Inukshuk

  Finally after twenty-two minutes of this stop and start, he quit. Went back to the kitchen on rubbery legs for water, and though he wouldn’t admit to himself what he was doing, he knew absolutely: the utility drawer by the side porch door—all the way at the back, the cache of ancient Marlboros in the box of kitchen matches. He was pretty sure, last he’d looked, two or three remained. Well, he’d just check to be sure.... Old and stale and nothing to really satisfy the craving, but.... Out he went to stand, steaming, in the porch light, smoking, mostly numb to the cold, though he worried his wet shirt might soon freeze to his skin. No Northern Lights visible from this side of the house, only the moon high and small, ringed by a frosty corona. A song he couldn’t place played in his head—something from one of the boys, he was pretty sure—the melody or part of a chorus, pieces only. I don’t want to be your ghost.... He flipped away the butt and went back inside, knowing suddenly, as he came up the steps and into the kitchen, what the line was—the key into the poem he’d thought he was hearing the other day at school, weird warm Chinook wind day, before all the business with Thomas and Jeremy Malloy, Moira resurfacing. He went down the hall as if in a trance, snapping his fingers, tearing aside his wet T-shirt and tossing it up the stairs. Stepped through half-unpacked boxes to grab a throw blanket from the couch, tugging it from beneath piles of notebooks and magazines on the cushions and draping it around his shoulders. The word wasn’t sun after all. Of course. Another trick of the ear: right sound, wrong word. Son. Tonight, he swore it, he’d start on their death scene and the final poem of the book—final wave carrying the seal-man and his son into the gunner’s sites, one on his back, the other facing forward . . . the puff of smoke, rifle report, seals dropping, diving through the wave too late. . . .

  3

  PASSAGE/TALLURUTIK

  AS HE’D DONE WHEN HE WAS A CHILD, Thomas hid in the beam of light thrown from the TV screen and believed himself safe from all harm as long as he stuck in the little circle of blue-green illumination and didn’t look outside it—as long as he huddled on the itchy basement carpet remnants and kept his attention on the screen. He started with Night of the Living Dead because if zombie sailors were, in fact, wandering around the house—if his imagination had caused some distortion in the space-time continuum, drawing them here to seek him again in Houndstitch, Alberta—then what better way to inoculate himself against their influence and against his own fears than with the mother of all modern zombie flicks? As always, watching, a part of him thrilled with anticipation, seeing the credits roll and the car winding its way through rural central Pennsylvania (so much like southern Alberta in black and white)—zooming toward the camera and careening past it; again, approaching and again zooming by—the creepy music, the turns in the road, entrance sign to the cemetery, all of it just perfect. Unsettling you and preparing you for zombie horror, with nothing but lighting and music to achieve the effect. It sped his heart and sent shock waves to make his fingers twitch and his kneecaps jump; yet, as always, through it all, another part of him stood aside, paying attention to the movie-making trickery—camera work, editing, and perspective. He mumbled along with the dialogue and kept his eyes on the screen, smack in the square, remote control in hand, ready to pause or skip backward or ahead as necessary, fast-forward through the slower scenes, get right to the flames and tire irons through skulls.

  Even so, as he watched, he became increasingly aware of shadows gathering in his peripheral vision—deepening and shifting. He couldn’t be sure. Didn’t want to be sure. Also a naggingly insistent need to urinate. The shadows would most likely have to do with the pills and some way they were still causing light and dark to distort and move unevenly across his field of vision. Also, he’d forgotten about the sore on his neck until something in one of the zombie’s makeup work reminded him, and now he badly wanted to see it again. Wanted to stand in the washroom alone with the light on, up close, and give it a thorough inspection—study it and be sure there weren’t any others. The tooth that had felt loose to him earlier was still sore and definitely more pliable than any of its neighbors, but that could be anything. Didn’t have to be scurvy.

  We were miserable living together and I don’t imagine we’ll be any happier together dead! I’m going upstairs!

