Hole in the Air

"There are things you have to work out for yourself, things that not even your soulmate, no matter how loving, can help you with. Not even if she's Big Bertha."

He couldn't remember who had told him that. It might have been the minister. Or Big Bertha herself. It might have been his own conclusion. It didn't matter. He understood that it was so. So although it was snowing again and the wind stronger than ever, Little Mac dressed in his warmest and traded Bertie's company and the comfort of the woodstove for the seclusion of the storm.

There was not much hope that he could hear himself talk to himself. He was hard of hearing, his hood made it worse, and the wind swept his words away like so many autumn leaves. But he felt that it helped him keep track, that the actual mechanical issuance of his thought through his mouth forced the imprint to remain a little longer on the increasingly self-erasing substance of his brain, so he addressed his question to the inhospitable elements with all the bravado of a revivalist.

"So you're a hole in the air where a man used to be! What comes next?"

The best place for such a crucial contemplation should have been out at sea where the land shrunk away. But the cove was frozen over and anyway the wind and waves in the open would have swallowed him and the dinghy in a second. So he made his way down the icy lane toward where it ended at the sea, his idea being at least to have a view of the great expanse in close proximity.

On the way a mouse jumped from a leaf-stripped wild rose hedge and sped away in front of him. In an instant a seagull swooped and carried the tiny creature away in its beak. Mac wondered if this was in the way of being an answer to his question.

He proposed a sort of answer himself. It didn't matter what came next. Not if he was a hole in the air. You had to be human to worry. You had to remember how much could go wrong. So the day he forgot everything might be his day of liberation and not a bad deal after all.

Except it would be such a burden on Bertie.

***

A while later, so exhausted that lifting his gloved hand to the doorknob was almost beyond him, Little Mac returned.

"I forgot why I was out there, Bertie," he said, holding his mug in both hands for the warmth. "All I could remember was that you would remember."

Big Bertha was cutting fabric. Little Mac, wrapped in one of her shawls, sat on a stool by the table while she stood and worked. The fire in the woodstove was as stoked as it could be. The iron kettle had been whistling nonstop.

"You should have worn your thinking cap!" she said somewhat more loudly than usual, so Mac could understand her in spite of the whistling.

"I know," he said. "I thought the ocean would be enough. I didn't want to overdo it. Besides, after all, it is only a tea cozy."

"However," said Bertha, "you have thought some of your finest thoughts while wearing it."

"Have I? Well, anyway, I knew I was there for a reason. It had something to do with a mouse and a seagull. And then with waves breaking right over the top of Bald Rock, and the whole island iced over, where in the summer we have seen thousands of seagulls and shags. And then I was trying to get closer, you know, to the water. And the snow had accumulated and hidden the dropoff and I went through the crust and down, down, down and down. And I was buried, Bertie. All in white. And I couldn't climb out. But the panic, it didn't last long. Suddenly I was like a little animal. Instead of climbing I started to burrow. To burrow down even further. And then I was free. I came out at the bottom where the waves crash on the rocks. And this one wave, it had a face like a, like a, you know, one of those old-timey Japanese warriors. Like a samurai! It was huge, and it was comin' for me. Well, I thought it was anyway. And I was paralyzed. But all I got hit by was spray. Lots of spray. Soaked my coat and my pants and my gloves. But it didn't take me. The wave didn't take me. So here I am. Back from Wonderland. And you do remember! Why I went, I mean."

"In course I do," Bertha said. "You had done all your chores, including fixing the rocker, again, and unclogging all the drains, at last, and you threw back your shoulders like a champ and said you had a date with Mother Nature and hoped I wouldn't be jealous."

"Did I?" said Little Mac, amused. "And was you jealous?"

"Honey," said Big Bertha, smiling to herself as she gathered up the cut pieces of fabric and carried them over to her sewing machine, "you have never seen jealous like you would have seen me had she tried to run off with you. They say don't mess with Mother Nature. Well, Mother Nature better never mess with me. Not when it comes to you. I'd take her over my knee!"

"Hole in the air," she said quiet as a mouse to herself as she examined the pattern for the dress she was making. "What next indeed?"

21 January 2018
Texas Jim
Prospect, Nova Scotia
www.granitecoast.ca