Dearly Departing

by Geoff North

  “That’s more like it,” David said. “Now close your eyes and start counting. If you can’t figure out what comes after ten, let Bone-Head take over.”

  Alicia’s eyes were already shut tight. She stuck her tongue out in silent response.

  Raymond only shut his eyes half-way and watched the boys saunter off out of the backyard to the south. Through the trees and towards the old slough. There’s lots of big rocks picked off the fields there for them to hide in. He didn’t consider peeking cheating. David and Bruce always made the game harder than it had to be. The general rule of hide and seek was to hide in an area that was possible to seek, at least for a pair of kids under the age of eleven. The farm was big, it encompassed an entire section of arable land, small forests, and sitting sloughs of water. To someone like Alicia, it probably seemed endless. Raymond had no qualms evening the odds a little.

  “Thirty!” Alicia announced. Her eyes popped open and she looked at Raymond expectantly. He suspected the little girl knew his secret, but she never let on. If you never actually came out and accused someone of cheating, there wasn’t an issue. “Which way’d they go?”

  Raymond pointed to the trees beyond the back yard and set out. Alicia jogged along behind him. “Awww, you know what Mom always says… never let the house out of your sight.”

  “Do you want to find them or not?”

  Alicia nodded sullenly, and they began winding their way through the trees. There was a scattering of small foot paths to choose from, almost indiscernible trails laid down through the spring, summer, and autumn months. Raymond stuck to the widest and most trodden, the shortest line through the shelterbelt of poplar and spruce.

  “Ouch!” Alicia shouted as a small branch—no more than a twig actually—snapped back from Raymond’s passing and swatted her across the forehead. “Watch what you’re doing!”

  “Keep your hands in front of your face,” he muttered back.

  Raymond stopped short of the barbwire separating the last bit of brush from the wheat field. The wire was rusted orange and older than the two children combined. It was the final remnants of an enclosure to keep horses or cattle, perhaps both, pastured within. Raymond pulled up on the bottom strand of flaking metal to allow Alicia room to crawl under. He saw the fine pink strip over her eyes where the branch had struck and felt pride towards the girl for not crying. Raymond knew it must have been hard having three older brothers to try and keep up with. He rolled beneath the wire and helped her back up along the way.

  He rested the palm of his hand gently across her lightly freckled forehead. “Does it sting?”

  Her eyes were red and watery but not a single tear had spilled over. “A little.”

  Raymond had the urge to turn around and take his sister back to the empty swings. To heck with his older brothers. Let them sit out on the rocks by the stinking water until they drop dead of boredom. Or at least long enough until they got it through their skulls that he and Alicia weren’t playing by their stupid rules anymore.

  “They went to hide by the old slough, didn’t they?” Alicia said.

  “I figure.”

  “We’re not supposed to go there.”

  “Nope.”

  “Bruce and David will call us chicken-shits if we don’t.”

  “Don’t swear.”

  Alicia started into the wheat where she’d spotted the narrow, flattened trail her bullying brothers had squashed down a few minutes earlier. She called back over her shoulder. “When the game’s over I’m gonna tell Mom and Dad that Bruce smacked me on the head with a stick. Then I’m gonna tell ‘em David chased us all the way to the slough.”

  Raymond grinned at the thought of it. David and Bruce could whine their side of the story until they were blue in the face. It would do them no good. Alicia could cast a spell over her parents as easily as the one she usually had Raymond wrapped within. He chased after her, laughing out loud. Let David and Bruce play by their rules. Alicia would win this game all on her own in the end.

  “Be careful,” Raymond warned as they emerged from the tall stalks onto a flat track of worked grey soil at the field’s edge. Twenty feet beyond the dirt was a patch of wild grass encircling a wall of discarded stones. “Don’t climb on the rocks without me.”

  The little girl plugged her nostrils between a thumb and forefinger. “Stinks,” she said, taking Raymond’s hand with her free one.

