Zeus was two stops from the hospital now and an argument had broken out between the guy drunk on German cologne and a wiry young man with an enormous gym bag. The young man jumped up and yanked the older guy’s corduroy sleeve. Come on, he said, that’s enough. Get the hell outta here. The drunk man was pressing his cologne bottle against the collarbone of a dark-eyed woman sitting next to him. She looked frightened and harassed. Put some of this on your pussy, he said. Might freshen you up.
The young man said, That’s it, and pulled the older man up and dragged him to the doors and pushed him out as soon as they opened. The man braced himself in the doorway, one last arc of protest, his gold jacket flaring open like the wings of a moth. The young man kicked him in the back of the legs and he fell out of the train. Zeus saw him land on his shoulder, his face like a wedge, shoved between his momentum and the platform. That’s gotta hurt, someone said. The man lay still for a moment amid the indifferent traffic of busy feet. Then he picked himself up proudly and made his way to the exit. He lifted his leg as if his foot was encased in cement and, listing backwards – his hand shooting out for the railing – descended onto the first step of the stairwell. Zeus heard a whole stadium applaud. The doors slid shut and the L-train moved down the track. The young fitness enthusiast who had thrown the man out turned around. He had sweat on his upper lip. He looked at Zeus – the wig, the wide eyes. Got a staring problem?
You talking to me? Zeus said and raised his eyebrows.
You look ridiculous.
Thank you very much, Zeus said politely, and the painted birds relaxed back onto their perches.
What’s with this guy? the young man said, looking around. His chivalry was all defensive bravado now.
Pick on the clown, tough guy, Zeus thought.
What an idiot, the guy said, walking back to his seat. Fucking clown suit, he said under his breath.
Last year, Norman Peach had gone hunting in Newfoundland and come back to Toronto with a hundred pounds of frozen caribou meat. Hannah Crowe had never known anyone to hunt. He’d left her the keys to his apartment and two hundred dollars and called her halfway through the week. Go get me a chest freezer. So Hannah had gone around the corner from where she lived to a secondhand appliance store on Queen Street West and chosen a little freezer that had been painted white on the inside to cover its imperfections. Two middle-aged men, one Jamaican, grey at the temples, and the other a thin Ukrainian in flat dress shoes, carried it up the steep fire escape to Norm’s apartment. When the Jamaican man heard what it was for, he joked, I’ll bring a two-four round, man, in a couple of weeks and we’ll have carry-bou steaks on the barbie.
Hannah was impressed that Norm had gone into the woods alone, found a caribou, shot it down, gutted and quartered it, then carried the quarters to where his old Toyota Tercel was parked, somewhere on a woods road. He was only about half a mile from his car, but it took him five hours to lug the meat out. This was proof of a kind of courage, self-reliance, and physical endurance that she admired. She wanted to admire herself for the same reasons – so, this time, she’d gone with him. They’d flown to Norm’s hometown of St. John’s, rented a car, and picked up the keys to the house of a friend who was away on vacation. In the morning, they drove to a quarry forty-five minutes outside the city, to sight in the rifle and take a few practice shots. Hannah was nervous about the kickback. She’d seen a picture of Norm with a dark bruise on one side of his chest, just below the shoulder.
They got out of the car and Hannah lifted the gun out of the trunk and slung the strap over her head so the rifle hung diagonally across her back. She’d never carried a gun before and it was thrilling. Wearing the first warm clothing of the year, she felt like some glamorous Russian spy from an old Bond film, about to ski down an alpine slope in a tight, white one piece, with fake fir trees bouncing behind her in the background. She had an accent. You know nussing about me, you only sink you do.
Coming? Norm said.
You know, Hannah said, we could turn around and go home now and I’d still feel like we’d been on a pretty satisfying adventure.
Yeah, but there’s shootin’ to be done.
