The Mercy Journals

by Claudia Casper

  I don’t think you’re particularly worried about them hurting someone.

  Why did God burden me with such a sanctimonious, self-righteous prick of a brother? He smiled and left.

  I smiled back because he was partly right. I could be a sanctimonious, self-righteous prick.

  I stared at the spines of the books in front of me in the spalted alder bookshelf I’d made for Mom in woodworking, and the green cloth spines of Treasure Island and Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson stood out, and with them came a memory of reading on the couch on a rainy afternoon, me on one couch with Kidnapped and Leo on the other with Treasure Island. He was eating cherries and he started lobbing them at me. I ate the ones he lobbed and spat the pits back at him. Idyllic, really.

  The couches were upholstered in light green, I think, so Leo’s cushion was soon covered in dark-red spots from the pits. Mom came through the living room on her way to the bedroom, smiling at first because we were laughing, and then she saw the stains.

  Things got kind of strange then because she got angry with Leo but not with me, though clearly I was the main culprit. Leo started to cry and apologize, saying he’d save up and buy her new cushion covers. He begged her not to be mad anymore and I remember wishing Mom would just hug him or at least be mad at both of us, but she didn’t soften. When she left the room Leo stopped crying and turned his face into the cushion. I kept on reading and got back into the story. I didn’t know what else to do. She’d sucked all the happiness out of the room.

  What a memory.

  I woke the next morning from a deep sleep surprised to be alive. I don’t know why. Thinking about a river. Ruby’s eyes. Birds chirping. Newness. Outside the window some of the tulips my mother and father planted twenty years ago are blooming. Wind ruffled the trees and the clouds were dark. I was savouring the warmth of bed when Parker pounded up the back steps.

  A goat!

  It had been missing when they went to water them. She and Griffin went to check the fishing net Parker had strung up across the peninsula access to keep deer out and had seen it just on the other side. I got dressed and we went together. It was three metres on the other side of the net. The wind was now thrashing the trees about.

  It lay on its side, cold and stiffening. Its legs were slightly bent, the blood on its coat was coagulated and hardening. Its shoulder and chest were partially eaten. There was no blood on the ground around the body. I wondered how it had got past the net. Goats don’t swim unless they have no choice. I couldn’t see a cougar being able to jump the net while carrying the goat.

  Griffin and I carried it back to the cabin, skinned and gutted it, cut around the eaten part. We salted and transferred most of the meat to the root cellar, except for what we roasted that evening.

  The cougar is not going to be happy finding its carcass gone, Leo observed.

  We have to try and kill them, Parker said.

  They’re going to go after goats and chickens way before they tackle a full-grown human, I said.

  We need those goats and chickens, Parker said, turning on me.

  If one attacks you, dear girl, Leo spoke while looking at me, what you do is jam your arm so far down its throat it starts to suffocate. It won’t be able to bite down. You might get a scratch or two but you’ll live. For the record, though, I agree. It’s time to deal with them.

  We’re going to need the gun, Griffin said.

  It’s going to be useful. Yes.

  I didn’t like the way this conversation was going. I asked, Has anyone wondered how that goat ended up on the other side of the net?

  The cougar carried it there for the cubs? Griffin suggested.

  Really? Leapt over the net with the goat in its mouth? I don’t even know if that’s possible.

  What are you suggesting? Leo sneered. An eagle?

  I don’t know how that goat got there, Parker said, and I don’t care. We know cougars killed the deer, something killed the goat. I want them gone.

  Leo looked at me. The shadow of a smile crossed his face.

  I had the thought—Leo put the goat there. He killed it. Maybe to scare us. An act of terrorism. Maybe because he’s bored and had an impulse to stir things up. Maybe he had a hankering for goat meat. Maybe he has no idea why he did it. I am not letting him kill those cougars. If they are around, I’ll find a way to scare them off.

