The Retreat

by David Bergen

  He zipped up and turned, saying that he’d come across it the day before. “It’s a beauty.” He said that he used to go shopping with his stepsister Emily, for her clothes. “Girls are lucky, don’t you think, all that choice.” He said that he once tried on one of Emily’s dresses, just for fun.

  A cool wind came up the hill. “Wanna go in?” Nelson asked, and not waiting for an answer he walked into the cabin and sat and poured himself another shot. He did the same for Everett and said, “Drink up.”

  Everett looked at the whisky in his glass and then took a sip. Bull passed by and rubbed against his legs. Everett reached down and scratched her head. “Where’d the cat come from? Is it yours?”

  “I found her wandering around the dump, scavenging for food, and I thought that’s no life for a lady and I brought her home.” He sat back and smiled at Everett, who smiled back. A hazy glow. Wind in the trees.

  “When you have to go, I’ll drive you,” Nelson said. “I have Reenie’s car. Throw the bike in the trunk. Easy. Very easy. Like speaking German. Ich. Go ahead, say it. Ich.”

  “Ich,” Everett said.

  “Attaboy.”

  “My father likes to mix up languages,” Everett said. “Throws in a bunch of French words and makes my mother laugh.”

  “Sure it does.” Nelson studied Everett and then said, “She’ll come back.”

  “You think so?”

  “I’m certain.”

  Everett smiled. “Am I drunk?” he said. “I think I am.” Something had been set loose inside of him.

  “First time?”

  Everett nodded.

  “Oh, boy.”

  “Ich,” Everett said. He laughed.

  Nelson said, “Go. Why don’t you try on the dress.”

  Everett looked at the bag in his hand, at Nelson, then back at the bag. He took out the dress and held it up. “This?”

  “Yeah. Put it on. It’ll be fun.”

  “I’d look stupid in my mother’s dress.”

  “Why don’t you just try and see.”

  Everett stood, stumbled, and moved to the bedroom. In the dim light of the room he laid the dress on the floor. He stooped to untie his runners and fell over onto the mattress. He could feel the beating of his heart. Then Nelson called out. Everett lifted himself and said, “Almost done.” Seated on the mattress, he removed his shoes and socks. Pulling his T-shirt over his head, he lost his balance and fell backwards again, then managed to remove it. He stood and unbuckled his jeans and dropped them. Kicked them away and stood in his underwear. He thought for a long time about his underwear. He had the beginning of an erection and he looked down at himself. He took off his underwear and picked up the dress and undid the zipper. He pulled the dress on, as he had watched his mother do so many times. It slid easily over his shoulders and hips, the arms went in, and there he was, clothed. His hard-on was real now. He reached behind his waist for the zipper and then called out that he needed help.

  “Come here,” Nelson said.

  Everett backed out of the bedroom and stood waiting. His erection embarrassed him and he didn’t want Nelson to notice. The light was weak. Nelson came up behind him and took the tongue of the zipper and pulled it upwards. A soft insectlike sound. Nelson’s hand against his back.

  “There,” Nelson said. “Let me see.”

  Everett swivelled, his hands in front of his crotch.

  “Well. That’s good. Very nice. Whaddya think?” He motioned at the chair and said, “Sit.”

  Everett sat. Crossed his legs so that his right foot extended towards Nelson who reached out and touched a toenail and said, “Next time you can bring up some nail polish and we’ll paint your toes. Red. Or something groovy and bright.” He laughed.

  Everett was shaking. He wasn’t cold, but he was shaking, and it came from deep inside.

  “Hey, don’t worry,” Nelson said. “We’re just fooling around. Nothing to worry about. It doesn’t mean we’re perverts or anything, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Everett was conscious of Nelson’s mouth and of his hands flitting through the air. Nelson said that a friend of his, a good man, had once said that the happiest man was the one surprised at nothing.

