Black Feathers

by Robert J. Wiersema

  “Hey, Cassie,” Constable Harrison said, leaning slightly forward. “Are you all right? I know this can’t be easy.”

  “I’m all right,” she lied.

  “Good,” Harrison said. “We’ve only got a couple more questions, then we’ll be done, all right?”

  Cassie nodded and tried to focus on Harrison. “I’ll try.”

  “Good.” He smiled. “Now, did you have any conversations with”—he looked down at his notebook—“Sarah over the last couple of days?”

  “One or two.”

  “Did she seem upset to you?”

  I knew it was you.

  “Did you have any indication that she might be planning to hurt herself, or do something like this?”

  The words didn’t make any sense. “Hurt herself?”

  Harrison glanced at his partner. “Yes,” he said slowly. “I thought someone would have told you.”

  “She did this to herself?”

  He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. Someone should have told you.” Another glance at his partner. “It’s too early to be one hundred per cent certain, but, yeah, it looks like your friend …”

  “So it wasn’t the killer? The one from the newspaper?” She tried to picture it: Sarah standing beside the fountain, pressing the knife into her own throat, falling backward into the fountain as the blood gushed out.

  It didn’t make sense.

  Not when she could remember the weight of the knife in her hand so clearly.

  Harrison shook his head. “No, there’s nothing to suggest there’s any connection to that investigation.”

  “I think that’s what she was afraid of,” Cassie said falteringly.

  “The murders?”

  Cassie nodded. “She came up to me yesterday.” The constable clicked his pen and started to write. “I was near the courthouse, and I had a newspaper, and she saw … She got really upset.” Cassie remembered the way she had hurried away, the sound of her voice in the blowing snow.

  “Did she say why she was upset? Was there something in particular?”

  Cassie took a deep breath. “She said, ‘It’s happening here now.’ Or something like that.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Farrow asked, and Harrison shot her a look.

  “You’re sure she was talking about the murders?”

  Cassie hesitated. “I don’t know.”

  Harrison made a note as Cassie tried to remember the exact details of the conversation. “She seemed to have some problems. Mentally …” Her voice trailed off.

  Harrison nodded and made another note in his book. “Can you think of anything else?”

  In the square one of the paramedics zipped up the black vinyl bag on the stretcher.

  Cassie turned away, tried to think of anything she might have forgotten. “I don’t think so. She didn’t really—” She stopped herself from saying that Sarah hadn’t made a whole lot of sense. “She didn’t say a lot.”

  “Okay,” Harrison said, as he closed his notebook. “We’ll—”

  “She was from Edmonton,” Cassie said quickly, remembering. “Sarah from Edmonton.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Everything helps. We want to try to find her family.”

  He stopped as the stretcher rolled past them, its wheels echoing off the concrete. Cassie stared at the heavy black bag, watched as the paramedics rolled the stretcher into the back of the ambulance on the other side of the breezeway, where the Outreach van usually parked. There was no hurry, no sense of urgency. They took their time, made sure the back door was closed, talking to each other.

  When they pulled out a few minutes later, they didn’t turn their sirens on. The ambulance blended into the early-morning traffic.

  She didn’t know what to do.

  After the ambulance pulled away, it was only the police left, wandering through the breezeway, measuring and photographing the square. The light was hard and cold, especially compared with the warmth of the camp the night before.

  Across the breezeway, Brother Paul looked toward her and started to approach. She shook her head. Hefting her backpack onto her shoulder, she walked away from the camp as quickly as she could without breaking into a run.

  Skylark had run off as soon as Brother Paul had left to call the police; she had no idea how to find her, no idea where to even start looking.

  Cassie ended up at the courthouse because there was nowhere else for her to go. She settled into her spot after grabbing a discarded newspaper from the top of the garbage can.

  She didn’t read it, just stared at the front page for a long time. The headline was something about the camp, but she couldn’t even focus on it, let alone read.

  She spent a long time looking at her hands. Her right hand in particular.

  The hand that had held the knife.

  She could still feel it: the thickness of the hilt, how cold it had been at first, the way it had warmed in her grip.

  The way it had felt skating across Sarah’s throat, leaving the deep red gash behind. The gristly, grinding resistance as she had twisted it …

  She turned her hand, watching it in the stark light.

  “You don’t have your hat out.”

  She jumped at the sound of the voice, glanced up.

  A man was towering above her, the wind blowing his overcoat around his brown suit, tossing his sandy hair.

  His clothes, his smile seemed familiar. “What?”

  He lifted his hand; he was pinching several coins between his thumb and forefinger. “I was going to make a contribution, but you don’t have your hat out.” His tone was light, friendly.

  “Oh, sorry.” She fumbled for her backpack.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, crouching slightly to her eye level, his face tightening with concern.

  Cassie recognized him then: the man who had dropped the toonie in her hat the day before.

  “Hello?”

  She shook her head. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m okay.”

  “Okay,” he said. But he didn’t move. He obviously didn’t believe her.

  “I’m Cliff,” he said. “Cliff Wolcott.”

  He extended his hand into the silence between them.

