I reach the ramp to the dock and walk down it, not paying too much attention to the handful of teens waiting there. My tube, which was once bright red, has faded closer to orange but still holds my breath of two summers past when I last inflated it. I place it on the dock beside the ladder and climb into the water to wet myself down. At this time of year, late August, the water is warm enough not to shock but to soothe, even on this slightly overcast and cooler day. It’s a sensual frisson that gets my nerves tingling though, so I waste no time in grabbing the tube from the dock and placing it just so, while I move into position, and lean back into it as I shove off from the dock. A little wiggle of adjustment and there I am, trailing hands and feet in the river, floating in my tube. The current is slow so I paddle out into the centre of the current, looking at the weir that marks the transition from lake to river. This year has been a dry one and I’ve heard that they’ll soon be raising it to store more water. Now, the lake is low and the river lower, making it a challenge for fish, for tubers like me, and threatening the mill downstream with imminent closure if they can’t maintain the water flow.
But that’s not what I’m thinking about. I’m remembering my friends Manjeet and Janice who graciously walked with me partway along the trail that runs into town from their place, until they had to turn back as they were expecting a call. I’m thinking about the growth of the town of Lake Cowichan that I’ve seen over the years, as businesses go bankrupt or are born. I walked past the new library on the way here, smiling at the thought of the excavated dirt from the site ending up at my friends’ place for a landscaping project. I paddle along, watching the riverside homes and wondering about the lives lived and love shared in them. The water is clear and I can see the bottom except in the deepest pools. Although I’m enjoying the river, the slightly cool temperature and high clouds have kept the usual crowds down and I’m virtually alone on my journey this afternoon.
Of course, nobody is ever really alone. My restless mind chatters internally, I hear the sounds of people on shore, the splashes of children swimming and the drone of traffic in the distance. Insects fly. Birds swoop close to the water to catch them.
I let the sensuous pleasure of the water distract me, luxuriating as I feel the water flow through and around me. The Cowichan River is extraordinarily clean at its source, made from snowmelt and raindrops in a valley at the edge of the continent, at the edge of the world. I keep paddling, using my arms as oars with a sporadic power ten to speed me along, then drifting, occasionally letting the tube turn in a circle so I can get my bearings. The first footbridge comes and goes quickly and by now I’ve adjusted to the water temperature so that the wet just feels like heavy air on my extremities. Up ahead there’s the larger bridge where the road through town passes. Last time I was here, boys were jumping off it but now with the lower water levels they aren’t taking any chances, at least not at this moment. A few other tubers wallow in back eddies, drinking beers, but I continue to press on, moving through the big wide pool, passing the floating garbage buckets which always make me smile for some reason. It takes a while but eventually the first of the rapids appears. I spin the tube around and face this obstacle head on. I draw a bead on what seems to be the deepest part of the current and squeeze past a few rounded boulders that don’t quite break the surface. The riffle of the waves sends splashes of water up and onto me as I speed my way around this bend in the river. Now the houses thin out, and more trees bring more birds to listen to and observe. The ravens are noisy today, as are the Stellar Jays. Dragonflies encrusted with turquoise and sapphire dart across the surface, at times seeming to draft along in my wake. More rapids up ahead grab my attention and I hustle to move into a better position. Stroke, stroke and whoosh, down I go through the sluice box of river rocks into the next pool. From here it’s easy to see the mountains that line the valley. I notice the cutblocks logged decades ago and the new growth coming in. Along the top ridges, a few clearcuts register, spilling over from the next valley where Mother Nature is as bare as you’d expect after a visit to a Brazilian wax parlour. Bald isn’t sexy I think, and spend a few minutes ruminating on our obsession with skin and hair, while I splash and kick with my feet which are wearing ridiculous looking but practical foot gloves in place of the watershoes I once used. I enjoy the absence of music and talk and listen to the rhythm of the riverwater tumbling over the rocks, the birdcalls overhead and the hum of the crickets. Up ahead