Monkey Beach (4 page)

I didn’t move from under the covers until Mom knocked on my door and said it was time to get my lazy bones out of bed. I told her about the little man and she gave me a hug and said everyone had bad dreams and not to be scared of them—they were just dreams and they couldn’t hurt me.

“But he was here,” I said.

She smoothed my hair. “Some dreams feel very real. Come on, let’s get breakfast.”

Dad came into the house as I was eating my cereal. He plopped a bulging burlap sack on the kitchen floor beside Mom. He looked very pleased with himself as he said, “Happy birthday, Gladys.”

She opened the sack and peered inside. “Albert, you are just too romantic.” She pulled out one of the cockles and balanced it on the back of her hand. “Next year, I want a diamond this big.”

“I can take them back,” he said, his smile growing fainter.

“Don’t be silly,” she said, standing on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “I’m just teasing. It was very thoughtful.”

He wasn’t looking reassured until she kissed him again. When he leaned in for a bigger kiss, I felt it was time to make gagging noises so they wouldn’t get too mushy in front of me.

“Go watch cartoons with Jimmy,” Mom said.

Jimmy had parked himself two feet from the TV and right in the centre and he yelled out “Mom!” when I shoved him over.

“Lisa!” Mom said.

“He’s hogging the TV!”

Later in the morning, while Mom checked the seals on the jars of cockles, the doorbell rang. I jumped up to get it. When I opened the door, I was looking up at a tall, deeply tanned man with black hair pulled back in one long braid.

“Hey, short stuff,” he said. “Your mommy home?”

Mom came up behind me, stopping suddenly. I turned in time to see her smile freeze. “Oh my God.”

The man held out a single pink salmonberry flower. “Surprise.”

She kept staring at his face, mouth opening and closing soundlessly.

“Did I get the day wrong?”

“No, I, I thought you were … I mean, we heard the standoff went, um, well, badly and we thought …” Mom nervous was a new experience for me. I stared as she blushed and stepped back. “Come in,” she said. Then to me, “Go get your dad.”

The man had a loping, bowlegged walk that made
the fringe on his buckskin leather jacket sway as he strolled into the house.

“Dad!” I yelled. “Dad! There’s a man here!”

“I said go, I didn’t say scream,” Mom said, turning a darker shade of red. “Now go get your dad.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Dad said as he bounced up the basement steps. “How many times have I told you not to yell—” He stopped at the entrance to the hallway. The man took two steps and bear-hugged Dad so hard he lifted him off the ground.

“Look at you,” the man said, thumping him back down and holding him at arm’s length. “I heard you had settled down, but I didn’t believe it.”

“Jesus,” Dad said, leaning over like he’d been punched in the stomach. “Jesus.”

“You okay, Al? What’s the matter? What?” the man said.

Dad put his shaking hands over his face and stayed bent over, shuddering. It took me a moment to realize he was crying.

“Go away!” I shouted at the man. “Get out! Go away!”

“Stop it, Lisa,” Mom said.

“Al?” the man said.

Jimmy came running into the hallway. “Daddy?”

Dad wiped his face and said, “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

I pushed myself between them and glared up at the man. “You go away.”

The man knelt down and smiled at me. “You know who I am? I’m your uncle Mick.”

“No, you’re not. Uncle Mick’s in jail.”

The man burst out laughing. After a minute of silence on everyone else’s part, he said as he stood up, “You thought I was in jail? Why the hell’d you think I was in the big house?”

The look Mom gave him was so dark that if she’d given it to me, I’d have been running for my room. Instead, Mick started laughing again. Dad was blinking faster and staring at the floor. I thought Mick was making fun of him and, in an absolute fury, pulled my foot back and gave the man a good, hard kick to the shins. He was howling and hopping so fast that none of my other kicks landed as nicely. Then Dad grabbed me around the waist, picked me up and said, “Enough now.” To Mick, he said, “You want some coffee?”

Mom poured three cups of coffee, and we all sat at the kitchen table. Dad sat at one end, Mom at the other and Mick in the middle. Jimmy stood behind Mom’s chair and wouldn’t come out to say hi. I had a death grip on Dad’s neck and wouldn’t let go, even when Mom told me to bring Jimmy into the living room.

