Cipher

by John Jantunen

  Curtis was thinking the same thing but kept his thoughts to himself. He ran his tongue over his teeth and found a gash running along the inside of his gums but nothing loose. Mo’s gaze drifted to the crowd and it was obvious to Curtis what he’d told them he would do if ever again he saw the man standing in front of him who was now standing there in front of him. Mo chucked the ball long, a good cover that lasted about as long as it took for him to turn back to Curtis.

  “I’m looking for a friend.”

  “Don’t know anything about that.”

  “You know who set those fires?”

  Mo shook his head.

  “That one’s for free.”

  “Huh?”

  “You’ve got to leave.”

  “Was it Indians?”

  Curtis didn’t see Mo’s hand move but he heard the crack of its knuckle finding his ribcage.

  “No.”

  Buckled over, the ground close enough in front of him to see the ants rummaging in the cracks, Curtis opened his mouth. Nothing came out and he closed it again, knowing it was a waste of breath anyway.

  “Ask another question.”

  Forcing himself up, Curtis felt the world closing in behind him. He got a single gulp of air but it ran out of room just below his Adam’s apple.

  “You know who did?”

  Mo aimed his fist for the same spot he’d just hit but Curtis twisted before it made contact and he took it in the side.

  “No.”

  The wobble in Curtis’s knees told him that maybe he’d be safer lying on the ground, but Mo’s hand holding him up had other ideas.

  “Anything else?”

  He’d seen Death before, Curtis would tell me one night while we were drinking in my backyard, his wife and son gone for the weekend, I can’t remember where; seen him as clearly as the mosquito feeding off the arm he’d held up to demonstrate.

  “And like this mosquito,” he’d said, “you rarely see him until you’re already bit.”

  Swatting the bug and wiping the blood off with a wetted thumb, he’d smiled through drunk teeth.

  “Makes a man …” he’d said, trailing off, the booze and the hour making him forget what he’d meant to say.

  I understood though, I think I did, the same way I understood why he looked up at Mo, seeing Death in both of his eyes, and said, “Anything else? Yeah.”

  Then, Mo waiting for the question with clenched hands, Curtis slammed his forehead into the bridge of his nose. He felt Mo’s hand fall from his arm. Turning, the world, smelling of sweat and weed and malt liquor, crashed down upon him, its mountains unleashing an avalanche of fists, its rivers running rapid with elbows and feet, hitting him with the force of a spring thaw, carrying him to the sea, his eyes so full of salt and brine that he couldn’t tell it wasn’t the sea at all but a man as big as the tide, his arms stretched as wide as the ocean.

  seventeen

  Curtis dreamt that he was drowning, drowning in the desert. It was the same dream he’d had in Afghanistan. His feet were touching the sand but his body was drifting upwards, pulled by invisible currents. Above him, ripples of blue reduced the sun to a blot but otherwise there was nothing to tell him that he was underwater except the way he drifted upwards, clinging to the earth by the tips of his toes, and the fact that he couldn’t breathe. He knew that if he’d just let himself float up, the yellowed spot of sun would guide him towards the surface and he’d be okay — there’d be someone up there, on a boat perhaps, or a raft, to pull him out of the water — but still he waved his arms, forcing himself to drown. He didn’t know why he did this. In his dream it made sense. He was going to die, he just had to accept it. When he woke up, his fatigues drenched in sweat, he would feel like he was dead and that his body had washed up on a beach and the sky above was the colour of sand because he was lying face down, and he didn’t find it odd that he was still seeing and thinking and breathing because maybe that was what it was like when you died. He’d blink and feel the grit in his eyes and taste diesel fuel from a truck idling outside, and only then would he see that the sky was the colour of sand because it was the roof of his tent.

  (Years later, he’d tell me that he still felt like this sometimes, always when he was alone, and that it was the only thing that told him he’d done what his memory said he’d done. “I can’t complain,” he’d say, “a lot of soldiers got it worse than I do but then …” And here his voice faltered, uncertain that they did have it any worse, because memory plays tricks and sitting in a chair with wheels for legs and a son on his lap who loved him more than little boys know how to say, plays the worst trick of all.)

  When he woke up the morning after the last football game he would ever play, he knew right away that he wasn’t dead. The sky above him was red and, unless I’m in Hell, he reasoned, the sky wouldn’t be red. Beneath him the ground was comfortable and if he was in Hell, it followed, he’d likely be lying on a bed of nails or on hot coals, naked, and he’d hear screaming, his own and those of a million others. The only sound that reached him was the dull moan of a lawn mower. After he recognized that, it didn’t take much longer to figure out that he was lying on a couch in somebody’s living room.

  He sat up and passed a glance over the pictures on the walls. They were in the Native style like at Rita’s but different too, the forms hazy and bled through with colour like a rainbow had been melted over top of them. He looked at the bookshelves and the stained-glass light fixture hanging from the ceiling and tried to ignore the giant Indian sitting in the armchair across from him, his gaze fixed on the couch. All four sides of him hurt and the pain in Curtis’s jaw gave him plenty of reason to stay quiet, to lie back down, to never speak again. But there was the Indian, as big as four men rolled together.

