13. Nature Calls
It had been a long day.
To Becca, it felt like it had been two days.
First, Gran got them to do an errand.
“How about you and Jane go for a nice bike ride and do the shopping for me?” she said.
So they set off for the store, Jane on Mac’s rattletrap and Becca on Speed Queen, Gran’s heritage three-speed.
But Jane didn’t really believe in nice bike rides.
“Let’s ride as far and fast as we can with our eyes closed,” she said. “Last one to open her eyes wins.”
So they rode down the long hill with their eyes closed, and Jane’s bike fell apart, and Becca didn’t open her eyes until she landed in a ditch full of stinging nettles and wild roses.
But that was all right. Just a lot of scratches and stinging.
All that felt like one kind of day. Fun, but hazardous.
Then suddenly, after they’d done the shopping, it became a totally different kind of day.
“Oh, look!” said Jane. “There’s Merlin. Maybe we can put our bikes in his van and get a ride home.”
Because now they had the box of groceries, as well as Jane’s bike that was in more pieces than a healthy bike should be.
And there was Merlin. Or was it?
All at once, Becca wasn’t sure.
He had his arms around a woman Becca had never seen before — someone tall, strong and spiky-haired. He kissed her. He hugged her. The two of them smiled at each other and laughed their heads off.
The unknown woman had her arm around Merlin’s shoulders and she looked at him as if she was thrilled to see him, right down to the soles of her elegant biker boots and right out to the tips of her purple hair.
Merlin was waving his arms and talking like it was the most exciting day of his life.
Was this the Merlin who had been kissing Aunt Fifi only the day before? A kiss that had made Becca’s hair prickle on her head?
The sad, dropping feeling in her stomach took her by surprise.
“Maybe it’s his sister,” said Jane.
“He only has one sister,” said Becca. “That’s not her.”
Sailing in a Qualicum would be nothing compared to whatever was going on here. And there was no question of getting a lift from someone as wrapped up with his Friend as Merlin was. Ms. Spiky-hair!
That night, Becca and Jane crawled into their sleeping bags on Gran’s deck long before dark.
It had taken them ages to walk home pushing the bikes. And the milk sprang a leak and seeped out of the backpack and through Jane’s shorts and underpants and all the way down her legs into her socks. The raspberries squashed and got all mixed up with the organic fertilizer, and Jane got blisters, and Becca scraped her shins.
But that wasn’t what bothered Becca as she stared up through the pine branches at the darkening sky.
“Did he kiss her on the cheek?”
“I didn’t see,” said Jane.
“What am I going to say to Aunt Fifi?”
Gran would be happy, Becca thought. It would be the end of arguments about Shakespeare.
She couldn’t sleep. She tried staring up into the stars, but they only reminded her of Aunt Fifi and Merlin. A star to every wandering bark.
And of the little ship she and Jane had seen, almost drowning in all the storminess and sea spray.
Would the play ever come together? Would they ever get a good sailboat? Would Auntie Meg like The Tempest? Would Auntie Clare and Uncle Clarence? Would Mum and Dad and Pin?
Would more bad things happen?
Then her head would fill with Merlin and Ms. Spiky-hair again, and with the look in Aunt Fifi’s eyes as she’d drawn Merlin’s face towards her.
Who was Merlin’s Friend? Not someone he could argue with as well as he did with Aunt Fifi. That wasn’t possible.
Then nature called.
Even indoors, out of the starshine, it wasn’t wholly dark. Are these my night eyes? Becca wondered, feeling the smooth floor underfoot, and then the cool tiles of the bathroom. The whole space seemed strange after waking up outside. She didn’t want to turn on the light and ruin the dimness.
But someone was moving around.
No, some thing was moving.
Becca’s heart pattered in her chest with a scared, scampering thrum of its own.
“Gran?” she whispered. “Is that you?”
The isle was full of noises, just like Shakespeare said, but she didn’t expect to hear them in the bathroom.
It couldn’t be otters, surely. Anyway, now she knew what otter language sounded like, and this wasn’t it.
There was a murmuring, and a scampering, scrabbling noise. A furniture-moving noise, even.
She didn’t flush, so it must have been the sound of her putting the lid down that bothered whatever was so nearby, scrabbling and shuffling. Oh, why hadn’t she just gone to the biffy in the safe, comfortable rustling of the forest?
But now whatever it was became noisy and bad-tempered — squabbling and squealing, scraping and crying.
