Dreams and Sioux Nights

By Richard Schwindt

Melanie Moon in love during a lost summer in Wasaga beach... Miranda Crane through the eyes of those who lose her... A young Bay Street trader who finds his soul with the help of a boy, a dog and a ghost on the winter streets of Sioux Lookout, and Joshua McKay who stands up against an abusive Residential School priest in 1966... Finally, one hundred years in the life of a divided family and ... a teacup. These atmospheric stories of love and loss in Northern Ontario are written with compassion and an eye for the beauty of the boreal backdrop.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 15, 2003
• ISBN: 9780992105419

Book preview

9780992105419

Melanie Moon in Wasaga Beach

People search for mood, an evocation – a feeling – that puts them somewhere they want to be. But it eludes us and can only be recognized in quiet moments, afterwards. It lingers on the outside of the conscious mind. What is mood indigo but an evocation; smoky bars, inky walls backlit with colored lamps; liquor stinging in your throat? Mood is warm; we gravitate towards mood and away from the cold and banal realities. It is nostalgic and elegiac; it cannot take root where there is no past.

Maybe that is it. I do have a past in Wasaga Beach; this place has a past. Thousands of years ago it began with alluvial shifts and the restless dance of water and rock, bog and scrub. Huron Indians lived here for many hundreds of years followed by the British, lake battles with marauding Americans, Fort Nottawasaga, razing the forest and raising the motels, and of course, in 1973, my arrival as a 17 year old junior ranger.

This jumble of superficial history makes me part of the centuries old passage of faces; loving, playing, dying and exploiting the 14 kilometer ribbon of sand on the shores of Georgian Bay.

The mood is remembering our bus pulling into the IGA parking lot; 20 guys sworn to maintaining the beaches and latrines on behalf of the Province of Ontario. The sun had already enjoyed two peak hours heating the blacktop and all our sweating bodies felt the furnace as we disembarked. Tomorrow we would be assigned our rakes but today we were free. Looking back now I can recall the boughs on the trees swaying in the liquid air and our baritone whoops of joy. We didn’t know what we were going to do or even how to find the beach but if something were going to happen, it would be this summer.

The bus departed to the barracks with our bags and we were strictly enjoined to be back by 10 pm. Every one of us were starting to envision blonde girls wrapped in pink bikinis frolicking in the shallows, throwing an inflated beach ball back and forth. I had paired up with Tom Wood from Paris, Ontario. He was a down home denizen of the Southwestern Ontario tobacco fields, possessing a laconic gravitas that, looking back, seemed out of place for a seventeen year old. We agreed to a Coke followed by a casual reconnaissance of the beach and a gradual genesis of a plan to acquire beer and lady friends

We proceeded down funny little streets, almost skipping by rinky-dink bungalows on postage stamp lots, enclosed by cute little fences and trimmed with small hedges. The lawns were shaved green; pretty annuals, petunias and marigolds, stood at neat attention, with the occasional stand of vain and shameless hollyhocks. And the lawn ornaments, so absolutely in the right place.

I remember a feeling of freedom when the vista of bright blue water appeared and spread out to the horizon. Tom and I still didn’t know what to do exactly, but we were there.

That first night in Wasaga Tom and I had experienced exactly no trouble, finding neither girls nor beer. But we were happy. If we couldn’t attain the possibilities, we knew there were possibilities. Towards nine we had wandered back to a trailer that was to be our home for the summer. There we were hidden on a back lot on sandy soil in a mess of poplars. We lay on our bunks, told jokes and listened to a Lab barking from the next yard.

We were all bright boys in High School, destined for University. For our achievements we were awarded the opportunity to rake beaches. Now the shorts and tank tops came out of the suitcases our mothers had packed. The sun tan lotion and the shades were purchased locally. Blissfully unaware of melanoma and the ozone layer we let our skin brown and our hair bleach.

We were resourceful and it wasn’t long before we realized that Nick Vanelli with his early arrival of a mature beard had no problem buying liquor and beer, despite his 17 years. This was a revelation and Alberta Premium Rye and Labatt’s Blue proved magical elixirs and conduits towards an alternative view of reality, one where the alternatives were fully articulated.

Our supervisor was 21 and his initial reluctance to affirm our drinking eventually gave way and he joined us with a full heart. He spelled off Nick in the purchasing department and launched his own futile search for girls.

It was just as well that the Ministry of Lands and Forests was kept out of the loop. The more diligent among us would show up for raking and bottle collection but that was only to supplement our cash reserves; returning the bottles to buy more booze. We soon turned our humble trailer into a hedonistic vacation hut. At its peak, it was bad. Guys would come home at all hours; the floors littered with chips, cheesies, spilt pop and hamburger wrappers. Our voices slowed and lilted towards beach guy resonance.

But no one was screwing. Even though were well on our way to forging both myth and group identity as a bacchanalian band of outlaws, the expected girls did not materialize.

I know now that this was because we were half-assed, staggering weenies and immediately identifiable as such. But summer was spinning her magic on our skin, hair and bodies and I was able to meet Melanie.

We discovered each other on one of those days where summer’s promise had been leached from sky and land. Although only four weeks into our tenure, we had already trimmed an eight hour day into three. And when the rains came in the night we all knew that work would be postponed entirely until sister sun again agreed to smile upon us.

The rain fell in a torrent, slashed against the tin walls of our trailer by a fierce west wind. The poplars were swaying madly outside our windows, and the bit of lake to be glimpsed in the distance swelled towards us in purple sheets. Groans mixed with the sound of pelting water in our happy little slum house. With seventeen year-old wisdom and an impervious constitution I decided that I wanted a coffee and could get one at a small countertop restaurant close by.

