Serpents Rising

by David A. Poulsen

  “What about his father? Any brothers or sisters?”

  “Owen never knew his father. Once he told me he didn’t think his mother knew him either. If there were brothers or sisters, Owen didn’t know them either. I think … he … stopped caring.” The tears flowed again though she tried to muffle her sobs. Again Zoe offered her shoulder and stroked Jen’s hair as she cried.

  “You better go,” I told Cobb. “We’re okay here.”

  Cobb looked me. “I appreciate all of this.” He looked at each of the girls in turn, though I’m not sure either of them noticed, then he got out of the car and moved off in a hurry.

  I spent the next couple of hours helping the girls get sorted and settled.

  First, there was a stop at the shelter on Child Avenue in Renfrew, then the shopping trip — Value Village, then London Drugs for a phone and the personal items the girls would need. I learned a few things about them. Or at least about Zoe. Jen had pretty much shut down. Going through the motions. Trying to put on a brave face. It wasn’t working and I couldn’t blame her.

  Zoe was clearly stunned by what had happened to Owen but there was real anger there too. She was in fighting mode. And for her the first part of the fight was to get all her ducks in a row. She seldom took her eyes off Jen for more than a few seconds. It was clear that she had taken on the role of big sister.

  Eventually we made our way to the place Zoe had arranged for — the Callaghans’. It was in the Tuxedo area, not all that far north of downtown. It was the all-Canadian family storey-and-a-half, fenced backyard, deck with a barbecue and snow-covered deck chairs, dormant flower beds in the front yard. If there was a place these girls might be safe, I figured this was the place.

  If nobody screwed up.

  I helped them load their stuff from the Accord up to the house. I didn’t go inside. I wasn’t sure how much Zoe had told the people who lived there and thought it might complicate things for her to have to explain who I was.

  Nobody talked much and Zoe and I did most of the carrying. Jen managed to get a couple of smaller packages up to the house, but beyond that she mostly sat on the steps and stared at the ground.

  “You think you’ll be okay with Jen?” I asked Zoe as we gathered the last few items from the car.

  “We’ll be okay.” She nodded. Definite.

  “I believe you,” I said.

  “I can get those,” Zoe said and took a couple of small bags from me.

  “Zoe, what Cobb said about being careful … he wasn’t kidding.”

  She nodded. “I know.”

  “Good. You’ve got my cell number and Cobb’s. You call if there’s anything at all you think might not be right, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “For the record, Jay is missing out on an amazing young woman.”

  She managed a half smile. “I better go.”

  “Right.” I turned to the car.

  “Adam?”

  I turned back to her.

  “It’s … I don’t think I’ve thanked you and Cobb. I just want …”

  I waved my arm. “You just take care of yourselves.”

  I glanced toward the house. Jen was still sitting on the steps but she had looked up, watching us. I waved but she didn’t wave back. I looked back at Zoe. She’d turned and was walking quickly back to the front steps … and Jen.

  I climbed into the Accord, looked in the back seat to make sure the girls hadn’t forgotten anything, and drove off. Back to the sanity and sanctity of my apartment.

  A half hour later I was there. I dropped my coat and gloves on the hide-a-bed, adjusted the thermostat, and walked to the window that looked out on the street. I stood for a long while, watching the occasional vehicle and a few pedestrians going by in both directions. Thinking about a world I’d written about and seen from the outside.

  I was realizing how little I had really understood that world. Until now. And it scared me that kids like Jay Blevins and Zoe and Jen were part of it. And that a kid named Owen had been.

  I turned from the window and stepped back into my living room/bedroom. I stopped at the stereo and stared at the stack of albums and discs for a long time. Nothing seemed right for what I was feeling, but I finally settled on Oscar Peterson with Joe Pass, a favourite and for tonight — charms to sooth the savage breast.

