The Journey Prize Stories 22 (20 page)

Nan cut me a slice of fruitcake for dinner. She'd misplaced her own appetite again. John Cabot did not discover North America on fruitcake. I found a block of semi-sweet chocolate in the cupboard and ate that instead.

I miss Nan's old cooking. We haven't much in the cupboards now. Oats, farina, dried apricots, molasses, chestnut
paste. We should arrive in Hong Kong within the week if I maintain shovel speed. (I reckon I average a foot an hour.)

I used to read with Granddad before bed. We're more than halfway through
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
and the
Jane Guy
has just been captured by the natives, but I won't finish without him. Maybe tomorrow I'll aim for two feet.

0715

Pleasant Mermaidian breeze from east. Some clouds.

Wanted to dig another foot before Nan got up. Found her in the living room on the arm of Granddad's button-back chair. She was leaning forward and her shadow made a falcon on the secretary and the fishbowl that sits on top of the secretary. The ribbon of her nightgown was untied and it dangled in the fishbowl, but I don't think she noticed. When she moved it glided across the surface like a Jesus bug.

I saw her breast. It was shaped like a triangle and hung over the pokey parts of her ribs. Then I noticed the slice of fruitcake in her lap and the cashew clenched between her index finger and thumb and the dried cherry floating above the fishbowl gravel. I asked if she slept. “With the fishes.” She laughed and her bones made a stepladder in her chest. I took the plate from her lap and said I'd feed Aquinas later. Made porridge like Granddad: simmer the oats in milk and vanilla until the oats plumpen and milk clings to each grain like melted wax. Nan declined a bowl. Left her with the swordtail.

1300

Dead calm. Sky like when Granddad made blueberry sherbet for the parish picnic on Dominion Day.

At the pit's deepest I've dug to my thigh. Starboard side needs work. My shovel's caused three worm casualties but I think they'll grow back. The soil's firmer now. Less like cookie crumbs, more like dough. Nan says it's clay. In China they bloom bowls and teacups instead of tulips and that's why we call it chinaware. There's broken pottery everywhere and in Szechwan province the lawns are mosaics. I'll bet Chinamen cobble shoes with ultra thick soles.

My own Oxfords are soiled with mud. Nan hasn't noticed. She's in the front, milking the crocuses.

1420

Found a live floater abreast the keel! He wears a scarlet tunic and bearskin hat – potential deserter from the Royal Guard? I conducted a proper interrogation, but he said very little. (He appears to be made of tin so I suspect his jaw is quite stiff.) I don't think he's a threat as he is little bigger than the palm of my hand – he will stay aboard as boatswain and I shall watch his behaviour. I went inside to introduce him to my navigating officer and found her in the bathroom applying white paint to her face, an emptied box of cornstarch on the toilet seat. Conversation as follows: “Nan?” “Captain Oscar.” “What are you doing?” “Putting on my face.” The plaster terrified her eyebrow stubs into fossils and when she smiled her forehead cracked. “But you already had a face.” Her hand rose from the sink, which was filled with white gook, and she slapped her cheek. “Without makeup, I'd stand out in Hong Kong like a
polkadot thumb.” Her palm smeared circles and stretched loose flesh to her nose, to her eye, to her ear. She reached behind her head and her cheek drooped to the corner of her mouth. She didn't have enough hair to hold a bun and her fingers left sponge stamps on her scalp. I asked what I ought to wear and she suggested Granddad's uniform and I thought Granddad sailed for Hong Kong in his uniform but apparently that was the British one and he has a Canadian one too but they look almost identical. I went upstairs and found the uniform on Nan's bed. It's large but I reckon the waistband will hold if I wrap the belt around twice. The pants are funny. The bottom of each leg is wider than the thigh. The shirt's got a large collar and a blue and white – striped kerchief that I don't know how to tie because I was only in boy scouts for a year and Nan secured the knot at the beginning and I never untied it. My favourite's the cap. The tally reads “
HMCS
Rainbow,”
which is a silly name for a ship so I'll probably cross it out and write “Rupert.” Nan's got a Navy photograph of Granddad on the dresser. I'm a spit image.

