Cipher

by John Jantunen

  That’s where his story ended, the one I heard anyway. It was left for me to imagine how this man looked on the other side of The Gate. Did he glance back at the road, the dust from his footfalls lingering like dew on the grass sprouting at its edges, and if he did, had it also changed as he had? Or did he remain standing there, one hand resting on the fence post, unsure of what had just happened? Was he afraid that if he moved it would seem as if nothing had, and he would be like Alice in middle-age, certain that the looking glass was only a dream that children and housework and dull conversations over tea couldn’t penetrate; lost to this instant until a cow wandered over in search of a dry hand on which to rub its nose, the sudden coolness snapping him out of his trance?

  Never having felt anything closer to God than a full belly and a few glasses of scotch in me, I couldn’t know for sure how it had played out. Then, Ricky Dee excusing himself, saying he had to use the bathroom — his partner’s trip through four screens bringing him to within one screen of the office saying otherwise — I saw Curtis step from the elevator and into the main lobby of Regina’s general hospital.

  He didn’t wait for the woman with the sleeping child to get off, leaving her to trail after, her slow plod telling me that she was used to being treated this way by men, in elevators or otherwise. Gone was his swagger now, the deliberation of movement that every one of his previous footsteps teased the ground with, so that it would know what kind of man had been there, couldn’t help but feel it through the soles of his running shoes, the same way the sand had through the soles of his boots and had felt lucky for the privilege of preserving his tread between swirls of wind. He walked hunched over, and this I realized, making the connection immediately, was how the great thinker must have walked on the other side of The Gate: humbled, as if he could feel his future, that of an old man, settling over his bones, the weight of words yet unwritten and the pages he would never fill making him curse the younger man under his breath.

  Such is the tyranny of yet-to-come and it had Curtis by the chest hairs, dragging him towards the exit doors, one step closer to the time when he’d have to keep the promise that he’d made to God or to himself, the two so muddied together that it would take years to sift through which was which. The whole while thinking, just as the great thinker had thought — the thing that had kept one foot in front of the other and his arms hanging limp at his sides as he traversed the field — of a girl. Seeing her, she’d be a sign: the way she looked at him, the way she smelled, the way her scent mingled with the air, the way he could taste her on his tongue and the way it drew him to her.

  The great thinker, being a young man in a foreign land and newly christened with a faith in putting one foot in front of the other, let himself be drawn across the field, to the house he could see only as a spiral of smoke. He crested the boulder-strewn rise and saw the house below, the barn behind it, animals and mud and straw filling the distance between. In front of it was a girl, and he knew it was The Girl, as certain as he’d passed through The Gate, even though, from this distance, she looked as plain as the others he’d seen in front of similar houses, and fatter too. Still, his belief in his new-found faith was unwavering. As he approached the house and The Girl, the sting of smoke in his nose and of freshly mowed alfalfa and of something sweet that he knew was her, his arms once again took on that loose swing that had carried him halfway across England. He kept his gaze on The Girl, waiting for her to look up, to give him a sign that he was right, and that God was good, and that one foot did go in front of the other.

  Chickens clucking, as chickens do, and mud squelching under his boots, he saw The Girl look up and saw that she was not plain, she was beautiful, if a little plump. He waited for her to smile, unable to breathe. Seeing the way he looked at her, she frowned and all of a sudden he knew what he was — a sickly, pale boy struggling under the weight of his leather satchel — and also that she was used to men, unburdened by bales of hay, one for each shoulder. To keep himself from looking at her again, the great thinker reached for the straps on his bag. As he fumbled with them he heard, as clear as the whine of insects feeding off the grass growing in clumps around the fence posts, his old self laughing at him for being so young and thinking that God ever made one’s life easy.

  One foot in front of the other led Curtis back to his motorcycle but not any closer to his girl — Amy — whose last name he still didn’t know. Walter “Scorch” Hering’s plea for death was so out of place with her face and the way her smell mingled with the apple-scented soap as he washed her off that, for a moment, mounting his bike, he couldn’t reconcile them, as if they were two sorts of finches, trapped on different islands with only his religion to say they were different birds entirely.

  “Fucking kill me.”

  The phrase — it came to him as he traversed the parking lot — wasn’t an island though; it was a peninsula. At its widest point, where it joined the land, was the gun he’d tucked into the back of his pants. The gun turned his mind back to Terrence, who was himself lost in a swirl of me and Lawrence and Walter and the fires and Clive. Then: driving around like it was an occupation, the thought of Clive brought her back into his thoughts and he knew that to see her again he’d have to visit her uncle and couldn’t bear the way he’d look at him, nor the way he’d reeked of perfume, like an old woman, nor the worry that his fingers, moist and dry at the same time, would find a way to brush against his. Then he thought of Rita, Terrence’s sister. If anyone would know where he was she would, so he pointed his bike at the stadium, not thinking of football as it passed by, not thinking of anything but what was on the other side.