  They climbed up onto the rocks and picked a particularly large one to sit on. The water spread out below them dark green, a hundred feet wide, and fifty across. The far side wasn’t littered with field-picked stones. There the surrounding forest grew in with steep banks of brown, mossy grass. It wasn’t much of a wonder why their parents didn’t want them down here on their own. It was a neat place to visit, but the danger of falling into the water without any easy way back out was obvious.

  “Stinks,” Alicia repeated. “Real bad.”

  Raymond nodded. The smell was exceptionally rank that afternoon. The hot summer sun was cooking the crud clinging closer at the water’s surface. A warm breeze was drifting in from the west, pushing the smell directly into their faces. It reeked like something dead in the air.

  “We know you’re out here!” Alicia shouted.

  Raymond waited a few seconds before calling out. “Better show us your hiding spot or we’ll tell Mom and Dad where you took us!”

  A stinking breeze off the water was their only reply.

  “They think they’re being funny,” Alicia whispered. “They think I’m gonna get scared and start crying.”

  “You’re not going to?”

  “Heck no.” She picked up a smooth white stone at her feet and threw it into the water. It made a satisfying galooping noise and sank out of view. “I can sit here all day if I have to.”

  Raymond didn’t feel the same level of determination as his sister. The stench wafting up from the rippling slough had gotten worse. They sat for a few more minutes that way, both holding their noses shut and breathing lightly between their lips.

  “Do rocks float?” Alicia finally asked.

  “Of course not. Why would you ask something like that?”

  She pointed down to a spot near the water where some of the stones were partially submerged. Raymond could see half a dozen more sunk completely underneath, varying in dull shades of grey, brown, and yellowish-green.

  “That one’s floating, see?” Alicia climbed down from their rocky perch until she was almost level with the water’s surface. “I been watching it.” She pointed at the top half of a blackish-grey orb approximately six inches wide. “Watch what happens when the wind picks up, it’ll start moving.”

  Raymond moved down and grabbed his sister’s shoulder to steady himself. A rock under his left foot shifted. It scraped along the stone in front of it and Raymond started teetering. His arms twirled in the air as he tried to regain his balance. The action created a small cascade of stones rolling into the water.

  “There!” Alicia said. “You see that? It’s floating!”

  Both of Raymond’s hands were on her shoulders now. The two swayed back and forth a few seconds longer, steadying themselves. Raymond saw what Alicia was talking about when the water began to settle. The blackish-grey stone was floating. It was spinning very slowly in a counter-clockwise motion. The stink in the air had gotten a little worse.

  Something was poking out from the side of it. Raymond clung to Alicia’s shoulders harder and craned his head over her for a better look. He thought at first that a twig was stuck to the object. It was coated in rotting grey slime. The thing turned further, revealing more.

  Fingers, he thought. No… Claws. Tiny sharp claw fingers.

  That wasn’t a branch stuck to the side. It was a tail. Alicia had begun to realize what the floating stone was as well. She took two more tentative steps towards it, until her shoes were on the last slime-covered stones still above water. Raymond tried warning her to move back, but his mouth had gone all dry inside. He didn’t se
e his brothers sneaking up behind them until it was too late.

  The next three seconds of events unravelled before his eyes like a slow-motion movie scene. Bruce had something big held between his hands over his head. Not like all the other rocks gathered around them. This rock wasn’t worn and smooth, it was jagged, with sharp edges.

  He’s going to bash my head in for cheating. They’re going to murder us and say it was a terrible accident. They’ll say that I fell, smashed my head into the rocks. Stupid, boneheaded Ray. Couldn’t walk and think at the same time.

  Bruce heaved the rock into the air with a heavy grunt. It twirled above and over heads.

  He missed.

  Time came to a practical standstill. Raymond tracked the rock’s trajectory. It hung in the sky for a moment and then started to plummet. One exceptionally sharp edge was pointed at the slough’s surface. The drowned animal. It was going to hit the drowned, beach-ball-bloated animal. Raymond saw the dull grey stripe running down the back of the dead thing. He saw the picked out remains of its eyes, and the bloody pit where its nose once was.

