by Dani Couture
But there was no current to buoy Ferd. He did not know how long he could live with his side of the conversation alone. The yards of the houses he passed were the colour of old teeth. Each step he took felt heavy and laboured, his body weighted down by his brother’s decision to chase the bear. He was tired and he had math homework he already knew he wouldn’t do. But it didn’t matter. The teachers at school still looked at him with sad eyes. Ms. Prevost excused his poor assignments and forgotten homework. She didn’t question him about the things that went missing from her desk.
A red-tailed hawk fell out of the sky like a meteor. Startled, Ferd stumbled backward, almost falling. With agile claws, the bird picked up something that had been hiding behind an overturned tricycle. The hawk swooped back and up and perched on the lowest bow of the tree closest to Ferd, who watched as it ripped apart a mouse with its sharp beak. The long, sinewy strips of the rodent snapped like rubber bands. Ferd rooted through his bag. He had to tell Leo about this.
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5:47 p.m. -11°C. Wind N, calm.
Greasy thumb prints on the lower half of the window.
Gaetan was uneasy serving only himself. He appreciated the direction and structure that other people’s drink orders gave him. Time parcelled out in highball glasses.
A drink in one hand—two fingers of rye with three ice cubes—he stared out the window into the already dark early evening. Cold radiated from the glass. Only two months ago, he would have been able to see past the football field at the end of the street, but now it was a black void with a twinkling of house lights on the other side.
Every June, the town held a massive bonfire in the centre of the field to commemorate Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day. In the fall, football teams from other towns shared locker room theories about the burned patch, the ritual sacrifices of the hometown team. What they would do to win.
Gaetan wiped his forehead. He was sweating and the window was beginning to fog up. In the kitchen, the vegetables and bones of dinner jumped and rattled in a steady roll of boiling water, the element red hot. Judging by the size of the pot, he guessed he’d be eating the same dinner for days. He’d complained about boiled dinners for his entire married life, but Algoma ignored him. She was convinced his taste buds would alter, become more sophisticated with age. He just thought that it was her way of nicely telling him to go to hell.
“It’s healthy,” she called out from the kitchen as if she’d read his mind. “Full of vitamins for what ails you and you’ve been looking grey.” She stirred the bubbling pot of fat and cellulose with such vigor he thought she’d knock it over.
Gaetan turned back to his window.
“Five more minutes,” she said. Water splashed and sizzled on the burner.
Defeated, he picked up his weather journal from the window ledge and ran his fingers along the smooth leather.
He fisted away a circle of condensation from the window, so he could see outside. His thermometer was nailed to the middle porch beam. It was cheap and simple, but accurate, and the numbers were large enough that he could read them without going outside.
-11°C.
The forever-green AstroTurf that lined the porch mocked the cold. It looked like a putting green.
“Minus twelve,” he said, and shook his head.
If it had been him, a man weighing 180 pounds, he would have lived. He would have survived the plunge into cold water. He would have found a way to get out. He was sure of it. Maybe he would have lost some fingers, or a toe, but he would have survived. A boy like Leo—thin and hairless as a skinned hare—would have never stood a chance. He shook his head and tried to focus on his weather journal, its familiar weight in his hands. Its religion of wind, sun, and precipitation.
Gaetan had recorded the weather every day since his thirteenth birthday when Simon had given him the red leather journal, which Gaetan assumed he’d shoplifted. Simon likely thought his brother would keep a diary that he could read; instead, Gaetan recorded the weather. By fifteen, he was able to match his best hunts and fishing outings with certain weather patterns. And by twenty he could track his life, how he was feeling, through the way he wrote down the details of the rain or snow, his own secret code. The habit had formed as easily and seamlessly as drink would later on.
The formula was simple: time, temperature, wind, and a short note. His formula, from which he allowed himself no deviations, meant that he’d never had to purchase a new journal, even though friends and family bought him new ones every birthday and Christmas. They always hoped theirs would be the next one he’d cling to. One line a day for over two decades and he’d still only used half the pages. He noted with some satisfaction that his penmanship had changed and improved over the years. It had become neater, more precise. At least something had changed.
