Muskrat Creek

The woods behind your house are not deep but stretch for several blocks, following the creek which flows wide and slow during most of the summer, though it rushes after a good storm and your mother used to warn you to steer clear of fast-flowing water lest it pull you under, never to be seen again.  Her warnings were never particularly effective; in elementary school you and Billy Fanshaw would dare each other to ride your BMX across the enormous, foot-worn tree trunk which had fallen across the creek some decades ago.  You never did take him up on the dare, or he you, because neither of you would go first.  But the possibility of it brought you a thrill.

         The forest was your domain.  You'd take your bikes along the path from your yard into the woods after class and look for toads along the creek bed or turn over logs in search of salamanders.  Someone had made crude bike jumps out of old wooden planks laid over piles of dirt and you competed to catch the most air.  Once in fourth grade Billy landed poorly and snapped his wrist.  (You remember, years later, that wet cracking sound, though you suspect the memory of being false.)  He was barred from coming over to play for the rest of the summer because his mother thought you were a bad influence.  For some reason this designation made you feel proud.

         But that was years ago.  You're in junior high now, and you have cooler friends than Billy.  When you bike past the high school and see the smokers slouching in their impertinent huddles out front, a remote sense of longing arrives like a hollow ache in your chest and you think, Someday that will be me.



It is some day in the middle of an endless midsummer week; the hot, soupy air has moved in to stay and you are with your friends in the woods seeking refuge from the blazing afternoon sun.  McCallum had swiped some smokes from his pops and he and Schwartzy are attempting to smoke them.  Neither one is inhaling; you know this because your older brother Jake shared a smoke with you last winter, for reasons you can't comprehend.  It was after your parents went to bed and Jake came out from his room with a cigarette in his lips and motioned for you to follow him to the garage.  This seemed like a momentous occasion because Jake is in high school and he leads a life that is mysterious and obscure to you, and you desperately want him to include you in his nightly activities when he slips out the back door after the house is asleep but you know he'll never do so.  In the garage he didn't speak but passed you the cigarette and watched the smoke drift harmlessly from your lips; then he showed you how to draw the smoke first into your mouth before taking it into your lungs.  You coughed, and then you felt pleasantly dizzy and you wondered if this was what being drunk was like.  He said no, being drunk was different.

         McCallum passes you his smoke and winks.  On his face, an expression of pure self-satisfied condescension.  This show of inclusiveness was initially what made being part of the older boy's posse seem so appealing, but now it irritates you more than you can account for.  Against your better judgement you take the smoke, pull in a long haul, and inhale.

         And the smoke sucker-punches you deep in the lungs where no amount of coughing can reach, and soon you are drooling and retching and trying not to vomit or pass out while your pals laugh their asses off.

         He can't handle it, Schwartzy shrieks.  He can't even handle it!

         McCallum pats your back as if burping a baby.  I do believe we just busted his cherry, he says.  Don't worry, it gets better after the first time.

         Something in his smarmy know-it-all tone is too much for you.  Between gasps, as you hand the cig back to Pete, you manage to say, At least I know how to inhale.

         What do you mean? Schwartzy says.

         Yeah, we inhaled, McCallum says, but he sounds unsure of himself.  There's a pause with your two friends holding their smokes but not smoking them, not wanting to look ridiculous but unwilling to butt them out.

         The coughing fit has passed.  Never mind, you say.  Forget it.  But McCallum has his back up now and is thrusting his cigarette at you.

         Okay, big shot.  Show us again how to cough like a retard.

         Pete McCallum stands a head taller than you and his chest and shoulders are already broad from bench presses in his basement.  Looking at him now with the hard glint in his eye, you can imagine being bullied by him and it makes you feel small and worthless.  If he turns on you, Sammy Schwartz will turn on you as well.  You've seen it enough times before.  Everyone always follows McCallum's lead.

         Reluctantly you take the smoke and pull in a smaller haul and suppress the urge to cough.

         That's exactly what we were doing, Schwartzy exclaims.  You try to pass it to McCallum but he pushed your hand back.

