by Heather Burt
Crouching beside Adam, he immerses his hands in the pail. The mud is a thick, cool mixture of greyish clay and black soil.
“What are you gonna do with this?” he says.
“Build something,” his brother answers, matter-of-factly.
While Rudy wipes his hands on the grass, Adam turns to the pile of flattish stones left over from the retaining wall and begins sorting them. Aunty Mary has been nagging Dad to get rid of the stones ever since he built the wall, on a whim, in early summer. But Dad’s interest in anything to do with the flower bed seems to have dwindled, and the stones, as a result, have become playthings.
With an air of confidence and expertise that Rudy finds surprising, Adam selects several stones from the pile, weighing them in his hands and tracing the uneven textures and bands of colour with his fingers. When his collection is complete, he squats next to it, pointy knees aimed skyward, and experiments with different structures, each one vaguely resembling the human-like figures built by Eskimos in the Arctic. Rudy watches, tempted once again to join in, but the intensity of his brother’s concentration makes him hold back. Finally, Adam settles on a design. He dismantles the model then sets to work fixing the stones in place with the gluey mud. He spreads it thickly on the surfaces to be cemented, occasionally massaging his forehead with his fingers. As he works, his face and hair and the Cookie Monster on his shirt disappear behind grey-brown splashes and smears. The sculpture, when finished, is as high as Rudy’s knees. It has a mysterious look, he thinks—as if it were alive. A silent, solitary observer.
Adam backs away from his work, wearing a critical frown, then turns and skips across the lawn to the sandbox. Rudy returns to the chair on the patio, glancing up now and again from his book to admire the stone sculpture. Only when his father appears at the laundry room door to call the boys for lunch does he begin to worry about his brother’s muddiness. As Adam jumps out of the sandbox, calling “Look, Dada! Look!” Rudy braces himself against a scolding. But Dad just laughs. Dressed in his weekend clothes—white shorts and a plaid, short-sleeved shirt—he looks unusually relaxed. His strong, spindly legs are tanned very dark; his calloused feet are immune to the baking hot patio.
“Look at you,” he says, taking Adam’s head in his hands like a supermarket melon, ruffling the mucky hair. “You’ve been playing in the mud, just like your dada used to do.”With a wink in Rudy’s direction, he adds, “I noticed your big brother was in on the fun, too. Good, good. I remember the mud we used to get—”
He seems to be on the verge of telling a story, but Adam, squirming out of his grasp, interrupts. “Dada! Look! I built a Chinese warrior like the one we saw on TV!” He bounces up and down like a Superball, while Rudy squints at the stone sculpture, re-imagining it as one of the famous terra cotta soldiers dug up by archaeologists in China.
Dad looks in the direction Adam is pointing, but Rudy can tell his father isn’t really paying attention. His eyes drift back to the little boy, studying him, examining him, in that curious manner he often has. It’s a special kind of attention, never accorded to Susie or, Rudy is certain, to himself.
“Very good, son. Very good,” Dad says, then he steps back. “We’d better get you out of these things or you’ll have your aunty to answer to.”
Dad tows Adam by the forearm into the shade of the patio umbrella, where he strips the boy down to his brand new, ready-for-kindergarten underpants. Further invigorated in his near-nakedness, Adam bounces into the house, while Dad shakes out the muddy clothes and drapes them over his arm with a long, contemplative “Hmmm.” Rudy, detecting the signs of a father-son talk, folds the corner of his page and gets up. A lecture from Dad on this flat, hot Sunday afternoon would be almost as tedious as Robinson Crusoe’s worries about the future of his soul. But Dad comes over and places a firm hand on his shoulder, preventing escape. For several seconds he says nothing, while Rudy, feigning preoccupation, tries to hold his balance standing on the outside edges of his feet.
“I know your brother’s young,” Dad eventually says, “but it pleases me when you spend time with him. He needs to spend more time doing boy things, if you know what I mean.”What Dad means is that Adam is a sissy, Rudy thinks. But he says nothing. “I was thinking that perhaps Adam could join you and the Heaney boys for baseball or street hockey one of these days,” his father continues.
The Heaneys are the only other boys in the neighbourhood who go to his school. They’re stocky and foul-mouthed, and they insist that only girls go to the public library for something to do.
