MELVIN SENSED HIMSELF lurching forward, gliding, lurching again. He thought about his new rubbery cowboy boots with the furry lining, boots he’d been so excited about only two hours earlier. And now he wanted to fling them into the woods, go barefoot. He wondered if he lay there long enough, would the snow cover him? Cover him completely? Make him disappear?
Though he no longer felt part of it, he could still hear the world, snow compacting beneath him, the crunch of his brother’s boots, grunts from exertion. He closed his eyes now, sides of the sled cupping him, and he imagined his withered form moving over the snow-covered laneway in a bright yellow open casket. Breathing slowly, icy air entered and exited his functional lungs, but he was unable to shift a single muscle. Melvin had watched her leave, but he wondered if it had all been a dream. If that was really her moving away from him, if she’d even been there at all.
When Melvin pulled open his eyes, ice on his lashes, he was aware of the snowflakes whizzing through the air above him. How could they travel at such speed, for such a distance, and never collide? Each unique crystal maintaining a perfect orb of personal space. An hour earlier, he might have expected them to touch, some of them to stick, journey through the uncertain sky in unison. One flake guiding the other. With love. But right now, he wasn’t at all surprised by the nature of their rejection. Selfish as they were. As he moved over the earth, dragged by his brother, Melvin was aware of something new expanding within him. Something outside of the realm of his childhood. A loathing, deep and cold. Not for the snowflakes themselves, but the spaces in between.
PART
FOUR
19
“HOW ’BOUT A BLUE charm?” Lewis settled into the creaking chair in front of his desk, took a deep breath, and smiled. “What do you say? Blue charm’s a good place to start, and I reckon you’re big enough now to give it a try.”
“Alright,” Toby said. “A blue charm.”
“Thatta boy.” Sliding open the bottom drawer, Lewis selected some feathers and floss and laid them on the desk. He twisted the screw on the bottom of the vice, secured it to the edge of the desk.
“Haul your chair over a bit closer,” Lewis said as he opened the miniature metal jaws, slid a single hook in place, clamped it.
“Can you jig a squid with that?”
“What?”
“A squid. Haul it in. Squirt his black juice right in your eye.”
“Nope. I don’t do squid. Salmon, my boy. Big tasty salmon.
They can’t resist it. Blue charm’s a real charmer.” Lewis laughed, rubbed Toby on the head, neck wobbly. Toby drew the corners of his mouth straight back in a flattened smile. “This here’s where my dad used to show me how to tie flies. Right on this very spot with this very vice.”
Lewis had thought of his father often, these past couple of years. Dig, my son, or be buried. That was what he’d always said. And Lewis did his best to put that old adage into practice.
At first he was angry when Wilda left. Savage, actually. How could she do this to her husband and children? Were they not good enough? Did they not deserve better? What words he’d plan to spew when she returned from her extended outing. But as the days passed, and her homecoming seemed less and less likely, a quiet relief had gradually elbowed its way into his heart. The distance that existed between them for so many years was no longer coiled into the space of a few feet. It was stretched out into almost nothing. A strand of weakened netting. And whenever his mind lobbed memories at him, her earlobe between his teeth, ends of her thick hair tickling his nose, the taste of her carrot cake for breakfast, he took a wrench to the valve, twisted until the screw was stripped. He reasoned Toby and Melvin should be strong enough to do the same.
“Really?” At eight years old, Toby now understood when to nod, when to agree. “With this vice?”
“What do you say, big guy?” Over to Melvin, now. “What do you think of that?”
Melvin was in the corner, spread feet pushing his chair back on two legs, arms folded across his chest. “You told us already. A hundred million times.”
“I have?”
“Uhh, yuh-aah.”
“Why don’t you haul your chair up like Tobe?”
“Why don’t I not?”
“Don’t you want to see?”
“Do I got to?”
“No, sir, you don’t got to. Thought you might want to. Be part of our little history.”
“Then, I won’t.” Melvin shook his head and the bangs of his hair fell forward, obscuring his eyes. “History is stupid and I hates fish.”
“Hates fish?” Strained laughter. “My sonny boy, you wouldn’t be here but for a fish. You wouldn’t even exist.”
Smack of wood, four legs on the floor. “Like I even cares.”
