For days Harry shuffled about the streets of Chemainus, looking for a second mural to ‘get into’, but none opened up to him. Had his adventure in Mural #1 The Steam Donkey been real or just an old fart’s quirk of mind, a short circuit into Lulu Land? Unless he could repeat the experience, he’d never know.
On the point of giving up, he ducked into the Owl’s Nest for a consoling coffee and scone, parking his walker at the entrance, then waddling up to the counter, leaning heavily on his cane. Recognizing him, the server smiled, then, without bothering to ask, busied herself pouring his coffee and putting his scone into the microwave.
“Don’t tell the Missus,” he joked when she rang in his total.
Her smile was polite. Kindly. “You go sit down, Mr. Sanderson. I’ll bring the scone out to you when it’s ready.”
How long before he ended up in an old-folks home where everyone would talk to him like that? He plonked his coffee down on a vacant table, then eased himself into a chair. Can’t blame the girl, he chided. Her kindness was genuine, even if she was busy. Be grateful, you old buzzard! What he dreaded most was the day Bernice started making his mind up for him, then the day he’d be too far-gone to give a hoot.
Please! he shivered, glancing up at the ceiling. If you’re listening, don’t let that happen!
He tried not to think about it. Slurped his coffee, thanked the girl when she delivered his scone, shook his head when she asked if he needed anything to go with it. He looked around for anyone he might know then, satisfied he was incognito, broke the scone into edible chunks and popped one into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed.
He was about to indulge in a second bite when it happened—what he would later describe as a homing instinct hijacked my brain. “Same way a bird has to head south in the fall,” he’d explain to Bernice later. He didn’t actually see them, but a trail of yellow footprints—the kind tourists follow, going from one Chemainus mural to the next—beckoned like memories. They marched into a lane off Mill Street, and he had to follow, like an excited bloodhound snuffling after the faintest memory of a scent.
Mural #6, Arrival of the Reindeer in Horseshoe Bay. “That’s the next one,” he figured.
He clattered up from his table and hurried toward the exit, leaving his coffee and scone unfinished. People stared as he hustled out the door, through a nearby courtyard, then up the lane behind the Willow Street shops. When he got to Mural #6, he parked his walker facing the wall and sat down.
Number 6 portrays a Penelakut woman watching a British warship tacking up Stuart Channel toward Horseshoe Bay and Chemainus. She’s a commanding presence, wrapped in a colourful cloak, holding lonely vigil on a rocky point, which he assumed would be on Penelakut Island. Harry’d always thought she regarded the arrival of the Reindeer with deep foreboding.
Who are you? he wondered.
She didn’t respond, so he set the walker’s brakes and settled in for what he expected might be a long wait.
New to the art, he hadn’t yet mastered the techniques of a mural gazer. His first adventure had been made on a dare by Bernice to ‘take a gander’ at Mural # 1- Steam Donkey at Work. He hadn’t expected to see anything special in that painting but ended up stumbling into it like a sleepwalker into a fantasy. Now he wanted more.
“Been a long time since I’ve had an adventure,” he told Bernice. “I’m thinking I might want to get into another one of them murals.”
But how?
To get into a mural, you must look into the eyes of one of its ‘inhabitants’, he would eventually learn. As much as you-seeing-them, they must see you then, whoosh! You’re in! But as a novice staring at Mural #6, feeling like a fool, he didn’t have a clue what to do next.
What’s the secret password? he wondered.
His initial examination of the wall’s colour and texture was a futile search for cracks in his brick-and-mortar world. The type of crack a spider might scurry into. But even a spider couldn’t squeeze through into the dimension he wanted to enter.
Got to make myself smaller than anything, he figured. Smaller than atoms…
Feel your way in, don’t think, his inner voice whispered. Let yourself go.
“Sort of like being hypnotized, he would later describe the sensation to Bernice. And when she pointed out, “You’ve never been hypnotized?” he chuckled and said, “Sure have! Just about every time you start going on at me about mowing the lawn, or vacuuming, or doing the dishes.” And they both had a good laugh.
Let yourself go, his spirit guide coaxed. Let her see you.
As she spoke, a persistent pressure built behind Harry’s eyes, “as if someone was inflating my head like a helium balloon!” He felt himself drifting into the painting, to a point between the Penelakut siem and the artist’s sky. Felt her watching as he floated down, alighting ever so gently on the rolling deck of the British warship.
Only then did he glance sideways into her eyes…
She saw him, a barely visible flicker of recognition registering in her serene gaze, and in an instant his ‘real world’ simply vanished, the world-inside-the-mural closing in behind.