‘The next time your father makes a barbecue, let’s put this on the embers,’ he said.
‘Will it make the hamburgers taste better?’ I asked and my uncle replied, ‘Better than that. The incense from this sweetgrass will relieve us all of our weariness. And yes, the meat will taste better too.’
We walked back through the trees and just before the gravel road and cottages on Long Point became visible, Uncle Reub said once more, ‘Hold on for a moment.’
Again he took his knife out of its beaded sheath and deftly cut two bands of bark off one of the surrounding birch trees. ‘When we get back we’ll soak these in water. I’ll show you how to make an unsinkable birchbark canoe.’
By the time we got back to the cottage, my family was already having breakfast. ‘Where’d you go?’ Robert asked me.
‘Nowhere,’ I answered.
‘What were you two doing this morning?’ my mother asked Uncle Reub.
‘Not much,’ replied her brother.
‘You’re not going to tell us anything?’ Mum asked.
‘Brucie and I were discussing the meaning of life,’ Uncle Reub answered.
I smiled inside me. I loved that we had a shared secret. We finished our breakfast all together, white toast, butter tarts and milk.
THE CANOE
The slapping rain was sudden and passed in minutes, leaving a rainbow over the still lake. Grace and I found my uncle inside the cottage talking quietly to my mother who, when we arrived, left and went to her bedroom.
‘I’ve just finished making the canoe,’ Uncle Reub said.
I had been surprised that my uncle had promised to make me a model canoe. I was more used to seeing him just sit in his chair or read a big book. Uncle Reub had found an aluminium bucket in my father’s shed and filled it with water to soak the white bark he had cut from the birch tree near frog bog. I had watched him make some slits at both ends with his knife and bend the bark in half with its woody side out, not its bark side as I’d expected, but before I could ask why I got bored and left to find Grace.
‘Do you hear how shrill that woodpecker’s cry is?’ my uncle had asked. ‘A storm’s coming.’
And in not much longer than it took that storm to come and pass, the miniature boat was finished.
‘Folks, that stitching at the bow and stern, it’s called whipstitching. When I used to patch up people at The Mayo I used something called mattress stitching but this is better for boats. Both of them make the seal watertight. Along the gunwales where I’ve bound in sweetgrass, those are called simple stitches.’
I was impressed, especially by the two thwarts my uncle had whittled with his knife, to keep the canoe firmly spread.
‘Will it float like our canoe or just tip over?’ Grace asked, and my uncle replied that we should take it out on the lake and find out.
Grace and I wanted to go in the big red canoe – we were allowed in it with a grown-up – but Uncle Reub said it was too wobbly for him to get in and out so we all got in the rowboat. Angus was on the dock asking to come but Grace said he had to stay at home.
‘I row,’ said Grace, so she did, with me in the front and Uncle in the back.
As she rowed, my uncle leaned forward and said to Grace, ‘Do you know where all the flowers go when winter comes?’
‘They all die,’ she answered.
‘That could be true,’ Uncle replied. ‘But I have a friend who thinks differently. He says that God would never let such beauty die. He says all the flowers go to heaven and come back next year to make rainbows.’
‘If God decides all the flowers come back, what does he do with the birds?’ I asked.
‘That’s difficult to know,’ my uncle answered. ‘Our Jewish religion tells us that each year God decides who will live and who will die. My friend Edgar’s religion says that nothing ever dies forever, that everything comes back in one way or another.’
‘Is Edgar a Christian?' Grace asked as she continued rowing.
‘You know, I don’t exactly know what his religion is,’ Uncle replied. ‘Edgar is a Lakota Sioux medicine man but he’s a modern thinker. He goes to church but he also believes in his people’s ancient customs.’
‘I’m going to frog bog,’ Grace said and we returned to silence.
The lake was perfectly still as we glided past Grace’s, Dr Sweeting’s and all the other cottages, each nestled amongst the cedars that lined the shore. Some women had returned to their front lawns and were quietly getting on with their chores. Their motorboats remained silent in their boathouses, their rowboats, sailboats and canoes tied to their glistening, wet docks.
Grace and I had rowed to frog bog before but could never get into its still ponds. A canoe would be able to get through the pickerel weed and bulrushes and fallen trees but our rowboat with its fixed oars was too wide. Grace let the bow of the rowboat nestle into the bulrushes. ‘The canoe will look good here,’ she said. Uncle leaned over the side of the boat and gently placed the birch bark canoe on the water where it immediately rolled over and floated on its side.
‘The bark is heavier on that side,’ Uncle Reub explained. ‘I can shave it down with my knife but ballast is best.’
‘What’s ballast?’ I asked.
‘Ballast is anything heavy. The grain or lumber or iron ore that Great Lake ships carry acts like ballast and keep those ships stable. If a laker doesn’t have a good load on it, even it can tip over in a strong wind.’
Uncle Reub reached into his trousers pocket where he had put some gravel. He put five pieces in the canoe, lowered it over the side of the rowboat then, with the model floating on the surface of the lake, moved the gravel around until the canoe was sitting absolutely straight in the water.
‘There now. Perfect. Should we leave it here, to embark on its own voyage, or take it back to the cottage?’
‘Leave it here,’ we said in unison. Without speaking to each other we both knew we wanted to return the next day to see where the canoe had gone.
‘Let’s leave it over there,’ I said, pointing to a narrow channel through the bulrushes, so Grace rowed over and Uncle Reub placed the canoe where it would be washed by the wind into one of the quiet pools in the lagoon.
‘It’s best to get back now,’ Uncle said. ‘It’s almost lunchtime.’ And Grace turned the boat and rowed back towards the cottages.
‘My friend Edgar, who says that flowers come back as rainbows, he says that those pebbles in the canoe will protect it from harm.’
‘Why do you listen so much to Edgar?’ Grace asked.
‘That’s a profound question, Grace,’ my uncle replied. ‘I can only answer by telling you that I had forgotten what a wise man Edgar was, until this spring when he came all the way from North Dakota to see me. It was Edgar’s wise words that encouraged me to come and stay with Bruce’s mother.’
‘How can pebbles protect a canoe from harm? They’re just pebbles,’ I asked and my uncle’s thoughts returned to the canoe.
‘Our religion teaches us that only people have souls and it’s our souls that go to heaven, but Edgar says everything has a soul, even a pebble. He says that’s what will protect the canoe, the souls in those pebbles.’
‘My father says that type of talk is nonsense,’ Grace said, as she pulled on the oars.
‘He might