“Duh. They knew about lead poisoning.”
“No. They didn’t, in fact. I told you. That’s why they soldered all the tinned provisions with lead. They put lead in, like, everything then—kids’ toys, paint, dishes, glass, wine. You name it. Even some medicine. They even made guys take mercury back then. They had no idea. They thought it was good for you. But the amount of lead in those cans and in their water-purification systems. . . .” He croaked and did a little spastic death pantomime. “Lethal.”
Two V-shaped dents like check marks appeared in her forehead, one above each eyebrow, and he wondered if he’d lost her, said too much, or been a little too enthusiastic in his death act. “I thought it was that other dude”—she snapped her fingers—“what’s his name, that died first.”
“Torrington?”
“Him.”
“He came on board with TB. They knew that. They figured it was, like, therapeutic to send him on discovery service to the Arctic? Good for the lungs? Then they had the bright idea to set him up as chief stoker down there in the engine room shoveling coal all day. Doh! Killed him right off. But Braine and Hartnell . . . totally mysterious. It looked like TB, but TB would never kill you so fast. Takes a while. Maybe botulism. Botulism is kind of like drowning. Your lungs quit and then you basically, you just . . . you suffocate. So says Devon.”
“Why do you know so much of this stuff? It’s, like, weird.”
“I just read some books. That’s all. There’s nothing wrong with it.”
“I didn’t say there’s anything wrong. Just there’s other things in the world.”
They’d reached the mailboxes and the walkway up to his house. Thomas stopped, but Jill kept going. She turned and walked backward, seeming to hurry from him now. He had the sense he’d scared her or hurt her feelings again. Maybe too much death talk.
“You need to wash with green soap. Your face. With a good green soap. And gargle salt water. No canoodling. It’ll make the bleeding start again.”
“Oh, so you . . .” She turned and kept walking. “Hey,” he said. “So I guess . . .”
“See you later.”
He raised a hand, half-waving, though he knew she didn’t see.
“Later,” he said, and turned to face the mailboxes.
Mom in the mailbox. Pop-up Mom in a square red or blue or bright green envelope bearing exotic canceled stamps, scentless and fat with paper. He’d seize it lightly in two fingers, as if not to touch any part of it too intimately, as if to keep his impulses in check, one of which veered toward an insane desire to rip the envelope open and pour all his attention greedily into her words, the other, with equal intensity, toward a desire to rip it all apart, tear print from paper if he could, and stomp the pieces into the grainy, icy snow without reading a word, because whatever she said, it would not be enough. The letters unfolded a larger window within the window of the envelope, all of it almost too electrifying to bear, none of it giving him anything like what he wanted. He didn’t understand himself in the presence of such strong emotions—knew only that he wished, right now, there would be no letter at all. Or wished there would be many, many letters, better, more personal letters with pictures and kind words, and much more of her than that.
Deep breath. Please, he thought, and turned the key for their mailbox—familiar tocking sound—and peered in.
Empty.
Barren, gleaming little square Quonset hut, like where she might be staying right now—someone’s makeshift sheet-metal hovel at the edge of a melting glacier maybe, watching and waiting. So the mail hadn’t come yet. “Yes,” he said. “Beat the mailman.” He slapped the little door shut and pocketed his key. Safe another hour or two, until his father returned and came in the door braying orders and asking where he was, what was he doing, had he finished his homework, practiced his piano, remembered to take out the garbage, empty the cat’s litter, start dinner. He was off the hook. He’d make some hot chocolate, or just eat some plain squares of it like the sailors, followed by canned tuna on Ritz crackers. Unwind a little with solitaire on the computer. Drop a note to Devon on his Facebook page. Dive into his storyboard notebooks awhile and see if he could draw some of the fight scene into frames—Braine versus Work. Hartnell in some of the background shots. It was too bad about Jill, yes—but probably a good thing, too. Skinny-legged Jill with her bare shins swallowed up in her black plastic snow boots and that blue-brown-red stain down her face. A kid, too young for him. Anyway, he’d survived plenty of afternoons without her already. He’d survive plenty more.
