by Dani Couture
Leo picked up one of the speckled eggs and held it in his hand. It rolled around in a tight circle in his palm, a clock gone mad. He carefully dropped the egg into his coat pocket and turned to look at the mother who was screeching even louder now, her wing dragging on the ground, the other flapping madly. Leo wanted to see the bright orange feathers on its tail close up. He raised the barrel of his pellet gun.
“What are you holding?” Ferd asked. He leaned against the door frame of the room he shared with his brother.
Leo tried to hide the bird behind his back. “Nothing,” he stuttered.
Ferd flushed red. Older by minutes, he felt he owned his brother. There were no secrets between them because he did not allow them, always crushing the spaces where they could hide.
“Show me,” Ferd said. He took a step closer to Leo.
“Leave me alone.” Leo held the dead bird tighter in his hand, pictured its feathers, the pattern beneath its wings. He could still picture it clearly in his mind.
Ferd launched into his brother, tackling Leo’s waist.
“No,” Leo cried out, his hand involuntarily releasing the bird. The killdeer’s soft body bounced on the floor, its glassy dead eye staring at both of them. Leo scrambled to grab it.
“No secrets,” Ferd said, his voice more of a growl. He grabbed at his brother’s leg, trying to pull him back.
The battle lasted only seconds, both boys reaching for the dead plover, before Ferd held up the bird and smirked.
“We can’t eat this shit,” he said. He tossed the bird back onto the floor, its neck now twisted at a painful angle. “Put it in the garbage now. Do it before Dad sees what you’re wasting shot on,” he said. “Do it before I tell him.”
Leo picked up the killdeer and ran to the basement. He pulled a cardboard shoebox out of the kindling bin and put the bird inside the box. A perfect fit. He ran his fingers along the bird’s feathers, the black bands on its neck. Gently, he pulled one of the wings back as far as it would go to mimic the bird’s last moments, the emergency. “Safe, safe, safe,” he whispered, placing the box on the floor. He opened the freezer door. Standing on top of an overturned milk crate, he moved frozen packs of meat around until he reached the bottom of the freezer. He made a space large enough for the box, which he carefully lowered down and buried beneath his family’s appetite.
Leo walked back upstairs and looked into his bedroom. Ferd was gone. He walked over and opened the second drawer of his dresser. The killdeer egg he’d stolen was tucked inside a nest he’d made out of an old T-shirt. He petted the egg lightly with his index finger and wondered how long it would be before he became a mother.
“Hungry?” Ferd asked when Leo walked into the house. Their parents were playing cards next door with the neighbours, spending a rare night together.
“Sure,” Leo said, surprised by his brother’s sudden generosity. He took off his coat and draped it over the banister.
“Eggs?” Ferd asked.
Leo nodded.
Ferd rummaged through the kitchen cupboards for his mother’s cast iron pan, the one seasoned with years of side pork, bacon, beans, and stews. With thin, winter-pale arms he hauled the pan up onto the stove and lighted the burner with a wooden match from the Redbird box. He turned the flame up high.
“Toast with your eggs?” he asked.
“Brown, please,” Leo said, glad his brother was trying to make up for their fight.
“Mom doesn’t buy white bread, idiot.” Ferd laughed.
“Lots of butter.”
“Whatever.”
“And salt.”
“You’ll have a heart attack and die.”
“Pepper, too.”
Leo sat at the kitchen table, a small round table that was used more for card playing than for eating. Ferd and Leo were allowed to sit at the card table so long as they understood that they would be treated the same as everyone else. A bad play would cost them a seat at the table, maybe even a quarter or two, but they would learn fast.
Ferd put two pieces of brown bread in the toaster and pressed the square black lever down until it clicked. He waited patiently until the butter in the pan started to sizzle before he cracked the egg open. Holding the egg high over the pan, he dug his grubby thumbs into the fissure he’d created and pulled the two halves apart. Leo could hear the hot sizzle of the egg bubbling and popping in the pan. His stomach grumbled.
