Treble hooks and small boats

The boat was too damn small anyway.

It floated dangerously, his father’s weight making the stern sit low in the water, the two square ends and rough white plywood making it look like an over-sized toy. They pushed off from the dock, rocking away from the mosquitoes already appearing as the sun settled lower. Daniel sat facing backwards, too little room to face his father, looking at the sun flashing off the window of the rented cottage, so you couldn’t see in at all. His father rowed, and he could hear the creak of the oarlocks, metal on metal, the awkward splashes when an oar caught the water.

The lake was small - about 300 yards across, almost a deep pond, and they hadn’t caught any fish in the first four nights of their vacation.

They’d missed one night, when his father went back to the city after a phone call. He’d stayed in after dinner then, watched his sister play hair stylist, twisting and pulling their mother’s brown hair, her face as blank as the lake’s surface.

“Are you having fun, even if you’re not smiling,” his sister had asked her, and she had nodded but then left the room for a while, and he had read to his sister.

They always went to a different cottage, swam and got sunburn and tried to catch fish, and his father got tan and laughed. But this year they’d looked too late, and the cottage, the boat, the lake were all too small, and the dog had come out of the water with a leech, fat and black-red, on its back leg. His father had touched it with the end of a cigarete while the boy held the dog, and it dropped off into the sand, but after that they all had to check for leeches. The boy didn’t fear swimming, but he hate the moment when he had to look for something bad.

They stopped rowing in the centre of the lake.

“Right, let’s catch some breakfast,” his father said. “This looks like a fishy spot.”

“You think they all look like fishy spots.”

“No, this feels special. And we missed last night, so they’re in a biting mood tonight.”

“Why did you have to go back?” He kept his voice even, and didn’t look around, heard his father opening the tackle box, felt the boat shift as he leaned forward.

“What do you think, calm enough for a surface lure?”

He looked around, over his bare shoulder, and saw his father, hair a little too long, skin red.

“Sure,” he said. “How about I try the jitterbug.”

It was a chunk of plastic, red and white, with a big metal plate in front to make it bob and gurgle across the top of the water, trailing a treble hook.

His father tied on the lure, a practised knot that looked much easier to tie than it was, then leaned his head and with sharp teeth bit through the excess nylon line.

“Why did you have to go back.”

“Just work, something I couldn’t avoid. That will probably be it for now though.”

He handed the rod, the dark grey reel, and looked away. The boy saw how calm the water was, and deep, and looked at the cottage just up from the lake, where his mother and sister sat and played hairdresser or read about little children and country lanes.

He held the rod in his right hand, grabbed it with his left for support, then moved it backwards, stopping the motion quickly so it would bend and generate more speed as it snapped forward, the lure like a pendulum.

But he heard a little gasp, and didn’t pull forward, just turned around, holding the rod loosely. Two of the hook points were sunk into his father’s cheek, just above his mouth, a single drop of blood looking almost jaunty beside the bright lure. His father was smiling, he quessed to be reassuring, but instead he looked like he welcomed the pain.

He said sorry, watched his father stand before the mirror, trying to cut his skin with a razor blade so he could pull the barbed hooks out. But he couldn’t.

He just stood fo ra long time with the blade pressed against his skin, stretching it, but that’s all.

It took an hour to drive to the hospital, and his sister fell asleep in the car before they got back to the cottage.

Morning

He woke up somewhere south of Calgary, coming slowly awake as his eyes focused on the Malibu’s shadow stretched 100 feet long, bouncing off golden chunks of dead grass and patches of snow. His neck hurt, his forehead was cold from being pressed against the window, his white shirt was twisted around his shoulders.

She was driving with her right wrist crooked over the top of the steering wheel, the other hand tapping her thigh, the noise from the Walkman headphones a small, tinny echo. The sun, behind her, lit the inside of her mother’s car, and when he moved he could see dust rise from the seats. He shifted, felt his forehead, sat a little straighter.

