SISSY Why’d you come up here, all the way from the desert?

SCOTT I didn’t come straight here, I was in Toronto for awhile.

SISSY Collecting Folkloreses?

SCOTT Oh no, no, I was a drummer in my girlfriend’s feminist alt-post-punk band, “The Fur Lined Teacups.”

SISSY (chuckle) ... teacups. But why’d you come here.

SCOTT Well the band kinda kicked me out – said I was too bourgeois.

SISSY So you came here?

SCOTT I was in PEI for a while, working with my fiancée at the time, on a women’s collective Emu farm. Anyhow, yeah, PEI – beautiful. Way too small though. Whoohee everybody knows everybody –

SISSY So then you came here?

SCOTT Yeah, came back here with a British woman I started seeing. She ran a summer theatre in the valley and I sort of fell into a job there—

SISSY Acting?

SCOTT Pumping the septic. You know...

SISSY (pretending she knows) Theatre.

SCOTT Yeah, but that ended.

SISSY The theatre?

SCOTT That too. But now here I am, only a thesis away from getting a Masters in Ethnology and Folklore.

SISSY You’ve done so many difdrent things. That’s amazing.

SCOTT Is it? My folks say I can’t stick to anything, but I think I’m on track now. It’s been a long haul but I finally feel like I’m, like I’m a—

SISSY Whacking balls on the freeway!?


SCOTT What? Oh Golf! Fairway. But yeah, you could say that.

YEW (entering) Well, it might be a transmission leak, I put a piece of cardboard down, we’ll see in the morning. Sorry you won’t get to meet Doc MacMaster, he’s a nice old coot.

SCOTT Yes I was looking forward to recording him, telling the legend of the deep channel mermaid.

SISSY Legend?

YEW Mermaid?

SCOTT His letter mentioned a local legend of a fisherman who married a mermaid.

SISSY Francis Bouchie? YEW Francis Bouchie?

SCOTT That was the name, do you know it?

SISSY It’s not a legend. I told Doc MacMaster about it, why would he say it was a legend?

YEW Having little strokes, probably.

SISSY Oh right. Well. It happened, before our time but Francis Bouchie caught a mermaid in the channel. She was chasing the mackerel. He seen her in the water and thought she was a drowning girl—he grabbed her by the hair and hauled her up. She had long, long beautiful red seaweed hair and gold eyes, no white part all gold and her skin was as blue as October water and her bottom end was like a fish but covered in the softest seal fur—right Yewina?

YEW That’s what they say.

SISSY Yup and I guess she was right nice to talk to so he brought her home. It was dark though when he’d carried her into the house and in the night she started to get older and meaner, until by morning she was just a mean, ugly old woman and she ate his cat. So, he went to throw her back into the sea and whoosh, she turned into the beautiful girl again and he got all mooshy and hauled her out again and again she turned into the hag. He spent the whole winter hauling her out and throwing her back until one day he went out for her and she was gone. And so was every cat from Advocate Harbour to Ragged Reef.

SCOTT Why did she eat cats?

SISSY I don’t know. But she was a mermaid so there’s probably a scientlific explanation.

SCOTT You told this to Doctor MacMaster.

SISSY Sure, when I had to go to him for my ner— YEW (coughs)

SISSY eeerrrvaccimations. My nervaccimations. Anyway he was always um, nice to talk to and he’s not from here so he loved for me to be telling him who everybody was and what all. It’s not a legend. Francis Bouchie lived just over the rise acrost from where the wharf was.

SCOTT Wow. Listen, could I record you?

SISSY Sure!


SCOTT I’ll just get my notebook and stuff from the car... (he leaves)

YEW Behave.

SISSY Oh my god, he played in a band and he’s been everywhere Yewina, Toronto and even PEI and his grandmother was a Comanche—

YEW Comanche? Thought he said Cherokee.

SISSY And she rode a mustang! A Palomino, a Palomino Comanche mustang!

YEW Palomino? Oh my god, look—don’t go building things up. Remember what happened with Tommy.

SISSY That was difdrent. And I’m not building thi—

YEW It’s getting dark, go put the chickens to bed. Go. (Sissy complies) Motheragod, s’gonna a long weekend.