Paul Willcocks stories

My life: Cancer

2010-06-24T19:45:00.000-07:00

One lesson is that it's good to be young and stupid.
Dr. Ferguson, the surgeon, was all serious. I’d been referred to him by Dr. Gossage, father of the many children dubbed Gossage’s Sausages. I was 18, but my mother had been summoned to the appointment too.
I had a mole removed from my calf a week earlier - kind of blackish red and nobbly. An hour in hospital, a little freezing, a couple of stitches and on my way.
Now the test results were back.
I didn’t really pay attention. Biopsy, juvenile melanoma, he said. I saw the sun streaking on the tiles, heard a little traffic outside, admired the examining table with its paper covering neatly down the middle. He was a serious looking, white-haired and upright, holding himself in. Probably not that old, really, but when you’re 18, then 35 is the new 80.
Uh-uh, fine, I say. I’ll get some assignments from my instructors – I was in second year CEGEP, a Quebec two-year bridge between Grade 11 and a three-year university degree. In a week or two, we can schedule whatever it is you want to do.
Tomorrow, he said, in the morning, be at the hospital.
That should have been a clanging, flashing signal that all was not well – that calamity and sorrow, in fact, might lurk around the next corner,
But not for one second was I worried.
Perhaps there was tiny bit of willful blindness.
Mostly, it was the sense of indestructibility of the young male. It was not possible that anything physically could be wrong with me. That my body would turn on me.
Remarkably, truly remarkably, I was never troubled. Never frightened. Never contemplated, literally, the possibility that my time on this planet was done, before it had really even started. I slept soundly.
I showed up at the hospital and was shaved – my left leg - and drugged. Count backwards from ten, the doctor said as I stared into the oval light above the operating table. He, wearing a blue mask, placed a plastic mouthpiece on me. I tasted garlic in the back of my throar, counted 10-9-8 and lost consciousness.
I awoke, sort of, four hours later in post-op. Apparently threw up on a nurse, then slept another hour before they wheeled me to a room, shared with a moaning man
I awoke with a great chunk of my left calf missing and a thick bandage on my thigh, where Dr. Ferguson had shaved off a layer of skin and grafted it over the hole. My calf ached. Some of the muscle had been cut. My thigh was merely alarming. I had, at least for eight square inches, been skinned alive.
I was able to order meals, marking a little badly copied form each day. White toast tomorrow, or brown. Oatmeal, or cream of wheat? Chicken soup, or vegetable? Jello or fruit salad?
OK, they were not real choices. Jello and canned fruit salad have, aside from the lurid colours of the former, much in common – cold, sweetish, neither mushy nor crunchy. A texture for which no word has been created.
The food was not that good.
But the chance to choose was wonderful. When I lived in Toronto, we went by train to Montreal. My father was the Toronto advertising sales manager for a Montreal newspaper, and must have had meetings. We stayed at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel and ordered room service the first night. I had a chicken sandwich and chocolate milk, a stemmed glass resting in an ice bucket, with a white crimped cardboard lid. And television, black and white, I think.
I had never been able to sleep on my back.
So I finally turned on my side in the night, although my leg hurt. I looked at the steel bars in the bed and then fell asleep.
In the morning the gauze bandage on my thigh where the skin had been removed – maybe two by four inches – was a rusty red. Laying on my side meant the skin cracked and bled through the bandages. The blood dried.
When the nurse had to change the bandage, the wound was ripped raw, returned to the moment when they had harvested the skin. Except then I was unconscious.
I didn’t scream. But I reached out with my right hand to my thigh, where it felt I like was being skinned alive.
But I didn’t touch it, for fear of infection. I just pawed above it, until she took my wrist and pressed my hand against the sheets and covered the skin with some worth of mesh, so it wouldn’t stick again, thenand gauze. I fell back.
My friends Jonathan and Jeff came to visit, people I had somehow met in my first days at Loyola. Jeff, I think, because he took the train in too from the west island – a stop near Dorval, much closer to the city. He was probably in a class with me.
So was Jonathan, I expect. Or maybe I met him through Jeff, because we had lockers in the same part of the basement. Jeff was lamb-headed – all tight curls – and Jonathan had dark, straight and shiny hair and shy intellect.
They brought bizarre gifts. An aerosol shampoo, so I could wash my hair during my six-day hospital stay – they did gouge out a good chunk of my leg, including some missing, aching muscle.
And a tattered paperback edition of Profiles in Courage, a book at least officially written in 1955 by John F. Kennedy, about eight U.S. senators who did brave things.
Jonathan was an ironist before i really got the concept.
I made it out of hospital. Probably, I spent a few days at home – I don’t remember. My room was upstairs, at the back on the right. I shared a half bathroom with Mark, my brother, then 15. Doors from each of our rooms opened into the bathroom.

And then, a few years later, I grabbed the The Final Diagnosis by Arthur Hailey out of the Beaconsfield library. And one night, before I went to sleep, I read about a tired pathologist who misread a tissue sample. Benign, he said.
But it was melanoma, Hailey wrote. The patient would die.
It was a throwaway line in the novel. But I was freaked. I could have died.

Police story

2009-05-31T21:21:00.001-07:00

Constable Cal Calrson had been third tallest in his 42-member RCMP cadet class. He was the 38th smartest, but he didn’t know that and wouldn’t have cared. After three years on the job he had three commendations in his jacket, no reprimands, a wife and a daughter. He exercised enough that he had Amanda take in the waists of his shirts, special ordered to house his shoulders and chest. His favorite expression was “let’s go get ‘em.”
Earl Shurler had been the shortest boy in his Grade 9 class, his last full year at school. He was a painter, but jobs hadn’t worked too well, especially since he lost his licence after the Mounties found him asleep in his car at a red light. He didn’t have a wife, or at least didn’t know where she’d gone when she walked out of the trailer eight months ago. Her note, written in lipstick on the front door, just said Fuck You, Asshole. All his clothes were too big; he liked them that way. His favorite expression was “fuck it.”
Shurler and Carley met for the first time in the parking lot of the Tall Pines Mall.
Earl had been drinking rye, coke on the side, in the Ranchers’ Steak House lounge, sitting at the bar since he left the job at 4:30. He’d was quiet, watching hockey highlights, looking around, tapping the heel of his hand on the bar, trying a joke on the waitress. She seemed to warm to him, especially when he tipped well when she got him some cigarettes.
He liked sitting at a bar, liked the dark. He was a bit worried at first in case anyone saw he had to reach with his toes to touch the brass rail , but after five drinks he felt warm and relaxed, liked the look of himself in the mirror, sandy hair and moustache, face divided by the bottles behind the bar. In the dark, the bloodshot eyes looked fine, the scar furrowed from one corner of his mouth across his chin almost vanished, the paint-spattered pants were hidden. He raised his glass, toasted himself, smiled at the bartender, looked for the waitress in the mirror.
As he toasted, dipped his head, they laughed. He turned red, without looking, because he heard the waitress laughing, using the same laugh she’d used when he told her the joke about the roughneck and the coyote. He turned slowly, gripping the bar with one hand, heel resting on the rung of the bar stool.
She was with two guys in dark jackets and bright ties, ha ir slicked back, each with a cell phone on the table, laughing as she brought them beers. They weren’t looking at him, but he stared until the nearer one looked up, and then stood quickly.
“What’s so God damn funny? What exactly is so funny.”
He took a step toward them, cowboy boots creaking, grabbing at the bar to steady himself, his other hand shaking just a little until he stuffed it in his pocket.

One suit started to rise, just reached out to the table from the low chair, then looked at Shurler’s red face and bright eyes and sat back, picked up the cell phone. The waitress looked at the bartender, leaning forward behind Shurler, then moved quickly to him, tight steps in a small black skirt, links arms, half pulls him back to his seat, scratches his neck just a little with her nails when he turns quickly back to the men, but she talks low and fast, promises a drink, tells him it’s all fine, sits him down.
T he suits sit still. Shurler gets his free drink, downs it quickly, pays, glares at the suits, leaves.
But the edgy bartender had expected a fight and had already pushed the speed dial for the police. And Constable Carlson is already in the parking lot, having just had a coffee at JJ’s Restaurant at the other end of the mall. Shurler moves through the dusk, smells the wind from the fields, cool after the smoke in the bar, enters his truck, starts it. But Carlson has seen him walking too fast and too careful and strides quickly over. Motions for Shurler to open his window, slowly moving his big hand down.
Earl does. Watery eyes, smell of rye. Bad smile, teeth bared, face already flushing, angry.
The waitress, she probably knew the cop was coming, probably held him up, the suits laughing with her now. Now this cop, phony smile, laughing like them, trying to take his truck.
“Can I see your licence please sir.”
“Why, what have I done?”
“Could I just see your licence please.”
“I haven’t done nothing, I’m just going home.”
“Step out of the car please. Out of the car.” Carlson is leaning in the open window, a little too close, his face like a mask.
Shurler looks up, tries to think of anything to say, a plea that would work, a threat, but nothing comes. He reaches for the door handle to get out, let the fucking cop win, nothing he can do anyway, no licence to show even.
Then in the next row, a woman loading groceries into her car sees her three-year-old trying to eat a stalk of rhubarb she’d bought, his chubby face screwing up in disgust, and she laughs lightly. It carries across the parking lot on the wind. Shurler hears the laugh and freezes, sure it’s the waitress, won’t look but can imagine her standing with the suits, waiting for him to be pressed against the truck, waiting to see the big Mountie over him.