  Cassie took it carefully, shook it. “Dorothy,” she said.

  Releasing her hand, he rose to his feet. “Listen,” he said. “I was going to just …” He lifted his hand again, still holding the coins. “But I was on my way for coffee. Can I bring you anything? Are you hungry?”

  Her stomach growled at the question, but she shook her head. “No, that’s all right.”

  “I can bring you a coffee.”

  She smiled. “That’s all right,” she said. “I’m okay.”

  He nodded, mostly to himself. “I’ll bring you something. It’s no big deal.”

  She started to protest again, but he said, “I’ll be right back.”

  As he hurried along the sidewalk, her heart jumped in her chest: Skylark waved from the other side of the street and jaywalked toward her, smiling.

  “Can I—” She gestured at the ground next to Cassie. “Just for a minute?”

  Skylark folded herself onto the pavement, shifting a little to be sure she was settled just right.

  “Pretty quiet out here,” she said, looking both ways along the sidewalk as she adjusted her knapsack beside her.

  “I think I missed the morning rush.” Cassie’s breath misted in the air. She folded the newspaper and placed her hat on the concrete.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Skylark said. “About taking off.”

  Cassie shrugged. “I know. The police.”

  “Was it awful?”

  “It was fine. They were fine.” Better than the last time. “They just wanted to know if I knew anything.”

  “Do you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Skylark looked at her, then shouldered her gently. “That was supposed to be a joke.”

  “Oh.” She didn’t really get it. Or maybe she wasn�
��t in the mood for joking.

  “Sorry,” Skylark said, as if suddenly remembering the seriousness of what they were talking about. “So, do they have any leads? Do they think it was the same guy?”

  At first, she couldn’t understand what Skylark was asking. “Oh. No.” She shook her head. “They think she killed herself.”

  “What?” Skylark’s voice rose.

  “That’s what I said. But the knife was in her hand,” Cassie said, as if that explained everything. “They asked me if she had seemed upset.”

  “And what did you tell them?” There was something brittle about her tone, defensive.

  “I said that she had, yeah.”

  “Why would you tell them that?” Skylark snapped.

  “Because she was,” Cassie snapped back.

  “How would you—”

  “Because she sat right there, right where you’re sitting. Yesterday. And she was upset.”

  Skylark’s eyes widened.

  “About what?” Curious now. Not confrontational.

  “About the murders.” Cassie shook her head to shake off the memory. “I think. I don’t know. She was totally freaked out.”

  “About what?”

  It’s happening here now.

  Cassie told Skylark about the conversation the day before and the way the woman had rushed off, talking to herself, waving her arms.

  “And did you notice her last night?”

  Skylark looked down at the ground.

  “She was sitting there all night long, all wrapped up. Not moving. Staring.”

  Staring at me, Cassie thought, but she kept that to herself.

  Skylark nodded. “Yeah. Sarah had some problems.” She blew out a deep, fog-silver breath. “I talked to her a few times. I think she’d been institutionalized …” At the thought of the hospital, Cassie looked down at the ground, willing her face not to give anything away.

  Two toonies fell into her hat. She glanced up in time to see Cliff Wolcott speeding up again as he passed. He had a cardboard tray with four coffee cups stuck in it, and she thought he was going to stop, but he kept walking.

  “Anyway, that’s what I told the police. Is that all right?” Unable to keep the hurt from her voice.

  Skylark looked away. “Yeah.” She nodded. “Yeah, I’m sorry. I overreacted. I get nervous when it comes to the police, and I—”

  “I just told them about talking to her. I didn’t really have anything else to tell them.”

  “They just make shit up anyhow.”

  Cassie had to bite back the questions on her lips. Instead, she gestured toward the courthouse. “Speaking of,” she said.

  “Yeah.” Resting one hand on her knapsack, Skylark rose smoothly to her feet. “Are you going to be okay here?”

  Cassie glanced up and down the block, nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Okay.” She lifted the knapsack onto her shoulder. “I’ll swing by in a bit, all right? Maybe we can figure out something to eat.”

  The crash was brutal.

  The wanting, the hunger, had so filled him it was like he was high. In the van, on the beach, he knew he could do anything.

  And he did.

  After, lying in bed next to Alice, he had vibrated, every muscle tingling, every neuron firing. When he closed his eyes, the insides of his eyelids exploded with light and colour.

  He had lain in bed for hours savouring the sensations, unable to keep himself from smiling. He didn’t need to sleep; he could do anything.

  But sometime later, sometime the next day, the crash came. He was sitting at his desk, and the exhaustion hit him, all at once. Every muscle gave out and cried in pain. His head fogged, and he couldn’t hold a thought. More than exhaustion; it felt like a complete collapse.

  He trudged through the rest of his day like a walking shell, listening to the hum of his computer, counting down the minutes until he could go home.

  But there was no respite. With the kids, Alice, there wasn’t time to draw a breath, let alone a few moments to rest. He still thought of it as a sanctuary, but in truth home was just another job, just another series of tasks he had to complete, another block of time to count down through.

  Sleep, when it came, didn’t help.