  A draft of air came in through the open door and passed over Everett’s neck. He looked down at his bare legs and saw the hem of the dress. He heard the wave of Nelson’s voice, and he saw the way Nelson was watching him, and he was surprised. He didn’t want to be surprised but he was, by the erection he’d had, by Nelson’s easy manner, by the hollowness inside him that felt like when he was hungry, and yet it wasn’t exactly hunger. He was surprised by all these things and so he knew that he couldn’t be happy. Perhaps Nelson had tricked him, or he had tricked himself. He stood and reached for the zipper. “Please,” he said, and he turned and asked Nelson to unzip him. He wanted to change and go back home.

  They drove down towards the main road, sliding through dusk. On Everett’s lap was the plastic bag holding the dress. They drove in a silence that confused Everett. He wondered if he had done something wrong, if Nelson still liked him. At the Retreat, Everett climbed from the car and Nelson took the bike out of the trunk. He leaned it towards Everett and said that they never had their game of chess. “You come back any time and we’ll play,” he said.

  Everett stood and watched Nelson disappear, then he looked up at the sky, which was clear and full of stars, and it felt as if he was standing at the bottom of a deep well.

  News of the native protest at Anicinabe Park arrived at the Retreat via radio and newspaper. Early on, the protestors had threatened to blow up both the hydro dam and the pulp-and-paper mill. The town might also go up in flames. One of the leaders of the occupation asked, “What are a few houses when every Friday and Saturday night blood can be seen running down the sidewalks because of vigilante actions against native people?” At breakfast one morning, the Doctor unfolded the newspaper and read aloud from an interview given by Gary Cameron, the leader of the occupation. Cameron said that one of their goals was to take back the park that had been sold out from under them years earlier, another was to draw attention to their people, who suffered at the hands of the government, the courts, and the police. He said that natives were tired of being beaten up and handcuffed and thrown into jail and paraded up and down the main street of Kenora in police cars. Houses on the reserves were death traps. There were no social services. He had a list. The people were tired and fed up and now they were taking action.

  The Doctor laid the paper down. Lizzy noticed that he had voiced no opinion about the protest, for or against, though when it came to social justice, she knew that he favoured the underdog and liked to quote from Christ’s beatitudes.

  That evening, she rode the bicycle up to the cabin where she found Nelson sitting on the swing, Bull in his lap. She approached him and straddled her bike and asked if Raymond was home. He wasn’t. Lizzy looked at the open doorway and then asked when Raymond was coming back.

  Nelson said that he didn’t know. “He’s a political protestor now, up at the park. Sometimes he comes back for the night, sometimes he doesn’t.” He shrugged. Lizzy looked at Nelson and shifted her weight onto one leg, her hip pushed out. She was wearing jean shorts and flip-flops and a T-shirt and aware of how Nelson leaned forward as if to inspect her. He said that Raymond might be back at any moment. Or he might be back in a week. He said that his brother was naive. He had discovered justice and protests and guns.

  “Raymond’s too smart to do anything stupid,” Lizzy said.

  Nelson laughed. He said that Raymond was in danger of being fired at the golf course, so he was doing the job. “I now punch his time clock.” He smiled, looked Lizzy up and down. “I’m becoming Raymond,” he said.

  “I guess that would make you my boyfriend then,” she said flatly. “Anyway, I just came for a dress,” she said. “I left it here.”

  “Look around, absolutely.” Nelson waved a hand.

  She went into the bedroo
m and came back into the main room where Nelson, inside now, was sitting on a chair, waiting. She sat on a stool at a distance from him and said that the dress was gone.

  “Your brother probably took it. He’s come up to visit me a couple of times,” he said.

  “What are you saying?”

  “Everett. Funny guy. Reminds me of me at that age. You know?” Nelson appeared slow and sleepy, as if he had been working at getting drunk.

  “He came up here? How?”

  “Like you. Bicycle. One time he carried the chess set with him. At the dance he said he liked chess and so I invited him up here to play and drew a map. Very eager boy. Awkward. Making sense of things. Not messed up.”

  “He would have gotten lost, map or not.”

  “He didn’t. People surprise us sometimes, don’t they? You think I’m messed up?”

  Lizzy shook her head. “I didn’t say you were messed up.”

  “Okay. But, the question. What’s the answer?”

