Return of the Trickster

by Eden Robinson

  Phil grimaced. “Yes, that should calm things down.”

  * * *

  —

  Jared couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t even shut the lights off. He lay in bed and eventually watched the sun crawl above the mountains. At the cusp of sliding into dreams, he could feel the dust and the heat of the strange world. He could hear the coy wolves dying.

  They weren’t even human, he told himself.

  But Cedar had died. Cedar, the little kid who morphed into a coy wolf by taking off his human skin. Cedar’s mother had also had a baby girl. Did he kill the baby too? Or was she still in this world, an orphan?

  He wasn’t thinking when he did it. Georgina had dislocated his arm, broken his leg and threatened to kill his friends and his family slowly unless he brought her and her family to a pocket universe in his bedroom floor, dolphin world, where they could feast on the inhabitants and leave once they’d eaten everyone. New worlds, new feasts. He’d just wanted to keep his family safe when he’d brought the wolves and Georgina to the world where the apes and fireflies roamed, an airless world where they’d all choked to death. Except for Georgina. He’d had to get away from her without her hitchhiking back with him, and he’d finally managed it. He’d tumbled through dimensions to land in his mom’s old house, in the basement where he’d first discovered how to “travel” with Sarah.

  He deserved everything David had to dish. He deserved to be killed again, and again, and again.

  He heard his dad and Shirley whisper-arguing in the bedroom beside his. Eventually, one of them slammed the door, stomped down the hallway and started the shower.

  Maybe I can scrub my brain clean, he thought. I’m a Trickster, aren’t I?

  But, again, some part of him must want to remember, because it was there, all of it, playing in an endless loop in his head.

  * * *

  —

  His dad had made oatmeal for breakfast and Jared listlessly picked at his, not hungry but not wanting to make a big deal of things. Shirley stormed past them dressed in jeans, a white shirt and a green Dollarama smock. She slammed the front door as she left. Phil poured himself another coffee.

  “Maybe I should go with you,” he joked.

  “Are you guys okay?” Jared said.

  “You’re still trying to help me. You know, Mother ripped me a new one when she found out you handed me all the money she gave you for school.”

  Jared stopped stirring his oatmeal. He’d been Sophia’s favourite grandchild until he blabbed to her about being the spawn of Wee’git. He’d suspected the money she gave him had been some kind of payoff to get him out of her life, and it made him feel rotten, so he’d given every cent to Phil. “You didn’t force me to help you. I made that choice all by myself.”

  “I feel ashamed.”

  “Dad, you were going through shit. I get it. It’s fine.”

  “I was so lost,” Phil said. “And then one night when I was in the hospital again, I felt a warm hand on my shoulder. And Jesus came into my heart. Now I see you for what you really are. A child. A child I selfishly used.”

  “Sophia didn’t give a rat’s ass what I did with that money when she gave it to me. I don’t know why she threw it in your face.”

  “What’re you and Mother fighting about?”

  “What?” Jared said. “Nothing. We aren’t fighting.”

  His dad sipped his coffee, watching him. “Is it me?”

  “Dude, it’s not all about you.”

  “I wish you would stay,” his dad said, reaching out and putting a hand over Jared’s. “I’d like to make it up to you.”

  Yeah, that was so not happening. Even getting burned alive by David would be preferable to becoming his dad’s pity project. “I’m going home.”

  “I wish you thought of my place as home.”

  “I want to go back to school. It’s not…it isn’t anything against you.”

  His dad bowed his head, closed his eyes. His lips moved soundlessly and Jared realized he was praying.

  He choked down his oatmeal and washed his dish and put it in the rack. His dad followed him into the living room and they sat and watched the news in silence.

  His dad sighed. “You’ve got a big blind spot, Jared. You think other people think like you, and care.”

  “Let that shit go,” Jared said. “Okay? It’s done. It’s over. We’re starting new shit, better shit.”

  “Good gravy. If you’re going to be a medical sonographer, you’re going to have to watch your language.”

  “Maybe the world needs more swearing ultrasound dudes.”

  “Don’t die, Jared, that’s all I’m trying to say,” his dad said. “Don’t get yourself killed.”

  Jared wanted to go back to bed.

  His dad handed him forty bucks. “For the trip down.”

  Jared swallowed and it felt as if he had an egg in his throat. His dad hadn’t offered him money in a long, long time. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t die,” his dad repeated.

  * * *

  —

  Early in the afternoon, Jared heard a car door slam and then a knock. Jared opened the front door and his cousin Kota gave him a quick bro hug, slapping his back. When he stepped back, his eyes locked on the bruises around Jared’s neck. Then Phil came from the kitchen, where he’d been washing dishes, and Kota looked away. Phil took off his rubber gloves before he shook hands with Kota and introduced himself.

  Jared felt as though he hadn’t seen Kota in years. His cousin had neatened his haircut to better show his neck tattoo and wore strategically ripped jeans and a T-shirt that indicated how much workouts meant to him. He asked Jared if he had any luggage or maybe a carton of Awake! magazines and Jared looked down at himself, laughed and shook his head.