  “This is silly,” he said aloud, and stood. Paused the movie. Still keeping his eyes from the corners of the room, he looked up and across to the doorway. Nothing. No one but himself. “Silly,” he said again, and headed up the basement stairs for the washroom, turning on all lights as he went. Not that zombies cared about light. In fact, in some circumstances, light was a hazard, a dinner bell, alerting them to the presence of human life. Fire was good protection, generally. And always, any kind of direct blow to the head was how to take them out. In his mind, he rehearsed some of the ways to pull that off: avoid a full-body embrace; sidestep and use the zombie’s own forward momentum to get him off balance, keep him from grabbing onto you; throw him down, and go directly for the head. Stomp on the head. Hit or kick or stab the head. He supposed the scariest thing, generally, was their persistence . . . slow and indefatigable, shuffling after you wherever you went, enduring all body blows and just never giving up. They were as persistent as fear itself—the very embodiment of fear’s nightmarish hold on the imagination. “Grow up, go away. Come on. There’s no such thing,” he said, and flushed, and moved to the mirror to see. Leaned in to examine the teeth first, breath from his nostrils instantly clouding the glass, and tilted his head to the side. It was as he’d remembered, the right upper incisor surging just out of line with its mates. He lifted his lip and probed the gums there with his fingertips to be sure, wincing at the pain. Pressed again and stood back. Yes, redder than pink, sore and swollen. That was new. So he’d done it. Probably. Given himself scurvy. He lowered his face to the faucet, turned the spigot, and drank. Again stood and leaned to the mirror to see his teeth, and again bent to drink. He focused on the differences in sensation and sensitivity in the various parts of his mouth as he swallowed and, leaving his mouth half-full of water, extracted the last of Griffin’s pills from the vial in his pocket. A rectangular orange-pink thing with the letter M on one side and a line down the middle—different from the others. Swallowed. Dropped the empty vial in the trash. Why not? he thought. You gotta live life.

  Next he pulled off his shirt and, wiping his mouth with a bare wrist, leaned on the sink to be as close to the mirror as he could get, pinching and stretching the flesh around the sore for a better understanding of whatever was going on there. But this time, he felt less sure of a diagnosis because he realized Jill had, as she’d said, gotten him a good one, not just where the flesh appeared to have ruptured but elsewhere on his neck, as well. Like he’d been attacked by vampire bats. Or was it all from her? He couldn’t be sure. One mark, raspberry-blue and bruiselike just under his collar line, he thought he remembered receiving—remembered a delicious inside-out sensation as she’d gone on and on sucking him, aggregate nerve firings popping all over his body in conjunction with the way her lips and teeth scrubbed the skin. Yes, she’d done that one. The worst was definitely still the one he’d noticed earlier, cratered and crumbling at the center, like a piece of exploded brain matter stuck to his skin. Piece of boiled raisin. That, he was pretty sure, was no hickey. Well . . . regardless, from here on things would only get better. Gradually, steadily, however long it took. Better and better. He pulled his shirt back on. The experiment was done. As of tonight. No more scurvy. If he couldn’t draw the men into being just by focusing on them as lines and shadow and light, being as attentive as possible to all actions, then he didn’t deserve to draw or film them, period. They’d have to find someone else for the job.

  What did Jill see in him anyway? He turned his head one way and the other, trying to imagine whatever it was, but found nothing there to admire. Same old disappointing proportions and too-fine features that were not quite like his father’s, not quite like his mother’s, not quite male enough, not e
xactly girlish, either, not grown into themselves and seemingly stuck forever in this half-developed state. Was that all he’d been trying to accomplish with the scurvy? Rush some false transformation for himself—too anxious to wait for the true one, too impatient to let nature broaden the bones, strengthen the angles? He remembered Jill walking to him on her knees, then her bare legs halfway across his lap. Also, just after swallowing the pills, something she’d said that had both puzzled him and strengthened his hopes: But what if it lowers my willpower and makes me even easier than I already am? Thomas! You have to promise you won’t take advantage. . . . He’d never thought of her refusals as having anything to do with willpower or as marking some internal struggle for and against sex, though, looking back, it almost made sense—how placid and willing she’d become when he first held his hand inside her shirt . . . or that one time he’d managed to slip a hand into her pants, the delirious few moments before she realized, how open to him she’d become and something in her that had shifted, melted under the skin, gone almost out of control. No, she liked it, too. Next time, he thought.

