I’m leavin’, too, first chance I get. I’m sick of drunks and hangovers, assholes and songs and girls that break my heart. I know she’s sick of it, too. What the hell is here for her? What? That secret kid of hers? Memories? She’s got songs. Nothin’ else. I’ve got nothin’ ’cept her songs. ’Cept thoughts. ’Cept maybe the storms that tear down the lake every spring. Maybe someday they’ll rip the front off the church, steal the stained glass, and smash it on the beach. That would be something.
I only remember heartbreak and sorrow, like a fuckin’ country song. My heart gets tore up like my hands when I fall down drunk on a gravel road. Every fuckin’ day there’s something pullin’ at me every which way I turn—some memory, some ghost. I’m sick of ghosts! I want no past. No old selves waitin’ to be remembered at every street corner. I want the future and, goddamn, I want it now. Tonight! And I don’t care who knows it. I’m done. But her? She’s not done yet. She’s got a town full of sinners to sing up to heaven. She’s tethered to the earth by them. Them and her cousin and her lead-heavy heart. That’s all. And yes, you can buy me another.
CRYSTAL
Mac had the fire going when we drove up, burning brush from the lane and winter blowdown from the big firs that hemmed his place in. We could see his silhouette against the flames.
Bud cleared his throat. “Been a long time since I talked with Mac Stuart, Crystal.”
“Just don’t expect him to talk back.”
“He don’t go into town much anymore, hey? I can’t remember the last time I seen him. Or the girl. What’s her name?”
“Juniper. All’s you need to know is that she’s ten, so that means it’s ten years since Auntie June died and ten years since Mac retired and holed up out here. And everything’s great out here.” I shot him a look. “No matter what you heard.”
He patted my leg and opened his door. The sound of the lake poured in: waves racketing the beach, rocks rolling, water smashing onto the point. I stepped out of the truck and into the wind. Bud and I walked together toward the fire.
“Hey, Uncle Mac,” I said, stopping a good few feet from him. Bud followed my lead.
“Mr. Stuart,” he said.
Mac smiled and saluted us. I knew right away he was happy to see me with Bud.
The screen door slammed and Juniper ran out of the cabin. She tackled me and I staggered into the bush, laughing. Nothing on earth feels so good as that kid’s arms around my neck.
“Where’ve you been! It’s been like fifty years since you were here! I wanted to show you my stuff! Who’s this? Why’s your face all puffy?” She held my face in her hands and moved it into the firelight so she could see it.
I squeezed her, then pushed her off. “This is Bud. He gave me a ride out here.”
“Why’s he got a black eye?”
Mac shot me a look. Bud smiled and tipped his ball cap at Juniper, then he started hauling brush to the fire with Mac.
Juniper rattled on non-stop, filling me in on school and her baking, how she’d almost burned the cabin down but cleverly thought to use the fire extinguisher. She told me about the ice coming off, how the cabin down the bay had people in it again, how the old folks next door told her she was almost big enough to drive their boat on her own. I thought about her out here all the time with all the old folks; Chance Bay wasn’t exactly a hot spot for kids, but I knew, too, that she’d get no more loving place in her life here, with Mac and the Swannells next door and the old doctor and his wife at the other end of the bay. I wondered who it was in the Chance cabin. We sat on the stoop while the men worked. She talked and Mac and Bud bent and hurled, the fire almost smothering with each load until the flame took and swelled and sparked up behind them as they bent to their next load. The fire lit the huge Doug fir trunks and coloured them orange, making their ridges look deep and rough; it filled the clearing between Mac’s cabin and his shop, and the woods all around felt nicer because of the heat. It didn’t press in like sometimes the dark could when you sat at a campfire. I listened to Juniper and wondered if this feeling was just what I got here, at their place, or if it was the booze finally wearing off. I just felt full up, and it was a familiar feeling, like I’d been waiting for it a long time.
After a while, Juniper went in to put the kettle on. Mac caught Bud’s attention and they both came to sit with me. Mac pulled out his makings and rolled a tight little cigarette. It was the one thing he did that brought Glory immediately to mind—their hands matched. Them rolling cigarettes was exactly the same: the same flick of the wrist, the same fluffing of tobacco, the same quick tongue darting out to wet the glue on the paper.
