by Deni Béchard
To my classmates, I bragged about my father, the immense salmon and steelhead trout that he reeled from icy rivers, standing deep in the current, almost swept away. They listened, but at some point—when the salmon bit his leg or gashed his hand or wrapped the line around his boot and tried to drag him downriver—they snorted and called me a liar.
What they didn’t realize was that their stories stank because they thought too much about time. There was too much walking, too much opening and closing of doors. They didn’t see that two shocking events years apart, on opposite ends of the country, longed for each other the way a smiling girl across the room made me want to sit next to her. Hearing my father, I forgot the slow march of minutes. A dog had once tried to bite him, and he’d also reeled in a forty-pound salmon, so it seemed natural that the injured fish would bite him, too. Minutes and hours had to be done away with, the thrilling moments of life freed from the calendar’s prison grid.
Soon, I told myself as I walked home through the forest, my life would be a story, and I’d be free.
School let out for Christmas. The autumn had been mild, but the weather finally changed. Snow fell in the naked forests and turned the ditches to ice.
We moved again, to a smaller farm, this time to be closer to my father’s stores. My mother barely unpacked. She no longer paid much attention to food, making slapdash sandwiches and rushing off to meet friends from the psychic church. Though she still had two horses, the years of goat home brew were over.
On Boxing Day, she took us to the mall. My father had given each of us a hundred dollars in loose change. We’d spent Christmas counting, huddled like misers over stacks of coins, but at the mall I noticed that my brother didn’t buy anything.
I sidled up to him. “What are you going to get?”
“Nothing. I gave my money to Bonnie.”
“You did? Really?”
“She needs it. It’s important.”
I shuddered. In my backpack, I had rolls of pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters, and I couldn’t believe that my parents’ stupidity might deprive me of the pleasure of spending them. As I bought a book of mystery stories, my mother stood off and watched, her expression that of tried patience, as if enduring some classroom humiliation. My heart went out of shopping.
As I walked back across the parking lot next to her, she stared into the distance, searching for something, an answer from her own invisible friends, a way to bridge the annoying, relentless minutes in which nothing at all happened, so that she could connect two pieces of her own story. I knew she’d need my money to do this, and that I’d give it to her.
When we got home, my father’s new cargo minivan was in the driveway, and he was back on the farm preparing a burn pile. He’d been busy closing his lots and wasn’t around more than a few hours on Christmas. He began walking toward the house. I went to my room and lay on the bed with my new book.
The fighting began just outside, and I rolled off the bed and went to the window. I wondered what they’d said to start the argument, but I was getting angry, too, and yelling might have felt good.
“I’m sick of this nonsense,” he tried to bellow, but to my surprise, the dark fields and night silence didn’t seem to care, and a wind blew through his voice, hollowing it.
“It’s none of your business,” she shouted back, drowning his words. This startled me. She spoke with such force, his force, as if she’d put on his boots and jacket and glared at him with his dark eyes, and he stood naked in the field, wanting his things back but too tired to take them.
“I can’t believe it,” he said. “You talk to . . . to some psychic and now you think Vancouver is going to be destroyed by an earthquake.”
“I’m sick of explaining myself!” she told him. The clouds cleared the moon, and the dark thinned so that the stars pulsed once, all together, and withdrew like barnacles.
She said a few more things, about him not respecting her wishes or giving her space to grow, and her voice remained loud, something exploratory in the way she raised it to new heights, as if only now discovering this could be done.
Her van started up, and its taillights flared and scorched off along the driveway.
The night lulled, and a fire began on the back of the property. He was burning hundreds of leftover Christmas trees, the light blurring in the frosted window glass. Ever since I could remember, he’d loved building fires: garbage on the property, tires and old appliances, wood from rotting sheds, and once a camper that fit on the back of a truck. He’d piled branches and dead pine and spruce on top, then doused it all with so much gasoline that he’d had to pour a long thin trail of it far away just to light it safely. We’d crouched together, and he’d dropped the match. The flame zipped like a shark’s fin across the grass and the heap burst skyward, the air sucked in and up, sudden heat against my face. It got so hot that Christmas trees turned to ash before our eyes, and the metal of the camper sagged and collapsed. He’d stood with his hands on his hips and laughed, and I had no idea why burning things felt so good, like yawning or stretching in the middle of class. Maybe he was trying to feel that way now, all alone burning trees.
I went to the mudroom and put on my boots and pulled the door from its warped frame. Frozen air spilled over me, and I followed the hard earth of the driveway back.
Halfway there, I came to a ditch, the spine of the buried culvert visible where big trucks carrying trees had passed. Beyond that was the tossing light of the fire. The cold stung my face, the night silent but for cars on the road. I hadn’t had time to get used to this farm, the sheds and barn unexplored, the forest scant and far away, beyond a frostbitten field.
I glanced back. My heart clenched and thudded as the world came unstrung. The lights of the house drifted out toward the road. The rising moon slipped a little higher in the sky, bumping over the stars.