  Phil hugged him and then lifted his hands skywards and prayed. Kota checked his cellphone and then cleared his throat and said they needed to motor. Phil followed them out to Mave’s bug, a Volkswagen Beetle pimped out in Vancouver Canucks hockey logos with a vanity plate that read: BLD BLU. As Kota backed out of the driveway, Phil solemnly waved as if Jared was riding off to his doom.

  When they were back on the highway, Kota finally said, “How the hell did you end up here?”

  Jared shrugged.

  “You weren’t fucking kidding, huh?” Kota said. “When you fall off the wagon, you fall hard.”

  “Kind of a talent,” Jared said.

  “It’s weird being on this side of the conversation. I’m usually the lapser in the family.”

  Jared grunted.

  “So what happened?” Kota said.

  Trees. River. Sky. Cliffs. Granite. “I’m not ready to share.”

  Kota had been his Alcoholics Anonymous sobriety buddy and knew better than to push. “You look like shit. Get some sleep.”

  Jared put his seat back as far as it would go and closed his eyes. More to mime sleep so he wouldn’t have to talk than from any desire to go to sleep. He wouldn’t be able to get away with such easy avoidance with his mom or Mave.

  Or Sophia. Once upon a time, she was his nana and he was her world. Before this new shit had happened, she and he had been cautiously testing their new relationship as non-related people, but they would never be what they had been. He wondered if she missed him with the same level of nagging ache as he missed her.

  If he was going to attract magic and insanity, maybe it would be better if the people he cared about stopped caring about him so they’d stay safe. He was riding down to Vancouver as if it would solve something. But what could he salvage from the wreckage of his life?

  * * *

  —

  The highway south wound away from the coast to the arid Interior of British Columbia, shot down to the Fraser River and then meandered through a long valley of farms and creeping gentrification back to the wet coast, with it
s mist-crowned mountains and low grey skies. The trip was punctuated by roadside stops so Kota could get his nic fix since Mave had given him strict orders not to smoke in her bug. Just outside Prince George they took another smoke break at a lonely gas station. While Jared filled the gas tank, Kota nuked some questionable cheeseburgers, and gathered up a pile of heat-lamped nachos and super-sized cups of dispensed Coke that was supposed to be regular but had the bitter chemical aftertaste of diet. They ate on the hood of the bug. Jared still had no desire to eat, but he carefully spat his bites of burger back in the wrapper and squished it small so Kota wouldn’t notice, and took a couple of token nachos. Kota collected the takeout wrappings and tossed them all in the clearly marked bottle recycling bin. Jared must have made a face because Kota said, “Ah, recycling’s a fucking scam. It all ends up in the landfill.”

  “I’m just wondering if I’m making a mistake going back to Mave’s,” Jared said.

  “Off to your Caribbean hideaway instead?”

  “What?”

  “Unless you’re secretly rich, I don’t see where else you can go.”

  “I don’t want her to get hurt.”

  “Yeah, your mom’s in a mood,” Kota said. “Come on. We’re missing all the drama.”

  “I’d rather skip it.”

  “Life is drama. Drama is life. Have you learned nothing from Facebook?”

  Jared stared at the traffic going by. “I dunno.”

  “You can’t avoid your mom forever.”

  “I’m—I don’t. I’m not avoiding Mom.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Kota gave him a friendly shove. “Get in, dumb-ass.”

  3

  YEA, THOUGH I WALK THROUGH THE VALLEY

  A lone, shadowed figure appeared in the headlights, a thumb held out as the dude walked along the shoulder, weighed down by a large camo duffle bag. They were a five-minute drive out of the previous town, a strip of gas stations and convenience stores, motels with vacancy signs and shuttered fruit stands.

  “Pull over,” Jared said.

  “No,” Kota said. “I’m not picking up some rando on the Highway of Tears.”

  The headlights spotlighted his thin face, his baggy jeans and rumpled hoodie. Through the side mirror, Jared watched the man turn red in the glow of their tail lights before he was swallowed by the darkness.

  Two years ago, Jared had been hitchhiking along Highway 16 one sleety February day, trying to make his way back to Kitimat. He’d been freezing his ass off, standing on the outskirts of Prince Rupert near the Indian gas station, and should have been happy for any ride, but his every nerve had jangled when a little old woman pulled up beside him in her burgundy Caddy. She’d looked like a rez granny—flowered dress, cheek-dusting glasses and chunky orthopaedic shoes. But underneath her skin, he could see something not human. At first he thought reptilian, but now he knew what he’d seen was an ogress. Georgina. He hadn’t got in her car. What would have happened if he had? Would he still have met the little old woman who’d unhinged her jaw and eaten ghosts, spirits and everything that bled?

  The sharp twists and turns of the road meant Kota had to slow down. If it was daylight, Jared could have looked down the pale cliffs at the river, but it was dark and all he could see were vague outlines. He rested his head against the window, not bothering to put his seat back again. He yawned and yawned again, fighting sleep.