“No,” I said.

“Lisa,” Mom said in her warning tone that meant I was going to get a talking- to when we were alone.

“That’s what we get for naming her after you,” Dad said.

“You named her after me?” Mick said.

“Michael, meet Lisamarie Michelle,” Mom said dryly. “It was supposed to be a touching tribute.”

Uncle Mick reached to shake my hand and I lunged to bite his arm, but he pulled it back just in time. My
teeth snapped together so hard it hurt, like biting down on aluminum.

“Lisa! That’s enough!” Mom said.

“Don’t like you,” I said to Mick.

“God,” Mom said.

“Hey, I’m a good guy, not a bad guy,” Mick said, not the least bit mad. “I’m your daddy’s brother.”

“I was surprised, that’s all.” Dad said, giving me a squeeze to get my attention. “Come on, say you’re sorry for kicking your uncle.”

“No,” I said.

“You think I’d hurt your daddy?” Mick said. “I’d never hurt him.”

“You better not,” I said.

Mick started grinning again. “You should have named her Agnes, after Mother.” When I scowled at him, he added, “ ’Cause she’s a delicate Haisla flower too.”

“Mother,” Dad said, almost letting me go. “Jesus.”

“What? Is she still mad at me? Man, she can hold a grudge.”

“Mick,” Mom said, “she thinks you’re locked up somewhere.”

“Why does everyone think that?”

“They phoned us,” Dad said.

“Who?”

“All your friends. They said you were shot and the FBI took you away.”

Mick’s eyebrows went up. He turned to confirm this with Mom and she nodded.

He sat back in his chair and laughed so hard that the coffee came back up his nose and he started choking. Mom pounded his back. “You could have written.
You could have phoned. But no, that would have been too much trouble—”

“Okay, Gladys, now you’re hurting me,” Mick said, and she stopped hammering. “Jeez, I been kicked and walloped and yelled at, and I haven’t even been home a half-hour. I was safer hiding out in the boonies, for Christ’s sake.”

“Oh, boohoo,” Mom said, sarcastically. “You had us thinking you were being tortured God knows where.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“You never do it on purpose.”

“Enough, enough,” Dad said. “Let’s just figure out a way to tell Mother without giving her a heart attack.”

While Dad and Mick went off to tell Ma-ma-oo the good news, Mom hauled the sack of cockles to the sink and began shucking them, popping cockles into her mouth, humming as she chewed. I was disgusted, imagining the cockles cold and slimy, and said so. Mom laughed, then said the best part was the cockles wiggling in your mouth.

I was afraid to sleep because of the little man’s visit the night before. I lay awake with a stranglehold on Mr. Booboo and the lights turned on. Mom came by, and I pretended to sleep and she shut the light off. My bedroom is above the kitchen and when Mick and Dad returned, I could hear the murmur of conversation, but not the actual words. If I had got out of bed and pressed my ear against the register, I could have heard them, but I was too scared to leave the sanctuary of my covers. I heard the front door open and then Aunt Trudy shrieked. She cried and cried until Uncle Mick said she was ruining his second-best shirt. I fell asleep
to the sound of Mick’s whooping laughter and the smell of coffee and cockle stew.

Now that I think back, the pattern of the little man’s visits seems unwelcomely obvious, but at the time, his arrivals and departures had no meaning. As I grew older, he became a variation of the monster under the bed or the thing in the closet, a nightmare that faded with morning. He liked to sit on the top of my dresser when he came to visit, and he had a shock of bright red hair which stood up in messy, tangled puffs that he sometimes hid under a black top hat. When he was in a mean mood, he did a jerky little dance and pretended to poke at my eyes. The night before the hawks came, he drooped his head and blew me sad kisses that sparkled silver and gold in the dark and fell as soft as confetti.

The morning after Mom’s birthday, as she was jarring the last of the cockles and I was using my blanket as a sleigh down the steps, she asked Dad to take me with him when he went for groceries. The road from Kitamaat Village to town is an eleven-kilometre strip of concrete that winds north along the coast and over steep hills like a roller coaster. It was finished in the late sixties and is patched every year when spring and fall floods eat away at the portions near the cliffs. Before the road was built, people went to town by boat. The town docks were across the channel, so even today, when people go to town, they say, “I’m going across.”

