by June Hutton
That’s when I heard a snuffling. Pigs. Not the little pink ones I’ve seen in town, but, as I reeled around to look, enormous black-splotched ones, red-eyed and putrid-smelling, with shreds of rotting food and paper hanging from their hairy chins and ears.
I straightened and took a step backward. Shoo, I called out.
Their mottled ears stood up. A snort or two.
Go. I slapped a hand at the air.
Mistake.
One lifted a foot, put it down again as if reconsidering, then lifted it again and stepped forward, two little trots. That was it. The others charged, snorting and barking.
I ran for my bicycle and slid on something wet, jerking myself upright to avoid falling. A leg and half-face of a pig under my feet. One of their own. An earlier meal, too, by the look of the bites. I lurched forward, feet flying under me.
In my pocket was one of my pieces of petrified pan-fried bread. I threw it behind me and it landed in a cloud of dust. The herd was momentarily distracted. But no, even the pigs wouldn’t eat my bread.
I would have jumped into the Dodge except that the doors were gone. They’d get me in there.
So I grabbed the handlebars and dragged the bike onto a flat patch, tried to leap onto the seat, only the tight skirt bound my knees together. I let go of the bike, clutched the hem in both hands and pulled—pulled until I ripped it up the side seam—took the handlebars again, swung a leg over and began pedalling, the herd hot on my wheels, snorting and squealing as they slammed into each other in their rush to get at me, as though I was better than any meal they’d found in the dump today, old pig included. My thoughts raced. Flashes of their weight bearing down on me, the bristles of their snouts, their teeth, biting and tearing in a frenzy. Me, pulling free, swinging the bicycle at them, bashing their heads in with it. But then I’d lose my only means of escape.
I pumped until my thigh muscles burned. Even so, my horrific imaginings were replaced by headlines: Marauding hogs. Wild pigs. Cannibals. What a story, what a story. I pumped and pumped until I couldn’t hear the pack anymore, and then I risked a look back. Gone. They’d gone back to the dump. Better pickings there than on the open road.
Before I could return my focus to the road, the front wheel caught the edge of a hole and sent me flying. I stifled a scream. Only the pigs would hear me and please oh god please let them not hear anything right now or sense my panic or smell my sweat on the wind. Mid-air, falling, I told myself, Get up as soon as you land. Get back on and keep pedalling.
But I landed tangled in the bike, the sharp edge of the fender deep in my calf. I saw the blood before I felt the pain and then I bent forward, trying to stop the blood with my hands. Jesus Goddamn Christ. They’ll smell this. It pooled in my palms and leaked between my fingers.
I pulled myself up onto my knees, and the waves of pain brought waves of nausea. I crawled in my ruined funeral clothes to the basket and seized the flask. I sat and tipped the flask over the deep gash. The pain sang right into my eyeballs. But it would cleanse the wound and mask the smell of blood. Then I took a long swig for courage.
At the edge of the path, alone, I hauled up my skirts, plucked the needle from the hem, bit the thread once more, knotted it, then stabbed the sharp point into my skin and through to the other side of the gash. Quickly. The pain was up my legs and inside me, like waves of monthly cramps. I made wordless, animal sounds. I cried so hard I couldn’t see and had to wipe my eyes and nose with my sleeves, though I allowed myself these tears. I deserved these ones. Pulled the thread through again, and felt it tug all the way through my womb, then another stab, then another upward pull. Just three stitches to close the wound, but equally as many swigs on the flask to do it. At least the bleeding had slowed.
A shadow appeared then and I snatched up the flask to throw it, my best weapon.
On a dead branch above, a crow spread its wings and tilted its head at me.
I tossed the flask back into the basket, grabbed onto the tree trunk, then a low-hanging branch, and pulled myself up on one leg, the other bent, like a balancing crane’s. Below in the dirt, a dark, wet patch. Already, flies had gathered, a carpet of bluebottles.
On both sides of the ripped side seam my hem was dangling. I tore a strip and bound it around my stitches, lifted my bad leg over the seat and let it dangle on the other side, throbbing, while with my good leg I pushed along the dirt, and wobbled my way home.
Behind me I heard the crow land, cawing and pecking at the flies and the soaked dirt.
I arrived at the shop, dripping blood, the wound in my leg pounding.
Vincent saw me through the side window and met me at the back door, an arm around me to help me over the sill.
I bubbled an apology into his smock about my news blunder, about why I didn’t return. I hadn’t seen him since the day of the rescue drill, since he’d told me what I’d done. I don’t know what I expected him to say. Maybe: It’s all right. You’ve suffered enough. He’d already said it was his fault, not mine. Having endured such pain, now, perhaps I had redeemed myself and could truly be forgiven.
But he sat me down in the chair with less tenderness than I had hoped, and flew out the door. My gaze dragged itself to the gaping door. I saw him leap onto my bicycle.
I had dozed off but awakened when I heard voices and saw, once again, Vincent on the bicycle, this time with Mr. Bones balanced on the handlebars.
