The Secret Life of Owen Skye

by Alan Cumyn

  At a quarter after two Margaret took Lorraine downstairs into another room to wait in private. She told Owen to stay with Sadie by the big doors and keep an eye out for Lorne.

  At twenty minutes after two Horace stood in front of the guests and announced that the groom had been delayed and would everyone please be calm for a few more minutes. But Horace himself didn’t look calm. He was red-faced and twitchy and sweat was soaking through his suit. Even after he stopped talking, his mouth continued silently opening and closing, as if gasping for air.

  “Your father looks like a fish,” Sadie said. “And your uncle is ruining my mother’s life!”

  “Fish!” Owen said, and looked at her. Then he said, “Your mother is marrying my uncle.”

  “It doesn’t look like it,” Sadie said.

  Suddenly Owen wriggled free from Sadie’s grasp and ran out of the church. She started after him but he didn’t care. He just kept running faster and faster and soon he couldn’t hear her calling after him anymore. He felt like his feet were bleeding inside his shoes. But he couldn’t stop, couldn’t rest until he got to the sweet spot by the river. He wasn’t even sure he could remember the route but his feet seemed to know, and in awhile he was there. His lungs felt ripped with the effort and his feet were past pain.

  Lorne was sitting on the big low willow branch with his bare feet in the water. His shiny new wedding shoes were on the bank beside him.

  “Uncle Lorne!” Owen yelled.

  Lorne looked at him as if he were an interesting bird squawking by the road.

  “What are you doing?” Owen asked.

  Lorne said, “I’m trying to get my feet down to the right size. But the water doesn’t seem to be cold enough.”

  Owen wrestled off his own wretched shoes, pulled up his trouser legs and waded in close to where Lorne’s feet were dangling. The water felt pretty cold to him. His own feet were in bad shape and the soft mud gave some relief.

  “Uncle Lorne, you need to get to the church!” Owen said. “Right away!”

  But Lorne stayed still, looking down into the water muddied by Owen’s impatient feet.

  “Think of the fish, Uncle Lorne,” Owen said. “Hearts are like fish!”

  It was as if Lorne woke up from a bad dream. He looked at his watch, clambered off the willow branch and took off down the road, leaving his shoes behind. Owen struggled out of the water and chased after him. There was a grassy section beside the road that was fine to run on in bare feet. Owen found he could run better if he fought his tie loose and undid his jacket. He pumped his arms and fixed his eyes on Uncle Lorne’s dark back. His uncle was awkward and lumbering but surprisingly fast.

  They ran into the church like two barefoot warriors. Lorne was mud-splattered, drenched in sweat, his eyes wild. He said to Horace, “Has she gone yet?” and Horace calmed him down and ushered him to the front of the church.

  Poor Sadie had been crying. Owen grabbed her hand and when the music started to play he said, “I can’t marry you.”

  “Why not?” she asked. They were walking down the aisle now and everyone was looking at them. Her eyes were puffy and wet.

  “I can’t,” he whispered. He felt her gripping his hand as if she was never going to let it go.

  They were near the front now and Owen could see the minister looking at them. Lorne — barefoot, huffing like a boiler — was gazing over their heads at his bride coming down the aisle.

  “We’re going to be cousins now,” Owen said. “And cousins can’t marry. Everyone knows.” He tried to keep his voice gentle. He didn’t say anything about the Bog Man’s wife being blind, or children of cousins maybe having two heads.

  They got to the front and Owen stepped to the right to stand beside Lorne and his father. Sadie went to the left to wait for her mom. And all through the ceremony she looked across at him, and he looked at her. He kept his eyes as kind as he could make them, and imagined himself looking into a deep, clear pool.

  Death’s Pocket

  ONE DAY THAT summer the boys were racing through the woods hunting dinosaurs. Their chief weapons were arrows they had made by stripping the leaves off ferns. The bows were made of alder stalks and kitchen string, and the dinosaurs were terrible but shy beasts, so the boys had to be quiet.

  They were creeping in single file, concentrating terrifically, when they got to the clearing by the railroad tracks and saw the crowds. There were black-and-white police cars with their red lights flashing, sirens turned off, and yellow pickets up to keep people away. Andy said the pickets weren’t really meant for kids so the three of them slipped through and looked down the tracks.

  Owen saw a piece of twisted metal, smaller than a car but bigger than a go-kart. There were policemen in blue uniforms and black hats, and railway workers in greasy train suits, and other men in shirtsleeves and sunglasses.

  It was a bright, hot, electric day. Owen couldn’t see any train, just the destruction it had left. There was an eerie silence, and the air had a strange taste to it, like something burned in a pan in the morning before you’re really awake.

  Everyone was talking about what had happened. A man had been on the train tracks with his son on a push-cart, pumping the lever up and down to make the cart go. It was a clear day and sunny but somehow when the train came along there wasn’t enough time to get out of the way. Maybe it was because the collision took place so close to the curve in the tracks. Maybe the man looked down at his son at the wrong time. Or maybe the son was pumping on one side of the lever and the father on the other, with his back to the on-coming train.