  Past the cold wet spots on the stairs he went, back up to his bedroom to draw. He needed to see if he could do it—make the men silly or funny, more horrific than tragic anyway. Fun and likable. There were the new colored pens from his mother for Christmas and some fancy drawing tablets from her as well, none of which he’d used yet or even really looked at, because all of his storyboard notebooks were black and white and featured at least as much text as image. Why use good art paper and color for a bunch of words and sketchy pen and pencil drawings? Duh, Mom. But he had a new idea now: fewer words and more pictures of the men—full color close-ups of sores and ripped open flesh; close-ups of mouths, and hands with broken knuckles. The emphasis on garishness offset by comedy, Chaplinesque clumsiness and slapstick grace in all their actions. He lay on the floor, tablet open, and uncapped the first pen to catch his eye from the plastic rainbow panoply: blue. Cyan. And before he could think to stop himself, he was drawing Jill, starting with the mark on her face and going from there, the lines and details tumbling out, blue tones sinking through the paper fibers more or less inversely to the way they seemed to puff out her flesh in real life. Again the two of them stood at her living room window, looking out, and this time instead of just Northern Lights, they saw the men, as well . . . all the men from Erebus and Terror in her front yard, standing around in tattered uniforms and torn fur wraps, Welsh wigs, waiting.

  As he drew, he felt the house tilt under him and begin to spin. This was not too unusual for him, especially starting into a new notebook, new scene, new vein of material, but he felt it more acutely than ever before, maybe because of the last pill from Griffin kicking in, or else the megadoses of vitamin C disorganizing his thoughts, breaking him up at the cellular level as Peel Sound had never thawed and broken up for Franklin. The house shifted and leaned creakingly up, rolled to one side, and started moving. South, he thought. Maybe west. Outside his windows, the tree shadows loomed close and streamed by. Clouds and more tree shadows, a three-quarter moon. The floor felt like part of his rib cage and hips now, melded with him. Floating. From the foundation and lower parts of the house came a crazy din something like what he remembered having heard in his seventh-grade drum line every afternoon, the first few moments of class before the teacher came in the double doors, blowing his whistle, arms upraised to silence them. Blam rift WAP riddly riddly riddly riddly BOOM.

  He drew on. The men outside were not interested in him or in Jill, did not necessarily perceive them, and didn’t seem involved in any of the usual stalkerish zombie antics. Not grimacing and waiting around menacingly, looking in at them through windows, starved for their flesh. They seemed caught up in their own drama, which now appeared to be a series of military exercises—getting into rows and marching one way and another and back and then reorganizing themselves according to some inscrutable purpose. Sometimes it appeared as if they were playing a game of tug-of-war with an invisible rope, other times like they might be about to scrimmage. Too dark for him to use most of his yellow colors, and all the details of flesh he’d wanted to get—busted hands and faces—needed to be so muddy with shadow that he that couldn’t do much with his reds, either. Browns and blacks. Hints of orange. Green-blue waves of color behind them. Interior close-ups of Jill in which it seemed to him the blue mark kept moving around, changing size and shape, sometimes disappearing altogether until he reminded himself (but was it the most important thing about her?).

  They’re trying to decide who’s next, she said. Which man gets killed and cooked next. That’s what I think.

  Like a really elaborate sobriety test?

  She nodded. Kind of. That one there is the likeliest candidate, I’d say. See how he’s always at the back?

  Back of what?

  From this perspective anyway, if they’re all like facing in a line together, I think the test is trying to determine which one of them—oh! He dropped it.

  Dropped what?

  Sure enough, the other men descended grimly on the sailor Jill had singled out, so he was no longer visible, and before long they all stood back again, facing in different directions and not watching what came next. Two sailors remained squatting on the ice beside the one who’d been rushed, then stood and repositioned themselves, kneeling, squatting again, carrying out a series of jerkingly elaborate movements. Cutting him apart, Thomas realized. One man holding, one cutting. Dismembering the sailor who’d done most poorly in whatever that exercise was. It was as neat and efficient as Romero’s zombie barbecue pig-out scene was frenzied and atavistic. And try as he might, there was nothing funny about it.

