Night Moves

by Night Moves- Stories (v5. 0) (epub)

  “That’s the thing,” Benny says. “That’s the whole thing. My boy is a god. I’ve seen him reach through walls and I’ve seen him reach through people. By the end of the day, Lester, he’s gonna reach through you.”

  I open my underlids.

  Benny is talking but it sounds like we are in a boat and he is underneath the water.

  Show me, I pray, and a voice tells me to go downstairs slowly.

  Come, a voice whispers.

  The basement is empty, except for a room. In it is a computer next to a printer. Beside it is a shelf. On the walls are pictures. I only look once. Lester with girls. All of the girls Native. Everyone smiling.

  Sure enough, there are shoeboxes in the wall.

  I reach in and look.

  There are balls of hair, soft hair, nail clippings, Kleenex where girls have blown their noses. Tampons.

  I am hit with the smell of dead blood.

  I close the lid. I close my eyes.

  I still see a picture of a girl in a harness screaming.

  I close my eyes and try not to remember this but it is already too late.

  There are five other shoeboxes on the shelf.

  I keep the one I looked into and walk up the stairs.

  “How did you—” Lester asks. “How the fuck?”

  “Shhh,” Benny says as I hand the box to him.

  I’m weak. I lean against the wall and peek with one eye to see Benny looking in. “That’s my boy. That’s my miracle.”

  Torchy and Lester look up at me like the full mystery that I am.

  “What the fuck are you?” Lester asks.

  I shake my head. The bear inside of my chest looks at him with four eyes.

  I don’t even know anymore.

  “So you’re making rape-dolls now, hey, Lester?” Benny says and stands to his full height. He hands the box to Torchy who has a look. Torchy closes his eyes and puts the box down like it is haunted.

  It hits me that Benny is not sick. He is not sick at all. He is just biding his time. The way he takes his breath now, he fills his whole chest like a grizzly standing tall. Benny’s home. Just like last time. Benny didn’t used to call it his “Reign of blood.” He used to call it his “Rodeo of Blood.” He is home now, and there is no stopping anything anymore unless it is what he wanted. He nods to Torchy who produces four long, thin knives which he places in the glowing elements.

  “So this is my sword,” he says. “I’ve been up all night researching it. It’s an emperor’s sword, designed to cut through three men tied up together. It’s been tested.”

  He draws it cleanly, been practising. “Let me tell you what’s going to happen next,” Benny says to Lester. “I’m going to ask you three times the same question. You’ll lie. Everyone lies the first two times. And I’m going to let you.”

  “Everybody lies, boss,” Torchy smiles.

  “But it’s the third time I ask that’s important.”

  “Mmm hmm,” Torchy nods. A muscle in his face jumps, he is getting so excited.

  “Because if you lie to me the third time, we turn Flinch on you. My boy. My attack dog. Oh the things he can do.”

  “My my,” Torchy purrs.

  “The last time someone lied, they got—what—thirty staples in their throat, chest and forehead?”

  I look away and wince at the memory of the last time I unleashed myself: I tore that man’s face into a starburst.

  “I’m connected,” Lester says, with a low growl, like a lynx in a leg hold.

  “Once upon a time you was,” Torchy grins. “Your Auntie Bodacious has given us until nightfall to make you talk.”

  And that is when Lester knows that he is all alone in the world. All alone with us in a room with the stove elements popping, four thin knives that can bore and burn their ways into anyplace, and a samurai sword. He hangs his head and starts to sob.

  “Where is the place they call The Farm?” Benny asks as he unsheathes his sword. “Who are the men working together to create Blood Mares? We know this is international and it’s connected to snuff and child pornography rings. We know law enforcement is probably involved—”

  Lester starts rocking his chair. “No! No! No! Don’t make me tell you. Don’t. They’ll know. They know now.”

  I freeze.

  “They know we’re talking about them. They have eyes everywhere.”

  “Bullshit,” Benny says.

