Savage Gerry

by John Jantunen

  You ever seen so many fireflies?

  Evers was looking back at him with craned head. His own amaze was straining through the bitter resolve and it had seemed, in that moment, that the fireflies had brought the boy he’d once been back from the dead. Gerald opened his mouth to answer, I sure haven’t, but found his mouth was too dry to utter more than a crackled, No.

  They both went back to watching the insects’ flicker, dwindling at even pace with the darkening sky. The last dozen or so winked out all at once and in the next instant they heard the thrash of treetops above and the distant rumble of thunder.

  There’s a storm brewing, Gerald had said, casting a furtive glance skyward. We best be getting inside.

  They’d made it about halfway up the rock face when the rain started, a few drops as fine as needle points giving them fair warning before a sudden torrent. It was coming from the south. That should have afforded them a measure of relief but the wind was whipping around the ridge with all the force of a hurricane. The rain pelted them in lateral sheets and they were getting it from both sides and sometimes from below. Every which way they turned their heads there it was: rain like iron drops dashing into their eyes and nothing they could do about it now but stay where they were and try to hang on. Gerald had made it to a ledge, eighteen inches wide and canted at a moderate twenty-degree angle. There was a horn of granite that came out of the main rock and he was holding on to this and looking up for his son, who was only five feet above him and all but lost within the swirling sheets of rain.

  The ten feet past the halfway ledge was the trickiest part. Evers would have been lucky if he had two inches square of firm ground on which to stand and had somehow managed to get a hold of the spindled roots dangling down from the ash tree perched at the edge of the summit.

  Evers! Gerald called out above the gale. Come down! It ain’t safe up there. Evers!

  No sooner had he spoken than he heard an explosive snap that brought to mind bridge cables giving way during an earthquake. Cast against the sky’s turbulent black, there was a shadow of something blacker still. It looked like a giant hand reaching out of the sky, about to pluck them from their perch and then there was a lumberous swoosh as the ash tree plummeted past. One of its roots lashed out, striking Gerald in the neck. It felt for a moment as if it might have taken his head clean off, such was the shock of pain it wrought. But he could still see, so it couldn’t have, and he was even then looking up, searching out Evers and glimpsing a dark shape with pinwheeling arms hurtling past. His hand darted out, grabbing for something — anything — and snatching his son miraculously by the bob of his ponytail.

  Evers’s face coming back into his mind now, peering up at him with stark terror as Gerald dragged him onto the ledge. In the years since, he’d had plenty of time to reflect on that night and in his mind it had always become paired with the day Millie had taken that first birthday picture. On that morning he’d never felt more terrified than he had cradling his son after he’d saved him from a plunge of barely four feet and there was Evers plunging from a height ten times that. Yet it wasn’t fear he’d felt clutching at his son, the boy’s body heaving in great braying sobs against his chest. In that moment he’d felt — there was no denying it — suddenly invincible.

  Three days later the bear would prove him anything but.

  As he now ducked low beneath the branches of a tamarack tree, feeling their yellowed needles flittering down his back and sticking to the sweat of his skin, the real truth of that evening imparted itself with a gravity that had his legs almost buckling at the knees.

  You might as well have let him drop for all the good you’ve done him since.

  27

  Thunder had been rumbling after him ever since he’d left Clayton back at the camp. But it wasn’t until the deer path had led Gerald to a mud-rutted quad trail on the south side of the lake that a four-pronged fork of lightning quartered the darkly frothing sky. At the trail’s end he could see the orange of a school bus blocking his way. That told him he’d come full circle around the lake and he stood there for a moment feeling more lost than ever now that he knew exactly where he was.

  Hey you!

  Gerald spun towards the water, seeing a man standing in an aluminum fishing boat, twenty feet from shore. He was holding a rod with its line trailing into the water behind him and wearing a faded orange life jacket over jeans and a black sweater. It didn’t take more than a second glance for Gerald to know there was something off about him, it being in the low-thirties with lightning flaring on the horizon, and him dressed as he was and standing in an aluminum boat with the waves dashing its hull, making it jostle and bob so it looked like at any moment the man would be pitched over the side.

  Hey yourself, he answered.

  Whooer you?

  The boat was drifting closer and Gerald could now see the man’s face was oddly elongated, like someone had squeezed his head in a vice. A ragged gash cut his forehead almost in half as if his fractured skull had pierced the skin while they’d done it and his mouth was agape, a trail of drool spanned from its droop and draining onto his lifejacket, which is to say he posed about as much of a threat to Gerald as a piece of driftwood washed up on the shore.

  Gerald, Gerald called back to him as if it was the most natural thing in the world, saying his own name. Whooer you?

  The man all of the sudden grinned wide and looked over his right shoulder, dusting his knuckles against his life vest as if knowing his name was a feat of great distinction.

  Trent, he said. Whadya doing?

  I was thinking of maybe going for a swim.

  A swim?