“He’s too little, Dad,” Rudy protests, forsaking his balance. “Besides, he doesn’t like sports. He’d just get in the way.”
Dad’s shoulder grip tightens. “A brother is a valuable thing, Rudy. Someday you’ll wish you’d spent more time with Adam. He looks up to you, you know.”
It’s the sort of remark that can’t be argued with. Still, Rudy ducks defiantly from his father’s arm. “I should talk to your brother. I bet he’d agree with me. Little brothers are a pain.”
“My brother and I had very little to do with each other,” Dad says, his tone peculiar. “That’s why I’m telling you these things.”
Frowning, Rudy tries to remember a story his grandfather once told him about Uncle Ernie—something about climbing a mountain. An important, beautiful mountain. But the memory has slipped out of reach, if it was ever real to begin with.
Inside the house, Aunty Mary’s voice rises, questioning Adam’s state of undress in her usual tone of exasperation. Lunch, Rudy guesses, will be late. He plants his feet in the patches of shade offered by a pair of potted azaleas and clasps his hands behind his head. A drop of sweat trickles down his side from his armpit.
“Where is your brother anyway?” he says. “Why don’t we ever see him?”
Dad reaches down for Adam’s muddy shoes. “He left home as a young man,” he says stiffly. “He might have left Ceylon.”
Pondering this, Rudy corrects his father absently. “Sri Lanka, Dad. They changed the name. Remember?”
Dad smiles. “Why do I need to remember? I have a son who knows everything. He’s going to be a very wise teacher one day.”
Rudy makes a face. “I’m gonna be an archaeologist,” he says, and Dad tousles his hair.
After lunch, giving in to his father’s wishes, Rudy suggests to Adam that the two of them go back outside to check on the warrior sculpture. Adam, dressed and clean, beams with an enthusiasm that Rudy finds both heartening and embarrassing. He watches his brother slide down from his chair and bolt toward the back door, only to be intercepted by Aunty Mary’s washcloth. Observing the struggle that takes Aunty and Adam from the kitchen sink to the laundry room in an exchange of physical and verbal tugs—“You didn’t eat any Jell-O.” “Don’t want any.” “Stand still; your face isn’t clean yet.” “Yes it is.” “Do you need to use the toilet?” “No!” “Put your shoes on!”—Rudy is struck by a realization that thanks to his brother he himself has been spared the worst of Aunty Mary’s suffocating attentions. Of course, if it weren’t for Adam, he then thinks, Aunty Mary wouldn’t need to be here. But this latter thought is confusing and frightening, and he pushes it away.
In the laundry room, Adam slides his feet back into his muddy sneakers then slaps open the screen door. “Come on, Rudy!” he calls over the metallic squeal. “Hurry! Do you think it’ll be dry yet?”
Rudy strides importantly to the laundry room and follows his brother outside.
Halfway across the lawn, however, Adam comes to an abrupt halt. “It’s wrecked!” he cries. “It’s all wrecked!”
Rudy carries on with deliberate calm. He reaches the sculpture and sees that two of Adam’s stones, presumably the head and one of the arms, have toppled to the grass. Adam comes up behind, his face a crumpled mess of tears and flecks of yellow gravy that escaped Aunty’s washcloth.
“It’s wrecked,” he repeats through his sobs.
Rudy crouches beside his brother, like a grown
-up would. He places a hand on Adam’s quivering shoulder. “No, it’s not,” he says. “We can fix this. Don’t cry. We’ll just mix up some more mud and stick these back on.” Basking in his newfound maturity, he reaches for one of the stones with further consolations—“No problem, men; this’ll be a cinch”—then he freezes as Adam kicks the warrior.
The remaining arm lands next to Rudy with a soft thud. He scowls, incredulous, as his brother moves in for another go.
“Adam! What’re you doing?! Stop that!”
Still crouching, he lunges to protect what’s left of the warrior, but a vigorous kick knocks him back. In the seconds it takes him to stand, his brother, sniffing and grunting, sends stones and dried mud flying across the grass. When nothing remains of his sculpture, Adam stops. His face, though still messy, is no longer distressed. Rudy clenches his hands to keep them from smacking his brother.
“You idiot!” he squeaks. “We could have fixed it! Why do you have to be such a baby?”
