Crow Lake Read Free

have to go to town,” she said to my father. “To the Bay. They have suitcases. We can go tomorrow.”
    So on the Saturday they drove into Struan together. There was no real need for both of them to go. Each of them was capable of choosing a suitcase on his own. And there was no need for them to rush off and do it that weekend—it was more than six weeks before Luke’s term would start. But I guess they just wanted to. Odd though the word seems when applied to such calm, practical people, it’s possible that they were excited. This was their son, after all. A Morrison was going to be a teacher.
    They didn’t want to take Bo and me with them, and of course we were too young to leave alone, so they waited until Luke and Matt got back from Calvin Pye’s farm. Both of them worked on the farm at weekends and during holidays. Mr. and Mrs. Pye had three children of their own but two of them were girls, and Laurie, the boy, was only fourteen and too small for heavy work, so Mr. Pye was obliged to hire muscle.
    Matt and Luke got home about four. My parents asked Luke if he would like to come and choose his own suitcase but he said no, he was too hot and needed a swim.
    I believe I was the only one to wave goodbye. It’s possible that I have invented that wave—that I dreamed it up later because I couldn’t bear not to have said goodbye—but I think it’s a genuine memory. The other three didn’t because Bo was in a rage at being left behind and Matt and Luke were staring gloomily at her, wondering who was going to be lumbered with her for the rest of the afternoon.
    The car turned out onto the road and disappeared from sight. Bo sat down on the gravel of the driveway and bellowed.
    “Well, I’m going for a swim,” Luke said, loudly, to be heard over Bo. “I’m hot. I’ve been working the whole damned day.”
    “So’ve I,” Matt said.
    “So’ve I,” I said.
    Matt prodded Bo’s bottom with his toe. “How about you, Bo? Have you been working the whole damned day?”
    Bo roared.
    Luke said, “Why does she have to make that Godawful noise all the time?”
    “She knows how much you love it,” Matt said. He reached down, pried Bo’s thumb out from her fist, and plugged her mouth with it. “How about a swim, Bo? Do you want a swim?”
    She nodded, moaning around her thumb.
    It must have been the first time we’d been for a swim together, all four of us. The lake was less than twenty yards from the house so you just went in when you felt like it, and I suppose we’d never all felt like it at the same time before. In any case my mother would always have taken Bo. But we passed her around between us, using her as a beach ball, and it was good fun. I remember that.
    I also remember that Sally McLean came along not long after we’d got out of the water. Mr. and Mrs. McLean owned the one and only store in Crow Lake and Sally was their daughter. In the last few weeks she’d taken to dropping by quite often, and each time she looked as if she were on her way somewhere and just happened to come across us. This was odd because there was nowhere for her to be on her way to. Our house was the last in Crow Lake and a fair way out; beyond it there was about three thousand miles of nothing and then the North Pole.
    Luke and Matt had been skipping stones, but when Sally appeared Matt stopped and came and sat down and watched me bury Bo. Bo hadn’t been buried before and she was delighted. I’d scooped out a little hollow for her in the warm sand and she sat in it, round and brown and naked as an egg, and watched wide-eyed and beaming while I piled the sand up around her.
    Sally McLean had slowed down when she got close to Luke and came to a halt a few feet away and stood there, her weight on one hip, drawing lines in the sand with her toe. She and Luke talked in low tones without looking at each other. I didn’t pay much attention. I’d buried Bo right up to her armpits and now I was making patterns on the mound with