Today I Learned It Was You

by Edward Riche

  No one would ever know whether her claims of pending revelations were a lie to prop up her reputation or genuine discoveries that, because of a sense of ownership or professional jealousy, she could not bear to see in the hands of peers who outlived her.

  Ruddock said before dying that she was in possession of evidence that Cabot was not lost at sea on a second journey across the Atlantic, as had long been the understanding, but that he returned to London in 1500 after an epic voyage to the New World.

  That was a happier ending to the story, wasn’t it, safe return rather than consignment to the deeps?

  And was there not a third alternative, one so chilling it could scarcely be considered? That Cabot and his men were stranded in Newfoundland. That they had crippled to some rocky shore in boats so damaged, hulls punctured by ice, sails flayed, that they could not take them back the way they came. That they survived the crossing but would never go home and never be found.

  Alessandra realized that if Jules forgot her he would not miss her when she was gone.

  Sixty

  Matt didn’t stick around City Hall when the meeting concluded. Before the press could pack up their notebooks and laptops and come downstairs to confront him he was already in his Camry.

  He knew he was driving out to Bowring Park but was unsure why.

  There wasn’t an hour of daylight left.

  It was a sultry evening so Matt motored with the windows down. He could smell barbecuing meat and cut grass. Hot nights such as these were rare in St. John’s, so the livyers appreciated them that much more. There was an air of celebration in the town. The people Matt saw on the streets, in their shorts and tank tops and sandals, looked so happy. Happy!

  He parked the Camry at the park’s maintenance depot, near the western service entrance, and went on foot.

  A man was a deer.

  There were certain things dealt you; you were in many, many ways, simply what you were.

  Which was what? What were the qualities of being human? Deer weren’t self-aware, so one couldn’t consciously live as one. Did the trees have some essential quality of being trees or were qualities merely something observed or assigned by man?

  He passed close by a soccer pitch. The players were young boys, around nine or ten years old, their high calls a musical ornament over the soprano and alto, tenor and bass encouragements of their parents on the sidelines. Matt loved the sound of children’s voices and missed those of his own.

  This Harry Davenant character, when had he ever stated he was a deer? Surely deer didn’t proclaim. Was there a final moment of humanity where he signed off, said, “This is the last you will hear from me as I will be taking the deer’s silent ways.”

  No, someone asserted he was a deer and for some reason people supported the proposition. Davenant was nominated and elected deer. The people wanted a deer.

  Matt took a foot trail into the woods, a path off the course prescribed by those who set the rules on this patch of the world. What had Alessandra said? Parks were like zoos? This is what she would have for her preserve, not the broad flat courses of crushed stone, but narrow cuts in the ground, rabbit runs found and worn wide as a man’s way. But we weren’t wild things. We were broken and trained. Perhaps Harry Davenant had only jumped his paddock fence and lit out for the open country.

  What was that scent that rose from the forest floor, that delectable aroma that was at once decay and bloom, carrion and fallen fruit?

  Matt stopped and looked. The trees were close around him. There was no heat from the sun and that which accumulated in the ground through the day was dissipating. No one could see him here.

  Why had Alessandra confessed their tryst? It wasn’t a mistake of a second tongue; she was far too smart, perfectly fluent. She bore Matt no malice; it wasn’t vengeful. It was likely nothing to do with Matt at all. “What does that have to do with anything?” “That,” she said. “That” was a thing; “that” was a fact she wasn’t going to waste any effort denying.

  Why was he here? Why had he come to Bowring Park? Was he looking for Harry Davenant? No. Maybe. He kept on, getting deep enough into the woods that, besides the birds and insects, the only sound he could hear was of the traffic humming on the arterial road on the south side. How far would one have to walk into the forest, he wondered, before you’d stop hearing man’s echo, the ghosting of his incessant noise? There were always planes overhead so maybe it was no longer possible.

  On the path before him was the carcass of a crow, its body bug-eaten and in advanced decomposition but its wings still glossy and full. Of what were feathers composed that they resisted decay?

