Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club

by Megan Gail Coles

  But there was no dialing back to that.

  The first confession made in her ear: I don’t think we would work and then you’d hate me.

  Then there was really nothing else to be done. He wished it had gone a different way. He wished he had taken a different road. But John also wishes he didn’t.

  Wishing things were different would mean wishing she were different. Or wishing her away. And he couldn’t do that. There was a pain that crossed his chest when he tried to whittle it down to nothing. A hurt that he couldn’t explain, understand or ignore. He does not want those wishes. He pretends they were make-believe wishes until the tightness releases.

  If wishes were fishes they wouldn’t be in this fucking mess.

  He wouldn’t be sneaking into his own restaurant having slept three hours at most, having not moved a miserable inch, to appear restful. Confined to his own corpse-like state of perpetual worry so as not to disturb or engage.

  John had grown convinced that certain beloved humans could hear his thoughts.

  Sometimes he intentionally runs baseball scores, imagines changing the car filter or recites church hymns to square off what he is trying to deny. He will Minecraft his indecent proposals. Because, my god, they were growing indecent.

  John is half the time throbbing like an insane person now.

  John thinks this is what they mean when they say cunt-struck.

  John constantly lies awake hating himself for his motionlessness but remains unable to execute any manoeuvre, knowing the slightest hint of repositioning would encourage discourse with one and intercourse with the other.

  There is no safe place for sleeping.

  John exhibits nine of the ten surprising effects of sleep deprivation. He recounts them to himself after midnight while lying stick straight. Sleepiness causes accidents: John had sliced the top of his forefinger off while dicing carrots, lost it momentarily amongst the tops and thought briefly the soup stock would have to be remade, considered not doing so due to lack of time and energy before celebrating the recovery of the lost tip, followed by a period of mourning.

  His reaction time was stunted. Like cooking drunk. His vocabulary was impaired; sometimes he forgot the names of root vegetables. Couldn’t recall a turnip. His heartbeat was certainly irregular, clip-clip-clipping away inside his cavity. And didn’t his face look lacklustre, like his skin was being melted off by some secret radioactive toxic waste disposal strategy.

  He was soft around the middle, indecisive and depressed. He was prone to high-risk situations and had the judgement capacity of a crackhead. John was hungry all the time. He wanted to eat and drink all the orange and yellow things. He wanted more than one Big Mary wrapped in bacon snuck into the restaurant through the side door. He would devour it over the sink. Three bites. The salt barely absorbing his sinking feelings before they sank low and heavy in his gut.

  Someone is suddenly behind John touching his elbow as he slides his key into the lock.

  He had grown distracted by his revolting thoughts and some kind of sick on the side windowpane, not noticing Olive as she timidly caught him by the elbow and off guard. This caused him to fall back long enough to warrant lurching forward. John is a reactionary sort. His whole life trajectory is a kind of chronic whiplash, with this morning’s near takedown no different.

  Olive had not intended to make him stumble.

  He used the small woman’s weight to right himself by pushing her swarthy body into the slushy ground. Any passerby witnessing the moment of bearing would assume John human garbage deserving of being hauled around back to the alley.

  There was no spin he could put on that. So he was glad for the empty street and Olive’s quiet nature. She didn’t even cry out. A quick, soft intake of breath was barely audible within their communal personal space, and it occurred to John that Olive was a woman well-practised in silence. And this was a nauseating thought because John knew how women and girls went mute.

  Jesus Christ, Olive.

  Is Iris with you?

  Why would Iris be with me?

  Cause she’s always —

  You scared the shit out of me.

  Her car is over there.

  So?

  I knocked on her door this morning.

  Well, I guess she’s not home.

  Where is she?

  How the fuck should I know?

  John and Olive both know how the fuck he should.

  I have cold feet.

  Olive frequently wrapped requests in a statements so rejection would ricochet past her. Terse remarks repelled by the absence of a question. This magic cloak hung in John’s closet, too. He tried it on for everyone.

  I am making pasta for staff dinner. Rather than would you like some pasta?

  I am going to smoke now. Rather than I want you to join me.

  I am not leaving. Rather than please let me stay.

  John holds the door ajar just long enough for Olive to meet his gaze and walk through to the bench. John had long since brought the dog blanket in from the car. It has lived at the bottom of the hostess station cupboard since the beginning of January when Olive started popping up randomly. Always on cold days. Always early. With a new bump or bruise. Refusing food until Iris arrives. She never goes farther than the bench for fear of George.

  Omi peeps around the corner and spies them in the doorway. He immediately notices Olive’s shoes. She is wearing ballet flats and wet socks. John hands Olive the blanket as Omi darts back into the kitchen. John is too preoccupied with his own hell freezing over at the moment to worry much on Olive’s toes.