She pushed the headphones off.

“Glad you decided to join me.”

“How long did I sleep?”

“Passed out, more like. You were gone before we hit the Alberta border.”

He paused, looked around, saw mountain smudged grey in the distance, a dog or coyote running slowly along a ridge above a house.

“I should call somebody at the shop.”

She looked at him, the put the headphones back on and turned up the sound, but 10 miles later she pulled off at a Husky Truck Stop, bumping hard and fast off the shoulder and running up beside the cafe, the sun already higher.

“Wait a minute,” she said, when he started to get out. “Maybe we should sa goodbye here.”

“What do you mean.”

“Call somebody at the shop? And tell them what?”

“I don’t know, just that I’m not there.”

“They likely aren’t the brightest people in Melfort - though that wouldn’t be saying much - but I’m pretty sure they know you aren’t there. So what would you tell them?”

“I don’t know, I told you. Sorry, suppose, I left them in the lurch.”

“Look bucko, my father’s going to wake up with a house full of dirty dishes, a fridge full of casseroles he doesn’t want to eat and a low-grade hangover, and he’s going to find me gone with the dearly departed’s car.”

“I just want to let them. . .”

“Well, pick now. You’re going to let people know, or you’re going to do things, and only one of them involves me.”

He paused, but just for a second, but maybe one second can be too long.

“Let’s have some breakfast and get going. Lousiana’s not getting any closer.”

The air almost touched you, it was so clean, and the cold felt good in the few steps to the restaurant. He almost touched her, but they were in that strange time, lovers still too new to be familiar.

They ordered huge breakfasts, eggs, ham. potatoes, laughed at the truckers, until a large, greasy driver in an International cap asked if there was a problem and she had to claim he reminded her of her uncle. He held his breath.

She caught that, looked at him again, then made a quiet joke about the funeral and her inheritance turning out to be the car and him. The coffee was the best part of breakfast, not good coffee but still the best part.

She left him to wait for the bill, went to the bathroom, and he knew right away she wouldn’t be back, but he waited for 15 minutes anyway and never did look at where the car used to be.

Just a touch

He had to lean through the branches of the bush to kiss her goodbye. She was tight against the house, in the corner formed where the rust red clapboards came together, watching the swirl of children and men and women on the dirt-patched lawn from the shadows.

They’d met in the town, and he almost hadn’t recognized her after so many years. The faded brusied red dress, the grey, thin hair rising in beauty parlor curls. But there was something about the way she stood tbat caught him, her arms crossed tightly, shoulders up a little, wrinkling the brown skin at the base of her neck. He realized who when it was too late. She came over, asked where he’d been, admired the son, touched the daughter’s hair until she shyed away, bought them candies and insisted they come see her.

“You grandmother,” he’d told them in the car, bumping along the gravel road following her as it grew dark. “She wants us to visit.”

The house was strange. He remembered it, the dark, faded wood, the leaning porch, windows like dark eyes, patchy yard, overgrown roses, swing set. But he could never remember being inside - just the outside.
She was waiting, on the step, paper bag in each hand, pushing at the unlocked door. Small dark rooms illuminated only by the fading light coming in from the windows, crowded with furniture and layers of things - clothes, pictures in small frames, china, the odd half-empty glass.

Everywhere things, and he thought he could hear his father breathing heavily - up the stairs, in the next room - but couldn't be sure, thought he could even smell something of him in the air, but it may have been the dust.

She showed him photos, clothes, school papers, china, a chest with clippings, offered tea, moved too quickly, banged her hand sharply on the table. But she hardly noticed, although he could see a small white spot where the blood was driven from her skin. She asked questions, did he want tea, a drink, were the children all right outside, did he remember this picture, and he answered, yeses and nos and maybes until he felt out of breath, like the air in the house had long since been used up. He looked at a last crowded table, a last picture of people he didn t recognize in dark coats beside a big black Ford, and said he had to go.

