by Tyler Keevil
Rick was still ranting when Liam fired up the tug, drowning the noise out. He did not say anything and did not look back as he pushed the throttle forward and manoeuvred the tug around the northwest corner of the marina. He headed for the gap in the breakwater that he had always dreamed of passing through, and it felt like a dream as he did so for the first and last time. Burrard Inlet opened up before him and the vista of North Vancouver lay behind it. To the west he could see the upright supports of the Lionsgate Bridge, and between them the strands of the suspension cables were strung like spiderwebs that glistened in the sun.
He cranked the throttle further, as far as it would go, and the tug lumbered forward, moving steadily and resolutely into the oncoming waves, which broke across its bow and crashed against its hull. He felt the concussions vibrating up through the deck, and each wave exploded in a shower of white spray, cool and light as snowflakes, that he felt flecking his face. In the distance were a few windsurfers slicing through the water like small fins, as well as trawlers and cruisers, but none of those were near him. Four or five miles out, when he was midway between the North Shore in front of him and the shipyards behind, he cut the motor and let the tug drift, rocking like a cradle on the waves.
He went to stand on deck. It was mid-afternoon and the height of the day’s heat, and in his coveralls he was broiling. He unzipped the front carefully, removing first one sleeve and then the other, having to peel the sweaty garment off like the skin he’d always imagined it to be. He lowered it down to his waist and pushed it further, to his knees, and then kicked off his boots so he could step out of it. From there it seemed only natural to peel off his tank top, too, and his boxers and socks, until he was naked beneath sun. Out there he could no longer smell the stench of rotten herring, only the richness of the sea air, which he inhaled in long and grateful lungfuls – as if he’d just emerged after holding his breath in a swamp.
The sealskin was still lying on deck. He picked it up and held it out at arm’s length, studying it. It was a complete hide. They had slit the seal’s belly and opened her up to her throat, leaving the back intact. The scalp, too, was intact, with its empty eye sockets and flaps to the left and right that would have formed part of the jaw. He turned the skin around and draped it across his shoulders, cupping the scalp over his head and letting the tail hang down his back. It reached to just below his knees. He let go and found he could wear the hide like that without having to hold it in place. On his back it felt tough and comforting, a kind of armour, and he imagined himself as an Inuit or bushman, inhabiting the hide of his animal totem. Dressed like that, he went to perch at the prow, with one leg on deck and the other propped on the gunnel, supporting his elbow, in the pose of a thinker. He studied the downtown shoreline and could just make out the shipyards he’d left behind. There was no sign of any boat coming from there and he guessed that meant they’d decided not to follow him but instead would wait for him to come back.
‘I’m not going back,’ he said.
It felt good to say the words aloud. After he did, as if in answer, he heard an odd, deep sound like a dog barking. He looked around. At first he saw nothing and thought he had imagined it. Then, off to the starboard side, he spotted a small, bulbous head. It made that unmistakeable dog-like sound again, and he made the same sound back at it, or his best imitation of it. At that the seal fell silent. It seemed to be regarding him with scepticism, as if it sensed he was an imposter but wasn’t quite sure.
Then the moment passed; the seal lost interest in him and dipped beneath the waves and didn’t resurface. Liam got back behind the wheel and fired up the engine. Instead of turning around and heading for the shipyards, he kept going towards the North Shore, his home, wearing nothing except his sealskin cape, feeling aloof and alone and untouchable.
Reaching Out
I was halfway down the mountain when I saw this kid thumbing for a ride. Generally I got no qualms about picking up a hitcher, but I don’t do it much anymore on account of people being scared of me. They see so much crap on the news and in the papers that they’re about ready to piss themselves when a man in a plaid jacket and a hunting cap offers them a lift. Most of them don’t want to get in with me, and the ones that do are jumpy as jackrabbits.