Norm was drawing a circle the size of an eyeball in the centre of a square of cardboard. He paced off fifty yards, set the cardboard at the far end of the quarry, and walked back. He showed her how to flick the safety on and off and check the barrel for cartridges. The bullet’s going to arc, he said, and there’s a bit of wind from the south, so aim higher than the crosshairs in your scope and a bit to the right. Norm could sense that Hannah was stalling.
Do you want me to take the first shot?
No, I’ll do it, she said.
She planted her feet and aimed, but looking through the scope was like looking through a blurry magnifying glass. A little juniper growing out of the gravel exploded into focus. Okay, I got it, she said. It was like binoculars. You had to get the angle right. Hannah panned an inch to the right and the target slid out of sight. She panned back and caught the cardboard in the crosshairs. It looked small. The bull’s-eye smaller. Her arm was trembling from the weight of the rifle.
You can crouch, Norm said. Like this.
Hannah squatted, put her elbow on her knee. The Lee-Enfield was sighted to hit dead square at both fifty and two hundred yards. The target was fifty yards away so all Hannah had to do was centre it, but the view through the scope still floated.
Breathe out, Norm said. And squeeze.
Now the picture sat still. She had the bull’s-eye lined up. She hesitated, just to be sure, then ran out of breath. She lowered the gun and yawned.
Take your time.
She glanced back at him. Norm had his fingers in his ears and his eyes were wide open.
She tried again – concentrated, aimed, held the butt firmly against her shoulder, and squeezed the trigger. Holy fuck. The noise shocked her. It was very loud and very fast. You almost doubted it after you heard it. Now she understood how a gunshot in a movie sounded fake. It sure ain’t cracked celery in a sound studio, that’s for sure.
Norm said, That’s gunpowder for you.
Hannah’s ears were ringing and adrenalin was prickling in her fingertips. There had been no kickback. Her heart was racing. She put the gun down as if denouncing the power of it. She shook her hands loose at the wrists. I have no idea, she said, whether I hit that or not.
They started off at a walk, then Hannah broke into a run. Not only had she hit the cardboard, she was two inches shy of the bull’s-eye at fifty paces.
Norm said, I think you’ll be fine.
Hannah took two more shots. Neither shot was as close, but good enough in Norm’s opinion and closer than both of his, though he took his standing.
They got into the car and headed back for the city, where Norm’s friends were expecting them for dinner. But then Norm pulled over at a spot where the trees thinned out and you could see the long clearing of a run of power lines. I’ve seen caribou in here before, he said, so they stood at the edge of the highway and got geared up. It was mid-October and they had rubber boots and rain pants and rain jackets and sweaters. They had orange toques and Hannah had bought a cheap plastic orange safety vest that was so large she had to tie it in a knot at the front. How do I look?
You look like you don’t want to get shot.
Norm tossed her a pair of thin white cotton gloves.
What are these for?
So you don’t cut your hands when you’re gutting the animal, he said.
You think we’ll get one now?
You never know.
Norm carried the rifle and a cracked waxed army surplus bag that was heavy for its size. Inside were bandages and a lighter in an old tobacco tin, a compass, topographical map, a small axe, hunting knife, whetstone, disassembled handsaw, and a yellow cardboard pack of rifle cartridges. The shells were for a Lee-Enfield .303 – an English rifle made in 1943. When Hannah called home before leaving and happened to mention to her father what kind of gun they’d be
hunting with, Tim Crowe had said, That’s the same gun I used as a fifteen-year-old cadet in the British Army. I used to win sharpshooting competitions. And Hannah had said, I wonder if it’s in the blood.
They followed the razed path beneath the power lines, then headed into the woods. Norm gave Hannah the gun and she didn’t hand it back. They saw nothing, and after a while the shooting and the anticipation and the physical exertion of carrying a twelve-pound rifle and the joyful privacy of walking where there were no trails and the clarity of the bright sunshine on the red grass and the brittle grey branches of dead trees and the dark green fur of the stunted junipers made them feel very alive.
We haven’t talked about you beating me up for a long time, Hannah said.