We watched the fire. I felt the heat coming off Bud’s great big body and I leaned into him. Bud looked up at Mac and said over the sound of the fire, “That place down the bay, the Chance cabin, you know who’s got it now?”
Mac shook his head. Took a drag.
“A Chance, again. Danny. Youngest grandson of old man Chance. Lucky son-of-a… Excuse me. Lucky fellow, walking into that setup.”
Mac raised his eyebrows.
“He’s working at the mill, on my shift. Nice guy. Got a wife and a baby. Though, the wife, she’s not too happy here…” He trailed off.
This sounded familiar. “I met the wife,” I said.
“Did you?”
“Outside the pub. Yesterday, walking with the baby.” I remembered her pretty brown eyes watching me and Glory spit fire, her skinny jeans, her city clothes.
They looked at me like, carry on, but I wouldn’t. A portion of the fire collapsed in on itself and sparks shot up to the treetops.
“I worry about Danny,” Bud went on. “He’s dumb as a newborn calf, in a way. Don’t know nothing about this place, but there’s something to him. He’s alright.”
Mac nodded and looked toward the kitchen window. I followed his eyes and we watched Juniper bob around the kitchen. She was dancing, lit up like Christmas and us all watching. Mac and I shared a smile. Juniper poured the kettle of boiled water carefully into the teapot. Mac stubbed out his cigarette on the porch and nudged Bud with his knee. We rose to go in, but on the threshold, I couldn’t. Bud and Mac looked at me, then Mac turned and went in. He shut the door after him.
“What is it?” Bud came in close.
“I don’t know. I don’t want to come out of the wind, I guess.”
Bud looked out toward the lake. It was black and loud, pounding the rocky beach. “You wanna stay out here?” He looked into the house, at the warm light pouring out of the window.
“Come down to the water,” I said to him.
He grabbed a blanket from his truck and put it around me. I led him down the rickety stairs to the shore and, once down there, talking was pointless against the noise of the water. I opened the blanket and pulled him in. He put his arm around me and we walked that way, bumping hips and tripping over rocks, toward the point.
Nights like that, with the wind and the waves, you feel the weight of the lake. Like someone else’s shadow following behind you. It’s always there, like a bogeyman. It was hard not to think about all the people lost on the lake. Glory’s other brother, Alfred, Anton’s twin, died when they were teenagers. Drunk boating. Like so many boys dredged out or washed up onshore, dead. Nobody ever talked about Alfred anymore. If there’s a superstitious connection between everyone in this town, it’s that we don’t talk about the lake dead. It hurts too much. And you never know if you’re next.
My shivering started up again, thinking that stuff, as we walked. Bud pulled me in tight and stopped me once we were past Swannells’ and almost to the point. He pulled the blanket over our heads so we were in a little tent out of the wind. I thought he was going to try to kiss me again.
“Crystal, I wanna tell you something.” He paused. His breath was hot on my cheek. “Look, this doesn’t mean nothing to me. I mean, it means a lot to me. I’ve been waiting a long time…”
“I know,” I said.
“I don’t think you know all of
it.”
“What?” I didn’t want to talk. I could smell his deodorant and the spicier smell of him underneath it. I leaned in and pressed my nose to his neck.
“Crystal, I can’t do this if it don’t mean the same to you. I need this to matter and I’m telling you, if we start this up again it’s not going to finish.”
I laughed. “Is that a threat?”
He took my jaw in one hand and held my face so it was in line with his, though neither of us could see the other.
“It’s a promise. I mean it, Crystal.”
There was a steeliness to his voice and I bristled, but there was a backbone in that promise I wanted. I’d never had it before, and there were times when Glory was on a bender in Prince George or Burns Lake when it all went bad and there was no one but me to get us out of danger and into our own beds. I wanted someone to make sure I got home safe, too.
I stood on my tiptoes and leaned into Bud’s hand, hoping his mouth was where I thought it was. My lips met his moustache and I shivered again, pushed in harder, found his mouth, and kissed him. He let go of my jaw and pulled me close.
“Yes,” I said, in the fug of the blanket tent, once we’d separated to breathe. That was a promise, too.
