The Mercy Journals

by Claudia Casper

  She came in from the kitchen where I could smell one of her soups cooking, drying her hands on a tea towel Mom had embroidered during one of her crafty periods. I picked out the opening notes for “Come as You Are.”

  I used to think our parents called this place after the band, I said.

  What did they call it after? Parker asked.

  While the band used the name ironically, I imagine, my mother was full-on serious. She never lost the hippie side of herself, even when she married a guy in the military.

  It’s an Indian word for heaven, I said. Freedom from suffering and desire.

  Griffin said, I always felt happy here. At home. I miss Gran. He glanced at Leo.

  I remember the feeling of endless time, I said, and feeling free. Too free maybe. Remember, Leo, when we bought weed from that guy at the cove and we took the boat out with the wakeboard you made in woodshop and it completely came apart? You almost drowned we were laughing so hard.

  Remember when the drug squad ’copter buzzed real low over Waterstone’s and we waited for an hour, then went to check it out and the cops had loaded up all the plants from the bust in the back of their van and left the doors wide open? We pulled up, Leo said to Parker and Griffin, and I don’t know where the cops were but they weren’t there. We stuffed as much as we could into Mom’s hatchback and took off. Then we heard the helicopter following us and we freaked. Luckily, Allen remembered the big maple tree at Hasek’s so we tore in under the canopy, unloaded everything, brushed out all the leaves and twigs with a T-shirt, I think, and took off back down the highway. We drove for half an hour until the ’copter veered away. They pulled us over later, but they had no proof.

  Yeah, I smiled. I definitely remember that.

  That little prank started me on the road to success. And you, Leo sneered happily at me, wanted to give it all away.

  I noodled away at a few chords. I’d forgotten I was partly to blame for your life of crime. I laughed. Where was my cut then? Did I ever get anything?

  A lifetime’s supply of free dope as I recall, risk-free.

  Leo looked out the window at the old rope swing strung between two firs. I wonder if we could grow any now, he said. Did I stash any seeds? Goldilocks, you seen any plants that looked like weed growing out there? Do you even know what they look like? She shook her head. Bro, let’s check it out tomorrow. The clearing in the scrotum. Maybe there’s something. Maybe I can even find my old bong. That would be the ticket, eh?

  Parker is five or six months’ pregnant. It can be harder to tell in taller women. She seems happy to have company, though the three-guys-one-woman dynamic is not ideal. Griffin seems definitely interested, helping her work in the garden, helping her cook, doing the clean-up. Leo also seems interested. His focus intensifies when she’s in the room.

  Yesterday I was looking through Mom’s bookshelf in the living room before dinner and heard Parker in the hallway. Not so fast, monsieur.

  Time is short, madam, Leo said, his voice thick and low.

  Not for me it isn’t, she said.

  She walked toward the kitchen. Leo waited a couple of seconds then followed at a trot. On the scent. Then at dinner tonight Leo came into the kitchen transformed. He’d cut his hair to an inch long around his head and trimmed his beard close to his face. The removal of so much gray hair had a startling effect. First off, he looks more sane, though his blue eyes are still too intense. Second, he looks younger, almost a generation younger, granddad to silverback, and he looks handsome, I suppose, compact, experienced, fit, hyper-alert. Griffin’s soft-hued, quietly perceptive blue eyes, clear skin, and mop of reddish-brown curls probably look boyish in comparison.

  We were already sitting at the table when Leo came in. He raised his hand in a flourish toward Parker and said, Hey there, Lady Madonna, looking beautiful!

  Parker laughed in that practiced way women seem to develop, acknowledging a compliment without giving anything back.

  You’re too kind, she said and snapped the elastic waist of an old pair of men’s track pants. If you can say that while I’m wearing these. You guys are going to be seeing a lot of these track pants until bébé comes.

  They never looked better! And I like your hair like that.

  Parker bugged her eyes out at Leo. Her hair was a tangled mess.

  Hey, Leo turned his hands palm upward, I like the wild look.

