The Archaeologists

by Hal Niedzviecki

  Of course, she’s not like them. She’s not running away. She’s not setting out into the night hoping against reason for a new chance, a new life magically free of centuries of genocide, institutional racism, and a legacy of poverty and addiction. She isn’t ruled by fear. She has, as a point of principle, always refused to be. Look at all the people in the world who live without jobs, without knowing where their next meal will come from, whose pension is a couple of crumpled bills and a handful of rattling coins dropped in a jar. But even with everything we have, she thinks, we are afraid. It’s an addiction, the desire to control our surroundings, to know where we’re going before we even get there. Where is she going? She never could get used to the misty wet weather of the Northwest Pacific winter; a feeling in her bones—time to go. Over the last few months of meetings and report writing culminating in that final Pyrrhic victory, snapshot images kept flashing in her mind: her old school—Columbus High; the ravine where they gathered on a Saturday night to pass around a bottle and a joint; the sprawling suburban colonial with its wallpapered walls and wall-to-wall carpeting, the ’80s haven she grew up in. There was nothing particularly notable about the images, the fleeting flashes of memory, except they repeated themselves with exponential intensity, seeped into her dreams and filled her with a sense of dread and foreboding. Eventually she accepted it—something was pulling at her, pulling her east, pulling her home, of all places. Home. Or, at least, the place where she grew up. It was here where she came of age, where she fought and railed against her parents, her school and its stupid teachers, where she eventually drove away her few friends with her insistence on endlessly chronicling the evils of the Western world in general and the Wississaugan way of life in particular.

  The bus lurches into that final left turn and moves down the ramp into its underground arrival point. Susan feels her stomach sink as they descend. This, she thinks, this is it.

  Susan twists and untwists the tangled headphone cord around her fingers. She’s here, she tells herself, so that’s where she’s meant to be. Goodbye Shane. Goodbye vistas of mountains and towering cedars and tall buildings glittering in the mist. Goodbye parks blighted by needles, goodbye homeless addicts panhandling outside the EL, goodbye Eden and Debbie and Dakota, missing, lost, presumed dead—women written off almost before they were born. The bus ticket cost about a tenth of the total sitting in her credit union account. When the time finally came, she hadn’t hesitated. She never did. She’d bought the ticket, promised Shane she’d keep in touch, and climbed on board.

  Her father picks her up at the station. He’s fashionably dressed, as always, in a sleek-fitting tan sports jacket and brown slacks. He’s greyer than when she last saw him—more than a year ago—but still trim and vital. He hugs her, his handsome face crinkling into a smile and she leans into him, her head on his shoulder. She feels herself relax for the first time since she clambered on board the first bus.

  Susie, his father breathes in her ear.

  They separate after a moment and she follows him through the underground parking lot to his car, a ruby red, leather-embossed Honda she hasn’t seen before and doesn’t remark on.

  Thanks for coming to get me, Dad, Susan says as they coast smoothly out of the parking lot and onto the main drag. She fingers the automatic window opener and, unable to resist, rolls the window all the way down, letting the cold air wash over her face.

  Of course, her father says. It’s great to see you.

  You too, Dad.

  They drive in silence for a few stoplights before her dad asks, Are you hungry? Should we stop for something?

  Susan, who had eaten the last of her trail mix twelve hours back and had been unable to bring herself to buy any of the items they passed off as food at the suffusion of smoke break rest stop donut and burger joints that marked the final stage of the journey, nods. Let’s do that, Dad, she says softly. She sees his hand on the gearshift. It looks smaller than she remembers. She covers his hand with her own palm.

