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‘Je me sauve,’ Colin typed into his iPhone with stumbling thumbs. Jason, sitting next to him, watched patiently. ‘French Detected,’ Google Translate reported, rendering the string as, ‘I run away’.
Of course, Colin already knew that, and Jason, too. Michael and Gloria had insisted on French immersion for their children. “It’ll make them more complete Canadians,” Michael enthused. He’d sounded prickly, though. Somewhat defensive. “It also increases cognitive flexibility and improves academic performance in general.”
True but trite, Colin thought. He knew that French immersion programs attracted a higher income demographic and fewer special needs students, and was pretty sure Michael and Gloria had factored those bits into their academic decision-making equation for Jason and Marisa.
“We would have opted for private school,” Michael confided one day, “but we’re not in that income bracket. Especially not times-two.”
“I me save,” Colin offered. A clumsy, literal translation for the French part of the declaration cut into the stainless steel seat of his chosen chair. The second sentence, inscribed at the bottom in English, read, ‘SALVATION he said’.
Colin and Jason were sitting side-by-side on the first two chairs in the Kin Beach Echoes art installation by Michel Goulet. Colin had suggested they try out all 16 of the metal café-style chairs embedded in a concrete base beneath the turf that bordered the beach. “Let’s look out to sea from Monsieur Goulet’s perspective,” he had challenged.
Jason scrunched his face into a puzzled look, first at his grandfather’s weird interpretation of the French text, then at the inscription itself, “Save me from what?” he wanted to know.
“Look behind you!”
Jason twisted round in his chair, squinting, then swivelled his uncomprehending focus back at Colin. “There’s nothing,” he reported accusingly, as if his granddad were playing some kind of trick—which, in fact, was true.
“Then whatever you’re supposed to be fleeing from must be invisible,” Colin suggested. He wouldn’t dream of playing that kind of mind game with any other ten-year-old. But Jason wasn’t any other ten-year-old.
“Ayeee!” Marisa shrieked, popping up behind Jason’s chair in the blood-curdling form of a frenzied harpy, then running away—enacting a Je me sauve before her older brother could recover and respond.
“Stupid!” he yelled after her.
“Don’t call your sister stupid.”
Don’t lecture your grandson, stupid, Hermes interjected from the patch of lawn where he’d been lying, pretending to be bored.
“But she is stupid!” Jason wailed.
“Intelligent people often do stupid things, Jace,” Colin coached. “I know from personal experience.” He smiled, hoping Jason would catch his humorous intent. “In fact, the more intelligent people are, the greater the acts of stupidity they become capable of. History will teach you that.”
Smart ass! Hermes snarked.
A smile lit up Jason’s face for an instant, then he frowned. “And what about the second part of the message? What does that mean?”
“SALVATION you said,” Colin recited from memory.
The collection of identical, metal chairs, each with its own obscure die-cut quotations, faced out of English Bay toward Burrard Inlet and into the Strait of Georgia. The collection was supposed to form a complete shadow-poem on the lawn when the sun was positioned just-so in the sky, and Colin was pretty sure Jason would be prepared to decipher the fragments as long as it took until that complicated pattern of light and dark worked itself out.
But I don’t have time, Colin lamented sadly. It was already late afternoon, and a campground a few kilometres west of Hedley was his destination for the day—three-and-a-half hours driving time. And that didn’t account for bathroom, snack, and tourist stops along the way. If things went well, he might arrive at Stemwinder Provincial Park before nine o’clock. He didn’t expect things to go well—they never do, he reminded himself sombrely. Besides, Mars wanted to get back to the Kitsilano Beach Playground they’d stopped at earlier, and her pranks and whining would only intensify with every passing minute.
Stemwinder… wristwatch… time. The word-association materialized out of his Scrabble board consciousness. Colin smiled. Apropos, he figured.
“I me save,” Jason repeated the mangled version of the French quotation Colin had invented. “It sounds like the speaker feels betrayed, and he’s saying, ‘To hell with you, I’m going to save my own skin.’
“Jeez,” Colin acknowledged. “It didn’t strike me that way. What about the second half?”
“Sounds like an accusation, like whoever’s saying it thinks he was betrayed by someone he knew and trusted.”
“Lied to?”
Jason nodded emphatically.
“Couldn’t it have been a promise someone made in good faith but couldn’t keep?”
“You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.”
“Well,” Colin countered. “What if I promised to take you out for an ice cream cone, but tripped going down the stairs because someone left a toy where it shouldn’t have been, and I ended up in hospital?”
“Okay. Maybe,” Jason conceded.
They sat in silent contemplation for a while, each wondering what the other might be thinking, until Colin asked, “What’s your chair have to say?”
Standing, Jason read from the round disk of his seat:
He remembered
everything
but the language
she spoke
so beautifully
They looked, each at the other, as if one of them might be able to cipher the passage. Without a word, they both agreed silence was the best-and-only answer—that the mystery shouldn’t be resolved because then… well, it wouldn’t be a mystery anymore, would it?
To: CynthiaPetersonArtist@gmail.com
Subject: Day 3 on Rialta Road – Echoes
From: Call-In-P-Terson@gmail.com
Hello, My Love,
Just a quick note because I have to get on the road. I’ve had a wonderful visit with Michael, Gloria, and the kids, although I’ve had to ward off Glow’s angst about her old-man father-in-law driving coast-to-coast in a dilapidated RV nicknamed the Junkernaught. Of course, there’s some substance to her fears. On my way out from our favourite Maple Grove campsite, the pantry cupboard detached from the wall again, and threatened to collapse. Potholed dirt roads are hard on the Rialta. I had to borrow some of Michael’s tools and tap into his engineering expertise to stabilize the cupboard. The fix isn’t pretty, but I think it’s going to hold—probably longer than the rest of our has-been dream machine.
I’m en route to the third destination of our odyssey, on this, the fourth day. We’re about to head inland from here, and I’m missing our Pacific Northwest Coast already, even before I’ve left. Really, it’s you I’m missing, of course. It feels today as though I’m leaving you behind—that your spirit dwells in the towering Douglas fir forests, on the verge of our vast Pacific Ocean, at the base of our magnificent mountain ranges.
Don’t abandon me, love, by being a homebody. Be with me from now until the end of our road. It was you told me to go, remember?
Missing you
Always
Love, Colin
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