He hears the laugh, like a nail in his spine, and instead of opening the door he shifts into gear, presses the accelerator, tentative. The truck is old, rusted, the engine fai ling. It’s slow, but begins to roll.
Carlson is 27.
“Stop the fucking car. Stop now. You’re making this worse.”
Shurler looks straight ahead, dignified as a chauffeur.
First Carlson walks, then runs alongside, trying to reach the ignition keys, then he clubs Shurler once in the cheek, bringing tears to his eyes, then the car is going too fast, and he lifts his feet, reaches for the steering wheel, for Shurler’s shoulder, scratches at his eyes. Then it’s all he can do to hold on, his left hand stretched down, scrabbling with stretched fingers, until he grabs the recessed door handle, his right arm stretched across the seatback, his chest pressed against the door, the handle digging in to his ribs, his feet now up, now dragging on the pavement.
Forty yards, still slow enough to let go, but Carlson feels he has a grip, doesn’t even yell, just says, reasonably, “ Stop the car, now.”
Shurler doesn’t. He leans to his right, farther away, steers with one hand, doesn’t touch Carlson. He can barely see over the dash, he’s stretched so far from the window. He’s humming now, almost grunts, some forgotten tune, a child’s song.
He turns his head, steals a look, sees the Mountie’s arms stretched like a swimmer, his eyes wide, still talking like he’s in control.
The truck is going faster, headlights shredding streaks across the asphalt, parking lot almost empty so Shurler doesn’t have to worry about hitting anyone.
And then, it seems too late to let go, and Carlson is scared for the first time, his stomach tightening when he almost slips and the pavement rips off his right boot, almost pulling him from the window. He screams, “Stop the car.”
Shurler is already scared, not yet sober, knows he can’t stop now, can’t believe the cop is tormenting him, hanging on, squeezing into his world His face is wet, warm, either tears or the spray from the Mountie yelling at him. He can’t think of anything to do but drive, hope the pavement noises rising through the window will drown out his thoughts. The air from the open window is chilling him.

His lights flash back at him, the chrome bars of a shopping cart ahead, and he swerves around it, the old truck slewing on worn shocks, just as Carley’s fingers slip from the inside door handle. He catches the spoke of the steering wheel, locks around it, sounding the horn and wrenching the car left. The left front wheel hits a ring of rocks surrounding a small island of grass and trees in the parking lot, three dark scraggy pines that will be dead by the next year, poisoned by the oil and gas runoff. The tire, old and bald, compresses, the rim bounces off the rock and the car rises three inches from the ground as Carley’s hand slips from the wheel, then catches the side mirror, then slips again. His body goes backwards and his right hand slides from the seat back, all leverage gone. He slides down the truck, his feet hit the ground and bounce up over his head. He flies, almost slowly, upside down, until he lands headfirst, bounces off his right shoulder, lands again on his back, sliding to a stop, ragged body dead on the parking lot, eyes open looking at the stars, blood from his lef t ear, one shoe gone, uniform ripped at the right shoulder and hip.
Shurler straightens up, slows, looks back in the mirror but can’t see anything, He leaves the lot, turns right, drives carefully, singing louder now but still no words.
He feels the back of his neck, a warm line where Carlson’s fingernails had traced across his skin, a lover’s scratch.
What to do. His hand shakes when he takes it from the wheel, he drifts into the left lane, then corrects. He breathes, stares until his eyes water, breathes, trying to think, hoping this is a dream, wondering whether to go back to the parking lot to see if the cop is there, back to the lounge to see if he can start this all again. Breathe. Fucking cop.
No thinking. He pulls into the Esso, parks beside a rusted Chev half-ton, sits for a minute, lights a cigarette, sweating and freezing at the same time. He turns off the truc k, hears the clunk of the key, the engine running on, faltering, cylinders firing on their own, out of time.
Into the coffee bar, after eight, three truckers at a booth, a woman with brown straw hair in tight conversation with a skinny man with a cowboy hat sitting on the table beside him, blurry prison tattoos on his arms.
Shurler takes a seat at the counter, legs trying to stay in contact with the floor. He orders a coffee, double, double, feels the waitress’ eyes on his grey, sweating face, fells his brown t-shirt soaked through. He picks up the coffee, but he shakes and it spills, leans down to sip, lights a cigarette. He sees the waitress through the heat waves from the flame, watching him, waves for her. She moves slowly, swimming through the fluorescent light haze, watching his eyes carefully. Earl asks for her pen, writes his name slowly in the matchbook cover, shaky back-slanted printing.
“Call the Mounties,” he says. “Tell them I’m here.”

When we don't say goodbye

2009-05-20T17:38:00.000-07:00

“Are you happy?”
He watches the television, changes the channel, turns his head to look at her, changes the channel again.
“It’s a hard time to know that,” he says.
“Maybe. But I’m not. I don’t think I can keep doing this.”
He runs through more channels.
“It’s not good to be unhappy,” he says, looking at the television, .
“So what are we going to do?” She’s on the edge of the green chair, leaning forward, her hands together, the ends of her fingers growing pinker.
He changes channels again, once, twice, three times. He looks towards her, not sitting up.
“I don’t know. Wait. See if things get better. I’m not sure.”
She can hardly hear him over the laughtrack.
“I can’t wait much more.” She keeps looking at him. She stares so hard her eyes water; she remembers staring at her old bedroom closet door without blinking to keep the creature inside.
He looks at the television. His skin changes, green, blue, pink, as images on the screen light the room. His age changes with the colours. He changes channels again, stops on the real estate channel, photos of expensive houses, descriptions of modern kitchens and multiple bedrooms.
They both wait.
“I don’t know,” he says.
He holds his breath, afraid of what a sound would say. She breathes, smells damp, stale air, windows too small and too high. In the winter the room never gets warm.
He puts his hands behind his head, elbows raised, so his face is blocked by his arm. He stares harder at the television, but can’t make himself change the channel, so he watches houses for sale roll by, one every 30 seconds or so.
“If you don’t start caring more, I’m going to have to start caring less.” She speaks quietly, threat and pleading all in one sentence. She pulls the sweater a little tighter around her shoulders, brushes her red hair back. Her fingernails are chewed short.
He lowers his elbow to look at her and knows she has already started caring less.
“I’ll try harder,” he says, and changes the channel again. He keeps changing channels, looks at her again, then raises his elbows and watches the colours on the screen.
She waits, then stands and leaves. He hears her feet down the hall, up the stairs, into the bedroom. He changes channels, turns up the TV.
“I’m going to the gym.” she tells him 20 minutes later. She has on black leggings, sweat shirt, her hair tied back with a scrap of black ribbon.
“Work hard,” he says.
He hears the car leave and walks down to their room. He sees the sweater, pants, underwear she was wearing, thrown in a pile in the corner of the room near the door. He goes and lies on the floor, his head on the clothes, the sweater scratching his cheek. He takes a deep breath, inhales her smell from the clothes. He knows it’s the last time her clothes will smell that way.

A note, a hole, betrayal

2009-05-13T18:15:00.000-07:00

I’ve always wondered about the note. I can still see the white paper, folded four times to fit into my father’s shirt pocket. I can see the creases, imagine the roughness of the fibres at the folds. I could see it resting on my parents’ dresser, one corner sticking up, beside cufflinks and Kleenex and powder, reflected in the mirror behind it.
The note wasn’t addressed to me, but I wondered. Then it vanished.
Everything was vanishing.
My brother had already vanished.The police came after midnight, two of them to carry the news, offering official sympathy in awkward French-accented English, one needing a shave, crumbs still nesting on his dark blue jacket front.
I woke to my father’s hesitant knock on the bedroom door. The light from the hall was behind him; his face was hidden in darkness. He was calm, his voice even, his hair slightly mussed.
I drove him to the hospital, along roads almost deserted, glad when cars came towards us and I could hold my eyes half shut against the headlights. I found myself humming, softly, and caught myself. In emergency the smell of soap and machinery and fear touched the back of my throat, and I coughed. A woman holding a child frowned at me. My father gave his name. The nurse behind the desk, black circles under her eyes, something chalky in the corner of her mouth, offered a look of sympathy, but with it a question.
My father went through swinging doors. I waited, listening to the hum of the fluorescent lights, and the moans of a man from somewhere down the hall. I felt cold, and realized I had no shirt on under my jacket. We went home.
The vanishing kept happening. I drove again, the next morning, to the Palais de Justice, and the trip vanished as I made it. I waited in the car, illegally parked, while my father went in and did what the law required.
The sun hurt, splintering off the dusty, greasy windows of a restaurant across the street. Looking up, I tried to see where three men had escaped from the jail on the top floors, climbing down an improbable string of prison bedsheets. The radio told me about traffic on the bridges. I closed my eyes, turned off the radio, and wondered what the note said.
More vanishing. My parents vanish, to make arrangements, then again, alone for a service. I drive Jenn to school while they are gone.
There’s a grave somewhere. There’s a small newspaper story, which someone rips out - I don’t know who, because it’s there, then it’s not there, just the space with other stories around. Lay the page flat, and the type behind shows through the hole, and it disappears.
We sit and watch TV four days later, and the air is brittle, so we breathe carefully, and speak rarely, anxious to avoid a jagged breath. The house seems to have dried, so when I go to get a drink I walk carefully on the dark brown carpet, fearful the floorboards and joists underneath will shriek if steps are too hard, or too fast. There is something wrong with the drink, a dry, metallic taste.
The last thing to vanish is the empty space and the silence.
At first, I walk around the empty space. It claims a whole bedroom, a space at the table. We walk carefully. My father is almost pulled in once - I can see him stumble as he nears the space, but he catches himself and is out the door.
We fill the space. A chair goes missing. I walk closer to the space, returning to straight lines.
The silence takes longer to vanish.It fills the room even when radios are playing, and television is laughing.
But we wait it out, then we push back, talking about errands and neighbours and the weather until the silence has vanished too. We pepper the silence with questions.
“Did you have a good day?” “Have you done your homework?”
“Do you think it will rain?” “What do you want in your lunch?”
“Do you need anything at the store?”
And with practical talk we drown out the questions in our heads. No space; no silence; no note.
Except the note hasn’t really vanished. It’s gone, I know. But at least one night a week, I have a dream where I can see it has not disappeared, it’s stuck to my dark cork bulletin board. It is, beside a quote from Thomas Hardy, about the coming universal urge not live.
But I never get up to see the note. I know there will be another dream.