I took a few more steps and stopped, my rapid breath misting, the smoldering center of the fire a red eye. I couldn’t see him. Sparks rushed up through the chill air, planing as they cooled and died. When the wind shifted, the heat warmed my face.
He called my name.
Fear released from my chest, and I continued over the baked earth. He was just beyond the fire, his arms crossed, and I stood next to him.
“She’s upset,” he told me.
I made myself appear as calm as possible, and I was proud of how I stood next to him and watched the fire, asking matter-of-factly, “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know,” he said, as if he might want my advice. “Maybe we can all go on a trip. Sometimes, when you go on a trip and come back, things are better. Sometimes that’s all it takes.”
I pictured this, a long journey, days and days looking out the window at trees and mountains, and then him saying, “This is far enough.” We’d turn around and return, ready to start over. But would he change?
Firelight shone on his cheekbones but hid his eyes, and though I worried that he might tell me to go back inside, he didn’t.
“Things will be better,” he said, and in his voice I heard my mother’s, the sadness and uncertainty and fear, and I knew that something had changed.
I lost track of the days. I read or played Dungeons & Dragons with my brother, my fears vanishing like fish descending through a dark current.
One night I fell asleep reading on the couch and I heard my parents come in the front door after arguing. They walked into the living room, and I didn’t open my eyes. I sensed them above me, looking down, silent as if surprised that I existed. My mother said she’d take me to my bedroom, but my father told her that he’d do it. He lifted me, my cheek against the coarse fabric of his shirt, my arm hanging. I could have opened my eyes and said I’d walk, but I sensed in his gentleness that he wanted to carry me. I breathed the odors in his shirt, pine sap and coffee, gasoline and sweat, but I felt no comfort. My heart didn’t slow. I didn’t drift asleep in this safety. I watched, starting to get angry, surprised to be this little boy, one arm folded
against his chest. I felt like I was remembering, as if this moment were a photograph and I were seeing how things had once been.
After he’d closed the door, I turned on my lamp and read. It was the only way to feel calm. In the novel, kingdoms clashed, and at some point I dozed and was swinging a sword at faceless, blurring enemies until I sensed danger and turned, a dark shape closing in. I woke, gasping, then lay awake until the sun rose.
At my new school, I jostled through the morning crowd, kids turning and saying, “Hey, watch it!” I fell asleep in class. I forgot my homework. When kids talked about the presents Santa had brought them, I said Santa didn’t exist. “Only babies believe in Santa,” I told them. “Get over it.”
A girl began to cry. I heard someone say he hated the new kid.
During recess, I explored the sprawling grounds. I despised everyone. I couldn’t talk to others without wanting to hurt their feelings. As I turned the corner, five boys appeared before me.
“Hey, it’s the new kid,” Tom said. He was in my class, tall and blond, his bangs neatly brushed back.
The kids formed a half circle and began closing in.
Years ago, when I started first grade, my father had given me talks about fighting, as if I weren’t heading off to elementary school but to become a mercenary. He’d warned me never to show fear and said that I should terrify my enemies.
“Fuck you, dog-shit-faced cocksuckers!” I howled.
The boys backed away, but Tom broke from them and ran forward and kicked me in the balls. I dropped to my knees, the air gusting from my lungs.
“Run!” he shouted to his friends. “This kid’s crazy!”
They raced off while I held myself, waiting for my lungs to work.
Back in class, Jamil approached me. He was a swift, dark East Indian boy I’d seen that morning near the entrance to the school. He’d pushed down another boy and farted in his face, then sped off. He glanced at the dirt on my knees.
“I don’t believe in Christmas either,” he told me. “It’s a bunch of crap. Do you want to be friends? We can beat up Tom after school.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Let’s beat him up.”
Until now swearing had been as good a defense as my fists. Prayers and mantras might reach the invisible world, but profanity was the power of words brought into this world to lay low my enemies. And yet I’d been kicked in the nuts. My father was right. I needed to get tough.
As Jamil passed the information through class that I was challenging Tom to a fight in the alley between two brick buildings, I could hear myself describing the victory to my father. But an hour later, walking into the alley, I began to tremble.
Tom was waiting with his friends, their shirts rumpled, dark with the interminable winter drizzle. Every detail appeared mapped out against the brick wall, their nervous faces drawn on graph paper. Rain beaded along Jamil’s hair as he stood at my side, saying, “Go! You take him!”
Tom shoved me in the chest. I got him in a headlock. We stumbled against the wall, the bricks rasping our clothes like sandpaper.
His friends tried to jump in, but Jamil blocked them. He kept slapping them in the face, dancing from side to side as if guarding a volleyball net.
“What’s wrong, pussy?” he shouted. “Tom can’t fight for himself?”
Tom popped out of the headlock. From behind me, he tried to dig his fingers into my eyes. I rammed him backward into the bricks. I threw my body against him again and again until his head struck the wall with a wooden sound.
I spun and punched him three times. He just stared, his nostrils too large and dark. Blood began to drip from one of them. His eyes teared up. He ducked and grabbed his backpack and ran. He disappeared along the alley, his jacket flapping.
I had blood on my lip where one of his fingernails had dug in.
