I fell back. His silence reached after me, its coldness striking my cheek like a chilled wind. I groped against his vacant eyes like a lost child, frantically searching through a room suddenly emptied of light. Ben stumbled beside me. He was making hard sounds in his throat. I looked to him, into his eyes, the full brightness of them. They were filling with horror as mine were already filling with sorrow, for I held no hope. Almost immediately I had known it—a part of me had known it all along. It had been born with me, it had shown me through his dreams, for they were never of the ordinary, but of Christ. Of moons without planets. Without time—as his art, his dreams too, were without time.
I whimpered in silence, unable to bring the sound through my throat. “I won’t take him home,” I whispered to Ben. My lips were frozen, yet I knew I had spoken, had seen my words register on his stone face. Then I crumpled like an autumn leaf onto Chris’s shoulder, my face burrowing inside his dirtied orange coveralls, my hands clutching at his face, grasping his hair from the mud. I burrowed further inside his coveralls. I burrowed like a dog seeking warmth. I smelled his skin, his odour. How strange that his scent was alive when he wasn’t. But the wind would take it soon enough. Oh Mother, what will you do now, and my heart leapt with fright.
I heard others piling onto the rig floor behind me, yelling, cursing, then falling silent as they came upon me, upon Chris. I heard Ben retching over the side of the rig floor. You left him behind, I said silently to Ben, it’s not your fault, but you left him behind, it’s your fault that you left him behind. I heard the cousins from the night crew speaking urgently as they rushed across the rig floor, then falling silent as they came upon me. I heard Push’s truck roar to a stop, his snarl of outrage coming up the rig steps, then his silence, his words ambushed in his throat. Then the quiet of Dirty Dan’s voice some distance behind, his hushed, urgent words falling like pebbles against the closed lid of a coffin as he told of what he’d seen from atop the derrick, the pipe shooting back up, snapping the chain from its mount on the rig floor and cat-assing around the rousty, who was just standing there, staring off. Must’ve crushed his ribs—the busted chain must’ve crushed his ribs, punctured his lungs, and his heart, too—must’ve, for it to have been so fast. Bled out, bled out on the inside. He’d read about it once, happening to some fellow in Louisiana, crushed his ribs, punctured his lungs and his heart, bled out in minutes. And he told, too, of another thing—of Trapp staring out at the rousty getting cat-assed, of Trapp staring at the pipe shooting up the derrick, of Trapp freezing at his station, and Ben charging to the panel and shutting her down—
Dirty Dan’s voice faded and I heard nothing but silence, echoes of silence, the silence echoed by the ice field into the vastness above it, the silence of Father sitting motionless in his boat, the silence of his prayer before that proud virgin moon.
Grace, I once read, is an unearned gift of God, and sometimes given to those in great sorrow. I wondered at its power, like that of a narcotic, calming my insides as I watched the horror of the following moments pass before my eyes like that of a great drama, incorporating me into its most intimate scenes yet keeping me distant as the most unwitting spectator. I felt Ben lifting me. I saw Dirty Dan and the others gather around my brother. The most solemn of pallbearers, they lifted him and carried him past the rest of the men, who were standing single file, eyes down. The squinty-eyed geologist was standing at the bottom of the steps, blinking confusedly as he watched them carry Chris to Push’s black truck and lay him on a mattress someone had dragged from the bunkhouse. Skin stood sideways, his eyes cast away from everyone, his foot jiggling nervously. Frederick stood beside him, his wide smile vanquished by a dropped mouth, his brows drawn in perplexity, his ears flattened back like a cowed dog’s. Push charged back and forth between his truck and the rig, his arms jabbing off from his sides and falling in silence, his face wearing the wrath of a mother who had left her house intact and returned to chaos. He shot a look at Frederick, his flat face tighter than shrunken pigskin. And then I saw Trapp, staring out at me, half hidden behind his truck, and I was the girl again, crouching behind the woodpile by the sawmill, seeing those eyes for the first time, a part of me already knowing the imprinting of his footstep onto mine someday. This day.
My eyes hooked into his, their greeny brightness dulled now. “You did this,” I croaked, drawing back as Ben tried to move me forward. My words were a whisper, heard only by Ben, but Trapp saw them on my lips, he saw them in my eyes, he saw them take shape through the drizzle and the fog and snake towards his neck like a noose. He bent his head, a ruff of hair falling forward, screening his eyes before mine as a curtain in a confessional.
“It wasn’t his fault,” Ben whispered.
Oh, yes it was, Ben. And you left him behind, Ben, it’s not your fault but you left him behind.
“I won’t take him home,” I whispered.
He helped me into the back of the truck. I lay down again beside Chris, staving off looking at his face now, seeing only the heavily shrouded sun creating a dome of brightness behind the dark. I closed my eyes, resting against Chris’s shoulder, his scent still there, same as yesterday, as this morning when I passed him his toast, thickly slathered with butter, the way Gran liked it. Gran. Mother. I filled with pity. And then with sympathy, and then with fright. A crushing weight cradled itself between my shoulders. I felt Ben covering me, stroking my hair. I nuzzled Chris’s throat, willing him to speak as when he tired of playing dead before the tombstones of Cooney Arm and suddenly sat upright, the leaves and cloth falling from his face. I whispered his name again and heard the horror in my voice. Something warm touched my cheek, soft, soft as air, a faint ray of the sun. My throat ached. I heard a small, nasal voice whimpering Ben’s name. Trapp. Trapp’s voice.
