Nobody Cries at Bingo by Dawn Dumont Page B

amusement. Inside them we played hide and go seek which more often than not turned into huge wrestling matches, the soft bales giving us a reason to be violent and take more risks.
    In the wintertime we went on skidoo rides. Dylan drove (Shane had been banned from driving after an ill-fated game of chicken with a stack of bales) and the rest of us kids piled onto the sled at the back. The heat of everyone’s bodies and the struggle to stay on would keep us warm in the minus thirty-degree weather. Inevitably the jostling of the bodies turned into a struggle for survival as each of us tried to maintain a hold on the edge of the sled.
    I lost the fight one night and ended up falling off into the snow. The sled and skidoo drove away even as I ran and yelled for them to stop. I kept expecting them to turn around but they didn’t. As the light and the sound of the skidoo faded into the distance, I stood alone in the snow and the black night. I stopped yelling. Who knew what I would wake up — a wolf, a bear, a Sasquatch?! So I stood by the skidoo track and waited. Above me, a billion stars filled the sky. If I hadn’t been so cold and frightened, I would have enjoyed it.
    The skidoo came around again and Shane jumped off. “I was so scared for you,” he said and pulled me back onto the sled.

    Over at our house, we didn’t have skidoos, horses or bales. We had something a better: a beaver dam that stretched a football’s field length behind our house. When spring came along we introduced Dylan and Shane to the mysteries of it.
    The dam was a huge collection of dry sticks and logs along with a dozen mud huts half exposed by the water. We knew that the doorways to the huts were under the water and I was always curious to know what it looked like inside. How big would the beavers’ rooms be? Did they make bedrooms as well? Did the beaver kids get their own bedrooms?
    Since the beaver dam was surrounded by water it was difficult to play there. We weren’t allowed to play in water — this was one of our mother’s cardinal rules. We swiftly found a way around that rule. You see, falling into the water is something far different from wading in. It’s an accident, an act of God, if you will, and certainly not something you can be punished for.
    We took logs and created bridges from one beaver house to the next. Then we dared one another to walk across the bridges. Some of us needed to be challenged, like Dylan who always examined a problem from a few different angles. Others would not do it, even if dared. That was me. There were others though who didn’t need to be dared, people who were always raring to put their lives and limbs in peril. That was Shane and Celeste.
    Shane was the first one to run across the skinny log bridging two beaver homes. He laughed at how easy it was.
    Celeste was the first one to stand on the bridge. She stood in the centre with a pole held horizontal in her hands. “I am the great Celest-tini!” she said as she tightrope-walked across it.
    Shane, emboldened by her daring, joined her on the log bridge. Their combined weight had an immediate effect on the log. It broke in two and let out a loud bark; the daring duo toppled into the water. Celeste ended up standing waist high in the water. Shane, in a decidedly dramatic turn, fell in headfirst.
    Dylan and I laughed from the sidelines, proud of our forethought and envious of their lack.
    Being that Shane and the great Celest-tini had spankings waiting for them at home, we stayed out late that night. In keeping with his reckless nature, Shane swam under the murky water into one of the beaver houses, and re-emerged with a beaver skull, white and small, no bigger than my fist. “So they really are dead then?” I said, as I held it in my hands. For some reason, I thought we were sharing this dam with the beavers. It seemed impossible that anyone would build something so amazing and then leave it all