Out at the sisters’ place, in the marsh at the bottom of their land, a man stands neck-deep in the water. It is summer, and the marsh is warm with a thick green sludge on top.
The man watches the tiny black flies that bounce along the green sludge, and the larger dragonfly that lands near his nose. He smiles at its iridescent wings and shimmering faceted eyes, and wonders why nature has chosen to bestow the miracle of beauty on some of its creatures and not others. Why some repel the viewer, and others garner wonder and awe.
Only one insect, as far as the man has observed, has maneuvered its way around the problem of objective ugliness, and that is the caddisfly. The caddisfly in its naked form is dull and unremarkable, but fashions for itself a delicate coat from broken bits of shell, pine needles, bone and stone. This is both a practical bit of armour, thinks the man, and a grand display of artistic novelty, thus making the caddisfly the most extraordinary creature he’s ever seen.
That young boy, Brisket (the man doesn’t call him that, but others do, as the boy is ruddy and round), is standing near the trees. He pokes at the ground with a stick, then scuffs up the stick with a rock, then throws the rock near the pond. Recently, the boy has taken to following the man around, in silence, and at a distance.
With a sigh, the man rises from the muck. In only his underwear, he is soft, and so pale he seems to reflect the green of the pond scum. His skin is covered in fresh red welts and older scabs, and scattered among these wounds are dozens of glistening black leeches, squirming and swollen with the man’s blood. The boy makes a whispery, Oooohhhh sound.
The man gently plucks the leeches off one by one and drops them into his tin pail, then scoops in water from the pond.
Leech collector! How many?
These are the first words the man has heard from the boy, and he can’t help but smile. He slips on his shirt, trousers and boots, then says, Come, have a look.
The boy steps out from behind a tree and peers into the pail.
It’s the most I’ve caught in this pond, says the man, and the boy’s eyebrows shoot up.
The man hands him an empty caddisfly husk, which sits in the boy’s chubby palm like a pendant.
The boy closes his fingers over top, then he turns and runs back into the trees, and the leech collector heads up to the sisters’ house.
The sisters live in a crooked gray house, built by their mother’s father. Above it, hovers a cloud of silent blackbirds, swirling and dropping through the air. The man has grown fond of the blackbirds, as he is of the sisters. Every time he visits, he gives them a caddisfly husk, which they keep in rows on their windowsills, and, as far as he knows, they are the only ones on the mountain to have read his work.
Years ago, the leech collector wrote a pamphlet on the caddisfly, and he isn’t too humble to remind people that the pamphlet is still held in the library of the Aquatic Arthropod Society of Eastern Canada. In it, he wrote, The Caddisfly, though ordinary, dull, and short-lived, though not especially dextrous or dangerous or desired, weaves for itself a delicate bejewelled cloak fit for the finest kings. It wears the coat for a short duration before emerging, naked and unimpressive once more, quickly mating, and then dying. But how glorious that, for one brief moment, the small insect is stately and proud, presenting itself to the world as a specimen worth noting.
He then goes on to describe the entire life cycle of the caddisfly, as he’s observed it, what it eats, and how, where it mates, and how, when it dies, and how. It is not a particularly academic treatise, but he occasionally receives letters from readers who say things like, I’d never previously considered… or, How astonishing that… or, most recently, Since reading your remarkable considerations and thoughtful prose, I feel a true kinship with the caddisfly, gentle little bug, occasional show-off, well-dressed gad-about…
The leech collector is exhausted by the time he reaches the sister’s house, weakened, as he often is, by blood loss and boredom. When they open the door, they step aside, and he goes into their cluttered kitchen and sits, as he always does, at their little table by the window. They bring him a cup of tea and a slice of brown bread with butter and blackberry jam, and he tells them that today, he collected 230 leeches. The sisters nod with raised brows and respectful glances. He doesn’t often collect more than 200 from their scummy pond. And everyone on the mountain wishes nothing but the greatest success for the leech collector, as these very leeches will go on to heal their wounds, fevers, and tempers. Without the leech collector spending his days turning wrinkled and bloodless in murky waters, the people of the mountain are convinced that half of them would be dead, and the other half maimed or afflicted.