Adam doesn’t answer. His big-brother maturity hopelessly deflated, Rudy picks up a stone and fires it at the wooden fence as hard as he can. The crack of the impact makes Adam gasp. Rudy holds his breath, waiting for more tears—theatrical wails that will bring Aunty Mary out to the boy’s defense, maybe even Dad and Susie, too. But Adam stays quiet. Bending for another stone, Rudy glances at his brother and notices then the stream running down Adam’s leg into his sneaker.
“Adam ...” he groans.
The boy’s expression, when he looks up, is one of surprise—a wide-eyed innocence suggesting he has no idea how this came to happen.
Rudy turns to the house and hollers. “Aunty! Adam needs another pair of shorts!” Then he snatches his book from the patio chair and goes inside.
Upstairs, he flops on his bed. He tries to read, but stupid, sissy tears blur his vision. He wipes them furiously with one hand, holding the book open with the other. But it’s no use. He gets up and goes to the bedroom window, sniffing. Across the street, Clare Fraser is skipping in her driveway. Not fast, but she keeps going as if she’ll never stop. She’s wearing cut-offs, and Rudy feels a new pang of irritation that his aunt still refuses to let him wear jeans, never mind cut-offs. The irritation doesn’t last, though. Mesmerized by the rhythm of Clare Fraser’s skipping, he stares out the window and his breathing calms.
In time his thoughts drift back to the talk with his father, the stuff about Uncle Ernie, and he remembers, like a lightning flash in his brain, the subject of his grandfather’s story. Adam’s Peak. Of course. The mountain Grandpa climbed with Uncle Ernie was called Adam’s Peak. The place where people go to conquer their weaknesses. Rudy closes his eyes and concentrates, until he can just about see the magnificent landscape in his mind—acres of untamed jungle, treacherous rivers and cliffs. He sees himself, all alone at the top of the mountain. He’s the only one who’s made it; everyone else has turned back or died. And now flood waters have risen almost to the summit, stranding him. But he doesn’t care. He’s built himself a fantastic shelter, and he has everything he needs.
16
“YOU’RE SURE YOU’RE UP FOR THIS, Rudy?” Uncle Ernie tapped clots of red dirt from his shoes with the end of his walking stick.
Rudy wasn’t sure. For the first time in months he was cold. It was July, long past the season of pilgrimages, and Adam’s Peak, a deserted ghost-world, was blanketed in thick layers of dark cloud and mist. Shops at the base of the peak, a kilometre or so behind them, were abandoned; an enormous reclining Buddha with painted orange robes and sultry curves stared past them vacantly.
He massaged his hip. It didn’t hurt, though it was stiff. “I’m up for it,” he said. “Let’s push on.”
The red dirt path of the initial approach cut across tea hills, glossy from a recent rain. Uncle Ernie, carrying a plastic shopping bag of necessities—a water bottle, a package of biscuits, tobacco—took the lead. Though they were utterly alone at the moment, they’d been passed earlier on by a pair of teenagers, a brother and sister, from Scarborough of all places, out visiting their relatives. The two kids, proverbially bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, had slowed down to chat for a minute or so before dashing off again, the girl’s Toronto Blue Jays T-shirt quickly disappearing into the mist. It was mid-afternoon already —too late for a recent invalid and an old man to be setting out, really. They’d planned to begin much earlier, but finding a room for the night, in a shabby guest house ten kilometres from the peak, had taken longer than they’d anticipated, and Uncle Ernie’s car had slouched asthmatically through the hill country, less fit than its passengers. An intelligent person would turn back, Rudy suspected—go for dinner, and try again in the morning. But he walked on stubbornly, conscious that he’d have only himself to blame if they ran into trouble.
Ahead of them, the clouds masked any sign of the pathway or the summit. Across the valley to his right, Rudy caught a glimpse of narrow waterfalls rushing down a hillside, but minutes later those too disappeared, and his world was reduced to the immediate surroundings: beads of water on tea leaves; pebbles lodged in the cakey dirt; scuff marks on Uncle Ernie’s loafers, ridiculously unsuited to climbing.
“Do you know the significance of this peak, Rudy?” Uncle Ernie said, breaking the awkward silence in which they’d been walking.
“I know my grandfather’s version.”
