Wild Red Strawberries

 

Quiet, not to make any sound. Daddy loves his little Marty, but not on week-end mornings. Not when Daddy's stumbled into bed in the misty-dark hours before dawn. It's all right, it's all right for him to wake me up with all his fumbling and his stupid whistling. That's different all right when he wakes me and I can't get back to sleep.

But her sleep, when her Daddy's out at night is fitful and worried anyway, and a delicious calm steals over her when she knows Daddy's back, even if she can't sleep any more. Mom's gone, probably for good this time, but she's Daddy's girl and Daddy won't ever leave her.

Pick on her once in a while, why don't you! Leave the Kid alone!

The Kid's asleep too. Nothing, no amount of noise ever awakens him. He rides his trail bike over the same tired old ground near the cabin, bumpety-bump, every day. Smokes one weed after another, eyes blank, trailing his feet in the water over at the dock. the Kid's on probation. Car-theft. Leaving the scene of an accident. "But", the judge had said, "you come from a good family, I can see that. I can see how concerned your parents are". And gave him a suspended judgement. In the care of his concerned parents. Mom was always concerned, true.

You bloody little bastards, get out of my hair! To be fair, she'd screech that at both of them, ever since Marty could remember. But the Kid was Mom's kid. Always, she hinted Marty was probably a changeling. Someone switched babies in the hospital nursery. Jesus, my own kid couldn't be so stupid.

But Marty had Daddy.

On with her cut-offs, her tee shirt dirty from yesterday but she wouldn't go banging drawers in search of another one. Who cared, anyway? Would a clean tee shirt make the morning better? Decided against sneakers, bare feet would do. And slipped carefully out the screened door. Outside, where the freshness of the morning unfurled from its night's sleep and gently enfolded her, caressed her with the damp and loving fingers of pre-dawn.

She stepped lightly on the wet grass, forcing herself not to think of slimy, slithering snails, mashing them underfoot. A mist rose languorously from the lake. In the trees overhead, the rustle of birds. A scuttering in the underbrush off to the left. She stopped, looked that way nervously. Groundhog?

Finally she untied the gun'l rope of the red canoe, the short one. Shoved it gently, dipped her feet into the cold water, slipping on rocks, gained a footing and made into the canoe. The sun soon to rise over the hills. The moon up there, ghostly, halved. Everything belonged to her, the lake, the sky, the cedars fencing the lake, obscuring the depths of the woods beyond. She breathed the fragrance of the trees, her surroundings; attar of life.

These early morning excursions on the lake suffused her with a gratefulness, a will to experience everything that life placed in her solitary path. She loved the wilderness feel of the lake, the woods, when all the surrounding cottages, hidden by old conifers skirting the shoreline of the lake housed fast-asleep people who could never know the wholeness, the completedness of the experiences that were hers alone. Somnambulists all, awake or asleep. Only she felt the earth beating, sighing, was at one with nature.

Her paddle raised slivers of silver from the lake, glimmering in the light of the naked moon. The gentle slap and slush of the water cradling her. The lake her birth-sac and every morning it delivered her newly-born. A dark and sleek shape dove from rocks coasting the shoreline as she spirited the canoe alongside. Muskrat.

A strange, unmistakable silhouette in the water betraying, at this pre-dawn time, no white. The loon, silent and aloof, submerged and she waited, no longer paddling, but dreamily drifting, until it broke the surface of the water. This must be what the primordial earth was like, she convinced herself. A strange grey and silver half-light, a luminescent moon, and vapours rising from the water.

There! That sound? And watched as a long-legged bird strode from a rock to the water, daintily lifting its awkward yet graceful stalks, shifting its long-beaked head forward. The heron half-dove, then raised itself out of the water, resumed its position on the rock, shaking droplets out of its blue-gray wings stretched impossibly wide. Effortlessly, it craned its head forward and rose, its body bulky yet uncumbersome, legs folding underneath, silently floating the ether over Marty, the canoe, the lake and the cedars.

She beached the canoe, slung the rope around an old stump and gingerly hobbled the pebbles of an unfamiliar portion of the shoreline. Ahead, what was it? An old stone foundation. Weeds, brambles overgrowing the stone, the squared timbers, what was left of them. Careful now, where you're walking, Marty. Don't want to step on a rusted nail, hand-forged or not.

Why don't you go on out and drown? Who needs your damn eyes following me around? What do you know about it? You think your mother's a whore and your father's faultless? What the hell do they teach you at that bloody high school anyway? At your age I never condemned my mother, damn you. Damn you! DAMN YOU! GO DROWN!

Sure, this was the place. Wild strawberries grew here, and garlic, and hens 'n chicks, someone's old garden. Once, when she was little, she and Daddy had discovered this place. One carefree and long-gone, hot and misty afternoon. They'd taken the baler from the canoe and lovingly filled it with wild strawberries. Red, luscious and ridiculously runty. The size of blueberries. Your mother'll make jam out of them, Marty. Jam. Wild strawberry jam. She could ignore the horseflies, the deer flies, lighting and biting, even the black flies.

Screw yourself! Think I'm prepared to hover over a hot stove for you two? Want jam, make it yourselves. Bloody well time I said it, I'm through!

What's this? Burnt rocks. Barbecue? Someone had a barbecue here? Lifting feet carefully, regretting the absence of sneakers now. Nothing to see here anyway. Back to the canoe. The lilting, tilting, mesmerizing and faultless water.

And shoving off again, rocking the canoe, settling, paddling.

Something white and lumpy in the water, half submerged.
 

Soon the sun would rise above the hills. Already a promise in the air of a warm, muggy day. Wonder what plans Daddy had in mind for this day. The Kid would want to stay home, stick around the cabin. Ride his trail bike. Over the same tired old trails, worn thin and hardened over like the shell of a turtle, by that bumpety-bumpety, bump. One smoke after another. Blank face. What did he ever think of? Did he ever think?

Time you did, you know, eighteen. At your age... Daddy censuring, recalling his own long-ago eighteen years. No trail bikes, no cigarettes. At least he said there were none.

Paddle shoving against something soft, yielding.

Wild strawberries, red and ripe. When you cook them on the stove they turn to liquid quickly, with the sugar. Bubble and squeak, cook into a gelatinous mush that smells and tastes like heaven.

Floating off one end of the something soft, dark fronds. Like hair. Hair? Red-on-white? Red streaming from the white-on-dark? Luscious red, like wild strawberries.

Could no one, no one at all in that lonely place, that place where everyone slept and no one knew the joy of the wilderness, could NO ONE hear her screams? Scream, Marty, Scream!

Marty? Marty! MARTY, SHUT UP, DAMN YOU! You're making enough noise to wake the dead.