This kid seemed decent enough, though. He was wearing hiking boots and a green rain slicker and had a backpack slung over one shoulder – just a regular sort of kid. He was standing near the parking lot at the entrance to Old Buck trail. Out of season there aren’t as many people up the mountain, and it could have been a while before anybody else picked him up. It wasn’t raining, but it had been for most of the morning and looked ready to start again at any time. So I pulled over and rolled down my window.
‘Where you headed?’
The kid blinked at me. ‘Just down the mountain.’
‘I’m going down if you want.’
He thought about it, fiddling with a clasp on his backpack. But I’d been cutting brush all day and didn’t much feel like sitting there while he hummed and hawed. I put the truck back in gear. ‘Look, your majesty – you want a ride or not?’
That decided him. He slipped into the cab, placing the bag on the floor, and shut the door. But he kept a hold of the handle, as if he was ready to jump back out. These goddamn people. I tell you.
I said, ‘Hold on to your horses.’
And I popped the clutch and floored it. I drive the road up Seymour every day. It’s as familiar to me as my own driveway, and I can hug the curves blindfolded. The kid didn’t know that, though. He was fiddling with his seatbelt, trying to get the tongue to click, but the buckle on the passenger side is broken. When he figured that out, he didn’t mention it. What he did was sort of drape the seatbelt over one shoulder, like a sash, and clutch at the grab-handle – the one attached to the roof of the cab.
‘You drive pretty fast.’
‘That’s the only way.’
Rounding the next corner we fishtailed onto the shoulder. Gravel spit from under my wheels into the pines lining the ditch, drilling against the trunks like buckshot. The kid had actually closed his eyes, as if he was expecting to die, and I figured I’d made my point. After that, I dropped back down to fifty. I felt around in my pocket for a cancer-stick, and hung it in my mouth.
‘You got a match, kid?’
‘I don’t smoke.’
‘Crap.’
I’d used my last one, and the damn lighter in my truck was busted. But I felt foolish putting the cigarette back, so I let it hang there, limp as a dick. Every once in awhile I even took a drag on it. And as I was doing that, puffing away on air, I noticed this smell. It had infiltrated the cab – a rotten-meat type smell. At first, I figured the kid had farted.
‘You let one rip, kid?’
‘No. Sorry.’
‘You don’t have to be sorry. Just thought I smelled something funny is all.’
I shut my trap for a bit. Ever since what happened to Robbie, I haven’t had much of a way with people. I’d just rather not talk, is all. I would have left it at that, but the smell got worse. It got so much worse that I would have assumed the kid had stepped in a pile of dog shit – except it wasn’t quite that type of stink.
‘Christ it reeks in here.’
‘Yeah, man.’
‘You smell it?’
‘Yeah – I smell it too, now.’
‘Maybe it’s outside.’
I rolled down my window all the way and leaned out, clutching my hunting cap to my scalp so I didn’t lose it in the blast of wind. I breathed in deep through my nose. The air out there was mountain-cold and tasted of autumn and pine and the recent rain.
‘Nah,’ I shouted. ‘Ain’t outside.’
When I pulled my head back in, the stench hit me all over again. It triggered a memory, in that way smells can, of the time I’d been fixing the support beams beneath our porch, and found a raccoon t
hat had crawled under there to die.
I slowed the truck down, and stared at the kid, who was staring at me.
‘Smells like a dead animal,’ I said.
He didn’t say anything for a while. With one hand, he took hold of the carry-strap on his backpack, which sat nestled in the wheel well, between his feet. It was a blue nylon day-pack, old and worn. The kind anybody would have.
‘I don’t feel so good, man,’ he said. ‘Maybe you better let me out.’
I kept coasting along at fifty, glancing between him and road.
‘What’s in the bag, kid?’
He looked down at the bag, frowning, almost as if he didn’t know what was inside.
‘Christ – how long you been out in the woods?’
Without taking his eyes from the bag, he said, ‘Just today.’
‘You went for a hike or something?’