there are a few other tubers that I’m catching up with as they stretch out their time here. I know I can always come back and besides, I need to travel another half hour at least from the usual pullout spot at Little Beach. Now there are another set of rapids to contend with and I follow the general advice to stay left, managing to avoid either getting tipped out, or even worse, puncturing this vulnerable craft. For a second I remember coracles and other lifetimes as I continue my hedonistic drift downstream. I use my feet to kick off from a boulder that looms up in the green water and continue down through towering hallways of hemlocks and firs, bigleaf maples and cedars. The green spikes of golden irises line the side of the river. In some places the banks have given way and tipped themselves into the river, along with the burden of whatever trees were reaching up to the sky overhead. Now they have been turned into weapons, sweepers that threaten to scuttle me or stab me below the surface. This section of the river requires concentration, as I’ve learned on previous trips, and I paddle and plan, selecting each angle I take with care. I think about Manjeet and Janice’s friendship and the times I’ve spent here on the river with them, and feel a bittersweet tug as I remember the impending sale of their house. The river pulls me along, past the splash of a river otter sliding off the bank across from me. Another swimming hole appears, where supple children swim unfettered by concrete edges and lane markers, desultorily watched by dozing parents. A dog barks as I drift by. More rapids and I read the river carefully, looking for telltale markers that help me get by the rocks. The tube splashes down the river as I navigate, using my hands to manoeuvre past the stony obstacles. I thank the creator for the absence of other dangers; there are no crocodiles, alligators or caymans here, the fish are innocuous and even the snakes aren’t poisonous. Of course, on shore it’s another matter, what with the bears, cougars, elk and deer all of which have their own risks for humans. The sun is fading into the west and the shadows spill across the river. Trees tilt at impossible angles out from the shore, leaning like it’s getting close to last call. Hold on, I think as I slide by, don’t let the weight of that butterfly tip the scale today. Up ahead, Little Beach comes into view, with its long, deep swimming hole dotted with kids swimming and jumping with the eternal enthusiasm of innocence. I continue past the pullout, while some folks look at me askance, as if to say, “that way lies monsters”. The most immediate of which is the shallow river, causing me to develop a crablike hop and lift technique until I’m able to float freely. From here I am much more alone, as the houses become less frequent and the birds more so. Eagles are soaring overhead, woodpeckers are tapping into stumps for meals of insects and just a few feet off the water a heron cruises upstream. I hear the rumble of the next drop in elevation before I see it and manage to luck out on the path I choose, slipping as easily between the rocks as I did when the river was a foot higher. I float along, finding peace and tranquillity. The river washes and absolves, cleansing my worries and leaving me with love and gratitude as I pass the boathouse turned artist’s studio, not too far upstream from my friends’ place. Now it’s my turn to go slow, letting the river drag me along, until up ahead I see the familiar landmarks of my destination. As I leave the river, I pause, sending a prayer downstream with each drop I shake off. Later, I’ll drive home over the infamous Malahat Highway but for now I look out at the river, listen to the sound of creation and give thanks for this day.
David Trudel © 2014
Miss Carruthers
Dust motes danced in a spiral pattern, a bebop model of the DNA of want, as the afternoon sun shone through the torn and yellowed curtains that hung over the room’s only window. The boy sat on a braided rug on the floor. The rug had once been patterned with a vaguely country and western motif and could almost have been called a piece of folk art, with bright orange and red highlights running through the two-toned brown stripes. Now, however, it was merely brown, worn with use, uncared for and filthy with dirt and scraps and god knows what. The boy was playing with the one toy in the room, which happened to be a toy pistol in a stamped leather holster.
He knew that he wasn’t allowed to leave the rug, because she had told him not to and what might happen if he did. He sighed, because he was hungry and he had been there for a long time. He didn’t know how long, nor did he care. Time was a fluid concept to him. If he needed to, he could get his mind to switch off, like with the radio or the lights, and he wouldn’t notice the dirty old rug anymore.
