‘I didn’t know there was sweetgrass here. I bet muskrats think this is paradise.’
‘I’m going over there,’ I replied.
I walked along the straight trunk of one fallen cedar tree and then another out into the marsh, to an open pool of clear water. Along the southerly shoreline of the bog, bulrushes were all standing to attention, their tops like thin little bearskin hats on skinny green soldiers. The water lilies were all shut tight. They wouldn’t expose their hearts until the sun was much higher. Later in the summer, if all of July was hot and humid, the water in the pond would get covered in bright green algae but now, in early July, it was crystal clear and you could see absolutely everything in it. Streamlined silvery minnows were easy to see but if you looked harder there were tiny, long slender dragonfly larvae that looked like they’d got baby leaves stuck to their tails. At the edges of the pond that’s where the tadpoles were.
Uncle walked slowly along the same fallen tree trunks. I thought he looked quite ridiculous, with his arms straight out to keep his balance, like Christ on the cross, I thought. He reached where I was and joined me where I was kneeling on a stump looking into the water.
‘Is it interesting, what you’re looking at?’
I knew my uncle couldn’t see what I saw. Grace and Perry, Steve’s younger brother, could but grown-ups couldn’t. Giant water bugs were stabbing the tadpoles to death. It was scary to watch and I didn’t like it but also I did like it and always watched.
All that my uncle saw were iridescent green dragonflies, like phosphorescent toothpicks, hovering over the pond, and on the water, long-legged water striders skating gracefully over the surface, never sinking.
‘Are you wondering how those insects can walk on water?’ my uncle asked.
Other grown-ups never knew what was in my mind but my uncle sometimes did. I really wanted to know why the water bugs were so mean to the tadpoles but I’d also wondered why water striders didn’t sink when they stopped skating.
‘They’re lighter than water so they don’t sink.’
I thought for a moment.
‘But ducks are heavy and they don’t sink either,’ I said, not so much as a question but as a fact.
‘You’re right. Good thinking. What ducks do is they trap air in their feathers. The trapped air makes a duck lighter than water and that’s why a duck doesn’t sink. I really should have explained it better. Water striders do the same as ducks. They trap air on their legs just like ducks trap air in their feathers. Shall we catch one and see?’
On his knees on the log, balancing himself with one hand, Uncle Reub reached down to the water, trying to grab a water strider and show me its legs. As he leaned out over the pond his glasses case, in the breast pocket of his pyjama top, slid out and plopped into the water. It sank almost immediately, just like the Titanic I thought, raising its stern to the sky before dying. Uncle pulled himself upright and rested on his knees. It was easy to see his glasses case, shiny and silvery, nestling in the black leaves and guck a few feet away at the bottom of frog bog, but I could see the concerned look in my uncle’s eyes.
‘I’ve got my shoes on. Can you go in and get it?’ Uncle asked.
‘No,’ I replied, not because I couldn’t but because I didn’t want to get into frog bog.
Uncle Reub paused for a while then said, ‘OK then. Let’s see if we can fish it out.’
He walked back along the logs, this time faster, with his arms more like you’d expect from a grown-up, over to a willow tree and took a knife from his pocket. Grown-up men all carried penknives in their pockets. My father’s penknife, in his pants’ pocket whether he was in trousers in the city or shorts at the cottage, was made from brown tortoiseshell and had two blades that my dad kept razor sharp with a small pumice stone. Black electrical tape kept the tortoiseshell from falling off. My uncle’s knife was completely different. It was a small single blade, thicker than a penknife, three inches long with a horn handle. The blade was in a soft tan leather sheath covered in white and red and black beads. I thought it was the most wonderful knife I had seen.
With that knife, Uncle Reub cut two green branches from near the trunk of a willow so that both were the same thickness and each had two fingers at their ends.
‘When I practised general medicine in Mandan, North Dakota, a good friend of mine showed me how to do this. What we’ll do is get the ends of these branches under each side of the case. They’ll act like two forks and we’ll slowly lift it up and out of the water.’
Uncle and I walked back along the tree trunks. First we acted as a team, with me pushing one branch under one side of the metal case and my uncle doing the same with the other, but each time we tried to raise the glasses case the branches bent too much and the case slid back into the black leaves and stirred up the guck at the bottom of the pond. Or my uncle and I couldn’t coordinate what we were doing and the glasses case slipped back to its murky home. Uncle tried using both branches himself but with no success, and now the water was so murky it was almost impossible to see where the glasses case was. I wanted to give up and go home. When I was young I found that easiest to do. My uncle knelt on the tree trunk. He was a small man and sometimes reminded me of Humpty Dumpty but now he looked even smaller and I felt sorry for him.
‘Are you sure you can’t get it for me?’ Uncle Reub asked.
I felt embarrassed. I was in my bathing suit. I loved the lake. There was nothing better in the whole summer than floating in hot sunshine buoyed up by the warmth and the strength of a truck or car tyre’s inner tube. But getting into the bog was scary. I didn’t mind the goo on the bottom. In fact I liked the squishy feel. I didn’t mind the frogs or painted turtles either and the water snakes always hid when Grace or Perry got into the bog, but there were snapping turtles in there too and the year before I was bitten when I caught one. It was horrible. I was carrying it back to show Grace and hadn’t noticed that the snapping turtle’s head had slowly emerged and turned upside down over its back. At the instant I saw this the snapper crushed its jaws into my forefinger. It didn’t let go until I put it back in the bog and it swam off.
I never talked about that. I certainly wouldn’t have told other adults but Uncle Reub was different so I said, ‘I’m frightened of the snapping turtles.’
‘They are frightening. You’re very sensible. Now I’ve got these sticks and I’ve got my knife, and Edgar, my friend in Mandan, taught me how to throw it. I can knock the right eye out of a rattlesnake at ten paces with this knife so if you get in there, I promise, nothing will come near you. You’re safe with me.’
The sun was higher. It was almost nine o’clock and I felt its warmth heat my bare back. With my uncle’s assurance I slid off the log until my feet felt the mushy bottom of the bog. The water was colder than I expected and came to the top of my bathing suit. My shoulders lifted and I squeezed my arms against my sides.
‘You don’t even have to look at what you’re doing. We’re a team,’ Uncle said. ‘Now, open your fingers and bend your body over to your right.’
I obeyed. In slow motion I leaned over to my right, reaching down towards the bottom of the bog until my whole arm and shoulder were in the water. I didn’t like what I was doing but I said nothing.
‘Over a bit more. Now forward. Keep your fingers open. Down. There. Can you feel it?’
I could. I grasped the case, together with some leaves as black as coal, and, still not smiling, raised it all out of the water and handed everything to my uncle, who opened the case and emptied it of water. I hoped there’d be a tadpole in it, stabbed to death by a water bug, but there wasn’t. Now, standing up, I felt warmer, and quite satisfied with