“Ah, yes. Well, there are other versions. The Sinhalese, for example, believe that Lord Buddha came here during his lifetime and left an imprint of his foot before leaving. Hence the name Sri Pada—holy footprint. In the case of Hindus, the footprint belongs to Lord Shiva. Mind your step here.” He paused to navigate a patch of smooth, wet rocks. “The Muslims believe that Adam spent a few years in exile up here—not such a terrible place for it, if you ask me—and I suppose the Christians claim something of that sort.” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. “So there you are. Something for everyone.”
“Too bad the same doesn’t apply to the whole country,” Rudy grumbled, though his complaint wasn’t altogether heartfelt. In the eerie solitude, with the path gradually steepening and his hip beginning quietly to complain, the conflicts of Sri Lanka seemed to him, as in the old days, distant and unreal. But Uncle Ernie snatched at the remark.
“The country’s a different story, Rudy. It’s not so simple. Things would be fine and dandy if we’d gotten off on the right foot after independence, but the government has been botching up from the start.” He spoke slowly but deliberately, the measured planting of his walking stick complementing the rhythm of his words. “And they’re realizing too late what sort of seeds they’ve been sowing in the Tamil people. These people have been exploited and excluded, and they’ve had enough. Just like your Frenchies, no?”
Rudy frowned then shrugged. “I suppose.”
Again he searched the sky for a hint of the summit. Uncle Ernie had assured him that those pilgrims who took the whole night to ascend were either unfit or drunk, or slowed down by the majority who were. But the summit of the peak, unknown to him outside of his uncle’s painting, remained concealed behind the mass of thickening forest and threatening cloud. It was strange weather—humid enough that beads of moisture collected on the outside of his sweatshirt, but penetratingly cold. He lowered his eyes to the dirt path and conjured up memories of outdoor jazz and women in short dresses, until Uncle Ernie, his own passions mounting, dispelled the images.
“I’m telling you, Rudy,” he exclaimed, “I’m not a supporter of violence—never have been—but I sympathize with these Tamils. Just as I sympathized with the Sinhalese when the British were here. There comes a time when self-government becomes necessary, and if those with the power to do something about it refuse to take action, well, we end up with calamities like the one you had the misfortune to be caught in.”
They passed a small plaster Buddha on a stone pedestal, and Rudy wondered absently if he should start a tally.
“But just how small a group should be abl
e to govern itself, Uncle?” he said, his tone deliberately musing, as if this were the first time he’d considered the matter. “And what’s supposed to happen to all the non-Tamils in a so-called Tamil homeland? Or all the Van Twests—or the Frasers—in an independent Quebec?” Fleetingly he saw Clare at the top of Mount Royal on a summer day, looking out at her city with beatific calm, and he sighed quietly. “People move around and mix themselves up so much these days. I don’t think it makes any sense to define your country by language or ethnic background or ...” His voice trailed off into uncertainty.
The argument was the same one he had wanted to make to Kanda but never did. Never would, probably. Though he’d been back at work several weeks, seeing Kanda most days, he’d avoided the boy. It was easier that way. His first day back, he’d caught sight of him chumming around with a group of other students, none of them Tamil, and the idea that Kanda could have been involved in the events on President Street seemed once again, conveniently, impossible. He still had the boy’s letter but hadn’t bothered acknowledging it.
Uncle Ernie stopped. Leaning on his walking stick, he raised one palm skyward. “Rain,” he announced then resumed his slow, steady gait. In the general dripping of the vegetation and dampness of the air, Rudy hadn’t noticed, but it was indeed beginning to rain. He slid his knapsack from his shoulders and pulled out a black nylon jacket. Uncle Ernie, well-protected in a heavy pullover of army-green wool, lifted his plastic shopping bag and wagged his index finger in the air.
“You mustn’t misunderstand me, Rudy, when I speak of home-lands. I’m not saying we should allow all the green-eyed, English-speaking Burghers with Dutch ancestors to declare a homeland on the outskirts of Colombo. As you say, it makes no sense. All those things—language, race, religion, and whatnot—those are the least interesting aspects of who we are. They’re just meaningless circumstances. But I’m telling you, it’s precisely those sorts of circumstances that have been used against the Tamil people. It’s a bloody mess, and the government should give the buggers whatever autonomy they want. Or expect to keep having their country bombed to bits.”