by Paul Butler
I know I can expand my circle by killing the seal. I can almost feel the manly spring that would come into my stride. But it would be bringing death to a place where there is life, and the reason I carry Elsa’s scent in my mind is because she is alive. She has a pulse and a heart, and eyes that grow moist before the fire. The circle shrinks once more, my hold upon the club loosens, and I realize I have more in common with the creature before me than I do with the kin who have led me to this place.
It’s a strange feeling, this certainty that I will not act as I am expected to. I am like some sea creature grasping a rock in a swirling ocean and heaving myself onto dry land to feel for the very first time the steadiness of the earth beneath my bones. The me that is unconnected from Fred, from Father and Mother, from cousins and friends, has no wish at all to aim a blow at a seal or any other creature if I can help it. The fact that I am new and unknown to myself makes no difference to this fact. This fresh self who has been revealed to me—a person incapable of striking—is, at this moment at least, many times more firm and indomitable than the need to please or impress. It is the one true thing in the general blur of my life. I have a fleeting sense that I may have glimpsed a different kind of expanding circle, another sort of growth not gained through the smell of animal blood. It’s beyond naming, but its imprint is in nature, in me, vaguely nestling inside verses half-remembered from the schoolroom and chapel. Who says I cannot draw Elsa inside this circle instead?
The seal throws up its head, keeping its neck proud and erect, and gives a hoarse, loud yelp that seems like a salutation of sorts, especially when its eyes do not leave mine.
Backing off slowly, I turn and make my way towards the shore.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Patrick Murphy, my insightful yet diplomatic editor; everyone at Nimbus Publishing/Vagrant Press; the Cranfords (Garry, Jerry, and especially Margo, for an image I couldn’t shake); the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council for helping to support the writing of this novel; the City of St. John’s, for a writing grant; my wife, Maura, for her unstinting love and support; and my daughter, Jemma, who is an inspiration in herself.
Paul Butler is the author of 1892, NaGeira, Easton’s Gold, Easton, and Stoker’s Shadow. His work has appeared on the judges’ lists for Canada Reads, and he has been a winner in the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Awards four times since 2003. A graduate of Norman Jewison’s Canadian Film Centre, Butler has written for the Globe and Mail, Beaver, Books in Canada, Atlantic Books Today, and Canadian Geographic, and has also contributed to CBC Radio. He lives in St. John’s.
Visit him at:
paulbutlernovelist.com
writingworkshops.ca