by Alissa York
The light was scattered, moving in lazy concert with the leaves and needles that allowed it through. A cone-strewn parking patch stood empty, sprouting weeds. With no truck out front, the place could almost pass for a dwelling from another time, the kind people built when they had to clear the land themselves—the man and his horse grubbing out stumps, the woman stooping to push seeds into the dirt.
The picture windows belonged to the here and now. The one to the right of the split-log steps was curtained, leaving Edal free to make up what lay inside. She kept it simple: a wood stove and a couple of old armchairs, a clean corner kitchen, a door leading through to the pioneer couple’s bed. She didn’t mean to imagine them in there—the man and his small, strong woman moving together under the crazy quilt.
The left-hand window stood clear. With nobody home, it had the watery look of the aquarium at school.
Edal took the steps slowly and knocked. Nothing but the thousand small sounds of the forest. She looked round to make sure she was alone, then bent over the rail to get her face close to the glass.
It was a tidy office—desk and file cabinet, plus a couple of tall metal cupboards, probably for storing guns. Maps in washed-out colours papered the walls. The only homey part was a half-sized fridge with a plug-in kettle on top. The kettle was crowded onto a metal tray with two jars—coffee and Coffee-mate—plus a sugar bag and three brown, hourglass-shaped mugs.
What would Edal say if he offered her a cup? She’d never tried it, though she knew the smell well enough—fresh and pleasant when the jar lid twisted off, sour on Letty’s breath for hours after she’d drunk it down. Yes, thanks, is what she would say. Or better yet, Sure, I’d love a cup. Stir in the creamy powder and sip and smile.
When she’d touched everything in the room with her eyes—wastepaper basket, ashtray, heavy black phone—Edal drew back to stand again before the door. Her fingers found the knob. She clutched it and turned. Locked.
Something like relief made her knees go spongy. After a moment they hardened up again, and she spun to take the rough-hewn steps in one. Jim Dale probably saw the leap, or at least the landing. He pulled up onto the gravel patch and cut the engine, his rolled-up sleeve at the rolled-down window. “Hey there.”
Edal wondered if he’d forgotten her name. “Hi, Mr.—”
“Jim.” He swung open his door. “How goes it, Edal? How’s that big-foot kitten of yours?”
She stood rigid a moment, as though she’d been slapped or stung. Then she began to cry.
“Whoa, whoa. Hey, now.”
She hid her face in her hands. Heard him shut the truck door and come to stand beside her. Then felt his palm on her back. He chose the rounded stretch of spine between her shoulder blades, held still there a moment, then started patting. He kept up a steady rhythm until she was done.
“Want a pop?” he said as she wiped at her eyes. “There’s root beer in the fridge, maybe even an Orange Crush.”
Edal nodded. No coffee, then. At least not yet.
——
She downed her root beer in silence, then squeezed the can so it dimpled and made hiccuping sounds. Meanwhile Jim stirred up a coffee—black with two sugars—and sat down behind his desk. Finally she looked up and told him about Daisy—the moonlit wakening, the window hoisted high.
“When was this?” he asked.
She considered lying, making up a week or two of the kitten living happily in her room. “The day you brought him.” She hung her head. “That same night.”
He nodded. “So that’s, what, four, five weeks now?”
“I guess.”
“Well, you’re probably right, an owl or a coyote got him.” It helped that he didn’t sugar-coat the thing. It made it something they could share. “What’d you say you called him?”
Edal hesitated. “Daisy.”
He laughed. “No wonder he ran away.”
A week or so later, she walked up his drive to find him unloading sheets of plywood from the bed of the truck. “Hey there,” he said.
“Hi, Jim.”
“What’s the good word?”
“I was just passing,” she heard herself answer. It sounded exactly right. “Building something?”
“Storage shed.” He hoisted a sheet in both hands.
“Need any help?”
He looked her up and down, as though assessing how much use she might be. “Sure,” he said finally, “I wouldn’t say no.”