  Another world, that’s what they’d said; his father and his coach too, both saying it in low voices and looking straight at him so Curtis would know it was true. Another world, as sure as if it needed a thirteen-hour flight to get there and not a ride on a city bus. North Central, wedged between two sets of train tracks, the CP and the CN, so there was nowhere that could possibly have it as bad. He drove past the rows of houses built in the ’30s and rebuilt, some of them, in the ’50s, small shacks mostly, rentals that sold for less than the cost of a new car, so cheap that talk of them drew people from the small towns in the north and the reserves, people who didn’t have it good regardless of how the new economy was giving Saskatchewan a boost, but who figured for that price they could own a house.

  A different world that Curtis only visited when they’d played Thom Collegiate, home of the Trojans. A team they’d played three times each year, once more than the rest because they’d always met at the city championship, the Trojans there on the strength of their defensive squad. A squad that Curtis knew only as a wall of helmets, painted like animals, wolves and bears mostly, and arms like roots, planted into the turf and twisted with veins, and eyes that shone red when you weren’t looking at them: the best defence in the league for the four years that Curtis played high school ball. They put up a fight, kept him under two hundred yards a few times, but in the end, for the big games, he’d always found his stride and The Trojans fell, hands grasping for a touch of his cleat as he stepped over them, pounding the turf in his wake. Then they were just another bunch of poor kids again, the paint on their helmets already flecking off, another summer to spend keeping straight or not. Hot days without even a job at Burger King to keep them cool. ‘Next season’ just something their coach said to keep them from getting into trouble during the break.

  Seeing them on the field after, arms at their sides as limp as a hangman’s rope, then seeing their parents and their neighbours through the windows of the bus on the ride home — shuffling, circling the streets, never looking straight at anything unless it was a dime on the sidewalk — Curtis thought of his dad and of what he said about responsibility and also respect.

  “They ain’t got none.”

  This one day while they were in the backyard. It was summer and Curtis was doing his push-ups, a thousand like he did every day. His dad wa
s curing half of the pig he’d bought with his brother, pacing back and forth in front of the smoker he’d built himself. Something had got him riled up, something he’d seen when he was driving home or had heard on the news, and it had turned to hot tar in his belly.

  “You can see it in the way they stand around in groups, like they know that by themselves, they’re nothing. Scared little boys pretending to be men, using history as an excuse for being ignorant and lazy and for wrecking themselves and their families. Next time you drive through, you take a good look. Ask yourself why they’re there and you’re here. Think about it and tell me it’s because you’re lucky. Luck ain’t got nothing to do with it. Respect, that’s it. And personal responsibility. Don’t let anyone tell you any different, son, because anything else’d be a damn lie.”

  He hadn’t said he was talking about the Indians but Curtis was meant to understand he was. Later, in his senior year, he came right out and told his dad that he was wrong, not because he thought he was but because it was his right as a son (this, the first tug on the chain that connected him to his father). His dad had listened, quiet as slate. After Curtis was done he turned around and started to walk away then stopped.

  “You fucking a squaw, that it?”

  Curtis hadn’t answered; he was too surprised to do anything but stand there because he’d never taken his father to be a fool but now saw that he was. So he stood quiet, waiting for his dad to go inside.

  “You best be careful, son,” his father had finally said, as grave as if he’d said it on his death bed and it was all that he had to leave him.

  It wasn’t a woman who’d made him say what he’d said about the Indians; it was merely convenience. He’d understood this after learning about pressure points in hand to hand and where a man’s real weaknesses lie during psych training. Of course, there was a woman, there always was, but she came after. Someone he hadn’t thought about since she’d told him that it was too much for her.

  “What?” he’d asked.

  “You’re Curtis Mays. It’s too much. I —”

  Then she’d left him standing there on the banks of the Wascana where he had taken her for a walk, holding her hand though he never once looked her in the eye, and he felt relief, watching her walk away.

  God, what was her name? he now wondered, the stadium at his back, The Ripper driving on autopilot, taking him towards the only address he knew for certain in the whole of North Central.

  fifteen

  He parked in front of Rita’s house keeping his eyes on the number beside the door, not looking at the other houses in the row, all of them the same: rotten, with chipped paint and cracked foundations, rusted trikes and torn garbage bags in their yards, their walkways pitted with broken glass and stains that might have been oil but could just as well have been blood. 153 Montague Street. The address where he’d sent all three of the letters he’d written to Terrence while he was overseas. The first two he’d slaved over, the words coming with the deliberation of a splinter working itself out of a thumb. Each was five pages, front and back, his printing cramped and strained like a child in detention wondering what his friends were doing outside. He’d filled them with stories about early morning hockey games projected against the wall of the mess hall, and about the heat, and about sand in every crack, and about making a difference, and about all the other things soldiers write home about so that their family and friends, their girlfriends, would know that what they were doing was right and sound, that they were still the same person they were when they left, that going crazy was something that happened to other people. The last one was just a quick note to tell Terrence when his train would be arriving.

  All three he’d sent to the house he was now walking towards, so that Rita could give them to her brother. The first two went unanswered, as he knew they would, but the third, sent just three weeks ago, got three words in response: I’ll be there, written in Terrence’s elegant, almost girlish, script, the same handwriting that was on the sign hanging from the metal rail around the concrete porch. Rita’s Place, it read, the long stem of a rose underlining it.