  It took us two days to build a shed to keep the remaining goats in at night, and we’re taking turns shepherding them during the day. Leo will not share the pistol he “found,” which annoys the hell out of us. Griffin and I have to use a whistle, a knife, and spears we’ve made. Parker is accompanied everywhere outside. She’s getting very big, walking with her legs wide apart, and stopping intermittently because of Braxton Hicks contractions. We haven’t seen further evidence of the cougars, but we’re all on edge. Predators will do that.

  I’m thinking about that pistol. Where did it come from? It seems too new to have been Dad’s. Did Leo bring it with him? That would mean he had it when the cougar attacked me. Why wouldn’t he have used it then? The way it just showed up bothers me. The way he guards it.

  I’m remembering something Griffin mentioned. He was checking out the old highway and spotted Leo from a distance coming down the mountain. Leo froze when he saw Griffin, then covered with a wave. He told Griffin he’d been hiking up to a lookout to survey Desolation Sound and see what other settlements were nearby and if they were inhabited. He never mentioned what he saw. I wonder if he has some kind of stash. I wonder if that’s where the pistol came from. I wonder why.

  I don’t know what I just witnessed. I was on my way to the outhouse but decided I wanted a book to read and turned back. At the door to the house, something made me stop, hold the door open; it must have been a sound, I can’t remember, but the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

  Don’t. Parker’s voice was strangely strangled.

  That kid won’t be able to keep this baby alive.

  I should have waited to hear more but I walked in and let the door slam.

  From the hall I heard a movement in the kitchen. I went to the kitchen. Leo was turning away from Parker who stood with her back to the counter, her hand covering her belly.

  A simple no would have sufficed, he said for my benefit and walked out of the room. Parker started to cry. She waved me away.

  I can see problems laid out for miles. Leo was always a law of the jungle type—his law, his jungle. He isn’t giving up on getting Parker and he’s obsessive when he zeroes in. I can only think of one plan. Two plans. I could suggest he go back with me to the city. I could say I needed to and that I can’t do it alone. I’m almost certain he has no interest in leaving Nirvana though. He is staking a claim. Plan two is to keep things stable until Parker has her baby and then move her out of here. With Griffin if she wants and he wants, and the goats and the chickens. Leo can live happily ever after in Nirvana.

  I can just see that.

  I wonder if Parker will tell Griffin when he returns from fishing.

  After dinner I went up to Leo’s room. He was lying in bed, the covers under his armpits, reading some papers. He put them face down when I came in and never took his hand off them.

  Whattup? he said with an ironic mimicry of ease.

  I went in and sat in the chair in the corner, a low-slung thing with no arms that had been our great-grandmother’s.

  What was that this morning?

  What was what?

  Parker started crying when you left.

  I guess I should take that as an insult.

  How about a signal to leave her alone.

  She’s a big girl. She can take care of herself, believe me.

  She’s pregnant, Leo. And she’s with Griffin.

  She hasn’t fully committed.

  There were a bunch of framed photographs turned face down on the dresser near my chair. I turned one over. Our parents, arm in arm, in Palm Springs. A photo from another epoch. I got a stab of nostalgia.
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  Can I take this? He nodded. What are you up to, Leo?

  Up to?

  Hey, I’m your brother. Something’s going on.

  But are you my keeper?

  Yeah. Sure. Maybe I’ll even keep you from yourself.

  We were quiet for a bit.

  The pistol. Parker. The cupboards. You’re looking for something and you don’t want to tell me about it.

  I do things. The way everyone does, not always in a straight line.

  But never without a purpose.

  He shrugged. His feet moved under the covers. They distracted me for a moment, thinking about his bare feet. Why do I think you killed that goat?

  We looked at each other. Why do you?

  It wasn’t lying right. A cougar would have eaten more. And dragged it into the bush. The cubs would have demolished it.

  You’re getting paranoid, big brother. Must be that post-stress thing. Why would I kill the goat? Although I admit I was getting sick of fish and shellfish and eggs.

  The cougars didn’t kill it. If they show up, I’m going to scare them off. I want the pistol to do it.