ONE THING HE’D LEARNED from his son’s obsession with their namesakes, the Franklins of Arctic lore: Lady Jane, Sir John’s wife, once traveled as far north as Muckle Flugga, in the Shetland Isles, then considered the northernmost point in the British Isles, in order to gaze longingly to sea after her husband’s lost ships—to be as close to him as she might get without leaving British soil. A publicity stunt to gain attention and fund yet another search party, Thomas assured him—she’d even (according to rumor) invited her new friend Charles Dickens and her nephew Alfred, Lord Tennyson, along to write about it for the Times—but John Franklin the school-teacher imagined it differently. He’d been to Shetland once himself and knew you didn’t make that sick crossing without a genuine incentive. His own had been a girl, of course, decades ago—a Dutch girl he’d traveled with for weeks through Spain and the UK, when without warning she’d given him the slip. Left him a note at the hostel’s front desk, saying he should catch up with her when he was ready, and the address. Baltasound Unst. So he had his own picture of Lady Jane just north of Unst, prelighthouse, and staring out to sea from a deserted pile of wave-encircled rocks after Sir John. For him, it was not just more lore of the explorer: He’d seen those rocks and heard the gulls and looked straight north to nothing but more and more open sea (the Dutch girl, of course, long gone). Regardless, factual or mythic, because of his personal connection with it, the story of Jane and Muckle Flugga formed a kind of emotional touchstone for him, icon, whatever you wanted to call it, like his father’s absurd dashboard Jesus figurines: something to look at and conjure as needed, to set on the horizon and steer yourself toward. Also a way of giving his own refusal to leave Alberta and move back to California a shape or explanation. (His mother’s words to him just the previous week: Honey, you’re north of North Dakota! No, we’re not visiting this year. You just come on home when you’re ready.) What kept him here? An oath, a personal resolution he mentioned rarely, if at all: He would not leave until Thomas had finished high school; he would wait at least that long so as to protect Thomas from having fully lost his mother, and to leave open for Jane the possibility of return. The chance for Thomas to visit her, too, though as yet that hadn’t happened. If he pictured Lady Jane at Muckle Flugga, looking north after John, still hopeful after how many years, it almost made sense. So long as he and Thomas were here, they were that much closer to her. One day’s travel instead of three. There was still the chance of patching it up.
Now he was in the parking lot at the end of the school day, done his classes, done the debate team, done grading, done with everything until tomorrow morning—familiar, happy release into the evening—hearing the wind bang and buffet the streetlight beside his car, the school-yard flagpole bare now but the halyard still chiming and chattering spastically against the pole, and thinking about Jane and Muckle Flugga and personal resolutions, because Moira had been text-messaging him every half hour or so since just after the end of classes. Three times, to be exact. Once just to pass him her number—a new one. Then the messages. Call here when u can. Not urgent. Maybe urgen now yes, pls call now. Not the home number. Dial this #. Picturing himself there at the point of his internal Muckle Flugga, gazing north, he wondered how much of it was dedication and adhering to an oath after all; how much was just stubbornness and being hooked on the romance of separation—the poignancy, stalled longing, frozen miles away from Jane—and how easily might Moira spring him from all of that? He�
��d sworn, too, when Jane left, that he’d never follow after her, even to visit, and had already broken that vow, months after she’d gone, though he hadn’t actually managed to see her—his own fault for having flown up spontaneously, unannounced, while Thomas was back east visiting relatives. Three days he’d passed standing on the balcony of his rented room and getting drunk on ten-dollar well drinks in the hotel bar with some of the locals he’d run into, asking after her. He’d watched the sun circle endlessly, and once, on a one A.M. jog to the outskirts of town, thought he might be on the verge of appreciating something like the enchantment of the place, the bitten-down, inhospitable whatever it was that had lured Jane there and kept her. He’d stood at the top of a rise, alone and swarmed by mosquitoes, until some inchoate realization connected with the wind-tipped dwarf pines and the light so endless it seemed to come from the earth, felt as if it had worked its way through him, then turned and jogged back. Flying out, he’d been amazed, again, at the foreshortened strangeness of the perspective—the trees too stumpy to calculate height or distance, the land and water continually interrupting each other, so the higher you went, the more it looked like a swampy, cratered patchwork of endless puddles and waterways in which it would be impossible to ever know your way. And he’d felt relieved beyond all expectation to be home again and returned to hours of darkness and night (and somehow, consequently, color)—had known, too, he would not go back. It was enough, having seen where she was. If she’d heard from any of the locals that he’d been up there looking for her, she’d never let on.