Ben’s hands left my hair. I felt him lean away from me, heard Trapp’s whimpers coming in snatches as Ben must’ve leaned towards him.
“Push would’ve shut her down,” he was whispering vehemently, “Push would’ve shut her down—Frederick— Frederick should’ve reported the kick—he should’ve reported the kick to Push, he should’ve reported the spillover, should’ve gotten Push outta bed—that fucking bastard Push, I couldn’t go to that fucking bastard Push, but Frederick should’ve, but he didn’t, and he seemed sure, he’d seemed sure it was only U-tubing—” His whispers turned to a whine as he kept railing against Frederick, who should’ve known more, who should’ve shut her down, should’ve shut the rig down, but he hadn’t shut her down, and he, Trapp, should’ve known, should’ve known, too—he’d seen the kick, he’d seen the pressure coming up the pipe, and the spill—all of it told him there’d be a blowout, and he should’ve reported to Push—but he reported to Frederick instead, he’d trusted Frederick, he trusted him, and now the rig had a blowout, the rousty was dead, and it was the engineer’s fault, Frederick’s fault.
All this Trapp was saying, his words accusatory. Yet I heard his own self-blame. As my hand cupped Chris’s cheek, feeling its last moments of warmth, I heard the self-blame in Trapp’s voice, that he had done it, he had killed Chris, would’ve killed them all if not for Ben shutting down the rig, if not for Ben hitting the kill switch and shutting down the rig. The truck started moving. Ever so slowly the truck started moving over the muddied, rutted road, and Ben’s hand dropped limply onto my shoulder.
LATER, MUCH LATER, Ben, holding tight to my arm as though I were a frightened bird at risk of flight, led me through the doors of a hotel suite. We’d been hours at the hospital. It was as Dirty Dan said, the snapped chain had wrapped around Chris’s chest, crushing his ribs, puncturing his lung, his heart, and he’d bled out in minutes.
I crossed the compact living room, heading straight for one of the bedrooms. Ben was behind me, holding open the door as I tried to shut it. I let it stand ajar, unable to look into his eyes. I crossed the room to the window, looking down onto the grey street below, the storefronts, a small green square of grass with a park bench sitting on it. A
girl stood throwing a stick to a dog who galloped, leaping into the air, catching the thing in its mouth.
I stood back from the window, closing the heavy night curtains, darkening the room, and wandered back to the door and the clothes closet next to it. I stood looking at the empty closet, its few hangers, and the two pillows on the shelf above. Pushing aside the hangers, I held on to the bar, leaned inside the small, dark space. I pulled a pillow from the top shelf and sank inside the closet. And, as when I was a girl crouching inside the closet in the haunted house in Cooney Arm, I drew my legs up to my chest and rested my chin on my knees. Chris had been frightened sometimes, crouching beside me inside that closet, watching for haunts. One time he started whimpering, wanting to leave, and I’d held on to him, hushing him to be quiet. Quite suddenly he busted into tears and, surprised, I let him go, listening to him scrambling out the door like a frightened mouse.
I felt frightened too now, hiding there in the dark. I heard a phone ring from a distance and dreaded the call I had to make. I could see them: Gran in her rocking chair, knitting in the dim light of her oil lamp; Kyle searching through the cookie jar for ginger snaps; Mother no doubt fussing over Dad, who’d be pawing at the window, anxious to be climbing aboard his boat.
I would call them soon. I would allow them one more night. One more night of Gran knitting contentedly beside her lamp. Of Mom, of Dad, sleeping soundly beside each other, and Kyle, curled up on the big, bright cushions on the sofa, munching his cookies. In this moment I would be their God, deciding when their lives, as they knew it, would end.
The brief sense of control I felt in making that decision soon ended, leaving me recoiling from that cold, white day I’d just traversed, where footholds that bore me one moment sank beneath me the next, leaving me scrambling for another and another, as did Father finding his way across a sea of pan ice. Bringing the pillow to my face, I quietly closed the closet door.
TWELVE
IN TIME TO COME I would think back over the last hours of that night and the following. Each brought with it death to other parts of me, and yet the germinal seeds of promise for new life. The latter felt far removed, though, during those wretched first hours of sleeping and waking, sleeping and waking in that cramped closet, the horror of the day’s events slicing its way through me upon each awakening. At some point I became conscious of Ben lying on the floor outside my closet door. The smell of whisky reached me, more medicinal than the sterile room across town in which Chris was laid out, with his flaxen hair flat back over his forehead, his eyes sealed, his lips faded to white.
