“Oh, my God,” Krista answered. “If I’d known there’d be shrooms, I would’ve brought a change of clothes. I always piss my pants when I do shrooms.”
“Hey, since when have you done mushrooms?” I asked.
“Since a few weeks ago, with Mike and them.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know it was such a big deal. Besides, we can do them now together.” Krista seemed herself again, as though the awkwardness between us, her tears in the church, getting caught for shoplifting all had no bearing on the night ahead.
When we made our way to the cookshack, we found Thomas in the kitchen, leaning on the counter with a beer in his hand and a woman pressed against his thigh. Gabe pushed me forward, whispering in my ear, “You ask him. I’m not charming enough to get his attention now.” I stood so close behind the woman that I could smell her scent – jasmine. Thomas was looking at his beer bottle while he drank from it. When the liquid slid down his throat, he raised his eyes and saw me there.
“Harper, hi,” he reached around the woman. “Just a minute,” he said to her as he pulled me between them, placed his arm on my shoulder and pinned me momentarily between the woman and his thigh. She moved away.
“Hey, can I talk to you?” I asked. He nodded and turned me around so he could guide me out of the kitchen, his hands on my shoulders. I saw the woman roll her eyes and shake her head. I smiled at her. We pushed through the room, winding our way through bodies, bumping up against them. I felt Thomas’s chest against my back whenever we stopped. He brought me to the pantry, drew back the curtain, and we went in. This was not a neutral space. I moved out from under Thomas’s hands, hoping that Gabe and Krista were close behind.
“What is it, Harper?” he asked.
“Uh, Gabe said you had some, um, mushrooms that we could do together. Gabe and Krista – have you met Krista? – and I were wondering if we could get some shrooms off you. I mean, if that’s okay. Gabe said, um –”
Thomas threw back his head and laughed. “Drugs. You want drugs.” His Adam’s apple bobbed in his neck.
“Yeah, I mean, if that’s okay.” I backed up and reached for the curtain separating us from the rest of the party. When I did, I hit the deep freeze and remembered being against it with Gabe. I felt the curtain being pulled out of my hand as it was moved aside. Krista and Gabe came into the pantry, blinking as their eyes adjusted to the lack of light.
“Oh, good,” said Thomas, his voice suddenly jovial. “You must be Krista. I remember you from that first night you girls came out here.” Gabe slid in to stand beside me. “So, Harper tells me you’re interested in indulging,” Thomas continued in a mock English accent, and paused. “Gabe, you think it’s a good idea for these young ladies?”
“It’s up to them, really.”
“All right, then. How many grams does everyone want then? A couple grams each?”
Gabe’s arm moved around my waist, drew me to him. “Maybe just one for Harp, hey, sweets?” he asked me.
“Sure. I mean, no. I’ll do however many you do.”
Thomas took our hands, opened our palms, and placed dried mushrooms in them.
“Just like this?” Krista asked. “I’m used to having them in chocolate.”
“Well, well,” said Thomas.
“We can brew them in tea,” Gabe offered. “That might be better for Harper.”
“No, it’s okay,” I insisted and lifted the dry bits to my nose. They didn’t smell like much. While the other three watched, I shook them into my mouth, chewed. A mouldy, bitter taste hit the back of my throat and I gagged a little as I swallowed. Gabe and Krista laughed and gulped theirs down, then we made our way back into the room. Thomas was behind me. He caught my hand for a moment, brushed his fingers against my palm. I drew it away slowly and followed Gabe’s dark head through the crowd.
I had a bottle of beer as though it was a way to anchor myself to the room, smoked part of a joint to ease my passage into the effect of the mushrooms. I held Krista’s hand, wanting her beside me when the drug hit. Gabe moved like water through the cookshack, one moment beside me, breath on my ear, hand on the small of my back, the next on the other side of the crowd or out of sight completely. Krista and I circled the room slowly, trying to find a place to sit down together. We made a nest out of jackets, coats, and scarves on top of one of the tables and sat there, waiting to get lighter.
When it happened, I felt air rise inside me like carbonation until it pricked my cheeks and filled my mouth. I held it as long I could, looking straight ahead.