18
The Chronicles of Darius
Not long after Grandmother read the last chapter of Faye’s favourite book aloud, the old man took Darius with him into the woods. They tramped down country until the light off the river glinted through the trees, then Grandfather forked left onto a one-man path. Darius followed, catching snap-back switches in the cheek. For a time they carried on within sight of the water, then the path peeled off into a thin cover of yellowing trees.
The pond was long and narrow, choked with cattails at either end. Grandfather’s duck blind was a simple brush lean-to. Water seeped up through the floor of trampled reeds, brown like the third-round tea Grandmother coaxed from every bag. Soon they were kneeling in a shallow pool. Looking down, Darius counted beetles, a water-skimmer, even a tiny darting fish. He began to fidget, and Grandfather hissed at him to keep still.
Darius had eaten duck several times, aping his grandparents, picking shot from the slippery meat and piling it up on his plate with the bones. He’d encountered the living article too, tails-up in a back eddy, or fat and quacking on the bank—even creaking their watertight wings overhead. Never shot out of the sky, though. The jerk and the wheel and the splash.
He was almost thankful when Grandfather tasked him with wading in after the first floating corpse—his itchy, aching legs were that desperate to move. The weak-tea water rose to his waist, the bottom sucking every step. The duck was a male. Head like a green gemstone, blue medals on its wings. There were five more bodies before they were done, five soaked and miserable vigils while the survivors forgot the fallen and came flapping to land again.
The path home felt different. It held to higher ground, and it seemed longer, too, though that might have been down to the ducks bumping against Darius’s back. He wondered if you could wash a winter jacket—Grandmother wrestling the puffy grey mass into the sink and scrubbing—or if the blood would mark his shoulders for good.
They were halfway home when Grandfather stopped in his tracks. He didn’t look back, only held up a finger that said Freeze. The ducks doubled their lifeless weight. Darius’s wet, goose-pimpled legs ached anew.
The old man raised his hand again, beckoning Darius on. He pointed to where the brush showed signs of a struggle, then directed Darius’s gaze farther—perhaps ten paces in from the path—to a mound of fallen needles and dirt. A mound with a hoof. A patch of grey-brown hide.
Grandfather used the shotgun’s muzzle to part the under-storey, taking slow, plunging steps toward the covered kill. Darius longed to keep to the path, but with the old man gone, the beaten earth felt like a seam beneath him, a fault along which the forest might crack. He stooped and followed, boughs grabbing at his feathered load.
Standing over the carcass, Grandfather reached out to tear a branch from its tree. Slowly, almost tenderly, he swept the dirt layer away. The neck was clearly broken, but the head it had carried was whole. No antlers. Only big, stiff ears, a sleeping eye.
“See the neck, boy? Spinal cord snapped clean through.” Grandfather flapped his branch at the deer’s belly—the pit where its belly had been. “Cougar. Wolves or coyotes go in under the tail. They wouldn’t cover it like this, either.”
Cougar. Darius shaped the word but couldn’t sound it. He’d forgotten the real-life woods held lions too.
“Come here, boy.” Grandfather laid a hand on Darius’s shoulder, bending him low so he could smell the musk of the deer’s death, the upsetting fetor of meat on the turn. “Teeth like razors.” The branch flapped again. “See how he sh
aved the hair away before going in?”
Darius saw—the skin naked where it rose away from the cut. What kind of a tooth could be used for shaving? He closed his eyes and saw the massive, neat-eared head, the golden gaze and cotton-ball whisker-puffs. Rubbing with one cheek then the other, the way cats do. Only curling a lip back first, unsheathing a single fang.
The lion in the book had teeth—Darius was certain of that—but there’d been no mention of him using them to razor a hide clean. The only one shorn in that story was the king of beasts himself.
Grandfather turned the branch around, gathering the greens up in his fist. The broken end made a fine pointer. He poked it into the open deer. “Looks as though he’s had the liver. Got up under the ribs too. Heart and lungs are gone.”