  As a man looking at another guy’s efforts at seduction, it’s always hard to see how women ever say yes. They must perceive something we don’t, like a dog whistle; there must be a frequency, undetectable to the male of the species, that we somehow nonetheless generate. Leo actually seemed to be making headway.

  Griffin must have been thinking similar thoughts.

  Could you get any cornier? he asked.

  Parker looked at Griffin and he looked down at his cup and swirled his tea leaves into a whirlpool. His shoulders were hunched. He glanced up at her, ignoring his stepfather, then put his cup down and left.

  I could almost see the calculations going on in the back of Parker’s mind for her baby, herself, the dangers over the next few years, what she was going to need, and I could see her body starting to respond.

  That was one of the things I’d loved about Ruby. Our connection had nothing to do with survival, with numbers or calculation.

  Last night Griffin went to the well for water and rushed back in. Three shooting stars. We ran out and saw four streak across the sky, two short ones, a long bright arc, and a faint one low on the horizon. It’s been a long time since I looked at a night sky with no clouds. The big dipper was there and the Milky Way, and it seemed strange that the sky hadn’t changed while everything down here on earth had.

  Our necks got tired so we lay on the ground and called them out to each other, oohing and ahhing at the more spectacular ones. Parker said she felt the baby doing somersaults and flips. It was one of those rare occasions when four people feel more or less the same way—happy and lucky.

  We got cold on the ground. Griffin had the idea to pull our mattresses and blankets outside. I suggested we lay a tarp underneath. Soon we lay side by side, our feet slightly slanted down the slope, getting warm and drowsy, chatting, dropping off one by one.

  I woke several times during the night, my hand or shoulder cold, and saw a wisp of cloud passing in front of the stars or the maple tree in silhouette or another bright chip of white slide down the sky, vanishing, leaving behind millions and billions of stars whose current existence was unknown.

  On one of the occasions that I woke I heard Leo roll over, and I whispered, Hey, bro, you awake?

  Grunt.

  Thanks, I said

  What for?

  Getting me up here.

  Yeah.

  I’m making a bow and arrow and leg snares. Griffin and I went fishing last night in the rowboat with a flashlight. I felt okay. We caught a rock cod. The only thing Leo is doing is cleaning out cupboards.

  Of all of us, including the wreck that is me, Leo is by far the most restless.

  The cougar has rolled me back to the animal world, where survival is not a moral issue. The smell of her fur, the weight of her paw, the warmth of my blood running down my face—some of the fight had already gone out of me. Before Griffin turned around I was getting ready to surrender my soul.

  Last night we sat at the table after a feast of roasted rabbit in a shallow broth with onions, carrots, parsley seeds, and oregano cooked in Mom’s old turkey roasting pan that I found in the shed. The candlelight made everyone’s eyes look bright. We opened the door to the wood burning stove and basked in the heat and orange light.

  Ahh, Leo said. Life on the big dick as we used to say, back in the day.

  We’ve already got our regular places at the table. Parker sits beside Griffin near the door. Leo sits across from Parker with his back to the sink and I’m beside Leo across from Griffin. Parker eats with her elbows on the table, usually holding her head up with one hand. She keeps her chair back
a few centimetres from the table and her feet on the floor. When she’s finished she pushes her chair back farther, lays one foot on the knee of her other leg, and leans back.

  Griffin eats in a careful, measured way, like a young man who has been taught excellent table manners. I struggle with my injured lip—concentrating on keeping the food in my mouth and not looking gross. Leo is tucked in close to the table so he can reach whatever he wants—the water jug, salt dish, second helpings. You’d never believe we were from the same family, his table manners are so bad. He chews with his mouth open and rolls the food around from one side to the other, snorting and smacking and picking his teeth as he goes. He uses his fingers to eat whenever possible, then licks them clean one at a time, flourishing each one toward whoever cooked the meal, as though his gestures were a compliment. Food attaches itself to his beard and moustache and he leaves it there, it seems, out of spite. I’m tired of handing him a napkin he never uses. His eating style might explain why Parker pushes away from the table as soon as she can.

