A Future Memory from the Dream Journal of Harry Sanderson
Edited by Buddy Hope
Harry and Bernice Sanderson live in a cottage on Maple Street, the same house they have lived in for nobody knows how long. They have: a nice view of Kin Beach, where Harry sometimes sits and watches the tide come in and go out; a short walk into town, where he sometimes ambles off for a late morning coffee; plenty of room for the grandkids and even the great-grandkids; and a nice verandah where they love to sit and enjoy the ocean breeze on hot summer evenings. It’s all a retired couple could ever ask for, but not quite enough. “You’re grouchy and always underfoot,” Bernice complained one day. “You’ve got to get out more.”
When Harry pointed out that he already spent lots of time watching the tides; going for coffees; walking their dog; entertaining the grandkids and even the great-grandkids, puttering in the garden; sweeping the drive; and sitting with her on hot summer evenings, she said, “That’s not even a tenth of the time you spend kicking around doing nothing.” He had to admit that was true. But adjusting to retirement wasn’t something Harry found easy. He missed the ‘good-old-days’ when he sat high up in the cab of his logging truck, bouncing and grinding up the steep gravel roads, then back down again to the log sort, then back up again, and so on.
“You’ve been retired 30 years at least,” Bernice observed. Being younger than him, she was the more active of the two, volunteering at the famous Chemainus Thrift Store, with the arts council, and at the seniors’ centre. “I’ve been retired less time than you, and I’ve got used to it,” she said. Harry didn’t point out that 29 years was still quite a long time to get used to retirement, and it’s a good thing he didn’t. Bernice can get quite sharp when pointy comments like that are made, and her sharp tongue was something he avoided with as much care as a barbed-wire fence. A retired high school teacher, there wasn’t much Bernice didn’t know about responding tartly to cheeky comments.
“You know what you should do?” she said one day. “You should go follow those yellow footprints and look at all the murals in town. Maybe you’ll get some ideas of things you might like to do. At the very least, it will give you something to talk about over coffee or when we’re sitting on the verandah.”
Now, you have to understand, looking at the murals of Mural Town was not one of the things on Harry’s favorite to do list—at least not at that point in his life. He had resisted giving them more than a glance since they first started appearing on walls back in the early ‘80s. “This is a logging town,” he insisted stubbornly. “I don’t like tourists, and I don’t want to look at the pretty pictures that are bringing them here.” Not that he was mean-spirited, or grumpy, or narrow-minded… Harry just had a hard time adjusting to change, and Chemainus had changed a lot since he was a kid.
Bernice Sanderson was not one to give in, though, so one day, when she was going up town to do some banking and shopping, she said to Harry, “Come on!” He didn’t want to go because he could tell by her tone of voice and the look in her eye that she was up to something. But since he wasn’t at Kin Beach, or morning coffee, or entertaining the grandkids, or doing much else at all, he didn’t have a leg—good or bad—to stand on, so with a grunt and a sigh, Harry rattled his walker out the front door and followed Bernice, who set a quick pace up to Willow Street, then into town.
“I want you to make me a promise, Harry Sanderson, and I want you to keep it,” she said as they were walking past Waterwheel Square.
“Don’t make promises unless I know I can keep ‘em,” he said defiantly.
“You’ll be able to keep this one.”
“And how would you know that?”
Bernice looked stern—almost fierce—for a second, then said, “Because if you don’t, I’ll put nettles in your laundry, I’ll put cyan pepper in your scrambled eggs, I’ll…”
“Okay! Okay!” he laughed wheezily. “I promise.”
She pointed to the mural numbered one on the side wall of the credit union and said, “While I’m in there doing my banking, I want you to look at this mural the whole time. I don’t want you to take your eyes off it even for a second, Harry. Then I want you to tell me, when I come back out, that you don’t like it, if that’s the case. If you can say that without lying, I’ll never ask you to look at another mural as long as I live, or as long as you live, whoever’s long is the longest.”
Now, Harry didn’t think there was much of a challenge in that. He knew he wouldn’t like the mural, even if it did happen to be all about his favourite subject, logging. “Pah!” he said. “You take all day about your banking business, and I’ll still be out here lookin’ at this mural and not liking it when you come out,” he vowed.
“Fair enough!” Bernice agreed, and off she went.
~~~
Something in her manner told Harry he better be careful, though. Perhaps she’d put something on his toast that morning that would make the murals too wonderful not to look at. So, he decided the best strategy was to not look at anything that might conceivably be interesting in the picture—a steam donkey hauling a giant log out of the bush. First, he concentrated on the slash along the bottom of the photo, nothing there to catch the imagination; then he let his eyes drift to the cable spooled off the winch, a tangled mess coiled on the ground. So what? Stumps, trees in the background, shafts of light penetrating right down to the forest floor, and…
By gosh! Wasn’t that Joe Donaldson running alongside the log, trying to keep from getting crushed?