Darius heard a buzzing sound in his head. The combined weight of the ducks and the old man’s hand felt like something sitting hunched on his back. He feared he would tip forward, bury his face in the deer’s deep wound.
“Can’t be far off.” Grandfather’s hand fell away just in time. “Hell, he’s probably watching us from some tree.”
Darius straightened up slowly. If the cat dropped down on them, Grandfather would shoot it. Only Darius couldn’t remember him reloading after the last duck hit the pond—and what would birdshot do to a cougar anyway, besides make it mad? The old man could use the butt end of the gun like a club, but Darius had nothing to defend himself with besides the day’s haul. It wasn’t the most hopeful of pictures, the big cat spitting and lashing its tail, him swinging his clump of ducks.
“Best be going,” Grandfather said, letting his branch fall. “Don’t want him shaving your belly too.”
19
The City Book
SUNDAY
It’s weird how they’ve never come here before. From the beginning—before Lily had even heard of Howell Auto Wreckers or the Precious Pearl—she and Billy made a habit of heading east along the footbridge once they’d climbed the stairs from the valley floor. She had an idea there was something called Riverdale Farm over this way, she just never imagined it would be an actual farm. Of course, they can’t go in—or Billy can’t, which amounts to the same thing. They can stand at the fence, though. There’s still plenty to see.
“Horses, Billy. You remember those. And that funny-looking one’s a donkey. See there, standing all on his own?”
Billy makes a sound in his throat.
“Yeah.” She pats his flank. “I know.”
Behind them, the happy noise of a neighbourhood park. Now and then the shriek of an indignant toddler, a burst of yapping from somebody’s poorly trained dog. Lily was here before any of them, having broken camp at the first grey hint of day. Despite what she told Guy and Stephen, it’s hard to sleep knowing the coyote creep’s down there. Harder still to lie staring, counting the hours until dawn.
She and Billy could have swung by the wrecking yard, picked up the bike and gone gleaning for birds, but there didn’t seem to be any point. She found nothing yesterday morning, and only a single white-throated sparrow the day before. Besides, sometimes it pays to break a habit and try something new. In addition to the farm and the busy little park, they’ve discovered a graveyard.
The place was flooded with early light when they first arrived, trees and tombstones laying long shadows on the grass. The gates were still locked, so Lily sat with her back to the wrought iron rails and read about Bigwig and the other rabbits busting out of Woundwort’s evil warren. She had to wait until they were all drifting downstream on the punt before she could trust the story enough to crack the dragon book and take out her pen.
That they should feel any relief—dull or otherwise—was remarkable in the circumstances and showed both how little they understood their situation and how much fear Woundwort could inspire, for their escape from him seemed to be their only good fortune.
When the caretaker came to open up, it turned out the graveyard was yet another place where Billy wasn’t allowed. They made do with walking the perimeter, staring through the pointed bars.
“‘Toronto Necropolis,’” she said, reading the sign. “‘Cemetery and Crematorium.’ You know what that means, don’t you?” She laid a hand on Billy’s head. “Any preference?”
He gave a whistling sigh.
“Me too. Cremation every time. Dump us in the Don with the other sludge.”
In truth, though, she liked the look of the old graveyard. She could picture ending up there, if only Billy could come too.
At least it makes sense keeping dogs out of the farm. Billy’s as well trained as they come, but even he could lose it if a stray chicken came clucking across his path—and God help him if there were rabbits in one of those barns. As it happens, the fence is as good a place as any for getting close to the cow and her calf. Lily’s proud of her dog, the way he keeps his cool when the pair of them come lumbering from their little shed.
The mother’s lovely, caramel and cream, with dark, lash-laden eyes. Her calf is almost entirely golden, save for the white splash across its brow. The cow pays close attention to this spot, passing her tongue over it again and again—but Lily feels certain she’d do as much for any calf she’d given birth to, no matter how its hide was marked. And it wouldn’t end there. Whatever peril, whatever predatory force the world thought fit to provide, the cow would put herself between it and her child. She’d lower her hornless head and ram the fucker. She’d kick the vicious prick to death.