“Watch the pan for a sec,” Ferd said, and he disappeared down the hall and into the washroom. “I just need to do something,” he called out from behind the door. A click. The lock turned.
After several minutes, he heard the scrape of his brother’s chair as he stood up. From the washroom where he sat on top of the closed toilet seat lid, Ferd could hear the sharp metal ting of the spatula hitting the floor and the sound of his brother’s bare feet running across the kitchen, the door slamming behind him. Windows rattled. He waited a few minutes before he slowly unlocked the bathroom door. When he was sure the coast was clear, he walked back into the kitchen and waved away the clouds of smoke and turned off the element.
The killdeer fetus was no longer clear as it had first been when he had cracked the small speckled egg open. Instead, it was now a charred lump in the middle of the pan, smoke rising in thin plumes to the ceiling. “No secrets,” he said.
______________
4:04 p.m. -22°C. Wind N, blustery.
Varnish flaking off the bar.
Gaetan walked into the Club and leaned up against the jukebox, which was affectionately nicknamed “the local band.” He looked around. At night, when the bar was low lit with blue and red lights (after nine o’clock), it was not impossible to pretend you were somewhere else. Somewhere more glamorous than Le Pin. Creative lighting hid the paint peeling off the cement floor, the ancient Goldilocks curls of fly tape suspended from the ceiling, the stained fabric on the chairs. In the afternoon, the white lighting, however low the wattage, illuminated every crease and crevice in furniture and patron.
Two regulars sat at the bar. When Gaetan arrived, they looked over their shoulders and nodded at the arrival of the next shift. Gaetan knew them as well as he did his coworkers, maybe better. In the far corner were a half dozen men that Gaetan recognized, but couldn’t place. It was like that every shift, a mix of predictable and unpredictable variables, never knowing what they’d result in: a quiet night, or calls to the cops.
Two hours into the shift, the argument began. The sound of fists coming down onto the table and raised voices made Gaetan look over, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying over the sound of the music. Every twenty minutes, or so, the shortest of them, a sandy-haired man with a deep scar on his chin that split his beard in two, came up for a new pitcher of beer. With each round, the argument got louder.
On his fourth time up to the bar, the man said something to Gaetan other than his order.
“Sorry, what?” Gaetan asked, as he refilled the pitcher.
“I was asking if it was your kid that drowned in the Charles a while back.”
Gaetan said nothing.
Drunk, the man pressed on. “No, it was you right? The guys and I were wondering. Jos doesn’t think it’s you.”
One of his friends yelled out from the other side of the bar. “Is it him?”
“So, is it?” the man asked.
Hoping it would end the conversation surrounding his macabre celebrity, Gaetan said, “yes.”
“Sorry, man. You are one unlucky sonofabitch.”
“I think we’re good. Go sit down,” Gaetan said, and handed him the full pitcher.
The man made it halfway to his table before doubling back. “It’s just, I don’t get it. Didn’t you teach him about the river ice? If it’d been my kid—”
“Enough,” Gaetan said.
At least once a
month, a scene like this played itself out in the bar. Like an amateur reporter, a patron would bumble his or her way through the questions they wanted to ask about Leo’s death. In some ways, Gaetan missed those first few months after the accident when everyone was too afraid to ask anything of him, let alone questions surrounding how Leo had drowned, how it could have happened. Now that some time had passed, people in town felt they owned part of the story, part of him. It had become a fable to warn their kids about.
The man seemed to finally sense Gaetan’s impatience and shuffled back to his table.
Gaetan looked across the bar at the men. They were likely fathers themselves trying to grapple with fears about their own children. He was about to look away when he accidentally caught the eye of one of the men. At first, he thought the man looked guilty, but then realized it was a look of pity on his face. In that instant he knew they saw him as less of a father, less of a man.
He couldn’t stay and endure their looks. Gaetan picked up the phone and called Daniel, another one of the bartenders and close friend.