  But Omi rushes back into the dining room. He has nuked a bag of peas and wrapped them in a red-and-white-checked tea towel. He lowers himself to the floor and wordlessly removes Olive’s shoes and socks one at a time, wrapping his dark hands around the pads of her freezing right foot, the pink of his large palms glowing against the top of her tiny foot which has the beginning of a sheen like he has seen in nature documentaries.

  Omi watched a lot of programming about the northern hemisphere to prepare himself mentally for the change in climate. It only marginally helped. Some days when the damp sets in, he is convinced no one is meant to live here. It is inhospitable. And Olive smiles through the pins and needles even though she is embarrassed because the gentle man is touching her naked foot and it is the single sweetest moment of her young life.

  She wishes her toenails were painted some bright shade of pink.

  John thinks this touching tableau is further proof he is not a good man. He watches as Omi speaks tenderly to Olive and wishes he had thought to warm the peas. This would garner some forgiveness from Iris, maybe even buy a little reprieve. Last night’s argument was a testament to her growing impatience.

  That wild look having crossed Iris’s face when he told her, yet again, that he was leaving.

  Following him into the bathroom, watching him wash up, with that scary vacant stare, the look that said she was capable of great feats of destruction. The one that makes John fearful of her. And there is no telling her to calm down. She sparks back hot accusations before retiring to the bedroom to wrap herself and yell some more. She has been raging in her mind for the past eighteen months and each sentence shanks him.

  She demands to know why he took up with her in the first place. He must not be paying attention to her at all. Because she did not pretend to be demure. No one in the history of the fucking world would refer to her as timid. Standing atop sheets soused in their mutual weak will, yelling, what in the fuck are you playing at, John? And then using his full name with senior-level aut
hority though she is wearing nothing but a sheer navy thong.

  And he loves her like this.

  Even if he is the target of her vitriol, he still loves her ability to summon such outrage. Not yet thirty. Penniless. And naked. Yet roaring at him to grow the fuck up with the conviction of an ageless monarch. And she would rule him. He knows it. She denies it. It is discussed at great length. But John knows what kind of woman she will become yet. She would make a lowly petitioner out of him.

  Last night, her yelling, finger pointed, eye trained down the line of it.

  Your truth is not more fucking true than my truth.

  And what was John supposed to say to that?

  Nothing. He has no words to settle her. Instead, he grabbed the quilt and brought her down with it. Wrapped her in it and pulled her down onto the mattress. Like taking down a pissy gazelle in a half-damp blanket. John pressed himself around her. Pressure being something that calms her fits of rage. John often wonders if she is on the spectrum. Or if it is him. Perhaps he has lost his mind this time. He cannot recall a time before this when he felt more fucked up.

  John is miserable. He loves her so much he cannot think straight. But he also loves his wife.

  What is he doing? He has made so many mistakes. He cannot connect them in his mind in a coherent order so as to understand.

  He must though. He must make himself understand before she puts a breach between them that will be impossible to cover. He will not have it end like that. He would like to put their rabid dog down kindly. Iris, though, is full of hurt. She intends to take it out back, tie it to a tree and shoot it in the fucking face.

  She has told him. She has warned him. She has said the worst things she could ever imagine to put him off her. But nothing deterred him. Now she claims she has no other choice but to silence their mad barking. John knows this is his fault. In his heart, he knows it. John had foreseen this happening and then made it happen. He makes himself right. But now he just wants to stop the hurt that is being lavishly spread around. He wants everything resolved peacefully. He does not want to lose them both.

  This kind of love cannot meet an easy end, John, Jesus Christ, grow up.

  Last night he had told her about the boy. He hadn’t wanted to. Had thought he had more time. That it would take years even. He had thought it would never happen. But George had called crying tears of relief.

  He would be someone’s dad before summer.

  There had been a shift in him so Iris started asking her questions. This: one of her most reliable qualities. She will ask the very question you do not want to answer. She will unearth you.

  You don’t get to know what goes on in my marriage, Iris, John had said.

  That had gassed her fire. And she exploded at him. He tried to make it so she could understand. He had promised he would never leave George. Shortly after that they had gotten the dogs. But the dogs were not the point. He got lost in the retelling. The promise was the point. He has promised to stay no matter what.

  Your marriage is fucking ridiculous.

  My marriage is none of your business.

  You make it my business every time you fuck me!

  Jesus, Iris.

  You’re un-fucking-believable, John.

  John had tried explaining that it was different for her. She still had a young body and youthful ideas and could move about the world untethered. But he could not go with her. John’s fantasies have always involved her far away from him. Upon first meeting, he took her in and at once anticipated an ocean between them. He calculated the immense, ravenous, ardent longing he would feel and thought best to avoid this at all costs. Whenever a less brutal alternative took hold in his imagination, he listed the many reasons he had been busy stacking against her while she fell in love. Sometimes he listed them aloud to her. And being as she was, as women are, she dismissed them out of hand. Or got angry. John hated her temper.