‘That’s when I found it. On the hike.’
‘Jesus. Why in the hell did you put it in there?’
‘I didn’t want to carry it.’ He was still staring at the bag, and still holding onto it real tight. ‘It was hard enough touching it once.’
‘I mean, why not just leave it be?’
‘I couldn’t do that.’ He finally looked up. ‘I might not be able to remember where it was.’
‘Right,’ I replied, as if that explained it. As if that explained everything about this kid with a rotting animal in his bag. I asked him to at least roll down his window. Having both windows open made it more tolerable. The kid sat and watched the trees strafing past, and I kept studying the bag. The shape didn’t give anything away. All I had to go on was the size. A raccoon would have been too big. A squirrel would have been too small.
‘An owl, eh?’
‘What?’
‘In the bag. An owl.’
‘It’s not an owl, man.’
That stumped me. An owl had seemed a good bet. I sat there sucking on my unlit cigarette, trying to figure out what else it could be, but before I asked the kid again, he said, ‘Do you work up here?’
He said it as if it was just part of the conversation. The next logical step. It took me a moment to answer. My head had to sort of shift gears.
‘Sure,’ I said, ‘I cut trail for the forestry department.’
‘Like your job?’
‘I guess. Don’t have to deal with any people. No boss breathing down my neck.’ I hesitated, then thought I should maybe ask him something. ‘What do you do, kid?’
‘I work in Wendy’s. Flipping patties.’
‘That sounds okay.’
‘We get free food, but my boss is a dickhead.’
‘I had my share of those. Dickhead bosses, I mean.’
I took a long drag on my smoke, tasting the faintest hint of nicotine. All that talking was getting to me. I don’t talk much with anybody except my wife, and that’s different since I always know pretty much what she has to say. But the kid seemed intent on hashing it out.
‘I like going hiking on my own,’ the kid said. ‘I like the sounds of nature. It’s a lot quieter than a city, but noisier in its own way too. After the first hour or so your ears start to adjust, like they’re tuning into a totally different station, you know?’
I grunted, to sort of signify that I did.
‘You start picking up on things. The wind rustling the trees. The sound of a stream running. And all the animals – woodpeckers, chipmunks, whatever. I don’t know. Maybe this sounds stupid. But it gets so you can even hear the silence, ringing in your ears.’
He paused, as if he expected me to say something. I cleared my throat. ‘It’s like that sometimes for me, when I’m cutting trail. It goes all quiet and pure like that.’
‘That’s it. That’s exactly it. It’s pure. There’s no people around. People ruin everything. Wherever they go, they bring… they bring…’
But he didn’t finish his sentence, and I couldn’t think of a way to finish it for him. I took the smoke from my mouth, and did something funny: I tapped it to ash it, even though there was no ash. I was tapping imaginary ash, as it were.
‘Anyways,’ the kid said, ‘that’s what I think.’
‘I hear you.’
From the way he’d been talking I figured he was a kid with a lot of ideas in his head, and that was all right by me. He was bright, but not real snotty or arrogant like some of the kids I’ve picked up. All told I guess I wouldn’t have minded Robbie ending up like that. I tried to imagine what Robbie would have looked like at this kid’s age. I took the face that was so familiar to me and changed the features, broadening his jaw and lengthening his nose and stretching him up into manhood. He would have been handsome – a real lady killer.
‘I had a boy, once.’
‘You mean you had a son?’
‘Sure did. Robbie. He’d be about your age by now.’
I rested one elbow on the windowsill of the driver’s side door, feeling my sleeve snap and ripple in the cold air rushing past, and waited for the kid to ask what he was going to ask.
‘What happened to him?’
‘He got sick. He got real sick and died.’
‘Oh, man. I’m sorry.’
‘Yeah. He was a good kid. Real smart, real talented. Would’ve made a better man than me, I can tell you that much.’
‘That must have broke you.’