It was late summer and the window was propped open with a wooden spoon, letting the traffic noises and shouts and cries from the neighborhood in. If there had been music appropriate to the location it would have been an edgy piece of Coltrane’s or maybe one of those numbers Bird came up with that evokes something almost as terrible as this place. But there wasn’t any music here, just the sounds of the cars and trucks rumbling by, punctuated by angry cries and curses.
The room was part of the small apartment the boy lived in. The apartment itself was a third floor walk-up, in a gritty tenement in the City’s most notorious part of town; the Skids. The apartment consisted of two rooms and a small water-closet that was far too small and primitive to be given the name bathroom. Certainly there was no chance that anyone had ever considered the idea of having a bath there.
A bedroom held an iron bed-frame with a tumble of frayed blankets on top of a saggy mattress, a nondescript chest of drawers, and a chair that did double duty as a laundry hamper. Behind dirt-encrusted Venetian blinds on the wall opposite the door was a cracked window that looked out on the brick wall of another equally squalid building.
The other room, where the boy was sitting, held a small countertop along one wall, upon which rested a two-burner hot plate and a toaster. A small rubber tub, like the kind used by busboys in cafes to gather up dirty dishes, was used as a sink. This array rested on a cabinet that had been lacking doors for some time now. A small sofa sagged against the other wall, in front of which was the rug where the boy was sitting. A scratched and dented card table with two chairs completed the furnishings. There was a fridge down the hall shared by all the apartments and rooms on the floor.
Most days the boy never left the apartment. He was permanently dirty, although often his face and hands were scrubbed to give an illusion of cleanliness, which sufficed as long as the casual observer was to keep their distance and pass by quickly.
Often the boy went hungry for long periods of time, until he passed out and went into a dark place where nobody could follow. Today at least he had been fed a bowl of porridge at breakfast and a lunch of a piece of white bread with a thin layer of butter topped with a minute sprinkling of sugar. This, along with a small carton of milk had left him feeling quite satisfied, at least in the only terms he knew. But it had been hours and hours since lunch, when she had left him on the rug, with a stern warning not to leave it.
He kept his sense of playfulness and curiosity carefully wrapped up in a warm place in the back of his mind. On the few occasions he had let them out, there had been trouble. He understood the language of pain, just as she understood it as an art form. When she took the trouble, she could make sure that the pain was bright and intense and sharp, so much so that even he would remember.
He was three years old.
He heard steps coming down the hall and tensed into immobility. The door opened and she thrust herself forward into the room, flinging her coat onto the sofa. “So, my little man”, she addressed her son, “have you been good? Did you stay where I told you?” His eyes betrayed his fear as he nodded curtly at her. “Yes, stayed on the rug”, trickled out in barely audible tones. “Good, good. By god, you might be getting some sense finally,” she exclaimed. He tried to sense her mood, but for a moment she stood over him, staring out the window without moving and without betraying the direction her emotional compass might be pointing. He waited, passively.
She might have been a beautiful woman if not for the nose that had been broken more than once and the mouthful of cracked and broken and missing teeth. She might have been a beautiful woman if not for the years of brutality and abuse and torture she had suffered, first in her uncle’s house in Krakow, then under the German troopers, then under the army of liberators lustily celebrating victory. Nowadays she worked sporadically as a seamstress, but the streets were her real workshop and the back alleys of the Skids were the office where her true pay was drawn. She might have been a beautiful woman, if not for that, but she was not beautiful or pretty or cute. Her face was god’s reflection as the world hurtled into the second half of the twentieth century, blown there by holocaust and conflagration through pain and sorrow and bullets.
With the swiftness of a ghetto survivor seizing a loaf of bread she grabbed the boy by his ankles and began twirling around in circles. “Momma takes you for a ride! Momma takes you for a ride!” she began chanting as the boy went spinning around the tiny living room, his head coming dangerously close to the few pieces of furniture that might have impeded his dizzying revolutions. Over and over she spun, her head thrown back, chanting her cry. Finally the boy began to send his consciousness to rest in the darkness and his hands relaxed their hold on the toy pistol.
