diabolical! Everything Ron had said about it must be true, because it even knew when to stay quiet! My only comfort was a shaky one, before we had gone to bed Ron leaned the old blunder bust against the door, "I’ll leave this here against the door, the wolverine should smell it and when he does he will remember it!"
"And it will scare him away?" I asked
"Hopefully, but you never know how one of those wolverine’s are gonna react, it might send it into a blind rage, and come charging into attack us all…I figure it’s about a fifty-fifty chance which way he would go."
Fifty-fifty I thought. I hoped that that was good; I had not yet learned that level of math calculation. I lay still in my bunk, it was pitch black, I hoped that the blunder bust smell would scare him off rather than send him into a blind raging attack like wolverines were so prone to do. I was terrified, every twig that moved, or rustle of wind sent me imagining that the wolverine was staging an assault. I somehow must have convinced myself that the blunder bust smell would scare it off, the way Ron described the blast that the blunder bust made when they fired it should scare anything off. I was hiding under the covers; terrified to peek out; yet comforted by the blunder bust leaning against the door I somehow fell asleep.

As the fire burned down and its final glowing embers lost their hue, Ron's story telling along with the conflagration subsided. We realized that all our efforts to keep the fire going any longer were futile. With the pyre barely glowing now, our only source of light was almost gone. The dark of the night closed in on us, and with it all the things the light had held back. The cloak of darkness closed in on us, and now the river, and the trees that had brought us such a lissome like quality to our lives during the day, grew into ominous figures hiding unknown harm.
Then from inside the cottage I could see the glow of a coal oil lamp that someone was moving about. It gave me some comfort as the lamp swung to and fro, and it cast its golden glow into the night, sweeping its creamy luminescence across the face of the forest as the lamp swung and cast its anti-shadow. Illuminating the windows of our quaint cottage and painting a picture simple nostalgia.
"Bring me some light out here!" my dad called out to my older sister Margaret, who was the one carrying the coal oil lamp.
On the porch of the cottage I could here the sound of a repetitive squeaking sound so I went to see what it was. On the porch Dan and my Dad were trying to get a Coleman lantern going. They were pumping at a little plunger pump that was built into the fuel tank of the lamp, and it was making a squeaking sound with each stroke. This was the first time we had a lantern like that. The lamps we already have are coal oil lamps, and are very old-fashioned looking. This Coleman lamp was much more modern looking. But I could not see the point of it; it seemed to take an awful lot of fuss to get it going. Then my dad held a match in the opening under the glass globe of the lantern.
I can still smell the sulfur of the wooden match that was hanging in the air, and Every time I smell that smell, it brings me back to this day. I wish I could strike a match just once more before I die, it would be like my own little time machine. Then it lit, more like ignited; there must have been way too much gas in there! It lit up and my dad's hands appeared consumed in the flames. My dad jumped back and rubbed his hands together to get the burning fuel off his hands; but he said the he was okay. Whenever something like that happened, for some reason I always had the thought that the reason dad was not too panicked, and how he knew exactly what to do, was because of the war. "He must have had much worse things happen to him in the war, that’s why he was not scared" I would think to myself.
The flame burned all the spilled fuel off the lamp without causing any more trouble, and the mantle began to glow. And what a glow! It was spectacular! Well out with the old and in with the new! I thought to my self. This was the conception of a theme that would develop through my whole life. It seemed I was born at a magic time, for centuries all they had were old things, and now I was part of the generation that would do away with all that and bring in the new. That Coleman lamp burned brighter than all of the coal lamps combined, I felt a sense of pride, as if to say "Well done" to the people who made that lamp, knowing that they were my peers.
Later the next day as we left the cottage to go back home we came to the crossing at the lower tracks, and there was a train coming, so my dad stopped the car as we waited for it to pass. The noise of it was tremendous, and there was smoke and steam surging out of it from everywhere on the old locomotive. It was dark and dull in color, nothing shiny. There were big mechanical parts reciprocating and turning to the rhythmic beat of steam as it blasted out the sides. You could see the old engineer in his dirty hat and scruffy clothes standing at the controls of this beast, he would give us no more than a quick nod, which was all he had time for.
I did not find the machine particularly beautiful, as one would later find them so displayed in museums. This was a dirty, well-used old machine, the railing down along the side of it was sagging between its supports, and there were stains on the tank from smoke and rust revealing its age. In all it, looked too busy, couldn’t they smooth that thing out a bit?
The train passed and we came to the upper set of tracks, and as fate would have it another train was coming. But this one was different, it had a much different sounding whistle, well, it was not a whistle at all, it was a horn. "Hey look at this kids," my dad would say. "It’s one of those new diesel engines!" Now this was more like it, it was clean shiny, smooth straight sides painted bright red and white in vertically angled stripes, no billowing steam or smoke, nice consistent rumble, no flailing parts, a nice neat package. In the window of the engine was a young clean handsome man; he gave us a wave and a smile as he passed by. We all waved back and he waved back again until he was too far away to see anymore. Like the Coleman lantern was to the old coal oil lamp, my peers could do it better. That’s how I would do it! We must be way smarter than all the previous generations; they couldn’t make anything work without putting way too many parts on it!

I was feeling quite warm now, the effort of stroking the pump continuously was warming me up, and with the door closed under me I was drying off a little, and the small space of the head must have been holding some of my body heat in.
The sleeve of my wet sweater was bunching up at the elbow cutting down the blood circulation and making my right arm very sore. I tried reaching across with my left arm to operate the pump, but in the tight space, my left arm had no way of getting leverage on the pump handle to operate it. I could not keep this up continually, I had to rest my arm; maybe I got enough air in here already for a half-hour or so. I hoped. I decided to rest and if I felt I needed fresher air, then I would begin pumping the handle again.