  Downstairs, doors continued banging open and closed, cupboard doors, drawers, the foundation screeching and mewling, and then the floor rose up at him—imperceptibly at first, but with a steady insistence he could not ignore or resist.

  That one there is my favorite, Jill said, pointing. He looks so glum and stern, but not like he’s going to let it stop him in any way, you know what I mean?

  That’s Crozier, he said. He drew Hoar into the background beside him. Tapped his pen up and down and licked a finger to smudge the ink, blackening him further into shadow. You couldn’t meet a sadder guy, probably. Should’ve been commander, by all rights, but he was Irish. So they made him captain. Saddest thing is, he’d proposed to Franklin’s niece, Sophia, right before they left, and she said no way. She was superhot, so everyone was always proposing to her and, but get this . . . she sends him a letter after he’d left, which he would only have gotten if they’d made it through the passage, saying she’s reconsidering and might want to say yes after all, when he’s home again. True story.

  Jill shrugged. Anyway, I like him.

  To me, he’s too much like my dad.

  Then your dad’s a hottie.

  He scrubbed wet fingers over Crozier’s face as well to abrade the outline, elongate and reproportion the features. Footsteps in the hallway approached and receded, and again the floor canted up at him. He tried to hold it back with his wrists. Oh, he thought. This is it. I’m dying. Wow. Then the notebook was against his face and he was pushing it away, trying to be upright, but he couldn’t. He was too unbelievably heavy to move. Dead, he thought. Dying. Who would have thought it’d feel so . . . good. Live life. You gotta live life. What the hell.

  IN HIS DREAM, FRANKLIN was at the steering wheel and flying down a mountain road with Jane at night—Banff or somewhere similarly mountainous. Earlier in the dream, he must have picked her up from the usual scene of their meeting in his dream life: a room of towering gauze curtains, dimly lit, a cross between a new railway depot and hospital waiting room, where she sat on the floor, surrounded by cut-up pieces of paper. She would have expressed her usual muted surprise, tolerance, but no offense at his delight in finding her (Finally! Jane! You’re here!)—and for the moment seemed willing enough to go with him wherever he said. So, they were driving through the mountains. In addition to pre
tending he had no desire for her, no designs or will at all, he was also supposed to pretend he didn’t notice how obviously something had gone wrong with her—something just fundamentally off, like she’d been lobotomized. And the more he pretended not to care or to notice or to have any will, the angrier he got . . . and the more withdrawn and fearful she seemed to grow in the seat beside him, until to shock them both, he turned off the headlights. In the careening darkness, just their voices screaming and then the drop in his stomach as they flew off the road.

  He jolted awake. Sat up and glanced at the clock’s blurred red numbers: 12:23. So, actually more like 12:12.

  In seconds, all he remembered of the dream was the car flying off the road, and Jane in the dimly-lit room, looking up at him in a tank top that showed the full length of her neck and chest. But he knew exactly where the last part of the dream would have come from: one of his worst moments ever, visiting Devon recently and driving back with him in a rental car from Jasper to Edmonton after a day of skiing—stupidly bored and tired, and playing with the headlights’ ON/ OFF switch for no good reason. Just because. Trying to figure out how to switch between parking lights, automatic lights, fog lights, on and off, turning the dial one way and then the other to no effect, until suddenly the lights went out completely and they were shooting down the mountain in pitch-dark. Devon screamed in the seat beside him, Turn the fucking lights on, moron! as Franklin madly toggled the dial back and forth, back and forth, trying to remember the exact pitch of the corner coming up, the concrete embankment, shoulder, staring through the blackness outside the windshield to make out the first detail of what lay ahead. Nothing. No sight at all. He braked and continued toggling the lights, until miraculously they came back on. He’d been doing over 110 kmh. Another two seconds without lights and he’d have killed them both.