The mayor of Fun Royale

2009-04-29T20:58:00.000-07:00

Colin saw the boy’s fingers slip, and thought I knew this would happen. It was a small Nissan van, five flimsy rows of seats. The boy looked about 12, deep black skin and one eye that stared off to the side. He hung out the open sliding door of the van, hammering on the roof to tell the driver to stop to let someone off, arguing and pushing to find a way to get two dozen passengers into the tiny space, collecting the fares.
Colin’s knee hurt, and one foot had fallen asleep, his ankle pressed against the boney shin of the man with the shovel. He had watched the boy’s hands, one reaching in pressed flat against the van’s ceiling, the other with a thick pile of bills wrapped through his fingers. Colin’s shoulders were pulled tight, giving room to an older Dominican woman, being the polite Canadian. Then he saw the boy’s right hand slide a little against the light brown ceiling, and he was gone, waving once with the hand with the bills. Colin and Marie were facing each other, and Colin saw the boy out the back, bouncing sideways on the road, ungraceful cartwheels, a sandal flying high in the air.
The passengers shouted, the driver stopped and backed up, the gears whining, and they all jumped out.
Three men on a moped had stopped, and helped the boy to sit up. He was bleeding, from his forehead and his knees and the back of his left hand, and he held his back. His eyes were cloudy, rolled high in his head, and he shivered. He still held the bills, but they were covered in blood, several torn. Colin watched, as Marie turned and stared across the alaming green sugar cane fields to the sea, blue and grey and stretching on and on. The sun was already low in the sky behind them, and the fields were mixed dark shadows and lurid highlights. He hair was reddish in the sun, and her face, burned, was turned darker. He looked up from the boy, and saw her, and for a second didn’t know who she was.
A taxi driver stopped to join the crowd. They paid him 150 pesos for a ride back to the resort.
They ate too much in Lin Tran’s, the Chinese restaurant that was part of the resort, with two couples from Calgary and a large bullet-headed young British man and the sunburned, toothy woman who had married him on the beach the day before, all of them drinking rum punch with the egg foo young and curried pork fried rice and sweet and sour something.
“How the hell could he fall?” Jeff was a stockbroker in Calgary, polite and curious and neat. “He must have done the drive a thousand times.”
Marie had told them the story, describing the over-crowded bus, the bruises on the boy’s forehead and the blood. “You didn’t get any blood on you, did you?” That from Cal, who struggled to focus on them. “I mean, you know, AIDS and all.”
Marie took a large drink of the pinkish rum drink, clean after the food. She ignored Cal, considered Jeff’s question, smelling the greasy food and the light scent of some sort of mosquito repellent the British woman. She pushed a piece of slippery pepper around the plate with chopsticks, put them down, and looked at her husband.
“Actually.” And she took another drink. “Actually I may have nudged him, a little.”
The British woman - Cecily, her name was - laughed, a sharp, high shriek, so Colin did too, then before anyone could speak he asked if anyone had signed up for scuba lessons and the talk moved away from the boy.
In bed, he felt the room move just a little from the rum, lay looking at the ceiling fan as Marie switched around the channels, watching a game show in Spanish.
“What makes you think you pushed the boy out of the van.”
“I didn’t say that.” She looked at Colin, but he was staring at the fan, steadying himself with the round blur of the blades. “I said I may have nudged him.”
Colin had brought a large glass of rum up from the bar, now reached for it and took a drink, felt the rough warmth on the back of his tongue.
“What makes you think that?”
“It doesn’t matter, does it? I don’t even know, really. It was something to say.”
“But why would you say that, if it wasn’t true?”
She got up from the bed and pulled the drapes open about a foot, looked out at the palm trees and the road and the lights of the hotel rooms in the next building. He could only see her back, and her head was resting on the window glass so he could hardly hear her.
“It doesn’t really matter, does it?”
The next day all eight of them met at the beach. Cal was bulky in a large orange T-shirt that said Galvin Klein, and bargained angrily with the skinny vendors selling carvings and suntan oil,. They all drank from the beach bar and ate hot dogs and watched a Dominican dog, thin brown hair with a sore on a back leg, limp slowly from group to group. Cal threw sand at the dog, who looked at him and then lay down about 15 feet away, in the shade of a small palm tree.
By 2 they were all a little drunk, except for the large British newlywed and Cal, who were a lot drunk and turning red as they lay on the beach chairs with their eyes closed, plastic glasses scattered around them like washed up jellyfish.
Colin lay on his stomach, and turned his head toward Marie. The sun actually touched his back. His eyes were almost closed; he could see her silhouette, against the sun, her neck stretched out as she lay on her back, one hand over her head.
“You didn’t push him,” he said.
Marie lay still, didn’t open her eyes. She may have been asleep.
“I stretched just a little,” Colin whispered to the sun, “tried to find space for my foot so my leg would stop hurting, and he stepped on my shoe and fell.”
He waited, but she didn’t speak.
“I’m going for a swim,” Colin said, and he got up so quickly wobbled a little from the heat, but was down six steps over the hot sand and into the water before anyone could come along. He liked the coolness, the way the waves pushed him around, and he swam steadily without looking back until he was past the sailboats moored offshore, out to where waves were breaking over the reef. He felt the water moving around him as if it were deep. Ahead the reef came near the surface, and waves broke crazily, sideways and backwards, water sucked in to fill the void over the coral. He swam there, slowly, buoyant in the salt water, waited for the water to flow over the reef and tried to swim across, made it halfway before the wave was past and he was rolling across the dark, dead coral, trying to use his hands to keep his body from touching it, bouncing off palms and shoulder and hip and knees as the wave rolled sideways over the coral, then pushed him back into deep water. His skin stung from the salt in the scrapes, and when he held his hand out of the water thin, watery lines of blood ran down his wrists.
He floated on his back in the water, and waitied for the next wave to break on the reef.

A bruise

2009-04-28T19:17:00.000-07:00

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 red dress, stains like bruises, the grey, thin hair rising in beauty parlor curls. But there was something about the way she stood that 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 playing, 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.

Treble hooks and small boats

2008-06-04T20:19:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-21T19:26:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-11T16:39:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-08T18:27:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-23T18:02:00.000-07:00

"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

2008-01-28T17:03:00.000-08:00

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

2006-05-07T19:23:00.000-07:00

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.

God comes to the Western Speedway

2005-06-17T17:05:00.000-07:00

Anna rocked back and forth, her hands clenched white in her lap, turning her head from side to side so fast her black hair danced, just trying to take it in, feeling the evening air get cool on her skin, listening to the cars testing their motors, sharp roars and bangs.
“Can’t you tell it’s the night?” She’s grabbing me while she talks, pulling at the sleeve of my jean jacket, grabbing on with her nails. “Look at the place, will you.”
Anna is half-right. In fact you could repeat that about her randomly every five minutes or so and be accurate 95 per cent of the time.
I look at it again. “I see a pretty nice smalltown race track, big turns, some cars parked a little too close to the corner there maybe. The infield’s a mess though, all dust and oil and the cars and their crews and. . . “ She stopped me there.
“Yeah, yeah, but look at the sky. Look at the goddamn - shit, no swearing - look at the sky.”
The sun was going down behind turn two, sliding into the ocean we couldn’t see and sending its last rays up instead of down on us, lighting up the bottoms of the clouds all red and pink and the sky around that last shining blue. “It’s a Jesus sky,” said Anna. “It’s a perfect Jesus sky.”
“Could you be just a bit quieter.” I wasn’t worried about her swearing - the people around us had no problem with that, even the 12-year-old ploughing through the French Fries and Rothmans in front of us. But I knew where this was going, and I’d watched Anna drink a tall plastic glass of vodka and cranberry juice while we watched TV in the trailer, waiting for it to be time for the races, and that meant it would be going there too loud, especially because we had also smoked up a little.
“And now we’re here, and God’s going to speak to us, and we’ll know how to make him happy, which one is his true faith.”
The lady one row down, sitting on a sofa cushion on the cracking wood benches, holding a thermos of what is probably rye and coffee and an attitude that is probably bad, looks around, at Anna. But she’s staring at the cars and doesn’t notice the lady - and wouldn’t care anyway, but then the PA announcer calls out in a bad radio guy voice, “Just a reminder that next Saturday afternoon, right here at Western Speedway, Happy the Clown will get his head shaved for cancer.” And I start laughing. “His real hair, or his clown hair,” Anna says, and I laugh more.
“His name is Happy,” she says, hand on my shoulder. “Happy.”
We saw the clown on the way in, a tall, skinny guy, standing against a wall and blowing balloon sculptures - he seemed to work in abstracts, though maybe not on purpose, He was so tall that his clown suit legs stopped about four inches above his big white shoes, and you could see a pair of black dress pants sticking out under the green plaid. “Good evening, how you doing,” he said to us in a deep voice, not like a clown at all. It was disappointing, I’ll admit, but right now I’m glad Anna can still laugh.
“Smell that,” I say to her, trying to keep her in the real world. “Gasoline and exhaust and rubber and cigarettes and fries and the evening breeze. We should have come here before.”
“I didn’t know you before,” she said. “We needed our fire.”
It sounded romantic, like our song, but it had been my fire, my stuff going up when the trailer heater exploded, a blue ball of flame rolling across the kitchenette and hitting some plastic curtains and me out the door running hard and then throwing myself in the mud puddle where the road through the trailer park is sunk down, rolling around in case I was on fire. That’s where Anna met me, her standing over me while I thrashed around in the mud, until I realized I probably never had been on fire and looked up to see a fat man in a red bathrobe running towards the flames with a fire extinguisher.
Anna put me up that night and I slept in a dusty sleeping bag on the small couch she had in the living room section of the fifth wheel she was renting. She didn’t say much, just asked me where I was from and how I got here. I didn’t have much to say. I didn’t think I had anything left to lose, really. But there is always something, that you feel bad when you lose it or it burns up inside a giant beer can that you call home.
But then I lay on that sofa, on a scratchy blue pillow that smelled of cigarettes and cat, and was almost asleep when Anna came out and looked toward me. I couldn’t really see her, but I could feel her, you know? And I didn’t move. And then she opened the door of the refrigerator, and I could see her in that light, see the way her neck looked when she stretched her head back. The light went out, and I closed my eyes and I felt good, you know.
And I’ve been there since. No sex, or anything. Don’t get me wrong, I’m interested in that - I’m only 38 and Anna is beautiful, even the way she dresses in jeans and big old sweaters and boots. But that’s not the deal. She does her work and I do mine, and we eat together and try to figure things out. And sometimes she makes me laugh, and when her cat, a big old guy named Crusoe, got run over by the kid down the lane, we both cried. I was the one, though, who went out that night and set fire to the crap in the back of his truck.

