Chapter 13
It took three days for us to build the frame for the monster out of plastic pipes and chicken wire. Deciding on what Fogopogo should look like took the longest. We wound up with a cross between a mallard duck and a Komodo dragon.
“Time for a break,” Warren said. “I want to show you something, Roland.”
The two of us sat down in the back room of the boat shed. Warren insisted on making us a pot of tea, even though I would have preferred cocoa.
“Tea is how a Maritimer passes time,” Warren explained as he boiled the kettle and fished out the tea bags. “We Maritimers practise our deepest thinking while sitting and waiting for the tea to properly steep.”
So we sat and sipped our tea. I wanted badly to find out just what Warren had to show me, but I knew better than to rush him. Besides, I was still thinking about what Dulsie had asked me the other day at the wharf.
What if we made the sea monster and followed through with our plan and my mom still wanted to leave?
“Do you think this is going to work?” I asked him.
“I don’t know,” Warren answered, “but I’m having the time of my life. I’ve spent too long waiting for some sort of a sign to show me what to do.”
I nodded and sipped my tea, not knowing what else to say.
Warren reached for a pad of paper and a pen and began to write. He peeled the sheet of paper off the pad, crumpled it up, and threw it into the garbage. He began writing again. He got halfway down the page before tearing that one up too.
I had experienced more excitement watching paint dry in the sun, but I didn’t want to interrupt Warren’s concentration. If I did, he might start all over again and the two of us would be here until several days past infinity.
When Warren was halfway through his third attempt, I couldn’t wait any longer. I finally asked, “So what are you writing?”
“A letter to the prime minister,” Warren replied, still furiously scribbling. “I’m going to tell him about our sea monster.”
“The prime minister of Canada?” I asked. “What are you going to write?”
“I’m telling him that the Deeper Harbour sea monster is an endangered species and that it’s his prime ministerial duty to come here and pay his respects.”
I had to admit that sounded like a pretty good idea.
“It’s not quite David Suzuki and I don’t even think the man actually reads his own mail,” Warren admitted. “But I just wanted to do something to help.”
He sealed the letter up in a huge envelope.
“It just needs the proper stamp, is all.”
“Can’t you just buy one at the drugstore?” I asked.
“We can’t send it with just any old stamp,” Warren said. “This is the prime minister of Canada we’re talking about. No sir, the choice of a stamp is downright critical.”
And then Warren dug out his stamp collection.
Oh my golly. I was pretty sure that staring at Warren’s stamp collection might be enough to kill me from sheer boredom.
Only I was wrong. As Warren spread his stamp albums out I began to get interested, in spite of myself. There were stamps of all shapes and sizes; stamps with pictures of spaceships on them; stamps with pictures of dinosaurs; and stamps with pictures of all kinds of strange and wonderful wild animals.
“My own grandfather worked the merchant marine,” Warren told me. “He used to send me an envelope full of stamps from whatever port he docked in. After he died I started ordering stamps through the mail.”
“Isn’t that usually where you get stamps?” I asked. “In the mail?”
“Very funny,” Warren said. “I can’t tell you how many nights I have spent sitting here at this table, peering at all of these wonderful stamps. Some nights I just sit here and dream about travelling to each of these different countries.”
“So why don’t you?”
“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “I’ve just never gotten around to it, I guess.”
I sipped my tea while Warren sorted through his stamps.
“Here,” he said. “These will do the trick.”
He laid down a block of four shiny Canadian stamps. One had a picture of a werewolf, and the others showed a giant squid, a gorilla, and a sea monster.
Wow.
“That’s the Loup-Garou and the Kraken,” Warren explained. “And that’s Bigfoot and Ogopogo.”
“I know Ogopogo,” I said. “I read about him on the Internet.”
“They’re all Canadian monsters,” Warren said.
“That’s really something,” I said. “They’re perfect.”
“Well, we only need a couple,” Warren said.
He carefully selected the Kraken and the Ogopogo stamps. He looked at Ogopogo carefully, as if he were considering something very important. Then he licked the werewolf and Bigfoot stamps and stuck them to the envelope.
“You keep these,” he said, handing me the Ogopogo and Kraken stamps.
I tried to give them back.
“You keep them,” he repeated. “All these years I’ve wasted dreaming. Now you come along and bring the stamps to life.”
He looked away. He swallowed hard, once or twice.
“I can learn something from you,” he told me.
“Me too,” I said, which was as profound as my fourteen years allowed me to be.