  In his dream, the bodies of her pack of coy wolves were all gone from the dusty plains where the ogress stood. She wore a brown tunic of coarse fabric. She was impossibly tall. Only magic could have folded her into her human skin. Her eyes were black and she’d tied her long hair in a braid. She watched him approach as if he was mildly interesting. A fire crackled, the flames low. The fireflies who’d helped him before were not in the dark sky full of bright blue-white stars, though this was their world, though the ape men were there. Jared crouched near an ape man in a grey tunic, who stared upwards, eyes shocked wide.

  “Once they realize what I can teach them, their fear subsides,” Georgina said. “The first brave, greedy souls come forward and offer themselves to me.”

  “He’s going to be human?”

  “No. Homo sapiens never evolved here. From what I gather, the last galactic collision irradiated this earth in such a way that it’s not a human-friendly environment.”

  Jared stood. He still had to look up at her.

  “Worlds die,” Georgina said. “Your world is dying. Would you save it if you could?”

  “You ate your way through the dolphin world and you weren’t going to stop.”

  Her lips quirked into an almost-smile. “Did that disconcert you?”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “You don’t trust me because I’ve eaten some animals. How hypocritical of you. And very human. You’ll shed that notion as you come into your power.”

  “I’m not like you.”

  She shrugged. “I underestimated you.”

  “You ate me.”

  “You murdered everyone I loved.”

  Jared flinched. She looked away from him. She was alone, he realized, like he was. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know they would die here, I didn’t.”

  “If I forgave you and promised not to seek vengeance, would you bring me back to your world?”

  Jared’s heart fluttered and, even in his dream state, he felt adrenalin coursing through him.

  “He has possibilities,” Georgina said, looking down at the ape man. “In a few generations his great-grandson could be this world’s first Trickster.”

  Jared backed away from her, wanting the dream to end. “Why am I here?”

  The ape man moaned. One of the bones in his face cracked, and his left cheek sank so the outline of his teeth showed through his skin.

  “He wants his brother’s wife,” Georgina said. “And he’s willing to go through anything to get her.”

  “What are you doing to him?”

  “You bumble through the universes trailing death, yet you think I’m the monster.”

  Wake up, Jared thought. I want to wake up.

  “I could never hurt your family and friends as much as you’re going to hurt them,” Georgina said. “But I’m willing to try.”

  4

  WEE’GIT

  The moment Jared returned felt to you as subtle as an interferometer detecting gravitational waves—two gargantuan astrological bodies had collided with sufficient violence to ripple time and space but at enough distance that on Earth the event was announced with a little chirp.

  You have 535 official children, most of them sperm donations meant to help prove your friend Chuck’s pet theory that guided evolution was the only solution to the Anthropocene. Chuck, a Wild Man of the Woods, had done a lot of mushrooms and acid. Your son Jared’s origin story was messy and involved good intentions and booze, the classic ingredients for paving the road to hell. How can one singular kid among so many be such a headache? Of course, Jared turned out to be the only Trickster in the bunch. Of course.

  His presence had been constant for so long you assumed he’d survive to boring adulthood, but everything about him is dangerously tied up with his mother and his grandmother. And, if you admit it, in the searing failure that was your attempt to help, which led the psycho witch to amputate your head with a shotgun. Yeah, yeah, you and Maggie had hooked up, thus Maggie’s desire to blow your head off, which normal people would think about but not do. Yeah, yeah, she was the daughter of your most recent ex, but she was flirting with a boy who was going to get her hexed by the very, very volatile Sophia. So in a way Maggie killed you for attempting to do her a good turn.

  Usually, when you were free of your physical body, you could wander around and find someone to resurrect you, but Jared’s mother had other ideas. Your unmarked grave in the woods became your world. You made up games to pass the time. How many truck
s versus ATVs will pass by this spot in one month? The ratio was usually 2:.01. It wasn’t a well-used road. Aggressive alders bent over it like an arch. Dusty weeds flourished down the centre and on the mossy verges. Once in a while, once in a great while, there was a jogger hell-bent on fitness, intently puffing by in bright, shiny gear. Most of the time it was you and trees. The squirrels avoided you. The deer chewed the understorey shrubs and stared at you, tasty and nervous. A black bear ambled straight through you, intent as it was on getting to the salmon stream it remembered, ignoring you calling, “Come talk, what’s your rush?” It rained. A lot. The sun rose and set. A lot. You didn’t even have a good view of the night sky, the stars.

  The psycho witch had tethered you to your body. Not sure how that was even possible, but here you were, stuck to your grave like a bug to flypaper. At least your head had been shot off near a road. You tried to will yourself nearer to the bits of skull that might still be around, but you remained stuck.

  A raven croaked in the trees.

  “Brother!” you cried in relief. “Brother!”

  The raven examined you from a branch. “Wee’git?”

  “Yes, hi, that’s me! Thank God, thank God! I’m stuck here. Can you help me out?”

  “What’s my name?” the raven said.

  “I need you to get a message to Chuck. Charles Hucker. He’s—”

  “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  “I’m stuck with human eyes,” you said. “Sorry. If I was in my raven form, I could, um, tell who you were.”

  “So what we shared meant nothing to you.”

  “Human eyes are so limited. Your feathers are all one colour to human eyes.”

  “Stay there and rot, you liar,” the raven said before launching upwards, laughing.