The City Still Breathing

by Matthew Heiti

  ‘What?’

  ‘At Top Hat, Dunc said – is this Lemmy?’

  Slim groans and turns his head to look in the trunk. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You never met him?’

  ‘Milly had him out at that old farmhouse. Oh fuck.’ He hugs himself, shivering in his T-shirt. ‘What do we do with it?’

  ‘The fuck should I know?’

  ‘Please, Francie.’ Hands knit together like he’s begging or praying. ‘Just tell me what to do.’

  She sits down on the dirt, all three of them lined up against the fender. ‘You give him back to the cops.’

  ‘Fuck that – you crazy?’

  ‘Give him to Milly then.’

  ‘You are crazy. Jyrki fuckin Myllarinen – you know what he … his own fuckin parents – you have any idea what he’d do to me?’

  ‘It’s his brother.’

  ‘We don’t know that. Anyway, thanks to this asshole,’ he slaps Heck, ‘he’s gonna think I stole the fuckin body. I’m fucked. And if I show up with some dead guy that isn’t his brother, I’m fucked anyway.’

  ‘So what then?’

  ‘We’ll split.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The car’s already packed. We’ll head for Toronto.’

  ‘I’m not going to Toronto with a dead body in the fuckin trunk, Slim!’

  ‘Fuck!’ He jumps to his feet and kicks the fender. Then kicks it again. And again. Then he kicks Heck, who rolls away. Slim moves away, kicking trees, kicking rocks, kicking anything in his way.

  Francie stands and walks down the slope to the creek. Slim let the grey out of that trunk and it was grey again, grey everywhere, only worse this time because it had sunk its teeth in and wouldn’t let go now. But looking down, her hands are still blue, and closing her eyes she can feel a shard in her heart pumping blue through her veins.

  This is the picture she’d like of herself – blue Francie. Not like her magazines. Pictures and pictures and pictures of beautiful people in beautiful clothes in beautiful places. That’s why a lot of people do it, she guesses – to live in that state of beauty. But everything is ugly. It’s just about being seen. More than Dad peering over his paper to say Good morning, or Mom pretending to care when she says How was your day, honey, or your friends looking straight through you to see only what you can give them. It would just be nice to be seen, all of her, like Slim used to see her through his camera. But that dead look on that dead body is the dead look you get everywhere. The dead look even on Slim’s face these days. It’s only a matter of time before someone else drags you down. Blue Francie slowly becoming grey Francie.

  Splash! A body hits the water and Francie looks up to the bridge to see Slim at the railing. Looking back to the water to see the body pop to the surface.

  ‘What the fuck’re you doing?’

  ‘Getting rid of it!’ Slim looking all pleased, like he’s solved a problem, not ruined everything.

  It’s floating away, and she’s following along the bank, pushing through the bushes, branches clawing at her face and hair, trying to keep it in sight. Slim yelling something stupid and pointless behind her. The body just going all peaceful, carried along by the creek. The path curves away and the brush is getting so thick she’s going to lose it, so she steps into the water. She expects it to be needle cold, but she can’t feel anything. She wades out into the middle of the creek, waist deep, so close she could touch it.

  But then it’s by and she’s missed her chance. On it goes heading for the culvert where the creek runs under the road. The black mouth opening to swallow the body. Francie’s voice shouting blue words, ‘I can see you! I can see you!’

  Slim’s arms around her, pulling her back, Francie still fighting, trying to keep seeing. Both of them finally falling back on the shore. Slim crying. Francie just lying there, feeling the weight of each snowflake. Flake by flake covering them up, maybe even burying them.

  She stands, brushes the snow off. Slim reaches for her. ‘I’m ready. We can go. Let’s go now.’

  ‘No.’ Because you can’t pin your dreams on other people, like some kind of game of pin-the-tail-on-whatever. ‘No.’ Because she was that close, like the body floating by, close enough to touch, to see, and Slim and her, they both missed their chance. ‘No.’ Because way off over the trees, it almost looks like there’s a little crack in the sky, a bit of blue starting to show.

  And as she walks away, she looks for her smokes and finds the photo strip in her pocket. The four little squares of her still white, still waiting to be found.

