Like the ferryman Fitzpatrick down the river below the falls at Fitzpatrick’s Ferry Sometimes if he’s dropping off a passenger on a real dark night and the passenger is drunk Fitzpatrick’ll pull up not quite to the shore and yell All right we’re here Step off And of course the passenger steps off and falls into the water up to his neck It’s usually Boiled Head McCooey who falls for it Now that’s not funny Poor Boiled Head His head is so boiled he doesn’t know where he is half the time Everybody says it’s because he was in World War I but never mind any of that Now that I’m developing my mother gets me to bind myself ever since I told her I get a bit sore after scrubbing the floor or square dancing like I did this summer when I got to go to the dance at Low and danced with Mickey McGuire Jr the whole night My mother sewed me a hem on a white strip off a sheet and I wrapped myself and she tied it at the back While she was tying it I told her I felt like kissing Mickey McGuire Jr the other day while we were walking through the covered bridge I told her I’d tell Father Foley the new young priest from Farrellton about me and Mickey Jr and the covered bridge in my next confession and she said never mind telling him anything about the likes of that What you do in that regard she said is your own business Father Foley is busy enough she said without me bothering him with stories about things I’m only thinking of doing and haven’t even done yet And even if I did kiss Mickey McGuire Jr in the covered bridge or let him kiss me in some future time it would be none of Father Foley’s business anyway She said priests know far too much about people’s private life as it is They often say around here that my mother is sometimes what you call outspoken
Now I don’t have to get my mother to tie me at the back with the strip of sheet anymore I leave the knot in and I get the strip off by slipping it down and stepping out of it To put it back on I just step into it and wriggle it back up until I’m in it It feels good being wrapped like that I don’t get so sore anymore after cutting wood or churning butter or rowing the boat And I’m wondering if Mickey McGuire Jr and I will be walking through the covered bridge again sometime soon Mickey McGuire Jr is Ronnie O’Rourke’s great-nephew Mickey Jr s father came to live with Ronnie O’Rourke when he was about my age He escaped here with Gramma Nora who is Great-uncle Ronald’s sister That was after her husband who was also called Mickey McGuire stole Great-uncle Ronnie’s horse Second Chance Lance and ran into the train Maybe you heard about that It’s very complicated like everything else around here Then Great-uncle Ronnie married Cecelia Hickey in a big Thanksgiving Day wedding and now they have seven kids Mickey Jr s father Mickey Sr grew up and married Martha McCooey daughter of old Boner McCooey and they had Mickey Jr who’s about my age now and who walked me through the covered bridge when the whippoorwill was singing so many bright tunes that your ears would get painful just listening to all of it But never mind all that You’ll never be able to keep it straight anyway so just forget I ever tried to explain it in the first place In the covered bridge we stopped for a minute and leaned on the rail and looked down into the water of Stag Creek rushing down toward the Gatineau River and we listened to the whippoorwill
Mickey dropped a small stick into the creek He said that stick was now free to go anywhere in the world Down Stag Creek into the waters of the Gatineau River and on down to the Ottawa River Then into the St Lawrence River and then into the Atlantic Ocean From there the little stick Mickey said would go anywhere the wind would take it and the currents Africa India Australia China It was around then that I felt like kissing him And I also felt like writing about it It was the same kind of feeling Kissing him and writing about kissing him I wonder what’s going to happen in the future Will I get married Or will I be a poet I think I’ll be a poet A girl poet The first one
3 The Best Stew MICKEY McGuire Jr s grandfather was killed by the Gatineau train My father Frank McCrank told me all about it He was there and saw the whole thing The train wheels ran over that man so many times that he was cut up into chunks the size of stewing meat My father was a soldier at the Battle of Brennan’s Hill He was a bugler He came here with the soldiers that time when they came to collect the taxes He got the soldiers up in the morning with his bugle He liked it so much up around here that when he got older he came up here and started to be a farmer And married my mother who is also a McCrank but not the same family of McCranks but never mind that There’s a huge black iron pot of stew set up near where Mickey Jr is working on the wood It’s simmering away hanging over red hot burning hardwood knots Every now and then Mrs Kealey comes over with a long wood spoon and stirs the stew She’s in charge She makes the best stew on the whole Gatineau River She’s a widow They say her husband died because he ate too much Probably he ate stew mostly because her stew is the very best My father Frank McCrank said that Mr Kealey’s last wish was to have the grave hole he’d be buried in filled with gravy and vegetables so’s he’d feel right at home That’s not true of course not a word of it Here at the picnic when Mrs Kealey stirs the stew the carrots and potatoes and onions and mushrooms and peas swim up to the
