A Matter of Life and Death or Something by Ben Stephenson Page A

her notebook probably didn’t have any excruciatingly scary or weird or sad things to find inside.
    â€œI think I put it under ‘Arthur,’” Maxine said.
    â€œAren’t you special,” Max whispered to me.
    The girl looked in her book and wrote something down. “You’re late,” she said.
    I checked my watch and it said 11:39 AM.
    â€œOkay Mrs. Arthur,” the girl said, “just sign here, and then you can go catch up I guess. Hurry up though.”
    Aunt Maxine scribbled on the paper and we went back out the front door.
    â€œYou didn’t sign as that, I hope,” Max said when we were back outside.
    Maxine laughed. “I didn’t want to correct her.”
    â€œMrs. Arthur,” Max said, “can you believe that?” He punched my shoulder amazingly gentle. “You trying to steal my woman?” he yelled. He picked me up off the ground and swung me around like we were the weirdest helicopter. “YOU TRYING TO STEAL MY WOMAN?”
    The people on the tour were little lines of bright colours between the trees, and from where we were they looked kind of like those yellow and orange barcodes that the postal service prints on your envelopes when you mail them. We headed towards them, trying to walk up quietly because a man was speaking, but little twigs and bits of snow snapped and crunched under our boots as we got close to the crowd. The talking man was kind of old, older than Simon, but not as old as an old man. He had curly reddish hair poking out the bottom of his hat with earflaps, and a black and white plaid shirt on underneath an orange vest. He looked like a picnic blanket going hunting. His outfit was kind of funny to me because it somehow showed that he looked funny, but was obviously in charge.
    The man-in-charge pulled a metal bucket off a tap in a tree and showed it to the people standing nearby. I squeezed my head through a couple of jackets so I could get a closer look. He held the bucket out in front of him and walked along for each person to get a peek. When he got to me I stuck my head almost inside the bucket. It was filled with clear liquid with some dirt floating in it. Maple sap. It smelled like soaking wet wood. I lifted my head up and the man-in-charge smiled and moved along to the next people. Another boy about my age was there with his little sister. They didn’t even look at the sap; they were too busy pushing each other around and stepping on each other’s boots.
    The man-in-charge walked over and poured the sap bucket into a way huger bucket thing on top of this wagon with really tall wheels.
    â€œHow often do you collect it?” asked a short woman with a round belly and short black hair.
    â€œEvery day till the buds come out,” the man-in-charge said. “Some places, they use a tube system these days, just run plastic hoses straight to the cabin, just collects itself and then you put it through the evaporator. We like doing it with the buckets. It’s how we’ve always done it.”
    I looked around the forest. The trees were spread out farther than the trees at home, and they were basically all maple trees. And every one of the trees had a tap stabbed into it, and a shiny grey bucket dangling. Every single tree was getting drained.
    â€œListen everybody,” the man-in-charge said, and he put his pointer finger to his lips to mean “Shhh.” Everybody shut up after a second, even the fighting kids.
    I listened.
    When everything was quiet and the wind died down, I could hear the dripping. I could hear these plinking sounds, drips hitting bottoms of buckets or puddles of other sap drips. I could pick out the sounds one by one, but at the same time there were so many of them that they made music.
    plink plink plonk, plink plonk.
    plink plink plonk, plink plonk.
    It was one of the saddest songs I’d ever heard.
    â€œHow long have you been doing it for?” the questioning lady