The announcer comes back on. “Last chance to buy 50-50 tickets. The money this week is going to Kent Williams, folks. You all know Crazy Kent, and I’m sure you all want to help him and the family out after the accident here, which I know many of you saw, though Lord it’s something we all wish. . . “ The announcer stopped. “Sorry about that folks, I got a bit involved. Don’t forget, Happy-shaving next Saturday. And now, a little different race for you. . . the Denomination Derby.” He drew the last two words out like he was announcing a Vegas prize fight or something.
Anna leaned against me, stuck her arm through mine, and just then the lights came on around the track, and the PA started playing that space age music - that theme from 2001, you know, and they drove out, eight of them, all ministers from different churches around town.
“Now we’ll know,” Anna said.
It took a long time to introduce them all, but we had most faiths covered. There was a Church of the Pentecost minister, a guy who seemed to have gotten the thing together and who raced all the time. He had on a white jumpsuit with a big glittery gold cross on the back, and his car was the white too, except it had his sponsors - Dirt Lake Groceteria, Capital Tire and Retreads and Church of the Pentecost - painted on each side, and across the hood it said “Pastor of Disaster.” For tonight, it had a big roof number, a placard that stood straight up like a rooster’s comb, and the name of the church printed above the number.
The Catholic guy, a youth minister from some church, looked like he knew his way around cars, but he and the rest of the guys were driving borrowed claimers and his was a black Firebird that sounded pretty rough. And there was an Asian guy with a big helmet - he turned out to be a Buddhist from the university, or so they said - who had on his own racesuit, so he looked like a good bet.
“The others don’t look too eager to be out there,” I said. “Looks like they shouldn’t have watched the heats.” The Anglican was a tall guy, who got out of his car slowly, cracking the window frame with his helmet and almost falling down. The United Church sent a woman, short and powerful, who bounced around on the track and shook her fist at the other drivers, pretending to be angry, I think. There was a Baptist and a guy from the synagogue, but no way was he a rabbi. And a guy with shiny hair from the Foursquare Gospel Fellowship, which made it seem like the fundamentalists were stacking the deck a bit.
Anna shushed me, concentrating on watching the drivers.
“What about all the churches that aren’t even there,” I asked. “Sikhs or Wiccans or Lutherans?”
Anna looked at me. “You think God can’t set the race up right?”
The only thing, almost, I hate is when she stares at me like that and some question hangs over my head like a huge weight balanced on some little spike, and if I say just the wrong thing “wham” and it’s down and the spike is driven through my head.
“Do you, you think God doesn’t know hot to set up a race?”
“Maybe it’s just a race, Anna.” I say her soft, because then she speaks quieter and listens more.
“It’s not just a fucking race, I told you that, you said you got it, what is the matter with you?”
She kept staring at me, then she had to look away at the track, where they were all getting in their cars, almost ready.
“You know this is God’s way of telling us what the real faith is, you know that. How else are we supposed to do it? Huh?”
Just then there was this kind of bang-whoomp, like a firecracker, a big loud one, and then a kind of low rumble and black smoke and a few flames are coming out of the United Church woman’s car and she and more smoke are coming out the window, on account of the doors are welded shut. And she was out of the race before it started. We went to a United Church when I was a kid for a while, dressed in scratchy clothes.
“Maybe you’re right,” I tell Anna.
They do one warm-up lap, the seven that are left, and head down in front of us lined up two abreast, with the Pastor of Disaster by himself at the back.
“Who do you want to win,” I ask her as they cross the line, but she just pushes me with her arm.
They were supposed to be taking it easy - that’s what the man said on the PA - but I think maybe some of them were looking at it like Anna, and the Pastor, he knew in a four-lap race he had to move quickly or he’d be boxed in all the way round. I’m still trying to figure our who I want to win - I like the idea of a Buddhist true faith - when I see his white car trying to slide under the Jewish guy and the Anglican as they enter the first turn, everybody’s tires squealing and one car letting out some ferocious bangs as it backfires when he backs off the accelerator. They might have made it, but the Catholic in front, he gets edgy and hits his brakes and then everybody’s banging and the Pastor of Disaster is over the berm on the outside of the turn and upside down on the parking lot.
That leaves six, and they all slow down like they’re waiting for something, then they figure it out and take off again, but there’s something wrong with the Anglican guy’s car and he’s going a lot slower, so it’s really only five and they’re going a lot more slowly after they saw the wreck, single file around the end of the oval and hardly speeding up down the straightaway, no squealing tires into the curve, just follow the leader.
“Oh shit, it’s the Catholics,” I say out loud, but it’s OK because everybody is cheering, though it seems a little stupid because these guys clearly aren’t interested in racing as they follow the Catholic leader around, the Jewish guy edging out a bit on the back straightaway but then dropping back into line.
But then they come past the crowd, finishing the second lap, and I think they hear us, because the gospel fellowship guy, in a car with a crappy rebel flag painted on it suddenly stomps the accelerator and the car roars, sort of hangs up then pulls out and around the two cars in front of him, banging into the front of the Buddhist guys car as he pulls back in line, and the Buddhist car - Dharma Centre it says on the sign, but it’s the Buddhist car for us in the stands - does this long skid, the back end leaning out and the rear tires smoking, bumps off the wall and keeps going down the outside and he’s beside the Foursquare Gospel entry and they’re second and third behind the priest - who already looks a little smug behind the wheel - and they just keep going into the corner, neither of them slowing and they’ve almost caught the Catholic when they both start to turn buit just keep gpoing, plowing through the dead grass and sending up clouds of dust and then banging to a stop against a big pile of dirt they had ringing the corner, the dust catching up with them and floating around the cars like mist.
They really should have stopped the race then, because the cars were piling up in bad places, but I think they figured the guys would slow down now. The Anglican guy has - his car has just stopped running, and he’s still sitting inside, afraid to get out.
But the three that are left - Catholic, Baptist and Jew - they’re slamming past us down the straightaway, one lap to go, side by side by side. I’m cheering for the Baptist now that the Buddha is out of it, not because I’m big on the faith, though they have good music, but because his car is so beat up he’s got to be working like a fool to keep it going. I’m screaming ‘go John’ - that’s his name, and what it says on top of his care, John the Baptist - and I look at Anna and it’s like she’s at church, her knees drawn up, her elbows resting on them and her fingers together like she’s praying, and she looks like Joan of Arc, except her eyes are a bit blurry. But it’s like the rapture or something.
The kid in front of us has started cheering for the Jew, surprising me because he struck me for a junior Aryan Nation type.
Then we went quiet, and you could hear just how loud those cars were, and three people with no real idea what they were doing headed together into the turn. And the Catholic - the Flying Father, the crowd had been calling him, he’d got squeezed to the outside, and he just couldn't hold it, spun the Firebird around once quickly and half-way round again, and stalled, his car facing the wrong way.
“Thank God,” Anna said, the first words I heard since the race started. She’d been to Catholic boarding school, she told me, a place where the Sisters walked through her dreams like dark avenging angels.
Back straight, one sweeping turn, and a dash to the finish line and it’s over, Baptist in a green Camaro, Jew in a grey Pontiac 6000 with rough flames down the side, the crowd screaming - expect Anna, when I look over, who is squeezing her hands together so tight her fingers are white, her eyes open wide - and the Baptist pulls up on the outside so they’re touching, banging, and then they both start spinning, no chance at the corner at all, and while we watch I see Anna looking ahead of the cars and there’s the Buddhist and the Foursquare Gospel guy, out of their stalled cars in that corner, walking back to the infield, laughing, and the Baptist bounces sideways off the track and his car catches them full on with its passenger side and you can see their heads bounce forward and then they're flying, kind of graceful really, and the Buddhist still has that big helmet on but not the Gospel guy, whose arms are out, he’s kind of twirling. I forget his name.
We left then, people quiet in the stands. But not like a church or anything. A few people were pretty shook up, a guy was crying in the little space under the stands, but more people were standing up trying to see what was going on, while people ran and the St. John Ambulance guys almost ran over a kid on their way around the track and everyone went “OHHH,” like someone had missed an easy goal in hockey.
Anna wouldn’t speak at all on the way back to her trailer, just leaned her head against the truck window. And stared up at the stars and trees. And turned on that psychic lady on the radio.
We sat on the front steps of the trailer, me with a coffee and Anna with a beer, listening to the highway noise at the bottom of the hill.
“Sorry you didn’t learn about the true religion,” I said, and I meant it.
“Shit,” she said. “I thought I might learn something, you know.” She looked up at the Christmas lights she’d strung along the faded canvas awning over the steps. “I like those lights. And I like this place. And I like you. Maybe that’s it.”
I didn’t have anything to say.
“Anyway, I know one thing for sure,” she said, leaning her back against me and pulling her sweater tight. “The truth faith sure as hell isn’t Buddhism or Foursquare Gospel Fellowship, whatever that is. When God gets you run down with a car in front of a thousand people, he’s sending a message, right?”
“I suppose I should have phoned the paper,” I said, considerably too late. “But I am on sick leave.”
Anna took my head, pulled my arm around her, and leaned her head back against the side of my head, and I thought I could feel her thinking through her skin, thinking and thinking.
“Let’s got to sleep,” she said.