“Dinner,” Algoma said, the white sleeves of an oversized men’s dress shirt rolled up sloppily to reveal her knobby elbows. Gaetan turned around to see his wife holding up a BBQ fork with a sopping ham on the end, fat gobs of oily water dripping onto the floor.
She smiled. “Protein. You like protein, right?” It wasn’t a question.
And you like to save a buck or ten, he thought, and took his seat.
“What did you say?” Algoma asked.
“I said great.”
On cue, Ferd walked through the side door, took off his boots, and sat down at the table with his coat still on. His cheeks were bright red and a clear stream of snot dripped from nose to lip.
“Where’ve you been?” Algoma asked. “Take off your coat and wipe your nose.”
“I’m cold,” he said. Ferd wiped his nose with his coat sleeve.
Gaetan turned to his son. “Listen to your mother. Take off your coat.” The one area where he and Algoma were a united front was in parenting their remaining child. He was all they had. A thin blood tether.
Ferd ignored them both and pushed the salt and pepper shakers in front of the empty seat at the table, so it looked purposeful. Occupied.
Seated with his back to the living room, Gaetan was convinced he could feel the weather changing behind him, the barometer dropping. His fingers itched with the urge to update his journal, but Algoma’s eyes were on him. She’d never stand for it. He shifted uncomfortably under her stare. She chewed aggressively on a piece of gristly pork fat. He needed a drink.
“A toast is in order,” he said, jumping up from his seat. His chair screeched as it scraped across the floor.
Algoma stopped chewing. “For what?”
Ferd held up his empty water glass in hopes of scoring a sip.
“To… us!” Gaetan ran over to the liquor cabinet “Civilized people have drinks with dinner. Kings have drinks with dinner. Vikings!”
Algoma rolled her eyes. “Your food is going to get cold. Sit down.” She tried to fork an overcooked potato onto her plate, but it crumbled as soon as she stabbed it.
Gaetan surveyed his collection of half-filled bottles, every one of them a “donation” from the Club. He settled on a fat glass bottle of amber-coloured rum. Something warm and sunny to battle the bland dinner and the cold outside. He walked back into the kitchen and held up his glass to the swing lamp’s light bulb.
“It’s like sun, right?”
Algoma swallowed a forkful of grainy potato. “Aloha.”
Ferd giggled. He stared at the pot of water-softened roots and meat on the stove and resisted the temptation to drop a note into the simmering mash. Maybe later, he thought, when his parents were watching television, which is about all they could stand to do together these days. Stalagmites of empty wine glasses rising from the coffee table.
Before Leo’s accident, it had been normal for his parents to invite friends and family over for dinner, the sound of glasses clinking and card-game insults filling the house with a comfortable and familial din. But now no one came over
, unsure of which version of Algoma or Gaetan they might find. How red-eyed from sadness or drink.
The phone rang. Neither Ferd nor Gaetan made a move to answer it. They knew better. Algoma hated phones—the uninvited noise, the intrusion. She wouldn’t tolerate interruptions during dinner. One of her few rules. Dinner was for family.
The phone bleated out its final ring. Gaetan wondered if Bay was on the other end. In between bites of ham and limp onion he tried to imagine what a life with her would have looked like. Would things have turned out differently? Would she have had twin sons like her youngest sister? He was sure hers would have floated, not sunk like Algoma’s.
While he tried not to, and while he knew it was wrong, Gaetan found himself at times blaming Algoma, at least in part, for Leo’s death. She had not raised him hardy enough. She hadn’t eaten the right things when she was pregnant. Things would have been different with Bay, but maybe not better. It could have been a parallel hell. Twin girls. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose a daughter. A tornado of ribbon and silk spiraling down toward the silt.
Throughout dinner, while Algoma and Ferd ate in relative silence, Gaetan cycled through all of Algoma’s sisters in his mind. He pictured a wedding with each, the honeymoon night, the different combinations of children, what jobs he could have pursued with a different woman behind him.
