Langley said “You’re old, Frost. That’s your whole problem. You’re old and you’re a farmer.”
Frost held his good arm across his gut and turned his back on Langley and leaned on the stove. A smell of burning wool mixed with the dense smoke. Langley took a long step forward and swept back the bloodied knife. Frost reached into the open stove and reared up with a blazing piece of cordwood and turned back to Langley, who hesitated at the sight of the flames curling among Frost’s fingers. Frost smashed him in the face with the wood.
Langley cried out “Ow! God! Damn!” and stepped backward and tripped over Grace and sat, with blood gushing from his nose, and an ember flickering in his hair. Frost came forward on his knees, with his face already pale from the blood that had left him, pale in the light of the burning thing in his raised hand. Langley managed to poke the knife forward and into Frost’s chest again, but still Frost leaned over Langley’s outstretched feet and smashed him once more with the wood.
Langley hollered hoarsely. He got up and rose twisting to his feet and stepped away from Frost. He sat in his chair, with both arms hanging and the knife gripped loosely. His face was charred and well bloodied, and bits of his hair were burning. Frost came forward another six inches on his knees. He teetered. He raised the burning wood and threw it weakly. It landed in Langley’s lap.
Frost folded slowly forward and came to rest with his forehead against the earth.
One of Langley’s eyes was ruined. He squinted out of the other one at the man bowed at his feet and at the woman lying near him and at the wide pool of blood sinking slowly into the hardened earth. He coughed and gave a long exclamation of pain. He said “Frost, you son of a bitch.” He looked down at the piece of cordwood burning in his lap and set the blade of the knife against it and began to push it away.
There was a sound. Running footsteps. Langley looked up. He said “Not you.”
She came at full speed around the corner from the first addition. The flames of the Christmas candles fluttered as she passed. She had a long spear and was holding it like a lance. Langley sat and watched as Noor leapt the hunched form of her grandfather.
The wide blade and the thick end of the shaft passed through the base of Langley’s throat and through the leather and stuffing of the chair as well. But even as the chair toppled backward Noor held the spear tightly, and her weight drove it down into the earth, and her momentum propelled her over Langley and into the heaped commodities, which tumbled upon and around her. A case burst open and silver cutlery spilled over her dark hair and lay there for a moment like a fool’s crown, sparkling in the firelight, knives and forks and spoons, until she rose and went to her grandfather.
She turned him gently onto his back. The fronts of his poncho and his trousers were soaked with blood. He looked at her. He was as pale as a sheet. She said. “It’s finished, Grampa.”
Frost said “Noor.” Or perhaps it was only a gasp.
“You’ll be fine now. I’ll get you home.”
But he was dead even before she managed to load him onto Beauty, who stood waiting in the rain.
53
“It’s in there.”
Snow nodded toward a door and then turned away, as if there were some shame involved in witnessing what she knew would emerge.
Jessica carried the black garbage bag slung over a shoulder, and she and Snow and Boundary and Oak descended the stairs of the big building and walked in silence along the south end of Town trail and up onto Frost’s Bridge.
It was a mild day, with high clouds coasting from the southwest. They stopped at the crest of the bridge. Without ceremony Jessica held the black bag over the eastern railing and let the contents slip free. The breeze took the finer powder, but most of the skag plummeted like a ragged mass of ash.
Jessica and Boundary and Oak moved to the other side of the bridge and looked down. But all they saw was grey-green water surging westward past the railroad swing bridge that stood eternally open.
Oak said “What did we expect? Don’t make no difference to the river.”
Behind them, in the middle of the roadway, Snow sat on the lane divider, weeping.
Tyrell and Daniel Charlie carried the airtight heating stove out to a wagon. It was still warm, a fact which seemed to deepen the desolation that made their faces resemble awkwardly carved masks of shadow and tired skin. Tyrell said “Let’s drop this off at Wing’s. He should be home with his crew by now.” Then he went back in and collected the silverware that had spilled near Langley, who was still in the upended chair, his blemished face now additionally gnawed by rodents. He was pinned to the earth like an insect by Noor’s spear. Tyrell set the knives and forks and spoons carefully into their case and brought it out to the wagon.
Down the path, beside the pile of skag dross Marpole, Newton and Richmond managed to struggle the ancient wood stove out of the A-frame and onto the big wagon, while Beauty stood watching nervously.
They all went into the main house, where they found books and medicine and matches and plastic jerricans of oil and gasoline. Tyrell and Daniel Charlie stood at open kitchen cupboards and squinted at decades-old print and said to one another the words ibuprofen and Lipitor and Immodium and Benylin and Prozac and tetracycline and Pure Milk Thistle Extract and Gravol and filled their grocery bags. Tyrell found a box of slug bait. He opened it and held the box to his nose and let Daniel Charlie sniff it as well. Daniel Charlie nodded and said “Yeah, that’s what he gave Grace to kill the dogs.”
