Can you have too much wine, too much song, too much ice cream on a Friday night? I think not, but the ashes have their own music and their own demands.
Ashes are trees that have given their souls to the fire and to the wind. This after a lifetime of being in one place, out in all sorts of weather, and not allowed to run to shelter. Chopped and torched and part of the night sky spreading over the dark Atlantic Ocean by this time.
Not that they were asked about it.
Not that anyone asked me. Or asked the bugs sleeping in the firewood, the eggs, the microbes. No one asks, you know.
Like they asked me? Like anyone ever asked me?
Some days I fear fires. I don’t believe what the priest told me, but there’s lots of fuel walking the sidewalks and hunching in old rooms.
The mirrors I’ve broken over the years, the lessons I’ve burned. If only they’d asked me. My fires burned in the daylight, down among the willows. At night I watch the fire and accumulate ashes there too.
Yes it would; it would have made a difference to me if they’d asked.
I could stare into the fireplace for hours. If I wanted to; if I wanted to make sure my life was in there, burning among the oak and the cherry wood and the chopped walnut limbs.
Does it surprise you that I burn cherry and walnut? It depends where your values are, I suppose. Heartwood, limbs, cheap spruce, or fine dark walnut- it all burns when you’ve chopped it up fine enough.
I like burning the best woods. Sometimes I buy old oak chairs at auctions, just to burn them. Sometimes a chest of drawers. Often a maple bed frame, if only for the kindling.
I open the glass doors to the fireplace. I pull back the wire mesh. The ashes wait for me, like the crematorium of all my yesterdays.
I have made fire, and found fire, and played with fire. I have touched the passions hidden in dead things and brought the shine out of them. Things that would die and rot and molder without me, but I cried, “Let there be light!” and there was, and heat, too.
I like a hot fire. A hot fire consumes.
I’ve had enough things in my life that aren’t consumed or gone. They haunt my waking life, like roots from a tree I thought I’d cut down. I trip over them from time to time, and flail away at them with the axes of my mind, but they regrow down in the dark, like arms on a starfish.
I look at the ashes in the early afternoon, when the light from the window crawls across the silent walls. This room’s a tomb, I think. There’s only one chair left in the room. Maybe tonight.
There are tongs in the fireplace tool set, and a shovel, and a poker, and a brush.
Another fire tonight. One more on this planet. One more day gone.
It’ll be fine, on a Friday night, after the ashes are gone. You can’t let ashes accumulate anywhere, fireplace or in your life. Got to get rid of them.
The tongs are for the big pieces, maybe a thighbone or an unburned limb. The shovel picks up the smaller pieces, and the powder.
The broom is for memories. It takes out the finest dust.
I have to do the cleaning now, in the daylight.
****
Bancroft OPP. Day After Fire Day.
The constable had a long morning. First there was an accident out south of Apsley where a cottager’s trailer had come loose, narrowly missing an oncoming bread-delivery van. The man behind the wheel was willing to swear on a stack of bibles that he’d attached the safety chain. Then it turned out he didn’t own or have a license for the trailer. He explained that it was his neighbour’s trailer and boat but his own 70-horsepower outboard motor. That took a couple of phone calls to confirm. Since the trailer and boat had rolled around a bit in the ditch before contacting a large piece of rock had left over from the last ice age, and the motor looked like it was going to need a lot of work, the cop figured the driver had learned a lesson, so he let the guy off with a warning.
Then someone had seen a stranger peeking into the windows of some closed-for-the-season cottages on Jack Lake, and that took some time to investigate. He didn’t find anyone doing that, and none of the cottages had been broken into, but he took the licence-plate numbers of the three cars parked there and left. Jack Lake was a long way from Long Lake, but Gottsen might have got a ride there and be trying to hole up –it was something to be considered.
It was past noon before he got word that the air force base in Trenton had better things to do with its helicopters than rescue a man who didn’t want to be rescued and might not even be the man they were looking for.
It was less than half an hour after that when he got a call from the receptionist, Courtney, that she’d arranged for a float plane. Good for her: she had more gumption than anybody else in the place. The constable turned toward the airport for the second time that day.
****
Pine Lake. Day After Fire Day.
“What should I tell you now?” he asked.
Kimberley thought a minute. “It should have a seashore in it.”
“Not a lake?” Paul sat with his eyes closed watching the red of the sun against his eyelids.
“Not a lake. Lakes don’t have big enough edges to them.”
“Seashore. I could do that. Wish I had more liquor.”
“Will there be a girl in this story?”
“I can do that too. Of course.”
“What would be her name? Her real name.”
“Pamela. Pam.”
“Go ahead, then.”
He started hesitantly. “She found herself on slippery rocks passionately embraced by green weed. She trembled at the suck and spew of waves. She could see red markers for lobster pots, and beyond, the sea that refused to talk to her.
“I watched her from the cabin as she found an empty orange shampoo bottle, and wondered what she was thinking. We’d met a month before, and I talked her into a week at the seashore. She was a writer, like me, but only when she was inland, far from the ocean. At the shore she couldn’t write, so she wouldn’t share my bed any more. I slept on the couch.
