Chapter 21
“The whole town is out there,” I said.
We were into our third week of taking Fogopogo out and I don’t believe I had ever seen so much of Deeper Harbour gathered together at any one time. They were all there, by the dozens and hundreds. I could see the purple minivan and the glint of a telescope and I hoped that the bit of morning mist we’d counted on was enough to disguise the fact we were but a moose-hide-clad dory.
Granddad Angus woofed out the grandfather of all turnip farts, through the birchbark moose call. It sounded horrible from inside the moose hide, but roaring and echoing through the mist and the waves, it must have sounded pretty impressive. I heard folks cheering and one woman screamed, the way you might scream at a tightrope act in the circus.
I could see the people on shore clearly now. They were clustered around the wharf and I could see them pointing. We were far enough out that none of the onlookers could get a clear look at us and the morning mist made things even eerier.
Or at least I hoped so.
Again, I saw the glint of a telescope or maybe binoculars. A part of me wanted to crouch down, even though I knew that the sea monster safely hid anybody in the dory.
I peeked through my peephole and I could see the big stretch of grey rock that hooked out around the harbour.
“Keep working those grinders,” Granddad Angus warned me.
“I’m turning them as hard as I can,” I told him. “I just don’t seem to be getting anywhere.”
“Seems that way, doesn’t it?” Granddad Angus said.
“What do you mean, ‘seems that way’?” I asked. “It is that way. This is really hard.”
Granddad Angus just shook his head.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“At any given time the Earth is rotating upon its axis at nearly 1,700 kilometres an hour,” Warren said. “At the same time, the planet is orbiting around the sun at the speed of 108,000 kilometres per hour.”
I blinked.
Warren had definitely out-stranged himself.
“So what’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“He means you’re setting world speed records just sitting still,” Dulsie explained.
Which still didn’t make much sense to me.
“I don’t get it,” I said.
“What he means,” Granddad Angus said, “is that it is impossible to sit still for very long, at least as long as you’re sitting upon this planet. Life has a strong current that will pull you forward into ever deeper water no matter how hard you try to stay in one place.”
“How’d you ever get to be so smart?” I said.
“Never try and debate astrophysics with a dory man,” Granddad Angus said.
“Or a stamp collector,” Warren added.
“Or a punk-goth-freakazoid,” Dulsie chimed in.
“Is that a fact?” I asked.
“I said so, didn’t I?” Granddad Angus asked.
I looked over at my Granddad Angus, sitting there in the belly of that homemade sea monster, his face lit up and mottled by the sunlight leaking through the shot-up moose hide. He was smiling softly and just for that moment I had the feeling that my entire life was orbiting gently about that smile.
“It’s really going to work, isn’t it?” I said.
“Did you ever think it wouldn’t?” Granddad Angus answered.