Monkey Beach

At the family campsite, Lisa is scared to go to the outhouse because of the ghosts. She tells Mick, “I just heard them laughing” (107). Mick tries to tell a story about Ba-ba-oo seeing ghosts, but other family members stop him. In the night, Mick has a bad dream. Lisa’s mother goes to him and Lisa hears him crying. Mom warns Lisa not to ask Mick about the incident. In the morning, Mick is yelling at Geordie about residential school and how bad it was, how the school officials tried to convert the students, and that they “torture children.”

Mom tells Lisa, “[w]hen you go up the Kitlope […] be polite and introduce yourself to the water” (112). She mentions a village buried by a landslide 500 years ago. She also mentions several legendary creatures, including one known as the Stone Man, a monster guarding a channel, and sasquatches. Lisa listens that night as Mick and Mom talk, thinking she’s asleep. She realizes that Mick is planning to leave the area, which makes Lisa sad. She gets out of the tent in the middle of the night and sees a white bird on a log that turns out to be a great blue heron. Back at the camp, Lisa has to do homework. Later, however, she runs off to a nearby graveyard and some abandoned houses. Dinner that night is tense. Lisa goes home to Kitamaat with Geordie. The others lose their punt boat on the way back, when it sinks.

Lisa again snaps out of her reverie and into the present day. She thinks about the birds around her, and the crows that Jimmy fed which still live near their house. While Lisa was unnerved by the crows, Ma-ma-oo encouraged Jimmy’s habit, saying the birds were good luck. Lisa’s mind wanders to her youth, and she remembers having her first sex-ed class. Lisa is baffled by the idea of sex. She and Tab go to Trudy’s house, where Trudy and her friends are drinking. Trudy antagonizes Tab, suggesting that Tab is sexually active. Trudy criticizes Lisa when she speaks up in Tab’s defense. Trudy tells Lisa that Mick was a “horny dog when he was a drunk [… p]anting after your mother” (128). Lisa is hurt and shocked at what Trudy says, but Tab pities her, asking, “Why do you listen to her?” (129). The next day, Lisa is at Tab’s house again, but Trudy acts differently and doesn’t remember the argument with Lisa the day before. Lisa asks if Mick and her mom had an affair, and Trudy asks who Lisa heard the rumor from. Trudy says Lisa’s mom went on some dates with Mick before she fell in love with Al, but nothing happened.

The little man wakes Lisa up from a dream, and though she thinks, “he’d been trying to comfort me,” she also feels like she wants the visits to stop (132). Mick is leaving, and Lisa asks if she can come. Mick can see that something is bothering Lisa. Later, no one can find Mick anywhere. Lisa tells herself, “[n]othing’s wrong. Nothing’s wrong. Mick’s just goofing off. He’s fine,” but the novel later reveals that Mick has died (134).

When one of Jimmy’s crows, Spotty, makes noise, Lisa awakens from a dream about Monkey Beach, stopping her reminiscences. Al calls, saying they found Jimmy’s life raft with no sign of him. Lisa thinks about how to get down to the area where Jimmy disappeared and decides to sneak away in the family’s motorboat, leaving behind a note for Edith. She wonders if her dream about Monkey Beach is a clue.