I had wrenched away from his bedside. On the wall before me was a near replica of the darkly bearded Christ my mother had bartered with once for retribution from some past failing. He stared back at me, no longer the warm, comfortable figure of childhood fable and nighttime prayers but a frightening sorcerer chilling my heart with the stillness laid upon my brother. I shut my eyes to a rush of anguish, its intensity like that of a flesh wound ripping itself free from the rest of me and sprouting a life of its own in my entrails. A needle had been pricked in my arm—to calm her, they said—and I was led away from Chris, my arms clasped tightly around my belly so’s to hold back that thing, that dark, new growth threatening to consume me.
I burrowed deeper inside the closet, pressing my face into the pillow. I raised it some time later to Ben’s voice sounding faintly from the living room, his words bumbling amongst some broadcaster reporting the news on television. Later I awakened to his having jarred the closet door, sitting now with his back resting against it. I could see his profile through the greyish night: his fine, straight nose, his brow sloping back into his thatch of curls, his mouth pressed shut, his tightened jaw. I could see the dark around his eyes, all puffy and swollen.
I slept some more, then woke, finding him stretched out on the floor, his head partly inside the closet beside mine, his fingers stroking my hair, the smell of whisky souring around his words as he spoke in a low, throaty whisper, “Gotta do your own creating now, Sis … don’t matter if you can’t draw, can’t write … gotta find something that’s yours, a thought … one unique thought … only it has to be true, true to you … and there you are, your own creator … there, I read that somewhere … don’t know where, but I read it … how’s that for crooked lines, eh … s’cuse me, my love …” and he kissed the back of my head, and stumbling to his feet, lurched out of the room to the washroom.
He came back, crouching beside the closet door, reaching inside to touch my shoulder. He sensed I was awake and whispered for me to come out.
“I’ll run you a bath,” he coaxed, “it’ll make you feel better. Sylvie? Will you please come out now? Please,” he begged, as I shook my head. “Will you talk to your father, then—if I call your father, would you speak to him?”
“No, gawd, oh no,” I whispered so harshly it hurt my throat.
“What then, what can I do?”
“Please—just close the door—I don’t want the light.”
“I will not,” he whispered. “I will not close this door.”
Chris appeared before me with his quick little shrug. I tightened my hold around my stomach. My face felt frozen, eyes dry as bone. Ben leaned inside the closet, taking my head to his shoulder. I felt like a stick person drawn by a child, my body stiff, my head forcefully bent to the side. I sat for a long time like that, feeling pain creeping up my neck, down my back. When some hours later I was forced to get up to use the washroom I walked bent, like an old woman. Ben argued when I crawled back inside the closet, begging to cover me on the bed, or the sofa, so’s I could straighten my legs.
I couldn’t bear the thought of comfort. Nothing feels more real to the living than death, I now knew. For happiness, anger, all other feelings sometimes lead to flights of fantasy where time is suspended, self forgotten. But death gripped me. It drew my knees up to my chest like a cord curling inward on itself. It drew me into a darkness without borders. It forced me into a pain more crippling than a broken wing. The small, cramped quarters of the closet contained me, kept my thoughts small and manageable, corralled that split-off thing inside of me.
Hours later I was forced to the washroom again, then started back towards my room. Amidst the rumble of television sounds Ben’s words caught me, “Your play, Pabs, your fuckin’ play, man.”
I stepped back. I watched from around the corner. He was on the floor, his legs sprawled out in front of him, listlessly flicking cards from a deck into a small pile before him. The only light was the reds, blues, and yellows from an explosive battle scene on the television, flickering madly across his face as he rasped in a tired, broken voice, “… never listens, you young fuck, never listens … got a skipper, do you … got a skipper looking after your boat … no need listening to Ben when you got a skipper watching your boat … didn’t I tell you to do your own looking …” He stopped talking, his head falling forward, his chin resting on his chest. A shiver went through him. His body jolted as though something struck him. His head twisted back up, his words slurred, his tone filled with revulsion as he moaned, “… little shit … too late now … she’s spitting pipe … and that prick of a captain …” he gave a nasty laugh, “… that prick of a captain’s sleeping like a baby, blissfully unawares … and where’re you now, you little bastard …” He swigged back whisky from the half-emptied bottle on the floor beside him, sneezed most of it back out. Rubbing at his face with his sleeve, he started flicking out more cards, froth gathering at the corners of his mouth as he started muttering thickly, “… you went off, little fuck. Didn’t swivel them eyes. Didn’t read them gauges, you little fuck … the ones in your head, the one’s screaming run, run … and them stun bastards … them stun bastards around you were singing lullabies … damn, gawd-damned!” He fisted the carpeted floor. His face contorted and he knuckled his fists to his eyes, digging at them. He kept on flicking cards, he kept on talking, his words torn from his throat and raw with anguish, “… you went off, little fuck
… you went off … been going off all day … can’t heave off here, Pabs … kept telling you, can’t heave off here, not sitting on the wharf here …” His voice broke. He started blubbering into his shoulder, no more than a boy. And yet I saw within the grimness of his jaw the full dissolution of the lightness of youth, and wondered if he could ever again give himself over to a game of crib, the spontaneity of a laugh.
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