I’m sad to tell you that I gave your caddisfly husk to that young boy. Called Brisket. He follows, you see, and he seems—
The sisters are all nodding when Harriet, the one in the high netted collar, cuts in.
He seems in need of wonder.
Yes, that’s it!
The sisters play an old wax cylinder on their phonograph, where the music is light and slightly chaotic. The man thinks of flitting insects and takes another bite of bread. His shirt is damp and pink with blood. He yawns. He could fall asleep right here, but he holds his head up.
This jam is a real treat, he says.
Agnes rolls a cigarette for him, then one for herself, and the smoke hangs over their little table. She nods to his neck, and he touches it, then pulls off a fattened leech.
Well, look at that, he says, dropping it in his pail. Two hundred and thirty-one.
Agnes blows smoke at the ceiling and Jane, the quietest, adds another dollop of jam to his bread.
As a child, the leech collector had gone to school with the sisters. Back then, the three girls clung to each other like frightened mice and never spoke to the other children. But they occasionally brought gifts to school, handing them out in secret. When he was nine, he was lucky to receive one of these gifts—a perforated leech tin, painted black, with fine linen thread wrapped around the handle. This was before the leech collector began standing in his underwear in ponds, but his father did, and his grandfather, and his grandfather’s father. In the leech collector’s lineage, there runs sweet blood, thin as water, so that leeches can drink readily from this family of water dwellers. A patient people, whose view for much of the day was the murky skin of swamps, who endured water snakes, mosquitoes, and every kind of weather. Sickly people, too. Always low on blood, always weak. Often battling some infection or blight from their many wounds. And yes, some would say an ugly people, scarred and scabbed, flabby from lack of exercise and mental stimulation, faces burned pink by the sun, and bodies pasty from never seeing it at all.
It is said, though, that the leech collector’s more distant ancestors were brave and highly regarded water walkers, who were very different from ordinary water dwellers. A people who tied rocks to their ankles before rolling off their boats and walking the ocean’s sunless depths in search of rare shells and silver pearls. Back then, they were impressive and broad-chested, their ribcages arched wide to encase their expansive lungs. The shells they collected were polished and packaged in straw, then sent around the world to queens and popes, outlandishly wealthy oil men and railroad men, and men who otherwise claimed large tracts of land for themselves, built something on them, and basked in their incredible fortune.
Sometimes, the leech collector imagines those shells still sitting under glass cloches on polished tables in stately mansions, and he feels a strange mix of pride and sadness. Maybe a touch of longing, though he can’t quite place what it is he longs for.
The next night, there is a full moon, and the leech collector never misses a full moon party at Mr. Haas’ grand old house. When he arrives, it is late and the party is in full swing, with the sisters playing their fiddles in the corner near the roaring fireplace, and folks dancing wildly or debating intensely, or draped about the furniture in a daze. The leech collector sits in the chair that is always left for him, the one stained blotchy with old blood. Beside it, on a tiny table, waits a frosty cocktail in a sweating crystal coupe. He smiles, sits, and takes a drink.
Apple, he says to a couple waltzing by. My favourite.
Mr. Haas is a gracious and thoughtful host, anticipating the needs of each guest long before they know they have any. He flits about, anxious to make sure everyone is pleased, entertained, comfortable and, most importantly, well supplied with drink. His houseguest, Kartika, is wearing her lovely silk robes, floating about and taking photographs with her box camera. People tolerate Kartika’s picture-taking, but they want little to do with the pictures themselves—terrifying and strange, and almost always prophetic. After a while, she sits next to the leech collector with a tired smile.
I ran out of film, she says, with a sweet pout.
Oh? Oh, what a shame. But the leech collector thinks, deep down, that having fewer pictures isn’t so terrible, all things considered.
They sip their cocktails, and Kartika pulls out a slim box of colours, and begins to paint on a ping pong ball. Kartika is always in some state of creation, and what she creates is rarely understood. She winks at him, holding up the creamy little ball.
I took it from the games room.
