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The Town Churchill
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Chapter Two
After the outlet, the self suspicion takes the turn. "Mr.Creek is right", he murmurs, putting aside the paper from his desperate hands. A post-graduate student who is about to graduate, a youngster who judges his potential by academic achieving, a mind always eagering for self-expansion but not initiative or daring enough, now a withered flower for water, a bankrupted bank for an investment, a failure. He is not caring about a paper printed with words, he never does or likes that. In fact, who else will? The graduation paper he handed in can be rewritten or recopied easily, why should he be mad about the tiny"UNQUALIFIED"?
But he lies down in bed, peacefully, as he usually does. His head rests on his elbows, the gesture so easy and so weary. Open his eyes, in tears all that he can see are the unclearness in his future and and the clearness of the cold ceiling, of his dormitory room inside which that overnight milk is stinking along with his heavily-sweated underwear skilfully in the cabinet piled and sour socks talently stuffed. Clear it's better to close his eyes and sleep than to ask a penny of mercy, or even a penny of rationalization from that stubborn stoic cynical Pro.Creek, he shuts his eyes, his mind roaming into darknesses, wildnesses, opennesses, and the very beginning innocences.
After the outlet, the self suspicion takes the turn. "Mr.Creek is right", he murmurs, putting aside the paper from his desperate hands. A post-graduate student who is about to graduate, a youngster who judges his potential by academic achieving, a mind always eagering for self-expansion but not initiative or daring enough, now a withered flower for water, a bankrupted bank for an investment, a failure. He is not caring about a paper printed with words, he never does or likes that. In fact, who else will? The graduation paper he handed in can be rewritten or recopied easily, why should he be mad about the tiny"UNQUALIFIED"?
But he lies down in bed, peacefully, as he usually does. His head rests on his elbows, the gesture so easy and so weary. Open his eyes, in tears all that he can see are the unclearness in his future and and the clearness of the cold ceiling, of his dormitory room inside which that overnight milk is stinking along with his heavily-sweated underwear skilfully in the cabinet piled and sour socks talently stuffed. Clear it's better to close his eyes and sleep than to ask a penny of mercy, or even a penny of rationalization from that stubborn stoic cynical Pro.Creek, he shuts his eyes, his mind roaming into darknesses, wildnesses, opennesses, and the very beginning innocences.
The Town Churchill
Frankie lived in Churchill, a town on the shore of Hudson Bay in Manitoba, Canada, and in vicinty of the frigid Arctic Ocean northward, the landscape of which around 200 days a year bathes serenely in the mysterious and spectacular aurora borealises at dawns and nights. The Aurora Borealis can be seen in late August and from December to late April in the night skies over Churchill. Those Northern Lights originates from the bald horizon and then intoxicatingly stretches through the vast heaven in shifting hues and forms, as dramatic as you can imagine--in a split second, the natural design demonstrates in a change, a change so drastic and unthinkable that you believe within your gaze thousands of years has just slipped by or at least, hundreds? If you are traveller, the first time you experience this, you can not believe your eyes, but you must surrender to that undescribable "shocks and thrillings" in your heart and every nerve, bursting, rushing about, before you calm down and you hear your heart beating in your ears.
After supper, Frankie always climbed onto the wood roof of his house, and sit or lied down, until he'd got the best spot where the observation of half an hour could be the most possibly complete and catchy made. He could manage it elegantly if he had to stay near the eave to grasp a view, he was skillful at keeping that uneven balance--with a leg in the air, dangling like a key to a key-chain, except one time--the time he fell off the roof, and broke his hough. "That was a terrible lesson!", now even looking back he'd conclude it with a tense over face.
That was in January of 1993, January is the among the coldest month with the whole town blanketed snow and Hudson Bay deadly frozen. As usual, supper finished, Frankie declared to his parents:"I'm going to see the Lights! " He did it countless times after countless suppers, so the statement, vocalised as light as a whisper, is more a blank signal. Fairly, though he wouldn't take it for granted, neither would he take it seriously. His parents then routinely nodded, smiled back and showed a bit of "worriness". "Don't be too late!" , that was the word. At dusk when the climate started plumetting and streetlights went on with the sky turning dark, went by the table in this small home the daily robotic coversation--but that was their commitment, a mutual respect, a small reminding for the absense, a way of parenting. Except the strong smell from father's mouth which indicated he was pleased at work and had awarded himself with the Vodka he concealed successfully on the top compartment of the closet before mother had traced and stopped--nothing seemed unusual.
