The Town That Drowned

Riel Nason

• Publisher: Goose Lane Editions
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9780864927057
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

Winner, Commonwealth Book Prize, Canada and the Caribbean, Frye Academy Award, and Margaret and John Savage First Book Award

Shortlisted, CLA Young Adult Book Award, Red Maple Award, and University of Canberra Book of the Year

Longlisted, IMPAC Dublin Award and Canada Reads

Living with a weird brother in a small town can be tough enough. Having a spectacular fall through the ice at a skating party and nearly drowning are grounds for embarrassment. But having a vision and narrating it to the assembled crowd solidifies your status as an outcast.

What Ruby Carson saw during that fateful day was her entire town — buildings and people — floating underwater. Then an orange-tipped surveyor stake turns up in a farmer's field. Another is found in the cemetery. A man with surveying equipment is spotted eating lunch near Pokiok Falls. The residents of Haverton soon discover that a massive dam is being constructed and that most of their homes will be swallowed by the rising water. Suspicions mount, tempers flare, and secrets are revealed. As the town prepares for its own demise, 14-year-old Ruby Carson sees it all from a front-row seat.

Set in the 1960s, The Town That Drowned evokes the awkwardness of childhood, the thrill of first love, and the importance of having a place to call home. Deftly written in a deceptively unassuming style, Nason's keen insights into human nature and the depth of human attachment to place make this novel ripple in an amber tension of light and shadow.

Chapter 7

Mr. Wesley Ball is the first to take the government’s offer, and even though it will still be more than a year until he absolutely has to be out, he decided to get it over with now. He and his family have packed up everything they’re taking with them and word has gone around that anything left that anyone might want, they’re welcome to take it before the house is burned tonight. Mostly this means things like doors and light fixtures, but they also had to leave some furniture. The Balls’ new place in Saint John is small, and they only had enough money for one trip with the moving truck anyway. It’s what Mr. Ball tells Miss Stairs when I’m in Foster’s Store getting sugar and he’s buying matches. He says he’ll be damned if he’s going to let anyone else light up the house.

“So are you coming tonight?” he asks her.

“Oh my soul, I wouldn’t miss it,” Miss Stairs says.

He grins and nods. “And everyone, everyone, please, come,” he announces, turning around to me and the other five or six customers in the store. “Come and bring your families.”

It’s a bit strange. I mean, he’s acting almost as if he’s throwing a big party. But then I guess who knows how you’re supposed to act in a
situation like this because when else does this situation ever come up?

“Ruby Carson,” he says to me, “I can count on you, right?”

I was planning on it. But up until ten seconds ago I would never have said so with excitement in my voice for fear of putting another strike against myself: aspiring pyromaniac.

“Love to,” I say.

No response.

Mr. Ball stares at me, expressionless. Two seconds pass. Three. I fight the urge to flee.

“Marshmallows!” he says. Now his eyes are twinkling. He isn’t joking. “Let me buy you a bag so you and Rhona can roast them tonight!”

Rhona is his daughter, who hasn’t talked to me since June Crouse tangled up all my lines of communication.

I politely refuse, saying it’s not necessary, but he is insistent and goes down the aisles to look for a bag. Wonderful. Now I’ll have to take them. I’ll choose to look ridiculous rather than forget them and feel guilty. Of course I’m only included in this public event by doing something exclusionary.

I see Mr. Ball coming back with not one bag but two. I squeeze out a smile. I was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. Mr. Ball hasn’t done more than say hello after church or smile at me for years, but now I’m part of this memory he’s making, his daughter’s friend in good old Haven Town where everyone knew everyone and everyone helped everyone out. I thank him for the marshmallows and say I’ll be there tonight.

Rhona Ball put her winter boots on once when she was nine or ten and there was a mouse in one toe. She had them almost all tied up before she felt something wiggling. She screamed and hopped and kicked and flung herself backwards and burned the whole palm of her right hand on the woodstove. She finally got the boot thrown off and when it landed the mouse ran out, unsquished and unharmed. If it had been me, I never, ever would have told the story at school, but everyone wondered how she’d hurt her hand. To this day, she won’t put on shoes, boots, even sandals, without first stepping on the toes, then turning them upside down and shaking. She does it every day changing from her boots to shoes at school. Sometimes she makes other people paranoid and they look too. There hasn’t been another mouse, even though once last year a piece of cheese that a boy either put in as bait or a joke shook out. I bet she will keep looking for the rest of her life. This might be the one and only thing I’ll remember about Rhona Ball.

I buy the sugar and leave Foster’s Store with it — and the marshmallows. I look at the map in the window for a bit, then start the walk home. I don’t get too far before Miss Stairs pulls her car up beside me. She’s finished her shift and offers me a ride.

“But one stop first,” she says. “Wesley Ball’s.”

I’m already in the car so I’m not going to refuse. She’s probably glad she caught up to me because she wanted to go, but not alone.

It isn’t far. We drive down into the new flood plain. The Balls’ house sits on an acre back at the end of a long driveway. It’s a two-storey white house with a little porch on the side. There’s a spray-painted chipboard sign as we turn in: “Fire 6:00 Help Yourself Til Then.”

Miss Stairs parks and starts to get out, but I don’t budge. I’m coming to the burning tonight, but this is different. I’ve never been in the Balls’ house and now we’re going to walk right in?

“I know it’s odd,” Miss Stairs says. “But it’ll be fun to have a little look.”

