by Alissa York
The beds had already thrown up a fair crop of weeds. No truck, but the begonias were in plain view, still in their flats, set down to one side of the front steps. They looked thirsty and thin. Edal could’ve used a drink herself, and so, after a long moment spent standing at the foot of the steps, she mounted them and tried the door. Locked. She turned, looking back at the road. Listening hard for his engine, she heard nothing but a squirrel flailing through the canopy, leaf litter shifting with beetles and shrews.
The shed was still a possibility; he often left the open padlock hooked through its loop to avoid fishing for his keys. It was all right to go inside—she’d helped build it, after all. She took down the trowel, then stood still in the dim interior, letting her eyes move over his things.
She started on the beds out front of the cabin, rooting up weeds and laying them aside, replacing them with the plants he’d bought. She did her best to make the flowers look natural, mixing up the colours and staggering the rows, but it was hard with all that bare black dirt. Watering only made it worse, spattering the bright petals with mud.
Having planted four flats, Edal carried the remaining two down to the foot of the drive. She worked on the ring garden for what felt like forever. Time and again she imagined him driving up to find her kneeling in the dirt, saw him leaning out of his window as she rose.
At last she stood to survey her work. The begonias looked rubbery and desperate, a flock of unfledged nestlings anchored in soil. She trudged up the drive and returned the trowel to its nail on the shed wall. Aside from the three ugly beds, she left the place as she’d found it. As though she’d never been there at all.
21
The Chronicles of Darius
Darius was thirteen when it happened. If it had been any other chore—carrying the garbage out to the shed, shovelling, checking the snares that ringed the yard—it might have been him who stepped out into that twilit scene. But Grandfather liked splitting the wood himself.
When the back door slammed, Darius stood at its little window and watched. Axe in hand, the old man kicked through the snow to where the woodpile stood in the lee of the shed. He reached for an oversized piece and balanced it on the scarred face of the stump. Hoisted his weighted blade and let it fall.
Now and then the axe met a knot, or lodged in a stubborn streak of grain, forcing the old man to lift the whole works and bring it thudding down. More often than not, though, a single blow was sufficient. Pieces halved and sprang apart. He let them lie where they landed; it would be Darius’s job to gather and stack them after he was done.
“What are you doing, Darius?” Grandmother came up behind him, bringing the smell of the soup she was making with her.
“Watching.”
They stood together then, her looking over his shoulder, touching him nowhere save with her breath at the back of his ear. It was a pretty picture they looked out on—tree boughs laden, the yard smothered and still. With no wind, the only movement came from the old man, the axe, the leaping wood.
Except there, on the roof of the shed.
Grandmother saw it when he did—he knew by the sharp inhale, the touch of her breath withheld. It had taken its time finding them; three years had passed since Grandfather had levered Darius down over the deer, showing him what teeth could do.
The length of the beast surprised him. Crouched low, it spanned the six-foot roof, its head at one edge, its muscled hind end at the other. Its tail rose and fell, a slow, shuddery dance. Its back hammocked down like a saddle, a hollow where some lucky child might hold on for dear life and ride.
As was to be expected in those parts, the lion had no mane. No matter. Just like in the story, the shorn face was braver, and more beautiful, and more patient than ever. Grandfather didn’t see this. He had his back to it. His breaking, straightening back. The three of them—beast, woman and boy—watched the man.
Grandmother didn’t say anything—how could she with no air in her throat?—and Darius found he too had no words. He thought of what he might do. There was the shotgun, but he’d never so much as picked it up. The Lord help you if you lay a finger on it. There were Grandmother’s kitchen knives, which shrank to toothpicks in his mind; and there was the axe, already in Grandfather’s hands. Last but not least, there was Grandfather’s whipping belt—and wasn’t a whip the very thing men used for controlling lions? Men, yes, but boys?