And she followed him out, into the twilight, then slid along the wall, so he had to lean through the branches, the skin on his hand lightly torn, scratched flesh and few dots of blood, and he brushed his cheek against hers, felt the dry skin.



He and the children met his wife again in a park not far from the house, two huge, overhanging trees soaking up the light, smaller tress and brush crowding around the chearing, battered slides and swings and teeter totters and a round-about all scattered around the dirt and grass, looking tossed like forgotten toys.

The children played, quieter than usual, dragging their feet in the dirt as they twirled on the equipment, running, stopping, visible then invisible in the early night. He watched them dance with danger, smelled the cool of the evening moving in, shivered just a little, saw them swing too high, jump from the top of the slide to land on the gravel and dirt, spin too fast, his daughter's hair flying out as she hung straight out from the little merry-go-round, head dancing just above the dirt and glass and rocks, pink fingers locked around the chipped railing, no sound from her as she went faster and faster.

He sat off to the side, watching the children, telling her of the house and the things he'd seen.

Seeing only the flashes of the children's skin in the near-dark now, seeing only her eyes through the night, and then only when she looked towards him, which wasn't often.

Then he saw movement. A figure, on the path, moving towards the children, then past, crossing toward them.

"Your father, he's dead."

"Oh."

"It just happened now. It seemed very strange, and we all thought it was just a little bruise, but he's dead."

A woman brought the news, not one he recognized, a friend of his mother's probably, a little younger, but with the same kind of clothes - plain, colors faded to grey, though dark this time, hands held in front of her wrapped in some kind of sweater.
"Just a small bruise, almost a smudge, a thin blue line, just here," and she pointed to the soft skin just above the cheekbone and under the eye, close to the eye and the brain. "We thought he was just lying down, then we saw he was too still."

"It was a swing, just came up and touched him ever so lightly, and laid down the bruise, and killed him. No one was on it - it was just a swing."

He thought about the house and the small yard, could see his father lying in it, jeans too large, on his back, black leather shoes still shiny, his face still except for the thin blue bruise, less than two inches long.

The children still player, now the boy pushing the girl higher and higher in the swing, his hands flashing, her hair stretched out in the sky, dancing with the swing as it swooped up and down in the night.

No blood came

Daniel wondered if he could even get the coffin open.

He stood at the back of the room, sweating in a heavy herringbone suit, straight legs of cheap wool bunching against the backs of his knees, sweat trickling down his calf, his white shirt stuck to his back.

The parlour was cooler after the spring sun, but it smelled. Not like death, unless death smells like perfume, carpet cleaner and flowers. Six wooden folding chairs, one foolish row, and at the front a large dark coffin, rich brown wood with dark twisting veins, the top rising rounded like a old car hood. It looked too small for his brother.

“Could I be alone with him, for a few minutes.”

The funeral director, Mr. Holmes, was at Daniel’s elbow, and he leaned close until they almost touched shoulders.
“Are you sure I couldn’t be helpful?”

Daniel was early. It was just after 11 and the service wasn’t until 1. Mr. Holmes held his hands in front of him, one finger marked with a series of small scars, half-smiling like he knew a secret he couldn’t share, a short man in a black suit that cost as much as the coffin.

“I’d really like some time alone with my brother, just a few minutes. Everything has happened so fast, and I’m afraid he’ll be gone and I won’t have . . . “

Half-sentences and silences were their language.

Holmes could spot the problem bereaved, the family members who would sprawl across the coffin sobbing, the brothers who would stumble into recriminations and blows before the service ended. But this young man looked all right, pale and sweaty, too thin, but not a problem.

“Yes, of course. I’ll just be in my office. Please let me know if you need anything.”

Daniel walked to the front of the room, the carpet soaking up his steps, heard the noise of the cars and trucks heading into the city as the door closed, mingled with the sound of blood rushing in his head.