Allow you to imagine:once the falling snowpieces which lovely dance from the pale skies of the frigid zone, have landed on the level roof and then accumulate and gather, gather and accumulate, finally it'll get chunky and too heavy for the roof to bear and make the inside house colder. The design of the roof of Frankie's house, with a slope to the eaves, helped dump the snow to the open area surrounding the house.
"It was never too cold to see the Northen Lights", that was the motto of turtlenecked Frankie. He freed of the bluish snow a piece of front-door ground, set the ladder in the vertical, leant it against the wall, and got a rock to anchor the root of it. The rock, actually a meteorite, was by him called "The Lucky Star". It weighes around 70 kilos, " If Lucky Star was a boy he must be a ugly face!"he liked to play jokes with the rock, and he knew every detail of the rock's figure, what the physician the organs and nerves. "Neat!" he said to himself while rubbing his hands. He did the work all by himself, he never needed anyone or anything, all he needed was a little shovel to clear up the snow and the spectacular "Northen Lights". He safely got the top, and now left to deal with the snow chunks having survived the slope-effect. He shoveled off their most in a lazy but handsome way, as he usually did. He preferred to get his viewing spot "Neat" too! Well, everything was done! He rested there, his head resting on his elbows, excited and hopeful, he gazed at the changing skies with his eyes bravely open as big as two strawberries.
Then came the show time for the "Northern Lights". The dimension, with a span of at least thousands of kilometres, in the eternal, endless big and unknown universe, revolutionizes and radiates in a way almost can be called "glorious", in a way not at all mechanical, but "spiritual".
Then came the accident. When Frankie was at a peace with the nature, he heared Ma calling from the below, "Frankie! Frankie!" " What's the matter?" he thought something might had happened, "What's up? I'm coming!", as he willingly adjusted his dangling pose to see, just about to descend from the roof in such case of emergency(at least it sounded so), he simply slipped--a natural slip, a feeling flashed through his mind, a feeling of a betrayal of his new gloves reaching out but to get nothing in grasp, a betrayal of his suede boots trying to get hooked but failed, a feeling of the wild goose shot in the sky and instaneously dropped. He simply fell over to hit the snowy ground, fainted.
To Frankie, he can still remember the morning he woke up. It was a Sunday morning, the sun shone through the window of the local clinic "The Lessings', run by a catholic couple for charity, he woke up to find himself in a white bed with his parents in accompany. Their excessively-exaggerated eyes and mouthes indicated that their son had under gone not a little. The moment Frankie opened his innocent eyes, he found the two familiar exhausted faces relieved instaneously in a harmony. Ma took over Frankie's weak body, crying out "Frankie, Frankie!"as if to confirm the legendary moment and save it for eternity when Frankie simply came back to earth from his dream too long to be realistic and sweet. Ma cried out "Frankie" in the same tone Frankie'd heard the moment he was on the roof, and he was at that time anxious and conscious.
"You finally wake up!"his Pa draw nearer to rub Frankie's left hand tighter with his big and rough hands. Touching Frankie's face were the sunshine and Ma's tender fingers . "You have been sleeping for 2 days" said Ma, excited tears lingering in her eyes, "We are so worried about you!", she caressed and kissed Frankie's face, "How do you feel now? Do you want something to eat ?"
"I'm OK mom."answered Frankie reassuringly with a weak smile, though he knew he was not quite "OK".
"What about you, mom? What did you call me for?"
"I'm OK, just a bit tired but it doesn't matter much," she paused a while, and then continued "en? what called?" Apparently she was puzzled by the second question.
"Oh, have you forgot you calling me when I was watching the Lights?"
"I called you?"
"Yes," Frankie held a breathe, as if to declare some important news.
"Are you sure?"
"You cried to me 'Frankie! Frankie!', then I answerd and began to descend from the ladder, I am not sure about what happend next...but I'm sure about the calling part. I'm sure it was exactly your voice!" he said, seriously. Ma hadn't seen him so serious before.