  People wondered why they didn’t hear the train coming, but Owen knew from the winter how fast those trains came at you. One moment you could be standing on the tracks looking across the bridge. The next moment you were scrambling down the bank and the train was almost on top of you.

  The father had just had enough time to grab his son and throw him off the cart before the train ran him over. Owen looked at the mangled cart. There was no trace left of the man.

  Owen had seen people die before on television. Mostly it happened like this. A bad guy would get shot in the heart by the good guy and he’d roll off the cliff and fall a thousand feet into the ocean. Or else the burning building would collapse on both the good guy and the bad guy, but the good guy would manage to roll out from under the flames while the bad guy got his foot caught and screamed while he died.

  But this was a different kind of dying. There was that bad taste in the air and the twisted wreckage and so much nothing to look at. The nothing where the train used to be but wasn’t anymore, the hole in the bushes where the boy was thrown to safety, the mangled space where the man’s body had been.

  If the father had time to throw his boy off to safety, Owen wondered, why didn’t he have time to gather the boy up and jump with him? Wouldn’t the two take about the same time? Why not save yourself as well as your son?

  In a few hours all the people were gone, and then in a few days there was nothing left of the accident except one yellow picket that the police had left behind. The wreckage itself was taken away but the strange burning smell remained.

  It felt weird to stand by the tracks and look down at where the wreckage had been and see only a big hole in the bushes and smell that smell. Owen found it hard not to imagine himself flying through the air, watching the train smash the cart and the father and then landing hard in the scratchy bushes with the gravel underneath, the train blasting its horn and the wheels screeching on the rails and the father crying out.

  The boys spent many hours that summer staring at a comic book advertisement for a personal submarine. It was made of Styrofoam and dove to a depth of ten feet and could be used for espionage and national defence. It cost $69.95 and came in the mail, but you had to send the money first.

  Owen and his brothers tried to figure out how to build one themselves. They had a steel
tube and two pocket mirrors that they might be able to make into a periscope. They also had a bicycle chain, pedal set and plastic fan to provide propulsion, and several diagrams of the hull. But they had no Styrofoam, and no idea where to get hold of such a specialized defence material.

  “We could try using wooden planks and fill in the cracks with cloth,” Leonard suggested. But Andy said the cloth would only keep out the water for a little while, and then it would come pouring in, sinking the sub to the bottom of the river.

  Andy wanted to use the submarine to scan the river bottom for giant squids. These squids had been known to swallow ocean liners whole. Owen wasn’t sure he would want to come across a giant squid, but Andy said that with the special Styrofoam submarine they’d be able to outrun any squids they came across, so would be in no danger.

  “That’s why we have to raise some money,” Andy said.

  But the boys didn’t know where to start. Margaret set them up with a lemonade stand in front of the house, but hardly anybody came down the road, and the boys drank most of the lemonade themselves without paying for it. Then Andy signed them all up to do extra chores for money. Leonard set the table every night for dinner, and Andy cleaned out the garage and cut the lawn three times in one day, and raked the gravel on the driveway. Owen swept all the way up the stairs and then down again, and tidied the boys’ room so that they could hardly find anything, and scrubbed the bathtub until his fingers hurt.

  At the end of a week they pooled their money together and found they’d raised 78 cents toward the submarine.

  “How much is left?” Leonard asked.

  “Sixty-nine dollars and seventeen cents,” said Andy. He figured at that rate they’d have enough money for the submarine by the time they were grandparents.

  The boys decided to sell their comic book collection. They had nearly one hundred issues, and many still had covers. They set up a table at the crossroads near the highway and offered them for five cents each, except for the special double issue in which Captain Volatile battled Temptress Serpina for the soul of the universe. That one was Andy’s, and he really didn’t want to sell it. But he had brought it along in case a wealthy collector arrived.

  Nobody came by until late in the afternoon. It was a little boy in a red baseball cap smacking bubblegum. He leaned on his bicycle and flipped through the enormous pile saying, “Got it, got it, seen it, got it, seen it, read it, got it.” Finally he stopped at the double issue of Captain Volatile.

  “How much for this one?”

  “Not for sale,” Andy said, reaching for it.

  “It’s in the pile,” the boy said, holding it away from Andy.

  “Just give it back,” Andy said.

  The boy held it like he might want to tear it in half.

  “You don’t have enough money to buy that one,” Andy said. “Captain Volatile only lasted five issues. This is a collector’s edition.”

  “I can give you twelve cents,” the boy said.

  “It cost twenty new!”

  “And now it’s old.” The boy didn’t look like he was going to give it back.

  “If you want to buy it it’s going to cost you sixty-nine dollars!” Andy said. “I don’t think you’ve got that kind of money.”

  “I don’t think you’ve got that kind of comic book!” the kid said, and before any of them could move, he jumped on his bike and rode away, the double issue rolled and stuffed in his back pocket.

  The brothers Skye chased him. Leonard and Owen couldn’t keep up for very long, but Andy was a strong runner and madder than a hornet. The boy rode all the way into the village and Andy followed him to his front door, which he pounded on with his fist, even while he was gasping for breath. Owen saw it all from a distance.