With Cen, he was a carpenter, and they had a boy and a girl. With Steel, he was the proud father of three perfect black-haired girls that looked like him, and he worked as a teacher. Math maybe. But his imagination stalled on Bay like a flooded engine. He conveniently forgot the part where she hadn’t wanted him.
Gaetan looked at Algoma. She was carefully rearranging the food on her plate so that it appeared she’d eaten more than she actually had. An old trick he’d given up trying to get her to stop. By the end of the meal she would just toss her napkin over the entire mess and announce that she was full and make a big show out of it. Her shoulders looked narrower than he remembered, sharp, as if the bone might slip through and relieve her of her skin at any moment.
After dinner, the family splintered off. Algoma to her sewing, Ferd to his room in the basement, and Gaetan to the living room to watch television. If someone stood in the centre of the house and listened—the television crackling, the sewing machine humming its way through repairs, and the muffled thumps of someone moving around downstairs—it sounded like a family. All the parts were there, but the web had been cut. One essential thread removed that had left them all speaking different languages.
Out of habit, Gaetan leaned over and picked up his weather journal again. He flipped through the pages and penned another entry for the evening. Sometimes, he took the journal with him to work or out for short walks to the end of the street, so he could report the weather in real time. His coworkers had nicknamed him “The Weatherman.” He worried constantly that someone would steal his journal, his weather—twenty years of highs and lows—but he couldn’t bear to leave it behind either. The back pocket of his jeans bore the distinct outline of his journal like a pack of cigarettes.
The thermometer remained constant at -11°C. He looked around the yard at what little he could see in the dark. The cedar hedges needed to be trimmed. He ran a hand through his own messy hair. He needed a cut, too. He’d have to wait until spring to prune the hedges, which were now over seven feet tall. When he and Algoma had first moved into the house, the hedges had been a series of thigh-high shrubs that stretched around the property in small puffs. Now they blocked the view of almost everything else. He found himself stranded on his own small green planet.
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10:13 p.m. -17°C. Wind NW, blustery.
Ice cube melting on the floor inside.
Algoma stood outside Club Rebar, her scarf wrapped around her head like a turban. She pulled Barry out of her purse. She felt bad that Gaetan couldn’t see her using it. It was the first thing he’d given her in a long time. She took a long drink of gin and coughed. The clear liquid burned her throat. Juniper berries. Like the bushes her father had asked her to stomp on when she was little, so that she could flush out the hares hiding beneath.
“Jump harder,” he had yelled, holding his shotgun loose in his hand, “they don’t even know you’re knocking yet!”
Out of breath, Algoma had jumped up and down on the springy bush like it was a trampoline until he’d said stop. By the end of her stomping session, her socks were threaded with tiny needles that tortured her ankles for the rest of the day. But it didn’t matter; she’d liked pleasing her father more than anything else. Every hare she’d flushed out had made her father love her more, she was sure of it, and would give her a leg up on Bay.
Algoma accidentally spilled some of the gin on her jacket. She’d only eaten a piece of toast earlier that day. Too tired to cook, she’d eaten whatever was easiest. Her brain felt gin-soaked—top-heavy—like she would tip over any minute. She leaned over and looked at her heavy winter boots and whispered, “Thank you.” If drinking worked for Gaetan, maybe it would work for her, too. He seemed numb all the time and that was beginning to appeal to Algoma.
Even though she was the only one outside amidst the cigarette butts, she tried to look sober, focused. Through the thin walls, she could hear music, an occasional laugh, a shriek.
Times when she found the empty house unbearable—Ferd staying with one of her sisters or a friend and Gaetan working—she went to the Club. She rarely spoke to Gaetan while he was working, but she enjoyed his presence. The mutual silence. She liked the bar, which was little more than a tool shed with a pool table and a battered dart board. Seated at the bar, she drank free glasses of ginger ale and ice; outside, she spiked her stomach with shots of alcohol that warmed her entire body.