  4

  Normando sits in one of those damned little gowns on the edge of the gurney, bare-ass except for his black socks. Bart sitting over there rubbing his chin and flipping through the charts. Normando staring out the window at the snow falling, first of the year. People clucking around out there – digging the winter clothes out, buying shovels, stringing up the tinsel, tossing salt all over the damned place – like they forget the first snow always melts. Same damned thing every year.

  Bart finally lowers the paperwork and looks him in the eyes.

  ‘It’s spreading.’

  Normando nods, already knowing this, feeling it inside these past few weeks, slow like peanut butter on bread.

  ‘We said that was probably going to be the case, but now that we know.’ He raises his eyebrows, letting that hang. ‘Have you told Pat yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She should know.’

  He goes to a drawer and opens it, shuffling through more papers, coming back and shoving something at him. ‘Take a look at these, then we’ll have you back in for a chat. All right?’

  ‘Right, Doc.’

  The door half cocked, Bart turns back. ‘You still running that cart around downtown?’

  ‘Every damned day.’

  ‘Well, good. Good to get some fresh air.’ Bart waves his folder as he leaves, giving him one of those encouraging grins you save for the walking dead. ‘Lots of options, Norm.’

  The door closing and him left with a handful of pamphlets. A pamphlet for every day of the damned year left.

  5

  Milly’s on the shitter when he hears the old man shrieking for Lemmy up on the porch. The noise goes on and on, so shrill it forces his asshole to pucker like a pair of old lips, trapping all that mess up inside him. He pulls his jeans up with one hand and kicks open the door to the outhouse.

  The grass is crunchy with overnight frost and there’s the skinny geezer out there in his socks and nothing else. His shrivelled cock slapping around as he yells his head off. Milly climbs the porch and throws his jacket around the old man’s shoulders, only the grey bulb of his head popping out of all that flannel. Milly speaks softly into his ear, ‘C’mon, Ukki, let’s go inside.’

  ‘Ei, ei, et sinä.’ The old man shakes him off, going to the porch railing. The fields roll out before them, brown and tired and full of nothing again this year. ‘Lemminki!’ the old man yells, like he might come waddling out of the trees any minute with that stupid grin of his. Walk past the rusted tools, the barn falling into the ground, the purple tractor. The sun not even up yet and already Milly’s too weary for this world.

  ‘Väinö!’ the old man tries, his voice cracking. ‘Louhi!’

  ‘Ukki.’ Milly takes the old man’s arm, thin like a wishbone in his hand, and gently pulls him away. But the old man latches onto the railing, throwing himself forward like the captain of a sinking ship.

  ‘Väinö! Louhi! Lemminki!’

  ‘They’re gone, Ukki.’ He scoops the old man up in his arms and carries him toward the house. ‘It’s just me.’

  The old man looks at him, all hopeful with his big wet eyes. ‘Lemminki?’

  ‘No, it’s me. Jyrki.’

  ‘Ei, ei.’ Giving him a look like this is all his fault. These dead fields. The rotting shingles. The paint peeling in strips. The old man’s mind. Their family. The wind taking it all away. ‘Ei, ei, et sinä,’ not you, Jyrki Myllarinen, anybody but
you.

  By the time Milly gets the old man all tucked under his electric blanket, he’s already drifted off to some kind of sleep. He kisses him on the forehead, a faint taste of onion, and then shuts him away with a soft click.

  He puts the kettle on and throws back the kitchen rug, the chain looped through the fat brass ring and a padlock holding the whole thing down. He uses the key around his neck, the chain purring out of the ring, then grabs a hold and pulls the trap door open. Seven-oh-one says the clock on the stove. Two minutes to daylight.

  He goes one foot, feet together, one foot, inching down the steep set of stairs a lesson he learned after smacking his head one too many times. At the bottom he reaches out and feels for the steel door, running his hand down to find the lock. In goes another key, the door coming open with a whine. One minute left.