Behind them, emerging one by one in the fog, the two children, who pushed themselves along on scooters made from roller skate wheels and a metal platform, salvaged grillwork, perhaps, I couldn’t quite see, but the handles were scrap metal, including cogs and wheels that flashed even in the gloom. Vincent must have built them. Children liked such gadgets, brought them to school when they weren’t supposed to, the regular children, that is, not the ones who were never allowed such things, the ones for whom education alone was a luxury that could be withdrawn, they were the real concerns, though it wasn’t them, just the problems around them, the adults, John’s people, letters to the government that found their way into the newspapers, the board of education, threatening fires and nude protests if their children were forced to go to school. Ridiculous, we all agreed.
The door burst open and Mr. Bones stood on the sill for a moment, surveying me bleeding there before him, half-conscious, delirious. Behind him was Vincent.
Not a doctor, I said, rolling my head to direct my concern to Vincent.
Mr. Bones simply made a clicking sound against his teeth. Accident-prone, he said at last. Aren’t we?
*
They must have carried me upstairs. Whatever concoction Doctor had given me knocked me out for the rest of the day. When I awoke I ate a simple meal, then stripped off the ruined black dress, washed, pulled on a thin shift, and climbed back to bed under a single sheet.
Fall weather would be welcomed, now, but the sun had smouldered for days behind the banks of grey. Heat from it and from the boiler had built all day and night, collected upstairs and pressed down on me like a damp palm. I had the windows open, too, but I soon kicked off the sheet, bare legs and arms welcoming the air. It was still warm. Hot. My stitches burned and itched. I tossed and turned until the twisted sheet bound around me like a rope. I kicked free, first one leg, then the other, the stitched one throbbing, then arms, too, swimming for freedom as they did in the lake, only the achingly cold water had turned unbearably hot.
I grabbed my pillow and limped down the stairs to the shop where the air was cooler, and slept on the spartan boards next to the press.
Sometime later, the shop door slammed and my eyes opened.
Vincent rounded the corner, stopped abruptly, and his arm shot out, palm up.
Sorry, he said. Please, don’t get up.
I gathered myself up anyway, but he backed out of the shop, hitting his elbows and knees on jutting pieces of machinery, blackening his shins in his hurry to leave, much as I had
that first time in his shop.
A cool tongue of air slid over my shoulder and I tugged up the strap that had fallen.
As I limped past the metal mirror I saw a strange, young woman in a shift, an ordinary cotton garment every other morning until this one, when its thin fabric revealed shadow and shape, and, out of range of the mirror but visible all the same, everything between neck and knees, giving rise to the musk of my own thoughts as I climbed the stairs.
*
Did I love the Poznikoff boy? Bess asked me that once, though I’m not sure I answered. I described how he looked. He had hair like the sun, I said, on a white-hot day. Or something like that. We were interrupted. One of the babies, probably.
For the rest of the morning and then the afternoon I sat in the window, stitched leg propped up, looking down on the greyness of Black Mountain, notebook in hand but unable to focus on the notes written there, unable to focus on writing more. I was agitated by the morning’s events, and my thoughts drifted back to a simpler time, one I could examine from the safety of now, as though I were finally having the talk with Bess that we never did have.
I loved having a boy to think about. There were others besides him who hadn’t joined up, some too old, true, and some infirm, but some who were all right and had stayed behind to run family businesses. None of my brothers had stayed, trusting instead that father and I could manage on our own. I drove the fruit runs, and those runs took me back to the jam factory where John worked. It was as simple as that.
I loved the flash of sunlight through the trees along the wagon road and the perfumed steam rising from the kettles of boiling fruit, the colours inside the factory walls, reds, golds and purples, the feel of a blackberry on my tongue, fuzzy and dry until it burst, bittersweet. He’d popped the berry into my mouth, then grabbed me around the waist and kissed me. Who wouldn’t fall in love with a moment like that, one that promised so much more?
I suppose I loved his pacifism, too, although it came from his upbringing and not from his own thinking. Politics didn’t interest him. He didn’t read books or newspapers. He was an infant when he arrived in this country, and yet he spoke with a Russian accent. He was hard-working, practical, would never build something for the joy of invention. And I couldn’t imagine him striking out to see the world. He wouldn’t stray far from his community, not for more than a summer. I must have known that from the start. Maybe that was all I had wanted too.
My father’s disapproval heightened the attraction. I can see that now. The rift between us had begun years before I met John, and now it gaped even wider. Had swimming really been the start of it?
I was inspired from an early age by famous women swimmers. They competed in races against men. One of them won a twenty-two mile race down the Danube, and tried three times to cross the English Channel, a similar distance. The west arm of Kootenay Lake was almost the same distance, but because I was still a girl, I figured I could practise first by jumping in further down the arm. Robbie was all for it, and said he could row the boat next to me. That touched me because the boys, the twins especially, didn’t do much with me anymore. But this was not mere play. This was an event, a challenge, and each practice would not only strengthen me for the full length, but build public interest. He had a friend at the newspaper who could wait on the beach with a camera. I’d be famous, too.
Ever since the twins had shrieked over my bare chest, I had been swimming by myself, and in those neck-to-knee, wool-skirted costumes that were heavy as a sack of rocks when wet. For a swim of that duration I needed something with less drag. One of my brother’s old striped leggings and undervest would be lighter.