I'm hungry but the weather's fouling so I should return to deck. Winds blow fresh and there are dark clouds on the eastern horizon.

1800

In China, there's a pyramid of mandarin oranges on every corner. Because there are so many orchards, everyone helps themselves and the farmers replenish the pyramids each morning.

In China, they have dens where sages and scarlet women and gamblers and poets puff on the stems of poppies like pipes. Then they have extraordinary dreams, like none that you could ever imagine, and sometimes the dreams tell the future.

1830

Tried to make porridge for dinner but the milk wouldn't pour from the pitcher. Gave it a slosh and tried again. One drop dripped out the mouth and down the side of the jug. Lifted the lid and found a golden bulb lodged in the spout and six more goldenbulbs floating in yellowish liquid. Fished one out for inspection. Its skin felt like a waterlogged chicken thigh with a hundred spots where the feathers might have been. I squeezed and milk gushed through my fist, trickled down my sleeve into the crease of my elbow. Called for Nan. “Apricots,” she said. “I'm necromancing the apricots.”

Made porridge with water.

1900

Nan's face is paper maché and the whites of her eyes look yellow like she's been soaking apricots there too.

I think she's been in my room. Found a pile of white shavings on my pillow case.

2030

Monsoon! Brisk gale, downpour of rain. I worry my pit will cave.

2040

Tried standing over pit with umbrella. Proved terrifically dull. Went back inside.

2045

There is a slice of fruitcake on a plate in the fishbowl.

2300

Tried to play Chicken Foot with Nan but she preferred to spell words with the line of play. Had to find Granddad's Double 18 set so that she'd have enough tiles. He bought them on his first sail to Bombay in 1892. They're ivory with ebony inset pips.

Nan's poems:

“Tick tick tick tick.”

“Cherry tart, crispy heart.”

My poems:

“Tongues clicking, licking.”

“Mango meat. Yum.”

This game would be easier if the tiles had letters instead of dots.

0800

Rains have ceased, clouds clearing. Light airs, temperature like dishwater. Pit walls have maintained structure, but there
are two inches of mud at the bottom. Will commence drainage after breakfast.

0830

Breakfast: one quarter jar molasses plus two necromanced apricots. Painted a molasses moustache above my lip and Nan said I made a very fetching George the Fifth.

Told her that the hull flooded two inches and she said that was the size of my mother's tumour. I don't remember my mother well but Granddad said she was a dish, which means pretty.

1100

The boatswain and I drained the pit and dug another half foot. We're hip-deep stern to bow. It's harder to shovel, which means we're getting close. (We could be digging through a cement road in Hong Kong and we wouldn't even know.) Crew's complaining of thirst. Maybe the Navigating Officer will have lemonade inside.

1105

Nan's not in the house. The dining table roses are face down in the vase. Stems spike from the glass at 180 degrees and the water magnifies the heads into clown noses.

1109

She's not in the yard either.

1400

Scoured the coast. Found Nan in Mr. Arden's wood picking flowers from the riverbank. (Fortunately we've had a dry spring
and this stretch of the stream is dry.) She says his April daylilies are the finest in all of Ontario. We gathered four baskets then lay between the stones in the riverbed and watched an eagle collect grass. Nan tried to string the lilies together stem by stem, but her rings kept sliding off her fingers and we could never remember where the clinkity-clink clinked from and they're coloured the same as the pebbles. So I did most of the stringing and my chain grew to two fathoms long. We wound it through her hair over her shoulder across her collar around her waist up her arm. She looked like
The Faerie Queene
by Edmund Spenser. I had to memorize Canto Thirteen last year for school. “Be bold, be bold, and everywhere, be bold.”

1800

Light airs, some clouds, temperature cool.

I've promoted my boatswain to quartermaster. After writing my last entry we dug for four hours. The pit's to my shoulders now and if I bend my knees slightly it's as deep as my chin.

