Wandering the Earth: A Selected Stories Sampler

by Michael Bryson

  Carole didn’t seem surprised to see me. She said she would have to tell my foster parents that I had gone to see her, but she wasn’t going to force me to go back. She has a nice office. It was air conditioned. I noticed that right away. She has art on the wall, too. Most of it is native stuff. She explained it to me once. The paintings were about healing. They were by people who had been in the residential schools. Carole told me a little bit about that, about the native residential schools. They don’t teach you that stuff in school, man. I didn’t hear nothing in school but lies.

  I told Carole that I wanted another foster home. I didn’t want to go back to that second place. I couldn’t say for sure what was wrong with it, but I knew that I didn’t want to go back. I knew I could say stuff like that to Carole. She wouldn’t make me feel stupid for not having a reason.

  Carole was the first person I told about my step father. I don’t talk about him much any more. He’s the reason I don’t want no one to touch me. I won’t tell you what he did, what we did. I don’t even like to think about it.

  Carole asked me if I wanted to go to the police. I said no. Not now. Not yet. I don’t think I could do that. Not because of him. Because of me. I don’t think I could take it. Not now. Not yet.

  Dave

  In the beginning Darlene was a disruption to me. She entered the stream of my life like a pebble tossed from the shore. The surface rippled with the shock of impact. The pebble settled. The stream flowed on, navigating an altered path.

  Darlene ended something and she began something; she began something and she ended something.

  I saw her again the following Saturday.

  Darlene

  I went down to Harbourfont. Down to the lake. I like going down there. I like watching the people. I like the buskers, the street musicians. I like watching the boats, watching the planes take off and land at the island airport. I like the breeze off the lake.

  I saw Dave down there.

  Dave

  She was wearing the same clothes, the same stupid baseball cap on backwards. She saw me first. I was glad to see her.

  I was sitting in one of the cafés sipping a beer, reading that Kroetsch novel. Beginnings and endings. I had them on my mind.

  I waved at her to come join me.

  “You want something to eat?” I asked.

  “Sure,” she said.

  I gestured to the waitress to bring a menu. The waitress was from Ireland. She was in Toronto for the summer on an employment exchange program.

  “How have you been?” I asked.

  “Good,” she said.

  She picked up the Kroetsch novel, flipped it over. On the back cover was a photograph of Kroetsch from the 1960s. He looked awful, like a real suit. Some kind of McCarthyesque dinosaur. He wasn’t like that at all, I knew. But that’s what he looked like. Like a university lecturer. A real drag.

  Darlene pointed at the photograph.

  “Creepy,” she said.

  “Isn’t it awful,” I agreed.

  She set the book back on the table, photograph side down.

  “Do you read?” I asked.

  She reached into her backpack and pulled out The Handmaid’s Tale, the Atwood novel I’d seen her with in the coffee shop.

  The waitress arrived with the menu.

  I picked up The Handmaid’s Tale and flipped through it while Darlene perused the menu. I figured I had read maybe half of Atwood’s novels. I hadn’t read The Handmaid’s Tale. I saw the movie. I hadn’t felt inclined to read the book.

  The waitress came back and Darlene ordered.

  “You’re paying, right?” she asked me.

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  Darlene ordered and the waitress left. I asked Darlene what she was doing down here.

  “I like to watch the people,” she said. “People down here always seem happy.”

  I hadn’t thought about that before, but it was true. Coming down to the water was like a return to childhood. Coming down to the water signaled a carefree day. It helped to create a sunny disposition.

  I took a sip of beer.

  Darlene

  “Do you read?” he asked me.

  I think maybe Dave’s okay.

  I started telling him about what I’d done after I left his place. I told him a little about Carole. I told him I wanted another foster home. I told him this was my second summer on the streets. I told him I wasn’t a prostitute. I wanted him to know that. I didn’t have a pimp, and nobody was looking for me. At least I didn’t think there was. My foster parents might be looking for me, but I don’t think so.

  “You’re bright,” he said.

  “And you’re cute,” he said.

  “Are you hitting on me?” I asked. I wasn’t afraid of him no more. I just wanted to be sure.

  “No,” he said. “I’m just saying what I see. You’ve got strength and you’re working things through, I can tell.”

  He tapped his head when he said that.

  Working things through.

  “You’re a survivor. You’ll do well.”

  “I don’t bend,” I said. I meant it.

  “Bending’s not good,” he said, “though there’s a certain type of man who likes women like that.”

  “What type of man?” I asked.

  “Men who work in advertising,” he said.

  He smiled when he said that. I wasn’t sure if he was kidding or what.

  Dave

  I met a woman in New York. I was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She was small, dark, European. She came up to me with her program. She wanted me to tell her how to get to the Warhols. I don’t know why but I said: “I’ll take you there, but first come with me for coffee.”