  The heat hits him first and then that sickly sweet smell. He takes a step forward into that wet dark, the noise of the fans like some sleeping giant down here. He feels for the switch, counting down from ten, nine, eight, seven years since his parents died, six, five Lemmy’s favourite number – high fives for getting yourself dressed in the morning, high fives for wiping your own ass – four, three days since he went off into the woods, three days waiting, two of them left, just him and the old man, one and almost there, teetering on the edge, counting down to zero, to Milly, to nothing. He flicks the switch. Sunrise.

  The fluorescents ting ting ting on. The walls, ceiling, floor – everything splashed with white paint to reflect the light. Four rows of green. Greener than any crop he’s tried to plant out in the fields the past few years. Plants taller than him – like him and Lemmy, children outgrowing their parents. He snaps on a pair of latex gloves, grabs a sack and walks the rows.

  The buds are just forming, most of them reaching out with strands of white lace, but he finds a few males in the crop. He uproots these, gently so as not to disturb the little bell-like clusters, and shoves them away in the sack.

  He checks the temp, the humidity, the water flow, the soil, he checks the fluorescent tubes, he checks and double-checks everything like he does every morning. It’s going to be a good one, maybe the best yet – Väinö would never have believed it. Everything Milly touched turned to shit out in the field, he said. Little Ilmarinen, his father called him, with the golden touch. He’d grab Milly’s hands and twist his palms up. Look at these, he’d say. Soft hands, baby’s hands like your mother.

  The kettle’s going off upstairs. He grabs a jug of ethanol from the chemical cupboard. He leaves the lights on, locks the door, up the stairs, locks the trapdoor, rearranges the rug in the kitchen – makes sure everything is in order. Not for the cops, but so Lemmy doesn’t get into it.

  He pours a mug of mint tea, dipping the bag in and out because he hates waiting. Puts on his rubber boots and pulls on his itchy red flannel and heads back out into the cold, dropping the sack of uprooted plants on the porch as he goes.

  The sun can’t find a way through and the morning is coming up like a grey hangover on the hills. Milly walks the furrows. Here where Väinö ran spuds, here beans, here turnips – the best in Canada, he said. The seeds from the family farm in Espoo, smuggled over in the lining of Ukki’s jacket when he came in on the boat from Finland. He’d help load up the truck in the middle of the night and tuck in between his parents on the dark road into the city, Lemmy on his lap. They’d set up their stall at the Borgia market, and Dad would give him a few nickels and tell him to take Lemmy for a walk. Nobody wants to look at that when they’re thinking about food, he’d say.

  Now the furrows are choked with weeds and maple saplings. He tried at first, but it didn’t matter what he did, or how hard he worked at it. These last years he’d begun to find a strange happiness in watching things stunt, dry up, die. All the decades of work erased. Even the best turnips in Canada. Especially the turnips.

  Lemmy loves the empty field. It’s like the ocean, Milly said. Why don’t you sail on it?

  We’re not asposed to, Yershey. Dad says.

  Dad’s not here, Lemmy. And he’d get him running over the furrows, a boat over the waves. Lemmy making motorboat sounds with his fat tongue hanging out, spitting all over the place. Both of them kicking dirt, running over the field like they were never allowed to, trampling it into a playground.

  Milly follows the fence down to the end of the lot, finding a few holes that need patching, that needed patching last year. The land had been cleared by Ukki and Väinö years ago, and each spring Dad had been militant about hacking down or pulling up any vegetation that was creeping too close to his fence. Without him, the trees have slowly crowded in, reaching down to touch the posts, vines wrapping around from below, so close now the forest might climb right over and take it all back.

  He stopped speaking Finn to Lemmy. Even castrated the two annoying dots off their last name. Of course, he keeps it from Ukki, he never wants to hurt the old man. Or Lemmy. Himself and the rest of the world, sure. If only he could dig up Väinö and show him how dead his dreams have become.

  Something itches at the base of his neck and he’s hit by the old crawling feeling of being watched. ‘Lemmy?’ he tries. There’s a shape moving off in the deep woods. ‘Lemmy!’ and he’s over the fence into the trees.

  He’s running, branches clawing at him, trying to slow him. He ducks under a low sweeping oak and pushes through a screen of tamarack, so close, right there, and then he trips on a log, rolling forward onto his back. The air knocked out of him. He chokes, coughing out white vapour.