It was awful, like hearing people fight. Every one of Becca’s hairs stood on end, even the hairs inside her ears.
Then the noise quieted and went back to murmurings.
Becca put her hands over her heart and escaped back to the deck.
“Where have you been?” murmured Jane.
“There’s something funny in the bathroom,” Becca whispered.
“What kind of funny?” asked Jane.
“Animal funny,” Becca said.
“Otters?” asked Jane.
“No,” said Becca.
“Does it smell?” asked Jane.
“No,” said Becca, and Jane lay down abruptly and began to snore a little, as if a night without otters or odors was all she needed for a good night’s rest.
But Becca lay awake looking up at the slowly vanishing stars, and the tops of the pine trees, and the growing light.
In the morning, she told Gran.
“Something funny in the bathroom?” Gran echoed. “Funny ha-ha or funny peculiar?”
“Definitely peculiar,” said Becca.
“What are you talking about?” asked Auntie Meg.
“Animals in the bathroom,” Becca said.
“Merlin will have to come,” said Aunt Fifi.
Oh! Becca hadn’t thought of that. Would he want to, now that Ms. Spiky-hair was on the scene?
“Not again!” said Gran. “And Clare and Clarence arriving soon! Fifi, why do these things happen when you’re around?”
“Me!” Aunt Fifi protested.
“We’ll eat breakfast at my house,” Jane said, pulling Becca away.
“Don’t you want a morning swim?” asked Aunt Fifi. “Maybe Merlin will stay for breakfast.”
“My mum and dad invited her,” Jane said. “We’re off.”
She threw her sleeping bag over Becca’s head and led her up the beach.
“Thanks,” Becca said, muffled.
“You looked like a small animal about to be crushed by a boot,” Jane said.
“I don’t know what I’m going to say to Aunt Fifi,” said Becca.
When Becca got back, Gran was crawling around under the house.
“Merlin said the problem wasn’t plumbing,” Aunt Fifi told Becca. “He so often says that around here! And Jane’s mum called so he had to tootle off. And everyone else has gone to do whatever it is that they’re doing — including me.”
She took her keys and disappeared.
“What’s under there?” Becca asked.
“I have no idea,” said Gran.
Her voice was muffled and hollow and emerged from under the house in short bursts.
Frank butted Becca’s leg.
“Frank’s very interested,” Becca said.
“Well he might be,” Gran replied, and there was a great ripping, squeaking sound. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not tearing the house apart. Well, only sort of.”
“Do you need help?” Becca asked.
She remembered Frank roaring after the creature that ran under the house.
When Gran finally came out, pushing herself along on her back, she had to cough for a long time.
“We need someone smaller than I am,” she said. “Preferably someone with compromised olfactory organs.”
“I’m smaller,” Becca said. “But what does the other thing mean?”
“Someone with no sense of smell,” said Gran.
“Is it worse than otters?” she asked.
“Possibly,” said Gran. “It’s sort of fishy, but — I find I don’t want to describe it.”
“My olfactory organs are fine,” said Becca.
“That’s too bad,” said Gran, “but we’ll kit you out with a surgical mask.”
She made Becca wear an old gardening shirt and gumboots and a toque, and rummaged in the shed for a mask. She held the gardening gloves open and Becca slipped her hands in.
“It must be like this for Aunt Cat,” Becca said, “getting ready to operate on someone’s heart.”
“I surely hope not,” said Gran. “In any case, whatever it is lives between the beams and joists under the bathroom floor. It’s not about the toilet, so don’t worry about that sort of thing. Just clear out as much of the dirt and insulation as you can. Drop it on the ground and we’ll get rid of it later. See if you can dig back to where the creature’s nesting.”
Then she put her own headlamp on Becca’s head.
“I don’t think it’s ferocious,” Gran said, and went to shut Frank in the cabin.
It was interesting under Gran’s house. When her eyes adjusted, Becca gazed up at beams and joists, and white pipes and black pipes leading into the floor. Plywood stretched out around her, and above, where Gran had already pulled some wood away, were the insides of the cabin’s underside.
Into the fluffy pink insulation ran a fist-sized hole.
“It’s a tunnel,” she told Gran.
“Can you get your arm in there?” Gran asked.
“Almost,” Becca said. She pulled insulation away.
“The tunnel goes on and on,” she reported. She shone the headlamp up.
“Any signs of its species?” asked Gran.
“Something small,” said Becca, “or that can make itself small.” She thought of the chittering and chattering that had startled her in the night.