“I’m not feeling well,” Gaetan said into the receiver. “Thought I was fine, but I’m not. I want to go home. Can you cover me tonight?”
Daniel and his wife had recently separated; Gaetan knew he could use the money.
Twenty minutes later, Daniel walked into the bar. “Ready for duty, sir.”
“Thanks,” Gaetan said. He stood there looking at his friend for a moment too long. Daniel had two children. Did Daniel pity him, too?
“You okay?” Daniel asked. His cheeks were still bright red from the cold. “You want some water? A beer before you go?”
“I’m fine. I mean, I will be fine. Thanks for coming in,” he stammered.
He walked out of the bar before Daniel could ask anymore questions. He knew his strengths; he was good at being silent, not at lying. As the door closed behind him, Gaetan heard the first bars of a song he’d heard played a thousand times before. It’s Only Make Believe, an old Conway Twitty tune. Daniel must be having a bad day, too, he thought.
The man with the scar-split beard was smoking a joint in the parking lot. On seeing Gaetan, he tossed his roach onto the ground and stepped on it. His eyes were red and glazed. “You should have told him about the ice. If you’d have told him about the ice, you’d still have him,” he said, and started to walk back into the bar.
Wordlessly, Gaetan walked over and buried his fist in the man’s face. Surprised at what he’d done, he stumbled back, slipped, and fell onto the ground.
The man stood there, his bottom lip badly split, drops of blood falling onto the snow. He sucked his bottom lip and winced. “Because that’ll bring him back, right?”
Home was a fifteen-minute walk away if Gaetan took his time. Tonight, he walked in the opposite direction toward the middle of town. He wasn’t ready to go home. The last person he’d hit was his brother. And it used to be that the bar was his refuge. More and more, he was finding there was no safe place to be. No quiet.
Darkness came fast this time of year. The street lights flickered on over head, one after the other casting yellow circles of light on the snow-covered sidewalk. The roads were mostly empty. Although the weather was warmer than it had been in past weeks, the air was damp and cold. A cold that ate at Gaetan’s bones, awakened old injuries. A shattered ankle from a slap shot in his teens. A dislocated elbow. A testy knee that threatened to give out entirely one day. He limped down the sidewalk, the snow squeaking under the soles of his boots. Hungry, Gaetan stepped into the closest convenience store and walked through the brightly lit aisles. He assessed the rows of shiny bags of chips and chose one. He tossed the bag onto the front counter and used the last of his change to pay for it. The cashier, a teenage girl with a tiny daisy tattooed on her left earlobe, scraped his change off the counter and tossed it into the till without counting it.
“Have a nice day,” she said, her voice monotone.
“Night,” he said. “Have a good night.”
The girl rolled her eyes and turned back to the small television she’d been watching.
Outside, Gaetan walked along the unshoveled sidewalk and ate his chips with his bare hands until it became too cold for him to do so. He tossed the half-finished bag into an empty garbage can that had been left at the curb and pulled on his cold leather gloves. As he walked he clenched and released his fists until the leather was warm and soft again.
Before he knew he was even heading there, Gaetan found himself standing in front of Bay’s house. The lights were out except for the porch light. She wasn’t home, which made him both relieved and dismayed, although he didn’t know what he would have done had she been home. Bay’s house was like many in town: a stacked duplex. Someone lived upstairs, and someone below. Gaetan had always wondered who lived on the top floor of her house, the person willing to navigate the narrow iron staircase in winter. He had a hard enough time staying upright on solid ground.
Gaetan and Algoma lived in one of the few detached houses in town, even if it was only a one-storey with a basement. When they had signed the papers, friends and family told them they were being ridiculous and extravagant for a newly married couple; however, the extra sacrifice had been worth it to not have someone living above them. For a few extra dollars on the mortgage every month, Gaetan didn’t have to hear another family’s footsteps in his head all day long, tramping on his thoughts, his sleep. If he was going to be kept awake by children, they would be his.