Oh, I do enjoy the games room. I feel like a bird up there, don’t you?
The games room is on the top floor, a room thick with cobwebs and mouldy tables. Years ago, an oak branch broke through one of the windows, reaching for light from a window on the other side, so that it now extends nearly the whole way across the ceiling. A walk through the games room is like a walk through a forest canopy, quite opposite to the leech collector’s usual state of seeing everything from ground level, like a worm.
Kartika continues on, telling the leech collector a story about when she was small, and her father gave her a tin of paints, which led, she is sure, to her love of photography.
Were your paintings prophetic, as well? asks the leech collector.
Oh, yes, she says. Once I painted my brother’s wife with a black hole for a mouth, and the very next week her teeth rotted and fell out on her pillow while she slept. She looks up quickly. It’s not my fault, leech collector. I don’t choose what will be; I only reveal it.
Not everyone is so sure about this. There is a fair amount of gossip about Kartika amongst the people of the mountain, but always followed by, She is such a lovely girl, though, isn’t she. So sweet-natured, so humble! And she is all of those things. Everyone both loves and fears sweet Kartika.
In any case, the leech collector doesn’t concern himself. He settles back and lets the fire warm him, the music lull him, and, as is his habit, he lightly dozes. The people dancing by smile sympathetically. Poor leech collector. What would we do without him? All through the night, they bring him desserts to keep his blood sweet, and more cocktails to keep his mind sated, then they thank him for his service and go off to dance some more. By the time he heads home, he is drunk and clumsy, singing off-key and stepping ankle-deep in moonlit puddles.
Every few days, when his pail is full, the leech collector plods along the winding road out to Dr. Olafson. This time, the boy follows.
It’s a nice day, the leech collector finally says.
Why, says the boy. Why do you think it’s nice?
Well, I suppose I like hearing the birds, don’t you? I saw three caddisflies. I had another lovely tea with the sisters.
Soon, the boy walks nearer to him, almost beside him. The leech collector is patient above all things, and so he says nothing more.
Dr. Olafson lives on the other side of the mountain, with a view of the ocean far below. With nothing but the widest sky before him, the doctor is fully exposed to sun, moon, and sea, but he is not the sort of person who would pay much attention to all that.
The doctor opens the door with a napkin tucked into his shirt collar, and a dribble of gravy on his chin. The leech collector follows him into his study and hands him the pail, and the doctor pulls each squirming worm out with a pair of pincers. He counts, and the collector, in the end, is given twenty-eight cents.
Twenty-eight cents! says the boy, because that can’t buy much, and this is several days’ work.
The doctor looks down at him as though this were no place for a boy, and certainly no way for a boy to speak.
These are simple North American leeches, the doctor says. His nostrils are always flared. If I ordered the finer leeches from France, they’d cost four times that. You’re that Brisket, aren’t you? The doctor takes up a small notebook and writes something down, underlining it twice with a firm hand.
On his way home, the leech collector feels dizzy and stops to sit at the edge of the road and look out over the ocean far below.
I might be a while, he says. And I don’t want you to miss your dinner.
So the boy heads home on his own, kicking up dust on the path.
It is true that sometimes the leech collector faints, and when he does, it is said that the ground shakes. This has led to people saying, when there is thunder, There goes the leech collector! In truth, he hasn’t fainted in over four months, so he feels the joke has not only worn thin, but it isn’t even entirely honest, and good jokes, as his grandfather used to point out, should always bear testament to the truth.
The last time the leech collector fell, he was walking to Marvin and Brothers Mercantile & Post, thoroughly enjoying the sun’s rays through his damp, blood-stained shirt. He felt as though the sun healed his wounds, and how wonderful it would be to expose his whole upper body to it, let it shrink each leech bite, let it fortify his blood as it does with a plant.
Next thing he knew, he woke up in the middle of the street with faces peering down at him. A man was dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief, and a woman was clapping her hands in front of his face like she was catching mosquitoes.
Oh, there he is! Right as rain! Up you get, leech collector. We need you strong and healthy, now, don’t we?