  The kid came to the door, looked at Andy, then ran back in the house to get his older brother, who had big hands and an ugly smile.

  “This is the guy who tried to steal my bicycle!” the kid screamed.

  “That’s not true,” Andy said, his lungs heaving. “You took my comic book!”

  The kid’s big brother was joined by an even bigger brother, and the two of them pushed Andy against a hedge on the side of the yard. He got punched in the stomach and the nose and bled onto the biggest boy’s shoes. For that he got his arm twisted and was sent stumbling to the ground.

  Owen wanted to fling himself onto those bullies, no matter how much it would hurt. But he was too late getting there. He and Leonard helped Andy limp home.

  “Why didn’t you give him the old one-two?” Horace asked when Andy had explained what had happened. Margaret wiped Andy’s face and made worried noises. Horace made one-two motions with his hands.

  With the old one-two you punch first with one hand, then with the other. If you do it right, like Horace, no one can defeat you. Joe Louis used it and Jack Dempsey and Sonny Liston, and all it took was practice and timing.

  In the yard Horace put big mitts on his hands and held them out so that all the boys could practice the one-two. Andy was the best at it. He could slam his fists into Horace’s hands — whack! whack! — and make you want to turn the other way and run rather than get caught in the path of such fury.

  “What are you doing to those children?” Margaret asked when she came out.

  “I’m teaching my sons to defend themselves,” Horace said. “Do you want them to spend their whole lives smelling flowers?”

  “It would be nice if they had a nose left anyway,” she said.

  After dinner the boys went back to the house in the village. It was hard not to worry. On the way, though, Andy kept practicing the one-two. They got to the door of the house and Andy knocked as loud as he could, with his brothers beside him for support.

  The father answered. He was a nasty-looking man with a bent nose and deep black eyebrows.

  “Good evening, sir, excuse me, sir, hello!” Andy said nervously. “I just wanted to report to you, sir, that one of your sons, today, this afternoon, sir, stole a valuable comic book from me. And that, also, sir, two other of your sons pushed me into your hedge and punched me in the stomach, sir, and made my nose bleed.”

  Andy tried to look the father in the eye, but the father was getting so angry that his fists clenched and unclenched, and his lips twitched in a menacing way.

  “Jeff!” the father yelled, and then the little boy appeared. He had the Captain Volatile double issue in his hand and seemed surprised that Andy would come back for more punishment. “This kid says you stole his comic book. Is that true?”

  “No way!” Jeff started to say, but the father snatched the double issue from his hand and whacked him over the head with it, cracking the spine of the book, which he then handed over to Andy.

  “Say you’re sorry!” the father commanded. A tiny apology came out of the little boy’s mouth.

  On the way home the brothers Skye were jubilant, until they looked back and saw three bicycles heading their way, black silhouettes in the dusk. Andy led his brothers into the woods, which they knew better than anybody alive.

  The ugly brothers on the bicycles couldn’t figure out where they’d gone. The boys listened to them crashing around, their bicycles too clumsy for the narrow pathways, sticks poking into their spokes, roots knocking them off. It was hard not to laugh. The bullies were having such a hard time, while Owen and his brothers were creeping like wolves, keeping their heads low.

  They circled back and watched the bullies wandering around lost. Then they headed off in the other direction. Andy had his comic book back. There was no sense fighting if they didn’t have to.

  The only problem with going through the woods was that they had to cross the railway tracks on their way back home, right at the spot where the accident had happened. It was one thing to smell that burning electric air by daylight, and yet another to have to pass by at night. The hole in the bush where the boy had landed wa
s black now, the murderous tracks glinted silver in the moonlight, and the one remaining yellow picket leaned drunkenly back against a tree.

  Owen felt a lump come to his throat, just thinking of what had happened here.

  “I can’t cross those tracks!” Leonard said in a shaky voice.

  “You crossed them on the way into the village,” Andy said. But that was different and they all knew it. Anybody could cross the railroad tracks on the main road in the sunlight. But now it was night, and this was the spot where someone had died.

  Andy said, “You close your eyes and I’ll carry you across, okay?”

  “No!” Leonard screamed, and both his brothers said, “Shhh!” because those big kids were still in the woods somewhere.

  “This is just two steps — one-two!” Andy said urgently. “And then we’re home free.”

  “I can’t,” Leonard squeaked, and he folded down to the ground, hugging his knees.

  Owen walked across the tracks and up the path. “Look, Leonard, it’s easy. This isn’t like crossing the railway bridge.”

  “Just two steps!” Andy said, and he stepped across the tracks himself. “Come on!”

  But Leonard wouldn’t move. He wouldn’t even look up from where he was huddling in the shadows.

  “We’re going without you!” Andy called, and he and Owen turned together up the path.

  They had almost disappeared beyond the bend in the path when they heard Leonard’s scream. It gave Owen a sickening feeling, like what that father must have felt when he turned to see — too late! — the train almost upon them.

  But this was no train. It was the big kids, who had found Leonard, and it was Owen and Andy’s fault because they’d left him alone.