I stood on the doorstep of Ms. Magoon’s house, cradling the freezing canister and fidgeting with my eye patch. I remembered the house from my childhood. Back then it didn’t have the two-room extension on the south end facing the mouth of the Moose River. Now it was painted sea green, a modernized house that belonged to an Irish woman named Ms. Magoon. While waiting for her to answer the door, I thought about when I’d been a buck-toothed, one-eyed kid playing hockey on the frozen road with the other neighborhood boys. My teeth had since straightened out, but my eye was gone for good.
For a few months after the accident, people had noticed my missing eye. Toddlers would point and stare at me like they would a roadway accident, their mothers like police officers, waving the children ahead, saying: Move along dear, nothing to see here. The older kids gave me the nickname Captain, or as I rushed by them in the school halls they would simply call out: Shiver me timbers! But our town of Moose Factory, Ontario, was so small that nearly everyone knew everyone. Eventually, word got around that I was the kid with the eye patch, and after a while, the fuss died down.
The day I lost my eye to a pecking partridge, my ohkom, my Cree grandmother, taught me how to be a fortuneteller. That evening, as I touched the bloody gauze taped around my head, she read my fortune in a cup of smoky black tea leaves. The shape of a bluebell formed by the handle, which, according to her, meant, “You will come out of the crowd with your eyes opened.”
Ms. Magoon opened the door with a lightning bright smile. The heated air from the house warmed my face and tingled my skin.
You must be Bobby.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I grabbed the brim of my John Deere cap to signal hello.
“It’s nice to meet you, Bobby. I’m Grace. Come on in.”
The woman let off a tender sexuality that seemed to swallow me whole. Her boyishly short hair moved with her steps, her orange curls bounced like springs. Her Irish-red cheeks were permanently blushed, her breasts firm and luscious. She looked younger than her age.
“Welcome to the neighborhood, Ms. Magoon. This is for you.” I handed over the airtight canister. “It’s tea, lapsang souchong tea.”
Her smile grew to where it was a bit too gummy.
“Oh my, how nice of you and, please, call me Grace.”
“Only if you call me Robert.”
No one ever called me Robert but I was hoping it would make me appear older, more mature. She walked me to the kitchen where she placed the canister on the counter then led me outside, through the backyard and into the porous garage.
“Well, there she is.” Grace pointed to the Polaris 800 XCSP, which was stripped naked. “I think all the parts are there. If not, let me know and I’ll give you some extra cash to buy whatever parts you need.”
The snowmobile was in decent shape but I wasn’t expecting it to be completely taken apart, down to the nuts and bolts. Right off the bat, I saw that the windshield was missing, which would set her back fifty bucks or so.
“You brought tools, right?”
“Yes ma’am.” I lifted my sweater and revealed my tool belt to offer evidence.
“OK, well good luck, Robert. Let me know if you need anything.”
She swiveled on the balls of her feet and returned to the house. I couldn’t help but watch her walk away—her jeans got tighter with every step.
After the partridge pecked my eye out, I stopped collecting my father’s traps and started working on snowmobiles and ATVs instead. Mechanics came natural to me and for the amount of labor I exerted, fixing snowmobiles and ATVs paid well. I gathered the pieces in separate piles: accessories, body parts, brake pads and pull handles, drive belts, wearbars and handlebars, electrical parts, and engine parts. The carburetor and clutch were already put together.
The first two days flew by. After working on the engine I pounded out the few minor dents on the body frame and smoothed the shoddy paint job. Grace taught at the elementary school and was gone both days, but she would leave the back door unlocked for me to use the john. On day two I chose to walk around the house—for no reason other than curiosity. Off the kitchen was the bathroom—it was a throwback, comprised of a boring personality—as dull as a wet firecracker. A wallet-sized photo sat on her bathroom cabinet. The glossy paper made her celebrity white teeth reflect light like a prism. Her freckles sparkled like orange glitter. I took the picture of her standing on a mountainside and stuck it underneath my salt-stained hat.
It wasn’t until day three when she invited me inside for a ham and cheese sandwich.
“I can’t thank you enough for this,” she said.
“No biggie, besides, my mother made me,” I said, halfheartedly joking.
“Your mother has been so nice to me since I moved to Moose Factory.”
“She’s really nuts once you get to know her,” I said.
Grace gave a solid laugh, almost a bellow. It was a loud but sweet laugh that made my body tingle, just like the first time I saw her. To keep from hurting my feelings, or maybe to show that she was well bred, she boiled a pot of water and made some of the lapsang souchong tea. After her first sip, she told me how tasty it was. We enjoyed the rest of the tea in silence.
It wasn’t until afterwards that I told her I knew how to read fortunes through tea leaves. I was worried that she would label me a gypsy. “Only a gypsy can reveal the future by swirling leaves in a cup,” she might say. But it was a risk I decided to take. In the few hours we’d spent together I realized that her name couldn’t have been more fitting. If she thought I was a nut job, at least she would have said so with grace.
When I told her about the fortunetelling, she looked puzzled but interested. I could tell by the way she tilted her head and focused in on my words. At a petite 5’4”, Grace was a pixie. Then you saw the muscles in her upper back, her raw athleticism, her dry hands with short fingernails, and the incongruity of it all reeled you in.
“You can read tea leaves?” she said, brightening.
“Do you have any sugar?”
“Sure.”