  She came. We talked. We saw the Warhols. We went out for dinner. She was a secretary for a modeling agency. It was her day off. She took me to a small club where they played jazz, authentic ancient ragtime. She smoked cigarettes through a filter. She wore a fur around her neck. She looked like pictures I’d seen of Jackie Kennedy. It might have been the 1960s -- or the 1930s. She kissed me and gave me her business card. I never called her. I don’t know why, except I was sure we had already been to the mountain top. It doesn’t get any better than that.

  I never saw Darlene again, either. I look for her when I’m downtown or when I’m in the coffee shop where I first met her. I hand out quarters to street kids more frequently now. I don’t worry about her. Beginnings and endings. It’s best not to get them confused.

  Darlene

  I could tell you some things. I could tell you things that would keep you up at night, but I’m not going to.

  Just read the newspapers.

  ###

  Running with that Indian

  “So, Barry,” Dad said, fumbling with his cigarette. He was in his wheelchair, wearing a blue hospital robe. Barry and I were on a park bench. I found it hard to look at my father, his pride hurt so bad.

  “You work at the casino, am I right?” Dad asked.

  “I’m in construction,” Barry said.

  “You work for Macleans?”

  “Used to,” Barry said. “I started my own company a couple years ago.” Got to keep the money on the reserve, I had often heard him say.

  I had tried to keep Barry away from my father for as long as I could. After the casino appeared three years ago, he tore into nearly every Indian person he met. That casino will be the downfall of the entire region, I had heard him intone to his nurse just the other day. I was concerned about what he might say to Barry. My kids adored Barry, and I didn’t want anything to upset him, to infect our relationship. Of course, Barry is one of the most level-headed people I’ve ever met, so my concern was really about myself.That was something that I was starting to learn. It was my anxiety, and I needed to take responsibility for how I dealt with it.

  Dad asked, “You working on anything right now?”
r />   “A community centre. Up on the reserve,” Barry said.

  “Is that right?”

  “Next month we put the spade in the ground on a place for our seniors.”

  “Jimmy Pike’s got a room booked there, Dad,” I pitched in.

  “Is that right?”

  Jimmy had been one of my father’s fishing buddies years ago.

  “A place just for Indian old folks.” Dad dropped his eyes and shook his head, and I thought he looked suddenly lost, like he was searching for a fixed place in the shifting corridors of his mind. He seemed so sad. So tired. Then he lifted his face, turned to Barry and pointing his cigarette at him said: “Why do you people always need to do things off on your own, all by yourselves? I’ve never been able to understand that.” He didn’t say it like he was angry, more like a whisper. Like he was talking to us from the other end of a long tunnel.

  I looked at Barry. He had a smile on his face.

  “Your Dad’s not so bad,” he said later when we stopped for coffee on our way back to my place.

  “He’s not the man he used to be,” I said.

  “He’s a fighter,” Barry said. “I admire that.”

  Dad was in the hospital because he had a fall. He broke his hip. He had been living at home alone, but that wasn’t going to be possible any more. My mother died two years ago and my father had been on a downward slide ever since.

  Barry asked, “Am I going to see you Friday?”

  “Sure,” I said. I gave my kids to their father every second weekend and took myself and my dog over to Barry’s place. Barry had a place on the edge of the reserve, back in the woods, isolated.

  I put my hand over his hand and we locked fingers.

  “Kiss me,” I said.

  Barry leaned across the table and planted one on me. I liked it when Barry kissed me in public. I’d heard stories about how a couple of band members didn’t like me staying over at Barry’s, and when he kissed me I felt less insecure.

  ***

  “I want you to stop running with that Indian.”

  The message on my machine when I got home was from Dad. I was glad that my kids didn’t get to it first.

  “I want it to stop,” the message said. “I don’t want any daughter of mine running around with no Indian.”

  ***

  Barry was Mr. Fearless. He left school when he was sixteen, took off with a pair of buddies to Toronto, then someone told him about the Mohawks in New York City, how they worked the big construction sites, walking the high beams on the skyscrapers. It’s a little like flying, he once said to me. It made him feel like an eagle. He was up there alone -- and free. He said he was never afraid of anything after that.

  Barry came back from New York five years after he left. I was married by then. Knocked up, too. I remember running into him at the video store and thinking that he looked real good, happy. I had a sweet spot for him that went back to high school. I used to talk to him when I saw him, and when my husband left he started coming around to cut the grass, fix the car and trim the trees, which didn’t take long to lead to other things.

  I called to tell him about my father’s message, but he wasn’t home.

  ***

  My father was a big man, a strong man in his time. He’d worked in the woods in his younger days, cutting trees, fighting fires. It took my mother to get him to settle down. He used to manage the arena when I was just little. Then he took over the movie theatre with a pal. A couple of times since he’s been in hospital he’s called me ’Sharon,’ which was my mother’s name. The first time he did that I corrected him.

  “It’s Debbie, Dad,” I said. “Debbie.”

  “Of course,” he said. Then he asked me about my brother, Bob, but I don’t have a brother. Bob’s my uncle, and he’s dead.

  ***

  I did my best to talk to my kids about their grandfather. I wanted them to know that he loved them, even if he couldn’t say so.