  “I don’t think so. You’re maybe a little sad. That’s one thing.”

  “That’s right. Sad. Raymond says I should talk to someone.” He smiled briefly and then said that when Raymond came back he would tell him she had come by. He said, “You can visit any time. I’m not dangerous, you know.”

  “Really? Why aren’t you up there at the occupation?”

  “Me? I don’t believe in that shit. You watch, after all the threats and the talk, they’ll give up their guns and go back to their shacks. Thirty years from now, nothing will have changed.” He stood, leaned towards Lizzy, and said, “Raymond’s got this big vision and don’t be thinking that you fit anywhere inside that vision. You know?”

  “I don’t think that’s true.”

  “No? Has he told you you’re special?”

  Lizzy was quiet. She remembered Raymond holding her in this room, the two of them on the woollen blanket and him asking if she was okay. She wavered now and felt Raymond’s absence and Nelson’s cruelty. She said, “He told you something?”

  “Naw, he didn’t tell me anything. I don’t even know Raymond, really. I’m just the prodigal brother. So, I can see things you can’t, and I’m telling you not to get too excited. Maybe he just wanted a white girl.”

  Lizzy stared at him for a moment, then turned and went to her bicycle and got on. When she looked back, Nelson was standing in the doorway. She called out, “Everett won’t be coming up here again. You stay away from him.” Nelson was gazing out into the distance, not at her, but at something beyond her, and he didn’t acknowledge her words, though she saw his head move, as if he were ducking a blow.

  That night, in the quiet of their cabin, when everyone else was sleeping, Lizzy told Everett that he was not allowed to visit Nelson again. She said, “I talked to Nelson and told him. What were you thinking?” Lizzy’s voice rose in whispers. “You don’t know anything about Nelson. He’s got nothing. He’s a talker. He makes things up. He can be mean.”

  Everett hesitated, then said, “He hasn’t been mean to me. He talks to me and makes me feel good.”

  “I love you. I worry. And I don’t like to be worried because then my chest hurts. You know?” Then she said, “What did you do with Mum’s dress?”

  There was a pause, and Everett said, “Why?” Then he said, “I put it back in Dad’s cabin.”

  It was quiet for a long time and finally Lizzy said, “Go to sleep.”

  Silence. The soft pat of Fish opening and closing his mouth.

  Then, “Lizzy?”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Do you think I’m strange?”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Am I bad?”

  “You’re only fourteen, Ev. No, of course not.”

  “But you think Nelson’s bad.”

  “I didn’t say that. I said he was mean. He can be cruel.”

  “He said he knew a man in Winnipeg who operated an elevator, one of those old ones where you can see through the grating. He said he would take me there sometime.”

  “Yeah? That’s wonderful, Ev.”

  “He lived with that man for a bit. He learned how to box.”

  “Maybe he’s just a little bit full of shit.”

  “I don’t think so. You worry too much.”

  “I’ve got lots to worry about.”

  “You’re not my mother.”

  Lizzy made a very soft humming sound, and then she was quiet. Everett heard her breathing and he knew she was sleeping. He lay there a long time, looking up into the darkness. Outside, an animal moved alongside the cabin. A skunk, perhaps, or a bear. His father had seen a black bear the day before, out at the edge of the clearing, and he’d warned the children. The berries were gone, the nights were getting colder, the bear was looking for garbage. Everett fell asleep, holding the twinned thoughts of capture and escape.

  The following morning, Lizzy found Franz and told him she wanted to go up to Anicinabe Park with him. “When you go,” she said. “If you’re still going.” He’d gone the day before and come back to announce that there was a huge police presence and anyone who tried to get into the park was being searched. He told Lizzy that he was going after breakfast and he would be pleased to have her join him. Lizzy wore a yellow sundress with thin straps over her bare shoulders and Franz said that she looked very handsome. She said nothing and turned away and rested her arm on the rolled-down car window. This was how Franz talked to her. Once, when she had come into the kitchen for a late-night snack, she found Franz eating bread and butter at the table, just sitting alone in the dark, a knife in his hand. He had asked, after some small talk, if she had a boyfriend. It was the kind of question that a man liked to ask, as if he was playing a game in which there was a stone fence, she on one side and he on the other, and he was asking if he could climb over the fence and join her. She also understood that some men liked to look at maps and that they dreamed of visiting foreign countries, countries that were out of bounds, and that the possibility of invitation to those countries was exhilarating to them.