  “You’re safe,” the Indian said, seeing the warning spread across Curtis’s face.

  “I need to use the bathroom, that all right?”

  “I ain’t no teacher.”

  Curtis stood up and the Indian made no move to follow him.

  “Down the hall on the left.”

  The window in the bathroom was small and had slats of glass that opened with a crank. If he’d pulled out the slats he might have been able to squeeze through but, shutting the door behind him, he heard dishes clattering in the kitchen and couldn’t think of a reason why a kidnapper would be doing housework. He popped four extra-strength Tylenols from a bottle in the medicine cabinet then relieved himself at the toilet, surprised from the way his belly stung that the stream was clear. After he washed up at the sink he poked gingerly at the bulge ballooning the left side of his face into the shape of an overripe cantaloupe.

  There was a cup of coffee on the kitchen table in front of a plate of scrambled eggs. The woman washing dishes at the sink had long, straight hair, its black sun-bleached brown on top. She was wearing a simple green dress the colour of pine needles that clung perfectly to her slim curves and covered all but the tips of her bare toes. Curtis stood at the end of the hall, trying to separate the way his body ached from standing from the way it ached standing there watching her, until she set the last dish in the rack. Towelling her hands, she swept her hair over her shoulder and looked back at him.

  “Salvation,” he said, the word popping out like it was a prayer and not the name of the woman standing in front of him. A smile tugged at her lips, thin like they were hiding something.

  “I’m surprised you remember.”

  “They still call you Sally?”

  “My friends do. My husband calls me Sal.”

  “Is that —”

  “In the other room? No. That’s my brother. I think you knew him as The Tide.”

  “Tide’s your brother?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  Curtis shook his head.

  “Then I guess you’re not as brave as I thought.”

  “So
rry?”

  “You should sit. You look like you’re about to fall over.”

  He thought of telling her that he was no worse off than he had been the morning after every game he’d played but he could feel the Tylenol eating at his empty belly and did as he was told. The eggs were spicy and tasted better than any he could remember. He finished his breakfast without looking at Salvation again. By then she was sitting at the table nursing her own cup of coffee. A creak in the hall floor told him that The Tide was at the kitchen door behind him. He thought of his bike and the gun locked inside it and wondered if he’d ever see either again.

  “Why’d he bring me here?”

  Salvation looked to her brother.

  “Ambulance don’t come to Mikiwam,” he said.

  “He knew you’d be safe here.”

  “Am I?”

  The Tide shrugged. Curtis could feel it in the way the house shifted.

  “Today, maybe.”

  “I guess I should thank you.”

  “They were done with you anyway. All I did was pick you up afterwards.”

  Curtis knew it was a lie but hadn’t the memory to back it up.

  “I thought he wanted me dead.”

  “Mo?”

  “Yeah.”

  “There’s always tomorrow.”

  “It matter that I never did anything to him?”

  The Tide didn’t respond so Curtis craned his neck to see if the answer was in his face. All he found was the droop of a man not used to missing a night’s sleep. His body sagged against the door frame, spilling into the kitchen, and his eyelids quivered, half-shut.

  “You asked about the fires,” Salvation said. “Why?”

  “You know anything about them?”

  “Solomon!”

  Dozing, her brother had started to slip off the frame and his name snapped him back.

  “Go lie down.”

  The rumble of his feet on the hardwood told Curtis that The Tide didn’t mind taking orders from a woman.

  “Was it Indians who set the fires?”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “It’s what people are saying.”

  “I’m a teacher, did you know? My husband works for the city. We don’t know anything about the fires they didn’t say in the paper.”

  The front door opened and the eggs in Curtis’s belly turned to stone. Small feet clomped double-time towards the kitchen.

  “Mom! Mom!”

  “Blake, take off your shoes.”

  Ignoring his father, a three-year-old with light brown hair and bruises from his knees to his elbows ran into the kitchen holding a pineapple as big as his head.

  “Mom, pineapple.”

  “I see.”

  “Blake, your shoes,” his father called from the hallway.

  “I’m showing Mom the pineapple.”

  “You know the rules.”

  “I’m going outside.”

  In stealthy advance of his father, just entering the kitchen, he set the pineapple on the counter then raced through the living room to a sliding door and pried it open.

  “Stay out of my tomatoes!”

  Salvation’s husband was dressed in shorts and a plain yellow T-shirt and was wearing a straw hat. He was white, which came as a surprise to Curtis, and his bone-thin arms seemed about to come out of their sockets under the pressure of the three loaded grocery bags in each hand. He didn’t look at Curtis as he set them on the floor and Curtis turned back to Salvation, collecting her empty mug and pushing herself up from the table.

  “How was shopping?” she asked her husband on the way to the sink.

  “He broke a jar of pickles.”

  “You put him in the cart?”

  The man shook his head as if he didn’t know how else to respond without starting a fight. He set the bags on the floor and his eyes wandered to the sliding door.

  “Blake!”

  Grumbling, his head shaking again, he hurried into the backyard while Salvation began unloading groceries into the fridge. Curtis watched her, thinking, these are ordinary people.