In the main room there was a brick fireplace. On the slate hearth boxes of matches were stacked. Books were lined on the wood mantel-piece. Except for one they were hardcover. Building Construction Cost Data 2008. Nontechnical Guide To Petroleum Geology, Exploration, Drilling and Production. The Collected Works of Shakespeare. Encyclopaedia Americana Volume 4. Mike Huckabee – Do the Right Thing. Digital Photography Masterclass – the men stood around Daniel Charlie while he flipped through this one - Revenge of the Sith. A Manual of Style. Except for The Collected Works of Shakespeare, the pages of which were brown and brittle and smelled stale, and Emotionomics, whose paper cover of healthy and smiling faces seemed to offend him, Daniel Charlie put all the books into his bag. He took the matches too.
When the wagons were loaded Newton and Richmond brought Grace’s body out and found a place for it in the wagon pulled by Beauty, and covered it with a plastic tarp.
Tyrell and Daniel Charlie walked among the mildewed and rotting furniture, among the nameless electronic wonders, among labour-saving devices as beautiful and useless as modernist sculptures, among chrome-plated objects that reflected and distorted the forms of the men as they spilled gasoline and oil from the jerricans.
They stood at the top of the driveway for a long time, watching the place burn. The roofs of the several additions and the makeshift house down the path collapsed even before the glass in the windows of the main house shattered and hands of flame clawed out into the drab daylight. Emaciated men and women dressed in shreds of plastic came from somewhere and stood nearby and without expression watched the fire rage. When the wagons pulled out they followed a hundred yards back, like timid and desperate dogs.
54
There were daffodils blooming all among the graves, even among the dozen new mounds of bare earth, and there was a honey smell of cottonwood and alder buds from some distant place where trees still grew. Noor stood looking over the river toward the mountains. Her hair hung loose and dirty, the eyes were stricken in her drawn face, and her cheeks were marked with the dried salt of tears.
It was warm and oppressively still. A high sheet of cloud the colour of oyster shell lay over the day. But against the mountains a lower stratum had flowed and gathered. It was as if a pair of hands had wrapped the peaks tightly in a thin white quilt. Noor pushed a veil of hair from her eyes. She rubbed at the salt on her cheeks. Then she turned and walked to the domicile. She washed her face and tied her hair back.
Will lay where she had left him, on
the mattress below the big window. King lay on the floor beside him. Will’s thin body, half covered by a throw of rabbit skins, was locked into a posture of struggle. His face was as grey as concrete except for a red patch on each cheek. He did not look like Will now but like a tortured and cadaverous twin. His lips gaped in a snarl of strangulation as he wheezed a filament of air into his lungs.
Noor gave a ragged sigh and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She set her lips and squatted beside him. King lifted his head and licked her hand once, then laid his head on his paws again. Noor stroked Will’s forehead and said “Do you want to see something?”
Will opened his eyes and seized her wrists and looked wildly around. In a few seconds he managed to say, between rapid, rasping breaths “Noor?”
“Yes, it’s me, Will.”
He let go of her wrists but kept looking at her in terror as he fought for air.
“Will, do you want to see something?”
She lifted him and got him onto his knees facing the window and supported him under the arms and around the chest, holding him against her breasts. She whispered into his ear “Look at the mountains.”
King rose and watched anxiously.
Will continued his loud, frantic gasping. In a minute he said “Take me out.”
She gathered him into the skin throw and carried him to the wheeled office chair, which sat near the fireplace, and gently sat him in it, making sure he was covered, and wheeled him out of the apartment and down the corridor and out onto the wide top step at the entrance of the domicile. King padded after them.
Noor squatted beside the chair. She pointed to the north and said “See?”
Will’s breathing relaxed slightly. He said “Snow.”
Noor looked sharply away. She wiped at her eyes again. She said “Is it?”
“Snow. I knew it would.”
Noor shuffled close and lay her head against his shoulder.
He said again “I knew it would" and then “Has Grampa seen it?”
A sob leapt from Noor, and she sat on the step and covered her mouth. Will appeared not to notice.
Noor rose again and took his hand and kissed it and said “No, he hasn’t seen it. Not yet.”
Will said “Listen.”
Noor listened. There was nothing to hear but his violent gasping. She said “What? What do you hear?”
“Hushed” he said. “It’s hushed.”
The next day Noor knelt in wet grass and reached down into Will’s grave and placed on his chest the Christmas ornament she had acquired half a year before at the market, and the residents of the domicile came forward one by one and dropped their handfuls of earth upon the boy.
55
The mother, father and child have found a place not far from an uninhabited warehouse, a little upriver from the bridge, where the grass grows close to the edge of the water, and where there are patches nearby of blooming vetch and lupine. There is a tiny inlet where the water is still. The little girl has the bottom half of what could be a white plastic bleach bottle and is squatting naked in the mud at the edge of the little inlet, scooping and spilling water and singing a formless song. The sun is mellow. There is a muted breeze.