Are you happy?

2005-02-18T19:43:00.000-08:00

“Are you happy?”
He watchs the television, changes the channel with the remote, turns his head to look at her, changes the channel again.
“It’s a hard time to know that,” he says.
“Maybe. But I’m not, and I don’t think we should keep on this way.” She pauses. “I don’t think I can keep doing this.”
He runs through more channels.
“It’s not good to be unhappy,” he says, looking at the television, .
“So what are we going to do about it?” She’s sitting on the edge of the green chair, leaning forward, her hands squeezing the arms hard enough that she can see the ends of the fingers growing pinker.
He changes channels again, once, twice, three times. He looks from the television to her, rolling his head on the pillows, not sitting up.
“I don’t know. Wait. See if things get getter. I’m not sure.” She has to strain to here him over the laughtrack as Dave Barry’s TV family squabbles contentedly, a voice-over pulling together all the loose ends.
“I can’t wait much more.” She keeps looking at him, waiting for a response. She stares so hard her eyes start to water, like when she had to stare at her old bedroom closet door without blinking to keep the creature inside.
He keeps looking at the television. The tone of his skin changes as the images flicker on the big screen, the only light in the room, green, blue, pink. His age changes with the colors. He changes channels again, skips through three or four stations, stops on the real estate channel, staring at still photos of expensive houses, listening to cheery descriptions of modern kitchens and multiple bedrooms.
They both wait.
“I don’t know,” he says.
He holds his breath, afraid of what a sound would say, knowing what silence says. She breathes, smells the damp. The room is always musty and cool,windows too small and too high, and in the winter it never seems to get warm.
He folds his hands behind his head, elbows up beside his face, so even the half-view she has is blocked by his crooked arm, only a bit of his forehead visible, his eyes and mouth lost. He stares harder at the television, but can’t bring himself to change the channel, so he watches more houses for sale roll by, one every 30 seconds or so.
“I can’t keep doing this. If you don’t start caring more, I’m going to have to start caring less.” She speaks very quietly, but he can hear her above the house channel, her voice floating just a little, threat and pleading all in one sentence. She reaches with her left hand, pulls the sweater a little tighter around her shoulders, brushes her red hair back. Her fingernails are chewed short.
He lowers his elbow to look at her.
“I’ll try harder,” he says, and changes the channel again. He feels the corduroy pillow pressing into the back of his head, hears the water running in the bathroom, a car starting on the street. He keeps changing channels, looks at her again, then raises his elbows and watches the lights on the screen.
She waits, then stands and leaves the room without saying anything more. He hears her feet, down the hall, down the stairs, into the bedroom. He changes channels, turns up the TV.

“I’m going to the gym.” she tells him 20 minutes later. She has on black leggings, sweat pants, her hair tied back
“Work hard,” he says, looking up from the television.
Once he hears the car leave, he goes to the kitchen, pours a drink, walks down to their room, lies on the bed without spilling a drop of gin. He sees the sweater, pants, underwear she was wearing, thrown in a pile in the corner of the room near the door. He goes and lies on the floor, his head on the clothes, the sweater scratching his cheek. He takes a deep breath, inhales her smell from the clothes, so familiar. He knows it’s the last time he can be sure her clothes will smell that way.

Watching Mrs. Reynold

2005-02-11T17:06:00.000-08:00

I watched the Reynolds through their kitchen window for almost three months, before the day I realized Mrs. Reynolds knew I was there.
I’d always sat in the dark, or near dark, across the end of my bed, my eyes just above the window sill, only a small crack in the dark gold curtains. Sometimes I’d played the radio, top 40 then, but often I just sat watching them, hands resting on the headboard, sitting on the brown bedspread that matched my curtains.
I’d glanced their way before. But that November I started to watch almost daily, their house across our two narrow backyards, no fences, just the scrawny cedar hedge Mr. Reynolds and my father had planted together on a hot July weekend two years ago, just before he left, my father that is.
Their kitchen had sliding glass doors opening on to a patio - just like our’s. The lights were always on in those winter evenings, curtains open, and what lights. A warm yellow that splashed a tilted square across the snowy ground, reflected off their pale lemon walls. I could see part of the fridge, the maple table, most of the counter. Off to the left a smaller window offered glimpses of Mrs. Reynolds at her sink, head down as she scrubbed carrots or reaching up for the bowl she kept in the tall cupboard over the sink.
Most days I was watching by 4:30, home from school, often with one small lamp on at my desk, so I could do homework and check out the window without being seen. The sun had already started to sink by that time, and their light was always on. Mrs. Reynolds started supper about then, moving in and out of my view, preparing food in tiny heaps on her clean counter. She was always neat, with the food and herself, usually in slacks but sometimes in a blue dress I particularly liked, light blue with a frill around the hem that kind of flounced out when she walked. She always wore an apron over that dress, usually a white one with a large sunflower across it. The dress made her look a bit like she was floating.
I couldn’t distinguish sounds from our kitchen down the stairs, where the radio was competing with the TV in the family room, my mother listening to some announcer, my brothers watching cartoons. It was just muffled noise, rising to almost making sense sometimes, but it was never quite clear, and I was never sure if I’d heard my brother or mothers say something, or just someone on television.
But I could hear the Reynolds. The plates being set on the table, the knives and forks clattering as she gathered them up, the steady tapping when she chopped parsley, the soft music from their radio - not to my taste, really, but kind of relaxing I will admit. I could even hear their television, but it was quieter, less harsh, smoother. I could even hear Mrs. Reynolds, singing softly to herself, helping the children when they ran in with some question. They had three like us, but one was a girl and they were all several years younger - the oldest was 11.
Mrs. Reynolds had a soft voice, a little deep, that I remembered most clearly from earlier that fall, when she had called “Nice job” across the hedge as I raked the leaves from our spindly apple tree.
I’d watch until I had to eat dinner, when I left my darkened room and sat in the bright white light, steam misting the inside of the windows and reflecting more light and fuzzy images of us back into the room, the radio still on. I’d eat quickly, scrape plates and load the dishwasher, then rush back to my room.
Most nights the Reynolds were at the dinner table then, chairs pushed back, Mrs. Reynolds facing me, Mr. Reynolds with his back to the sliding doors, children on either side of the table. They talked about his work, her day, the kids’ school or friends, their weekend plans. And I watched and listened, until they finished cleaning up, and turned off all the kitchen lights except for a fluorescent tube over the sink which left just a dim white glow and an empty, neat room.
The first day I knew that she knew was a Friday, after I’d finished loading our dishwasher and taken the garbage out to the garage. I headed across my darkened room and settled on the bed, looking across the snowy yards. As I did, Mrs. Reynolds, listening to her husband, looked up at me, and smiled. She looked my way three more times as she sat at the table, once raising her eyes over her coffee and nodding, as she smiled.
I began watching in the mornings, too, some days staying until I was late for school. And each day, Mrs. Reynolds looked at my window, smiled, nodded, gave small waves, showed me the cake she had taken from the oven, took special care of her children when she knew I was there.

And so I packed that Thursday night. Not everything. Some clothes, a few books, the level my grandfather had given me, my CDs - only seven, mostly gifts. I tried a note to my mother, but after four drafts I gave up. No words seemed to make sense, and she would see me across the yards anyway - it’s not like I would be in an apartment downtown. I slid all the things into a gym bag, and slid it under my bed, ready to retrieve after school Friday. I slept on my secrets, always the best kind of sleep for me, on my stomach, legs crossed at the ankles.
I rushed through school, left before the last class, calculus, so I could get my things before anyone else was home.
It was cold, walking across the yard, cutting through the hedge, the snow hard and crusted and making scratching noises with each step. I slipped once and dropped my bag, but didn’t hear anything break.
I went to the Reynolds’ front door, on a concrete porch under its own roof, rang their bell and heard it echo inside.
Mrs. Reynolds answered, wearing the blue dress, but not the apron, opening the door wide despite the cold.
“Yes. Oh, I’ll get the money,” she said, leaving the door open disappearing before I could speak.
“I don’t need any money,” I said when she came back.
“Oh I’m sorry, of course, you’re not the paperboy. You’re too old. How can I help you?”
I just stood there, then realized the problem, and took off my toque, and smiled at her.
“Are you looking for the Johnstons - they’re just two doors down.”
I kept smiling, then dropped my bag, held my hands across my chin and forehead, the view of me I thought she would recognize through the window. She just looked slightly alarmed.
“Sorry.”
I didn’t watch the Reynolds anymore. That summer, I got a part-time job and moved into the apartment with my father and his girlfriend, but it was small and felt too warm with three people and I moved back to the house in the fall. Mrs. Reynolds came over, the first week I was back. She hired me to cut their lawn, but I couldn’t get their lawn mower to start.

Postcards, from the bass trail

2004-12-08T10:03:00.000-08:00

Alanah left Roger on June 4, a Friday, when he came home and showed her their bank book with $16,844 in the chequing account.
“I took a second mortgage on the house,” he said. “I bought the truck and the boat.” He raised his hands just a little, reaching towards her.
Alanah just looked at him, then went into the kitchen, took a large pot of stew off the stove and dumped it in the sink, then ran the water and started the garburator. It made grinding, smashing noises, chewing the half-cooked food, steam rising around her as she leaned on the counter. Her face was red and her eyes watered and the smell of the beef soaked into her. Their daughter, Kate, was watching TV in the family room that hung off the kitchen, a talk show with a crying fat woman. She looked up, and then turned the sound up with the remote.