  “Look,” Lester says and points with his lips to the shelf. On top of it is a scrap of fabric tacked to a piece of wood. It is the eyes of a wolf that might have been on someone’s T-shirt once. “They’re watching right now.”

  “They’re watching right now?” Torchy says. He gives the eyes the finger.

  Lester starts to mumble and whisper something. Is he praying?

  “Let them watch,” Benny says. “Let them see the sinnery of what we’re about to do to you.”

  It is going to be like last time. Benny asked me to tape mattresses and pillows over the windows to block the sound. I bet he and Torchy have cartons of smokes in the truck. I catch myself wincing because if this is so, then this night is just beginning. We can last for days and days, stopping only to shower and eat and plan more pain, more punishment.

  “Flinch?” Benny calls.

  I start to unfold. It starts like this and it’s like a dogfight when I roar and hit and rip and snap, but I stop. Benny’s eyes. He’s scared. This is bigger than any of our “violence cures violence” campaigns.

  Lester looks at all of us. “May your worst enemies raise your sons. And may your sons know the truth about all of you.”

  I look at Lester and feel nothing. His heart could stop halfway through my first hammer. Maybe before I even hit.

  “Okay,” Benny says calmly. “I’ll ask again…”

  I am so suddenly tired. I’m about to let go and Become when I see the time: four pm.

  This is when the shift change at the hospital happens. New staff. Supper in an hour.

  Mom will be wondering where I am.

  I hear a voice: “Make your life holy and useful,” my mom said to me this morning. “Make good choices.”

  She smiles. It has been weeks since she smiled.

  Oh, Momma. I’m so ashamed of what these hands have done.

  “Flinch?” Benny looks at me.

  I look at Lester who is now looking down. I bet that to him his whole life feels like dragmarks now. He’ll break quick and tell them everything.

  And because of what we have opened, maybe everything for all of us now would be dragmarks.

  I don’t want this. I know this now.

  I don’t want to know any more about a place they call The Farm where they make Blood Mares. What if my size and what I am—I know I am a man of grace meant to hunt men of stone, but what about the angels Snowbird told me about? What are they waiting for?

  I want my parents to be proud of me—from either side.

  I want to be with my mom.

  I want to hold her hand while she dreams of my dad.

  “I don’t belong here,” I say.

  “Told ya’,” Torchy says. “I told you Radar would fold.”

  I close Lester’s door and walk past Crow.

  I want my life to be holy and useful.

  Momma, hold on.

  Crow

  The girl, Crystal—who I call “Snow Light”—travels with me until we can find her people. If she is the only and last of her family, I will take her and show her what the world is forgetting. I will raise her as my own. We walk through the willows with my dogs, breaking trail back to my cabin across the ice. It will be so good to be home. We stink of town.

  I think of the giant, Flinch. The helper who will one day lead. He passed the test and, when the time is right, I will tell him what we know ab
out him.

  This fills me with light.

  And, again, I know that there is something starving on the way to us all. I keep moving, and I’m listening. Two sun dogs on either side of this afternoon sun watch us with pity. The one on the right is larger. This means it will only grow colder. The willows don’t make a sound as we pass. On the porch of my cabin sits an old man smoking a pipe.

  Snowbird.

  I realize the camp is alive with children and elders, sleigh dogs and Skidoos.

  This must be a celebration, I think.

  “Who is that?” Snow Light asks.

  “Snowbird,” I said. “A friend.”

  My heart sings as my dogs growl.

  “Hush,” I say.

  I squint to look at Snowbird and a red fox sits beside him. She looks at me and him. He says something before she leaves but not before looking back once, twice, to see me.

  She leaves and I feel pure.

  But I still have that haunted feeling.

  We are still being watched.

  It’s as if the face of the forest, the ears of the Creator, are listening. War is coming. All of my dreams point to this.

  As we get closer, more elders come from their camps and are coming to meet us.

  Each one is a healer and a carrier of bundles, medicines, ceremony.