It was then that Grandmother finally made a sound. Not a scream or even a squeal, but a sigh, the air leaving her body the same instant the cougar left the roof. The leap was golden. Grandfather took the brunt of it, the axe shooting from his grip. The impact alone would have been blinding, never mind the talons. His huge and beautifully velveted paws.
The cougar bent its head as though it would drink from a stream. Its brave and patient face opened wide. See the neck, boy? Spinal cord snapped clean through. It would all be over soon.
Or it would have, if Grandfather had been any other man.
When the cougar closed its jaws, it closed them not on flesh and bone, but on wood. The old man’s stand-in spine blocked the bite; more than that, it froze the bite in time. Jammed behind the killing canines, the board held the cougar fast. The cat wrenched and writhed, the old man thrashing beneath it in the snow.
Darius jumped when Grandmother’s hand landed on his shoulder. “God,” she breathed. “Please, God.”
For once the blind bastard in the sky was listening. As luck would have it, He misunderstood.
Somehow, despite the great twisting weight on his back, Grandfather began to crawl. While the cougar panicked, desperate to tear its face free, the old man worked his torn-open shoulders. The axe hadn’t flown far. Inch by inch, he wormed toward it. Groped through the snow until one hand, then the other, found the handle’s curve. The strength in those wrists was inhuman. The blade shot up dark and glinting, and plunged into the cat’s yellow back.
Stretched on his belly, face down in the snow with a six-foot mountain lion bucking like a stallion on his back, Grandfather somehow retained the ability to think. To calculate, even. He lifted the wedge of his blade from the lion’s back and shortened his grip on the handle. Swung it down blindly again.
In Faye’s book, the children covered their eyes when it came time for the sacrifice. Not Darius. The lion in his story thrilled at the second touch of the axe, turning rigid, almost electric, before it slumped. Darius saw everything: the long, shapely handle of the axe suspended; the blade buried deep in the animal’s skull.
For a moment, nothing stirred. Then, like a dark fin surfacing, an arm bent at the elbow sliced up out of the snow.
“God help us,” Grandmother said, her fingertips digging under Darius’s collarbone.
As they stood staring, the old man levered up on the hand he’d planted. The cat shifted on his back, Grandfather shouldering, heaving, until the body capsized. Now the old man was on top. Still anchored to the cat, snow-caked and spluttering, he kicked like a beetle on its back.
“God help us,” Grandmother said again, releasing her grip. “Nothing can kill him.”
She’d gone for help—at least that was what Darius told himself. It seemed strange, though, leaving like that, without a word.
He’d turned at the sound of the front door slamming, stood stunned as the truck’s engine roared to life. Too late to stop her, he caught only the tail lights winking away down the drift-choked road. Strange. Maybe shock could alter a person, make them thoughtless, even cruel.
If Darius knew anything, it was that his life depended on what he did next. He thought for a moment, decided to pull on his boots but not his coat. A coat would look as though he’d taken his time. His only chance was to be ignorant of all that had transpired, aware of nothing but the old man’s roar.
He acted the part admirably, bursting from the back door, stumbling like a mad thing through the snow. “Grandfather, Grandfather!” Drawing close enough to make out the fur-clad corpse, he let out what he judged to be a suitable screa
m.
“It’s all right, boy,” the old man said hoarsely. “It’s dead.” And Darius knew he was in the clear.
Grandfather’s eyes were dark in their sockets. He was powdered like a doughnut, leaking a cherry-coloured mess. What’s black and white and red all over? The laugh caught Darius off guard, bubbling from his lips as he dropped to his knees at the old man’s side. He caught it in the nick of time, twisted it into a sob.
“Agnes,” Grandfather moaned.
Darius’s mind was quicker than he’d ever known it to be. “She was right behind me. She must’ve gone for help.”
The old man let out a sound—or was it the animal beneath him?—a wordless, deflating complaint.
Darius fought back a second wave of the giggles. “What should I do, Grandfather?” he wailed. “What should I do?”
“Get a knife,” the old man said through his teeth. “The big carving knife. You know where it is?”