His fingertips touched the wood, cooler than the rest of the room, and he leaned his forehead against it. The lid was one long piece, not the two halves he’d seen in films. His fingers slid under the rim and he pulled.

His brother, in an old suit too small for him, his hair arranged in a spray around his head even though no one was supposed to see it. He’d been afraid, but he wasn’t sure what of - some stranger, a wax dummy, some final cheat.

No tears. He reached in his jacket pocket, pulled out a jagged shape, a long nail his brother had twisted with pliers, making a loop that always sat on the pavement or ground so the point would pierce a car tire or foot, a toy from the Anarchist’s Cookbook.

He rolled it in his palm, felt the smoothly looped bottom, the metal stretched, the tight turn and half-twist, the jagged point. Made a fist, felt the point bite into his palm.

He reached with his right hand, felt his brother’s cheek, dry and cold and dusty with make-up and powder, the scratch of stubble the only real thing.

Daniel leaned in, his lips almost brushing his brother’s cheek. He could see the thin dark red line floating in blue around his brother’s throat, almost a smudge beneath the thicker make-up, some artist’s trick. He took the nail, traced the line lightly, then drew a new one harder just below it, scratching the make-up, almost tearing the skin, no blood to draw.

“You cheat. You fucking cheat.”

“What am I supposed to do now. You little snot, are you the only one you ever think about. I’m stuck now. We’re all stuck.”

His voice was quiet. He stood slightly, leaned on the edge of the coffin, then pressed the nail against John’s left eyelid, saw a little dot of white.

“Now it’s my job to be here. Now I can’t go away. Why the hell do you think you’re the one with the right to do this?”

He pressed harder, until the skin broke. No blood came.

Daniel stopped, reached out and cupped his brother’s head in his hand, felt the hair hard with spray, and lifted it gently from the satin pillow, not feeling the stiffness he expected. He centered the looped nail carefully on the pillow, and slowly lowered his brother’s head.

600-count sheets

"These ones, I was thinking of."

She holds a plate in front of him, heavy china, shiny under the store's halogen lights, cream with little rust flecks and a band of dark red around the outside.

"It looks fine," he says. It looks like dried blood, he thinks.

She looks at his face, wonders if the china is wrong, feels something stir inside, hears a dry breeze that's not there. She writes down the name of the china pattern in tight square letters in a little notebook, thin paper and brown leather binding. "Come look at some sheets they have."

He limps a little, glad to hang back a step, tasting the pain where he can imagine his bones grinding, watching her back, wondering if he will recognize her in two years, wondering when she started to dress like someone he didn't know.

The sheets are cotton, as fine and smooth as ice. The clerk - young, thin, tall, smooth-skinned - approves, pulls out cream and ivory and ecru, drapes them across the display bed where they shine expensively. He tries to imagine the sheets spread across their bed, but it feels like he's watching a movie.

Across the floor a woman steps from a dressing room. It is as large as a bedroom, a pair of jeans twisted on the floor, one black boot lying on its side. She wears a dark dress, lost between red and black, and stops in front of the mirror to study herself, pulling it down off her shoulders, then sudenly twirling, once, twice, three times, the dress spinning out and her legs flashing, one knee scraped and red. She laughs, starts to shrug off the dress before she is back in the dressing room.