  As happy as I am that a gathering of Holy People has been called, I can still smell blood.

  I look to the four directions. I can see the water tower of Fort Simmer.

  War is not only coming to the north, but it is coming for the world.

  May the snow forgive us all.

  A ho.

  If Only Tonight

  As the David Gray CD wound down for the second time in a row, Lance marveled again at the most beautiful star blanket shining away over the spot where the James Wedzin painting used to hang in Duane and Juanita’s living room. The pattern was violet and gold. It vibrated—no—it hummed, Lance thought, so loudly in how it presented itself that he had to look away. He felt his eyes cross every time he tried to focus on it.

  He wondered if the James Wedzin painting he’d commissioned with two tents in a northern meadow had been taken by Duane when he left or if it was under the blanket.

  As Shari and Juanita talked in the kitchen, Lance sipped his coffee and marvelled at how beautiful they looked tonight: spring dresses, hair down, ankle bracelets sparkling over their right ankles, nails done, glowing. You’d never guess one of my goddesses was fighting for her life, he thought. He glanced at the star blanket and remembered asking James Wedzin to add the second tent to the meadow so Duane and Juanita would always know he and Shari would never be far away from them as couples, as family. As MC for their wedding three years ago, Lance presented the painting with Shari at his side with the words, “You can always count on us for help. The good times and the growing pains. We will be there for you both.”

  And they embraced.

  Now, as Lance looked around the home, it looked like Juanita had been robbed. The George Littlechild, the Susan Point, the Chris Paul—all of the big paintings that used to hang proudly in Duane and Juanita’s home were gone.

  Duane had left Juanita. Tonight, during supper, Lance observed half of Juanita’s music and art collection gone, and it felt official. Duane had not told Lance why, nor were there any real warning signs. Juanita had returned a week ago from her photo shoot to half a home. Duane had choreographed a moving truck and helpers for when his wife was at an appointment.

  You think you know someone, Lance thought as he looked at Juanita and felt an ache for her. Duane, you fucking coward. What a horrible year. Juanita had been diagnosed with breast cancer. He wasn’t entirely clear how, but the date for a double mastectomy was looming and, just when Duane should have been there to hold and comfort his wife, he’d simply vanished.

  Lance had tried Duane’s cell, his e-mail, his work. Duane was gone. When he thought about it, were the signs there? He and Shari had been in their own whirlwind of realizing they were pregnant and then losing the baby ten weeks in. To cope, he’d hurled himself into teaching and his own work of gathering stories, so he’d missed the last three sweats at UBC. He hadn’t seen Duane in weeks. Weeks, he pondered. Was that all it took for a marriage to unhinge?

  His own distance with Duane had started well over a year ago. The gang had a ritual: to meet every second Sunday at a new diner for brunch. The deal was one person paid for everyone and they took turns reading the “Savage Love” sex advice column out loud to the others. Over the past few years, quite a few of the articles no longer applied to them.

  “We’re too vanilla now,” Lance joked.

  “It’s starting to feel that way,” Shari agreed.

  And they laughed. Yes, fisting, golden showers and orgies didn’t really apply to any of them, but these reading sessions that used to be hilarious or juicy, now, for the past few months, had added a tension to the table.

  Lance should have realized that this was exposing the valley between Juanita and Duane—long before the diagnosis.

  “Lance,” Juanita called. “How’s your coffee?”

  He looked at her and smiled. “Perfect. So can I ask the obvious: where do you think Duane is?”

  Shari gave him her firm look, the one that stated that this was not the time.

  Juanita looked at them both. “Let me go pee and we’ll talk, okay? We’re celebrating four glorious things tonight—maybe more, but let me get prepared, okay?”

  Shari put her hand on Juanita’s shoulder. “Pee, Sister. Pee.”

  Juanita left and Shari whispered, “Is this the best time?”

  Lance shrugged. “Don’t you want to know what happened?”

  “Of course I do,” she said. “What a fucker.”

  She went back to doing the dishes.