         Please, carry on the demonstration, Professor Dickhead, he says with a bow, and you can't help but laugh and carry on puffing.  That lightheaded feeling has returned.  You feel loose in your limbs.  Smoking the cigarette--actually smoking it instead of this pitiful charade being carried out by your friends--you feel yourself elevated, as if you have stepped through some threshold and onto a higher plane.  McCallum, for all his bluster, is eying you with what almost could be called respect.  Schwartzy watches you closely, tries a real puff himself: he instantly starts coughing.  You all share a good-natured laugh.

         It is in these high spirits that you offer to show them something.  You won't tell them what it is; it feels too good, holding them in your thrall.



I don't like you hanging around those boys, your dad said the other week.  You just scowled at him and offered no rebuttal, because you can understand why he doesn't want you hanging around them and you have no idea how he knows what kind of boys they are.

         A smart boy like you, he said.  You need to stay out of trouble.  You don't need to go around gallivanting with troublemakers.

         You made a dismissive noise and left it at that.  Clearly your dad wanted to debate the issue but your silence had left him at a loss and he dropped the subject.  He only has so much energy to devote to raising you; most of his efforts are concentrated on Jake, who they say has yet to lose a fight at his high school, and who was suspended twice last year and probably deserved two more.  Whereas you've never fought, never been suspended, never even had a detention.  Your parents don't bother much with you.

         Everything Jake does has the effect of minimizing what you do, and this past year you suddenly found yourself able to break curfew without consequence.  The first time you did it you got home prepared for the apocalypse, but nothing happened; if anything your dad seemed pleased that you came home while he was still awake and after that you had greater freedom to roam the streets at night with McCallum, Schwartzy, Jenna, and the rest of the crew.  What did you do on those cool fall nights at the beginning of the school year?  You spraypainted poorly-drawn graffiti on the school walls.  You smashed fluorescent light tubes in the underground parking lot beneath the new condos.  You kept watch while the other boys stole change from cars on various streets.  Did you enjoy these activities?  At the time it gave you a rush, made you feel like someone other than your usual boring self, but afterwards when you were alone in bed you felt badly and wished you hadn't done some of the things you did, and even the things you didn't do but merely observed.  You will never forget when, walking down the street, McCallum ignited a whole packet of matches and casually tossed it through the open window of a car parked on the street.  The three of you had laughed.

         Imagine when he gets in the car to go to work, Schwartzy giggled.

         Imagine the whole car blows up in the driveway, McCallum said.  Boom!

         Later on you imagined these very things and it didn't make you giggle.  It made you feel ill.

         You started bringing the boys into the woods in hopes that it might provide an alternative to stealing and breaking things.  The bike jumps offered some amusement but soon they became more interested in making fires and burning any garbage they could find: pop bottles, beer cases, garden hoses, shopping bags.  They burned the planks from the bike jumps.  Sometimes McCallum brought an aerosol can from home, furniture polish or disinfectant spray, and tossed it into the fire and then you all waited for it to explode and shower you with embers.  That was your favourite part: waiting for the burst, not knowing what would happen.



Billy had noticed the swimming creature first.  You both watched its sleek brown body gliding effortlessly just beneath the surface of the creek, sinuous tail weaving behind it.

         Holy crap, a beaver!  You had never seen a real live beaver before.

         It's not a beaver, Billy said.  We don't have beavers around here.  It's a muskrat.

         You hopped back on your bikes and followed the muskrat downstream.  The creek gradually widened and slowed and here you saw the muskrat swim up to a large pile of dirt and sticks heaped near the water's edge.  Just short of the pile, the muskrat suddenly dove under and was gone.

         That's its den, Billy informed you.

         Isn't it called a lodge?

         Whatever.

         It is to the den or lodge or whatever that you are now leading your friends.  You haven't been to look at it since last summer and you hope it will still be there and still in use.  The trail descends a gentle slope and then flattens out; the creek is wide, the water is muddy brown and looks like chocolate milk.  You see the den on the other side of the creek.  It is much larger than you remember it.  You point it out to the boys.

         There it is.

         What, says Schwartzy, that pile of mud?