  I hauled out Donna’s photo albums, poured myself an Alberta Premium and Diet Coke, and settled on the couch, determined to make another pass through the last two albums that night. I didn’t last twenty minutes before falling asleep. I woke up a couple of hours later three pages into the eleventh grade album and with a serious kink in my neck. I set the albums on the floor and stumbled off to bed, Peterson and Pass gentle in the background.

  Bad, bad day.

  Twelve

  A peach yoghurt, a bowl of Shreddies, two cups of coffee, and I was ready to start the day. I took Donna’s grade eleven photo album, the one that had fewer pages than any of the others and, trying not to spill my too-full coffee mug en route, made my way to the balcony to enjoy one of those spring-in-December Calgary mornings that make winter in this city more than tolerable.

  I forced my mind not to think about Jay and Zoe and the MFs and kids with addictions and concentrated on the pages of the album much harder than I had the first time through, first noticing only the obvious, that there was much less content in this book. I’d given the grade twelve album a cursory glance while I ate the Shreddies and it confirmed what I already suspected — that the grade eleven book was an anomaly. Donna’s senior year album wasn’t as extensive as the earlier ones, but it was far larger than the grade eleven album.

  All of them were.

  Did that mean anything? Surely there wasn’t some prescribed number of photos, some carved-in-stone amount of material needed to make the process valid. Still, why the discrepancy?

  As I’d examined the earlier albums, I’d tried to mentally catalogue the photos according to type. It seemed to me there were two categories more or less: Occasions/Activities and Fun Stuff. I’d even made notes and calculations based on my arbitrary classifications.

  The first category was made up of pictures associated with Donna being involved with something; there were a few of her playing piano at recitals and receiving awards for her playing. The strange part was that I didn’t know Donna played piano. We’d never owned one and she’d never mentioned that she played, even though, judging from the photos, it appeared that the piano had been an important part of her life when she was in school.

  There were other occasions too: a provincial volleyball championship (I did hear about that), a couple of academic awards, and one of Donna getting a trophy at the Calgary Music Festival, but not for piano. The carefully handwritten caption informed the reader that she had received a certificate for her recitation of the Alfred Noyes poem, “The Highwayman.”

  But it wasn’t just about awards and achievements. There was a picture of Donna hanging a poster for someone named Trudy Mock who was running for vice president of the students’ union; there were a couple of Donna and several classmates building a snow sculpture at the winter carnival. A lot of these pictures showed Donna and others enjoying school and after-school moments. I had to stop a few times, look away from the albums, and sip my coffee.

  The “Fun Stuff” group was what you’d expect: people laughing, being silly, mugging for the camera. Mostly pictures of girls, a few with guys. Sometimes Donna was in the pictures with her friends but most of the time she wasn’t. It seemed likely that she had taken a lot of those pictures herself.

  I calculated that in most of the yearbooks, the breakdown was consistent — about one third focused on occasions and activities with the balance, two thirds, devoted to fun stuff. Until grade eleven.

  The change that happened that year wasn’t only in the dramatic drop in the number of pictures taken but also in the kinds of pictures. The percentages were altered — drastically. In fact, virtually reversed. What photos of friends there we
re had a different feel to them. They were more serious and in some cases almost sombre. And something else. No music pictures. None. Had Donna given up playing the piano that year?

  Maybe the whole thing was as Cobb had suggested — all hormonal. Donna was going through the mental and physical changes that were part of being a teenager, the angst and rebellion that made for fewer smiles, less laughter … and no music.

  The grade twelve album was closer to the pre-grade eleven books in both content and tone. The surprise this time was that music did not seem to reappear in Donna’s life. Or at least the pictures of her involvement with music that were part of the earlier albums remained as in absentia from the grade twelve book as they had from the one for grade eleven.

  So what did it all mean? Even coupled with the note and my conversation with Kelly McKercher Nolan, maybe nothing. Probably nothing.

  So why was there this knot in my gut that kept telling there was something out there I was missing?