  Celebrating four glorious things? he thought. That was strange: Juanita had asked that both he and Shari bring songs that mattered deeply to them, but she also asked that they save telling each other which song it was. Lance had brought “If only tonight we could sleep” by the Cure because it brought him into complete surrender every time he listened to it. He’d trance out and remember the first time he and Shari made love: looking into each other’s eyes, he asking himself if this was really going to happen. He’d been crazy about her for over a year before he asked her out, so he didn’t want to wreck anything. The first time he made love to her, he didn’t hold back. He took his time kissing her, going down on her, tasting her. She marvelled at him and told him so, after.

  “Wow,” he remembered her laughing into her pillow. “I’m so sorry I went preverbal there. Wow.”

  Lance, even now, nodded at the memory. “Need help?” he asked.

  “No,” she said, “you cooked. Rest.”

  She gave him her doe-eyes. “What are you thinking about over there? Where did you go just now?”

  “Oh,” he said. “I’m just thinking about the first time you let me make love to you.”

  She laughed. “Shhhh.”

  He winked at her and felt the blood rush at the thought of them lying together in their home, with all of the windows open to create a warm breeze. Her cool body against his, cuddling, dreaming. He marvelled at his wife. Not only was the miscarriage something they honoured together, Shari had said the day after, “Now we know we can have a child, Lance. Thank you. Bring me our daughter. I can see her out of the corner of my eye. She’s waiting. I feel like this was a test run and we passed. Now we know. This is our time to build our nest before she comes.”

  She had touched his face at Kits Beach in a new way. He couldn’t name it, but Shari was a new woman now. They would conceive and they would begin their family. This was their time to celebrate their fertility. Lance had had his vasectomy reversed and the anguish that he was not fertile was no longer a worry. He was “firing live
” as his doctor said, and he and Shari were trying again.

  Most wonderfully, Lance thought, was a message that came to him when they were both receiving acupuncture from a fertility specialist. Lance was drifting when the softest voice spoke to him. It said simply, “When you make love with her body, make love to her spirit.” He woke from the deepest island inside himself and had not told her this. It was his secret that he would share later.

  Tonight, they’d just shared a feast of fresh sockeye fried in his famous lemon and butter sauce to blackened perfection—both Shari and Juanita loved the skin to be charred—on a bed of garlic and lemon couscous, some garlic mashed potatoes and one of Shari’s avacado salads. Lance was so proud of himself as he’d cooked most of it. He’d used flour and a mix he’d created himself out of herbs from the local farmers’ market. Now he sipped his favourite coffee. It wasn’t Starbucks or Timmies: it was the Safeway Breakfast Blend. Every sip took him back to when he and Shari first got together in his tiny apartment and the days that would blur into one another of music, reading together, sex, walks, feasts, concerts. He rarely vacuumed his hardwood floors as they were covered in sand from Kits Beach, and he thought that waking to sand in your toes was one of the sexiest things in the world. He’d brought a pound of coffee with him tonight and decided he’d leave it so every time they came back to check on Juanita it would be a comfort. She’d need a lot of help in the months ahead. Not just with Duane but with the surgery and the everything after. And they’d be there. He’d already told his department head, Brian, what was going on and arrangements were already in place to get him out of the classroom and away from a few of his other obligations. Brian had lost his own wife three years earlier to breast cancer, so he told Lance to be careful, since Brian’s wife had had all the assurances that she was going to make it, but three months later was gone.

  Juanita came out of the bathroom wiping her hands on her dress. She carefully took her favourite mug—a smiling sun with two stars beside it—from the table, walked across the living room and sat across from Lance in her favourite chair. Beside it were her books. She was always reading three or four at a time and she curled her legs up beside her. She was not only tanned, she was glowing. Vancouver’s summer sun had lightened a few strands of her hair and this only brought out her foxlike features and her freckles on the nose and cheeks. Lance had always had a quiet crush on Juanita, and it bloomed now as she sat across from him.