"Really?", Ma recollect with a great effort:what she had done that particular night? She pondered for quite a while.
"Really...but I didn't cry. I didn't call you. Yes I'm sure. How could I? I was just home watching TV. I watched?eh..." she frowned, tried really hard to recollect.
"Oh, I got it. I watched Mr Junge's talkshow, it was funny, I watched that program every Wednesday afternoon on channel 7 from 7 to 7:45, don't you know?"
"But I really heard it. It was you! It was you! You ran out of the room to call me. I can't be mistaken!"
"Listen, my baby!" Pa calmed Frankie as if about to put forward a rationalization mutual acceptable and reasonable."You are too frightened. The time we got you you are unconscious in the snow. I don't care about how did you fall, which I believe is your own fault", Pa looked firmly into frankie's eyes, "I can prove your mom's 'alibi' as I was with her, and consciously with her."he said in a joking way.
The time Frankie was to rebut, Pa cut in with his final conclusion "So forget the calling part. It's your illusion. Take care and get recovered as soon as possible!"
"Yes, what your pa said is right. Don't think too much!" Ma joined Pa in defending their standpoints.
Frankie was totally defeated in this "Debate", he looked doubtful, "Believe or not, but better believe me! I really heard it!" He murmured a hundred times in his heart in his most rebelling way, as if to gain a psycho-advantage to make up for the loss in words.
But after Frankie recovered, that CALL he used to stubbornly believe, faded away from his memories only available to "reasonable events". After the CALL faded away, not as fresh as the time he heard it any more, he agreed with Ma and Pa it was just an illusion. Sometimes people make mistakes because of their illusions.
Learnt from this terrible lesson, Frankie behaved much better. So please remember, besides the time Frankie "illusively" fell off and broke his hough and slept over 2 days, he was always so handy and competent. After that not-too-long climbing prohibition, he returned to the roof, like a general to his battlefield. Frankie loved the Northern Lights, and the roof was where he belonged.
Northern Lights, namely the Auroras, are to Churchill as rainy days are to Cherrapunjee, as mosquitos are to Middle Africa, too much to be mentioned. A boy, Frankie had already seen a lot of it but never enough. He loved the purple-tinted version of the night skies the most, and enjoyed the first-fat-cat-then-slim-leg-then-truck-then-dragon-then-grandma's-wig game, but then he grew up, and his sorrownesses began to take a certain part of his heart, he gave up that "stupid naive trick", as he called it.
And to approximate the "native" wonder overhead, instead of the local people's common metaphor "A blessing", "An unfathomable soul" was Frankie's latest version.
The town of Churchill is kissed both by the sky and by the sea.
Churchill is situated at the estuary of the Churchill River at Hudson Bay. The small community stands at an ecotone, on the Hudson Plains, at the juncture of three ecoregions: the boreal forest to the south, the Arctic tundra to the northwest, and the Hudson Bay to the north. In late spring (May), large chunks of ice float near the eastern shore of the bay, while to the west, the center of the bay remains frozen.
When Frankie was a child, Ma always pat his head while telling him stroies about the sea ghosts, which were both old and fantasitic, in her tone, in her eyes, Frankie was so relied on that feeling, that he will never forget it, whenever in a good mood or in a bad one even like today, whenever he recalls the tales mom told him in the dark and cold nights, he will feel a thrill, as if transiting into the long-vannished happy childhood, graduation-paper-free childhood. "The sea is a time machine," sometimes Ma told him that kind of abstract doctrine. "But 'The sea is a time machine' must be Ma's favorite, because she've told me a dozen of times", Frankie thought, a "big discovery" was made.
"The sea is a time machine," Ma told young Frankie, "The deeper you dive, the surer it's to be, for the deeper you dive, the more ancient treasure or relics you will locate, the deeper you dive, the more of the varied and varying marine life you 'll explore, the deeper you dive, the more original the time you've traced back to." Young Frankie felt a thrill. He felt that also when Ma told him the Atlantis Empire's rise and fall, when she told him the love story of Titantic, the ship which slept, and sleeps a wreck in the Atlantic Ocean.