  Skunk… it’s a dead skunk filled with rotten water and gas. This is going to be bad. Very, very—

  Bruce’s rock missed the swollen carcass by inches and splashed noisily into the slough. Alicia screamed as a gallon of fetid water splashed up and soaked her hair, face, and clothes. Raymond closed his eyes and turned his head away. A cold slosh slapped into his ear. It ran down his neck, shoulder, and arm. The stench was unimaginably foul. When he opened his eyes again, Raymond found Alicia on her knees, making a pathetic small hitching noise. She was spitting black water onto the rocks and into the unsettled slough.

  Oh God… she got some in her mouth.

  Raymond started to gag, thinking the worst was over. He was wrong. From the corner of one eye he saw the grinning image of David working his way around Bruce. Raymond was too busy attempting to hold his breath and fight off puking to be of any use to either himself or his sister. The sharp end of David’s branch shot out and punctured the hide of the wildly spinning skunk. There was a dull popping sound, like a balloon only half filled being pricked with a needle, and Raymond’s face was splattered with goo. There was no fight left in him. He vomited up his breakfast and lunch in an instant. Through the strains of his own retching, he could hear his sister doing the same. Behind those awful sounds, Raymond heard his brothers laughing.

  In the end, no one really won, and no one really lost. Raymond dragged his sister back to the house and the older boys were told on. Alicia and Raymond were scolded mightily by their mother, stripped down, and sent in turn to take hot baths. They never saw the clothes they’d put on that morning ever again. Their father dealt with David and Bruce. It was the last time any of them would ever play hide and seek. None of the children returned to the old slough that year. Alicia never went back there again.

  “Those evil little bastards.”

  “Be nice,” Ray said. “Those are your uncles.”

  They were half way through Saskatchewan. Regina was a hundred miles behind them, and there were a few hundred more to go before the rolling hills of Alberta. Towns were few and far between, with only the occasional grain elevator to avert their attention from the rest of the flat, featureless province. There was plenty of time to tell old stories, and Ray was more than willing to reminisce with his daughter to pass the time.

  “Thanks for sharing your memories of Aunt Alicia with me.”

  “I should’ve told you more about her while you were growing up.”

  “It’s totally okay, Dad… I understand completely.”

  They fuelled up in a town called Indian Head. Ray gave Dawn a twenty dollar bill to buy sandwiches and coffee. He watched her disappear into the service station while he pumped gas. An old green pickup with a cap attached to the box pulled up beside him on the other side of the bowser. It looked just like the truck Ray had travelled in with his parents and brothers all those decades before. Its panels and windows were crusted with dried mud. Someone had scrawled wash me into the dirt on the driver’s door. Ray chuckled. Below that he saw something else. It was close to the rusted-out running board, a single word. A name.

  Bonehead.

  His heart started to hammer in his chest. Ray looked back up and strained to see through the dirty window who was sitting inside. A white skull clunked against the glass and two black empty eye sockets stared back at him. Wisps of grey hair clung to a crack in its forehead, and Ray knew he was looking at the skeletal remains of his father. It lifted its boney arm and tapped a dangling wristwatch against the glass. It pointed to the scratched surface on the watch face and he saw the toothless bottom jaw move up and down. The skeleton was speaking.

  Ray couldn’t read its lips—the thing didn’t have any—but he knew, he could sense what it was saying.

  Time’s a wasting.

  Chapter 8

  Ray took his turn driving. He needed to feel in control of something, to have the steering wheel in his hands—any little thing to keep his mind off what he thought he had seen. The visit from his grandmother hadn’t startled him as much. Ray had still been in full-on suicide mode on the flight back from the Dominican. The image of his skeleton father rattled him to the core. Ray, at least for the last few hours, hadn’t entertained a single thought of ending his life. The time spent with Dawn had opened his eyes to the possibility that his continued existence wasn’t entirely meaningless. Here, sitting next to him, was someone that needed him, that loved him. She enjoyed his company, and his stories. Sharing his few and fading memories of Alicia had done them both a world of good.