“I asked her. She held up a seashell and the empty Pert shampoo bottle. She said she was a writer on dry soil, but here by the sea she was an empty shell. By the sea, she was a nun. I told her I didn’t understand.” Paul opened his eyes and measured Kimberley. “She said I was the sea.”
“You understood that?”
“No, but here’s another story with the sea in it.
“Andrew, Jesus’ disciple, came home. After five years away, he returned to his wife and the small hut by the Sea of Galilee. ‘I've told everyone who will listen,’ he said to his wife, ‘and many, many more.’
“Occasionally, just before dawn she would hear him get up take his wool coat and slip out the door. From the window she watched him walk to the shore, step carefully into the water. When it got to his knees, he'd look up to the stars a moment, then walk slowly back to his house.” Paul coughed and rubbed his head. “You understand?”
“Not me. I’ll never get that close to the edge. I’m not a writer.”
“Life can do it, if you can see it. Life, birth. Death – now there’s an edge.”
“Did you ever understand Pamela?”
“I never understand women. Not enough.”
“Not even me?”
“No. I don’t know why you came. I don’t know why you stay. I don’t know why you’re talking to me.”
****
Pamela’s Story
We decided to go to the coast one clear autumn day when the sun was out and winter was coming down the trans-Canada blowing the last dandelion seed into the air.
I’d never seen the ocean: I’m not a traveller. Paul was always after new experiences. No, I said. No. Why should I go? But there were the last yellow leaves of poplar dancing around my feet and a sadness in his eyes and I said no once again but it hurt him. He thought I didn’t understand him, but the problem was, I did.
I tried to tell him what I knew, that laughter is made of kite strings and you can’t st
retch them too far. They’ve paved Florida anyway, I said, my hands in my pockets. Strip malls and condos. Like I knew. But by then I was just being stubborn.
Can’t pave warm, he said, knowing I didn’t like winter as much any more. He kicked the leaves as if they were bad memories. He had problems with his memories of Willow, his second wife. Well, who wouldn’t, given what happened, but he had to deal with that, not run away from it. We’ll sit on the beach, he told me, and watch the kids flying kites.
I lost a kite like that, once, the string snapping, the kite soon gone, me wailing after it. I don’t believe it flies forever, but the kite never listened to me, either.
We went to the beach and lived for a while, just the two of us, in a large upstairs room with windows most of the way around. In the night I could hear the wind in the palms, the rustling of dry shards and I’d leave the bed to sit by the window and watch the waves.
After a week, he took my hand and we walked through the darkness past the palms then out on the pier in the dark to watch the moon rise and I realized he had reached an ending long ago. It came to me that I needed beginnings, like Easter eggs and lilacs, and he was always feeling the edges of things that ended. What would I ever be to him?
I remember the cold feel of the night sand on my bare feet and the warmth of his arms around me, but not much else. He was all endings and I needed a new beginning. Not as much as he did, but there would be no use explaining that to him. He would just repeat his endings till his own ran up to him and put him out of the light.
I told him he was the sea, meaning he was beyond anything anyone could do, but he thought I was admiring his depths I guess. I left for home that night although it took three days to get out of the room with the seagulls crying all day. It was snowing when the plane landed in Montreal but people there were making plans for the rest of their lives and when I got a place in the north end I began to write again.
****
A Poem from Mad Tom
For Paul, a year before the fire, after a meeting and a long talk.
I left no track
Not a Trace
On the landscape’s
Random face
A moment’s motion
A minute’s wake
I was gone
From another lake
Down the hill
On the portage track
A blue canoe
And a smallish pack
A fading memory
For a crying loon
Gone by the rising
Of the moon
Oh! To have left no mark
No faintest trace
On this planet’s
Rolling face.
************************
Chapter Four
************************
Fred Speaks
Yes, I know Kimberley We were together for a few months near the end of term in the spring. I guess she dumped me, if you can call it that. I mean, it was never all that serious between us. We simply liked the same things and more or less hung out with the same crowd until we sort of drifted apart.
I met her through a friend, and invited her to a movie one night. We were going together after that right up till we separated in summer. We live a long way apart, so we didn’t see each other except for the canoe trip.
She’s a smart girl. She gets better grades than me, but then I suppose she works for it. I figure on putting most of my efforts into the courses I really need and I can get through the others even if I’m late with the assignments sometimes. I have my hobbies – I’m big on quantum theory and that. But you’re only this age once, my father told me, and like to mix partying and studying more than some people – like Kimberley – do.
But before we left for summer, we arranged to go as a group, with Cindy and Paul and Ian and Colleen in Agate Lake with the canoes. I had my dad’s canoe and I have the Cougar (my own as long as I keep paying the bank). We were supposed to go with another canoe, with Ian and Colleen, but they had to go to a wedding or something.
It worked out okay. We both had summer jobs, but we got an extra day on the long weekend and Kimberley made up some food to take. Me, I’ve have taken instant foods but I certainly appreciated her effort. The weather was good the whole four days, except raining on the way home, but you can’t argue with that.
