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; an easy scoot into town, where he sometimes wheels off for a late morning coffee; plenty of room for the grand kids and even the great-grand kids; and a nice verandah where they sit and enjoy the breeze on hot summer evenings. It was 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 tide; going for coffees; walking their dog; entertaining the grand kids and even the great-grand kids; 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 that before he really got into them, looking at the murals of Mural Town was not one of the things on Harry’s favourite to do list. 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 said stubbornly. “I don’t like tourists, and I don’t want to look at the pretty pictures that are bringing them here.”
Bernice Sanderson was not one to give in though, so one day when she was going up to town to do some banking and shopping she said to Harry, “Come on!” He didn’t want to go, because he could tell by that tone of voice and the look in her eye she was up to something. But since he wasn’t at Kin Beach, or at morning coffee, or entertaining the grand kids, 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 climbed into his scooter 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. “I don’t make promises unless I know I can keep ‘em,” he said defiantly. “You’ll be able to keep this one,” she persisted. “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 1 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 shortest.”
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 one of his favourite subjects: logging. “Pah!” he said. “You take all afternoon 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 would make the murals too wonderful not to look at, he thought. Maybe something she got at one of those newfangled cannabis dispensaries in town. So he decided the best strategy was to not look at anything that might conceivably be interesting in the picture, which was of 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 tangle 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 a young version of Joe Donaldson running alongside the log, trying to keep from getting crushed?
Harry quickly looked away, but…
Wasn’t that old Angus, 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 Bob Henderson 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 in his scooter to have a closer gander at the fellow, whose muscles seemed about to pop out of his shirt. He looked directly into the stranger’s eyes, as if the figure in the painting might acknowledge him… then it happened, sudden as being zapped by a bolt of lightening… Harry found himself outside his own body, which he left behind in its scooter on the edge of Waterwheel Park, and inside the head of the stranger he’d been looking at. He caught a glimpse of his ancient creaking form out there in the 21st Century, then a shutter closed and he found himself deep in the forest, stripping cable off the steam donkey’s winch, watching a giant log crash through the brush, headed like a freight train straight for them.
“Yahoo!” Bob Henderson yodeled. “Hey Joe, you better skedaddle out’ta 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 that was bucking and crashing like a monstrous bull through the forest. The steam donkey chuffed away, determined to reel its load in.”
“Slow down, Bob!” Harry felt himself holler.
“You speed up Wyatt!” Bob shot back. “Stop now and we’ll never get this brute out’ta here.”
Harry, who figured he must also be Wyatt somehow, worked the wire with a frenzy, keeping the coil taught on the drum, then just as the log was about to plow right into them, Bob released the clutch and it stopped…”
“Harry?” Somewhere from up in the trees, so it seemed, a voice summoned. Harry looked up to where the shafts of light came down, and listened. “Harry Sanderson, you stop joking around now, and wake up,” Bernice was shouting.
Soon as he heard that, Harry felt a sensation like being sucked up a vacuum hose, his eyes popped open, and he found himself back in his scooter, staring at the mural from the edge of Waterwheel Park.
“What happened, dear?” Bernice fretted. “You okay?”
“Saw Joe Donaldson, Bernice,” he said. “And Bob Henderson…”
“Joe! He died years ago,” Bernice said. “And Bob’s in a home now. He’d never be down here.”
“In the mural,” Harry explained. “They’re in the mural.”
Bernice looked close at the characters in the painting, and allowed as there might be likenesses to Joe and Bob in there, but that she couldn’t say for sure. She was just glad Harry had come back from wherever he’d gone.
“So?” she said.
“So what?” he shot back, getting used to being in his own skin once more.
“What did you think of the mural. I chose that one specially as the first you should see,” Bernice said, with only as much modesty as she thought necessary under the circumstances.
“Well,” Harry dithered. “I wouldn’t say it was quite as bad as I’d expected.”
“Well then,” Bernice 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 remark was funnier than it was true.
Only later, after dinner, did Harry tell her what had really happened, and that he was dead set on seeing as many of the other murals as he could ‘cause I don’t know where they might take me.’ Turns out, they’ve taken him places he never dreamed of going, and over time Harry has become known in Chemainus as the Mural Gazer, or Gazer for short. Rain or shine, it’s not uncommon to find him sitting in front of a mural in his scooter, looking like he’s the only patron at a drive-in movie. Only, he’s not there body and soul, most of the time; he’s gone wherever that mural has taken him, on another adventure of a lifetime.
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 one of those murals and never come out again. Many’s the time she’s had to find him and call him home for dinner from wherever he’s gone.