At the end of the next full moon party, as the leech collector stumbles down the long drive, heading for his home, someone calls out.
Leech collector! Wait!
Kartika, so young and bright and lovely, runs after him in a swirl of billowing silk robes.
I was waiting to give you this, she says as she nears, a little out of breath.
Oh? The man takes the small photograph, small enough to fit in his palm.
I was waiting, she says, suddenly very solemn. For the right moment.
He blinks, then squints, then angles the image into the moon’s light. In it, Kartika lies in water, though he doesn’t know where, as her fully submerged face takes up most of the image. Her eyes and mouth are wide open.
A nice little swim, is it? The leech collector asks, his tongue thick and his mind swampy. His hands feel too large and unwieldy for such a small square of paper. It’s me? Swimming while I work? You know, I should do that more often, Kartika, I really should for a little treat, shouldn’t I, and it’s funny that I haven’t taken that up, isn’t it, I mean swimming, since I…
She reaches out and touches his arm. You take that home with you. You give it a good look in the morning.
His thoughts are buried beneath a heavy blanket of drunkenness. That is to say, the leech collector forgets, in this moment, to be afraid of Kartika’s gift.
Well, sure I will, he says. Thank you, Kartika.
He tips his hat, though he isn’t wearing one, slips the photograph in his pocket, and continues on home.
The leech collector lives in a dark, soft little cabin in the center of a swamp, depleted of hungry leeches since he was a boy. The house is built on stilts, surrounded by a railless porch, so that, for generations, the men in his family could slip into the water at any time, without trouble. Now, since all the leeches have been collected, and they are no longer eating the waste left behind by other creatures, and they are no longer feeding on snails and insects, and further, they are no longer available as food for turtles and birds, the bog is sludgy, like mud, and stinking. The sleepy-faced turtles have lumbered off, or died, and snails are so plentiful they crust the edges like salt crystals.
But now it is dark, and the leech collector can only see the planks at his feet in the swaying light of his lamp. He stumbles along these, avoiding a tumble into the water on either side of him, opens his door, and lands fully clothed in his bed, falling into a black sleep.
The leech collector wakes with a gasp. His head is full of churning nails, his body slick, and his mouth dry. Morning is hours away yet, and the night is silent, but his heart is racing so wildly it swooshes in his ears. He lights a lamp, then fumbles in his pocket and pulls out the photograph.
Not swimming at all, he whispers. Dead!
The leech collector sits on the edge of the bed, the photograph held loosely in his grip.
Over the next days, while submerged and staring across the skins of sludgy waters, foamy waters, and clean black waters, the leech collector waits. He waits for some bump against his leg, or a spasm in his heart, or a shift in the mud at his feet. He no longer notices the dragonflies, or butterflies, or caddisflies. Instead, he notices every push and pulse in the water, every hitch in the breeze, or twitch in his body. He’s waiting. He knows for what, but he doesn’t know how. Or when.
At night, when he should be sleeping, he instead looks at Kartika’s photograph by lamplight, studies it for clues. But all he sees is a face, under the water, staring at nothing, mouth open as if hollering, or gasping, or choking.
After several days of this, the leech collector wakes, dresses, and digs through the top drawer of his desk for his membership to the Arthropodic Society of Eastern Canada, for which he pays one dollar and fifty cents a year. After all, his true love is for caddisflies, not leeches. Why had it not occurred to him before!
He flicks the certificate once with a finger, then leaves it on his desk, and makes the long journey to the sisters’.
The sisters are waiting for him, standing on their porch as he approaches, blackbirds swirling and diving above their old gray house. He presents them with three pairs of earrings, fashioned from caddisfly husks. And they present him with a crisply folded shirt of the finest linen, embroidered along the collar and cuffs with pine needles, twigs, stones, and bones. All the things that make up a caddisfly husk.
The leech collector tries it on, right there on the sisters’ porch, and they circle him, inspecting it for fit.
It’s perfect, he says, looking at his reflection in their front window, smoothing the shirt with both hands.