She’d been canoeing with the Wilderness Club and at the camp she went to when she was younger (I don’t remember the name) but I could still teach her a few things about the outdoors she didn’t know. We portaged into Agate Lake with a few bottles of red wine. Plastic bottles, so we could burn them in the fireplace when we were done. Spent the days walking around the hills and paddling into other lakes and generally enjoying ourselves. Cindy can get a bit uptight.
And Kimberley, she gets quiet sometimes. I guess she had a rough home life when she was growing up or something. She didn’t want to talk about it. I figured she’d find someone a bit more bookish or nerdy than me (more serious, anyway). But it was three good nights around the campfire and our tent was good enough to keep out the mosquitoes, unlike the one Cindy and Paul were using.
I hear she’s signed herself out for this term. She didn’t tell me why, but then, we haven’t spoken much since last summer. I wish her luck and happiness. Tell her I said hello.
****
Pine Lake. Day After Fire Day.
Mad Tom held the rifle in front of his face, pointing it in the general direction of Peter Finer’s nose. There was a long moment of silence, Tom’s mouth moving but no words coming out. Then he said to the reporter, “A canoe will be necessary.”
Peter waited unmoving, mouth slightly open. No more words came, so he asked, “To get to the island?”
“A canoe will be quite necessary to get to the island where Paul is.” Tom began blinking rapidly and his arms shook.
“Well, don’t shoot,” Peter said. “How about I’ll sit in the front and paddle and you keep the gun pointed at me. To make sure I go to the right place.” His knees shook a bit, but he tried to keep them still.
This seemed to puzzle Tom, as if he hadn’t contemplated that option. Finally, he nodded. But as Peter started to put his pack into the canoe, Tom said, “An inspection will be necessary. Quite essential.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but couldn’t, so the reporter got emptied the pack, one item at a time, into the bottom of the canoe. Finally, Tom nodded. Peter just left the items in the bottom of the canoe. He slid the canoe halfway into the lake, then climbed into the front, holding his paddle. Tom slide the canoe the rest of the way into the lake, getting in at the same time.
Out on the island, Paul and Kimberley stopped what they were doing and watched. “There’s a canoe coming. Two guys. Do you know them?” Kimberley asked. For a moment she could see herself escaping, paddling madly back to the shore, leaving Paul to die with somebody else.
“My eyes aren’t very good. Do you want to give me a description?”
Kimberley did her best.
“The guy in the back sounds like Mad Tom,” Paul said in a low voice. He lives in the woods and probably is totally nuts. But I don’t know the other guy. It’s not Rollie, from your description.”
“I had the pleasure of meeting Mad Tom yesterday,” Kimberley said. But I don’t know the other guy either.” She reached into a jacket pocket and handed Paul the bottle of pills.
****
Notes from Kimberley Molley, Student
Hi, me.
I’m still on the island in Pine Lake with Paul. He’s still alive and I’m looking for a chance to hide the pills he wants to use to off himself, but he keeps them close to him.
The real news is there’s a couple of guys in a yellow canoe coming from the portage. Paul says the guy in the back is called Tom. He looks like the creepy guy I met at the portage yesterday. He must be the one Paul says lives in the woods around here.
The one in the front is doing all the paddling, so they’re not moving too fast.
/> Oh fuck. The guy in the back has a gun and he’s pointing it at the one in the front! What do I do now? Paul’s saying something into a recorder, I think.
Remember us if we don’t get home. I’m thinking of rushing my canoe and making a break for it, or something. Not going to just sit here any more.
****
Paul Gottsen. Pine Lake.
Paul here. Interesting day, I think. Still can’t see very well, but from what Kimberley says, Tom and somebody else are coming here in a canoe. Wish I’d taken the pills and woke up dead this morning. Isn’t that right, Kimberley?
Oh, she’s busy, texting or something. This all seems irrelevant. I thought I’d have something to say to the world in my last hours, but somehow, what I haven’t already said seems pretty stupid and obvious. Goodbye forever.
****
Peter Finer, Journalist
From his book, Dark Waters: A Life of Paul Gottsen.
A person can be rather tired after a long portage, but there’s nothing like a rifle pointed at one to keep one paddling anyway. With Tom not steering, the canoe meandered across the lake towards the island, with my neck hairs on end and my brain contemplating rolling the canoe and swimming for it.
Aside from that, it was a truly glorious autumn day. A couple of wispy clouds, a skein of geese (why do they always fly in skeins?) heading north for some reason, the forest dark with pines along the shore but glowing on the hilltops in maple and beech, the water clear and dark with mysteries.
There was a silence and a promise in the world, and a call of distances. The canoe became the passage and the paddle was love beyond knowledge. Somewhere, beyond the hills, the lake became a river and flowed like silver to the far-off sea. You wanted to take someone and sing a song and find where the rivers ended and where hearts no longer needed to speak. It was a bit harder under the circumstances, I guess, but there was still the sunshine and the geese.
And, of course, an island with Paul Gottsen and a university student waiting for me. Except for the rifle, it was working out nicely. And except for the guy holding the rifle, big enough to stomp me into mush, and not, perhaps playing Mozart with a complete keyboard.