In the crowd of men

Warren’s father missed breakfast that day. He often went in early, got home late. When Warren’s mother complained, he’d say “Running a school is more than a job.”
By mid-morning, Warren knew something was wrong. As the principal’s son, he’d been invisible. He’d wrapped his head and hands in bandages for two weeks in Grade 10, and no one said anything. Now he felt eyes on him.
“So, is it true?”
Andrew had once given him a ride home on his old motorcycle, Warren’s feet dragging because he couldn’t find the footpegs, certain he would fall. Andrew, fat, dirty, often stoned by noon, was indiscriminate in his friendship.
“What do you mean?”
“Did your dad take off with Janet Ferguson?”
“I don’t know.”
Except, he did, just then.
“That’s what everyone says, and she’s not here. Jesus, Janet Ferguson - who would pick her?”
Janet was skinny, curly brown hair, nor wildly pretty or popular, editor of the school newspaper. She was one year ahead of Warren - he was in Grade 11, she was in Grade 12 - two years older because he’d skipped Grade 5. And now his father had run away with her, moved to Calgary, 90 miles away, and started selling cars.
No one ever really told him that. His mother, eyes red and Kleenex crushed in each hand, told him and his sister Jenn their father was sick and had gone away for a while, sitting them on the beige chesterfield where they had to stare into his empty study, smell his cigarettes in the air.
That was April. They stayed in the house. His mother worked as a legal secretary. He helped on his grandparents’ farm for the summer, sun burning his neck, a thin boy trying to lift heavy things.
Janet Ferguson was back in school in September. His father stayed in Calgary. Once every few months he sent a greeting card to Warren’s mother with money in it - usually $100 or $150, once almost $3,000. Warren remembered one card - “I can’t understand why people get so upset about broken promises” on the front. Inside it said “Why‘d they believe me in the first place?”
That card had $300 in it. His mother used it to hire a lawyer, a man named Fraser McTeague who lost his licence to practise law and killed himself before the support case got far. He shot himself, twice.
That was a bad year for his mother. She wrecked their car in December. When the police got there she was hanging upside down in her seatbelt, smoking, as the gas pooled in the ditch.
And her sister Terri got arrested in Vancouver at Christmas, flying from Germany with hash oil in the bottom of her suitcase. She made bail - $120,000 - then vanished. His mother had mortgaged the house for the money. They rented a trailer.
“At least it‘s a double-wide,” he told his sister.
There was no yard - no where to go except their own three bedrooms, each so small things seemed about to crash on to the bed, walls so thin he could hear his mother and sister breathing.
His sister was 13.
“I can smell him,” Jenn complained, even though they’d shampooed the carpets, scrubbed the walls with ammonia until they gagged, left windows and doors open. The place had come available when a retired teacher had died of throat cancer. She said she could smell dying.
His mother finally got angry, really angry, and screamed at her, face red and dark hair tangled. His sister yelled back, then ran to her room. That night Warren smelled ammonia again. When he looked out, his mother was scrubbing the wall, pressing until her hands were red and raw. She stopped, chewed at a broken fingernail until blood seeped from the edge, then looked in the kitchen mirror as she spread the blood like lipstick.
Warren had his father’s Calgary phone number, kept it in code, never called. Until almost a year, a Wednesday night, the date marked on his calendar with a tiny cross.