‘Almost killed me. Probably would have, except for my wife. She’s a real woman.’ That didn’t make much sense, so I added, ‘She’s just really strong is all.’
‘My mom’s like that, too. When my dad left she was only nineteen, and waitressing in bars. She had to put three kids through school and still managed to go to night classes. She’s a teacher now.’
‘You should be goddamned proud of her.’
‘If I ever see my old man I’ll tell him we were better off without him.’
I nodded. One thing I could never understand is a father that walks away from his children. A relationship is one thing. That’s between two adults. Even a marriage – fine. Sometimes it doesn’t work out. But to walk away from your kids. That just don’t make any sense to me.
‘Are you okay, man?’
‘Sure. Why?’
‘You just started driving a bit fast again.’
‘Sorry.’
I slowed down. My knuckles on the steering wheel were white. I took breaths of clean air, in and out. The stink hadn’t gone away despite all our gabbing. The butt of the cigarette in my mouth was all gummed and soggy by that point. I flicked it out the window. Probably the longest cigarette I ever smoked – and I hadn’t even smoked it.
When I looked over, the kid was staring at the bag again. I waited. I wanted him to come to the decision on his own, without any prodding from me. We had something between us, now. We had some water under the bridge.
‘Could you pull over?’ he asked.
I pumped the brakes and eased us onto the shoulder. There was a solid wind blowing and the pines at the roadside swayed back and forth, all together, like mourners at a funeral.
‘I’ve got to take a leak.’
Very deliberately, the kid lifted his bag and put it beside him on the seat, within arm’s reach, before he got out of the truck. I watched as he made his way a few yards into the bush and stood with his back to me as he started watering the plants. I looked at the bag.
Now that I’d stopped, the stench should have been unbearable. But it was almost as if my nostrils had adapted and grown kind of accustomed to it.
I didn’t move the bag. It was a fifteen or twenty litre pack, with two compartments and a small front pocket. It was all zipped up. With my right hand, I reached over and pinched the zipper of the main compartment between my thumb and forefinger. Then I coaxed it up, opening a slit in the side of the bag. I saw something that looked like clay,
or plaster – grayish white and very smooth. I widened the slit. For a moment, I thought the thing actually was clay, sculpted into that stiff pose, with one finger extended and the others curled in upon themselves. It looked as if it was reaching out, or asking to be touched. So I did. I touched it. It was real, all right. The nails had gone bluish-grey and were rimmed with grime. I didn’t see the base, but it couldn’t have been the full arm. It must have started at the elbow. It was small, too. A lot smaller than mine, anyway.
When the kid got back in the car, the bag was zipped up again. He cradled it protectively on his lap, like a basket of eggs, as I pulled out into the road. We didn’t talk the rest of the way down. There wasn’t much else to say, really. When we got to the base of the mountain, by Northlands golf course, I asked him, ‘Maybe I should take you to the police station.’
‘I guess so.’
‘You want to go to Lonsdale, or downtown?’
‘I live on Commercial, so downtown’s closer.’
I took Mount Seymour Parkway to the Second Narrows, and crossed over the bridge. Underneath us the inlet was sloshing about, whipped up by winds. I came off at Nanaimo and hung a right on Hastings Street. After the calm of being up the mountain the city was a madhouse: long lines of traffic, drivers jockeying from lane to lane, horns honking, stereos blasting, people shouting. The sun had split the clouds, and the light flickered in shop fronts and flared off car windscreens. The pavement was still wet and glistened like the surface of a lake, blinding me to the point of tears.
The police station is this giant concrete block squatting on Cordova and Main, right in the worst area of the city, like a fortress surrounded by junkies and dealers and bag ladies. I couldn’t find any parking out front, so I just had to flick on my hazard lights and pull over to drop off the kid. He hopped out, taking the bag with him, and then reached back through the window to shake my hand, real firm. His eyes were rimmed with red, as if he’d been crying, or was about to.