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ne cool Friday in early April, we decided to take the boys from Ward 720 to the beach. Buntzen Lake is about a half hour drive from Woodlands, a secluded park with a small foreshore beach, picnic grounds, and a couple of easy nature trails. But its most endearing feature was that there was only one way in and ergo one way out, unless you planned on landing a seaplane or commandeering a submarine, feats of a magnitude that none of our charges could undertake to our knowledge.
Three staff teachers, three RT councillors, a driver from transport, and our six lads bustled around the stretch van parked outside the pool loading – and often working at cross-purposes – the paraphernalia of beachdom. We loaded the van with as much equipment as its aging suspension could bear. Beach balls, bags of towels, shovels and pails, Frisbees, footballs, soccer balls, beach umbrellas (don’t ask why), barbecues and charcoal, coolers filled with snacks and lunch, team-sized thermoses of watery juice, a couple of first aid kits, medication kits, and (for some unknown reason) an oar.
Sammy sat in the last row by the window, primarily because he was a skilled projectile vomiter who could lay waste to almost an entire busload of passengers. The only ones who could be reasonably assured to be out of range were the driver and the front passenger. Billy sat beside him, but not without trepidation and discomfort. The most junior RT councillor sat with them. Draney sat in front of Sammy, his laughter interrupted by frequent turnings of the head to see what Sammy was up to. Next to him were two more RT councillors and Ralph, who was oblivious to everything but the fact that we were going to the beach and he might get a chance to go in the water. Next seat up came the dynamic duo of Andre and Peter – Andre burbling to himself and Peter pointing his accusing finger at people and things only he could see, joined by two teachers, usually James and myself. Gerald always snarfed the front passenger seat, claiming car sickness if he sat anywhere else. Someone challenged him on this one day, and damn if he didn’t pull a doctor’s script out of his day planner that said he needed to sit in the front seat or be subject to nausea and bilious attacks. He didn’t realise that he would probably be subject to long range bombing from Sammy as well. Sammy didn’t care for Gerald and would as soon have heaved on him as ignore him.
The trip was fairly smooth, except for Andre turning around and telling Sammy what a bad boy he was for head-butting him that morning on the ward. Ooh Sammy, Sammy bad bad boy. Sammy stopped rocking and froze Andre with such an evil stare I expected to see lightning bolts to snap from his eyes and put Andre into a state of suspended animation. Through Anmore, down the long and winding rural road, right into the big parking lot deserted for the most part. Unload this, unload that, and stand around wondering what to do first. Ralph broke the silence by declaring to Gerald, who had nominal responsibility for him:
“Mr. Gerald, I want to go swimming.”
“I don’t know Ralph. It’s kind of cold and it’s beginning to rain.”
And so it had, albeit lightly. Billy, Draney, and I took a little hike along one side of the lake, stopping often to throw pine cones at each other. The poplars that fringed the lake had begun to put on the first flush of spring foliage and Billy took the opportunity to try several of them out as camouflage, while Draney giggled and pointed at him. Draney enjoyed days like these, grey and indeterminate. Here was a child of Africa who, ironically, could not stay too long under the sun because the side effects of his medication over-sensitized his skin and eyes to its direct rays. At the end of the trail was a rock outcrop that widdled away to the shoreline. We took off our shoes and socks as they had been taught on the ward and I by my mother and dangled our toes into the icy water of Buntzen Lake.
When we returned to the camp site, the RT councillors had dragged some of the sports equipment out and began tossing things around. Draney picked up a football and laughed at it as though it was the most ridiculous thing in the world. Andre and Peter stood facing each other waving badminton racquets at each other, until someone introduced the impediment known as a birdie which really slowed down the process. Andre talked a good serve, but the birdie would be three seconds on the ground before he even began his swing. Billy stood at a slouch while someone threw a Frisbee to him, or rather at him. The flying discs bounced off his feet, knees, tummy, and head, each time eliciting a smile and a giggle before he picked it up and flung it anywhere but back to his partner. Ralph was sitting on a log, hands deep in his pockets and calling out:
“Please Mr. Gerald, I want to go swimming!”
“No Ralph, it’s too cold”
To which Ralph would shiver with anger and squeal softly to himself, trying very hard it seemed, to find a balance between self-control and needing to let us know he was displeased with us. If there would be a disturbance today we all knew it would be Ralph; not that he would strike out at us or one of the other boys. He was far too self-destructive for that.
Out came the barbecue, in went the charcoals, on went the fire starter, and up went the flames much to the boys’ delight, for hamburgers and hot dogs couldn’t be far behind. Of all the boys shortcomings, poor appetites didn’t qualify as one of them as they knocked back prodigious amounts of burgers and dogs, chips and ice cream, and the ubiquitous institutional juice water. Ralph was really tuning up now, red in the face and demanding to go swimming every five minutes.
Clean up, barbecues cooled and disassembled, useless sports equipment repacked along with beach umbrellas, empty coolers and thermoses, shovels and pails, and (yes) the oar. The boys re-seated, but no Ralph.
“Gerald, where’s Ralph?”
“I sent him to the toilet” he replied nodding to the large building at the top of a small rise. We waited for five minutes. Small talk and discussion about what was on tap for the weekend. Gerald went up to the toilet and yelled to Ralph to get a move on. Five more minutes. More small talk. Gerald went back to the toilets, went inside and called out to Ralph to hurry up. Silence – before Gerald came flying out of the toilet yelling:
“He’s not there!”
