Shot-Blue

by Jesse Ruddock

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  During freeze-up Keb was in town and couldn’t see Rachel, not even at a distance in the crowd of Sunday. He sometimes went to the Hotel and Bait and pretended to wait for her, drinking pitchers of beer to himself. He pretended to wait until he felt sick with disappointment and relief. All his feelings, good and bad, were precipitous and he followed them down. He outdrank himself, and when that didn’t bring any calm, he picked fights with his friends to get out of his head. He fought to feel less alone. If he ever felt content, he didn’t trust it because it had no origin.

  Looking out had been his posture, but now he wandered inward to a weaker bearing. He didn’t know what do to there. He could only half look at himself in furtive glances, so he was stuck with first impressions. He could not stop thinking of Rachel. He couldn’t remember what he used to think about before he knew her. What did he used to do? He had no idea. She would find another lover. She was the least sentimental person he’d ever met. She would never feel sorry for him and he hated her for that. Of course he didn’t hate her, because he loved her, but she would never come here when he was pretending to be waiting.

  In late January, he was called to the icefields. A few men were needed to clear an island. In summer Keb was the lake’s taxi and freight boat. In winter he was someone you called if you needed an extra man to survey land, haul materials, or tear shit down. Clearing land, you worked all day into lightfall with disregard for how you felt. You had to put yourself in ignorance of yourself; if your legs grew too tired to pick up your feet, then you used your back and stomach muscles to lift the dead weight and throw your legs forward like bags of cement. All you heard was your own breath, and you held on to its plain rhythm like a song because you needed it. The final feeling was dried salt, grit accumulated around your lips. You felt and tasted that for a few seconds in bed before passing out. When Keb worked at clearing the land, he was too tired to want Rachel. By day, work was all; at night, sleep. He felt he could think more clearly, because he wasn’t thinking.

  He was sent off the island one day and could have protested to save himself, but he didn’t. He took one of the snowmobiles to the trading post to buy supplies for the camp. There was a light fresh snow, so the ride was fast, which made him feel more powerful than he was. He walked past the store, to the chapel, past that, and onto the open field that led to the shed. There were no footprints, which meant they hadn’t come outside today.

  As Rachel opened the door, he looked at her neck, not her face. He didn’t say hi. Somewhere in the middle of the field, he had decided not to leave time or space for any special feeling or new understanding. He would tell her what she needed to know, then he would leave her there.

  ‘You should know something,’ he said.

  ‘Something?’ she asked, standing forward in the door, not letting him in. ‘Tell me what it is.’

  But he didn’t want to tell her now.

  ‘Keb,’ she said. Moments of silence with him had never led to anything interesting.

  ‘Men have come with contracts to your land.’ He spoke almost in disbelief, easing his way into it.

  ‘I think Codas put them onto it.’ ‘They’re liars then,’ she said. ‘I have papers. They’re in the bottom of my clothes chest.’ She didn’t have any papers. She didn’t have a clothes chest. But it was her land. ‘That island’s my father’s.’

  ‘He’s been gone a long time.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘They’re clearing the trees,’ he said.

  ‘When?’

  ‘They’re gone from the front. I’ve seen the plans. They have a sheet of paper as tall as a man and they unfold it on a table.’

  Rachel’s hands fell at her sides, surprising her. They felt like something she was carrying and needed to put down right now. She laughed at how they felt.

  ‘Why are you laughing?’

  ‘I’m not.’ She couldn’t explain.

  ‘You’re laughing at me.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘The trees collapse. You cut in and the base snaps because it’s frozen.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘They all came down and we slid them over the snow, pulling them with snowmobiles.’

  ‘What about our cabin?’

  ‘They burned it to make room.’

  ‘Room for what?’

  He didn’t know.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I was there.’

  ‘You helped them?’

  ‘I was working for pay. I wasn’t helping anyone.’

  ‘You son of a bitch,’ she said, trying to feel angry, but all she felt was tired. The veins in her arms felt like vales. Ice air off the chapel field was blowing through her into the shed. In a way, she liked it, how she felt; it was a new feeling and it had been a long time since she’d given up the idea of new feelings. Maybe she would have new feelings she never expected, but no use for them. ‘You son of a bitch,’ she said, repeating it, unable to make it satisfying. It was like trying to remember the lyrics to a song, but it had been a long time and the melody wasn’t right.

  ‘I have to take any work I can get.’

  ‘Me too,’ she said, laughing at him now.

  ‘They’re going to pave a tennis court there.’

  Rachel shut the door behind her. Tristan was close at the table and she didn’t want him to hear.

  ‘Do you think they’ll let you play?’ Her voice turned intimate.

  ‘Tennis? I don’t care.’

  ‘You can’t play tennis in those shoes.’

  Keb looked at his boots. They’d lost their proper shape a long time ago. He had never thought his boots meant anything. ‘I wear these every day.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I don’t want to play tennis,’ he said. ‘I don’t play games.’

  ‘You’ll build cabins they’ll never let you in. They’ll ask you to come over to fix their boats and shit. They’ll talk to you through the screen door.’