Plug pulled, joy draining, cold wet sink. Lewis found this transformed Melvin impossible to take. Months of moody silence after Wilda left, and Lewis finally sat him down, asked him what was he was thinking, knocked him gently on the skull. Melvin tried to squirm away, but Lewis put both hands on his shoulders, held him in place, “You tell me what’s going on in there, my son, or you’ll won’t be getting out of this chair.” To which Melvin replied, “Eventually, I’ll grow. I’ll get big enough. And then I’ll go find her myself.” Lewis released his grip, then. Couldn’t think of anything to say. Until Melvin was walking away, and Lewis yelled at his back, “Don’t ever mention that woman again. For your own good, Melvin. Trust me on that one, my sonny boy. Quicker you forget about her, better off you’ll be.”
“What was that?” Lewis said. “What did you just say?”
“Nuthin.”
“Well, you can just sit right there without budging an inch, do your nuthin, and keep your gob shut.”
Toby touched Lewis’s fingers, pinched white around the secured hook. “Blue charmer, Dad. Right?”
“Oh, yes, yes. You starts with, um,” deep breath, sigh. Lewis leaned over, tightened the clamp securing the vice. “You starts with this here thread and a bit of silver stuff.” On the pinewood table, Lewis showed Toby step by step how to create a perfect salmon fly from tinsel, floss, feather, and hair. Twirling thread, adding the items neatly organized on the table, clipping the finished product. Then, with minimal instruction, eight-year-old Toby took his father’s seat, two hard cushions propping him up, and constructed his own. “Good, good, yes that’s right, what a memory, well done, exactly. You’re a natural, my son. By jumpins. A natural.” Though loose and bushy, Lewis was telling the truth. Toby had a knack with his hands, the ability to put things together in meaningful ways.
“Can I keep it?” Toby said, fluff of blue and yellow and bristles of brown, hidden hook, resting on his open palm. “Can I keep it for keeps, Dad?”
“Of course, hold onto it ’til we gives it a try,” Lewis announced. “See what we catches.”
“But what if I loses it?”
“That’s the chance you got to take. The chance you always takes. As a fisherman. As a man.”
Wisdom fluttering over Toby’s head. “I don’t want to lose it. I wants to keep it.”
“But that’s the whole purpose, my son. You got to use them. If it sinks to the bottom of the river or gets swallowed by a fish never to be seen again, then that’s what’s got to happen” Eyebrows lowered. “You don’t get attached to a bloody fly, my son.”
Toby crinkled his lips, narrowed his eyes. “Buh, buh, I wants it.” And he started to cry, not loudly, but with a pronounced sniffle. “’Tis my fly.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sakes. Give me that fly.”
Toby closed his hand around it.
Metal fly box open, Lewis’s own invention already stabbed into the foam. “C’mon, I said. You can stick it in there yourself. Like a big boy.”
Second hand enveloping the first, the double fist jammed into Toby’s chest, chin bent down over it.
“Fine,” Lewis said, snapping the box closed. “Poke your finger. See how pleasant that feels. But you got to grow up
, Toby. ’Tis time to grow up.” Gentle slap to the side of Toby’s head, knocking the boy further than Lewis intended.
Melvin leapt up from his roost in the corner, growled, “Don’t you tell him to grow up.”
Lewis swung around. “Is you talking to me with that lip?”
“Leave my brother alone.”
“You better watch your tone, young man. You’re not too big to get yourself in a heap load of trouble.”
Step closer. “They calls you a pig, you know.”
“What? Who do?”
“Oinks when we goes by. Me and Toad.”
“Who, I said.”
“Calls us little piggies. Wee, wee, wee.”
Lewis yanked open a drawer, tossed his fly box in there, slammed it shut. “Sure they do. Got no respect for yourself. Hair on you like a goddamned mongrel. Making a mockery of me. You’ll be shaving that off right this minute, my son. Shaving it all.”
“Like I gives a crap. Wee, wee, wee.” Hand twisted up behind his head, fingers pulling back his nose, two stretched nostrils.
“What did you say, my son?”
“Nuthin’.”
“What. Did. You. Say?” Ding, ding. Doors closing. Voice ascending. Heartbeat along for the ride.
“I said nuthin’.” Quiet snort.
Up from his chair, he had a grip on Melvin. “You said nothing? Nothing? How stupid do you think I is?”
Child mouth in a sneer, singing, mocking. “Do you think I is? I is, I is. Stoo-pid.”