“Where’s Ferd?” Gaetan asked. He poured a beer for a large man with a red beard and a matching red Mohawk, a skidder operator who found his way to the bar six days out of seven. While the skidder tipped poorly, he tipped on every drink, which was more than most did.
Algoma stirred her ginger ale with a yellow plastic sword. She pushed the ice cubes beneath the surface and then released them so they floated back up.
“He’s at Cen’s.”
Gaetan nodded. Algoma pushed her glass forward for a refill. She liked the hiss of the soda gun, how the ice cubes popped and fractured when he dropped them in the ginger ale.
Before the accident, Algoma sometimes asked one of her sisters to babysit the kids while she went to visit Gaetan at the Club. She’d enjoyed the women who leaned over the bar trying to seduce her husband, their heavy breasts sopping up old beer spill. She liked Gaetan’s deep laugh. How he would flirt for tips, with which he would buy her new old things. She liked how it felt like it was just the two of them, if only for a few hours.
The house was silent. Algoma shuffled across the floor in her socks, knocking into things as she passed. When she accidentally knocked over the spider plant that sat beside the phone, she knew she’d drunk more from Barry than she’d realized. The trouble with a flask was that it was impossible to tell how much you’d had to drink until it was empty. She stumbled into her bedroom and peeled off her shirt and tossed it on the floor.
Half-dressed, she turned out the lights, lay down on her bed, and closed her eyes. A moment later, she woke with a start. She hadn’t set her alarm for work. In the darkness, she reached over to turn on the alarm, instead upsetting the homemade humidifier—a soup bowl of water—that sat on her bedside table.
Algoma groaned and got out of bed to clean up the mess. She switched on the bedside lamp and grabbed the shirt she’d discarded earlier to sop up the water. When she moved the table to clean up what had spilled down the sides, she found another note. Two hundred and fifteen, she tallied in her head. She’d set bowls of water around the house to combat the dry winter air and to prevent the bloody noses she was prone to. Because of Ferd, t
he bowls had a new use. They were like small mailboxes stationed around the house and Algoma was the collector.
She tucked the note into the pocket of her robe that hung on the door and went back to bed. She’d read it in the morning. Ferd’s narrative was slowly growing inside her like a vine, almost convincing her at times that Leo was alive. Almost asleep, Algoma heard someone turn on the television in the living room. She tried to listen in, but couldn’t make out the voices or which show it was. Gaetan must have come home. He would be up half the night watching reruns until he fell asleep in his chair with his head slumped forward, legs spread wide open, melted slush pooling around his boots. She often found him still sleeping there in the morning, the television still on. He looked like a noble soldier asleep in his bunker. At least that’s how she tried to picture him, not as a husband minutes away from waking up to another hangover.
Unable to sleep, Algoma switched on the lamp again and dug through her bedside table drawer for a pen and paper. Maybe if she wrote a letter to Ferd from Leo the letters would stop. I’m fine, Leo would say. Happy. Not coming home. Miss you.
She wrote a few sentences, stopped, crumpled the paper, tossed it onto the floor, and tried again. There was nothing in the parenting books she’d read that could have prepared her for this. They’d covered imaginary friends, but not the undead. Maybe she would write her own book, she thought, if she ever figured out what to do. She threw her pen to the floor and lay back down. The world spun dizzily around her. A better idea would come. Tomorrow, she would know what to do.
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1:25 p.m. 23°C. Wind S, light.
A scattering of stones and eggs.
The killdeer shrieked and scuttled back and forth across the gravel. It let one wing drag and exposed a patch of dark orange feathers at its tail. An evolutionary trick. The bird was supposed to appear wounded to attract attention from predators. Leo touched the birthmark on his neck, wondered what it signaled to others. The bird’s antics, he knew, were a distraction to keep his interest away from the nest, which must have been nearby. He saw which direction the bird was heading and looked the other way. There, several feet behind him, hidden among the stones, a clutch of pyriform eggs.