The toy holster and gun left his hands just as she increased the speed of her dervish-like whirling. It was flung in an arc across the room and, crashing through the grimy single paned window, continued on its inevitable course to the sidewalk below. The pistol did not, however, hit the sidewalk directly. Instead, the tweed-covered shoulder of Miss Alice Carruthers intercepted the missile, which only then dropped to the ground with a thud.
Miss Carruthers turned around, seething in immediate anger. She assumed that one of them had hit her, but as the gun bounced to rest she realized that someone had thrown something, some object, at her. She grabbed the holster, still holding the pistol, barely registering what exactly the thing was. She scanned the sidewalk behind her but the nearest people were a block away. She became aware of a rhythmic chanting coming from overhead and looked up. One of the upper windows of the tenement she was standing beside was cracked and broken and a wisp of yellowed and tattered fabric flickered in and out, as if describing some kind of semaphore message. She measured the distance from the window to the spot on the sidewalk she was standing on and rendered her verdict faster than a Roman emperor deciding the fate of a fallen gladiator at the Coliseum.
She strode toward the entrance to the building and bounded up the stairs, if one can use the word bounded to describe the deliberate movement of a severe looking spinster, wearing a tweed suit, tortoiseshell glasses and with her hair done up in a bun under a practical rather than stylish hat. Just as she reached the door, it opened and an unshaven man wearing a torn sweater and dirty blue jeans scuttled out. Miss Carruthers seized the door handle, pushed through the doorway and rushed up the stairs. On the top floor landing she immediately turned left, as she had an excellent sense of direction and had already mapped out where the offending window must be.
Not bothering to knock, she opened the apartment door and looked in, ready to confront her attacker. Inside, she was confronted by a scene that she was later to describe as almost Hieronymous Bosch-like in its horror. A woman was in the center of the room holding a small boy by the ankles and twirling about in circles while over and over she chanted “Momma takes you for a ride”. The boy appeared to be dead, or at least unconscious. The place stank, was not just uncleaned but truly filthy, and was obviously no place to raise a child. “What is going on here!” Miss Carruther demanded. The dervish noticed the intruder, ceased her spinning and dropped the boy onto the sofa.
“Who are you?”
“What do you mean, “who are you””, came the retort. “I am Alice Carruthers, of the Children’s Aid Society. I was walking down the sidewalk when I was almost killed, by this!” she said, exhibiting the holster and gun. “It obviously came from there,” she said, pointing imperiously at the window. Then she turned at pointed at the boy, “And from him.”
The boy’s mother strode to the door and demanded “Get out, you nosy bitch. You got no business here!” Miss Carruthers squared her already formidable shoulders, drew herself up, and said with steely determination, “Oh no, dearie. That’s where you’re wrong. It just so happens that I’m a social worker and it’s my job to protect children like this from people like you. Of course you probably don’t know anything about that do you? No, you wouldn’t have people like me where you come from.”
The boy started to come to, amazed to see someone actually arguing with his mother. He waited expectantly for his mother to lash out at the strange lady, but amazingly the defiant light in her eyes flickered and went out. She walked over to the window, drew back the tattered remnant of curtain and stared out.
Across the rooftops rose the looming bulk of Hamilton’s Department Store. The waning sunlight caught the landmark’s golden H that towered on a spire over the store and the sun’s ray was, in turn, reflected back to the dusty tenement. The boy’s mother turned back to the room, laughed bitterly and said to Miss Carruthers, “Well if you want him so bad, take him. He’s more trouble than he’s worth. What the hell.”
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Tagged as child abuse, creative writing, creativity, depression, downtown eastside, fiction, memoir, prose, skid row, social commentary, social workers, writing