“I’ll get it.” Darius rose and pelted for the open back door. You want the fork too? Inside, he let himself laugh out loud, covering the sound by rattling the cutlery in the drawer. Closing his hand around the stub of antler that was the knife’s handle, he clamped his crazy mouth shut.
He judged it best to say nothing while he followed Grandfather’s instructions, opening first the old man’s coat, then his snap-button shirt. “Cut it,” the old man said of the bloodied undershirt, and then again, “Cut it,” referring to the bandage beneath. Darius breathed evenly and did what he was told.
As always, there was the dark, scented presence of spruce. Beneath it, the smell of blood, like a penny fished from a fountain; Faye had always let him fill his sopping pockets, even when another boy’s mother said he was undoing somebody’s wish. The cougar itself smelled like an abiding secret. Piss and raw pollen and meat. Was this the rich sort of smell that came over Lucy-Faye’s sister in the book, when the lion rose from the dead and licked her face? Darius wasn’t fool enough to imagine the cougar would ever work its tongue again; no denying the sweet, unseemly odour that wafted from the cleft in its head.
He sawed through the bandage, loop by loop.
“Easy, now, easy. Okay, undo my belt. The button too.” The old man’s breath was smoky and sour, like bacon grease turned yellow in the pan.
He needed help sitting up. Without his board to harden him, he was more plant than man, drooping forward under the weight of his own head. The grey ducktail lifting. The curve of naked neck exposed. Darius flashed on the picture of a different boy—one who could prop his grandfather up with one hand while he reached for a length of split wood with the other. Who could fix his dead eyes on a target and do what had to be done.
It took a lifetime to half stagger, half drag the old man inside.
“Agnes!” he bellowed the first time he stumbled and went down in the snow, taking Darius with him. Then again, as he crashed against the door jamb, “AGNES!”
“She went for help, Grandfather.”
They lurched together to the table.
“This is good.” The old man fumbled for a chair.
“Shouldn’t you lie—”
“I said, this is good.” He sagged sideways into the seat. Grabbed the table edge and righted himself, then let his forehead meet the planks with a crack.
Darius worked what was left of the coat down the old man’s arms. The shirt was torn to a skein, each shoulder a bundle of ribbons, festive and bright.
“Get the kettle on,” Grandfather said. “Get a basin and a bar of soap. And a rag. A clean one from the drawer.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And shut that door.”
“Shut the door. Yes.” He slammed it accidentally.
“And put some more wood in the stove.”
Washing the wounds took another lifetime. Grandfather’s flesh jumped under the sudsy rag, but the man himself held perfectly still.
“Really get in there. Harder. That’s right.”
Darius was shaking by then, but he could still make his fingers do what he asked. Wrapping the index in a layer of cloth, he pushed the tip in deep.
“Where’s Agnes?” Grandfather said to the table planks. “Where is she?”
“She went for help, Grandfather, remember?”
“Help.” The old man laid his cheek on the table and fixed Darius with a one-eyed stare. “How?”
Darius looked away, dipping the rag, greasing it against the soap. “She took the truck.”
“My truck?”
“Yes, sir.” He touched the rag to a gash along the old man’s spine.
“Stupid.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“I said, stupid. She’ll put it in the ditch.”
The old man was wrong about that. It wasn’t a ditch so much as a gully—at least, that was the word the RCMP constable used. He arrived not long after sun-up. Grandfather was still hunched over the table, where he’d insisted on spending the night. Darius was on the couch. He’d slept little, flinching awake every time the old man twitched or snored, rising every couple of hours to add wood to the stove. When the sound of a truck engine finally came, the pitch was entirely wrong.
He could picture it, plain as the breaking day beyond the Mountie’s back—the truck snout-down in the head-high drift, Grandmother resting her brow on the wheel.
Darius turned in time to see Grandfather lift his head. “What did I tell you?”