  I fired up my computer and on a whim checked flights to Phoenix. I could leave the next morning. Not a bad price, I knew where my passport was, and it didn’t look like I’d be involved in the search for Jay Blevins, at least not for a while.

  I picked up my cell phone, called Cobb. He answered after two rings.

  I said, “Why aren’t you sleeping?”

  “I did that. Fresh as a daisy. How about you?”

  “I’m good. The girls seemed okay too when I left them. Any Jay sightings?”

  “Nothing. I’m doing the street guy thing, hanging out in the hood, so taking calls on my cell phone isn’t great for my cover. What’s up?”

  “I’ll be quick. I just wanted you to talk me out of flying down to Phoenix to talk to Donna’s high school pal, Kelly.”

  “How much is a flight?”

  “Under four hundred bucks. Seat sale.”

  “So you have to ask yourself how much your peace of mind is worth. You go there — maybe you find something. Or you go there and Kelly wasn’t holding back and you learn nothing but you hang out in the sun for a couple of days and miss a cold front that’s supposed to be coming in. High tomorrow of minus thirteen. If it’s me, I’m on the flight. Peace of mind.”

  “I said you were supposed to talk me out of this.”

  “Gotta go, some guys are coming this way. I want to talk to them. Enjoy Arizona.”

  I stared at the phone for a couple of minutes before I went back to my computer, to the Environment Canada site. Cobb hadn’t been lying — a system was on its way: north wind, gusts to seventy klicks, temperature dropping.

  I Googled the Duke Golf Course and learned that Maricopa is less than an hour south and east of Sky Harbor, the airport in Phoenix. An expensive but not impossible cab ride.

  I found Wes Nolan’s name on the Contact Us page. No home address — no surprise. I called Arizona information and was asked by an eager-to-please operator if I wanted Mr. Nolan’s number or address. I requested both, got them, and, after another Google search, had tracked Wes and Kelly Nolan to 814 West Neely Drive in a subdivision just minutes from the golf course. I’d even written out the directions to their home from the airport.

  I bought a WestJet ticket online — leaving the next morning at 10:50 a.m., arriving a little over three hours later.

  I had some time to kill. I picked up the phone, stared at it for a long minute, then dialled the number of Let the Sunshine Inn. A voice, very not-Jill-Sawley, answered. Celia maybe. The voice didn’t say the whole name of the place.

  “Hello, Sunshine Shelter.”

  “I wonder if I could speak to Jill, if she’s in.”

  “She’s with someone right now.”

  “You think she’ll be long?”

  “Couldn’t say.”

  “Can I leave a message?”

  “I guess so.”

  I resisted the temptation to say something I’d later regret. “Could you have her call Adam Cullen when she gets a minute?”

  Long pause. “She have your number?”

  “I think so, but maybe I’ll leave it just in case.”

  “Sure.”

  She didn’t say anything and I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to recite the number or wait until she found a pen and paper or what. I gambled, gave her the number.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Okay, then,” I said. “Thanks.”

  Celia or whoever it was hung up the phone. Maybe she was the screening device for the shelter. If that was her job, she was very good at it.

  I cradled the phone, turned on the TV, and watched maybe ten minutes of the news, just enough to remind me that we were all going to die of either the ravages of climate change or a damn good war. All of which was cheerier than watching the media scrum with the prime minister in the halls of the House of Commons as he defended still more cuts to arts funding.

  I turned off the TV, thought about putting on some music, but didn’t. The phone rang and I picked up. It was Jill.

  “Hey, thanks for getting back to me. I wasn’t confident you’d get the message. I’m not sure Celia thinks I’m someone who can be trusted.”

  Jill laughed. “If you heard some of the calls we get here, you’d know why she isn’t a little more cordial on the phone. Consider yourself fortunate you didn’t get to feel the full force of the Celian wrath.”

  “My lucky day. Anyway, I thought I’d give you an update on where we’re at with finding Jay. Have you got a minute?”

  “I’ve got lots of minutes. I just wrapped up my shift here.”