Oh shit. Panic stabbed at every one of us and we fanned out to try and find him. Ralph was not known as a ‘runner’, a resident who would make a break for it when no-one was looking, but this might be his first time. The rest of the boys were belted in and under control. I ran down the trail calling out his name, others checked the rock bluffs on the west side of the lake. When I got returned I saw everyone wading hip deep in the icy water looking below the surface for Ralph. His name rang out.
“Are you sure he wasn’t in the toilet?” James asked, a shiver in his voice, for an onshore wind had picked up as it usually does in the early afternoon.
“Positive.”
So we retraced our steps. Two of the RT staff duplicated my check down the trail and with nothing else to go on, James and I decided to double check the toilet.
Gerald was, after all, legally blind. The door pushed open to a fair sized washroom with a row of sinks on the right. To the left were six stalls and an equal number of urinals all standing at attention and waiting for the onslaught of the summer’s lager-laden bladders.
“Ralph! Ralph!”
The first stall was open and we looked in. Nothing there, just a gaping hole leading to a cavernous underground pit of water and disinfectant. The same behind door number two. Just as we were about to open door number three, we heard the faintest of voices crying out, Help me! We froze and cocked our ears. There it was again! Please, help me! We tried the door, but it was locked from the inside. Dropping to my knees I looked beneath the door and saw a neatly stacked pile of clothes: shirt on trousers on shoes, exactly as if they had been folded on the ward. James jumped over the top, unlocked the door and we both stared down the toilet seat to see the closed-eyes face of Ralph; his arms raised in expectation of deliverance from this place. James and I looked at each other in extreme disbelief.
Instinctively James reached down and grabbed Ralph by the wrists. Standing up on the rim of the toilet, he heaved upwards and had Ralph partway out until his shoulders prevented him from being extricated further. Now it is a peculiarity of the human body that entry into a tight space is most easily accommodated feet first. The shoulder cradle will slide into small openings but be physically incapable of coming back out head first. This fact was rammed home to us after just a few minute of James’ efforts at Ralph’s extrication from the toilet.
“This isn’t going to work” James realised, and loosed his grip on Ralph’s wrists. But no sooner had he done so than Ralph grabbed onto the rim of the toilet with a fierce death grip, as though surrendering his grip would cause him to tumble into the bowels of the Earth.
“He’s going to tear his fingers off if he keeps this up” James decided, and tried to pry his fingers off the toilet. But Ralph clung fast. By now a crowd of staff had gathered around the stall, watching a distraught James put his foot on Ralph’s head in an attempt to push him back into the pit before he could cut his hands to shreds on the sharp fibreglass edge of the seat.
“There’s got to be a clean-out somewhere” someone suggested. We found it at the rear of the building, but it was concrete with a wire loop protruding out one end. With all our collective strength we could not budge it. Someone noticed a parks truck in the lot and ran to get help. We were soon joined by a parks board ranger who seemed confused at why we were all so eager to get the clean-out lid of an outhouse off its moorings.
“You guys are UBC engineers, right?” he smiled. We assured him we weren’t.
The ranger was young, but even an older man would have had difficulty believing what we were so desperately trying to communicate with him.
“Honest to God” Gerald pleaded. “We’ve got to get him out before he drowns.”
“Look, I don’t know what you guys are up to, but I can have the police here in five minutes.”
“Good” I shouted. “Maybe one of them will have enough brains to believe us.”
He was about to make a call on his walkie-talkie when the echoing voice struck us.
“Please Mr. Gerald. Let me out!”
The ranger stood awestruck.
“Who is that?”
“Never mind. How do we get this thing off?”
He rushed to his truck, backed it up the service road to the outhouse, and threw a cable onto the ground. We hitched it around the wire handle and waited while he slowly dragged the monstrous concrete cable from the cistern’s opening – a gaping square hole six by six feet. The cistern was huge, almost the size of the outhouse building and extending to the rear. We saw no sign of Ralph. Then the voice. Please help me! From the depths of the clean-out, and up to his waist in water and massive amounts of disinfectant, waded Ralph, eyes closed and shivering, dressed only in white underwear and socks which were now green from the disinfectant. In fact Ralph himself looked like the Jolly Green Giant. Choruses of “Thank God…Holy shit…I don’t believe it”
A blanket was wrapped around him and he was led to the lake where Gerald told him, “Five minutes in the lake Ralph. OK? No more.” And Ralph strode into the freezing waters of Buntzen Lake, swimming back and forth with furious abandon; as though he had gotten his way and was determined to pack half a day’s swimming into five minutes. We towelled him down and re-wrapped him.
Ralph was ensconced in the back seat next to the unfortunate Billy, primarily because he was least likely to hurt him for smelling so bad. And he did smell bad; as if someone had stuffed a couple of urinal deodorant blocks up your nose. We opened all the windows but it did little good. Ralph just smelled awful! He sat like a caterpillar in a cocoon, shivering still. The other boys were in good spirits, despite occasionally looking over at him in what must have been disgust. They knew someone was going to catch crap and it wasn’t them. If misery loved company, it was a company in which none of them wanted to purchase shares.
At the other end of the van sat Gerald, equally despondent. Ralph was his responsibility and it wasn’t the first time he had slipped up with him. Now he would have to explain what had happened. He would have to face the wrath of the charge nurse and his supervisor. It would have to be explained to his aged mother who lived just across the river. We all sat silently on the trip back. We too, knew someone was going to catch crap, and it wasn’t us.
As Ralph was bundled out of the van by the back door of the ward and led off by Gerald, we could hear his plaintive plea:
“Please don’t tell mummy, Please don’t tell mummy, Please don’t tell mummy.”