He focused on Bay’s house again, which he thought could be nice if a few repairs were made: a fresh coat of paint, new windows, the porch replaced. The mailbox was hanging sideways from a single screw, Bay’s mail stacked in front of the door. Gaetan walked toward the house and climbed the three steps to the porch. He turned and faced the street like it was his house, to see what Bay saw every day; it was a mirror image of her side of the street. He half expected to see a carbon copy of himself standing on the porch opposite, but there was no one.
Gaetan turned to the mailbox. He held up the unscrewed end to where it should be secured, and let it drop again. It swung back and forth like a pendulum clock. He stepped back and looked down for the missing screw and found it wedged in the crack between the house and porch. Using the Leatherman he kept in his coat pocket—a gift from Algoma for their first anniversary—he screwed the mailbox back in place and tightened the other screw. Satisfied with his repair job, he looked around the porch. What else could he fix? He absently kicked one of the banisters, but stopped when he heard steps coming up the sidewalk.
“Gaetan? What are you doing here?”
Bay stood at the bottom of the stairs. Her glossy dark brown hair was pulled up into a loose twist. She never wore hats, even if it was dark and there was no one to see her.
Gaetan stuttered something about being in the area.
Bay looked around. “Where’s your car?”
“I walked.”
“Ah,” Bay smiled. “This is the third time in a month I’ve found you ‘walking.’”
“I fixed your mailbox,” Gaetan said. “It was broken.”
“It was and now it’s not. Look at that. Thank you.” Bay put her key in the lock. “Do you want to come in for a drink? You know, to say thanks?”
Gaetan shook his head. “No, that’s alright. I should get to work. I’m feeling better.”
“You weren’t feeling well?” Bay asked, still holding the door open.
From where he stood, Gaetan could see Bay’s couch at the end of the hallway, a pair of grey slippers tucked under the end table. He was beginning to sweat despite the cold. “Yes. No, everything’s fine.” He ran down the stairs, waved without turning around, and hurried down the street like he was running away from something.
Bay let the door close and walked down the porch stairs. From her walkway, she watched Gaetan appear and disappear
as he passed under the streetlights, like a flickering night light on the verge of burning out.
Algoma pulled into the driveway, car full of groceries, and wrinkled her nose. There was a six-pack of beer sitting in the snow on the porch. She parked, got out of the car, and walked toward the bottles. A white envelope was taped to the cardboard handle, Gaetan written on it in a loose feminine handwriting she immediately recognized. She ripped the envelope open and read the card: G. Now the mailman doesn’t hate me anymore. Thank you. Feel free to paint the place next time you’re around. There’s dinner in it for you. B.
After a lifetime of knowing her sister, Algoma knew she could neither compete with nor deter Bay. It would only make things worse. All she could do was run interference and hope that her sister, as she almost always did, would grow bored and move on to the next thing.
Algoma stuffed the envelope and card into her coat pocket and picked up the six-pack. The beer bottles were an imported brand she didn’t recognize. Green bottles that clanked as she carried them into the backyard where she hid them behind the cord of wood behind the shed. By the time Gaetan found the beer, the bottles would be frozen and broken, shards of glass buried in the snow.
______________
6:01 p.m. -22°C. No wind.
Furnace rattling like fluid-filled lungs.
“We’re going camping. Pack up.”
“Um, Mom. It’s minus a million outside.”
“Pack up.”
It was late Friday afternoon and Ferd thought his mother had finally lost it.
“Dad!” he yelled. “Mom says we’re going camping. You know how to build an igloo?” He thought it was joke, but would find out soon that it was not.
Outside, snow was piled up high in huge drifts on either side of the street, every corner capped with a cold white pyramid. The details of the neighbourhood had been gradually erased as snow had risen like water over curbs, planters, and porches. Toys that had been left out on the lawn before the first major snowfall would sit beneath the weight of a season until spring released them into the hands of children who had outgrown them.