Sea of Tranquility Page 8

  “It’s when the windows shatter, that’s the part I like the best,” Bruce announced.

  “I think I hit the gas tank. How come it didn’t blow up?” Todd wondered out loud.

  “All fuel has been safely removed before using the vehicle as a target,” Phonse answered. This lesson had been learned the hard way.

  “If you like the sound of glass, Mr. Sanger, may I suggest we move you into televisions if you feel you’re ready.”

  “I think I am finding my range,” Bruce said.

  “Yeah, Dad, can we? Can we shoot at TVs?”

  A curious look to Phonse. “TVs, computer monitors, you pick or mix and match as is your pleasure.”

  So, while Alistair monitored the guns for safety’s sake, Bruce and Todd assisted Phonse in setting a big old Motorola floor model TV in the centre of the pit. Acer and Goldstar computer monitors were also expertly placed, one atop each decimated car. Bruce’s ears were ringing pleasantly from all the gunshots. Todd’s shoulder was sore from the kick of the shotgun.

  Bruce fired away at the computer monitors over and over until they were shredded into a ragged mass of plastic, wires, and riddled electronic fragments. But it did not compare with the magnificent implosion of the old TV screen on the Motorola. Todd brought television to its knees with one crippling blast from his shotgun. After that, the excitement dwindled.

  Alistair suggested they fire at old five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disks tossed in the air, but for these novice gunmen, it turned out to be a bit beyond their skills. Nonetheless, after two hours of therapy in the Phonse theme park, both men were pleasantly exhausted and knew it was time to find the womenfolk.

  “Time for a beer?” Phonse asked.“I made it myself.”

  “No. Just tally up what I owe you and we’ll be on our way. You do take Visa?”

  “Visa, MasterCard, Sears card, if you have one. I can’t do Air Miles, though.”

  “This has been amazing.”

  “We aim to please,” he said taking Bruce’s credit card.“Get it?”

  Todd was polite enough to laugh.

  “What do you do with all the stuff after it’s been used for target practice?” Bruce asked, environmental conscience creeping up on him from behind like a stalker in Central Park.

  “A lot of it is recycled. For what’s left over, well,Alistair takes the Caterpillar and shoves the junk into a hole. We bury it. It goes back into the earth. It’s only right.”

  Something continued to tug at Bruce’s scruples as he was handed back his Visa card and signed his name in the usual place, surprised that the total for the afternoon fun was so much less than he’d expected.

  “Tell your friends,” Phonse said as they walked away, down the dusty road towards the Aetna Café.

  “But not your mother,” Bruce whispered under his breath to his son.

  Bruce could not stop smiling. Yet he couldn’t believe that he had allowed himself (and his son!) to indulge in such a thing. He swore to the sky above him that he was still a pacifist; he would donate even more money to the lobby for gun control. He would work for a cleaner world. He would do these things even as he silently admitted he was a hypocrite. No. He was a walking paradox. Everyone was. Better to understand the central ironies of your life and get on with it. Better than hiding them away in a closet. This was something to discuss with his wife when the time was right. Not now. No, not today. He would not destroy the euphoria of the day. A day without whales had turned out to be not a bad day after all.

  Chapter Nine

  Men, off to do what? Go to a junkyard. Well, that was a first for Bruce. Nonetheless, it was a good chance for mother-daughter bonding. That was an important part of what this vacation was all about, after all. She didn’t have to read an article in Cosmopolitan to realize that kids didn’t spend enough time with their overactive mothers these days. Complicated lives. Who didn’t have a complicated life? Certainly, Elise Sanger had one.

  Angeline was not only insistent, she was imperative. They would go knock on the door of the old woman, Sylvie. Not hard to find her, they said in the Aetna Canteen. Take the road from the wharf and when it splits, go left, out towards the sea, front of the island. Only a few of the “old ones” living out that way. Most sons and daughters had built homes away from the sea. Newer houses down thisaway, here by the government wharf. Closer to the ferry, easier to get back and forth to the mainland.

  Elise thought she heard some kind of a blast off in the distance.“A gun?”

  “Only them at the junkyard. Phonse and the rest. Old cars and such. Men and their little odd jobs,” the canteen woman said. She wore a little button name tag that read “Binnie.”