  Yeah, well, let’s see what Parker and Griffin think about that.

  On this I don’t care what they think.

  Ooh, the boss rears his head. Leo put his hand behind his head, keeping the other on the papers.

  What do you care? I asked. You don’t even really want to live.

  And now you do?

  What are you reading?

  Old love letters, he lied, not even bothering to disguise the lie, savouring his moment of dominance.

  Bean and barley soup with a couple of goat bones, carrots and onion and thyme and sea salt. Good, but not quite enough to fill us. Leo held up a glass of goat’s milk to Parker. Lovely soup, my dear. Thank you.

  The last of the onions and the first of this year’s carrots. I hope it’s enough.

  Oh God, Leo continued with a surge of emotion, when I think of how much food there was. And the variety. Sushi, wasabi, soy sauce! All gone. Your generation, he gestured with his spoon at Griffin, you don’t know any different, but for me … So many pleasures—and now—homespun, bland, and nourishing, for the rest of my life. Oh for a California Cab Sauv or a crisp French Chablis Grand Cru—and not just once, but every night …

  You’re not helping, said Griffin.

  Oh, helping. Everything going in one direction. Subsistence just isn’t that engrossing for some of us older folk. Don’t get me wrong. I love working out there in the field with you two, covering every millimetre of skin to avoid burnage, expending the same number of calories to do the work as to grow more calories, ad infinitum.

  Leo’s looking more like a mad man again these days. His hair is stiff with dirt and stands up at odd angles, and his beard looks like a squirrel has been tucking away food particles in there to last the winter. His eyes are a deeper blue than ever; the pupils always seem too small, and somehow he doesn’t

  seem to see what he’s looking at. We had to ask him to bathe and wash his clothes last week because he stinks. He tried to get us to wash them, saying it was our need not his.

  I’m bored. I’m depressed. I want my old life back—my family, my car and my house, my clothes, restaurants, trips, movies. Variety! Variety! Variety! Variety! he shrieked, his eyes popping open, hand pounding on the table. Griffin and Parker remained very still.

  It could be different, you know, he continued. It doesn’t have to be like this. OneWorld Spartanism. They’re hoarding. There’s enough wealth. The one-child law has solved the problem; they’re just not admitting it. They’re fucking moralists without imagination. They’ve won, and they’re imposing their morality on the world and loving the power. There are some who see what they’re doing and are starting to organize. Getting ready. There are going to be changes. You should expect it.

  He had my attention. What changes? I asked.

  Leo looked at me, sizing me up, then an expression of contempt leaked over his face.

  Oh change, change is inevitable, as the Buddha says.

  I felt unbearably weary. More conflict. More striving. More history. More killing. I realized I had let myself believe that we were on the verge of a new order. A consensus after near extinction. Of course, there will be no end.

  Leo spoke to Parker. At least you’re having a baby. That’s something new. Exciting. What is there for the rest of us?

  What about your children? Parker asked, not looking at him.

  Well, there’s Griffin here, looking like the end of a line, and not, with all respect and affection to Griffin, even my bloodline. Allen over there has lost track of his boys, so that genetic covalent is a question mark, and I have lost my daughters. I’d hoped we’d find at least one of our offspring here, and that that one might know something about the others. Allen acts like it doesn’t matter, but this could be the end of the Quincy line. All that’s left is a few more stops at Barley Soup—no offense—and a blind date with the worms.

  You can all be family to this baby, Parker said in a small burst of hopeful connectivity. It’s not like it’s going to have any other. It would be lucky to have three uncles. My mother used to say if a baby has good grandmothers or aunties, its chance for survival goes way up.

  Charmed, I’m sure, to be compared to a grandma, and yes, of course, happy to be an uncle to the little thing. But, again, no offence—blood matters to me.

  That was a conversation assassination and we stayed silent. Thicker than water, trickier than water. Leo put his bowl in the sink and left. Then Parker leaned in. What happened to his daughters?