  Over their meal—a large kale, strawberry, and pecan salad for Susan, curried butternut squash soup of the day for her dad—her father tells her about the educational cruise he’s about to take with his girlfriend. The boat, apparently, comes equipped with experts on everything from marine life to the local tribal culture. He chatters on, delicately avoiding the series of questions her parents inevitably and eventually put to her. The same questions over and over again ever since she’d dropped out of university a decade ago in the middle of her junior year. She’d helped organize her campus’s contribution to a massive rally, a protest against world leaders gathering to ratify yet another secretive agreement meant, Susan had come to realize, to further codify the systematic denial of the vast majority of people on the planet the basics needed for human dignity and liberty. She hadn’t actually meant to drop out. She’d woken up in a sleeping bag on the floor of someone’s flat in Quebec City, her eyes still oozing stinging tear gas ether and her mind reeling with images from the protest the police had seemed determined to turn violent. Her friends and accomplices had been clubbed, gassed, hauled off. Susan had been stunned. She was due back at school the next day. School! Her joint degree in Women’s and Native Studies overseen by a gaggle of fussy professors with a collective fetish for social justice and historical grievances—talking talking talking while the world quite literally burned to the ground.

  Her father had taken the departure from school in stride. Susan, at the time, had the feeling that he even supported her. But as the days turned into years, her dad fell silent in the face of her mother’s ardent disapproval—all this activism and caring is great, honey, but what about a career? What about settling down? Have you met anyone special, honey? How are you for money, dear? Taking care of number one, Susan thinks. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. Hobby liberalism, token concern.

  Are you still hungry? her father asks as Susan stabs the flecks of green at the bottom of her bowl. She’s avoiding looking at him, doesn’t want to give him an opening, doesn’t want to have to see the worry in his face. She’s skinny and her clothes are faded and rumpled and hanging off her, and she smells like stale sweat and bus bathroom and itinerant cigarette exhale. She looks older, she knows. She’s felt herself age this last year, her face etched beyond its thirty-three years, her pale orange hair starting to grey. So what can she tell him? Is she still hungry? Is she?

  Finally, she wills herself to look up. Dad, she says, thanks for—all this. I hope I’m not—I didn’t mean to barge in and—

  It’s no problem, he says. It’s been way too long.

  She nods, smiling shyly at him.

  So…her father says, delicately returning his coffee cup to its saucer. How were things out West? I read about some of it…in the papers.

  He speaks, now, with a halting tone. Does he really want to know? Before he retired, her father supported causes, lent his graphic design firm’s talents to developing posters for Greenpeace and ads for anti-bullying campaigns. He isn’t bad, Susan tells herself. He asked. So he wants to know.

  Dad, it was…it’s hard to…The plunge she felt in the pit of her stomach as the bus entered the underground parking lot beneath the Middle Mall abruptly returns. Oh! Susan gasps. Feeling the room start to spin, she drops her face in her hands.

  Hey, she hears her father say lamely. Are you okay?

  Susan isn’t a crier. All that time out West, meeting with the families of the murdered and the disappeared, looking at their fresh-faced pictures, their happy smiles and beaded dresses and glossy pigtails, she didn’t cry, not once. They cried. Susan could not—would not—cry. She didn’t deserve that. Not even in the end. They had cheered the announcement and some had cried. It was what the families wanted—I know she’s not coming back, a pale, grizzled dad had told her during one of the depositions. Clutching a picture of his daughter to his scrawny chest he addressed Susan with righteous intensity. I know that. I just…I don’t want this to happen to anyone else. The man had been cryi
ng, tears dripping on the snapshot of his little girl. Susan had felt like crying then and several other times, but had been able to push it away. What had they done? What victory had they earned?

  I’m…Susan wipes her face with a napkin.

  It’s okay, her dad says.

  No, Susan says fiercely. It’s not okay.

  In the car she apologizes to him. She feels embarrassed now amidst new leather bucket seats and a voice-activated Bluetooth-enabled satellite radio system. Their family has never been expressive. None of them are criers. When her parents split up seven or so years ago, they came to see her. They told her the news, and she’d nodded and murmured bloodlessly: If that’s what you think is best. Susan closes her eyes, leans back against the perfectly firm seat. She’s just so tired.

  She barely remembers it happening—her dad leading her into the house she mostly grew up in. Showering in the spare bathroom, then wrapping herself in a plush towel and padding over to her childhood bedroom. Sliding into sheets tinged with a vaguely recognizable scent. Falling instantly asleep.