  Maybe it wasn’t a gun, some kind of air-compressed tool ripping a rear-view mirror off a car. What did she know about such things? Thought of her husband and son around all those rusty cars. Was it safe?

  “The whole island’s safe, ma’am,” the woman said.“Not like some places on the mainland.” It was a stock phrase for tourists. Binnie was working up a number of stock phrases for the summer tourists, if they ever got here. Seems that summer was a little slow gearing itself up. Everyone on tenterhooks, worrying about the whales and whatnot. Some slow returning this year, the whales were. Now these tourists back from Moses’ boat tour and no whales. Poor old Moses giving them a freebie on him… lobster dinners yet (lunches as the mainlanders insisted on calling them). If Moses was buying, she’d give him twenty-five percent off. And of course, there were no tips unless the tourists decided to go the extra distance. This husband had left an American five. Nothing to write home about, but it was a start. Undeclared income. No taxes to be paid on that bit, anyway.

  Angeline thought the gravel made a little song underneath their feet. She studied the coltsfoot flowers growing by the side of the road, the pretty green spires of horsetail plants, saw a frog in a pond. Dragonflies the size of model airplanes. Small yellow birds sat on spruce boughs and chirped so loud she thought she might have to cover her ears.

  Mother and daughter walking down a dirt road on an island. An enchanted island, Angeline was certain of that. Yet it somehow seemed so much more real than where they lived in Upper Montclair. Maybe that life had all been a dream. She was just now waking up. Waking up to blue sky, shredded cotton candy wisps of clouds. The smell of sea everywhere. Old barns, tilting to one side as if a giant had been leaning against them, taking a rest. Ravens sitting on the ridge posts, louder than the chirping yellow birds, big awkward voices echoing against the forest.

  The road looked less and less travelled. Fewer driveways with cars, gravel giving way to grass and dandelion beneath their feet, two tracks and a hump in the middle, little blue flowers in the hump, and a well-placed bony boulder or two that was hungry for the undercarriage of the car of anyone willing to drive here without caution. Then a little driveway off to the left, a footpath really, leading through tall trees and opening up into a clearing.

  An old house with weathered grey wood shakes on the walls, the same weathered shingles for a roof. Moss on the roof and lichen. Yellow and orange. A scruffy-looking chimney, tottering. Sylvie’s house. Old woman in a shoe. Not quite. But this was better.

  Robins hopped around in the early summer grass. A harmless snake lay on a flat slate stone, relaxing, slowly absorbing solar energy to bring it fully back to life. An osprey flying overhead. Angeline noticed it all as if in an instant, witnessed it all and absorbed it, said to herself,“This is me. This place. I am at some special, special place and it will stay with me for the rest of my life.” She knocked on the door. They did not have door bells or buzzers or outdoor intercoms here on Ragged Island.

  A door swung inward. Open Sesame. The old woman, blinking in the light. Slightly surprised. Not many visitors for her, Angie guessed.

  Elise cleared her suburban throat.“Hope we’re not intruding.”

  Sylvie adjusting her bearings. The word “intruding” had a funny foreign feel to it. People on the island usually did
n’t worry about intruding. You were either there to visit or you were not. You did not worry about if it was intruding. But these were not islanders. Mainlanders. Little girl and her mum. Sylvie smiled, opened the door as wide as it would go. “Not at all. Was just sitting alone with a not so interesting book. Close it up. Easy enough at that. Come. Sit. Angeline, isn’t it. Cookie, girl?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Nothing to drink but tea or well water. No pop.”

  “It’s okay. We’re both okay. Angie wanted to come say hello.”

  “Tea, then. I’ll make it weak. Won’t hurt the little girl. Not much caffeine if you make it weak. Sometimes I make tea from tansy or mint, too. Grows wild in the backyard.”

  The old woman went to her sink and there was a hand pump. She pumped it up and down in a smooth stroking manner like she had done thousands of times in a life. Water in a kettle, set upon an electric hot plate. So she has electricity, Elise was thinking.

  This must be what “rural” poverty is like. Elise kept her thoughts to herself, studied every detail, prepped herself for a debriefing with the women in her group once she returned.