I hurried to the pickup zone. My brother was waiting on the sidewalk. His eyes went to my face and then, like a switch, dropped to my mouth.
“What happened?”
“I got in a fight.”
Kids gathered around, pushing between us. They told him about it, speaking quickly, pointing here and there.
My mother’s brown van appeared from the traffic and pulled to the curb. I got in, and she reached across the space between the front seats and took hold of my chin.
“Are you fighting?”
Her blue eyes glared at my cut as if seeing the one thing she most hated.
“I had to.”
“Fighting is wrong. You don’t fight. You talk to people. And if you can’t resolve the problem through talking, you tell your teacher. You tell the principal. You tell me. Do you understand?”
I just sat. It was pointless to argue. What she was saying would ruin me at school. I’d have to fight constantly.
My brother spoke from the seat behind us.
“Everyone said that Jamil helped you.”
“What?” she asked.
“It’s not true,” I shouted. “He just made sure no one else hit me.”
I tried to meet her gaze but felt blinded, as if looking at sunlight flashing on seawater.
“Listen,” she said. “I don’t want you to fight again, but André is going to ask what happened. When he does, don’t tell him that you got help. He’s not going to like that.”
My father was so busy that we hadn’t seen much of him, but that night he was taking my brother, my sister, and me to dinner. By the time he picked us up, my mother had already left for one of her meetings. My father hardly spoke, not even in the restaurant. He called for coffee, then noticed my lip.
“Did you win?” he asked, his eyes suddenly still.
I glanced at my brother. “Yeah,” I said.
“You did?”
I nodded, trying to hide my anger. The story was almost perfect. The confrontation in the alley, the kids gathered to watch, the rain falling along the narrow slice of sky. As far as fifth-graders went, Tom was a bruiser. But with my brother sitting across from me, I couldn’t tell the story right.
“What was it like?” my father asked.
I glanced once at my brother, then avoided his eyes and hesitantly described how I’d knocked Tom into the bricks, then spun and hit him three times and gave him a bloody nose.
“That’s good,” my father said.
I risked another glance at my brother. He was watching me, his face nervous and confused. My father looked between us, and I dropped my gaze to my hands, but it was too late.
“What is it?” he asked. “Why are you looking at him like that?”
When I didn’t say anything, he turned to my brother.
“Come on. Let’s have it.”
My brother shrugged. He could never lie. I was doomed.
“Deni got help,” he finally said.
“No I didn’t,” I shouted. My tongue curled in my mouth, son of a bitch caught in it, trying to get out as I clenched my jaw to keep it in.
“What help?” my father asked.
Reluctantly, my brother explained, but he was telling it wrong. He hadn’t even been there, and all he described was Jamil protecting me. He had the details right, but the way they went together wasn’t. Tom had almost clawed my eyes out! I’d banged his head against the bricks all by myself. It was a close call!
My father glared at me. “From now on, you stand up for yourself. You can handle a couple of kids, you hear me?”
I wanted to remind him how he and his brother had watched each other’s backs in their village. But there were dark creases beneath his eyes, and the bones of his skull seemed close to the skin. A look came into his eyes, like that of a dog about to bite.
“Anyway, we all know you’re not too smart,” he said, his lips smiling thinly, showing his upper teeth. He began to say something else, but my tongue came loose and I yelled, “Shut up!”
The room tilted and blurred. I had blood on my lips again. My brother and sister stared into their plates. I felt dizzy and didn’t speak. I wouldn’t look at him.
“That fucking bank,” he said to himself. “It’s ruining my life. I’m going to dump a load of manure on their steps.”
I sat near the window, cold radiating from the glass. If the end was inevitable and there was a new beginning, why not pray for it? Why not get it over with? I’d had enough of their rage, of them crying out like animals in the dark.
The next day, I told my mother that I wanted to leave.
She packed our lunches, but instead of taking us to school, she drove us to the house of one of her friends and told us to stay there and play Dungeons & Dragons.
When she returned, it was almost noon. Everything we owned was inside the van, boxes and blankets crammed to the walls, her favorite German shepherd lying between the seats. Her white horse trailer had been hitched up, both horses inside.
She hurried us into the van, saying she’d explain soon. We drove to the border.
On the interstate, she told us that we would stay with our aunt in Virginia.
My sister began to cry. She said she’d never see her friends again, and my mother told her that she would someday. My brother remained silent, sitting in the back, arms crossed as he stared at his feet. But my rage had been released, and I felt as if I were waking from a long sleep, empty and open, eager to see the world. When we drove through Seattle, I pointed out the Space Needle.
“Who cares,” my brother said, “we’re not here to look at things.”
As I watched the darkening highway, I felt an excitement I couldn’t explain. We were traveling, and maybe someday, when I saw my father again, I’d tell him this story, of leaving, of discovering a new life. We wouldn’t be angry anymore, and he’d tell me everything he’d done after we’d left. He’d laugh and describe how he’d driven into the city and gone to the bank, a salmon in his briefcase. He paid for the safe-deposit box, took the key, and locked the fish inside.