My shovel ripped a hole in Granddad's trousers. Nan wasn't mad. She helped me trim the pant legs to above my knees and now I trip less and my shovel speed has increased by at least a couple inches. We were sailing south at almost a foot and a half an hour, but we're inside now because I feel like someone is shovelling the inside of my stomach. In China they believe in karma which is like Galatians 6:7 “Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap” and I wonder if I feel like this because I cut those worms in half?

Chinamen also believe in reincarnation. After death you come back to Earth as something else.

I hope I don't come back as a worm.

I hear shouting.

1804

Dubore's driven her Flivver into my pit.

I hath slain the Jabberwock.

(Oh frabjous day, callooh callay!)

1900

We had to stick Dubore's floor mat under the wheel and push from the front grate while Nan cranked the ignition and I fell in the mud twice.

She found Nan's appearance “startling” and threatened to call a nurse the moment she arrived at a telephone.

She wanted to take me home with her so I hid inside Granddad's chest, which is where I am now but with the lid open a crack so I can see.

The air in here itches.

1910

In China there are fields of garlic and rows of ginger and rivers of soy sauce and hills of peppercorns and plateaus of cumin and mountains of 5-Spice and clouds of star anise. And the grass is made from lemons.

Someone's on the stairs.

1920

Nan's gotten rid of Dubois. And she knows for certain that she does not own a telephone and does not like driving at night so she probably won't come again until morning, which gives us till then to get to Hong Kong.

2030

Dug to my nose. Pressed my ear to the ground and cross my heart I heard wind chimes. We're a few fathoms away, tops. Soon I'll be able to crack through to the other side, but I hear Chinese cement is extra strong. (It has to hold more feet because did you know there are a lot of people in the Orient?) Was extra careful around worms but it's hard on account of the dark. Nan called me in – said we were close, real close, and that we should enjoy our last evening in Sudbury. She wants me to help her look smart for our arrival. (Her flower chain has fallen off but the individual lilies are mostly unharmed.) I have to pack too, but Nan says we won't need to bring much. My stomach sounds like Mme. Dubois's Flivver. Might try to make semolina pudding from the farina in the cupboard.

2055

My pudding's erupted.

Details later.

2110

Left the farina and milk on the stove while I braided flowers into Nan's hair. This took longer than it should have because
A., I don't know how to braid, B., a clump of hair fell out of her skull each time I ran the comb through, which was C., gross, and D., hard to hide, but E., I had to hide it because Nan used to have hair down to the bottom of her spine, black as the ink in this fountain pen.

I maybe put in F., too much farina or G., too much milk and now H., it's vomiting.

Scraped what I could from the pot. It tastes like sand.

2230

We've boarded the ship, but Nan doesn't want me to continue digging just yet. I write by the light of our last candle because we are saving the lamp oil for navigation. I packed: my good breeches, a clean sweater, matches, Granddad's Double 18 domino set, his pocket watch,
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
, chestnut paste, this log, an extra pen. Nan's packed nothing, but she's dressed grand – silk tea gown plus the fox and mink furs that Granddad gave her after they got married and Granddad's mother's pearls. She's wearing both furs at the same time because she says it's “bloody Siberian” out here, which means cold. I collected the flowers that fell off her chain into two baskets this time and I'm going to try and fix a few to her hat.

I don't think it's how Chinese girls dress, but she says she feels like Queen Mary so I guess that's good?

We're going to play dominoes.

2345

Light airs. Temperature cool, clammish. Skies blacker than the bruise on my right knee, which I think I got from unmooring the Jabberwock. Didn't realize it was this bad until I started using my legs as a writing desk.

Nan and I engineered a domino track that winds over the whole deck, portside behind Nan's rear, then overtop the tin of chestnut paste to the bow where it figure-eights around my rucksack and me, then starboard to the stern, over
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
, and under the handle of one of the overturned baskets. We tried to make it climb the ship wall, but the tiles wouldn't stay vertical.

Nan wants me to pinch her cheeks to add colour because harlots wear rouge and ladies get proper blood flowing.