The town of Kitimat, with its different spelling, has a fluctuating population of about ten to twelve thousand, while the village has between seven and eight hundred people. Most people from the village who
work in town travel this road twice a day and know its hairpin turns so well that they say they can drive it blindfolded. After getting his second speeding ticket in a month, Dad was one of those who pushed to get the speed limit raised from fifty kilometres an hour to sixty. When the safety inspector from the department of highways came out to test the road, he drove back and forth four times in a car laden with instruments, then announced that the road wasn’t even safe to drive at fifty kilometres on dry pavement and the speed limit should actually be lowered to forty kilometres an hour.

Dad was driving too fast that day, but I liked the speeds that sent you straining against the seat belt. We stopped at the bank first. “Jesus,” he said when he looked at his updated bankbook.

“Is something wrong?” the teller asked.

“I think there’s been a mistake. There’s a couple more zeros here than there should be.”

“Oh,” the teller said. “Is your brother Michael Hill?”

“Yes.”

“He dropped by this morning. He said he owed you some money. He had your account number.”

Dad shook his head. “He doesn’t owe me anything. Could you give me the exact amount he put in?”

“You want to take it out?”

“Yes.”

“All of it? You’re sure?”

“Very.”

The teller handed Dad a fat envelope, and instead of driving to the grocery store, we stopped in front of a long, run-down series of town houses.

“Stay in the car,” Dad said.

“Don’t want to,” I said.

“Lisa, once, just once, don’t argue with me. Okay? Stay in the car and don’t move—”

“Well, howdy stranger!” Uncle Mick’s voice boomed. I looked up and he was standing bare-chested in a pair of shorts on the porch.

“Stay,” Dad said.

He walked up to Uncle Mick and held out the envelope. Mick shook his head. Dad tried to push the envelope into Mick’s hands, but Mick lifted his arms above his head and dodged out of his way. Dad chased him until the door opened and a blonde white woman in a terry-cloth bathrobe started talking to Dad. They shook hands. Mick disappeared inside, came back outside wearing a flannel shirt, kissed the woman on the cheek and passed Dad as if he didn’t notice him. He came straight to the car, with Dad following behind him.

“Hey, Lisa M,” Mick said, opening the door and sliding into the backseat. His legs folded up almost to his chest, and he had to keep his head at an angle or he’d hit the roof. “You want some ice cream? Your daddy’s taking us to Dairy Queen!”

“Yay!” I said, bouncing up and down on the seat. “Ice cream! Ice cream!”

“Hey, Al,” Mick said when Dad got to the car. “Maybe we should take my truck. I’m getting claustrophobic back here.”

“Ice cream! Ice cream! Ice cream!”

“Settle down, Lisa,” Dad said. “We’re not getting ice cream.”

“Sure we are,” Mick said. “You said we should go for coffee and I pick Dairy Queen. Do you want to go to Dairy Queen, Lisa M? Hmm? Ice cream! Banana splits! Strawberry sundaes!”

“Mick,” Dad said, turning in his seat to glare at his brother.

“See?” Mick said, punching his shoulder. “You’re outvoted.” When Dad didn’t say anything, Mick leaned back. “Don’t worry about it, man. I figure it’s the least I owe you.”

“You should invest it,” Dad said.

“I am,” Mick said. “You’re my Bank of Al. Come Christmas, I’ll be bumming off you and living in your basement, you’ll see.”

I unpacked the box of extra dishes we had given to Mick as a housewarming present. Mom put groceries in his cupboards while Dad looked through Mick’s tax forms. A few days after he started work at the logging camp, Revenue Canada had sent their own welcome-back package—a bundle of forms for each year he’d been missing, with instructions to file immediately or face an audit. Jimmy stayed curled up in Dad’s lap, thumb firmly in mouth. Dad gave an exasperated sigh and put down the papers he was holding. “This is a mess. It’ll take me a few weeks to figure it out.”