Chapter 24
Later that day Dad sizzled up some garlic sausage and a chopped onion and some apple slices in the fry pan. Then he dumped two tins of beans on top of that, drizzled in a little maple syrup, and buttered a couple of slices of bread that looked suspiciously as if they might have been made out of rocks, twigs, and seeds.
“High fibre he-man beans,” Dad said. “I bet you didn’t know your dad was a gourmet chef.”
“Since when do you know how to cook?” I asked.
He grinned and winked.
For just an instant I felt this weird sort of Stephen King moment, as if I was staring at Granddad Angus wearing Dad’s face, cooking like Mom.
“It might be there are a lot of things you don’t know about your dad.”
The food tasted good. I was hungry from a morning of pedal-paddling. We had left the dory monster in the inlet, covered with deadfall and pine boughs. As far as we could tell, it was nearly invisible. Of course, Dad didn’t know anything of that. At least I was pretty certain he didn’t know.
You never can tell with Dad, though.
He can surprise you.
“It’s good to see you spending so much time with your grandfather,” Dad said.
He’s not just my grandfather was what I wanted to say.
Only I just nodded.
“I even kind of envy you getting the chance to leave Deeper Harbour.”
What?
Now where did that come from?
Just like that, I lost it completely.
I threw my fork down. It did a little hop-skiddle in the beans, spattering bean sauce on Dad’s paper tablecloth.
“Envy me? I don’t want to go. I hate Ottawa. And I hate my mother. All I want to do is to stay here with you and Granddad Angus.”
I stared up at him as if I had laser vision and could burn a hole through his skull deep enough to penetrate whatever common sense he had buried beneath the layers of grilled cheese sandwiches and he-man beans. I knew he would slap me. I had seen all the movies where the kid badmouths his mother and the dad slaps the kid and tells him that he must never talk bad about his mother.
Only Dad didn’t slap me.
He just sat there staring at me.
Not saying a word.
I think he must have had some sort of an evil shrinking ray hidden in his silence because by the time he was done not talking I felt a little less than two inches tall.
“So what were you up to all day today?” he finally asked.
I was in the belly of a dory monster named Fogopogo, was what I wanted to tell him. I was sitting in a moose hide with your father, was what I wanted to say.
“Nothing,” was all I said.
“So did you see the sea monster this morning?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said. “Didn’t everybody?”
“Funny,” he said. “But I was down at the wharf and I didn’t see you anywhere.”
I shrugged and swallowed. It was hard to lie to my dad but I had to.
“It was a big crowd, wasn’t it?” I said.
Dad nodded. I wasn’t so sure what a police chief would think about a crowd like that, especially since Dad had been complaining about the mess the tourists were making of the town. I was afraid that he might feel that so many people gathered so close to the water was a public hazard or something.
Only he surprised me.
“You know what?” he said. “I can’t remember ever seeing so many people in our town so excited over any one thing.”
“Not even on bingo night?” I asked.
“Not even bingo night,” Dad answered. “Whatever this sea monster is, I believe it’s doing a pretty good thing for Deeper Harbour.”
And then he looked right at me and winked one more time.
“Do you know what I heard?” he asked.
And then he told me who was coming to Deeper Harbour.
And it wasn’t David Suzuki.