Actually Alanah didn’t leave Roger.
When he went to pick up the truck and the boat Monday she started calling locksmiths. The third one - Al's Safe & Locks - had a man free, and he’d changed all the locks by noon.
Roger pulled up around 4. Alanah was lying on their bed just then trying to separate their smells on the sheets - which were him, which were her. She heard the truck and went to look from their bedroom window, through a small space in the brown curtains. It was a black Ford three-quarter ton that looked almost new, and behind it a shiny black motorboat, low and flat and dusted with diamonds, with an outboard motor that looked far too tall. He pulled slowly into the curb, his shoulders hunched, his head moving sideways as he took quick looks in the side mirrors. He stopped, then pulled forward a bit so the boat wasn’t under the scrubby apple tree in their yard. Alanah thought just for a minute how much he needed her. Then she pulled the curtains shut and lay down on the bed.

Kate was watching out her brother Peter’s window. Her bedroom faced the back, where a swing set the old owners had left was rusting in a corner of the yard and weeds had taken over the vegetable garden her father had started, raised beds between squares of railway ties. Pete - 18, four years older than she was - wasn’t using his room right now.

Kate watched her father get out of the truck, and disappear for a second as he bent to look at something on the far side, then he came around the back and stopped to check the boat, rubbing at the finish with the side of his arm. It looked like a toy, a shiny black and silver skipping stone, a big blue carpeted deck and two chairs folded flat. He moved forward to polish a spot on the windshield, touched the boat’s steering wheel, a chrome ring that caught the sun.
Kate wondered: how could he not know no one was coming out?

Peter wasn’t using his room because he was in jail. The police had stopped him riding his bicylce, with four three-foot-tall marijuana plants in their pots stuck in a cardboard box behind his seat. He’d raised them to that height in his closet and was taking them over to his friend Dale’s house to grow them up to harvest size. Then he’d get one and Dale would keep three. He could have got away with a fine, but he wouldn’t tell the two officers where he was going. The fat cop had even offered to let him go, with the plants, but Peter didn’t believe him. Anyway, he told Kate while he was waiting for his court appearance, I’ll plead guilty and they’ll fine me
Except he kept forgetting his appointments to see his lawyer, never caught up with the probation officer who was supposed to do his presentence report and was almost an hour late for court because he’d had to help Dale move some plants. He got six months. Kate was in court with their father, and when the judge - a small man with a worried face and heavy glasses - said he was ordering jail time, Peter turned around and smiled at them, made a little surprised face like a cartoon character, lifting his shoulders a little.

Roger stood by the boat, felt the sun on his neck, waited for them to come out. Alanah would have read the note he’d left. And the boat looked damn near perfect. So he waited, touching the finish, checking that the motor was held on right, taking a quick look when the light was right and he could see his face reflected in the finish, 37 in three months, dark curly hair and just a few lines around his eyes that made him interesting, he thought. He bent over, checked the strap holding the boat to the trailer, stood up and walked around the back of the boat, looking quickly up at the house.
He went to the door, pushed his key in partway and it stuck, checked it, tried it upside down, took a step back out of the shade of the little overhang over the front door so he could look at the key in the sun. He posed, head tilted a litle, showing the neighbours he was a man surprised by some odd lock failure, could hear Andrews across the street going back and forth with a whiny little electric lawn mower. He rang the doorbell, looked at his watch, like the answer to why no one would open the door was written on it. Then he went to the truck, looked up at the house and stopped just a minute to smell the freshly cut grass. Then he drove away, banging the trailer just a little over the curb.

Roger left a note the next day, after he spent the night trying to call her from the Sleepy Hollow Inn.
Dear Alanah;
I know I can make this work. You know how hard I’ve been studying and getting ready, and you know what a bunch of redneck losers are making money on the fishing tour. I’m smarter, and I want it more. Once I start winning real money we can fix things. I’m sorry you’re surprised. I’ve got enough to cover eight events, and I know I can get ahead. That takes me to Fayetteville. You can come down then and see. I’ll send money for the tickets and everything.
Love
Roger
Alanah had kept it in her top dresser drawer, with socks and tights and underwear,

While Peter was in jail, he thought every day about a woman. Three days before court he’d come over the hill on a trail by the river, and seen her and two friends sitting on rocks by a deep pool. Her friends were both naked, one still wet from the water, and he barely registered breasts and legs and pubic hair. She had a yellow sundress, undone, slipped off her shoulders and gathered around her waist, and a little bamboo umbrella that leaned against her left shoulder. Her hair was dark brown and her skin white. He stood in the trees, staring at her, until she looked over her shoulder, leaned back on one arm to see him better, then turned back to her friends.

For the first two weeks they got a postcard almost every day, tracing Roger’s drive south through New York and Delaware and on to Georgia, about half of them from motels he stayed in, sometimes a little X scratched into the glossy picture, showing his room. He hardly wrote anything - what he’d eaten, or some dead animal or accident he’d seen, one day what sort of mileage the truck was getting. He sent a post card with a picture of a big bass, leaping out of the water with its mouth wide open, and a headline that said ‘Bassmasters’ Georgia $200,000,” and on that one he wrote “Here we go.” He didn’t make the final 60 there, left with no money, and headed down to Kentucky, outside Lexington, where he got a headstart on practising for the Green Hills Classic, working his way through a long reservoir and feeder creeks, making charts and marking spots with his $800 satelite positioning unit. He sent one last postcard: ‘Going good, but too busy to write. Love you.” Then after that the postcards pretty much stopped. He called twice. The first time he talked to Kate for 15 minuites but Alanah wouldn’t take the phone. The second time he was drunk in a bar in Ohio called Red’s Roost and Alanah just pretended he had the wrong number. After that, he took a woman who said her name was ‘Sara with no h’ back to his motel. He passed out on the floor before they had sex. Sara took $20 from his wallet for a cab back to the bar.

Alanah picked Pete up at the jail on a hot July afternoon, an old fort-like building with coils of razor wire like DNA around the top of a 12-foot fence. She’d taken the afternoon off work, made up a story about a furnace repairman coming. He had a blurry blue tattoo of marijuana leaf on his forearm and asked Alanah to drop him off at Dale’s.

Roger tried. He fished 14 hours a day before the tournaments, trying to learn the waters. It pained him, because he wanted to be one of them, one of those slow-talking Americans with sun-burned faces and big white rings around their eyes from days on the water wearing those over-size polarized sunglasses that cost about $90 a pop, but he started to ask everyone for advice, what lures they used, how they rigged them, did he strike too hard or too soft, getting used to leaving every Friday because he wasn’t one of the 60 or so who made it into the weekend fishing, not making a cent as the money went faster than he thought possible, sleeping in the truck sometimes. Someone gave him the nickname ‘Question,” and it stuck, and one day he came outside to find a big question mark in the red Arkansas dust on his truck.

Roger came back in August, pulled up at the house in the truck just as the false dusk finally turned to night, his shoulders stiff from 11 hours on the road. He didn’t have the boat. He’d sold it to pay the medical bills, got less than $4,000 for a rig that had cost him $11,000.
He did have a patch on his right eye that he touched every minute or so, never able to tell if it was on straight or if it had slid. He’d seen the swirl of a largemouth coming up behind his jig in a muddy patch of Kulder Lake and set the lure as hard as he could, but a bit too soon, so the treble hooks he’d honed sharp that morning with his little file struck his cheek and eye, barbs locking beneath the surface.
He stumbled a bit on the step as he went up to the door. His sense of depth was all wrong.

A Place He Could Handle

2004-11-08T15:12:00.000-08:00

“If you buy that place, I’m leaving you.”
Irene’s shoulders were maybe a little squarer than usual, but her voice was low and level. She had even blue eyes, a nice smile except for one chipped tooth you didn’t usually see. She rubbed her tongue on it now, felt it tug.
“I mean it, I’m not going to live in some old place in the Flats with college kids in the basement drinking and playing loud music. That’s not for me, not now.”
Davey leaned back, balanced the heavy glass of scotch on his leg.
“It won’t be some old place, I’ll get the guys in to fix it up, like you want. And we’ll take our time, get good tenants downstairs. It’s a great deal.”
“Have you found anybody else who thinks this is a deal? You’re almost broke, and you’re buying a house?”
“I can’t afford to rent anywhere decent. I buy, I get tenants, we live for almost free. I’ve been over that with you. It makes good sense, long-term.”
She took a long drink from her scotch, looked out over the woods at the side of the house they were renting. She liked the view, liked the way the land fell away so the living room windows looked out on lots of space and air.
“I’m not going. I didn’t walk out on a marriage and move in with you to end up in a place like that, a place you can’t handle.”
Instead he found the brown mobile home, with orange trim, on an acreage about 12 miles west of the city. The farmer sold them the trailer and a half-acre of low land, all the county would let him subdivide, and he took back the mortgage.

“Are you happy?” he asked her one June night, as soon as she came in from their garden, vegetables already over-run with Scotch thistle growing thigh high, two weeds rising for every one she pulled. He’d told her that organic stuff wouldn’t work, but she had books and plans. He’d ploughed it all under twice now with a bucking rototiller, so she could start again, but she still wouldn’t let him clear it out with weedkiller. She had on rubber boots, leggings, a sweatshirt he’d bought her that had pictures of Princes Diana, Mother Teresa and Elvis, and said Together At Last. She’d never worn it, except to pull thistles.
She brought her hand up to her mouth, bit at thistles stuck in the fleshy part just below her thumb, ripped off a little bit of skin.
“I think I’ll go to bed,” she said.