  I left home when I was sixteen, Griffin said. Amanda was nine and Annie was eight. I feel guilty now. I didn’t know I was abandoning them. I didn’t know Leo would leave. He stared at the woodstove. I was hoping to find some trace of them here.

  I passed the staircase later that night on my way to bed and heard Parker and Griffin whispering furiously.

  Leo came out of his room and stood at the top of the stairs with an empty jug in hand.

  You know what they say, he winked as he went past to the kitchen to fill the jug with water. Loose hips sink ships.

  This morning I got up early and made tea and porridge. Leo came down and we ate companionably enough. He tossed his spoon into the empty bowl, pushed back his chair, sucked air in through his teeth, and said, Gotta see a man about a logging operation.

  He headed to the outhouse and I went up to his room and looked for the pistol. I looked under his pillow and his mattress, under the bed, in the drawers, in the wardrobe. I felt undignified skulking around and resented Leo for putting me in this position. I felt behind the books on the bookshelf. I checked the pockets of his clothes. I eliminated every possible place to hide a gun in that room. I thought about the papers he’d been reading and had lied to me about. There was a gap between the hardcover and the pages of one of the books in the bookcase, For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway. The papers were inside.

  I took them out to the hallway where a narrow window looks onto the outhouse. Two copies of our parents’ will. Everything looked standard, everything going to Leo and me fifty-fifty. The door to the outhouse slammed shut. There was a letter paper-clipped to the front of the second copy.

  May 28, 2018

  My Dear Sons,

  I love you both so much. The times ahead are looking like they will be very tough and I want you both to know that your father and I have always hoped Nirvana could be a refuge for you and your families. You can always make do living here together, with the well and enough deer, waterfowl, shellfish, and firewood to last ten-thousand lifetimes. Your dad would be very happy at the thought.

  Love

  Mom

  Leo clomped up the stairs. That stupid gun weighed down his coat pocket. I felt like smacking him just for taking the gun with him.

  Why did you hide these from me?

  You were in my room?

  You were reading them last night.

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sp; I raised the hand with the papers. You should have shown them to me right away. We should have read them together. They’re our parents.

  There aren’t any rules anymore. And stay the fuck out of my room.

  I felt like strangling him. And where are Mom’s ashes? I didn’t see a container anywhere.

  What do you think, I hucked them all over the place when the world was collapsing around me? A little backpack for Mom’s remains, through thick and thin, carrying them with me, the good little son, through rain and shine, hurricane and drought, to sprinkle them on the ground here? I emptied them out at Fisherman’s Terminal where the mini-ferries used to run. They floated out, like your fish food, and finally sank after half an hour. I can still smell the creosote.

  I turned to leave, taking the will and the letter with me, the image of Mom’s ashes in the filthy water shattering my heart.

  Our parents. Our parents, he said bitterly to my back. You were right about one thing. Those papers don’t make any difference.

  I went into the old bathroom, which was the only room with a lock on the door, sat on the old flush toilet, and finished reading the will. It was all predictable except for the end. In the event of irreconcilable conflict between Leo and myself, the will stipulated that Nirvana, the land and the buildings, should go to me, while all remaining possessions should go to Leo. The reason given was that Leo’s material resources far outweighed mine and therefore he had less need. I could just imagine how he’d loved reading that.

  I missed Ruby intensely at that moment. I wanted to pack up and paddle back to the city. I wanted to be in her arms and hold her in mine and stare into her eyes and hear the throaty growl in her voice when she laughed. I stood up from the toilet and looked at myself in the mirror. The claw mark on my cheek, the patch of white folded skin and missing lip in the corner of my mouth, the raised pink scar near the hairline, the patchy hair—my face was a true testament to nurture over nature, though it looked more like nature than nurture. I don’t recognize myself in it anymore.

  I am deeply unsettled. I don’t know what to do about Leo.

  The next day Leo left early. He didn’t tell me where he was going. All day the tension coming off Griffin was intense. Leo returned as we were sitting down for dinner.