Calm veneer disintegrated, and Lewis watched helplessly as his own hands clutched Melvin’s skinny arms, muscles firing, dragged the boy to the bathroom. Fistful of hair in one hand, he forced his son’s head down into the sink, snapped the switch on the set of clippers he’d used that morning, and they came to life. Making his palm numb with the vibration. He pressed the steel blades against the side Melvin’s skull, nicking his ear, trail of blood falling forward, dripping off his nose onto the olive-colored enamel. Verbal shots, “You gonna get that attitude in check, boy. If ’tis the last thing I does. You think you’re in for a free ride? You thinks you’re something special? No, my laddie. You can think again. Bloody well think again.” Melvin did not fight back, lay limp and accepting, arms dangling, and soon the anger left Lewis’s hands, and he threw the clippers into the soap-ringed tub, where they cracked into metal and plastic and tangle of cord.
“Dad! Daa-aaah-duh!” Toby was hollering from the front of the house. “Someone’s at the door.”
Lewis took two deep breaths, rubbed his sweaty hands on his shirt, and strode out into the kitchen. There he found Mrs. Verge standing behind the screen door, big smile, fingernails tapping against the glass. On her hip she balanced a burgundy pot. Lewis pushed open the door, and short, jolly Mrs. Verge with her tight curls, shiny face, and oversized glasses brushed past him, lighting up the room.
“Thank goodness,” she said. “My side was about to drop off.” Toby was next to her now, mouth slightly open, and she touched his face. “Wouldn’t be too good having an old hip out on your front step, now, would it darling? A bit gross, as they says. Supposing your father wanted you to clean it up?”
Toby giggled, lay his head against her freckled upper arm. This woman who was always warm, and always smelled like comfort. If comfort had a smell.
“Mrs. Verge,” Lewis said, rubbing his eyes to gather himself together. He no longer tried to discourage her generosity, had given up that useless line of dialogue a couple of years ago. Now, he just accepted, with sincere gratitude, her turkey soups and moose pies, cherry squares and slabs of fruitcake. Homemade bread, already sliced, bottles of squashberry jelly, or even bakeapple jam if lightning didn’t kill the berries. She had brought that first meal the day after Terry was released from the hospital. “He got himself a renewed spirit,” she’d told Lewis. “I don’t know how you got through to him. What you done and said. But, he’s a changed boy. And I’ll be forever in your debt for that, Constable Trench.”
At that point, Lewis had been unable to look her in the face, as he’d really said nothing, had more negative thoughts during the recovery of Terry than he’d care to admit. So he replied, “Oh, I don’t know, Mrs. Verge. Sometimes, you know. Well. Yes. Sometimes. Of course.” And in the months to follow, Lewis’s recollection of that afternoon adapted, his participation swelled, until he believed he truly had transformed the boy into a solid man.
Perhaps she only intended to do it the one time, but once word about Wilda’s wanderlust piggybacked through the town Mrs. Verge arrived regularly. Lewis watched her waddle over to the counter, slide the pot off her side. Plug it in. “All you got to do is twist the dial to there,” she said to Toby. “And your belly’ll be bursting right after you hears the buzzer.” Then, to Lewis, apologetically, “A bit hot for a stew, I knows. But I was going through my freezer. Waste not want not, I always says.”
“You won’t hear a breath of complaint out of us, Mrs. Verge.”
Mrs. Verge’s jaw fell open then, not to speak, but in response to something just behind Lewis. She was staring at Melvin, then without hesitation went to him, took his hand, walked him over to a window. Wet the corner of a cup towel, and daubed blood from his nose, the curved line across his face, carefully traced the leak to a tiny laceration near his ear. “Not much to that,” she said, pressing a cloth to his head. “Looked worse than it is. You’re a bit of a bleeder.” Holding his face gently in her soft hands, she joked, “Now, about that style you got. You shouldn’t be playing with those things, those clippers, young man. You could’ve done a real number on your ear. Could’ve taken ’er right off. One Van Gogh was enough for this world.” Chuckling at her own banter. “Terry’s working over to Barber Barber’s, and he’ll give you a clean cut. Unless that’s the style you’re after.” She smiled, hugged his rigid body until he was nearly lost among her folds. Glancing over at Lewis. “Young folks these days. Sometimes they likes to hide behind it, sometimes they don’t. Half and half. Newfangled, what have you. I never once made an issue about hair.”