Davey got fired on a Friday, which surprised him. He’d just read an article saying that was a bad day, left the loser too much time to brood on the weekend. The manager had called him in just before lunch, his dark jacket on. He kept glancing over Davey’s head at the clock above the couch all the time he was talking. Davey wanted to ask if he’d read the article, knew what a mistake this was.

He’d gone to the lounge in the strip mall on the way home, asked for four shots of vodka in a glass, sat at the bar rather than take a table during the lunch rush. He could see himself in the mirror, then looked away and focused on the glass, threads of clear liquid dancing as the ice melted and the glass shook just a little in his hands. He touched the cigarette burns and dents on the dark bar, closed his eyes and smelled his drink, the fields and the fires and the wind. He pressed it against his forehead, felt the cold. He drove home very carefully, watching for small animals that might run into his path.

“What are you going to do?” Irene still had on her work clothes, a blue suit with a some sort of black check you could only see in the right light, the kind of $700 costume they sold where she worked.
“Take some time, decide what to do next. They’ll pay me for three months.”
“Did you know this was coming? Didn’t they give you a reason?”
He looked at her, then changed the channels on the TV. It was new, 42 inches, and he wondered about buying it now. He’d been wondering anyway, since it filled the living room in the trailer, left him feeling like he was shut in a closet, and they had to sit so close they could see all the little dots that blurred together into the image.
“It doesn’t really matter, does it?”
Now she watched the TV. She thought about his answer, like she always did.
“I don’t know.” She leaned her head back in the chair, felt the cheap fabric rub against her neck. “I really don’t know.” They watched TV together, then Irene went to bed.

“How come you’re so different out?”
They were sitting in the yard, watching the sun turn the valley slope golden, drinking wine. They had been at a lunch barbecue at Elena’s, the woman who owned the clothing store.
“I’m not different.” He stretched out in the lawnchair, reached his bare feet into the grass and closed his eyes, felt the sun on the side of his face. He couldn’t see her, facing into the sun.
“You are. You laugh, and you talk and it’s like a long time ago.”
He just waited, trying to remember when he’d laughed.
“Is that just play for you, when we were with those people? Which is real?”
He opened his eyes, could just see her hair, looking black not red against the sun, before he had to close his eyes again.
“It’s all pretty real to me.”

He hadn’t thought about Irene having another man. Then one day he just knew she was, and he knew who. Afterwards, he thought back and wondered how he knew. Maybe he’d noticed her buying new clothes, new underwear. Maybe when she started leaving early for work. Or maybe when she stopped talking about Gordon.
Davey didn’t do anything for three days, then on a Monday when she left early for work he waited 10 minutes and followed, saw Irene’s car parked near Gordon’s townhouse, tucked around a corner but there. He kept driving, bought coffee and a muffin and went home and checked the paper for jobs.

He didn’t say anything to her. He took to driving that way often, whenever she left the house early or worked late at the store. He marked the changes. She went in early every day, not just some. Her car moved from the side streets to a space just down from Gordon’s house.
Sometimes he thought of leaving a note on the window. Once he took a piece of paper and a pen, parked behind her car in his truck. But he couldn’t think of what to write, so he just put the paper under the windshield wiper, blank.
Each time he turned the corner on to Gordon’s street, he was hoping the car was there. When it wasn’t he felt cheated. When it was he felt sick. He started checking through the day, three or four trips. He didn’t have a job, so he had time to drive.

“I think you’re seeing someone.”
He didn’t look at her, stared into his drink, held it up between thumb and finger and watched the TV flicker through the Scotch, felt the little sharp edges of the carved crystal. Wedding gifts, four years before. Three had broken, but one had made it this far. He felt the wind push against the side of the trailer. It had pulled the door out of her hand and slammed it against the side when she came in. He often thought about the wind, how it came from up in the mountains somewhere and travelled down the river valley. It always made him think about how small the mobile home was.
Irene sat down, stared over his head at the spot where the water leaked in, marked the panelling whenever it rained hard and left the room smelling like must, like rotting leaves, for days.
“I’ve been so lonely.” She looked down, still not at him, but closer. “I’ve just been so lonely.”
“I suppose,” he said. “I suppose that’s too bad.”
They cried. She said she would stop.

Their bed was too small. It was big as they could get into the tiny bedroom, barely fit through the door, and you had to turn sideways and edge along the wall to get into either side. But even laying face down, with their legs crossed at the ankles and their arms folded under them, they still touched sometimes.

He hadn’t checked in a week. But there was nothing on television, and he was tired of reading and it was 5:30 on Friday and she wasn’t home. He decided to get a video.
He drove past Gordon’s house, listening to the six o’clock radio news, summer weekend safety warnings and highway reports. Her car wasn’t out front. But when he went down the next block, there it was, the big dent in the front fender like a scar.
He went to get a video. He’d watched too many videos, because he needed to give himself a reason to drive past Gordon’s house. The video store clerk in Gordon’s neighborhood knew his name. They talked about the movies he rented, ones he should rent.
The clerk liked him, admired his taste.

He took the video inside, set it by the television, but decided not to watch it. He went into their bedroom, looked through her dresser drawers, held a sweater against his cheek to feel the rough wool, smell her.
In the kitchen he poured a tall glass of Scotch, then went to the grey metal shed where they kept tools and bikes and golf clubs and hauled out his chainsaw, a red Poulan he used to cut the wood for the stove he’d put in the living room. It always made the little room too hot.
He carried the drink in one hand, the chainsaw in the other, put the chainsaw down and went back for their stepladder, sipping the drink. The sun was low, the way it gets in September, and he made a 30-foot shadow across the lawn, the ladder and his angular body looking like a cross against the yellow grass.
It took two or three tries to get it started, a roar, little backfires and puffs of oil-smelling blue smoke, the vibrations running through his palm to his wrist and up his arm. His drink spilled so he carried the saw into the house, filling the living room and kitchen with smoke and noise, and brought out the bottle.
He climbed the ladder, set the bottle on the roof, went back down for the saw, then kicked the chain in gear, teeth a black blur.
Cutting through the roof was harder than he expected. The noise was like cars crashing, the aluminium siding ripping and tearing, tiny jagged arrows sticking in his hands and forearms, a larger piece hitting his forehead, drawing blood that he wiped off with one hand, the saw bouncing and twisting. Once the metal skin was ripped, the saw cut easily through the wood frame, light two-by-twos and particle board sheathing stitched together with staples. He stopped once, turned off the saw and sat on the roof with his feet hanging over the edge. He’d cut halfway across and the roof was already sagging a little. Davey always liked the silence in the country when you stopped a car or chainsaw, the way he could hear the birds start up, hear the wind in the poplars that separated the fields. He sat, and drank, and watched the sun light the underside of the clouds.
He could see in through the long narrow hole in the roof - the sofa, the TV, his desk, the lamp they’d bought in Seattle, bits of the frame he’d cut. He had another drink, then started the saw and worked across the rest of the roof, down both walls, cutting through the centre of the trailer, finishing by cutting right through the middle of the front door. When he stopped, and opened the door, the two halves fell to the ground.

When Irene came home around 9 he was already asleep in the kitchen and most of the furniture was moved around, shifted into the two halves of the trailer.
He’d divided things up pretty fairly, she thought.

Morning

2004-10-21T08:31:00.000-07:00

He woke up somewhere south of Calgary, looked down and realized he was still dressed for the funeral. He watched the Malibu’s shadow stretched 100 feet long by the morning sun, 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 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 and smell the stale cigarette smoke. He shifted, felt his forehead, sat a little straighter.
She pushed the headphones off, turned and smiled. He realized he didn’t know her age, and couldn’t guess.
“Glad you decided to join me.”
“How long did I sleep?”
“Passed out, you mean. 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 really call somebody at the shop.”
She looked at him, then put the headphones back on and turned up the sound. But 10 miles later she pulled off at a Husky Truck Stop, bumping the car 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 say 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 aren’t the brightest people in Biggar - though that’s not saying much - but I’m pretty sure they know you aren’t there. So what would you tell them?”
“I don’t know. Sorry, I guess. They thought I’d be in at work today, and now we’re heading for Los Angeles. They’ll be a little surprised.”
“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 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. . .” But she stopped him, leaning back, one hand on the wheel.
“I’m 32. I’ve learned exactly six things so far, and one is about decision time, and it’s here for you. You can talk and let people know, or you can do things. Only one choice includes me. And you’ll be sorry if you choose wrong.”
He paused, about to point out he’d known her for 21 hours and had left friends, apartment and job at her father’s car dealership. He paused just for a second, but maybe one second can be too long.
“Let’s have some breakfast and get going,” he said. “California’s not getting any closer.”
The air almost touched him, 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, her laugh too loud, 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, not wanting to fight a man 60 pounds heavier and twice as mean.
She caught that, looked at him again.
“You know,” she said, “I come back for a funeral and don’t even wait to see if there’s an inheritance - just grab you and a 12-year-old car. My mother would probably like that.”
The coffee was the second best part of breakfast, not good coffee but still good. The best part was when she reached out and touched his shoulder.
She left him to wait for the bill and went to the bathroom. 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.