Don’t tell father, we agreed.
There is a wonderfully awful sensation when you submerge yourself into a lake. Weeds stroke your arms. Fish nudge at your calves, your inner thighs, and when you put your face under, the whole world turns green.
I felt fast as lightning, my arms slicing the surface. So cold, at first, but then the heat of what you are trying to do takes hold, you have energy, and just a bit of cheek as you picture yourself rising from the waters, triumphant. But as the hours slid past, you got tired. I got tired. At one point my arms felt dead.
I can’t do it, I told Robbie. Water up my nose, down my throat. Coughing, choking.
He pulled me up into the boat and I sat in the bow, blanket around my shoulders, shivering, defeated. I pictured the teasing twins, my doubting neighbours and school chums, the newspaper photographer walking away, disappointed. I threw down the blanket and swung a leg over the side.
That’s my girl, Robbie said, and I slipped back into the dark waters.
We brought no food. That would bring on cramps and our father had lectured long about the dangers of that.
As we neared the beach and the promenade I could see a crowd gathering. I pulled myself out of the water, rubber-limbed, forcing myself to smile in preparation of camera bulbs flashing. Then I heard them, shrieks of laughter, gasps.
My father was there, red-faced. We can see what you had for breakfast! he bellowed, and threw a blanket over me. Robert, into the truck with her right now!
There was no photographer. Father had chased him away. I felt my face crumple and mouth turn down, and wrapped the blanket tight as I ran after Robbie. This was to be my victory, and my father had ruined it.
For several days after he berated us for our lack of concern about safety, about scandalous attire, Robbie increasingly sullen in his presence, me, venomous in my defence. Robbie was right there beside me, not standing on the shore with that whistle! You try swimming in a bloody wool bathing suit with yards of skirt and see how quickly you sink! You don’t care about my safety. You’re just worried what others will say!
We were never the same after that. Fraternizing with a pacifist was one more way to get back at him. Women got the right to vote a year before the war ended, and my father lost no time pointing out that I got it only because my brothers had enlisted. I lost it when they returned, and wouldn’t get it back for another year, until the law was changed for good. The hurt of that was relieved by the sheer joy of seeing them again, though they were not their old selves. Robbie came back empty-eyed and grieving for Will, more so than the twins, who had each other, and me, who hadn’t seen what they had seen. Once more, we argued with our father. Robbie wondered aloud how our father wasn’t a pacifist himself given what had happened to poor Will. And on it went. It’s one more reason Robbie eventually moved to Australia, and me, here. I breathed in raggedly at the view from this window, grey upon grey. He was glad to be rid of us both, our father.
*
My leg still throbbed the next day, and to take pressure off it I sat behind the counter to read, my foot resting on a shelf. My call for ads had produced a swift and unexpected response from an outfit down the coast in San Francisco. I was delighted, even when I eventually realized it was addressed to Uncle, which meant the company couldn’t have seen my call or my announcement that I was the new publisher. But an ad meant money. It proposed flights up the coast, with stops at various ports of call including here. The date of the inaugural flight: September 27. Incredible. Twelve days from now and two days before the opera. Again, I felt green and tense as well as excited, thinking about the end of the month. I would have no trouble finding news for our first edition. Though why the craft would stop here, I couldn’t imagine, not at first.
Gradually, I saw the appeal. Even miners took holidays, and a few hours up in the air, especially away from all this grey, would draw those who sweated below ground. The flight company must have figured that larger stops along the route—Portland, Seattle, Victoria, Vancouver—would make this one worthwhile.
The letter and ad had come in a package that included plates, much as the opera company’s had, this one a relief of the airship itself, a Zeppelin. In the palm of my hand it looked more like the impression of a bullet, and I was dazzled at once with the idea of a design for m
y own masthead one day, its snout firing us into the future.
I gathered up the package and its contents and carried it straight to the pressroom to leave for Vincent. I knew my foolish announcement was still in his thoughts. This would brighten them. He had never mentioned seeing that stinking thing on my doormat. Good. It couldn’t possibly help my situation for him to know that it was a result of that story.
I had already limped to the post office and back, though I was supposed to keep my leg elevated. Now I had an appointment with Meena for my fitting. I walked quickly, excited. This ad from San Francisco meant money, yes. It also meant progress, bringing us modern transportation, sleek and silver and flying high above the filthy fog. The airship might be a common sight on the east coast and in Europe, but not here. It would ignite the imagination. And the fact that both money and progress had arrived in one bundle charged me with an energy that took the pain from my wounded leg. First the opera, now this.
*
Meena shrieked when she saw the stitches. It looks like a tarantula crawling up your leg!
It’s all right, I told her. I just have to keep it dry.
Your beautiful dress, she said.
Until she saw the butchery, as she called it, Meena had been pinning and clucking. Your slender waist. Your strong shoulders. The material drapes beautifully from them.
I twisted around in the three-way mirror and only now saw how truly ugly it was. The back of my calf blighted not only with three stitches to seal the wound but a knot on either end.
Black? Meena cried. A pale peach is all that was needed.