“Jesus Murphy,” the Mountie said, stepping inside. “What the hell happened to you?”
“Don’t you take the Lord’s name in vain in this house,” Grandfather croaked. “Don’t you dare.”
It was only later—after Darius had taken the Mountie outside to see the cougar on its back, with the axe in its head and the board still jammed between its teeth; after Grandfather had refused to go into town for treatment, and the Mountie had told him he was sending a doctor out to the cabin whether the old man liked it or not; after Darius had made coffee for both men, and Grandfather had propped himself up and told all about the attack in his own words—that the Mountie let slip exactly where Grandmother had died. Forty clicks south of town. South. Which meant she’d passed clean through help and kept on going.
Darius saw clearly then. He was the chunk of meat you throw back over your shoulder while you’re sprinting for the gate. Faye probably would’ve done the same if he hadn’t been clinging on tight to her insides.
Grandfather said nothing about it. Not then, not ever. The story was simple: A cougar had dropped down on him by the shed. Grandmother had gone for help and somehow gone off the road.
It turned out Grandmother had been wrong too. Something could indeed kill the old man, and it only took five years to come.
The time whistled through Darius, stretching him to the height, if not the heft, of a man. He kept his head down in school, hovering at the C-minus line. At home he made the bread and rubbed clean the clothes, served up supper for three every night and scraped the third plate clean when, as ever, the Lord Christ Almighty didn’t show. It fell to him to strap Grandfather to his board each morning and release him from it each night. The eyeless skin of the cougar watched them, nailed like a flattened sun to the old man’s bedroom wall. With Grandmother gone, Darius took every beating Grandfather had left in him to give. If anything, the scars from the attack seemed to have made him stronger. A man who could kill the king of the forest while lying prone on his belly was more than a match for a skinny sneak of fourteen, sixteen or eighteen years.
It was hard not to blame the old bitch—all those times Darius stood bracing himself over the shithole, taking her share. Five years. She could’ve stuck it out. Could’ve held on until the thing that could finish the old man off finally did.
It happened, through some sweet, unfathomable symmetry, out by the winter woodpile. Darius was in Grandfather’s bedroom, making up the bed, when his brain registered a silence that had lasted too long. He looked up at the cat skin, and it fixed him with an empty stare. Leaving the
top sheet untucked, he walked out into the main room.
The back-door window beckoned. Looking out, he saw the old man lying broken across the split and scattered wood—the attack internal this time. Darius took his coat from the hook and drew it on. Fed each foot into its boot. Pushed open the back door. He advanced evenly, making use of Grandfather’s fresh tracks in the snow.
The old man was dead. No doubt about it. Darius had seen staring green eyes like that before. All the same, he approached the body warily, stood over it scarcely daring to breathe. When he finally got up the guts to make contact, it was with his foot. First a nudge with his toe, just by the shoulder, just in case. Then, when the bright eyes didn’t blink, he used the entire boot.
22
The City Book
MONDAY
The house stands shabby and alone. To begin with, Edal is locked out, her dream-body pacing the porch. She halts at the door, knocks and knocks. Then, just as she’s about to begin pacing again, her fist becomes a spout and pours her inside. Little wonder her mother hasn’t answered. How could she hear with the door bricked over like that, volumes deep.
Edal listens. Nothing. Then, deep in the heart of the house, something stirs. She’s here, still here—the monster in the maze, the child gone missing in the woods. Endlessly patient, Letty Jones lies waiting to be found.
Edal sits bolt upright in the narrow bed. Guy shifts in the covers, reaching out to circle her hips with his arm.
“I have to go.” She lifts his hand. “I have to go home.”
“Now? It’s not even light out.”
“Not my home. Home.”
He withdraws the arm, rising up on one elbow. “What’s wrong?”
“Not for long. A week, maybe.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Well, a week might be being a little optimistic.” She swings her legs out, snaps on the lamp. Yesterday’s cotton bikinis lie on the floor by her heel. She bends for them.