A Gathering Storm

Across the miles I feel you watching
lower lip under, biting down hard and wondering
yes, I miss you…
And in the spaces of time reserved for nothing
I hear you calling, pointing
to where your hair streams like a wave in the water
happy eyes smirk as you reach across the years
one finger pointed to my heart
with a touch like lightning.

• ml’02

I supposed I should have known things were too good to last. Sure, there had been rumblings over the past few years, the extended parental silence – “Tell your Father, Tell your Mother” stuff, summer vacations at Rath Trevor with my grandparents and aunts (all on my Mother’s side) while my Father stayed home and worked.

But at 12 you really are in floating mode, each day steeped in a warm, but numbing sameness of predictability. I liked my life and who wouldn’t! The hardest things I had to do was delivering newspapers in the rain on a busy highway or lugging the hundred weight gunny sacks of potatoes from the trunk to the basement. Peanuts in the grand scale of things!

So here is where the rubber hits the road, or sh** hits the fan, your choice.

The storm started gathering about the time my Mother decided she wanted to renovate the master bedroom off the living room. Now the entire house was panelled in cedar back in 1943 and over the years it had darkened to a deep red colour, almost ebony. It was in a word ‘dark’ throughout the main floor of the house.

So my Mother sat down and designed what she would like their bedroom to look like; light lavendar walls with deep pile or shag rug. She also wanted to replace the old and dingy bedroom dressers with something more modern and modular.

So far so good. My Father jumped on the project, carpet, paint, even creating a brand new modular bedroom set (my Father was an expert cabinetmaker in his rare off time). It was exactly what my Mother wanted!

Little did we know that my Father had another purpose for renovating the master bedroom! But that would take some time to play out.

Meantime Spring was upon us, logs to run, Rusty to beachcomb with, and Clay to hang out with on the beach. Judy was well ensconced down the road at her grandmothers and she seemed to be at our house a lot, which did not bother me one iota! It was kind of fun to just hang over the half wall between the kitchen and dining room and listen to her laugh and joke with my Mother and Dode. It was beautiful – her laugh – like a tinkling bell of brightness enfusing everyone around her. And I could listen to it for hours. She didn’t seem to mind this gawky kid hanging out, engaging everyone as she did. Dode on the other hand found me annoying at the best of times, a teenage thing.

And then came the morning Rusty disappeared. I was bummed, totally bummed, wandering up and down the shore poking the kelp beds with a stick, tramping through the sedge grass up to my chest, walking the dusty side-roads near my house. I think I knew from the get-go that he wasn’t coming back, whether by choice or otherwise. After a few days I gave up and sat on the front steps for hours, back against the railing, staring at nothing. None of my siblings said a word, they could see my pain and no amount of ribbing would help. Judy sat on the steps with a couple times, not saying anything, just being there. Even Dode wasn’t her usual sarcastic self!

There was baseball to take my mind off things. I plunged into the league full bore that year, playing shortstop and center field, good enough to be selected for the Campbell River rep team, The Tyees!

First step was the Island Finals, a tournament for all the cities and towns on the Island. Victoria even sent two teams, which was probably to give the rest of us a chance to compete with big city.

The Finals were being held in Duncan, a town about the size of Campbell River between Nanaimo and Victoria. We would be billetted with host families for the week of the tournament (or less if we didn’t win any games!).

The morning of departure dawned bright after an overnight rainfall. I was up at 6, breakfasted, packed and ready for the bus at 7. The bus arrived at 8, filled with screaming 12 and 13 year old let loose from parents grasp.

I stowed my duffel in the bay under the bus and took a seat near the front. Riding a inter-city bus was a rare and special event, the deep reclining seats a far cry from the plywood hard seats on the school bus! The driver walked down the aisle and reminded the motley crew that he was within his rights to dump anyone off the bus anywhere between Campbell River and Duncan if they got out of hand! That quieted down the bus in a hurry and he returned to his seat and swung the big front door shut.

Off we went, crunching through the gravel to the highway. As we passed Johnson’s I could see Patty, Judy’s little sister, walking down the road bawling her head off. I felt a pang in my heart, like something terrible had happened, but I shook it off and settled into my seat for a snooze.

The tournament went well, tiny Campbell River defeating Nanaimo, our hosts Duncan and Victoria A in the finals to capture the Island crown! We were off to the Provincial Finals! And I had been selected to the tournament All-Star team! It was all cool!

My Mother and Dode came down for most of the tournament, staying at my grandparents in Nanaimo then travelling the 20 miles or so down to the games. It was good to have them there, cheering us on! My Mother and Dode are still BIG baseball fans by the way. I was a bit disappointed that Judy hadn’t come with them, but I figured something might have come up or she had to stay and help her grandmother.

Mother and Dode left after the last game as I was overnighting in Duncan for a wrap-up party and bus home in the morning with the team.