He doesn’t tell them about Kartika’s picture. He prefers not to think about it at all. He prefers, instead, to think about the East Coast, and stepping into the lobby of the Aquatic Arthropod Society, and seeing his pamphlet displayed behind glass, or better yet, on a table so folks can thumb through it. And now, he has the finest shirt in which to do so.
On his way home, he tosses his old blood-stained tunic into the trees.
When the leech collector arrives, after five days on a rickety train, he steps off the station platform and breathes in the sights of the colourful city and the cold, black ocean. With a happy sigh, he heads toward Wharf and Peacock. He is scanning the facade for a sign, an entrance, a number—when a young woman bumps into his arm.
Excuse me, says the leech collector, and the young woman is only a beat behind him when she says the very same thing. Her eyes are so dark they are nearly black, and her smile is warm and dimpled.
I was trying to find the linen draper’s, she says. I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going!
And neither was I! I’m looking for the Arthropodic Society.
Well, that’s easy, she says, nodding to the building across the street. You see the blue sign?
And sure enough, tucked next to the signs for cigars, flowers, and kid gloves, is a small, tidy picture of several water mites: Arthropodic Society of Eastern Canada (three flights, please tread lightly). The sign has an arrow, and the leech collector’s eyes travel up each floor to the top, a gabled attic with green shutters.
Ah! He looks back to thank the woman, who is studying the pattern on his cuffs.
I’ve never seen such a shirt, she says. What fine needlework! Then she raises her dark eyes to meet his. It’s really quite extraordinary!
The leech collector beams, tips his hat, which he is wearing this time, and crosses the street. He is still smiling when a trolley strikes him down.
The people of the mountain receive word that the leech collector has died, inexplicably out in St John’s, on a dusty street, well-dressed and penniless. And worse, in the most unsightly way. The impact of the trolley crushed his chest so mightily that it knocked his eyeball right onto his cheek, where it dangled by a long pink nerve, staring directly towards a pretty young woman, who had fainted.
The people are shocked and saddened, but also quietly wondering what they will do now that they have no one to find leeches for them. Even so, they bring flowers to the front door of his cabin in the swamp, and they build a fine memorial to him near the pond out at Thornfield Acre.
It is the sisters who, upon leaving a bouquet at his door, find another photograph, tucked into the pile of flowers. It’s faded from sun damage, but the image is clear enough to make out. Kartika, in a tunic made of leaves and sticks, lying crooked on the ground with one eye open, one closed, and a ping pong ball dangling on her cheek, its painted iris staring at nothing. And, strangely, she is smiling.
The sisters take it home and pin it on their wall of Kartika’s photographs, right next to the one of her submerged underwater, her eyes open, her mouth wide as if screaming.
Brisket’s mother is sick with a fever and the doctor only has fancy leeches, imported from France, which are outrageously expensive, and besides, smaller than local leeches. So the mother waves off Dr. Olafson, saying she’ll be just fine, thank you very much, and GOOD DAY.
But Brisket is clever. His father had told him that. And the leech collector. And so did his teacher (although it was said sternly, Aren’t you clever.)
When his mother is sleeping, Brisket silently slips on his trousers and boots, then grabs a tin normally used for old coffee grounds. And he makes his way, by lantern light, to the swamp out at Thornfield Acre, strips down, steps in, and waits. It’s not cold, but it is slimy. He can feel the brush of soft-bodied creatures along his legs, the slippery fingers of weeds, and the mud oozing between his toes. But he can’t see much in the dark, with his lantern left on the bank, flickering. He’s not so sure he likes leech collecting after all. It’s a little scary. Plus, it’s boring. He twists around and back, pushes his toes through the muck, then slips down a bit so only his eyes show. Then he lies back to look up at the night sky. It feels like he’s floating along with the moon, just the two of them. The moon is creamy and soft, but when he slips under, it turns wobbly and green.
Oooohhhh…. He mouths, soundlessly, his mouth a circle, the slimy water filling it before he swishes it back out again, then filling it again. Like bellows, he thinks. Perhaps he does like leech collecting! The boy lets his mouth fill once more, as the shimmery green moon winks down at him.