  Harry Davenant was an actor, a showman. Matt and he shared that. They’d heard the cheering and the jeering from the stands. They knew the crowd and its moods.

  His knee was singing. In the game they said, “Play through pain” and for the first time, Matt, thinking about it, understood the phrase had more than one meaning. What portion of life was misunderstood? How many actions were inspired by the equivalent of the misheard lyrics of a popular song? There was wisdom in seeing things as they were but was there not an even greater insight in knowing things as they were not? In recognizing that a commonly held truth was fundamentally in error, or what was long thought wrong was right? He wasn’t thinking straight.

  In sport you learned there was no future. There was a past, a record, a matrix of statistics that marked your trail. There was the electric present. But there was no future. The proof was in the futility of game plans. No matter the challenge it was always faced with a study of the opponents’ perceived strengths and weaknesses, strategies offensive and defensive, tactics and set plays. All of which ceased to be of any relevance the moment the puck dropped and the exquisite and terrifying unpredictability of the next moment exploded from the now and you responded with instinct, with lunging and clawing. Everything was accident and yet, next match, you planned again. Planning was as futile as prayer.

  Matt could hear the river below. He was skirting the crevasse but could not see the edge through the green growth of summer.

  What would he do with himself now? He fancied he might go back to school. Be one of those “mature students.” Why not? His undergraduate degree was a hockey scholarship joke, but now, years late, he was thinking back on much of what he missed with curiosity. “In the long run we are all dead” was the case for the present, for paying heed to the here and now, sad and funny at once.

  The best you could do was to acknowledge things and get on with it. Dream as one might of flight on waking, it was walking the miles that got you there. Man was not winged. Man was not hooved or horned. Man was trapped in man’s body.

  He kept on, his course tracing that of the river below.

  Acknowledgments

  Steve Crocker helped me address the question of the animal. Steve Palmer proofed Spanish invention, Christina Fabretto Italian, and Claire Wilkshire French. Dr. Jasber Gill consulted on psychiatry, Jamie Fitzpatrick on hockey.

  I regularly discussed the novel’s progress with Charlie Tomlinson as we walked our dogs and benefited from his sage advice.

  Fans of The Great Eastern will recognize Bill Murphy’s trick, the Skin wetlands and the fierce Tuskaweegee.

  Gerry Porter and Debbie McGee eagle-eyed the manuscript and showed me the error of my ways.

  I am grateful for the support of The Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council, The City of St. John’s and Memorial University of Newfoundland ’s Writer In Residence program.

  Among the many heroes at House of Anansi, I especially want to thank Sarah MacLachlan and Janice Zawerbny.

  About the Author

  Edward Riche, an award-winning writer for page, stage, and screen, was born in Botwood on the Bay of Exploits on the northeast coast of Newfoundland. His first novel, Rare Birds, was adapted into a major motion picture starring William Hurt and Molly Parker, an
d his second novel, The Nine Planets, was a Globe and Mail Best Book and won the Thomas Raddall Head Award. He is also the author of Easy to Like, which was a finalist for the Winterset Award and longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Riche lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

  About the Publisher

  House of Anansi Press was founded in 1967 with a mandate to publish Canadian-authored books, a mandate that continues to this day even as the list has branched out to include internationally acclaimed thinkers and writers. The press immediately gained attention for significant titles by notable writers such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, George Grant, and Northrop Frye. Since then, Anansi’s commitment to finding, publishing and promoting challenging, excellent writing has won it tremendous acclaim and solid staying power. Today Anansi is Canada’s pre-eminent independent press, and home to nationally and internationally bestselling and acclaimed authors such as Gil Adamson, Margaret Atwood, Ken Babstock, Peter Behrens, Rawi Hage, Misha Glenny, Jim Harrison, A. L. Kennedy, Pasha Malla, Lisa Moore, A. F. Moritz, Eric Siblin, Karen Solie, and Ronald Wright. Anansi is also proud to publish the award-winning nonfiction series The CBC Massey Lectures. In 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011 Anansi was honoured by the Canadian Booksellers Association as “Publisher of the Year.”