“Moira, Moira,” he said. Checked the callback number and hit Dial. Backed his car in a reverse arc from under the streetlight and headed out of the lot as digital ring pulses fluttered in his ear, connecting them.
She answered just as he was turning and accelerating onto the access road. All sand and bare pavement now, no snow. Just an incredible amount of sand. He couldn’t remember—November? October?—when he’d last seen it this snowless.
“John! Hang on a sec,” she said, and then moments later: “Back again. I’m so glad you called.”
“Of course. You know I—”
They’d spoken at the same time.
“You first.”
“ No.”
“OK,” he drew a breath. “I was just going to say it was so good seeing you today. I’d forgotten how . . . how much I always enjoy your company. Whatever. It’s just good, and I’m glad we’re back in touch. Let’s keep it like that.”
“Let’s do.”
“So what’s up?”
“Oh, you’ll just think it’s dumb.”
“Never. What’s wrong?”
“You haven’t seen Jeremy at all since my visit there, have you?”
“No, I had class straight through. Talked to Legere, though, just a while back and everything seemed fine from his end. The boys will make a formal apology to Thomas, blah blah, and there’ll be some work detail for them. Nothing goes on anyone’s record. All sounded pretty reasonable, I thought. A little too reasonable, maybe, but he’s got his theory about barometric pressure and eccentric behaviors due to zee vinds,” he said, trying to mimic Legere’s accent. “Did he mention that? We were possessed by the devil winds.”
Her breath ruffled into the phone. A laugh? Not a laugh. “Jeremy never came home.”
“Oh.” Now he was maneuvering into traffic on the main road, Tim Hortons flashing by. Blockbuster, its formerly towering snowbanks shrunken to a meager misshapen few humps. The ridiculous new condo warrens. “Is that . . . that’s unusual for him, I guess? Of course it is.”
“It wouldn’t be if I could track him down anywhere, but I haven’t been able to. His girlfriend doesn’t know. She never saw him after school. Alas, no one seems to have . . . a clue where he went. Ordinarily, he’d be in touch, call or text. Late after school, going to the Okotoks mall, busy with Belinda, whatever. I suspect he’s gone to Davis . . . his dad, but I haven’t been able to raise anyone there, either. Unsurprisingly.”
“He’ll turn up.”
“Yes. Of course. Dead or alive is the question.”
“I’m not touching that one.”
“No, I’m sure he’s fine.” She sighed wearily. “It’s just weird. He hasn’t done this before, ever. . . . now it’s going on six o’clock, and tomorrow he’s got practice.”
Franklin checked his watch. 5:27. Drove a ways in silence. There were certain things he could (and probably should) ask now—where was Rick, why was he getting drawn into this drama instead of Rick, how had this sudden collusion between them sprung up again—but to ask such questions would be to incite an impeding logic, when all he really wanted right now was for her to keep breathing (distraught, worried, whatever) close, in his ear, as he made his way home. He didn’t want to ask her why it was so, why she was inviting him to share her concern.
“So . . . OK. Was he OK with Legere’s disciplining? Did he mention anything to you about it after?”
“We weren’t talking.”
“Not at all?”