  The only thing that burned through the fog, that woke him up, was the hunger.

  It was only with that yearning in his veins that he felt alive.

  Everything was different in the camp that night.

  At first, it seemed like no one was going to be there at all. Skylark and Cassie arrived at City Hall shortly after nightfall: the Outreach van was already parked out front, the table set up with its pot of soup and basket of bread, but there was no lineup, no crowd, and the Outreach workers were looking at one another uneasily, shifting from foot to foot in the cold.

  People started to arrive after a while, slipping warily out of the dark, but it wasn’t the same as previous nights.

  “People are scared,” Skylark said, finishing off her soup.

  They were sitting on the bench in front of City Hall, watching people creep up to the table, get their soup, then retreat into the dark.

  “But Sarah—”

  “They don’t know that she killed herself. They just know that something happened and they had to split before the police came. A lot of people, they won’t come back.”

  Skylark was right: the circle that night was the smallest that Cassie had seen, half the size of the night before.

  When Brother Paul stepped into the circle, there was something different about him too. He seemed smaller, somehow, but tensed, like he was trying to hold something in.

  When he started to speak, his voice was stronger than Cassie had ever heard it.

  He didn’t say anything about himself or invite people to introduce themselves.

  The air crackled when he said Sarah’s name.

  “Sarah had only been a part of this community for a short time.” He paced slowly in the middle of the circle. “She kept mostly to herself.” He was twisting his hands together. “I know that she had a hard life. I know that she was struggling. That she was haunted. But I never expected this.”

  He stopped and took a long, slow look at everyone in the circle, turning in place to look at every face.

  “Something terrible happened here last night,” he said. “We lost one of our own.”

  A low buzz of voices rose from the circle.

  “Sarah killed herself this morning, just before dawn.”

  The voices changed, the tone suddenly questioning, defiant.

  Brother Paul raised one hand. “I have spoken to the police,” he said. “At length. They say there is no question that Sarah took her own life, in a most terrible fashion.” He shook his head at the distant, half-formed questions. “But it was not her hand that held the knife.”

  Cassie flinched and glanced toward Skylark, hoping that she hadn’t noticed.

  “Every person who saw her struggling, who walked by instead of lending a kindly hand, they’re the ones who killed her. How many more of us have to die before people see us as anything more than animals, more than their dirty little secret?” He raised his head. “I should have done more. I should have seen that Sarah’s struggles had started to take her from us. But at least I tried. At least we tried. Society didn’t try. Society treated her like trash. Her family, her community, threw her away. Just like they threw all of us away.” He stopped and turned, looking around the circle again. “And now they’re using her death against us.” The whole circle seemed to gasp. “When I spoke to the police this morning, they told me that we would have to move on. That if I didn’t disband this camp, if I didn’t tear this community apart, I would be arrested. We would all be arrested.”

  A murmur of voices and a flurry of exchanged glances.

  “But this is our land,” he almost shouted. “This is our home. This is our community. And no one is going to take that away from us.” Someone shouted in agreement. “We will not hide anymore. We will not sli
nk into the shadows so we don’t offend their delicate sensibilities. We will stand,” he said. “We will fight. All of us. Together.” He took a long, slow blink. “And we will do it for Sarah. And for every victim of brutality and neglect. In their names. In their names. Blessed be.”

  And with that, he stepped out of the circle, into the shadows of the square, leaving everyone silent, watching him as he disappeared into the darkness.

  When Cassie looked at Skylark, she was crying.

  He couldn’t tear his eyes from the two girls. Even in their sadness, they shone and burned. Brighter, it seemed, but perhaps that was because of the dimness around them: the whole ridiculous little encampment shrouded in grey, shadows moving wraithlike through the mist.

  There was a beauty to that sadness, a bittersweet flavour he could almost taste.

  He knew that no matter how strongly Skylark shone, how brightly Dorothy burned, they could not escape the sadness they were bathing in. It would seep into their pores, work its way into their flesh.

  He imagined how their hearts would taste, brined in sadness, but still sweet, still tender.

  The thought made him ache.

  A black shadow fell from the sky, a crow alighting on the bicycle rack next to where he stood.

  Their eyes met, glistening in the dark.

  “You wanna get high?”

  Cassie didn’t know if it was Frank or Joe who called out the question as she and Skylark crossed the square. Bob was silent, occupied with a tiny glass pipe and a lighter that arced with a rich blue flame.

  “No thanks,” Skylark said. “We’re taken care of.”

  The boys smirked at them, but it was the truth. They had spent the time since Brother Paul’s speech sitting on the rooftop level of the parkade, looking out over Chinatown. They hadn’t said much of anything, just silently passed Skylark’s joint hand to hand.

  The boys were standing near the bench close to the door to the parkade. Had they chosen that spot deliberately? Cassie wondered.

  “You’re such snobs,” Bob said slowly, blowing out a cloud of rank, chemically smoke. There was something strange about his voice, though: it wasn’t bitter or threatening. His words almost made it seem like he was joking around.

  “We had other plans,” Skylark said, in the same light tone of voice.