The mother and father are also naked. They lie face to face, leaning on their elbows. As the child plays and sings she often bumps against their feet.
The man says “The thing is, see, I’m the boss of the bumblebees. That’s why everyone calls me honey.”
The woman says “Ah, I was wondering about that. And how long have you been the boss of the bumblebees, honey?”
“Not long, only since I stopped being the king of the caterpillars. I had to give that up because people started calling me creepy.”
“Well! I didn’t know you were so important. Have you always been a king or a boss?”
“No, only since the day I was born.”
The child stops singing. She doesn`t bump their toes. The man and the woman look toward her. She stands up and turns.
“Daddy?”
“What’s wrong, my princess?”
“My bottle goed away.”
“It did? What happened?”
“I fulled it up and it sanked and sappeared.” She is about to cry.
The man says “Noor?”
The child only looks at him.
He says “Come here. I’ve got some important questions to ask.”
She walks solemnly up the corridor formed by their legs. The man sits up and takes her by the waist and lays her on her back on the grass. She is smiling now. She says “Jus don’t giggle me.”
“But what if I feel like it?”
“Jus don’t!”
“We’ll see. Anyway, so here’s the first question. What’s this?”
“My nose.”
“Correct. And what are these?”
“My footsies. I mean my feetsies.”
“Right again. Harder questions now. Are you ready?”
“Yeah, I ready.”
“First question. Are you going to be beautiful like your mommy?”
“Yeah, I going to!”
“Are you going to be smart like your grampa?
“Yeah!”
“Are you going to be brave?”
The child is silent.
“You don’t know what brave means?”
She shakes her head.
“Brave means you’re not afraid of anything.”
“Yeah, brave!” She kicks her heels against the earth. Then she is serious. “Daddy?”
“Yes, my princess?”
“Can people sappear?”
A ripple on the complicated face of the river beyond Noor’s wee bay throws a spark of more intense light upon Steveston’s features. Noor sees the green eye and the blue eye and the impish grin above her blend with the sky, and for an instant her father vanishes into the day itself.
Steveston says “Can people disappear! That’s the silliest thing I`ve heard since… since…”
“Since tomorrow?”
“Yeah, since tomorrow.”
He wiggles his fingers above her ribs.
She shrieks and thrashes. “Daddy! I said don’t giggle me!”
56
Wing said “You know what this is? It’s a revolution. It’s called domestication. Domestication of the wild rabbit.”
Noor said “It was Will’s idea. We plan to trade breeding pairs at the market - with people we can trust to breed them and not just eat them. Can you take a pair home today?”
“Damn right! I’ll keep them in the barn so’s the coyotes can’t get at them.”
“They multiply so quickly – pretty soon no one around here should have to be hungry.”
It was a clear winter day. Here and there to the east and the west and the south, and over Town as well, threads of smoke rose as straight as reeds. Noor and Wing were standing at the open door of a shed made of concrete blocks. Noor wore a long cloak of rabbit skins. Wing had the blood-red warm-up jacket and a skin hat. There was a smell of old straw and manure. It was as gloomy as a cave inside the shed, but the dark was dotted with glowing points of pink from the eyes of rabbits.
Noor closed the door of the shed. She waited as Wing walked over to Beauty’s yard. As Wing approached, the horse thrust her head over the top railing and snorted, and spears of vapour shot toward Wing. He stood for a minute talking to the animal and stroking her thick neck.
When he returned to Noor’s side she said “What about that wagon the Parts Crew made for you?”
Wing shrugged. “It’s still there I guess.”
“We could go and get it with Beauty.”
“No point. I couldn’t use it ’cause my steers wouldn’t be able to pull it. I need that colt you been promising.”
Noor said “Well….”
They walked toward the domicile.
Wing said “Brandon died, I hear.”
“Yeah. Couldn’t make it without the hooch he was getting from Langley.”
“Used
to trade your inventory.”
“He did, yeah.”
He said “Night. Rain. Ryan. Jessica. If anyone was going to live forever I thought it was Jessica.”
Noor shook her head, sighed. “Langley’s medicine wasn’t much help. But more people keep coming from Town. The domicile is full. People died over at Fundy’s place too. You remember old Christopher?”
“I do.”
“Old Moses, the bible thumper. That guy who got Grampa’s shoes. Solomon.”
“Fundy’s boy?”
“It’s been a bad year. But your crew has been okay?”
“Yeah. Lucky so far.”
Two dogs came around a corner of the domicile. One of them was King. The other was a brown wire-haired creature no bigger than the rabbits in the shed. It had a swollen belly.
Wing said “That mutt looks familiar.”
“That’s Margaret. Hemlock the Messenger’s dog.”
“So I guess Hemlock must be….”
Since Tomorrow Page 35