CHAPTER 11

I do remember that morning at the Chilliwack Fall Fair a few years ago. It was a September weekend, hot and sunny and crowded, and we all moved slowly across a big field surrounded by mountains. Horses everywhere. And people who dressed like they wanted to ride horses, or would be riding horses soon, or had just finished riding horses. Smell of tents and dust, animal poop and fried onions. Clanking sounds from the Ferris wheel motor, screams from the kids. Ruby was in charge of me, holding my hand because she didn’t want me wandering away. “You wouldn’t watch where you were going, Gussie. You’d wander off and fall in the river,” she told me.

Yes, there was a river running through the fair, cutting it in half, with a cute narrow bridge for people and an ugly wide bridge for cars and horses.

“But I’d be fine. I’d float downstream and be adopted by a family of beavers. I’d eat whatever beavers eat and sleep in their beaver lodge. I’d outlive them all, and generations of beavers would know me as the wise old one who has always been here.”

“Well, I’d miss you.”

Ruby pulled me from the sun and noise into the dimness and quiet of the next shed. And there was the two-headed calf, born that week. It lay on the straw, not doing anything. The crowd clustered around, and shuddered, and called it a monster, and took pictures.

I was fascinated.

“The calf can talk to itself,” I said to Ruby. “It can have its own conversation.”

The woman beside me put her hand up to cover her eyes. “Hideous!” she said to what looked like her twin sister, who agreed and pulled her away.

I went on with my thought.

“And when the two heads have an argument, how does that go?” I said. “Am not! Are too! I know you are but what am I? Oh yeah, I know I am but what are you?”

Ruby squeezed my arm. “Talking to itself? Like you, you mean? Well, I hope it has as much fun as you do, Gussie.”

One of the heads moved on the straw. Two of the four eyes blinked up at me.

I stared at the calf and saw myself.

“It’s not hideous, is it?”

“No. It’s strange because it’s rare. But it exists, Gussie. Now you know.”

She squeezed my arm hard.

“I’m glad you’re here, Ruby.”

“You.” That’s all she said, but it was enough.

“You,” I replied.