A Monkey Fur Coat

2004-10-12T16:49:00.000-07:00

The coat was right. Carson saw it hanging from the ceiling, above the racks, shining blue-black, like the hair of beautiful and dark women.
He edged past a woman with purple hair holding a beaded dress draped in front of her, stretched up to look at the coat. Small neat handwriting on the tag said it was made from monkey skins, in the ‘40s.
But it was $700.
He’d bought her a fur coat three years before, when the company had handed him a surprising $1,100 bonus at the end of the year.
“Good for a fur coat,” the card said, 11 $100 bills in the envelope, propped in the branches of their spindly Christmas tree. That turned out to be not much money in a fur store. The coat was coyote faces, long, to her knees and her tall brown leather boats. When they left the store he lagged a step or two behind on the street, staring at her back, trying to find the features in the patterns of light and dark brown, the sun bright white off the snow.
She had stopped wearing it about a year later.
“Is it because of the fur thing?” he’d finally asked her, pretending to have just noticed.
Liz had switched from wine to vodka then, kept icy in the freezer. She took a sip, licked her upper lip, slid off the counter to move into the living room, so he could half see her through the opening to the kitchen.
“No, it’s not that. I just don’t want to wear it right now.”
Carson had been chopping a yellow pepper into thin strips, the pieces leaving the knife like small twisting animals.
“It looked good, I thought.”
But she didn’t answer and didn’t worn the coat.
He reached high, touched the monkey skin coat, soft, not what he expected, like a child’s hair.
They put the coat in a box for him, folded in a tissue paper nest. He was lighter, the box under his arm, a little bounce in his step when he crossed the street. Standing on the bus he leaned back against the pole with both hands in his pockets, the box tucked under his arm, bending his knees and balancing when the bus stopped or went around corners.
The air even smelled different when he got off outside the condo. Raw earth, like someone had been pawing at the muddy ground, and a softness that came from the ocean, even though they were almost four miles inland.
She was in the kitchen. They had laughed when they bought the place at even calling the narrow space a kitchen, a counter and gas stove on one side, fridge and sink on the other, barely enough room for two people to pass. In the first weeks, Liz had sat on the counter, drinking wine, while he played cook, pasta and rice and seafood, bread from the breadmaker.
Now she was eating an apple cut into small sections. He held the box behind him, watched her dip the apple into the vodka, hold it submerged as if the thick liquid could freeze it.
“I got you something,” he said, and before she could think what to say slide the box towards her.
“What is it?” Liz didn’t move. She was just home from the office.
“A surprise, that’s all. It seemed right.”
Carson set it on the counter beside her, called to her from the next room as he hung his coat up.
“Open it. It won’t hurt you.”
Liz was staring at him when he came around the corner. She hadn’t touched the box.
“It’s a gift.” She kept watching, and he edged past, careful not to touch her, poured a large glass of her vodka.
He leaned against the counter, waited until she pulled the box open.
“It’s a coat. I saw it at Second Chance, and thought of you.”
She touched it, pulled a sleeve loose from the box and held it lightly in her hand, white fingers on blue-black.
“It’s monkey skins.” He took a drink, watched her as she just stared at the coat. “It’s vintage.”
He couldn’t see her eyes. Her head was tilted forward and her hair, a dark brown, hung in front of her face.
“You really shouldn’t have.”
“Try it on. See if it fits.”
“You really shouldn't have,” she said, quietly.
“Please,” he said. “Just try it on.”
Liz walked across the kitchen and touched the switch, making the lights brighter. She got the vodka, poured the glass half full, it coming out like heavy syrup, turning the outside of the glass white with frost. She took a drink, and her eyes shone.
“You don’t want to do this, do you?”
“I just want to see if it fits, if it’s you. Just try it on.”
“And it’s monkey skins?”
He nodded.
Liz pulled the sweater over her head, got it tangled in her hair, threw it over his head into the eating area. She had on a cream bra, and took it off too, then undid the skirt and let it fall to the floor, kicked off her underwear. Her feet were bare.
The coat looked even blacker in the bright light and against her white skin. It came to halfway to her knees. Her thighs were white, with a thin blue vein running under the skin inside her left leg.
“All right?” She brushed her hair back and looked at him, held her arms out from her side, the coat, unbuttoned, stretching open. “All right?”
She turned slowly, all the way around. Her arms were still out, brushed against the wall. He saw the monkey skins, hundreds it must have taken, draped over her, white and black, soft and shiny.
“All right?”
She dropped the coat from her shoulders, let it slide to the floor behind her, and stared at him.
“I’ll be back for my things,” she said, and turned and walked into the bedroom to dress. He folded the coat carefully before he put it back in the box.

The mayor of Fun Royale

2004-10-05T18:06:00.000-07:00

Colin saw the boy’s fingers slip, and thought I knew this would happen. It was a small Nissan van, five flimsy rows of seats. The boy looked about 12, deep black skin and one eye that stared off to the side. He hung out the open sliding door of the van, hammering on the roof to tell the driver to stop to let someone off, arguing and pushing to find a way to get two dozen passengers into the tiny space, collecting the fares.
Colin’s knee hurt, and one foot had fallen asleep, his ankle pressed against the boney shin of the man with the shovel. He had watched the boy’s hands, one reaching in pressed flat against the van’s ceiling, the other with a thick pile of bills wrapped through his fingers. Colin’s shoulders were pulled tight, giving room to an older Dominican woman, being the polite Canadian. Then he saw the boy’s right hand slide a little against the light brown ceiling, and he was gone, waving once with the hand with the bills. Colin and Marie were facing each other, and Colin saw the boy out the back, bouncing sideways on the road, ungraceful cartwheels, a sandal flying high in the air.
The passengers shouted, the driver stopped and backed up, the gears whining, and they all jumped out.
Three men on a moped had stopped, and helped the boy to sit up. He was bleeding, from his forehead and his knees and the back of his left hand, and he held his back. His eyes were cloudy, rolled high in his head, and he shivered. He still held the bills, but they were covered in blood, several torn. Colin watched, as Marie turned and stared across the alaming green sugar cane fields to the sea, blue and grey and stretching on and on. The sun was already low in the sky behind them, and the fields were mixed dark shadows and lurid highlights. Her hair was reddish in the sun, and her face, burned, was darker. He looked up from the boy, and saw her, and for a second didn’t know who she was.
A taxi driver stopped to join the crowd. They paid him 150 pesos for a ride back to the resort.
They ate too much in Lin Tran’s, the Chinese restaurant that was part of the resort, with two couples from Calgary and a large bullet-headed young British man and the sunburned, toothy woman who had married him on the beach the day before, all of them drinking rum punch with the egg foo young and curried pork fried rice and sweet and sour something.
“How the hell could he fall?” Jeff was a stockbroker in Calgary, polite and curious and neat. “He must have done the drive a thousand times.”
Marie had told them the story, describing the over-crowded bus, the bruises on the boy’s forehead and the blood. “You didn’t get any blood on you, did you?” That from Cal, who struggled to focus on them. “I mean, you know, AIDS and all.”
Marie took a large drink of the pinkish rum punch, clean after the food. She ignored Cal, considered Jeff’s question, smelling the greasy food and the light scent of some sort of mosquito repellent on the British woman. She pushed a piece of slippery pepper around the plate with chopsticks, put them down, and looked at her husband.
“Actually.” And she took another drink. “Actually I may have nudged him, a little.”
The British woman - Cecily, her name was - laughed, a sharp, high shriek, so Colin did too, then before anyone could speak he asked if anyone had signed up for scuba lessons and the talk moved away from the boy.
In bed, he felt the room move just a little from the rum, lay looking at the ceiling fan as Marie switched around the channels, watching a game show in Spanish.
“What makes you think you pushed the boy out of the van.”
“I didn’t say that.” She looked at Colin, but he was staring at the fan, steadying himself with the round blur of the blades. “I said I may have nudged him.”
Colin had brought a large glass of rum up from the bar, now reached for it and took a drink, felt the rough warmth on the back of his tongue.
“What makes you think that?”
“It doesn’t matter, does it? I don’t even know, really. It was something to say.”
“But why would you say that, if it wasn’t true?”
She got up from the bed and pulled the drapes open about a foot, looked out at the palm trees and the road and the lights of the hotel rooms in the next building. He could only see her back, and her head was resting on the window glass so he could hardly hear her.
“It doesn’t really matter, does it?”
The next day all eight of them met at the beach. Cal was bulky in a large orange T-shirt that said Galvin Klein, and bargained angrily with the skinny vendors selling carvings and suntan oil,. They all drank from the beach bar and ate hot dogs and watched a Dominican dog, thin brown hair with a sore on a back leg, limp slowly from group to group. Cal threw sand at the dog, who looked at him and then lay down about 15 feet away, in the shade of a small palm tree.
By 2 they were all a little drunk, except for the large British newlywed and Cal, who were a lot drunk and turning red as they lay on the beach chairs with their eyes closed, plastic glasses scattered around them like washed up jellyfish.
Colin lay on his stomach, and turned his head toward Marie. The sun actually touched his back. His eyes were almost closed; he could see her silhouette, against the sun, her neck stretched out as she lay on her back, one hand over her head.
“You didn’t push him,” he said.
Marie lay still, didn’t open her eyes. She may have been asleep.
“I stretched just a little,” Colin whispered to the sun, “tried to find space for my foot so my leg would stop hurting, and he stepped on my shoe and fell.”
He waited, but she didn’t speak.
“I’m going for a swim,” Colin said, and he got up so quickly that he wobbled a little from the heat, but was down six steps over the hot sand and into the water before anyone could come along. He liked the coolness, the way the waves pushed him around, and he swam steadily without looking back until he was past the sailboats moored offshore, out to where waves were breaking over the reef. He felt the water moving around him as if it were deep. Ahead the reef came near the surface, and waves broke crazily, sideways and backwards, water sucked in to fill the void over the coral. He swam there, slowly, buoyant in the salt water, waited for the water to flow over the reef and tried to swim across, made it halfway before the wave was past and he was rolling across the dark, dead coral, trying to use his hands to keep his body from touching it, bouncing off palms and shoulder and hip and knees as the wave rolled sideways over the coral, then pushed him back into deep water. His skin stung from the salt in the scrapes, and when he held his hand out of the water thin, watery lines of blood ran down his wrists.
He floated on his back in the water, and waitied for the next wave to break on the reef.