  His father, again. Another refrain in an endless stream.

  “They’ll try to get their hooks in you.” He’d said it too many times to count while Curtis was immobilized by the weights he lifted three hours a day in the basement. “They’ll drag you down. You got to resist them at every step. You remember that when it’s tough on the field. Ain’t nothing compared to what it’s going to be like fighting them.”

  By them he’d meant girls or, most often, Terrence, and Curtis had nothing to say to his father about either. Running through empty streets, too early for even the garbage men, he’d spin the words over in his mind and they’d pick up contempt like it was candy floss. His brain’d wad with the fuzz of them spun together and he’d walk the last few blocks home to calm himself down so he wouldn’t get into it the moment his father said more than good morning to him.

  His father was wrong; he knew it then but not the extent of his wrongness. There was nothing ordinary about Terrence. What was it Rita had said? It was like he could see the future, and it was just as he’d always imagined it would be. Like he’d created it. Like he was a god.

  Her voice had quivered when she’d said it. It scared her, Curtis saw, thinking of what this might make her brother capable of, like a future imagined by Terrence could only turn out bad. But she was wrong too. He was like that long before he’d gone to prison, maybe he was like that from the first time they’d met, and, and …

  Curtis’s head throbbed, muddling his thoughts, and he forced the pain outside him, creating in it another person, sitting at the table, drinking coffee, yawning, now getting up, walking into the bathroom, closing the door, gone.

  “Nobody’s ordinary in a war zone.”

  He hadn’t meant to say it but there she was staring at him.

  “Sorry?”

  Through the sliding door Curtis could see Salvation’s husband watering his tomato plants with a hose. Blake snuck up behind him and his father, spinning, turned the spray on his son, sending him scurrying away, giggling and hiding behind a small plastic shed made to look like wood. Curtis pushed himself to his feet and, one foot in front of the other again, walked out of the kitchen. He was at the front door before he realized that he hadn’t said goodbye. Turning, he found Salvation at the end of the hall, holding a can of beans and looking at him like she wanted to say something but couldn’t remember what.

  eighteen

  It’s circumstances that make a person who he is. That’s what he’d meant when he’d said there’re no ordinary people in a war zone. Terrence had given him an inkling of this but it would take six months in the desert to see that he was just part of a larger pattern, and also that his father was confused about what he meant by ordinary. To him, being ordinary was a choice, like choosing to be a doctor or a farmer or to work the grill at McDonald’s. Maybe luck has a part to play but then there are lucky doctors just the same as there are unlucky ones (so there).

  What Curtis saw in the desert was that people don’t choose to be ordinary, they choose not to see what is standing right in front of them and become ordinary because of it. In a war zone, it’s war, and that’s the one thing man’s invented that’s impossible not to see when it’s staring straight at you.

  Terrence wasn’t ordinary, Curtis was certain of it. When he looked at something he saw it for what it truly was, and because of this it seemed like he could see the future. It made him free. It was a kind of freedom that Curtis only felt around his best and maybe only real friend, and one that he missed with the urgency of a quiet detonation when they were apart.

  He’d got his first taste of it with the cat. They were seven, maybe eight, and they’d found it in a field a few blocks from the street they shared. There was a cattle fence around the f
ield though it had never been used as a pasture. To get to it you had to follow a path studded with thorns through a small patch of trees left as if by accident when they’d built the subdivision. Navigating the prickles and climbing the rusted squares of wire, the field sat like a bomb crater between the highway and an old foundry. Piles of broken concrete and rusted metal covered with earth and moss, and amongst them smaller piles: garbage and blackened pyramids of wood ringed by stone, broken bottles everywhere. The tall grass ate it all up, with a path winding through it, looping with the staggers of the drunken teenagers who’d been the first to tramp their way through. A paradise of sorts that spoke of times to come — the stack of rain-crumpled Swank magazines they’d found under a water-stained mattress and the dozen or so condoms that hung from a tree, swelling like balloons on a day that warnings of a tornado had kept everyone else inside. They sifted through the remains of Saturday night parties and circle jerks and clumsy fucks like archaeologists digging through ancient ruins, trying to figure out what the artefacts could portend.

  They found the cat curled up inside a shopping cart that someone had heaved over the fence. It was dead, though it hadn’t yet begun to smell. There were no marks on it, nor blood, so it could have been sleeping except that its eyes were open, bulging like fish through a bowl. Terrence poked at it with the tip of his shoe then picked up a stick.

  “Don’t,” Curtis said.

  (They hadn’t known each other long and Curtis still had doubts about the boy who’d moved in next door who, on his first day, had watched him, perched for hours, days it seemed, in his yard’s lone maple tree. Curtis had called over the fence for him to cut it out and two days after he had, Curtis had climbed the wooden fence between them and sat in the same tree waiting for Terrence to come outside. When he did and saw Curtis, he’d laughed like no one Curtis’d ever heard before: with such reckless abandon as if it wasn’t just funny but meant something too. Curtis’s first impulse was to punch him in the face but instead he told him about the field and the balloon tree and all the rest and they’d gone there right then even though it was lunchtime and Curtis’s stomach grumbled the whole way.)