“I’d say he was a little disappointed, if I had to guess. But . . . I don’t know. No, we didn’t talk. I don’t fight his battles for him. I told you.”
“Yes. You said that.”
“I can’t anymore. Not for him or anyone. It’s a road that goes nowhere.”
“Yes.”
She made a growling, exasperated noise. Laughed. “Fucking kid.”
“He’s all right.”
“Probably having a hamburger somewhere or shooting pixels at imaginary aliens at some friend’s house or at his dad’s, according to a preapproved plan which I seem to have completely and inconveniently forgotten about.”
“For sure.”
“Anyway, I thought you might have seen him around. . . .”
“Sorry, no.”
“I had this crazy thought maybe he would have sought you out to make good and patch things up, but . . .”
“Sorry, no . . . like I said.” Sorry. He’d inflected the word Canadian-style almost before he could notice it to stop himself; some form of subconscious, unconscious mockery? Sabotage? Desire for inclusion? Hard o sound. Doubted she’d even notice. “Jeremy’s not . . . not a kid I’ve ever had anything much to do with, actually, until today. If he was on the debate team, now, maybe. Otherwise”—he tried to lighten his voice a bit, speed it up—“I might’ve put it together long ago, you and him, you know. Turner Valley. Actually, though, aside from that, I don’t really know how I would’ve figured it out. But I might have. Anyway, I had no idea. You have to realize that. No idea at all. Definitely, I wouldn’t have grabbed him had I known.”
“He’ll show up.”
“Yes, of course he will.”
“I should go now.”
“Call as soon as you know anything?”
Silence on the other end of the line.
“I didn’t say that. Call if you want. Whenever you have a moment.”
“I’ll try, John. I will try to remember. I appreciate that you care.”
“Well, of course I do. And I’m afraid I’m also at least somewhat culpable here.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“Mmm . . . but I would.”
His phone went dead suddenly, bleated and flashed on and off—Dropped Call—before connecting again to his service. The dead spot at the turnoff—he’d forgotten. “Damn,” he said, snapping the phone shut as he rolled into the driveway. In the silenced car interior, he sat a moment, turning the phone over and over in his hand and staring idly at the thing as if willing it to ring. Should he call her back? To say . . . what? They’d been signing off anyway. You didn’t redial someone to finish a call that was already ending. Did you? But this car—the Volvo—his pride and folly (and not many drives didn’t end without a moment or two of appreciative reflection on this: the sweet blue-lit contoured dashboard and controls, all-automatic heated leather seats, heated mirrors), bought with money from the cash-out of their property in Calgary—it’d
suit Moira. Rich girl. She’d like it. Had he chosen it (and Houndstitch over Cochrane, for that matter, where there’d been a similar position open) because of some semi-conscious impulse, despite all resolutions to the contrary, to be nearer to her . . . to be more like her? Possibly, all for Moira, yes. No, Cochrane was at least as overrun with new oil people as Calgary, and growing faster than Okotoks; moving there would never have satisfied his desire just to get away and clear of it all, back out to where your thoughts could stand in sharpest relief against the flat prairie light, the grass, the tall sky, the cold, the mountains—everything that had drawn him here in the first place. Never would have left him with the savings to establish such generous college funds for both boys, either.
No sound. Only the noise of the engine cooling. And then it dawned on him: no sound, no wind. The Chinook was done, or soon ending. If there’d been light enough still, he might have looked up through the windshield to see the sky clearly split in pieces, two or three bands of clouds like stair steps exactly demarcating the shifts in air pressure and temperature where one front ended and the next began—that dramatic. In hours, temperatures would plummet. Minutes maybe. Instafreeze. Welcome back, February. He swung open his door and gripped his knees a moment, trying to remember those lost lines of almost word sounds—the melting snowbanks, the reflections in the vanishing puddles, and the light high clouds whipping by. Nothing. All of it so illusory. “Another day,” he said, and pushed himself upright to go inside, see about getting dinner ready for the lonely sailor-obsessed boy who was his son.
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