“Aunt Ginger! Is that you?” I croak, clear my throat and quickly scan the living room crammed with her 1920s mohair sofas, overstuffed chairs, and Tiffany lamps. Sadie Brown thumps her tail on the floor and whines softly. Nothing else shakes, rattles or rolls. I turn back to the phone, pick it up and walk over to the bay window overlooking the lake.
“Norman? Ready anytime,” I say, in a loud, firm voice. What a faker!
“Okay, I’m all set here now. Let’s do a run-through of the elements, beginning with the tree in the water,” says Norman, encouraging, professional, utterly unaware that I am dealing with weirdness everywhere I turn.
“Tree. Poplar or black poplar. Medicinal sap, smells a bit like cottonwood. Balm of Gilead. That’s another name for it.”
“As in the hymn? ‘There is a balm in Gilead’?” sings Norman, completely unselfconsciously and very nicely, too.
“Yes! You sing?”
“The Whitehorse Choral Society, two concerts a year. Depend on us for Bach’s Magnificat and Handel’s Messiah, on alternate years at Christmas. CBC Radio tapes us and out we go on the airwaves to Faro and Old Crow and Inuvik and all points in between. This year we’re going on the new northern television program as well. As long as there are more than two others singing bass, I can belt it out with confidence. Now, where are we? Gulls. Please go on to the gulls, Mercy.”
“Gulls!” I blurt. I have to get focused. “Gulls, talking birds. Yes. Rude, jeering types, like the kind of people I try to avoid at all costs. Noisy, belligerent, too stubborn and stupid to know they’re unbearable to be around. I know that’s just a tad judgmental but these gulls get my adrenaline up. I’m always at a loss, almost tongue-tied, when I have to deal with blatant rudeness and mean-spiritedness. I just can’t comprehend how anyone can live with themselves after spending the day dumping on everybody else—quite literally, in the case of gulls.”
“The snake?” Norman is snickering and I am suddenly pleased.
“A small, pretty garter snake, green and yellow. You know, I have a bit of a phobia about snakes. Actually, more like a full-fledged phobia. But this one, in the water, looked so puzzled and confused and that’s how I felt too, just watching this bizarre movie or dream-thing, vision, whatever...Anyway, I picked the snake up. It wasn’t slimy or anything, just warm and alive! Aren’t snakes cold-blooded? Doesn’t matter. I’m trying to be rational. Okay, so, the snake was ever so dainty.”
“Your preliminary report says, ‘Thank you, you really didn’t need to do that but I’m truly grateful,’ and then you have a question mark and ‘Voice? Ginger?’ What’s that? You lost me there.”
This is the part that gets me feeling foolish. “I thought the snake talked like my Aunt Ginger,” I say, trying for an airy, noncommittal tone.
“Really? Didn’t you move into your aunt’s place last year, just before the Nitassinan work?”
“Yes. What do you think of that? I wish I knew what this stuff meant! Norman, get real now. Is any of this any use at all?” I feel like a fanciful nitwit all over again.
“Absolutely. I’m sure of it. You’re in my Top Ten, remember, you’re a top-notch sensor even though you try to deny it. Stay open-minded about all of it. If it helps you to feel useful, just remember Nitassinan. Between you and the other four sensors, we had the place pin-pointed on the map because you picked up the landforms, the bird migration route and the two rivers joining up. Trust yourself! You’re doing a good job! Now, ready for more?”
Trust yourself. She would say that, striding around tapping cigarillo ash in the general direction of the standing ashtrays and swooping her right arm around to make her points even more forceful and expansive. Aunt Ginger was an Isadora Duncan fan and she, too, must have dominated every stage she was on, all swirling silks and bare feet.
“Yo! I’m not exactly sharp as a tack, sorry to say. But yes, let’s keep at it. Deer?”
“May as well do all the wildlife first. Go ahead,” he says.
“Two. Young male, bigger doe, maybe mother and son. Frightened. Trying to get out of the water. I think they’re going to drown. God, how awful, but it’s true. They know it, too.”
“Yeah, they sense it all right. We should have as much sense as they do,” Norman blurts out with feeling. “Three of the reports have animals drowning! It’s upsetting to say the least. In Nitassinan the jets drove animals over cliffs, among other things. Now these drowning reports! I don’t know which is worse but I fear water like some people fear flying.”
“Or snakes,” I say, inanely. What am I trying to do here? One-up Norman in the phobia department? Anyway, I don’t think I’m afraid of snakes anymore. “Norman? What’s next?”
“Landforms, Mercy. What did it look like out there on the log? Think left, right, up and down. Go.”
“At first, the canyon, really just a recess of, oh, less than one hundred metres from the river. Shale, steep sides. Flat top. In the main channel, on either side the land is flat, like a plateau. There are cutbanks, yellowish colour. I remember trees, but they were far away, beautiful gleaming white tree trunks with leaves that are that fresh lime green of spring. It must have smelled wonderful. It’s a rip-off not being able to smell during these, whatever they are, even though smells in my regular life send me off to other planets!” Good grief! I am blushing madly, thinking of roses. Why can’t I just shut up? I’m becoming one of those unfortunate people who can’t stop talking, the kind other people roll their eyes about and invent boiling kettles for after five minutes on the phone.
“Good work, Mercy. Plateaus, eh? That fits. Now, the water.”
Just the facts ma’am. Button up except for the facts. “Muddy, full of floating debris, big hunks of ice, all sorts of trees, evergreens, poplars. Very strong current. It’s...”
“Yes?” asks Norman.
“Odd. That’s what it is. The tree keeps getting sucked out by the current and swung around a lot, and it rolls a lot, but...the current isn’t right somehow. Up ahead, now I remember, up ahead the water is coming in big rolling waves and there are whitecaps and all that deadhead junk in the water. It’s no place to be is what I’m trying to say. Yet the log is moving forward to meet this wall of waves. The current is going in two directions! I’m not even going to try and think my way through this lot! You go figure!”
“Very interesting, this is a new one. Good work. Now, the people, please.”
“Okay,” I say, feeling back on track again. “The man in the maroon truck has on a workshirt, a shade of muted green. Some men wear pants the same colour? Hard-wearing cloth. Lots of farmers wear that kind. Anyway, he’s slumped over the wheel, one arm is slung over the wheel and his head must be near the window. I can’t see his face. It’s an immaculate old truck with those big curving fenders and a silver grill. I like that old-fashioned maroon colour but I’m no expert on makes and models, sorry.”
“No problem. And the others, the police with the binoculars?”
“Too far away to get a better description. I saw the flash of the sun on the glass first. They were passing the binoculars back and forth. I wish I could say more but there you have it.”
“And the end of it? Can you go a little further?”
“The end. Well. I’m looking at my copy here and all I get is the feeling of a stupid mistake, the knees betraying the body, the truly sickening feeling of something solid giving out from underfoot, the biting coldness of the water. The blackness is similar to fainting. And then I hit my head.”
“You don’t have that