On the frozen Hudson Bay, you can sometimes catch a sight of the polar bears. Churchill is most famous for the many polar bears that move toward the shore from inland in the autumn, leading to the nickname "Polar Bear Capital of the World", as the encyclopedia described:
"In Churchill, October and early November are the most feasible times to see the polar bears, hundreds of which wait on the vast peninsula until the water freezes on Hudson Bay so that they can return to hunt their primary food source, Ringed Seals. Local authorities maintain a so-called "polar bear jail" where bears (mostly adolescents) who persistently loiter in or close to town, are held after being tranquillised, pending release back into the wild when the bay freezes over. Tourists can safely view polar bears from specially modified buses known as tundra buggies. Use of the buggies helps sustain local tourism, but can also cause damage the local ecology when driven outside the established trails".
Yes, Frankie could see two or three of them a week. People put up boards "lookout for polar bears" alongside the Hudson bay. A shotgun was equiped by most adolescents, people threatened with a shotting gesture the naughty bear who persisitely drew nearer to town. In most cases, the polar bear would be scared, it turned back its pure white body, and ran away. It could run very fast, considering its cumbersomeness from appearance. But sometimes people had to tranquillise them and held them to the "jail", until the ice freezed over, as described above.
Frankie's grandpa, was a stout bold barrel- chested Eskimo hunter who lived five blocks away to the very northwest of Churchill. He visited Frankie twice a month. Sometimes he would take some gifts with him, among the gifts the telescope made in America was Frankie's favorite. He used it to observe the "Lights", the stars, and the polar bears.
Under grandpa's garment hid his shotgun. Young Frankie liked that gun, his grandpa polished it clean and shiny. Grandpa would take it off only when sleeping or bathing. At that time Frankie would have a chance to touch it, to observe it in detail, he held it in his hand, like holding his favorite toy. The gun witnessed grandpa's every hunting, every harvest and danger. Its body went staight, merciless and tough. He hoped one day he could be a hunter as brave and tough as grandpa.Frankie wanted badly to join him when grandpa was trying on his boots again for another hunting, while grandpa insisted permitting Frankie was old enough could he follow. To kill a bear was easy, a shotgun, a bullet, a precise shot, but it was dangerous. Once, a polar bear with its rocky claws unleashed an unexpected attack to grandpa from the back, grandpa was lucky to escape. So, every time Frankie pleaded to go hunting with him, grandpa would show that deep wound on his left leg, "scratched by the Bear", he said, in a tone a bit discontent and a little arrogant. That scar was still clear after healed, crossed over half part of his hairy leg like a writhing snake. It demonstrated a struggling survival of an experienced hunter. It looked painful!
But in frankie's eyes, it was Grandpa's medal, Zorro's Mark.
Frankie's Eskimo grandpa never forgot their tradition, in the ways of hunting. He told Frankie the primitive Eskimo way cruel and efficient to hunt a polar bear: they freeze Seal's blood into a ice cubic, inside which set a sharp knife, then they deliberately place the cubic where the polar bears loiters, and wait at a distance for the polar bears to get baited itself. Seal's blood cubic is enough a great temptation for the bear, the bear will move to its ice-cream as soon as it smelled the blood of its favorite game. Then the bear holds the cubic, licks it up, and finally in its feast get deadly stabbed. The greedy monstrous creature doesn't even know it was its own blood that it is drinking the last minute of its life, so it dies, what a tragedy! Frankie was fascinated by those things grandpa told him. He pitied the polar bear, but grandpa told him it was its greed that directly and inevitably lead to its death.
The polar bear's thick, warm, valuable fur, together with its delicious flesh, that's probably why 1980s' saw so hot the business huntings and so vivd a plummetting in the number of the polar bears. Some European travel agencies even offorded a thosand-dollars reward for a dead body of polar bear. But in the recent years, relevant bills have been passed in Churchill to keep the polar bears from excessive hunting, and also the reservations for polar bears are mushrooming and being maintained in the circling areas of the Arctic Pole. The law only allows the Eskimos to hunt one polar bear a year. Now grandpa's shotgun is always seen hanged to the wall, rusty.
The Town Churchill is also noted for its native flora and fauna:Black spruce, Beluga whales, Snowy Owl, Tundra Swan, American Golden Plover and so on. And, the pre-born austerities and originalites shaped and sharpened by the extremity of the environment runs in blood of every local people, in blood of Frankie.