“Aha!” Krista whispered. “It’s hit you, hasn’t it?” and began to giggle.
I avoided looking at her for as long as possible but faces and bodies began to merge, waver, and when they did I needed to look at something familiar to regain my bearings. When I turned toward Krista and saw her shining eyes and crazy hair like banners announcing her face, I burst out laughing.
“What?” Krista asked, joining me.
“Nothing! I just feel so fucking good!”
“I know! Isn’t it great?!”
“Are we yelling?!”
We collapsed back on the table. Krista’s head hit the window sill but this just made her laugh harder. I had my legs folded under me and I threw my head back, my spine arching like a bridge. When I tried to move, the laughter lodged me there. I imagined vocal cords straining against skin. I rolled myself over, onto Krista, so I could breathe again, then sputtered and laughed even louder. No one seemed to notice. The impromptu bands played on, people danced, children ran, babies wailed, and the sounds of the dogs that had been shooed outside came in through the open door.
The cookshack became a kaleidoscope of sound, colour, and movement. Gabe was with me, then he wasn’t. Krista was beside me, or I forgot that she was at the farm at all. Every once in a while, I was caught up in the music and tried dancing but I felt self-conscious, my body foreign, unwieldy as it moved around me. I saw faces and mouths moving, and tried to listen, even feign conversation but I couldn’t speak much, except to Gabe and Krista. We would gather in corners or along walls and attempt to relay conversations as we had heard them, but other people’s words never formed the same thing in our mouths. This, in itself, was funny enough to have us laughing so hard we would fall to the floor, bend in on each other, get stuck in an inebriated version of Twister.
At some point, I saw the curtain door into the pantry pulled back, a corridor of people stretching beyond me. When I went toward them, I could feel cold air and searched for its source. The night was visible through the open door and I pushed my way through the pantry, gasped at air when I got outside. People were leaning up against the cookshack smoking cigarettes and joints. With the smell of cedar and the sensation of heat radiating from somewhere, I realized that someone had started up the sauna. The sauna! I wanted to find Krista and show her the bathhouse and sauna, show her where I showered, practically outside, even in the dead of winter. As I moved back toward the pantry, I heard someone yell, “Close the door, it’s freezing in here!” and watched as it slammed in front of my face. I tried to turn the handle but it was stuck, locked from the inside. People yelped in the bathhouse and each time the sauna door was opened, I could hear wood cracking in the stove.
I went looking for Krista and Gabe. I wanted to see him again, to feel his hands on me. I couldn’t remember how long I had been looking or where. I watched my feet, making sure that I was still on the ground, but then I would walk into things and remind myself to look up. I would never find them if I wasn’t looking up. I stopped on the porch, more than once, for a smoke. A smoke to clear my head, bring me down, to help me remember where to look.
I was crying when Thomas found me and brought me back to the sauna. There were moments of blindness – the shirt being pulled over my head, the first dark of the sauna. When the air struck my skin, Thomas’s hands tried to rub the cold away, then led me into the heat. My mind seemed unable to follow ba
sic mental processes but my body took a fierce hold of every sensation and experienced it acutely. “It’s okay,” I told myself, feeling air on every part of my stripped body. “Everyone is naked in here. It’s a sauna. It’s okay.” I sat between Thomas’s legs on the top bench, sobbing unevenly while he rubbed my back, the skin and muscle stiffening, folding, yielding. I could feel him growing hard. The stove opened and closed to accommodate more wood; water was thrown on the rocks, creating a sputtering vapour. By the time the steam rose to the top bench, the wet heat pawed at me, the press and lick of flames. The sides of my throat seemed to be straining to meet each other, block out my breath. Muscles gripped bones and everything began to ache. I gasped and clutched at my neck, trying to find air. The heat pressed against me like walls.