  Sylvie wore a long, theatrical dress, something clearly from what she thought of as “the olden days.” And she was tall. A bit bent over, but tall and graceful. “Sit,” she told the mother from New Jersey.

  Three of them sitting at an old oak kitchen table, with knife marks in it, chips and dings, rounded edges as if from sheer use, not design. Three rocks positioned on the table for some purpose — or maybe just decoration. Three round, elegant, but common beach stones. The chairs: spindle-legged, flat-seated chairs creaked, thanged, hawed, and yankled with every little movement. Aside from that, the room was stone still and quiet. Outside, though, birds performed soundtracks for nature films.

  Angie was still looking at the hand pump, had never seen such a thing or even heard of it.“Can I try?”

  “Sure. Oh yes, dear. Please. Lots of water in the well. The island has lots of fresh water even though we’re surrounded by salt. You’d think it’d be salty down there below too, but it isn’t. Clean. Fresh. They say you should drink lots of fresh water, flush your kidneys and all that.”

  “You live here alone?” Elise asked.

  Angie pumped the handle and water flowed into the sink. She smiled and laughed and held one hand under the flowing water, then touched its wetness to her forehead, a baptism ceremony.

  “Alone now. Well, depends how you figure it. Husbands are all dead.”

  “All?”

  “All four. Some died young, some older. Way it is sometimes. All good men. They’re all still with me, though. In my heart.”

  Elise tried to look at the beautiful face of the old woman but could not. She was slightly embarrassed as Sylvie revealed so much so quickly to a stranger. Elise was used to small talk, endless small talk. Her crowd talked around in circles about trivial things for a long time before zeroing in on anything real and worthy of serious woman talk.

  “Where does the water come from?” Angie asked.

  “Oh, just out of the ground, dear. Free gift from the island. Out in the yard there. I found the spot a long time ago with a dowsing rod. Not much of anyone better than me with a dowsing rod.”

  Elise tucked her chin in. Charming. A hundred percent charming. The old lady reeks of authenticity. Wondered if this was part of the eco-tour somehow. Almost too good to be true.

  “You knew where to find water?” Angie asked and stopped pumping, then splashed the last dribble of water onto her face, drew a little circle with it on her cheek like she was face painting.

  “Yes, I did. Made the men mad, some of them. If someone wanted a well, they’d call me and I’d cut a bit of alder or willow and go tell them the best place to dig. Never failed. Now they think that’s all superstition. Funny, that. No one bothers with using a dowser anymore even though it worked for generations. I did it for free. Now, if someone wants a new house, they call out a drill truck from the mainland, comes over on a barge and drills down through the rock. Costs an arm and a leg but they don’t seem to care. The modern way is the better one. Old woman and a stick can’t be of any use.”

  “I believe there has been scientific research,” Elise said, coming to Sylvie’s defence.

  “Yes. Indeed. Somewhere in one of those books. I read it myself.” Sylvie pointed to books. A whole wall of books on shelves. No illiterate old island woman here. “Yes. The United Nations workers in Africa still rely on water witches, as they are called sometimes. And it’s almost always women who have the touch more than men. Women are more rooted in the earth. More connected with the sea. We’re tidal, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yes.”

  “So if you ever need to dig a well where you live, give me a call. Not that I’ll come up there to the States, but I could do it over the phone with you if you use one of them portable phones and go walk around your own backyard and hold onto the right witching stick. Don’t think I’m silly. Did it once for some friends on the Eastern Shore. At their cottage. She in the backyard with a little hand phone. Me on the phone down at the Aetna. Everybody had a good laugh about that one but saved the boy a pile of money. No twenty dollars a foot to dig into the hard rock. No sir. Twenty feet into gravel and pure, sweet water, all they’ll ever need and then some.”

  “Do you know any other tricks?” Angie asked.

  “It’s not a trick,” her mother corrected.

  Sylvie smiled, set out a plate of cookies, another one of small cakes, one of crackers, and a jar of relish and homemade mustard. Some preserves, too, then poured tea. “I added some mint and one tea bag. Fine for both women like yourselves. Tricks? Why, yes.”

  Three cups of tea steamed little twirling wraiths up into the sunlight above the table. Dust motes sailed like tiny hang-gliders in the shaft of light from the backyard window.