  He did it in jail, Curtis thought. The sight of it made his hand, tightening into a fist as he lifted it to knock, feel as heavy as a sledge.

  The door was blue to match the trim. The house had been painted recently but from the looks of it would soon have to be painted again. Cracks were already appearing around the bumps where the old paint hadn’t been properly scraped off. The steady beat of heavy metal, or maybe hip-hop, throbbed from deep inside. When he raised his hand to knock again the door opened.

  “Yeah?”

  The boy who stood in the crack barely came to the chain lock. He was as taut and thin (and as pale) as kite string but the look on his face said that there’d be more than trouble if Curtis tried to push his way in.

  “I’m looking for Rita.”

  “She expectin’ you?”

  “Don’t know. She psychic?”

  The boy looked at him like he didn’t know what he meant then turned and yelled into the house, “Hey Rita, there’s some joker at the door.”

  Rita’s voice came back with the force of an arrow slicing through an apple.

  “He selling something?”

  “Don’t know. You selling something?”

  “No.”

  “Says he ain’t.”

  “He isn’t.”

  She was closer now, creaks in the floor telling Curtis she was walking down the hall. The door closed enough to unchain the lock then opened again. The boy was gone and Rita stood there squinting as if she was looking at Curtis through a telescope. She was in her thirties but had the harrowed look of a woman well into the change of life. The wiry black hair on her head was streaked with grey and the three or four sprouting from her chin were crooked, like broken fingers. She stood hanging onto the door with a weariness meant to absolve her of responsibility for anything that happened outside of her house, as much a front as the way her eyes bore traces of desperation, or possibly madness.

  “Hello Curtis,” she said but made no move to step out of the way.

  “Rita.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “I know.”

  She clicked her teeth together then stepped aside.

  “Well I guess you might as well come in then.”

  Terrence had been very specific when he talked about his sister, a topic on which he never seemed to run out of things to say. In a way he was proud of her, and Curtis got that, even though he always prefaced his remarks with, “She’s crazy. And I’m talking capital C fucking batshit crazy.”

  And then he’d go on to say, “She just got another one. I swear, she collects kids like some people smoke. She’s a chronic adopter, that’s what she is. There ought to be a goddamn government hotline for people like her.”

  Or, “God, you ought to have seen what she was doing this time. She had her kids, there’s six of them now, not four rooms in that house of hers, and that’s including the bathtub, which, I swear, one of them must be sleeping in. It’s like she’s building an army or something, I don’t know what. Anyway, she had her six kids out patrolling the neighbourhood with this big old wheelbarrow, took one on each handle and two beside just to keep it straight. They were picking up garbage. Nothing strange about that though, right? Just doing her part, keeping the neighbourhood clean, right? Wrong. She took all that garbage, wheelbarrow load after wheelbarrow load after wheelbarrow load, and she dumped it — I’m not kidding here, go check it out for yourself — she dumped it in her own front yard. Broken glass, condoms, a goddamn mattress, whatever they found. It’s all piled on her lawn and she put a sign in front of it that says, Lost and Found. She’s nuts, I tell you.”

  Or, “I was over there for dinner last night, like I am every Sunday. What can I say, she’s a damn fine cook. Afterwards, we went out for a walk. Should have seen it, them six kids
of hers ringed around her like they was a suit of armour or something. The whole troupe walking down the middle of the street. Cars were honking, people were shouting at her, ‘Get the fuck out of the street, lady, you’re crazy.’ I would have been doing the same except I was keeping a low profile, right, walking behind her, ten paces back. Then somebody must have called the cops. A cruiser shows up, pulls right in front of her. What does she do? She circles it, not even slowing down. The cop gets out, tells her, ‘You can’t be walking in the middle of the street. You’ll get hurt.’ And what does she say? ‘Sidewalk’s too small.’ That’s it, then she keeps walking. The cop comes after her, saying, ‘Ma’am, Ma’am, I need you to get off the street. Ma’am, Ma’am.’ Then he’s in front of her, his hand in the air stopping traffic, and you could see he was getting flustered, especially since he’d left his keys in the car and the door open and she was turning the block and he knew the moment it was out of sight his car’d be gone. So he turns to her and he shouts, ‘Stop! All right. Just, please, I need you to get off the road. Be reasonable.’ Be reasonable? I had to laugh. He didn’t know who he was talking to. The kids swarmed around him, closing him into their circle, and she steps right up to him. He was young, maybe twenty, and his hand was on his gun, though, I give him credit, he didn’t pull it out, just had his hand there, you know, in case. She says, ‘Do my children look like ducks?’ That’s what she said. The cop, he didn’t say nothing. ‘Well, do they?’ she asked again. ‘No, Ma’am.’ What else could he say? ‘And they don’t walk like ducks either,’ she says then starts moving again. The cop stood staring after her, I don’t know what he was thinking, target practice maybe, then his siren went off and he ran back to his car to chase a bunch of kids out of it. Christ. The roast was good though. And the gravy, don’t even get me started.”