From Whence the Rivers Come

I couldn't believe it. Through a mass of mud, silt, and logs there now trickled a tiny stream. Someone had pulled the plug on our creek.

As we drove past, the driver tapped the steering wheel and grinned. "Gotta admire him. Nobody else would've had the spunk to do it."

I nodded. "Or the nerve."

"Guess not," he said, still grinning. "But is it better to do things the right way or the smart way? What about all those jobs at the mill?"

I gazed ahead. "There are no jobs at the mill."

The muddy expanse had disappeared from view. So had the grin. "That's just it," he replied, spacing and straining his words. "It's flooded. By that millrace. So he blocked it off. Had to. No mill, no jobs." The grin returned. "Of course, if he were you or me he would've spent twenty years going around cap in hand for permission."

I fell silent. I was still silent when the time came to get out and walk home.

Mark Twain was only half-right. Yes, when you tell the truth you don't have to remember so much, but then you have to explain, and then explain what you just explained, and then ... It's like unwinding a ball of yarn. Before long, a mess of string is all over the place.

The story of the mill was one such ball of yarn. It all began when a new owner bought the old mill property and moved in next door. He was tall, brash, the kind who would grab your hand and start shaking before you even offered it. Just as forthright was his home — uncluttered, with windows free of the potted plants and sundry curtains of other homes. Even more forthright was his lawn — open and expansive, save for a few ornamental shrubs and miniature trolls. Every Sunday morning he would mount a riding lawn mower and go around his home in ever widening arcs, stopping only to root out a dandelion or to pick up the occasional branch. He was usually done by noon.

Noon was when the right tractor wheels began to bump against the stone-edged bank of the millrace, a slow-moving stream with walls of rubble masonry lining its course. The mower man would sometimes stop to gaze at the far bank with its green and yellow and brown, at the Manitoba maples and tufts of goldenrod leaning out from winterkilled grass over the sluggish waters. And beyond this weedy scrub he would see something that was his and yet not fully his.

The mill. It was a familiar sight to all. It squatted low to the ground under a flat asphalt roof, with water flowing past all three sides: a river with a millpond, a tributary creek with another millpond, and a millrace running from one to the other. On this third side, it nestled into a grassy slope, atop which a sluice gate would let in water from the millrace to run the machines. But that was long ago. The machines were now idle, the rows of windows boarded up, the din of saws and hammers a drowsy memory. Why did it close? No one seemed to know. It was just a place we walked past on our way to the swimming hole.

One day, walking by, I noticed some boards had come loose. I peered in. The interior was dark but a ledge could be seen about two feet down and, further below, a worktable. I pried a few boards away. A windowpane was missing. Not enough room for an adult to squeeze through, but for a boy ...

In a minute, I had made it to the dry concrete floor. Thin shafts of light pierced the musty darkness. It all felt so still, like being inside the Presbyterian church with its narrow windows and high vaulted ceiling. Gradually, my eyes grew used to the dark. Above me loomed a large wooden wheel and around me stood pieces of furniture in different stages of assembly, with vestiges of activity here and there. A shrivelled apple core. A discoloured newspaper clipping. A tube of rubber cement, half-rolled-up. As if everyone had suddenly dematerialized without warning.

At the far end rose a staircase. I made my way up, opened a heavy door, and entered a room bathed in sunlight. The surroundings looked friendlier, yet here too it seemed as if everyone had vanished into thin air. Desks with half-open drawers. A typewriter with a sheet of paper still inside. Invoices in tidy piles. Letters waiting to be signed. I reached into a drawer and pulled out a book marked "General Ledger." Figures filled one column after another, all tallied by month and year in diligent and crisp handwriting — only to end halfway through. No final balance. No closing statement. A Sunday school verse came to mind: Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities. All is vanity ...

Something caught my eye. In the open drawer, amid the dull yellow of forgotten receipts, and no longer concealed by the ledger, lay several glossy pages. I took a closer look. They were clippings from a Time-Life article on Ancient Crete, with colour pictures of strange women whose bodices stopped below the bust ... leaving both breasts exposed in all their glory. Such were the tastes of Ancient Cretans. Apparently such were also the clerk's tastes — the only pages he saved were the bare-breasted ones.

Even in our day, breasts were still something of a secret. The local paper once reported how a restaurant had told a young mother to nurse her child in the washroom. This prudery struck an elderly columnist as excessive. As a child, he had seen "those blockbusters" every day while living with a dozen other people under the same roof, including nursing mothers. Then came smaller households and infant formula — the strange sanitized world of postwar parents, a world not only free of breasts swollen with milk, but also home births and home deaths and children washed together in the kitchen tub and sleeping in the same bed. A world free of all the shameful things that had once been normal.

I looked up. Directly ahead was an unboarded window and, beyond, the millowner tending his shrubs. If I could see him he could surely see me. Slowly I moved out of view and put the clippings back. Then the ledger. Then I got the heck out of there.

So that's what I knew about the mill. And what the others didn't know. But knowledge is useless when ill gotten and kept to oneself. I steered clear of the commotion that resulted when the millowner dumped a load of fill into the millrace and made the creek run dry. In the local paper, he claimed that water had been flooding into the mill and keeping him from reopening the place. At stake were thirty new jobs.

Within a few days the millrace was abuzz with activity. A power shovel came in to rip up the rubble masonry. A work crew laid a culvert along the dry bed and dumped soil on top. Water began to flow once more ... underground. Finally, the millowner laid swaths of green sod, making home and mill a single piece of property. Nothing was done to drain the mill's interior. Nothing had to be done. It had never been flooded.

So I kept mum and no good came of what I knew. The consequences, in fact, were rather bad. Break-in and entry had evolved in my mind from something I had never done and would never do into something I had done and would try again . The next time I got caught. The interrogation lasted a long half-hour with me sitting in a chair and the sergeant firing questions from above: "Why did you do it? How come nothing was stolen? What were you looking for?" I tried to explain, but couldn't.

As for the mill, it never reopened. It was eventually torn down and then the millowner left town. Or perhaps he left first. The property is now a stretch of grass along the river with a few park benches and saplings. It's hard to believe there had ever been anything else.

There is no remembrance of former things.