It could be a nest where something was having babies. Or where toddler animals were spending their preschool life. It could be the nest of a couple that didn’t get along. Of an animal that was at home, or of an animal that was not. Of an animal that was vegetarian, or one that was a raging meat-eater and liked to sink its teeth into the face of anyone who peeked into its nest.
What if it was like one of Prospero’s sprites, the ones that were good at pinching, biting, hissing and stabbing?
Whatever it was, no animal she’d ever heard of welcomed someone who was pulling its home apart.
She pulled out more insulation. The tunnel went on, right into the next section of floor, but now she could hear a small, worried murmuring.
“I think it’s at home,” she called to Gran.
“That makes sense,” Gran said. “It’s probably nocturnal. Otherwise why would you have heard moving in the night?”
Fine for her to be so calm, Becca thought. She wasn’t the one about to have her nose chewed off.
Inside the mask, her face felt damp and itchy. Even though the mask kept dirt and bits of stuff from falling into her mouth, and the toque kept it from falling into her hair, everything about herself felt dirty.
And she wished she had the qualification Gran described — no sense of smell. Now fumes were burning her eyeballs and nostrils. The more she pulled at the tunnel, the stronger the fumes grew. Tea-colored drips trickled and dropped all around her.
It was worse than otters. They only smelled of partly digested fish.
The worried murmuring was now an anxious chatter.
It was true that Becca’s arm was smaller than Gran’s, but it didn’t stretch as far. She kept having to shove herself along in the earth and old leaves under the house, and she could feel dirt trickling into her boots and even down the back of her trousers.
I must be at the end, she thought. The smell can’t possibly get worse.
She shone her headlamp into the darkness. She heard tromp, tromp, tromp, and Alicia’s voice, and water gurgling in the pipe that ran along just beside her ear.
Gran’s head appeared, looking under the cabin.
“Alicia’s back,” she said.
“I’m here,” the unknown creature — or creatures — seemed to be saying. And without warning, without alarms or screeches or cries of any kind, a pair of flat, shining eyes glared into Becca’s.
Greeny-yellowy eyes, bright in the shine of her headlamp. Sharp pointy teeth bared in her face.
The face Becca saw looked ready to tear her to pieces. This was the creature that Frank had chased under the woodshed. This was the creature that had cried out with blood-freezing rage.
She barely registered the shine of two pairs of smaller eyes. Her mind filled with the sight of teeth as long and sharp as fairy-tale thorns; the red, red wetness of a mouth full of tongue; a bony, dark cavern of throat.
Then she was pushing herself away, scrabbling and scuffling, her breath warm in her mask, her hands muffled in gloves, her head muffled in the toque that shifted and fell into her eyes.
And all the while that hideous stench, the brownish, pungent, blistering drips, and now a squealing, growling scream of sound.
The minks flitted past her like shadows —
“Oh!” she heard Gran exclaim. “Babies!”
“I’ve cleaned up animals’ homes before,” said Gran. “There was a pack rat once …”
She paused while she handed Becca clean insulation to stuff into the minks’ tunnel.
“This is exceptional. Mind you, if you took your time … a close examination of the debris would reveal a diet of …”
She fell silent.
“Just think, Mum!” said Aunt Fifi, peering under the house. “If you washed more often this wouldn’t have happened! The noise of your feet in the tub would have scared them off.”
Becca pushed insulation into the narrow spaces. Under the bathtub, she thought. The stinkiest place in the world.
This had to be worse than any plumbing job.
“What were they doing with babies so late in the season?” Gran wondered.
“I hate mink,” said Auntie Meg when Becca finally emerged. “They eat everything — eggs, fish, snakes, hens, mice. Half the time they don’t even eat them! They just tear out their guts and leave them!”
Becca thought of the animal bits that had fallen from the insulation. And the tea-colored drips.
“I don’t want to know,” she said. “I’m going swimming and when I come back no more talking about it.”
She washed herself in the sea. She washed every single thing she’d been wearing. She scrubbed her head as hard as she could. She breathed in gallons of sea air and cleaned the foul stink from her lungs, her mouth, her windpipe, her lips, her teeth. She scrubbed her palate with her fingers and swished her mouth out with seawater.
“You’re so lucky!” Alicia said when Becca finally emerged. “I wish I’d found a mink’s nest. Why do interesting things always happen to you? It isn’t fair.”
Fair! Becca thought.
But there was this. She hadn’t thought about Aunt Fifi, Merlin or Ms. Spiky-hair all morning.