  “It’s not necessary.”

  “Just one then.” Sylvie walked to the bookshelf and lifted off an old mariner’s compass. Elise looked at all those books and then noticed the rocks sitting on the shelves as well. She realized, too, there were other rocks on tables or piled up on the floor as if some kind of art or avant garde sculpture.

  The compass in its polished copper mounting was placed in the centre of the table. The compass needle floated on clear liquid. It was a relic, for sure, something that would sell for a mint back in a Montclair antique store. The compass needle wobbled, wavered this way and then that, until it found north and anchored itself on its little inland sea.

  “So that’s north,” Angie said.

  “North it is.”

  “Now watch.” Sylvie took three smooth stones from the bookshelf and set them on a triangle on the table, framing the compass. She rubbed the palm of her right hand and then held it over the magnetic needle, closed her eyes but then opened one eye in a squint to get a look at Angie’s intent face. Next she raised her hand up once and brought it back down on the compass, then fanned her hand left slowly, and then right. The needle moved with her.

  Sylvie worked her hand around in a perfect circle and the needle followed her movement like a well-trained dog. Then she fully opened her eyes and showed that she had nothing in the palm of her hand.

  Angie clapped her small but enthusiastic applause. Elise smiled, knew there was some easy explanation.

  “Do you let us in on how the trick is done?”

  “Absolutely, madame. No trick at all really. Magnetism. All basic scientific principles.”

  Two mainlanders waiting for the punch line.

  “The lodestone in that floating needle came from this rock beneath us. I was born here. I live here, grow my food here, drink water from the well. The island is part of me just as that little magnet was once part of the island. We are kin. I belong to this place.”

  The smell of minty tea in the air. Stillness. No one reaching for cookie or cracker or homemade relish.

  Angie wide-eyed. Elise suddenly feeling very remote, far out
side of her comfort zone. The peculiar sensation tapped into something that had been simmering on the back burner of her mind. Something missing in her life. Some strong attachment to place. She had never felt like she truly belonged to any physical place, ever. They’d moved from one house to another since she married Bruce. Each time he stepped up in his career, it was always a new car, a new house, a new neighbourhood, and sometimes a new set of friends that seemed to go along with the move. Together as a family, yes they belonged. But no allegiance to geography, adrift in the urban-suburban sea of countless faces. No rudder, no compass with a true north bearing.

  Sylvie bit into a cookie, looked at Angie when she saw the far-off drift in the eyes of the child’s mother.“These are old skills women had before we started relying on other parts of our brain.” Sylvie tilted the sugar bowl and purposefully spilled some sugar on the table. Then drew a picture of the earth in the sugar and curved lines arcing out and down from the north to the south pole. “Magnetic fields. Birds sense them. So do fish. Whales, dolphins. Most animals make use of these magnetic fields in their every day lives. People did too once.”

  “Is that the earth?” Angie asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Is the earth made of sugar?”

  “In a story it could be.”

  “It would get sticky if it got wet.”

  “Good point.”

  “Can I draw in the sugar?”

  “Yes.” Sylvie poured some more upon the table. Angie trailed her finger around like it was beach sand. She had never played with sugar on a table since she was an infant. “Oops, I messed up your earth.”

  “It’s okay.”

  The child was occupied dissecting the planet into several triangles like it was a pie. Sylvie looked at Elise, who was coming back from someplace far off. “Ever feel like you know a lot more about some things than you should? Feelings? Intuition?” Sylvie asked.

  “Sure. Often.”

  “Most of us push those feelings away. Replace them with reason. But an old woman has so much time on her hands. She follows some of those things in her head, things she feels. She discovers some interesting notions.” Sylvie pointed to the books. “And then she discovers that she’s not onto anything new at all. Old stuff. All in the books. Just sometimes hard to know what’s true and what’s false until you feel it for yourself. The island things, though, I understand. That part is always true. For me at least. Finding water? I just know. Make a compass needle move? My magnetism can be as powerful as the pull of the earth’s, if I’m close by. You want me to tell you if it’s a full moon, a quarter moon, or no moon at all without ever looking into the sky or reading it in the paper? I can do that too.”