  ‘I don’t want in,’ he said. There were so many things she thought about that he never did. ‘What makes you think I care?’

  ‘You would care if they were on your land.’

  ‘It’s not your land anymore.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Your father was a squatter, Rachel. He never owned anything.’

  ‘I don’t care what you think.’

  ‘You’re right. It doesn’t matter what I think. When I was taking the trees down, it didn’t matter what I was thinking.’

  ‘Did you think of me when you burned the cabin?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I hate that.’

  ‘When can I see you?’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t feel good about you here. This is not okay. You shouldn’t live here.’

  ‘You don’t feel good? Do you know what I feel?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘You should go inside. You’re not wearing anything.’

  ‘I’ll see you later,’ she said.

  ‘When?’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  Without looking at Tristan, Rachel put her coat on and went outside. Tristan would understand that she needed to be alone. She was seduced by exhaustion and wanted to feel it more. It made her neck loose and head light. She wanted to feel everything as deeply as possible. And she did – with each step in the snow, then drawing her legs out. All was white around her, no matter what colour it was. Coated with snow wind-burnt to ice, the black trees reflected the sun so intensely they shone like mirrors. She walked among them into the white, which was also silver, away from the chapel grounds, the road, the row houses.

  She walked off every path she came across into the woods, moving not by sight but by hand – lunging, grabbing at branches to pull herself forward. Low in the underbrush, she could feel the forest’s dormant life. An underworld packed beneath the snow: plants and animals playing d
ead, a flood of them holding on to the smallest heat, in no rush to rise again. The confidence of this sleeping world radiated a gravity she could feel. Her thighs felt heavy, her ankles weak, her feet numb. Snow packed into the cuffs of her shirt and melted down her sleeves. Her hands hurt – but her hands were hers to run across the shells of snowbanks to nurse and ice them, which she did, only making them worse.

  It was hard to tell if she was feeling more or less. Her hands said that when you open the body, it spreads red, also clear. If she didn’t look, it was nothing. Blood was put on. It was something people did. People did everything to themselves, and to each other, and never admitted it, she thought. She was doing something to herself but didn’t know what – she knew not to lie down, and didn’t lie down. She didn’t fall either, but sank onto her side, folding her hands across her chest to put them away. Then she half buried herself like a sled dog, feeling the acquisitive cold, knowing she had only her body to give up.

  When she woke, night was past black into silver. There was a tinct of moonlight on the frozen trees, and she pitied them for being lit when they might sleep. Poised, hovering, they had no choice. They too would fall and sink into the forest floor, just not yet. Sleep had made her more tired, if that was possible. Her body felt like a heavy coat, cut out of thick leather, too big for her, stiff in the shoulders. Her body felt like a big man’s coat. She tried to take it off, but she couldn’t raise her arms, stuck at her chest. Her fingers were so cold she couldn’t bend them, like the branches of these trees. Afraid her fingers might break, she didn’t touch them to each other. She wanted to cover her face with her hands. There was a violence to her wakefulness: another new feeling. She had fallen asleep, was gone, then thrust back – into the silver trees, as if they were leaning down to her, which they seemed to be. They might break, she thought, shatter like mirrors, and maybe she was becoming one of them, first the hands.

  Sleep was something she would never understand. The simplest things were the most complicated. She didn’t know what she was doing here, sleeping and thinking about nothing. Her mind started to race and fall through the underbrush. She stood to try to catch up, but was very slow to run, which made her think of Tristan. He was a slow runner. Lately he was reluctant when she tried to get close to him. He would have been afraid of her right now, of the way she was carrying her hands in her arms. Maybe she would have been afraid of him, how she loved him. But he rarely spoke. It was unkind, she felt, even for a boy.

  She moved out of the trees onto the snowdrifts of the flat east shore. The east was all small coves, half-sheltered from the wind that funneled down the channel. Rachel knew that if she tried walking back through the woods, she would never make it home. She had to cross the ice, cove by cove, or go far out and come around wide. She moved from land to ice without noticing the threshold. Her body couldn’t keep up to where she thought she was. It felt like she was running ahead, but she wasn’t running; she was sliding a little at a time, half slipping back. When she fell, she couldn’t use her hands to break her fall. She banged her knees hard, waited for them to hurt, but felt nothing. She felt no pain, only doubt. She doubted her knees, doubted her hands. It was more than thirty below, probably, but she didn’t feel the cold; she felt her body like a coat growing heavier, weighing her down. She carried the coat on her back more than she wore it. A few steps across the second cove, she collapsed under its weight, and it held her there in place.

  She stood and fell again, hands battered underneath. Her face took the brunt of the ice this time and she stayed down, lifting her head to keep her eyes fixed on the point of shore she was aiming for. She thought she was walking there. Maybe she was half running, maybe she was down. She told herself to hurry, to breathe again, and took quick breaths like the quick steps she was walking in thought. The cold air came in with these breaths and rimed her lungs. She started swallowing, trying to swallow the air all around, to catch it between her teeth. She bit at the air, that was the last thing. Before she died, she did not imagine dying.