  Don’t you wish you could eat a good old spicy Spanish sausage? Leo asked the table. He seemed uncharacteristically happy and relaxed. Or chocolate? Or coffee?

  Bubblegum! said Parker.

  We might get coffee again, said the ever-cup-half-full Griffin. The green line to Mexico is almost finished. It’ll cost a few days’ rations, of course—we’ll be able to drink like one cup a month, but eventually prices should come down.

  The crowd in my head turned over in graves they never had. Coffee exports.

  A good bottle of wine, said Leo.

  Driving a motorcycle, said Griffin.

  Hot tubs, Parker said.

  Hockey, added Griffin.

  I miss hopping on a plane and leaving everything behind. Walking out the door of a five-star into tropical heat and a smell like ripe mangos. Beaches full of women in bikinis.

  I didn’t speak. What was I going to say? Beaches? Don’t you wish you could have your old life back? Your wife? Your family? I would have been a downer. I smiled at everyone else’s whimsy.

  This OneWorld crap, Leo reared his chair on its hind legs. I guess it won’t be over in my lifetime.

  I have to give him credit. He has a real instinct for keeping a pleasant conversation rolling along.

  It’s working right now, he said, but it won’t last. It goes against our nature. We’re bean counters. We keep track of who gets what and who does what. We get severely pissed off at the assholes who don’t do their share. You watch. People are just biding their time. When the fear wanes, all this cooperation shit will morph back into competition. Socialism—nice idea, but it doesn’t work.

  I was chewing on a rabbit leg, pinning every shred of meat between my incisors and tugging it off, watching Leo, who was speaking to the air above the table. Parker looked at her knife. Griffin was stabbing his fork into a crack in the table.

  You know, Leo, Griffin said, capitalism, nice idea, but it doesn’t work either. Leads to socialism every time.

  We have a taker, Leo held his hand out in welcome. And that works vice versa, I might add. Socialism, he turned his hands up. Capitalism.

  Griffin kept digging at the table crack. Life is better now. Maybe for some people it’ll be hard having only one kid, but that’ll only last two, maybe three generations, and besides, it makes everyone family now.

  When the effects of the die-off settle and we start generating wealth again, you’ll see, it’ll be business as usual. Quick, he snapped his fingers, as a broker’s keystroke.

  Those days are gone forever, Griffin countered. The model of eternal economic growth is finished. It was a mass delusion, created for the few to hoard a lot. No one is going to buy into that anymore. It defies the laws of nature. Maybe there’s a few holdouts in your generation, old wavers who can’t make the adjustment, but does my generation look unhappy? Do we look like we want to go back to your world? No. We get by, we work hard, have fun, make music, get drunk on occasion, smoke a little herb, and try not to mess each other up. Friends, Leo, ever heard of friends? Besides, there is no world if we go back to the old one. And my generation, unlike yours, wants to live.

  The scar tissue on my scalp tingled.

  Not just your generation, I said at the same time as Leo answered, Wow. The excitement of the “life”—he made air quotes around the word—you anticipate is killing me. In fact, I guess it almost has. Leo looked at me and grinned, whiskers gleaming with rabbit fat.

  There’s behaviour that has a future, Griffin said, and behaviour that doesn’t. It’s easy to tell the difference. Everyone knows the difference.

  A future? A bunch of Rasta boy scouts jamming their do-good lives away? No one controls the future. You can quote me on that.

  At least we’re not all—If I can just cram all this money into the bank I’ll be safe forever. You call that excitement? You call that living? And by the way, Dermy, speaking of bean counters and people not doing their share. Griffin gave a bitter laugh. Not a dish! Not a vegetable! Not a finger on the broom or the stacking of a log. You too good for it? Now I know what my mom must’ve felt like.

  Dermy? I hadn’t heard that nickname. Leo’s middle name is Dermid. I wanted to lighten the tone. I keep forgetting that I only know Griffin because he’s Leo’s stepson and that Griffin lived with Leo and Evie until he was a teenager.