  That night, in the kitchen, she had quickly made a sandwich and left, aware of the glint of the light off of Franz’s knife. Now, sitting next to him, she was conscious of her own curiosity about him. Then Franz spoke, and the silence dissipated, and with it her mood. He said that the occupation was a good thing, the government was fascist, and he was all for the Indians blowing up a few buildings to make a point. “They’re oppressed,” he said. “And they want a voice. Who wouldn’t want a voice?” He said that this sort of oppression would never happen in Europe.

  The entrance to the park gate was blocked by six police cars. Two officers held rifles. One of them approached the car. Lizzy recognized Vernon. He leaned in to talk to Franz and he saw Lizzy. “Miss Byrd. Sightseeing?” he asked. He shifted his rifle. Held it higher as if to make certain Lizzy caught a glimpse of it. “Because if you are, this is not the place to be. We’ve got a bunch of Indians with guns and Molotov cocktails who want to take down the town. I’d suggest you go back to your commune.” He said commune slowly, as if it were a strange and unwholesome word.

  “Franz is from Germany and he wants to take some photos.”

  “I know he’s from Germany,” Vernon said. “I remember your little brother. How is Fish?”

  “He’s taken care of,” Lizzy said. She stared out past the windshield towards the gate and beyond as if she might catch a glimpse of Raymond.

  Vernon said, “It’s not wise coming up here. It makes it look like you’re sympathetic to the Indians. Yesterday, three communists from Winnipeg tried to get through here with a semiautomatic rifle. All the wackos are coming out of the closet. You don’t want to be counted as one.”

  Lizzy didn’t answer. Franz held up his camera and said that he was interested in recording history. “You, for example,” he said. “Could I take a photo of you?” Vernon looked amused at first, as if unsure about the request, and then he smiled and said, “I don’t see the problem.”

  He po
sed beside his police cruiser, one arm resting on the roof of the vehicle, a leg slightly bent, his rifle slung over the shoulder.

  Lizzy stood behind Franz, who asked Vernon to hold his riffle in both hands. “Is it loaded?” Franz asked, and when Vernon grinned and said, “Of course,” Franz snapped two quick photographs.

  Vernon took one step forward and said, “Enough,” and waved them away. He halted before Lizzy and, nodding back at the park, said, “Your Seymour friend in there?”

  Lizzy shrugged. “No idea.”

  “Be careful,” he said. And he walked away.

  The following day, Lizzy saw the newspaper on the table in the Hall and picked it up. There was a photograph of a group of protestors, about twelve in all, raising their fists and rifles in the air and, according to the caption, singing the American Indian Movement anthem. Lizzy studied the photo and thought she recognized one of the men who had been up at Raymond and Nelson’s place.

  She put the paper aside and lifted Fish and walked to the pond. William followed them, dragging a stick. Lizzy sat on the grass while the boys looked for frogs in the reeds at the edge of the water. At night, she had woken frightened and breathless from a dream in which Raymond had been standing with his back to her. She had circled him, trying to catch a glimpse of his face, but there were shadows and he appeared not to see her. When they had made love he hovered close to her and sniffed her all over. There had been no words, just the sound of him breathing as he moved over her. Perhaps Nelson was right and Raymond’s vision did not include her. She took a cigarette from her bag and lit it. Fish came up out of the reeds and said, “You’re smoking.”

  “You’re right,” Lizzy said, and pointed affectionately at his nose.

  His eyebrows went up. His mouth puckered. He turned away and surveyed the pond. Then he sat down between Lizzy’s legs and pushed himself against her chest. Lizzy lifted her head as she exhaled. She imagined Raymond admiring her neck. Fish was hot against her. “Go swim,” she said.