The wind felt good on her — it was cold, colder than it had a right to be for early September, and it cooled her cuts and bruises like an ice pack. When she turned to face it, however, it took her breath away, so she moved with her back to the wind, down to the dock.
“Ernie!” She cupped her hands around her mouth, and called off across the waters. “Ernie! Come on back! I ain’t dead! You got nothing to fear!”
For surely, thought Janie, that was what had happened. She had fallen down into her blood, and there had been so much of it, and she had been out like a light, and poor Ernie had thought the worst — that he’d killed her.
So he’d run. The OPP had already come by the house two times, on account of complaints from neighbours, and each time they asked Janie if he’d been doing anything to her. Like hitting or punching or kicking or biting, or even just pushing. Janie’d said no both times, and the second time — with Ernie in earshot — the one policeman had told her that she had to complain; they could only arrest him otherwise if he killed her and it was murder. “I don’t want it to come to that,” said the policeman, and Janie had replied, “Then me neither.”
“Ernie!” She yelled so loud her voice cracked and turned to a scream. “Ernie! It ain’t murder! It’s okay! I won’t complain!”
There was another gust of wind then, and it nearly blew Janie off the dock. It sent the water-drum rolling down the rock face, and it entered the bay with a splash that sprayed ice-cold water up the back of Janie’s dress. Janie steadied herself, and opened her mouth for one more yell, then shut her mouth again.
It wouldn’t do her no good. Ernie was long gone.
The drum clanked up against the dock, and Janie kicked at it as she passed it on the way back. The kick sent the lip of it underwater, and that was enough. The rain-drum started to sink.
There was a shelf in the lodge’s living room that had every one of Mr. Swayze’s books — although not one of them had his name on the cover. Mr. Swayze used what he called a pen name, so all the books were “by” Eric Hookerman even though Mr. Swayze wrote them.
There were a lot of books, and Mr. Swayze said that a lot of people bought them in their time. Janie thought that might be true. Sometimes, she would even see one at the drug store in Fenlan, and they only ever got in the best books. It was no wonder that Mr. Swayze could afford to own all that land outside Fenlan and this island here in Georgian Bay.
“I guess you can’t call me a starving artist anymore,” he joked one time.
“You’re not starving,” said Ernie. “You don’t know what starving is, Mr. Swayze.”
And then Mr. Swayze had laughed — a scary laugh, like those books of his must be. “I guess not,” he said.
Janie had never read any of Mr. Swayze’s books — she was just getting to reading stories now; anything bigger than ten pages made her feel sleepy, even if she picked it up in the morning. But she looked at the pictures on the covers, and she read the titles, and she had a pretty good idea what they were about. There was THE HAND, and it had a picture of an old dried-up hand with long fingernails and a drop of blood on the tip of each; THE BOTTOM OF THE WELL, with an old-fashioned hand-pump, and a snake poking its head down out of the spout looking all fierce and frightening; and ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD! THE DEAD BIRD, with a cover that was all black, but had raised parts that Janie could see as the shape of a bird with wings spread, if she held it just so in the light. That cover took some work to enjoy, you couldn’t just look at it and see, but it was her favourite of them all.
When Janie stepped into the living room, she nearly tripped on ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD! THE DEAD BIRD. That book along with most of the rest were spread all over the floor.
“Oh, Ernie,” she muttered, “look at the mess you made.”
Janie flicked the light-switch on the wall, to get a better look at what had happened, but it stayed dark. Did the wind knock out the generator too? If it had, it’d be up to Ernie to fix it — Janie could lift and haul things, she’d always been a big girl that way, but machines and such were beyond her. She flicked the switch once more, to no avail, so bent down and in the grey light from the window she started to gather up the books. Fine thing that’d be, thought Janie. Mr. Swayze loans out his lodge to us, we ruin all the books he wrote. Never invite us to dinner again.
Sometimes, Janie wondered why Mr. Swayze bothered with Ernie and her at all. Mr. Swayze was smart, and he must know a lot of people, and he sure had a lot of money. Ernie and Janie didn’t have much money — Ernie’s work with his chainsaw and his contracting wasn’t steady, and paid poor when it came; they sure didn’t know many people; and smart? They did their best with what they had — but folks in town said Ernie and Janie were a good match for each other, and they didn’t say so in a kindly way either.
Yet from the time he moved up to Fenlan, Mr. Swayze took them on. He bought the land back on Little Bear Lake in the 1980s some time, and after asking around hired Ernie to come lay foundations. Land was no good, and Ernie told him so — more than half of it was swamp, and most of the rest was bare, knobbly rock. Mr. Swayze said he knew that now, but he bought it because he liked the feel of it and hadn’t been thinking practical. Was there nothing that Ernie could do? “Not for cheap,” said Ernie.
“Then let’s not do it cheap,” said Mr. Swayze. “Tell me what it’ll take.”
It took a lot, but Ernie’d done pretty good for him by the time it was done. Found him a level spot on high ground to build his house, then brought in some fill and a digger and made a road across the firmer parts of swamp so Mr. Swayze could get in and out. Sunk a well through the rock, deep — so Mr. Swayze wouldn’t have to be drinking swamp water — and strung a power line in so he wouldn’t have to be using candles and oil lamps to see at night.
Janie’d spent more than a few workdays out at the site — in those days, she was as good a worker as any man and came twice as cheap, or so said Ernie. That was when they’d got to know Mr. Swayze and learned about what he did to make ends meet. And that was when he started inviting them for dinner — first at the farmhouse Mr. Sloan rented him about five miles up the concession road, then once his own house was done, in there.
Got so they’d dine with Mr. Swayze one time a month — whether at his place or theirs. And oh, those dinners would be fine! Mr. Swayze was a real good cook — a magic cook. He could take a chicken and make it taste like Thanksgiving turkey; make a cheap cut of steak into a restaurant-fine meal that’d dissolve on the tip of your tongue. He wasn’t much on vegetables, but that was fine — neither was Ernie, and Janie didn’t much care one way or the other.
Ernie figured that Mr. Swayze cottoned to them so well because there weren’t many others who’d accept him in town. He lived alone, and Ernie said many in town felt that might be because he was whoo-whoo. When Ernie said whoo-whoo, that meant he was talking about a fellow that liked to lay with men and not women. But Janie didn’t think that was true about Mr. Swayze on a couple of counts.
For one thing, the way Mr. Swayze was working, she didn’t think he’d have time to lay with anyone, man or woman. The day he moved into his house at Fenlan, he started writing. From dawn to dusk, he wrote and wrote or so it seemed. When she was working in his yard, the typewriter was going clackity-clack all the day long. When they got together, there was always a new stack of paper by the typewriter and he would often go and just look at it, making a mark here and there. One time she asked him how he wrote so much, and Mr. Swayze said, “Because when I’m here, I feel like it. The place here inspires me. It’s got a soul to it. I just look at the rocks, and there’s a spirit in them. Sometimes I can find it written in their face. Do you understand what I’m saying?” “No,” she’d said, which was the truth. So he winked at her. “Maybe you just inspire me, Janie.”