Harry quickly looked away, but…
Wasn’t that old Charlie, the draft horse, standing there in the background, looking back over his shoulder the way he always did, wondering what he was supposed to do next?
Harry shifted his eyes quick as he could, but…
Wasn’t that Herb Olsen working the steam donkey’s lever? And who was that beside him, stripping line off the winch?
“Don’t know him,” Harry grumbled, squinting and leaning even farther forward on his walker seat to have a look at the fellow, whose muscles seemed about to pop out of his shirt. He stared directly into the stranger’s eyes, as if the figure in the painting might acknowledge him, and then it happened, sudden as being zapped by a bolt of lightening… Harry found himself outside his own body, which he left behind, slumped in his walker on the edge of Waterwheel Park, and inside the mural.
One last glimpse of his ancient creaking form out there in the 21st century, then a shutter closed, and he found himself deep in the forest, watching the operator’s assistant frantically stripping cable as a giant log crashed through the brush, headed like a freight train straight for them.
“Yahoo!” Herb yodelled. “Hey Joe, you better skedaddle outta there before you get crushed like a beetle at a barn dance.”
The three of them laughed at that, but Joe did veer away from the giant log, bucking and crashing like a monstrous bull through the slash. The steam donkey chuffed away, determined to reel in its load.”
“Slow down, Herb!” the stranger hollered.
“You speed up, John!” Herb shot back. “Stop now and we’ll never get this brute outta here.”
The fellow named John worked the wire in a frenzy, keeping the coil taught on the drum. Then, just as the log was about to plow into them, Herb released the clutch, and the behemoth came to rest.”
“Whew.” He wiped his brow. “Break time, guys. Let’s find some shade.”
The excitement over, Harry relaxed, imagining himself as one of the guys. Whoever or whatever he’d become, it felt good not to be rattling around town behind his walker. He envied the younger men, remembering what it was like to be young and strong, in a body that did what you wanted without reminding you how ancient and decrepit you’d become every time they even thought of going for a walk, or reading a book, or taking a leak.
John is me sixty or seventy years ago, he thought.
Except Harry had never stripped cable off a steam donkey’s winch before and couldn’t say it was a job he’d choose. “Driving my rig was more to my liking,” he informed his companions.
John glanced about like he might have heard something, then shrugged, shook his head, and went back to munching his sandwich.
Harry decided to keep his trap shut after that, but couldn’t help thinking, By God, it’s good to be back in the woods!
Then he reminded himself, You’re imagining all this, kiddo. He raised his hands to look at them, but the best he could conjure was a ghostly memory. “I’m still just an old guy imagining what it was like to be in my prime,” he figured sadly. Everything in here is real, except for me.
They were on a steep cut above Chemainus Harbour. Harry could make out the mill; see the giant log booms tethered to the shore; Thetis and Penelakut islands; and beyond that, the Strait of Georgia and the snowcapped spine of the Coast Range, extending out of sight as far as the eye could see. No matter how often he took in that view, it pleased him. Home, for Harry Sanderson, was everything he could see to the horizon of the only place he’d ever lived, the Chemainus Valley.
No place else, he smiled contentedly.
A hundred years! he thought. That’s a long time. But his earliest memories sometimes seemed closer than yesterday’s.
What is my first memory? he wondered.
“This is not a place of memories.”
Startled, Harry spun round, but there was no one behind him.
“Unless they be future memories,” the voice pronounced.
“Who are you?” Harry demanded.
“We’re not here to discover me.”
“What the hell’s a ‘future memory’?”
“One that replaces memories lost.”
“Why can’t I see you?”
“Why can’t you see inside your own eyeball?” The spirit laughed, dissipating into the background, become the buzz of a fly zigzagging out of earshot on a hot summer day. “Because I am future memory,” its words trailed off.
Yeah! Well, you’re already forgot! Harry shouted after it, unsettled by the encounter.
~~~
His puzzled thoughts were stopped cold by a sound he never would have expected to hear in a clearcut. He cocked his head and listened hard, just to be sure he wasn’t imagining things. But there it was again, a dog yapping like he was being wound up by someone pretending to throw a ball.
“Huh?” Harry looked in the direction the commotion came from. There! No mistaking it. A flash of piebald fur and a quivering tail darted through the trees at the fringe of the clearcut. “What the…?” Tracking the dog’s movements, Harry set off after it. Then another voice alarmed him. “Gypsy!” a boy called out. “Gypsy!”
Harry quickened his pace, clambering over stumps, logs, and slash. “Hey kid!” he yelled, trying to keep his voice loud but friendly so as not to scare the youngster off. “Kid! Wait a minute! Where are you?”
“Gypsy!” the boy called out again, this time off to the right. Harry swivelled just in time to make them out, galloping down the sloping edge of the clearcut. “Hey kid!” Harry hollered. “Wait! Please!”
The boy and his dog stopped and turned, facing him, both bright-eyed, happy. Harry froze, then beckoned them toward him, signalling casually because he didn’t want to frighten them. “It’s okay,” he beckoned. “It’s alright. I just want to help you find your way out of here.”