         There's sticks in the pile too, says McCallum.  I declare it the finest pile of mud n' sticks I ever done seen.  Nice job, kiddo.  He claps you on the shoulder and Schwartzy laughs.  Your face is getting hot and you're wondering what you hoped to accomplish by bringing them here.  Of course you wanted to impress them, and you counted on them never having seen a muskrat dwelling, but without the resident animals it is just as they describe it: a pile of mud and sticks.  Then you see a triangular ripple spreading across the water.

         Check it out, you say while pointing.  The muskrat.

         The three of you watch the large rodent, its brown body slick with water, as it swims up to the lodge and rather than diving under it climbs on top.  Its mouth is full of weeds and mud and it deposits the material on top of the lodge and pats it down with a forepaw before returning to the water.  You check your friends for their reactions.  If they don't seem overly impressed, at least they don't look bored either.  But it isn't the same as when you and Billy Fanshaw would take your bikes down here.  Back then you would sit on the bank and watch the coming and going of the muskrats and make observations about their habits and feel like fledgling ecologists or something.  You could spend the entire afternoon watching them.  But now after not even two minutes your friends are heading upstream, back to the fallen tree which spans the width of the creek.  They are crossing to the other side, and you begin to realize it was a mistake bringing them here.  But it's too late to do anything now.  You cross the log after them, trying not to lose your balance.

         

What's wrong with you? Jake says.

         You are slumped on the couch pretending to read the latest X-Men comic book.  It is getting dark out; your parents have already gone to bed.  Jake has just come out of his room and looks ready to go out somewhere.

         Eh?  Why so glum, chum?

         You don't respond but stare fixedly at the comic and to your astonishment Jake comes over and hurls himself onto the sofa beside you.  You both sit there without saying anything.  In your mind you still see McCallum trying to set fire to the muskrat lodge yesterday, having made a torch from a bladeless hockey stick he found in the bushes and an empty beer case he filled with dead leaves.  You were relieved when it wouldn't catch--it was mostly mud, after all--but then McCallum started using the stick to prod and whack the lodge.  McCallum passed the stick to Schwartzy and then Schwartzy passed it to you, and you took your whacks and soon the whole thing was in pieces, a spreading patch of mud and sticks in the brown water, and you envisioned little hairless baby muskrats drowning somewhere below the surface.  Eventually McCallum tossed the hockey stick into the water, now strewn with the wreckage of the lodge, and said let's get out of here, and the three of you left like nothing happened.  You saw the muskrat swimming along the edge of the creek on your way back and you felt something catch in your throat.  Schwartz threw a stone at the creature and it disappeared under the water.  All this happened yesterday, and you spent the night fantasizing about what you could have done, such as shove McCallum face-first into the water.  You imagined Jake suddenly appearing from the bushes where he was quietly getting wasted, wrestling the stick from McCallum's hands and beating him across the face with it.  Pete McCallum is the biggest kid in your school, is in fact bigger than your older brother, but you imagine Jake could make short work of him.

         But sitting beside your brother on the couch, you realize he is probably getting ready to go and get laid in a park somewhere and has no interest in the fate of the resident muskrats or the destruction of their habitat, and you feel truly alone in the world.  Jake must have tired of your sullenness because he lifts himself from the couch and exits the living room without a word.  But then he reappears in the doorway a minute later, gesturing with his head.  You follow him to his room, where you are never allowed nor invited to enter, a blacklit lair of heavy metal posters and dragon sculptures and ornamental swords.  Sit, he says.  You sit on the bed.  He pulls a shoe box from under it, removes a flat brown bottle of Canadian Club.  Pours a measure into a water glass from the kitchen cupboard, then fills the rest with cola.  He hands you the glass ceremoniously.  You take a hesitant sip.  It is not too bad.  In fact you drink it down quick and he pours another.  All this without words, without sympathy or commiseration or even brotherly understanding, yet you feel as deeply connected with Jake as you have ever felt, and your limbs are loose, your mind is loose.  When you get up from the bed the room sways a little, not unpleasantly.  Jake is smiling at you.

         Feel better now?

         You bob your head.  Much better.  Something was upsetting you, but it is gone now.

         Jake goes out, to your disappointment, and you go up to your room on wobbly legs and spread yourself across your bed.  Your body seems filled with warm liquid and you luxuriate in the novelty of the experience.

You have, for tonight at least, forgotten the little hairless rodents drowning in the muddy creek.