In the morning the bus dropped me off at the front gate and as I walked down the sweeping driveway to the house I could see that there were no cars at the house, nor at my grandmothers next door. “Must be shopping or something.” I thought. Then I realized I didnt have a house key and these days my parents had started locking doors whenever there was going to be nobody home. “Damn!”

Under the back porch there was a hidden hatch that lead into the basement over the laundry tubs. My Father had built it, out of sight, for reasons unknown. Perhaps to pass sacks of potatoes through. His winter tires lived under the porch during the other seasons so perhaps it was for that. In any event I was able to slide through the hatch and jump out of the tubs onto the basement floor, hauling my duffel behind.

The house was deadly quiet as I scampered up the back steps and dropped the duffel on my bed. I was feeling a bit peckish so off to the kitchen I went to grab a snack. Mother had made a large pan of rice crispie squares so two were liberated and accompanied me back to the dining table.

In the middle of table was the local paper, facing away from me. As I sat down I spun it around to see what was happening in CR. And in that moment my entire life changed and I knew why Patty was crying.

I bolted out the front door, leaving the rice crispies behind. I ran, for miles literally, past Bennett’s Point, my lungs burning and pain searing between my eyes and down my neck .

I never read the article on the front page of the paper, just the headline.

“LOCAL GIRL DIES IN CAR ACCIDENT”

I recognized the car, the road, and Judy’s smiling face and that was all I needed to know.

By the time I returned from my run it was late afternoon. The cars were back in the driveway and I could see several people sitting at the dining room table. I tried slipping in the front door, but my Mother called out from the kitchen, “Mark is that you?”

I poked my head into the dining room. Dode, Pam and my grandmother were sitting at the table. Dode was white as a ghost and looked like she hadn’t slept for days. My Mother was on the other side of the half wall at the kitchen sink. She was holding onto the counter.

“You read the paper…” she said softly.

I nodded.

“We didn’t want to ruin your tournament…” her voice trailed off.

Dode turned and looked out the window, not wanting to see my expression. She was still dressed for church so I knew they had been at the funeral earlier.

Dode and I never talked about that day, or what happened, or for that matter ever discussed Judy again. It was there, always, like an invisible wall that started to build between us, between myself and my Mother, and myself and anyone who ever came close to my heart. And it would take years before I ever opened up to anyone again.

Events happened rapidly after Judy died. We didn’t do well at the Provincials, finishing fifth out of eight teams. I did make the BC All-Stars and there was a piece on BCTV about me catching a long fly in centerfield then crashing over the fence. That was kind of cool, especially being interviewed by Bernie Pascal, one of my childhood heroes.

After I returned from the Provincials my Mother decided that Dode and I needed a holiday so off we roared to Pen’s in Prince George. It was blazing hot that July but we enjoyed getting away. Until the day we left Prince George.

“We’re going to visit Don and Dorothy.” My Mother announced as we loaded the car. Don and Dorothy were my aunt and uncle, my Fathers brother. They lived in Victoria at the time, with their four children, who were basically the same age as Dode and I. Now in the past we had never visited them, usually they would arrive at the beach for a weekend every year or two. Dorothy was nice, Don was Don and I got along with the cousins on a fair to middling basis, as long as I had a beach exit route in mind at all times.

We drove down from Prince George, Dode in the backseat with a blanket over her head when we went through the Fraser Canyon even though it must have been 100 degrees in the car! We had stopped at Cache Creek to buy green gage plums which we snacked on all the way to the ferries.

I loved riding the ferries. There is something about the mix of diesel, smoke and salt air that is intoxicating. Especially if you can find a quiet place on the top deck away from the tourists! The trip from Vancouver to Victoria is especially beautiful, the open water south of Roberts Bank giving way to the narrow Active Pass with passing ferries sending mournful blasts on their horns. On the southwest of Active Pass you slide past tiny islands with cottages perched on the cliffs, and then slip into the terminal at Swartz Bay.

We spent a week with Don and Dorothy. It was ok, but both Dode and I were champing at the bit to get back to Oyster Bay. We had been away for two weeks that felt like forever, and I had been away for two more weeks playing baseball.

“We’re not going back to Oyster Bay.” my Mother announced over dinner.

“Whaaat?” Dode and I replied in unison.

“We’re moving to Victoria,” Mother said bluntly, “end of story!”

13 years of my life washed away in that one statement. My parents were seperating, we were moving to Victoria and my Father was selling the house at the beach. Wham Bam! It was done, gone was the desk my Father made for me with its’ flip top lid, gone was my chemistry set, my japanese fishing floats and the rest of my beachcombing lucre, and most of all, gone were my friends, Clay, Debbie, Martin, George, Beanie and Steve, none of whom I ever saw again. Patty I saw later that year but that is a whole other story.

The clouds and thunder had rolled in and it would be years before the sun came out again.