He called from outside the 7-11, got the answering machine, heard his father’s voice, then the beep. He waited while a truck pulled out, engine racing.
“I’ll be riding at the Bucking Horse Sale Saturday. Thought you might come.” He hung up.
He left early the trailer early Saturday, didn’t say where he was going. It was hot by 10, the way the Prairies can be in April, straight from winter to summer, the snow gone one day and sun burning your skin the next.
Warren picked his way across the rodeo grounds, tried not to look at anyone as he signed up, got his number, scribbled his name four places on some legal form, waited.
“Listen up.” The sale was run by the Caldwell family, and Walter, a one-armed rodeo stock provider, was in charge of the chutes, He waited for quiet, picked at something on his forehead with his one thumbnail.
“Here’s the rules. Ten bucks a ride, fifty for the best of the day. Your job is to stay on, don’t get hurt and make this stock look good. Get drunk, and you’re gone. Miss your turn, you wait till it comes round again. Everybody gets the same chances to ride. Cash at the end of the day. Right?”
The other riders were mostly older, though not much. They were farm boys, ready to go down the road, with cowboy hats and battered boots and most with one glove stuck in their belts, dark with resin and sweat. They leaned against the rails of the fence, bent and stretched, watched the horses milling, bumping.
“And hey, remember, you’re the last chance - these horses look good, they get bought for rodeo stock. Or they’re dog food.”
Warren edged close to the chute to see how the riders did this. His right hand shook when he pulled on his new glove, sweat gathered in the small of his back. He’d ridden twice, both trail rides, tired horses all in a row.
About 200 people crowded the edges of the ring, buyers in their own special stand, kids getting chased from the fences. The pick-up men - two Caldwell boys - were sitting straight and posing for the town girls and were slow to help the first cowboy, who stretched his eight seconds into four times that before he slumped off the bronc, arms around the pick-up man’s waist, hips bumping against the horse.
Caldwell called Warren’s number. He climbed the fence awkwardly, scraped his hand on a raw board, struggled to find a place in the crowd of men leaning into the narrow chute, poking and kicking the horse to keep it straight. It was a thick, dark brown mare, heavy marks across its shoulders from some sort of harness. The horse’s eyes wide, bouncing sideways in the chute, grinding its teeth, spray flying when it shook its head.
“Get on her.”
And he did, balanced, a leg on each side, felt the weight of the mare push his leg into the fence, grabbed the leather grip with his right hand, pounded it closed with his left just like he’d seen, tucked his chin tight to his chest and nodded, sharp and quick.
The ringman pulled the eight-foot gate open, and his horse stood there, legs locked, until a chute hand stuck her with a cattle prod and she reared once, spun sideways and took off flat running.
Warren remembered to spur out, feet high, felt big muscles move underneath him, then was falling back, his hand ripping from the grip just as the horse kicked, his quarters smashing into Warren’s back. He landed on his head and shoulder in the brown dust. He heard hooves nearby, tried to get up, couldn’t breathe.
A skinny man in a blazer, cigarette still in one hand, was over the fence and running across the dirt awkwardly. He leaned in close, careful not to touch.
“Son, you all right?”
Warren felt his muscles start to release, took his first breath since he got on the horse.
“Yeah.” He coughed, spit out some dirt, smelled the horse on his hands when he touched his face, looked up at his father. “Yeah, I’m all right.”
He rolled over and got up, limped a little, walked away without looking back.
He rode five more horses, stayed on one, wrecked four more times. His left shoulder stiffened and turned the colour of dusk as he drank beers with the other cowboys at the Innisfail hotel. He made $60. Two of his horses got bought for rodeo stock, three for dog food and the first one because it looked like it might make a decent saddle horse.
“About what you’d expect,” a cowboy told him.

Where home should be

Rick went to Nashville with a notebook full of songs and his uncle’s old Martin. When he came back eight months later he’d left the notebook in a motel and the guitar was cracked.
“It’s just a lot different there,” he told Alan during their break, picking bits of sawdust out of his coffee. Rick felt the silence almost pressing into his head now that the machines weren’t screaming, ripping trees into sheets of wood.
“You tried. And you’ve got Linda. How’s she like it here?”
Rick didn’t know.
They had made it through winter, the part he thought she'd find hard. In May he’d borrowed a tiller, carved out a garden behind the trailer. She stopped him when he went to lay on the RoundUp to kill the weeds.
“No. We’re going natural.”
He’d been right. The thistle had outpaced the vegetables, until in five weeks they were waist high and her hands were laced with thin red scratches from pulling weeds.
He tilled twice more so she could start again. Most mornings when he left she was out pulling weeds. By night she fell asleep in front of the little TV, while he drank and watched her breathe.
The drive home usually took 40 minutes, over the river and then west on gravel roads. Rick liked it, especially when the sun sent long shadows across the fields.
But this night he could see dark smoke where home should be.
When he skidded into the driveway, almost hitting the ditch, Linda was standing in the blackened garden, a red plastic gas container at her feet. Rick went and stamped out some of the flames that were creeping across the grass, kicked dirt on a small fire.
Then he saw the green suitcase at her feet, beside the gas can.