I see other people through the windows upstairs and someone walking out the door with a bathroom sink. Miss Stairs walks around to my door and opens it.

Inside the lights are off because the power’s already been disconnected. Even though there are no curtains left on the windows, not much light seems to be coming in and it’s dark. And cold. Other people are walking around quietly, sometimes whispering. It feels gloomy, without any of the thrill you’d expect when you’re somewhere you probably shouldn’t be. Miss Stairs and I look through the living room, the dining room, and the kitchen. Then there’s the loud sound of wood being pulled with a crowbar and the eerie quiet is broken.

We go upstairs. We walk through three bedrooms and I figure the one with the purple-striped wallpaper was Rhona’s. Out her window I see another car pulling up the driveway. Mr. and Mrs. Hogan are leaving. Tommy Cole is throwing a piece of moulding in the back of Mr. Cole’s truck. He has a mountain of things piled up. A crowbar is hanging from his belt loop.

Miss Stairs touches me on the shoulder. She hasn’t said anything since we came in. I’ve just been following her along. We walk downstairs and she heads for the front door, which is fine by me. Tommy’s still in the back of the truck fixing the load as we walk by and thankfully doesn’t see us.

We get in the car and tears start to well in Miss Stairs’s eyes as she looks in her purse for her keys.

“I wouldn’t be able to do that,” I say, “just let anyone wander around — even in my bedroom.”

Miss Stairs dabs her eyelashes with her pinky finger. “That’s what Wesley wanted though, to share what little was left.”

“Could you do it?”

She looks out the car window back to the house.

“Maybe,” she says. “Maybe.” A pause. “Once it was empty.”

She starts the car.

Miss Stairs is quiet for most of the drive home, but when we pass a surveyor walking along the road she waves (I think she’s one of the very few people around who bother) and she seems to perk up — as if she’s just remembered something.

“You know Ruby, even though a lot of people are leaving, there will be lots of new people coming in too — men to work on the construction.”

“On the new town,” I say.

“Yes, and more on the dam. And the new highway. And the mill they’re building.” She turns to me for a second and smiles and nods.

“It should mean some new kids at school,” she says. “I’m sure there will be some new families — some more chances to make friends.”

Again she turns, smiles, and nods. It’s a bit much how convincing she’s trying to be, like she’s told herself to snap out of the depressing mood of the Ball house so now she’s going overboard with the optimism. But it’s probably just how she’s found some goodness in all the changes. New people, new possible husbands, are something for her to look forward to.

We pull into the driveway. As I get out of the car Miss Stairs says, “Be sure to tell your mother you were talking to me,” even though I can see her already, waving to us out the window.

I know all about Miss Stairs’s wedding fantasy. She talks about it a lot with my mother. It’s a story they keep telling, editing, subtly changing, embellishing, streamlining, and perfecting. Sometimes when they’re bored, or when it’s dark and rainy, they get a bit adventurous and talk about exotic locations with white sand and palm trees or churches with gold-gilded angels and three-storey-high stained-glass windows. Neither of them has ever been to places with these things. The usual story they tell is better anyway.

Miss Stairs and her future husband will stand beside the Pokiok Stream, up above the Pokiok Falls. They’ll stand under an archway of bent twigs; purple, pink, and white fresh lilacs and lupines (picked only a half-hour before the ceremony), since the wedding will be in June. The smell will be wonderful and the sun will be shining. My mother will be the matron of honour in a pale mauve dress. When they started telling the story when I was younger, I was the flower girl. Now I’ve been promoted to junior bridesmaid. Percy used to be figured in as the ring bearer, but now no one tricks themselves into believing he would enjoy that.

With the sound of the falls splashing and churning in the background, Miss Stairs and this usually tall, dark-haired future husband will repeat their vows. Her dress will be long and white with lace sleeves. She’ll wear a necklace inherited from her mother, rhinestones, but good ones, clear sparkling crystal except for a centre one of pink. The necklace will be “the old.” A gift from her future husband, earrings she hopes, will be “the new.” A small pearl-encrusted hair comb from my mother will be “the borrowed.” The water nearby will be “the blue.”

The reception after will be at the Pokiok Lodge and the wedding night will be spent in one of the cabins. I’ve heard about it so many times I used to think it would come true. But now the dam is putting a big twist in the climax of the story. The Pokiok Falls will disappear into the rising river. The lodge and cabins must be moved or burned. It’s sad that they’re messing with those little forest cabins. Sarah and I used to imagine they were a village of playhouses. They’re gingerbread-house cute — tiny, white, with a single gable and a little porch. But I suppose if the falls are gone, it takes away the best reason tourists had to stop here. Even if the cabins weren’t in the flood plain, there’d be no need for them anymore.

I haven’t heard my mother and Miss Stairs go through the wedding fantasy since all of this started. I wonder if Miss Stairs is still holding on to it in her head or if she’s made adjustments. Maybe she does dream that somehow in the next year and a half she can meet one of these new men and get married before the flooding. It doesn’t seem likely to me, but not much that’s happened around here lately ever seemed likely. So who knows what Miss Stairs considers possible or probable? You really don’t know what other people think about. You can’t know what other people are saying to themselves when they’re sitting home alone.

And probably the worst thing about it is this: if Miss Stairs can’t meet someone and get married, how can I ever expect a better result for myself? Everybody around here seems to like Miss Stairs. At the store I see people standing and chatting with her all the time — even if they’re holding up the line. After church...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Preface
• Contents
• Summer 1965
• Spring 1966
• Spring 1967
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Back Cover