The boy laughed, the dog barked saucily.
“What’s so funny?” Harry wanted to know.
“We’re not lost, Mister,” the boy said. “Are we lost, Gypsy?”
The dog barked an emphatic “No!”
“But you’re alone, in the middle of a forest, in a working clearcut. It’s not safe,” Harry pleaded.
“We’re not alone either,” the boy chattered, carefree as a swallow. “You’re here, aren’t you?”
No denying that, Harry had to admit. “But I’m just a visitor, kid. I can’t help you find your way home, but the crew up the hill can. Why don’t you let me take you to them?”
The boy’s smile softened. “We’re visitors, too,” he said matter-of-factly. “Hope you’ll come back and find us again sometime.” Then he and the dog hightailed it into the forest, vanishing between the gigantic trunks of the towering trees.
“Stop!” Harry yelled. “Let me help you!”
“We live in the pictures,” the boy’s voice came back to him like an echo. “Behind the walls, with all your other memories.”
Then they were gone, and Harry was left alone, listening to the whispering voice of the forest. His heart sank. He knew he didn’t have to fear for the child, that the boy and his dog were a mirage inside a painted wall… figments of someone else’s imagination.
But…
“Arthur,” he sighed wearily. “Still here, after all these years?
“I need to find you,” he vowed.
“Harry?” Someone cried out to him from somewhere up in the trees, so it seemed. He squinted at the glaring shafts of light that pierced the forest canopy, listening. “Harry Sanderson, you stop joking around now and wake up this instant!” it commanded.
Then his eyes popped open, and he found himself slouched in his walker, staring at Mural #1 from the parking lot of Waterwheel Square.
“What happened, dear?” Bernice fretted. “You okay?”
“Saw Joe Donaldson, Bernice,” he mumbled. “And Herb Olsen…”
“Herb! Joe! They died years ago,” she frowned.
“In the mural,” Harry explained. “They’re in the mural.”
Bernice squinted, examining the characters in the painting, and allowed as there might be a likeness, but that she couldn’t say for sure. She was just glad Harry’d come back from wherever he’d gone.
“So?” she said, once she figured he’d recovered. They were walking down Willow Street, toward Oak.
“So, what?” he shot back, getting used to being in his own skin again.
“What did you think of that mural? I chose it specially as the first one you should see,” Bernice said, with only as much modesty as she thought necessary under the circumstances.
“Well,” he dithered. “I wouldn’t say it was quite as bad as I expected.”
“Well then,” she chided, “I guess you must be mighty pleased, cause that’s a better review than I got on our 60th anniversary, as I recall!”
Harry laughed at that one until he almost choked, then he had to use his inhaler to stave off a wheezing fit. Bernice couldn’t help laughing, too, because, after all, her quip was funnier than it was true.
~~~
Only later, over dinner, did Harry reveal to her what had really happened inside Mural #1. Bernice looked worried. “You okay?” she wanted to know. “I mean, it’s not normal, is it? To be traipsing around inside a mural, looking for an imaginary boy and his dog.”
Then Harry confessed something he hadn’t had time to think about since his adventure or during their walk home—something the two of them knew hovered in the air between them. “The dog,” he said. “The boy called him Gypsy!”
Bernice put her knife and fork down carefully, as if a bomb was about to go off, and she didn’t want to make the slightest tremor in the atmosphere. “Don’t tell me that, Harry Sanderson!” she quavered. “That’s just your brain, still mourning after all these years, your heart still breaking.”
“I know, dear, but I can’t let it go, can I?”
She bowed, her hands clasped to her lips, as if in prayer. “No, my love, you can’t. Some memories are like pockets full of stones. We get used to the pressure of them on our shoulders, bending our backs, and making us slouch, eh?”
Harry agreed. He reached across the table and took her hands in his own. “Arthur’s Gypsy looked just like that dog, now I think about it. And the boy bore a striking resemblance to Art—the same bright eyes and chirpy voice. I might be crazy, but some things it’s okay to be crazy about, don’t you think? Some things we need to follow through with, even if folks talk and think you’ve gone off the deep end, eh?”
Bernice nodded, hard as it was for her to agree. What else could she do?
That was the day Harry Sanderson became the Mural Gazer. He and Bernice never told anyone what kept him going inside the murals of Chemainus. Most people in town simply call him The Gazer and accept him as he is. Rain or shine, it’s not uncommon to find Harry sitting in front of a mural on his walker, looking like the only customer at a drive-in movie. But Harry’s not there, body and soul; he’s gone wherever that mural has taken him, on another mission in search of a kid who’s the spitting image of his long-lost friend Art and Art’s dog, Gypsy.
As for Bernice, in a way, she regrets ever having made Harry look into that mural by Waterwheel Park. Sure, he’s not underfoot so much anymore, but now she’s afraid that one of these days he’s going to go into a mural and never come out again.
Next: Who’s Arthur