  TIM

  Friday, April 11

  NIGHTTIME. Tim feels like he’s the only one on foot in all of Wississauga. He pulls up the zipper of his thin jacket. Army surplus, its drab green lends him a menacing don’t-screw-with-me vibe, helpful for dealing with the rich kids, the hockey and football types who think they can intimidate him into discount dime bags. He bought it after Clay pressed him into service. Welcome to the team, Clay said unctuously, slapping him on the back. He hasn’t told Carly he’s been promoted to dealing pot in the alley behind the bar during breaks and after work. She’ll be pissed. She’s right. It’s a bad idea. But he said yes anyway. What else was he going to do? He already owed Clay a few grand by then. The situation, Clay said, speaking in that slow careful way of his, is becoming untenable. Tim hadn’t actually known what the word meant at the time. But he’d gotten the idea.

  Part of him likes it. He likes the way his customers tiptoe around him—as if a wrong word or look will send him into a deadly rage. People watch too much TV. Anyway, he bought the jacket figuring he might as well look the part. He was even gonna shave his head. Buzz-cut. Travis Bickle badass. Yeah he’s a real tough-guy, hoofing it down the suburban sidewalk. You talking to me? You talking to me? Tim blinks, blinded by passing headlights. Cars cruise by in exhaust wakes, their taillights glowing as they slow to get a look at him once he’s safely in the rear. He suppresses the urge to flip them off. He sticks out. They want to know who he is. Just a guy going for a walk, he thinks. Is that such a crime? You should try it sometime. It’s how we used to do it. Anyway, he’s on a quest. Who drives around in an assembly-line pseudo-sporty aging Pontiac reeking of stale smoke and sweaty patchouli when they’re on a god-damned honest-to-god quest?

  The car wouldn’t start. So he’s on foot.

  It shouldn’t be too far, from what he remembers. The street in question was just a tree-lined conduit in his day, a shortcut between the main drag and the less opulent working class neighbourhoods that were slowly spreading south from the 472. A street called Victory Drive, a long dark speedway framed by thick forest. This is where his father lives now. In some place called the Victory Colonnades. What the hell is a colonnade? Carly would laugh. She’d say, smiling, How am I supposed to know? But she’d know.

  Tim turns up the collar of his jacket. He puts on an angry face, glaring at oncoming headlights. He left his cell at home. When he gets to his dad’s place, he’ll call Carly. First thing, Tim tells himself. I shouldn’t have just—

  He hoofs on past a sprawling new high school, concrete complex complete with multiple parking lots and sports fields. Used to be all woods here. Across the street, a housing development squashed together in semi-detached efficiency, each domicile adorned with a two-car garage in lieu of lawn. Tim keeps moving. Further on, three or four condo high-rises sticking into the night sky. Victory Colonnades, Tim thinks.

  He looks up to find himself lapped by two women in spandex and name brand running shoes. They huff silently as they move past him, weights in belts entrapping their ankles and wrists. The women each carry a plastic bottle of designer water. Tim feels their stares. Who, me? I’m nothing to worry about ladies. Just little old Timmy. From the neighbourhood.

  What neighbourhood?

  Nothing looks quite right. But it all seems familiar. None of it was here the last time he was on this street. What does he expect? That was more than ten years ago. Everything’s changed, only as he walks, Tim feels a familiar constriction in his chest. Regret, remembrance, revenge—the noose tightening around his heart reminding him. He doesn’t want to forgive him. He doesn’t want to see him. Whatever he has to say, it doesn’t matter anymore. Not after—

  last night.

  Tim can still smell it—her—time unearthed moment by moment, a truth in feeling. He knows. He knows. Whatever happened, Tim’s got his answer. Maybe he’s not ready to say it. Or even think it. But he knows, he knows what he has to do: dig into the dirt; hold what he can with his bare hands and do his best to cover up what’s sunk in too deep and too decayed to ever pull out. The clouds shift and a sheen of hazy moonlight lights up the long empty sidewalk in front of him. He puts his head down and picks up the pace.