  I paused. Was there an invitation there? So if you want to have dinner …

  Or was it just a comment and if I did ask her to dinner I’d look like an idiot. I debated the two possibilities long enough that she finally said, “Hello? You still there?”

  “Yeah, sorry, still here. I was just thinking that maybe I could give you that update over something to eat, you know, if you didn’t have other plans.”

  “I’d love that. But would it be all right if I went home and showered first? You’ve been here, you’ve smelled the place. I could be ready in an hour, well maybe an hour and a quarter.”

  “That’s great. I’ll pick you up in seventy-five minutes.”

  She told me the address; she lived in Glamorgan, in the southwest quadrant of the city. Middle-class neighbourhood, not fancy but nice. I hung up and this time actually put on the music. Emily Spiller. I’d bought the CD a couple of weeks before but it was still in the wrapper. I sat back down and for twenty minutes let the Vancouver singer’s voice fill the room. Upbeat. Like my mood had suddenly become.

  By the time I pulled up in front of Jill’s house, my frame of mind had pendulumed back to just north of anxious, a little this side of terrified. The house was an older bungalow surrounded on both sides by in-fills. It looked sixties vintage, with blue siding, a large living room window facing the street and an uncomplicated but well-tended front yard. A light blue Dodge Caravan sat in a driveway in front of an attached garage to the right of the house.

  I sat for a minute, wondering if this was a bad idea, checking the mirror on the off-chance that I’d magically developed Robert Redford looks during the drive to Jill’s house. I hadn’t but was comforted by the fact that Boris Karloff wasn’t looking back at me either.

  Finally I stepped out of the Accord and walked up the walk, climbed the three stairs to the front door, pressed the doorbell, heard it chime inside.

  Jill came to the door and opened it, smiling. She looked great. Her hair was hanging loose and over the collar of a dark blue turtleneck. Informal but not so casual that our only option was fast food. She pulled the door inward and stepped to one side to allow me to enter.

  “Hi.”

  I stepped in, turned to her, and said, “Hi, you look terrific.”

  “Thank you. Come in.” She closed the door and gestured toward the couch. “Have we got time for a drink before we go or do we have a reservation somewhere?”

  “No reservation
. I didn’t know what you liked so I thought I’d check, then phone.”

  “Toss your coat on that chair and have a seat. I’ll mix us a drink and we can make a serious dining decision.”

  I dropped my coat on the chair she’d indicated — I liked the casualness of that — and sat on the couch, a pillow-backed brown leather piece that had been around long enough to be soft and deceptively comfortable.

  “What can I get you?”

  “Have any rye?”

  “Crown Royal.”

  “You said the magic words. A little Diet Coke if you have it. Can I help?”

  She shook her head. “I won’t be a minute. Just relax.”

  She went into the kitchen and I could hear her fixing the drinks over Coldplay on the stereo. I looked around. The living room had almost a country feel — hardwood floor, throw rugs that looked a little southwestern, but the pictures on the walls spoke of other things, other places. There was a photo I recognized of Montmartre in Paris, a stylized poster of a museum collection in New York City, and a painting of an island sunset that was stunning.

  A desk stood off to one side of the room. It was piled high with what looked like textbooks.

  Jill was true to her word. She was back with the drinks before Chris Martin could get through “Square One.” She handed me my drink and sat on the couch. I said thanks but she didn’t answer. Instead she giggled and put her finger to her lips. Then called, “You can come out now. He’s here.”

  Nothing for ten seconds, maybe fifteen. Then a small head peeked around the door of the first room down the hall.

  Kyla.

  “Well, come on, you can’t just stand there staring. Adam will think you’re rude.”

  The little face and the body that went with it came the rest of the way out of the bedroom and moved down the hall toward us. Kyla’s eyes never left my face until she got to the living room. She sat on the arm of the couch on the other side of Jill.

  Shy. But not afraid or anti-social.

  “I hear you’re eight years old,” I said.