Norm had come up behind her. He was unbuckling his belt.
They had got lost inside a fantasy, in the early days of their relationship, born of a desire to merge, to obliterate and dominate each other. It was, for Hannah, a way of exploring the rare temptation to surrender, of wanting to be broken open, but not knowing how, short of an act of violence. I wanted you to drag me through the woods by my hair, she said, remember? We talked about coming to a place like this and doing it.
Norm dropped his pants and Hannah heard the clink of .303 cartridges in the front pocket of his jeans. She had her hands on the scratchy bark of a fallen tree.
I wanted you to yank me over logs, and the sound of breaking twigs. I wanted my skin to be cold and scratched and streaked with dirt and pine needles.
You’d be naked, Norm said, but I’d have my clothes on. Like in that film by Buñuel.
Naked and tied to a tree and totally vulnerable, Hannah said, breathing heavily through her mouth. She was getting close and then Norm pulled out and came on the ground and it was like pulling a trampoline out from under someone in mid-air and, God, why won’t he come in me? And then the frustration and the unachieved climax and the throbbing nub of her arousal pulsing furiously.
Hannah sank to her knees and rolled over onto her back. The faint warmth of the sun on her belly. Legs bound at the ankles by her pants. One hand above her head. I wanted you to bring a couple of friends, she said, arching her back and pressing her ass into the moss. Couple of guys just sitting around smoking roll-ups and spitting tobacco on the ground. Gorgeous young men in parkas, with fur-lined hoods.
They could take turns, Norm said, picking up the rifle.
Connie Foster wanted to wear white. That’s why she was on her knees, digging through a laundry basket full of clean clothes, trying to find her yoga pants, when Mary-Beth arrived after the vestry meeting – a meeting she was supposed to have been at, but her husband still hadn’t come home. He was staying out later and later these days and it was making Connie nervous – nervous and short-tempered – when all she really wanted was to be patient and caring and wise.
She’d put the kids to bed and was trying to get focused before Mary-Beth arrived to watch a rerun of the second presidential debate that had aired earlier. She wanted to clear her head, and getting into something clean and white was part of that. The situation in the world right now was so dire that, in the last six months, she and Mary-Beth had watched more CNN than they thought they could bear. On top of it all was the three-ring circus of the Republican Party. While they shared many of the belief practices of their charismatic brethren south of the border, they were convinced they were being politically misled. They knew how the Christian right had voted during the primaries in the spring, and were now praying for God to give those people discernment in the upcoming election.
Connie had been raised in the Anglican Church and loved how cerebral and rational it was, with its emphasis on the power of words and metaphor and ritual. She felt there was a mysticism in the Anglican liturgy that could erupt at any moment by its sheer recitation every week. It wasn’t until she met Mary-Beth that she found somebody who shared, in her own way, a profound spirituality. Mary-Beth was open to all sorts of manifestations of God. She’d been to charismatic gatherings and been hurled to the floor by the power of the Holy Spirit, but also loved the quiet, dignified poetry of the Book of Common Prayer.
Mary-Beth had moved to Vancouver Island sixteen months earlier because she’d found an excellent special-needs school in Mill Bay for her teenaged handicapped son, and could afford to open up a hair salon and live nearby. She catered mainly to the wealthy high-school students at the local private boarding school, and had done about thirty up-do’s last spring at graduation and twice as many manicures and pedicures. She would sometimes witness to the girls as they sat getting their hair dyed or nails done, especially if it was a quiet afternoon and the salon cosy with the heat from the hair dryers, the windows fogged up like milky stained glass. The girls are in their own element, she told Connie, so it makes the gospel seem more friendly, more accessible. I tell the story of Mary Magdalene washing Jesus’ feet with her hair.