  Tim pulls on the handle of the building’s front door and feels glass rattle against a lock. You have to buzz up, he realizes. Sure. No problem. Hey Dad. I’m baaack! Yeah, it’s been a while. Like, uh, twelve years. So I got your letter. I heard you were on your way out. Figured I’d drop by to give you one last chance to tell me—

  He didn’t look for her, Tim thinks. He never looked for her. He didn’t look for Tim either. You had a wife and son, you fuck. Once upon a time. And then you didn’t. That doesn’t bother you? You ever kinda wonder where they went?

  Last night.

  It’s true, he’ll tell Carly. A vision like that girl said.

  I know, you fuck. So just say it. Admit it.

  Then I’ll—

  Shove that letter up his—

  Here’s your letter ya fuck. Choke on it.

  You’re so angry. Why are you always so angry?

  —Carly—

  Tim ducks behind a potted bush so green and luminous he thinks it must be fake. He rips a leaf. Huh. It’s real. The plant looks nothing like the scraggly, denuded plants in the river gully. A vertical glistening emerald, it smells different too, chemical and soapy, weirdly clean. A lady and her stroller-entombed baby push out of the entrance. Tim waits and then steps quickly to the closing door. He silently sticks a hand in the diminishing crack.

  The door crunches on his fingers. Aww. Fuck. Anyway, he’s in. He wiggles his swelling fingers and looks around. It’s a dimly lit lobby adorned with thrift store chairs and several more aggressively shiny plants. The trapped odour of cooked food and wrinkled feet sticks in Tim’s nostrils. This is it? He imagined his father in something swank: uniformed doormen, walls of upholstered velvet, mirrors on the ceilings, marble floors polished too slippery. Not some cheap building full up with old stink.

  He takes the elevator up to the tenth floor. The fingers of Tim’s hurt hand pulse in a tight fist. He should have smoked on the way. Now it’s too late. He could go back down. Roll a fatty. Why not? What’s the hurry? He wishes Carly were here. She’d understand. She’d tell him to take his time. She’d tell him that he needs to be patient, that he needs to give himself space and evolve toward the moment.

  Whatever that means.

  —Carly—

  Ding, short ride, he arrives too soon. He slinks down the corridor. What if he isn’t evolving? What if there isn’t a moment? He knocks, the sound ringing hollow.

  Knocks.

  Knocks.

  Not home? Where else would he be? Out on a hot date? He’s supposed to be sick. Dying. Tim hits the door. The thud feels loud on the palm of his hand, but disappears into an echo absorbed by the musty carpeted halls.

  Hello? he tries. His voice comes out tinny.
<
br />   Nothing. Nobody.

  Tim pounds the door. He rattles the knob. The door, unlocked, swings open.

  Tim stands in the entryway hearing his own breath pushing hot blood into his throbbing clenched fingers. The apartment is dark. He waits for his eyes to adjust. Dad! he thinks. I’m home! Home. He isn’t home. Anyway, there’s nobody here. He’s too late, he thinks. The tightness, sweat beading his forehead, it’s hard for him to breath. Too goddamn late. The old man’s—

  Even the smell, like something left behind: sweat and canned soup and Band-Aids. A death smell, hospitals, old age homes, places where they drape a sheet over what’s left and wheel it away.

  Tim creeps down the hall into the living room. The sharp edge of a coffee table digs into his shin and he stumbles.

  A lamp flicks on. Tim blinks. He sees the couch first. Forest green leather he recognizes from the sold homestead. Then: almost lost in the couch’s cavernous corner, a withered, slumped creature. Tim thinks of victims on the History Channel—prisoners or survivors.

  They stare at each other.

  Dad?

  The wan slumped figure raises his head and Tim freezes. Bulging, yellowed eyes shimmering with anger, disgust, and triumph. It’s him. Tim stares back, trapped and wild and barely able to breathe. Suddenly, the man—his father—doubles over and retches into the plastic bucket on the floor at his feet.

  Throat. Cancer. Tim, perched on the opposite edge of the couch as far away as possible from the skeletal imposter father, feels his own throat constrict. They. His father speaks in one word guttural gasps. Can’t. Do. Nuh. Thing. He gags and coughs, his neck bulging and swollen, strangled from the inside.