  He burned his hand upon the stovetop of her every time he opened his jesus mouth.

  * * *

  Damian is already forty-five minutes late for his shift.

  He has been late for every shift since Dot was in the newspaper. He should not have read the comments section online. It had sent him into a spin. Damian was spiralling all over the downtown core. It was dangerous to cross the street under these conditions, under normal conditions even, but operating as he was currently would qualify as high-risk behaviour.

  John would tear Damian a new asshole if his wasn’t already torn asunder.

  And he woke up somewhere in the Goulds. He knew it was the Goulds because he could hear dogs barking in the distance. A kennel or breeder or daycare or some shit. It’s what farmers did now that no one had use for farms. Training expensive dogs had a greater market share than growing food in the current local economy. Doodles. They were mostly some kind of doodle. Even dogs not of the sketchy variety were mistaken for some appealing hybrid.

  Queen Georgina complained people confused her poodles for doodles endlessly. She announced it to the dining room as if this were a real lifestyle indignity she was forced to endure. Dog breed ignorance being amongst the ever-growing list of things about St. John’s she finds wanting. Knowing your English Springer from an American Cocker would win her admiration instantly. She was the Queen Bitch.

  It seemed travelling made her grow increasingly discontent.

  She wanted the same access as any world city. Like London or New York. She wanted Montreal bagels on Sunday mornings and smoked meat sandwiches on Friday afternoons. She wanted the Globe and Mail Pursuits section delivered to her door on a Saturday.

  Queen Bitch wanted Denmark’s public transit system, Iceland’s heated sidewalks and all four seasons. Summer, fall, winter, spring, especially spring, and on time every year.

  She wanted the impossible.

  She wanted St. John’s to be a different city, The Hazel to be a different restaurant and John to be a different man. She wanted all things bettered. She saw opportunities for improvement everywhere. She found breaches, attempted to cover them and was left scrambling on the rock face. She was solution-driven and goal-oriented.

  Damian loathed her. They were all happier when she was out of town.

  And she was without a doubt the reason he knew about dogs going to daycare. Which was rich indeed considering half of people living could not afford even childcare. His own sister was forced to stay home with her baby. Mel had failed to land a modern husband as those were still in short supply, and now she watched a lot of Peppa Pig and spoke of lorries and lifts. Not that it mattered who she married. Even the good ones were capable of shagging some young thing in the back of the bought brand new family minivan. Damian had been ridden on the back bench seat of a few Caravans himself.

  So he knew a thing or ten about the state of domestication in his ragged town.

  And what he didn’t know, Queen Georgina was all too happy to share. Spooning the logistics of business operation down their throats at each staff meeting she attended. Educating them on the state of commercial income tax, rising overhead and gratitude. She wanted undying thanks for just above minimum wage serving jobs. She stood lecturing while a pair of thousand-dollar dogs slept at her feet, unaware of the contempt this bred in the staff.

  The sharp whines and whimpers of some young bitch’s litter had woken Damian. Hungry animals howling morbid songs for their supper. Or breakfast.

  Damian didn’t know how he got there really, he was just suddenly in a living room.

  He was staring at a glass-top coffee table covered in short straws and empties. Through it
still, underneath, he could see butts swimming in half-water-filled mugs, abandoned cellphones and a bycatch of Swedish fish. He could not remember eating candy but hoped he had.

  He could not remember the last time he had eaten. Or had an appetite for food.

  When Damian goes off nutrition, he really goes off nutrition. His mother said this was his way, every slight excused by his predisposition. She was not one to badger her son. Or pay him any mind at all. She had always had her private pastimes. And Damian was just like her. He never paid her any mind either or at all. He had intended to pursue their apathetic relationship through to the grave, hers or his, whichever came first was of little consequence.

  Damian had fully intended to maintain the facade of being a loving, if not incredibly busy, son forever. His life did not allow for extended telephone calls beyond the obligatory birthday-Christmas-Mother’s Day bullshit. In fact, sometimes, given the opportunity, he would avoid even those. Like on his birthday, he refused to answer her calls. Because he was tripping balls on acid, had believed quite readily there was a panda upstairs, and announced a great percentage of stuff in Campbell’s soup was not worth eating before accidentally head-butting Tom, who had been leaning in to kiss him. Tom.

  But it was his birthday, and you’re meant to get what you want on your birthday.

  Rather than be subjected, yet again, to another recounting of your actual birth where your mother implies indelicately that your sexual deviance is somehow a result of hard labour.

  Tom said Damian’s mother was an old hag sitting atop her son’s chest.

  Tom was convinced she said things like this to get herself off the hook for being absent and then a disaster. Tom had taken none of her passive aggressive humour. Or, at least, he hadn’t before he left. Tom left, too. And it was Damian’s fault. Tom seated in the rocking chair, stroking their cat, shaking his head, voicing over and over his disbelief.