  It was a shame the ghosts from his past wouldn’t fade as easily.

  “So, is that it?”

  “What?” Ray glanced over at Dawn as they slipped by another featureless little prairie town and its trademark grain elevator.

  “You haven’t said a word since Indian Head. Don’t you have any more stories?” She paused for a moment. “Or maybe there isn’t much more after that to share.”

  “I know your mother told you more about Alicia… Do you need details?”

  “That isn’t fair.” Dawn looked away from him and stared out the passenger window.

  Five long minutes passed before Ray offered an apology. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t shut you out like that.” Ray pulled the car off onto the side of the highway and started to cry.

  “Dad?” Dawn reached for his shoulder, but he shrugged her hand away. “What’s wrong? What did I say?”

  “It isn’t you,” he wept. “It’s me… It’s all this silence and guilt inside. It’s all the things I didn’t say. To you. To your mother.”

  A semi roared by rocking the Cruze on its four wheels like a boat at sea. Dawn tapped the steering wheel. “Maybe I should drive again.”

  “No, I can manage.” Ray put the car back into drive and crept another quarter mile along the shoulder until he came to a gravel road approach. He parked the car, turned it off, and sighed heavily. “It’s time I told you… it’s time I told someone the truth about my little sister. Of what really happened to her, and my part in it.”

  “It was an accident,” Dawn said. “A terrible tragedy. You had nothing—”

  “I had everything to do with it.”

  1981

  If there had ever been a more beautiful morning in all of Raymond’s young life, he couldn’t remember it. The last morning of June was magical. School had ended a few days earlier, and the long summer holiday lay before him like an entire lifetime spread out over two sun-drenched months. Raymond’s oldest brother was off with his new girlfriend somewhere, and Bruce had accompanied their father to another town in search of some dumb piece of farm equipment. Raymond’s chores were done, and the birds were singing. The sun was already hot in the cloudless sky.

  There was almost a sense of urgency in his desire to make the most—or the least—of his day. Raymond wasn’t too young to realize the carefree days of childhood were coming to an end. In a f
ew more years his interests and responsibilities would be more like those of his brothers. He might have a girlfriend, and he would be big enough to help his family run the farm. These were the days to take full advantage of what he still had. Youth. Freedom. He would treat this morning as one of his last and do absolutely nothing.

  With a dozen comic books under one arm and a couple of cold bottles of Coca-Cola held against his chest with the other, Raymond made his way to the big oak in the back yard. He settled down in a shady area up against the rough tree trunk and opened the newest edition of The Amazing Spider-Man onto his lap. He sipped on the first Coke and flipped through the colorful pages. After a few minutes, even that small task became a chore. Raymond propped the half-finished pop up against the tree at his side and tossed the comic book back onto the pile. He nestled further down into the grass and locked his fingers behind his head. It was too bright up in the blue sky to keep his eyes open for long. He closed them and listened to the bird songs. A cooling breeze wafted over his bare tummy where the tee-shirt had ridden up. It truly was the most beautiful, carefree day of Raymond’s life.

  Or at least it was until he heard his mother calling his name.

  Raymond met her on the steps of the back porch. She was leaning out through the screen door with a frustrated look on her face. “When’s the last time you saw your sister?”

  “I dunno. Breakfast I guess.”

  “Her room’s a mess. Dirty clothes all over the place, dolls and toys tossed wherever, candy wrappers and dishes shoved under the bed.”

  Raymond wasn’t sure why he had to stand there and listen to the list of reasons his sister had pissed their mother off. It wasn’t his room. It wasn’t his mess. He wanted to get back to his tree. Nancy Wallace wasn’t going to let that happen.

  “I want you to find her,” she said, pointing a finger at Raymond’s face. “Find her and drag her back to the house if you have to.”

  “Aaww, Mom…”