  Above him, the canopy of trees knits together and it’s dark here, so dark. He props himself up on his elbows and sees it four, maybe five, feet away.

  A fox.

  Stopping to look at him, head cocked to the side, tongue poking out between teeth, almost the way Lemmy would. But it’s not. He’s been up and down every trail, driven every back road and patrolled the highway these past three days. Lemmy’s gone.

  The fox leaps over him and the trees swallow it up again.

  Back over the fence, he picks up his mug where he left it and starts back for the house, then makes a detour to the tractor instead. Sitting in the middle of the field, rusting out. They painted it a few summers ago when Lemmy said his favourite colour was ‘peeple.’

  He swings himself up onto the seat, tucks the mug between his legs and gets both hands on the wheel. Lemmy liked to pretend it was the Batmobile and he was Batman. Milly was always Robin. The engine had long since been stripped for parts, but Lemmy would drive them all over the place from that one spot, clear across the country. Milly would pretend to fall off the tractor when they got to the Rockies, and this would always make his brother laugh. They’d finally get to the ocean and Lemmy would say, Let’s go swimming, Yershey.

  Can’t, Lemmy.

  Why not go swimming, Yershey?

  Cause I forgot your water wings.

  Yershey.

  We’ll have to go back for them. And Lemmy’d chase him into the house.

  The machine smells like gasoline, even now. As if they could just drive off like Lemmy always wanted.

  The tires at the back have started to sink into the dirt, like even the tractor is giving up. Väinö loved talking about the time Milly drove it into a ditch. Well, he said smoking a cigarette and looking down at it in the muck, you’ll never be a farmer, that’s for sure. He’d tell the story whenever Milly’s friends were around. He’d say, And you think the other one’s a retard. Nobody ever laughed except him.

  He sucks at the cold mint tea and looks at the squat log house, so small now but somehow they used to fit in there, all of them, with all their yelling and all their silence.

  Back up on the porch, he brings the clothesline in and takes down the plants he hung up to dry last week. He replaces these with the fresh plants from the sack and heads inside.

  He puts a pot on the stove and fills it partway with ethanol, flicking on the burner. Then he cracks the stalks of the dried plants and shoves everyt
hing into the food processor.

  He’s just transferring the pulp into the pot when the phone rings.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Milly?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘It’s Dunc.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Yeah – yeah, cool. Um … any news?’

  Milly waits.

  ‘Nothing, hey? Listen, this could totally be bogus – I mean, the source is legit, but you never know, right? But you said if I heard anything, and I just thought, y’know – ’

  ‘What is it, Duncan?’

  ‘Yeah, um, well, I heard a body got brought in today. Early. Picked up off 17, out your way.’

  The ethanol is starting to bubble, the air going thick with the sharp and the sweet. ‘Is it him?’

  ‘It could be anybody, Milly, I wouldna called but you said – ’

  ‘Is it him?’ The words hissing out, his insides boiling like the pot.

  ‘I dunno, nobody’s saying anything, but it was out on 17 so I thought – ’

  ‘Meet me in Memorial Park, the usual place, a couple hours.’

  ‘But, Milly – ’

  He drops the phone back on the cradle. His head spinning. He grabs the pot, a bubbling golden mess, the fumes overpowering, and dumps the whole thing down the drain. Some of the ethanol splashes up, burning into him, his insides burning out, and he kicks open the front door, pulling his shirt off to get at the cold. He finds the railing and tries to shout, to stop him, to say, Wait, wait, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, we’ll go, we’ll go all the way to the ocean.

  Then the old man’s at his side, pale and naked again. He takes Milly’s hand, curling arthritic fingers around his. He turns toward the forest and yells, ‘Lemminki!’

  And they shout together, over and over, until there are no words left for what they’ve lost.

  He feeds the old man buttered porridge and then gets him back in bed. Milly kisses him on the forehead again, then once, light on the lips. The way Lemmy always does. As he gets up, those strong bony hands catch him again.

  ‘What is it, Ukki?’