  If you were ruler of the world, Parker asked Leo carefully, concentrating, what would you have done? Something had to be done, didn’t it? Or we’d all be dead? Extinct?

  Leo shrugged. Maybe we needed to put on the brakes. Go through a cleanse or something. But not forever. Definitely not for fucking ever. OneWorld is not a new religion. It’s a government. There’s nothing new under the sun. The only thing I believe in is my life. My choices. Everything else is guesswork.

  We have to try, don’t we? We have to try and change.

  A wee bit of a hypocrite, aren’t you? Leo nodded at her belly. Not your first, I’ll wager.

  It was an accident.

  And?

  My first child was taken by his father.

  I understand. But still, the planet …

  Everyone went silent.

  Well, well, I didn’t mean for everyone to get so solemn, Leo said, leaning back in his chair. I’d be doing just what you’re doing. I certainly would.

  Parker began to cry. I’m not going to kill it. I’d rather die. The baby can have my place.

  Griffin shot a look at Leo.

  No, Parker put her hand on Griffin’s arm. I know it’s wrong. If everyone acted like me, our species wouldn’t survive. I don’t have the right to be an exception. I know it. I’m not one of those who are resisting the law. I think the law is right. Meanwhile the baby is growing and I can’t kill it. What hope is there?

  Goodness gracious me! I said, mimicking our grandmother. If it comes to that, the baby can have my place. To tell you the truth, I haven’t enjoyed life much for twenty years now, with the exception of the last few months.

  Leo looked sharply at me. Then he eased his chair back on its hind legs and said, This all started with my saying I’d like a spicy Spanish sausage. Lighten up, folks. I expect you’ll give birth to a beautiful baby, and even I will make like a socialist and help it flourish. He toasted an invisible glass in her direction.

  Parker sat without moving, then said she was tired and went to bed. Griffin followed.

  Not bad for one evening’s work, I said.

  He leaned forward and put his elbows on the table. But look at the pair of us. Neither one really caring if we live. What would the parents think?

  I was thinking that Parker would have to be watched closely after she had that baby. I was thinking I was going to have to find an argument to get her off the hook with herself.

  Our parents? They’d be happy we were here.

  Well, you anyway.

  I wanted to change the subject. I remembered his original pitch for coming up here. By the way, I said, when should we deal wi
th Mom and Dad’s ashes? Where should we put them?

  Let’s help Parker get the field established and the seeds planted first. Let’s get everything in place for next winter before we think about that.

  I stared at the fire thinking how I couldn’t live without the idea that the world was going to get better in some way, and by “world,” I meant humans. By better I wasn’t thinking about progress or technology, obviously, but maybe about evolution. I don’t know, but my whole adult life I’ve always been checking the pulse of our country, our culture, our species. I’d never thought of it as a compulsion before, but it is; I need that sense of underlying purpose. Part of being a soldier maybe. Without that, the emptiness is unbearable. I’m the flip side of Leo. And nothing like Griffin.

  I had an attack of vertigo this morning. Went back to bed.

  I can’t shake the feeling that something is up with Leo. I don’t know what it is. I’m watching, listening for clues.

  Late spring and we’re clearing and ploughing. Trying to get a field ready for planting in the first week of June. The three of us. Parker wants to help, but none of us want that baby to come early. She’s taking care of seed plants in the greenhouse, plus the goats and the chickens. We made a plough using a large, sharp stone and arbutus branches tied together. Mostly Leo and Griffin stand on either side and push against a yoke and, because of my peg leg, I guide the angled piece with the stone attached. It’s tricky work because Leo and Griffin have to push hard to get the damn thing moving and stop whenever we hit a stone. Then we dig the stone out and carry it to clearance cairns every five metres or so. Also we have to chop down alder that have sprung up in the years since dad last cleared the land and dig out the stumps. Burn piles are illegal, so we drag everything to the field’s edge. I don’t like the messy visuals and want to drag the debris further into the bush, but Leo and Griffin voted me down. We’re leaving a tree every couple of metres for shade.