My thin nylon jacket was nowhere near up to the task and when I finally found the restaurant and slid inside I felt like a wet rat. I was dripping and embarrassed. Taking a seat close to the door I ordered a coffee from a grim waitress. Despite my soaking I began to feel a well being spread through my body. I was now confident enough to order toast. The waitress all glare and raised eyebrows (or so I recall) set the toast down in front of me along with the rack of jam and peanut butter. As I turned to reach I looked down the counter and saw her.

She sat with both hands wrapped around the coffee cup staring at her image in the mirrored tiles behind the counter. Her gaze was intent but she turned and looked at me almost immediately. Her hair had been dyed black and her eyes well trimmed with mascara. Caribbean blue, they looked out from a face as round as the sun. She wore a black leather jacket with straight leg black jeans. A turquoise scarf had been wrapped like a choker around her throat and feathered hoops dangled from her ears.

She had smiled at me through her outré adornments and I had looked away with that strange combination of fear and shyness that makes you do the opposite of what you want to do. I wasn’t looking at her body, which was slim and lightly curved. It was the kind that would be labeled boyish in that sexy way that could never been transferred to mannish. But I was fixed on that remarkable face. Her smile had conveyed an irresistible combination of sympathy and curiosity. The black borders made her eyes all the more penetrating.

Reaching away to pick up her purse and sling it over her shoulder, she took her coffee in both hands, and moved to the stool beside mine.

Someday you will be able to get a cappuccino in Wasaga Beach, she said. Her voice was a little richer than you might expect in such a slim girl.

What’s a cappuccino? I asked. She smiled again and I felt like the clouds had parted.

A Italian coffee made from a big machine. It’s kind of foamy.

Where do you go to get one?

Some places in Toronto like, ah, College Street, Dufferin. She leaned in as she spoke and I found myself fighting the urge to shift away.

What’s your name, hon?

Russell, I said, What’s yours?

Melanie Moon.

Oh. I didn’t want to say anything about her funny name but she was way ahead of me anyway.

Are you at a cottage, Russell?

No.

Do you live here?

No.

So?

I’m a Junior Ranger. The Junior bit chaffed but I forged ahead, We’ll be here the rest of the summer. I live in Scarborough.

Oh, she said with unsubtle pity. Do you want to come to my place? I have some weed.

For a moment I refused to believe my ears. Her place! And I hadn’t done anything. Weed! I had tried it once then needed to stay at my friend Brad’s overnight because every time I tried to talk to my mother over the phone, I couldn’t stop laughing. It wasn’t the weed per se but its totemic significance as a conduit towards a sexual experience. Surely a girl who looked like this and had weed in the house would like sex?

As we walked down one street and up another I was quickly lost, though my growing panic may have left me disoriented. I was going to have sex I thought, probably. Melanie was telling me about herself.

My mother is in Banff for the summer at an artist’s studio, so she set my brother and me up in a small cottage. Except, he’s away right now. I think he may be homosexual. Does that shock you? Not me; I have a Lesbian friend who lives in Rochdale College with her lover. Do you like herbal tea – there’s one called chamomile that is supposed to calm you, especially if you’re like me and drink eight cups of coffee a day. I’m just a vegetable if I don’t have it.

As I listened I was caught between fantasies of something I really wanted and something that frightened me. So her brother was away. The rain had stopped but the wind was up and I could hear the breakers crashing on the beach.

She took my arm as we stepped out and I felt a tingle run up one side and down the other. It brought her body close to mine. But I was too young to interpret her need. We walked together in silence over the slick sidewalks, listening to the waves, and the sound of leaves in the wind. Wasaga is long and we walked for a while until we found a small cottage, square and white behind a picket fence. It looked well kept, the grass mowed and the garden weeded.

Are you OK?

I’m fine.

Good. She opened the door and walked inside. It closed behind us with a squeak and a bump. We entered into darkness; the windows were covered by black shades; the only light, a candle on the end table. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I began to make out posters, woven wall hangings, low set furniture and more unlit candles. The outside had been sealed off. We had entered directly into the living room. Small as it was, a narrow hallway led off to the right. A small kitchen and a doorway, probably a bedroom, were set directly behind the living space. The overall effect terrified me; my reality was being squeezed away. Strange enough that I had been picked up by this girl, but now dark rooms, dope and sex. It was all new to me. But Melanie looked positively cheerful.

I am so glad you came, Russell. Sit down, I’ll light some more candles and we can talk. She made a quick diversion to the kitchen and returned with wooden matches.

The wood is so much better when you strike it against the box. The flame is so...sensual.

As the small lights flickered to life I saw her eager face more clearly. She sat primly beside me on the couch and produced, as if by magic, a joint. Her eyes shifted mischievously over to me as she put it between red lips and applied a lit match with a slow sweeping motion. After a long toke where she now closed her eyes, she handed it over.

I coughed twice during my first toke and began to relax. For a moment we smoked in silence. Then she began to talk.

My parents are divorced and really my mom is just as happy to leave us here for the summer. She has this boyfriend who’s a lawyer and when he’s around we become invisible. Do you like swimming when you’re high? We could go swimming later if it’s wavy then it’s cool just to go with them.

I was high as a kite and afraid to move let alone swim in the waves. My right hand was pressed down on the couch hard so that I wouldn’t tip; Melanie was getting closer on the other side.

I can really feel this, I said.

Are you OK, Russell? Melanie’s face drew closer to mine. "The guy I bought this from