Coyote Cop’s Blog
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Nothing wrong with taking a trophy. A man ought to take pride in a job well done and anyway it helps to have a reminder of what the fight is all about. Because a coyote is not a feeling in somebodys guts or anywhere else. Its a flesh and blood menace. Its a predator. And when it comes for you it comes on four grey paws. I don’t mind admitting that scares me. It should scare you too.
A couple of you wrote saying you didn’t know where to find cyanide canisters. I’ll post a link down the bottom of this entry but in the meantime I bet you know where to get your hands on some gasoline. Like I said you want to be on the lookout for den activity this time of year. I know some of you have already found promising looking holes. Well here too the trick is to watch and wait. Bring some binoculars if you have them. If you get too close to a den before your ready to make your move the mother will get wind and cart the pups off somewhere else. Watch the main entrance but also keep an eye out for a possible back door. There won’t be any sign of digging there. Chances are the only way you’ll spot it is if you see one of them dive nose first into the ground. If the den is active you ought to see pups this time of year though they won’t be straying very far from home. One or both of the parents will be out hunting during the twilight hours so midday and the dead of night are your best bets for finding most of the family at home. Of course in the city you will want to go about your business in the dark.
First if you are lucky enough to know where that back door is block it up. Bring something to cover the main entrance too. Old car wheels work great or even shopping carts. Try looking in the river around the bridges where people like to chuck stuff in. The riverdale footbridge is a good one. Its pretty shallow and stuff gets snagged along the bank. Lots of times its only a tire but if you get lucky like me you might just fish out the whole damn wheel. Whatever you use you will want to stash it in some nearby cover so when you need it its close to hand. The rest is just common sense. You have the gasoline and you have the matches. You pour. You light. When the flames die back enough so you won’t burn off your eyebrows you roll your wheel into place. If your the type that gets nervous you might want to make tracks and thats just fine. What matters is getting the job done. Or maybe your more like me and you want a little something to remember your successes by. But who wants to crawl face first down a skinny smoky hole and what are the chances theres anything worth keeping down there anyway? It probably looks like chicken and ribs closed up in the barbecue on high. Besides as you can
see theres more than one way to take a trophy. Just roll that big old wheel away and remember to use your flash.
POSTED BY Coyote Cop at 6:04 AM
In the office of Howell Auto Wreckers, Stephen sits rigid in the old swivel chair. No sound save the rumble of the parkway, the hum of the computer’s fan. The photo floats on the screen before him. At first it appeared celestial, the blacker-than-black circle wearing its halo of eerie light. Now he sees it for what it is—something much, much closer to home.
soldierboy wrote …
I don’t know how long I’ve been looking at this picture. Long enough to forget the room I’m sitting in and find myself down there in that burnt-out hole. Not now, when it’s all over, but then, when the gas came splashing and the den filled up with fire.
Of course, I’m not there. Still, for a while my heart was beating so hard I thought I might die from the sheer terror of it. Can you imagine what it must have been like for the creatures who were down there in the flesh? Because I think you should. I think we all should. And I’m not sure what’s wrong with us that we don’t.
There’s a switch inside every one of us that I guess grew there as a necessary part of survival. How can you drag a fish up out of the river for your supper if you feel the yank of the hook in your own cheek? I get that part. We can’t feel for everyone and everything all the time. We’d die of fear or sorrow a hundred times a day. The thing is, it’s gotten so we flick that switch off like it’s nothing. And, more often than not, we forget to turn it back on.
So I’m asking you, Coyote Cop and everyone else reading this, put yourself down in that den. Bunch yourself up against the back wall with your brothers and sisters. Feel what happens in your chest when the air turns to poison. Then to flame.