Shh was the sound of Thomas’s voice as he led me out of the sauna. Shh was the sound of the water over my head and in my ears. Who was in there with me? Later I would remember Thomas and Gabe both being there, but decided they couldn’t have been. Shh was the sound I made when I saw Gabe’s face on the other side of the steam, thought I saw him, clothed and standing outside the shower, like he had on the night he washed me and cut my hair. If he wasn’t there, whose hands were washing me, who was holding me up? I heard the sounds of muffled yells, of words caught. My own throat wouldn’t open. When I tried to force words up, out of it, when I tried to say something to Gabe, they lodged there. Shh was the only sound I heard as someone held me back, the feeling of lost words and water, skin and heat becoming one in that cramped place. Shh was the sound of someone dressing me, wrapping a blanket around my shoulders and holding me until the shaking stopped. It was the sound of someone rubbing my jaw to ease the clattering. Shh. It was Thomas’s hand on my face again, the sky above us clear and pricked with stars.
I would understand, when I tried to piece together the night later, that Thomas was the person who walked me back to the shed. I thought I would be all right then. The fresh air entering my lungs reminded me of how it would feel to be sober, clean. I was sure sleep would come quickly and that when I woke everything would be back to normal but when I saw Krista’s boyfriend, Mike, swaying and obviously drunk in the yard between the cookshack and shed, my mind skipped, tried to find a reference point. Behind him Rob Hanshaw bounced from leg to leg, spat into the dirt. I was confused, things colliding in my mind. Mike and Krista in the schoolyard the night after the party in November. My neck in the vice of Rob Hanshaw’s arm in his truck. I pulled away from Thomas then reached back for him at once. As I did, Mike approached me, his words coming as though from different directions.
“Sylvia Harper. If it isn’t sweet Sylvia Harper.”
“Harper, this a friend of yours?” Thomas asked.
“Who the hell is this?” Mike said, pointing at Thomas with his chin.
Instead of answering I said, “I’ll go find Krista,” and moved away from all of them. “I’ll go find Krista,” I said again as though this was a reassurance, for myself or someone else.
“Why don’t we all go try to find Krista, shall we?” Mike said. “It’ll be a little game, eh, Hanshaw?” Rob Hanshaw didn’t say anything, just stood behind Mike with his hands in his pockets, smirking. Thomas turned and made a motion with his head for me to follow. When we were on the front veranda, Mike got hold of my arm and snapped me back towards him. He and Rob stood watching my reaction, laughing. Thomas had just gone in.
“Stoned, Harper?” Mike asked. He had his lighter out, flared it in front of my face. “Seeing lights?”
Then, with Mike still holding my arm, Rob Hanshaw leaned in. “Know what I’d like to do to you?” he asked. When I stared back at him, Rob continued, “I’d like to go down on you when you’re on the rag, suck up all that blood, and then spit it back into your mouth.”
I tried to hold my stare, to have them believe I wasn’t intimidated, but Mike let go of me and I fell back. As they laughed, I stumbled up the steps to the porch and into the building. I wanted desperately to be sober again. To be safe. It would be all right, I told myself, all I had to do was find Krista. She’d know what to do. It would be all right. I pushed my way through the hall into the kitchen and found her. She was coming in the back door with Gabe, their cheeks taut, glazed with fresh air.
I looked at Gabe quickly then gripped Krista’s forearm and said, “Mike’s here.” My hand shook as I did.
“What?” both she and Gabe said at once, then Krista continued, “Oh, God, I didn’t think he would come. I bet he’s drunk. Shit.” I was still shaking, wanting to collapse against something or someone but Krista and Gabe were already moving out of the kitchen and back through the cookshack. When I got to the front porch, I could hear Mike before I could see anyone else.
“You slut. What did you think you were doing – you think I wouldn’t figure out what you were doing?”
“No, Mike, I –”
Mike motioned toward Gabe. “And, what, everyone shares everyone out here? Bunch of fucking freaks.”
I stopped in the door frame and watched the porch like a stage. Things seemed to move in slow motion. Mike’s mouth gaping then clamping shut, the words coming out fast, his face twisting around them. Rob Hanshaw beside him, scowling and shifting his weight from heels to balls of feet, arms and hands twitching. Krista recoiling from Mike’s words, her head turning from side to side, red curls bobbing and springing in a way that seemed almost cheerful, inappropriate. I lost focus when my eyes found Gabe. He seemed less defined, a blur of colour and shifting texture, as though I couldn’t quite place him in the surroundings. I stepped out onto the porch in an attempt to get things into focus, people gathering behind me, pressing.