  It came out pinched and he shook his head with the alarm of a dog shaking a bee off its ear. Holding his hand out, he then pointed at Gerald with a chastising finger.

  No swimming allowed!

  I must have missed the sign.

  The man’s gape returned for a moment and then he held his hand up again, this time pointing towards the sky and waving his finger like some scientist in a moment of divine inspiration.

  Leeches, he said.

  There’s leeches in the water?

  Leeches, the man repeated. Eeew.

  Thunder rumbled and the man’s eyes grew wide, but it wasn’t the thunder he was worried about.

  Uh, oh, he said. Darlee’s mad.

  The words were barely out of his mouth when a woman’s voice was calling out from behind Gerald: Trent!

  Darlee was stalking up the quad path — a woman in her mid-to late forties with a mess of brown curls and wearing a pair of green capri pants and a flimsy yellow T-shirt through which the warp of an orange sports bra was just visible. She had on pink flip-flops and her one foot was muddied to the ankle, which spoke as much to the integrity of the path as it did to her mood, about the same as a mother’s who’d just caught her son trying to flush his sister’s favourite doll down the toilet. But the woman couldn’t have been Trent’s mother since they looked to be about the same age. She must have been his sister, or perhaps his support worker.

  What the hell do you think you’re doing? she yelled as she came to the shore.

  Fishing, Trent answered, holding up his rod as if there was still some doubt to his enterprise.

  And what did I tell you when I laid down for a nap?

  Trent frowned, trying to think of what she might have meant.

  No fishing, he finally said.

  That’s right, no fishing.

  Too dangerous.

  You’re lucky you didn’t get struck by lightning.

  I’m lucky.

  That’s one word for it. Now quit your foolishness and bring that boat in to shore.

  Trent looked at his feet and then back up again.

  Where’re the oars? Darlee asked.

  Trent pointed towards the stern.

  Back there.

 
You lost the oars?

  They broke.

  Broke my ass. You dropped them and now they’re floating in the middle of the lake.

  Yeah! he exclaimed, his voice swelling with an undeniable pride like such had been his life’s work.

  It hadn’t seemed that the woman had noticed Gerald at all but she now acknowledged him with a plainly exasperated sideways smile in his direction, happy to have someone there to bear witness to her trial.

  He could tell she’d been pretty in her younger years but the sag to her cheeks and the lines spiderwebbed from the corners of her eyes spoke more to the life she’d lived as a woman than to the girl she might once have been. And yet he could still see traces of that girl in the way she smiled, full-faced this time with eyes gently imploring — a coquettish come-hither look, like she, or at least her younger self, was used to getting her way with men.

  You mind giving me a hand?

  * * *

  As Gerald dragged the boat up onto the bank — leaning forward at a steep pitch with its rope slung over one shoulder, his feet slipping, unable to find purchase in the shallow’s murk, his muscles taut against the strain and Trent perched in the rear seat, holding on to the gunnels as if for dear life — he caught parcelled glimpses of the woman watching him. It was hard not to intuit a subtle lustfulness in her gaze. Millie had often looked at him the same way when she’d first come to live with him at the farm, or rather after she’d never left the night she’d followed him home from the Legion.

  Gerald had always been startled by the intensity of Millie’s gaze as he went about his day-to-day, whether chopping wood or fixing an eavestrough that had come loose in a storm. And she was never more delirious in her zeal than when they were in bed after they’d both come and she lay beside him, plucking at the meagre hairs on his chest or running her fingers over the trenches turning his stomach to rock-hard dunes, the first time she’d done so giggling as she said, God there’s not an inch of fat on you, is there?

  An odd state of affairs for a man who’d never been with a woman until he was twenty-one that his first would show enough interest in him for a dozen. And here another woman was looking at him with a trace, albeit slight, of the same lustfulness though he was practically a skeleton now, and about the same shade of white.

  He’d taken off only his shoes, sparing himself the look of startled concern that no doubt would have confronted him had he taken off his shirt and she’d seen the thatch of claw marks on his back and the groove of scar tissue indenting his left shoulder from where the bear had taken a bite out of him. While he slipped back into his sneakers the woman helped Trent from the boat and then reached back in, retrieving his rod.

  I’m Darlene, by the way, she said, walking towards Gerald with Trent in eager pursuit.

  She was reaching out her hand and Gerald offered his. The skin on her palm was moist and cool and reminded him of the pizza dough Millie had sometimes left overnight to set in the fridge.

  He’s Gerald, Trent said before Gerald could answer. Gerald!

  That didn’t even raise a tic in her appreciative smile.

  Pleased to meet you, Gerald.

  Lightning forked and thunder crashed and she threw a nervous glance skywards. She seemed to have forgotten she was holding his hand or was reluctant to release it. Either way, when she turned back she realized her oversight. She jerked her hand from his, smiling shyly and looking at her feet, glancing up at him again without raising her head.

  I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come along.

  Weren’t no bother, Gerald answered. I was planning on going for a swim anyhow.