  My daughter had begun having nightmares. She would wake up screaming, and when I came running she would tell me that she had dreamed that her granddad had died.

  “No, sweetie,” I told her. “It’s okay. Your granddad’s okay.”

  I told Barry that I thought my daughter was reliving the trauma of when her father had left.

  “That’s possible,” he said. “Or maybe her grandfather’s spirit goes for walks in the night.”

  I poked him. “Don’t give me any of that Indian bullshit,” I said.

  Barry laughed. He was a trickster if I ever met one.

  I decided to tell my kids about my father’s phone message about Barry. I didn’t like to be the one bringing trouble into my kids’ lives, but I wanted to make them strong and I figured that the only way to do that was to show them that I could stand up to my troubles, too. We could stand up to them together.

  When my husband left, I wasn’t much use as a mother. This is hard for me to admit, and someday I’ll tell my kids it was all I could do to save myself. I had felt for a while that my husband wasn’t happy, but I never thought that he would leave. A couple of friends had tried to tell me that he was having an affair, but I thought they were just jealous. That sounds strange I know, but it’s true. Denial is a powerful force; it works hard to shield you from the stuff that would destroy you. It’s got limits, though, and when I hit them, I faced the pain with ’hope in my heart’ and found a way out the other side.

  ***

  “How is he doing?”

  “Better,” the nurse said. “His attitude seems to have improved.”

  It was going to be weeks, though, I knew, before he was on his feet again, which meant more valleys than peaks I was sure.

  I was looking for a bed for him in a nursing home, but with all the cutbacks -- well, none were available. The hospital would keep him until he regained his feet, but after that they were threatening to send him home with me, an eventuality I felt in no way ready to accept.

  After the nurse left, I stood outside his room, thinking about what it would be like after he was gone. My life had seen so many changes. This was more than just another one. I stepped into the room. He was sleeping. I pictured him again on my wedding day, how happy he had been. I saw the smile that lit up his face when he teased my kids. I remembered how he had held me in his powerful arms longer than usual on the day of my mother’s funeral, how I had felt him shake, how I had seen his frailty that day, understood his vulnerabilities in a way I hadn’t before, though he’d done his best to hide them.

  ***

  I got Barry on the phone. “He’s at it again. Only worse.”

  “What happened?”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell him.

  “He said things about my mother,” I said. “About when they were younger.”

  “Like what?” Barry asked.

  I hesitated. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll tell you.”

  I took a sip from the glass of wine I’d poured myself after I got home from the hospital. “He said my mother used to have an Indian boyfriend when he was off in the woods in the summers. He said my mother used to go up to the reserve to get drunk and carry on.’ I don’t want you turning out like that,’ he said. He’s lost it, Barry.”

  Barry didn’t say anything.

  I took another sip of wine.I felt awful.

  ***

  Barry told me a story once about what it meant to be Indian. He said he was travelling in New Brunswick, hitchhiking, when he got picked up by this guy who used to be a priest. Barry asked this guy why he’d dropped out of the priesthood, and the guy said he’d been evangelizing in Toronto, going door to door, and he’d met a woman who had been at Auschwitz. She showed him the serial number tattooed on her arm. “Christians did this to me,” she said. “Please leave.” The priest told Barry the experience had led to a breakdown in his faith.

  He asked Barry, “You’re Native?”

  “That�
��s right,” Barry said.

  “What the church did to your people wasn’t right,” the guy said. Then he apologized over and over, until Barry told him it was okay.

  I told you Barry is a joker. “I’ll tell you some words my Elder told me before I left home,” he told the former priest. Then he said: “He not busy being born is busy dying.”

  ***

  Barry came to pick me up as usual on Friday after I dropped my kids off at their father’s.

  “I didn’t think you were coming,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know, I just didn’t.” I didn’t have anything packed.

  Barry had his arms around me, his hands under my shirt. He kissed me and I held on to him. I held on to him like I would never let him go.

  ###

  Border Guard

  The car idled. Jerome tucked a cigarette behind his ear. He didn’t know if he ought to be there, parked opposite the sports bar where Cynthia worked.

  A light snow powdered the hood of his car.

  He rubbed his hands together and turned off the engine. Two hours earlier he had come home from work and found a message on his answering machine: “Jerome. Call me.”

  From his sister. His father was dying.

  Jerome slammed shut the door of his Thunderbird. He trudged across the street towards the bar. He was aware Cynthia didn’t want to see him — though not why she had cut him off — yet the news of his father’s impending death gave him an excuse, he thought, to try one more time. He didn’t want to go home alone, would she come with him?

  She was twenty‑one. So she said. He thought maybe she was eighteen. He was chasing thirty. He started coming to the bar after Dorothea moved out, came early, drank late. Then after twelve drunken nights and hungover days, he sat one more time on the last stool against the wall and watched Cynthia refill drinks.

  Finally, she said to him: “You look interesting. What’s your name?”

  She was wearing a tight top, her hair pulled back. He read her body language: I’m no pushover, no weakling. He told her his name. His job. About his wife.