Her salon was called The Beauty Ministry – Making Women Beautiful Inside and Out – and it was there that the two women met. To Connie, Mary-Beth was like a breath of fresh air. She’d led a secular life until her conversion four years earlier at the airport in Seattle, where she’d been visiting an old flame. Her return flight was cancelled because of a snowstorm, so she’d sought out the chapel, thinking it might be a quiet place to sleep. She told Connie she was curled up on the carpet when a woman walked in, kneeled, and started to cry. Mary-Beth offered her a small pack of kleenex she had in her purse. The woman’s son had recently drowned. Mary-Beth told her, I have a son too. He’s got MS. He’s in a wheelchair. I understand what it’s like to feel angry, to want to rail. But the woman had said, I’m not railing. I’m thanking my saviour for walking beside me through this terrible journey.
It was at that moment Mary-Beth felt compelled to commit her life to Jesus. She didn’t bristle or judge at the news of somebody’s drug addiction or delinquent child, she was honestly forgiving. And it wasn’t until she’d experienced Mary-Beth’s compassion first-hand that Connie realized intimate friendship and genuine acceptance were two things sadly lacking in her own life.
There’s no such thing as a scandal, Mary-Beth once said. Look at me? Divorced, a single mother, a handicapped son most people refuse to make eye contact with. I probably used to have a bit of a drinking problem too.
She was so open that Connie trusted her opinions unreservedly, though there were those who thought of her as vain, that her profession indicated a weakness for the adornments of the flesh.
Connie opened the door and her friend walked in, billowing a waft of Estée Lauder. What a day, she said. How are you, darling?
Oh fine, Connie said, taking Mary-Beth’s leopard-print coat. How was the vestry meeting?
We argued for thirty-five minutes about whether or not the worship band should have a dress code, she said and poked her long fingernails into her hair.
I made walnut brownies, Connie said, offering up a tray in the kitchen and nodding towards the living room.
You’re such an angel, Mary-Beth said and followed her down the marble hallway. Nothing like a vestry meeting to work up the appetite, she said and plucked at the corner of one of Connie’s elbows with her fake nails, and it gave Connie a shiver.
Connie pushed the French doors to the living room open with her foot and carried the tray in. Her living room was white and she found it helped. A cut-glass bowl with five pink marble eggs, one for each member of the family. The coffee table was white and the carpet oatmeal. What a bland, pale room this was, she thought, but it was how she liked it.
Mary-Beth stood at the huge picture window. You really do have the best view of the water, she said even though it was dark outside and the window a perfect duplicate of the living room. She crossed the room and collapsed onto the sofa. I’d be more jealous if I didn’t know I could never keep a house this clean with Jay around, she said, referring to her son.
Well, I don’t let the children in here except for birthdays and holidays, Connie confessed. And
I told Harl I want a fibre-optic Christmas tree this year, as an eco-decision, but it’s really because I don’t want pine needles worming their way into the carpet again. Connie was kneeling next to the coffee table. She flashed Mary-Beth one of her furtive looks while pouring out the tea, but Mary-Beth wasn’t looking. She was flicking the TV on with the remote.
You know, Mary-Beth suddenly said in a passionate voice, I just wish I could grab Obama by the wrists and drag him to his knees and force him to pray for his soul, the whole soul of America. I mean, he made all these promises four years ago, that’s what he was voted in on. And what did he do? Protected the interests of the rich, that’s what. And is he going to invade North Korea now? You start that kind of thing and it’s hard to get out. Look at Iraq. It took him a lot longer to get the army out of there than what he assured everybody in his campaign.
But that war was started, Connie said, well before Obama got into office.
Exactly, but he was supposed to put an end to it.
Connie handed Mary-Beth a cup of tea. The sad thing is, after 9/11, people thought they were fighting a righteous war.
Even if it was a righteous war, Mary-Beth said, deflated after her short outburst, it’d still be hard to contemplate. War should be the last resort. I’ll never forget how excited Bush looked, addressing his troops on that navy ship, in one of those leather bomber jackets with the sheepskin collar. Like he was announcing the start of a football game. He made it seem like some kind of party.
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