  Tristan felt the thinness of the shed walls. He was waiting for her footsteps, for the door. He lay on the bed with his face to the boards, listening. Now and then he banged his knee to make a noise to check his hearing. He put the palm of his hand against the wall and it was cold, the fire was low. Queasy with unhappiness, he pulled his hand back and covered his mouth. Where should he go? Where she had gone. First he would run through the field. The tall grasses that in summer swelled around your legs and made it feel like you were running in water, these grasses were crushed and buried under. He would run faster than ever. He went to the table and felt for the small box of matches, found it, shook a match out, and lit the oil lamp. He drew out the wick to make a long blue flame. What if she came home now and caught him wasting the oil? Then he would be caught. He would tell her he always lit the lamp when she was away.

  Morning came and he crossed the field. It had been such a bitter night the snow on the ground was hardened to ice and he was able to slide over it, half skating on one foot, using the other to push and drag for balance. Far below the chapel, small fishing huts dotted the bay. Trampled-down paths between the huts made lines, strange patterns in the snow that he liked and followed with his eyes. There were dead ends where huts had been pulled away. There were straight lines, arches, all drawn by the routine of the fishermen checking on each other. It was beautiful and made Tristan forget the night. He had to ask himself why he was there, what he was looking for.

  Mr. Matthews was an old man who liked to work alone despite the protests raised by his sons and friends. When he was young, people had questioned his solitary days on the ice and on the open water in summer, but he had never answered them. Time was unpredictable when people were with him: it could go by too quickly, or be an obstacle, obdurate as hell, and not an interesting hell. Alone he felt at peace. So he surprised not only Tristan but himself by stepping out of his hut into the boy’s path.

  ‘Come in here and sit down with me,’ he said. Mr. Matthews never changed his voice to talk to children. He spoke loudly, just like he was talking to another man.

  Tristan tried to keep walking, but the man said again, ‘Come in here.’ Tristan did what he was told, ducked into the small dark room and sat down on the ice floor.

  ‘I’ve seen you walking around,’ said the man. ‘I’ve seen you all morning. I don’t know why anyone wants to walk around like that.’

  Tristan didn’t know what to say.

  ‘At least don’t sit down there, sit on the bench.’

  Tristan didn’t feel like he could stand up again.

  Mr. Matthews saw what was happening, went over and lifted the boy onto the bench. ‘You’re like a little animal,’ he said, happy to discover that he had not ruined his own peace. ‘You can sit here beside me.’

  The warmth of the hut, the quiet and sudden calm, meant Tristan soon fell asleep, collapsing against the stranger.

  Mr. Matthews missed hits on his lines. He could see them being tapped – the fish taking the bait then spitting it out. Some of the hooks were probably stripped, his bait lost, but he couldn’t check because he didn’t want to let the boy’s head drop down. His head seemed to weigh nothing, like a leaf that could catch a breath of wind and blow off. There was something heavy in the boy too, but not his body, which seemed weightless, like a spirit’s or angel’s. He could be that. It was not the kind of body you let fall.

  When the sun started to set, Mr. Matthews used his hand to hold up Tristan’s head, then he woke him by saying, ‘Okay.’ He only had to say it one time.

  Tristan didn’t walk to shore. He ran all the way to the shed door, and ran up against it. When he found that Rachel still wasn’t home, he lit the woodstove, then he lit the oil lamp and sat down in front of it.

  Over the next days, Tristan did the same thing. Some of the other fishermen befriended him, but they were not like Mr. Matthews. They teased and played tricks. They handed him their lines but taught him to set the hook to
o hard, so it pulled out of the fish’s mouth or tore and gaped the lip. They made it seem like tying the knot to bind the hook to the swivel was mysterious. He lost many hooks and was told to pay for them by running errands. The men made him run for tobacco and rolling papers, firewood, and even pinecones. But that was just one more of their jokes: burning pinecones smelled like pussy, ha ha ha.

  Mr. Matthews told Tristan what he needed to know but made no project out of him. For the most part, they sat together in silence, how they liked.

  ‘A fishing line is like a string of hair,’ Mr. Matthews said. ‘You can’t tie it too tight and you can’t yank it.’ Pulling huge trout out of the slush, one by one, Tristan could feel the line stretch.

  After a week he ran out of supplies and had only their Christmas tins of flour and sugar, and some dried beans, rice and salt. He traced the cursive pink on the tin with his finger, Merry Christmas, and cooked a kind of tasteless bannock on the woodstove. He burnt it to make it taste like something. Then the flour ran out and he started following Mr. Matthews home.

  Mr. and Mrs. Matthews didn’t question the boy, because he was a boy. His mother was not taking care of him, or couldn’t, but that wasn’t special. Mr. Matthews thought the wicked, so often talked of, were hard to find. There were no people like that. So they asked no questions of the kid, only began to expect his company, appreciating his cautious way of coming and going. He didn’t speak, but sat close by. He was otherworldly with his long hair that needed to be cut, his clothes that needed to be washed, his unrevealing eyes. He didn’t smell good. Mr. Matthews thought of Tristan as a spirit animal, a gift but not to own, a messenger maybe. He let him operate on his own terms.