  The woman nodded.

  You staying at the camp? she then asked.

  Just arrived today.

  Well I sure am glad you did.

  Happy to help.

  Another clap of thunder.

  I ought to be going, Gerald said. He was already turning towards the bush.

  Least I can do is offer you a cup a tea, Darlene said.

  Maybe another time.

  But Trent wasn’t taking no for an answer. He’d pushed himself past Darlene and was wrapping Gerald’s arm within the crook of his own.

  This way, he said, pulling him down the quad path towards the settlement.

  Trent, Darlene protested, you know you’re not allowed to go grabbing people!

  Trent released his hold and his body suddenly went stiff, his arms shaking like they were fixing to fly right off. He let out a cry like a cat with its tail caught in a door and jammed a balled fist into his mouth. He only had three teeth that Gerald could see, the two front ones on the top and one incisor on the bottom. All of them were stained brown and sprouted at odd angles and as he bit down hard on his knuckles it seemed to Gerald one or all of them were about to snap off.

  Oh cut it out, Darlene scolded, not overly concerned by the display. Then turning back to Gerald, seeing the alarm on his face: He always does this when he doesn’t get his way. Glancing back at Trent then: The man’s busy. He’ll visit another day.

  But Trent would not be abated. A dribble of blood was sprouting over his knuckle.

  It’s okay, Gerald said. I’m thinking maybe a cup of tea wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all.

  28

  The quad tracks brought them back to the camp, only a few paces from where Gerald had left it.

  It wasn’t dark yet but it was getting there. Lights shone through the windows of all the RVs in sight. The blue spruce were lit up too with strands of multicoloured Christmas lights and there were solar-powered torches stuck in the ground delineating the paths criss-crossing the camp.

  The first pricks of rain were needling at the bald spot at the back of Gerald’s head as Trent pulled him in a near-frantic pace past the hospital tent, Gerald craning his neck backwards and again feeling a hot flush of shame, wondering if Clayton was still in there or if the cop really had locked him up. Trent was then dragging him right, guiding him along a narrow causeway between the outer row of RVs and school buses converted into domiciles and the city of mostly identical blue tents crowding the interior. Deep in the heart of the camp now, he felt little of the wonder he had when he’d first seen it from the back of the truck. It no longer looked so much like a festival than what it truly was: a refugee camp filled with an anomalous blend of suburbanites playing at vacation and a host of down-and-outers clinging to the last few crumbs that had fallen their way.

  Most of the RVs and motorhomes were seemingly bursting at the seams with a variety of household goods spilling onto whatever meagre yard they’d been able to claim as their own and now tarped off against the rain. The tents too seemed to be overflowing, but with garbage. Bags of it were dumped in haphazard piles between the rows, and discarded chip bags and steak wrappers, sheets of cellophane and other such detritus flitted about in sudden gusts or were plastered against the blue canvas, held there at the wind’s mercy.

  Plenty of dogs were about — some nosing at the refuse and others tied to metal stakes and a few seeking refuge in the cubbies beneath the trailers — but most of the people had fled inside. There were only a few still about, all of them making last-minute preparations in advance of the storm — an old couple tying an orange tarp over their tent and a burly, bearded man using the same to cover up his quad, a young girl hefting a folding dollhouse as big as a suitcase towards the metal retractable steps of her parents’ thirty-five-foot trailer, her mother at the door urging, Hurry up, it’s startin’ to rain!

  They were nearing the far side of the camp and still Trent was pulling him onwards. Darlene, a few paces ahead, had come to the line of RVs separating the field from the swamp on its eastern side.

  We’re just down here, she called out above the wind’s bluster, pointing to the right, towards the tracks. She turned around to hurry off but stopped mid-stride, apparently seeing something happening a littl
e further on. When Trent had pulled Gerald astride, he had no such reservations and was tugging at the other’s arm with renewed vigour, Gerald pulling back, slackening his pace, as alarmed as Darlene by what he saw.

  There was a young man with dirty-blond, shoulder-length dreadlocks standing in the middle of the path, twenty paces hence. He was naked save for a pair of grey boxer briefs and was carving a crude square into his chest’s ghost-white skin with what appeared to be an exacto knife, but it was neither that nor the look of crazed abandon in the young man’s eyes that had stopped Gerald short. It was the cop standing with his back to them not ten feet away. He was the same one Gerald had seen before. He had one arm raised and was pointing his sidearm at the dreadlocked man.

  You want a piece of me? The man was peeling the square of flesh from his chest. Ripping it free in a welter of blood, he held the quivering chunk of skin out to the cop. I got a piece of me right here!

  That he was a Euphoral addict in withdrawal there could be no doubt. One of the early signs was self-injury. Gerald’d had to clean up after enough of them at the prison to know that. There was a crowd of maybe a dozen people who’d come out to see the show and at least one of them must have known what was likely to happen next.

  You better thoot him there copper, he was shouting in a lisping drawl, you know what’th good for you!