“Is that right, Mrs. Verge.” As Lewis was watching the smugness spread over the exposed side of Melvin’s face, the phone rang. Lewis pressed the receiver to his ear, listened, then rubbed the sunburnt skin on the back of his neck. Hanging it up, he said, “I got to go now.”
“Yes, yes,” Mrs. Verge said. She plucked an embroidered apron from a hook, leaned forward, tree trunk arms reaching to tie it around her waist. “You go on. Boys’ll make themselves scarce, right? I’ll just straighten up a few things here and there. Idle hands are the home for the devil.”
THEY COULD SMELL the hole before they reached it. Hot muck, drowning plants, still water with occasional clumps of algae bumping against the side. When Melvin and Toby emerged through the bushes, they saw six or seven boys, a couple of girls splashing in the pond. Toby made a rapid scan of the faces, hoping, hoping that Clayton Gibbon would be nowhere in sight. He sighed, but his immediate relief was replaced with trepidation as soon as that particular shark disrupted the surface, popping up for air.
“He’s here,” Toby whispered to Melvin.
Melvin stopped in a patch of dry grass, a lounge area where swimmers lay down to dry off. Toby stopped too, leaned against Melvin, ball of towel cradled in his arms. “I idn’t going in.”
“That you is, then,” Melvin said. “I didn’t bring you all the way down here to get a tan, my son.”
“But—”
“No one’ll touch you.”
Toby scratched his neck. “But Clayton—”
“He’s a fucking nosebleed, man. Now get your arse in the water.”
Toby kicked off his sneakers, stepped gingerly onto the path, tiptoed down towards the pond, carefully avoiding the scattered pieces of broken glass jutting up like crystals in the mud. He wished he had just gone to the stream in the woods. He wouldn’t be able to swim, but at least he would be able to cool down without fear.
Toes touching the edge of the water
and Toby felt the charge move up through his legs, weaken them. It was there, he was certain of it. A dirtiness. As though the activities taking place in and around the swimming hole had transferred their wayward energy into the water itself. Necking on the towels, bikini bows untied, fabric slipping, dunking heads, play-humping the diving rock, trunks yanked down to display soggy double loaves. Just coming in contact with the water made Toby feel queasy, nervous. Made his skinny chicken bones want to run back to Melvin.
As soon as he decided to leave, his fears were realized. Someone grabbed his wrist and he was airborne, stomach smacking the water’s surface, hungry gravity pulling him below. Eyes open, through the murkiness he saw white legs and feet, flashes of swimsuit, gunk on the bottom billowing up in great brownish clouds. He came to the surface, sputtering, twisting, found his footing on the slippery bottom. But a ball of wet fur struck his abdomen, someone’s big head bending him in half, and he felt hands on his swim trunks, off his feet again, legs kicking, and cool water rushed in around places that were suddenly exposed.
Toby crouched, hands cupping his business end, and his eyes widened as a few feet ahead of him Clayton Gibbon emerged with barely a ripple, Toby’s navy blue trunks whirling around the tip of Clayton’s finger at high speed, then lifting off, a continual arc, snagged, a dead twig on an old spruce.
“Get me my shorts, you nosebleed.” Words big, strength behind them like putty.
“Who you calling nosebleed?” Heel of palm kissing the water, spraying Toby’s face. Laughter came from all corners from a hoard of water witches, brazen brutes. Other kids pretending that nothing was happening. No one dared challenge the pecking order. Not if they valued air, liked their shorts on their bodies.
“I wants them now.” A squeak.
“Well, go and get ’em yourself, loser.” And Clayton dove backwards, did a handstand, emerged, hair a mess of misplaced fins.
As quickly as he attacked, Clayton moved on, joke over, and Toby took mini-steps backwards, trying to find an edge, a corner, a muddy wall, somewhere to disappear until everyone went home. Once there, he held himself, front and back, stomped the bottom of the pond to create a continual blanket of disturbed gunk. Beneath the surface, his chest hiccuped over and over. There was a cry trapped inside there, and Toby would not let it escape through his face. Passed nervous gas instead, and it bubbled up behind his back. Though he wouldn’t look directly, he saw one of the Fagan sisters, Angie, staring at him from the side. He wasn’t sure whether she was peering through the water or not, trying to catch a glimpse. But, after a moment or two, he noticed her feet. She was stomping the muck in time with his stomping of the bottom. And as his stomping got angrier, more frantic, so did hers.
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