Mike caught one of Krista’s wrists, held it stiff between them as though wielding a weapon against her. That was when things sped up. I moved quickly and somehow I got her away from Mike. Thomas came between Krista and me and the guys, telling them in a slow, controlled voice that they should leave. Mike stood, fists clenching and unclenching, releasing his breath in short, violent bursts, and stared around Thomas at Krista. “Come on, let’s just move along,” Thomas said again.
“Come on? Move along?” Mike said, shifting his gaze until it was directly on Thomas. “You think you’ve got it made out here, eh? While the rest of us are out working, busting our asses, you can just sit back, watch your weed grow, living off pogey. And now you’ve got these sweet teenage girls to pass around. Share and share alike, right? Can you even get it up, you old hippie? You scared we’re going to take them away from you, huh?”
That’s when Gabe lunged at him, knocking us aside as he did. Thomas tried unsuccessfully to hold him back. The rest of us stood as though paralyzed. In the light of the cookshack, it was Gabe’s face that I watched, the set of his jaw, twist of his mouth. Somehow, those hostile expressions looked natural on Mike. Seeing them on Gabe frightened me. I closed my eyes and heard boots against wood, fists against fabric, then air expelled, guttural sounds bursting from chests, throats. When I opened my eyes, I saw blood on Gabe’s face. “Stop!” I yelled, still holding Krista, who was struggling out of my grip. “Stop!”
Krista tore away from me and stood in front of Gabe and Mike, small movements betraying the conflict within her – as though she were lurching forward and holding back at once. The guys had paused and were staring each other down, transferring their weight, hands pumping fists, each waiting for the other to strike. As Gabe glared at Mike, it was as though all thought and emotion were wiped away, his expression revealing only an instinct, a need. And in this, I saw something familiar. I had seen the same thing happen to his eyes when we had sex – in that moment right before he came, an instant when his eyes were wiped of recognition, his need fierce, sharp and anonymous. Gabe struck out again, and I felt nauseated. Mike dodged him and Krista moved between the two of them, arms held out as though to protect herself, wild panic and anger across her face. She turned to Mike and yelled, “You bastard! Get out of here!”
Gabe and Mike stoo
d mirroring each other, shaking the men off, still staring each other down. Their stances began to slacken slightly – breath slowing, shoulders and hands loosening – but they seemed intent on holding their hard gaze. It was Gabe who broke it, turning abruptly and pushing people out of the way as he went back into the building.
“Come on, Hanshaw,” Mike said when he did. “Let’s go. These people aren’t worth our time.” He stopped at the top of the steps, turned to Krista and said, “I’ll leave your diaphragm at the end of my driveway. With the trash,” and walked down the stairs. Rob Hanshaw cocked his head, looked at me, spat once on the porch and followed.
Krista and I were against the railing, holding each other. Ordinary things – the banister, steps – started coming into focus, blunt and heavy. My throat felt raw. I could feel Krista shaking in my hold. “Bastard!” she yelled out again. I wasn’t sure if it was intended to reach Mike or if it was simply a statement.
Thomas came through the crowd, stopped and turned, said loudly to the people around us, “Would you clear out of here? Come on already.” With a few more glances in our direction, everyone filed into the building or moved to the other end of the porch, lit cigarettes, tried not to look at us.
I pulled away from Krista and asked, “You okay?”
Krista nodded and swallowed. She said quietly, “I just want to go home. Can I get a ride home?”
“Of course you can,” I said.
“Where’s Gabe?” asked Thomas.
“He went inside,” I said. “I’ll go look for him.” I looked at Krista, ran my hand over her hair and asked, “Will you be okay for a sec?” When she nodded, I turned back into the cookshack. The party had begun to die down. I asked people if they had seen Gabe, but no one had. He must have gone out another door. I was drawn through the building and out the back to the edge of the field, as though it were a magnet and I was a piece of something hard, metal. I clung to stretches of wire between barbs, listened to the sound of the wind. The field stretched from white to grey to black.
The Sudden Weight of Snow Page 22