I pulled the screen door open and let him in like a gentleman. Bud allowed it, but I knew he wouldn’t next time. I grinned at him and he leaned in to smooch me again, but I pushed him through the door instead. I wanted to watch him discover Mac’s place.
The room was like falling into the lake, like coming up for air after you jumped in off the cliff and went deep, like you’d dived in so far you were bursting for air, the bubbles streaming past you. But then you realize right away you can breathe and it’s just an illusion. Every wall was blue or green or grey or black, hung with cloth cut and stitched together in sharp angles, so it became obvious this was the lake, quilted and hung, like it had been mounted mid-wave. Still water, storm, underwater, on the water, sky and water, it was all there, almost moving. I watched Bud plant his feet wide so he could look without getting seasick: quilts as big as walls between the windows. I let him look, then I shoved him from behind and laughed at him.
“Guess I didn’t warn you, eh?”
He just stared.
“Got some tea, guys,” Juniper said. She put a mug in my hands and the steam rose and warmed my face. I gave the mug to Bud and went in close to my favourite quilt. Most of them were made of wool and flannel scraps. There was cotton, worn-out cotton, some of it stained in spots, most of it white or blue, but my favourite was made of a dress I could remember my auntie wearing: cornflowers so thick no ground showed, and no sky, either. I stroked the flowers with the tip of my finger. Up close it was like shattered glass—all triangles and straight lines—the lake broken up and seen through cracked eyeglasses. But when I turned and looked at the quilt across the room I could make out a boat, a grey boat, next to dark cliffs, one of them with a hole right through. Chance point. The town a brown smear off to the right.
“Pretty neat, hey?”
Bud took a sip of milky orange pekoe. I went and sat with Juniper on the couch. I watched him do a double take when he looked at us. I knew what he saw: it was like me and Glory in high school, except it wasn’t Glory—short hair and no sneer—and I was old and wrinkly. And tired. I let myself sink into the cushions, ready to weep after the day I’d had, all the emotions still roiling so close to my surface.
Mac came in and smiled at us there on the couch.
Bud said, “Mr. Stuart, these quilts are something else.”
Juniper said, “They’re made of Nana’s leftovers. Sheets and blankets and clothes. Some of it he got from the second-hand store, but mostly it’s Nana’s. She had a lot of blue stuff.”
I said, “He taught himself. He was mending Juniper’s stuff, anyway, and when she went to bed, well, there’s no TV out here, so he sewed.”
Mac shrugged. He put down his tea and cracked the lid on a Crock-Pot on the counter. Yellow steam rose and the smell of ham and peas escaped. The phone rang and Juniper got up to answer it.
“Papa!”
My guts dropped. I knew instantly something was wrong.
Anton and Tiny hadn’t come in from fishing. It was Tiny’s wife on the phone. They were talking search and rescue. I looked out the window and tears started up in my eyes. Not Anton. Not Tiny. Not my cousins, because then it was also me. And Glory. We’d lost too many neighbours and friends and Alfred… I looked at Mac. These were his boys. His eyes were shut. I took his arm.
“Mac, what do you want us to do?”
His voice was rough. “Go get Glory. Keep her safe.”
“That’s all? Shouldn’t we bring her here?” Bud asked.
“She’s going to lose it when she finds out. She’ll go nuts and we don’t know what she’ll do. We can’t bring her here, though. She doesn’t come here.” I turned back to Mac. “I’ll find her,” I said. I hugged him, and he was like a bird whose feathers compress when you pick it up in your hands. I held him for a second too long and then I turned to Bud. “I’ve gotta go.”
“I’ll come, too.”
I shook my head. “I need to tell her alone. She’s going to want to go after them or burn shit down, I don’t even know.”
He was confused. “But you might need me.”
“Of course I need you,” I snapped, “but not like that. You need to see if you can help with search and rescue or something.” I swallowed. All of us knew how stories like this ended up: coffins and wakes, not search and rescue. “Bud?” I held his arm. “I need your truck.” I was wrecking it, I could tell. He wouldn’t understand. I wanted to throw up.
But instead of pushing me down or walking away, he fished out his truck keys and handed them to me.
“It’s a stiff clutch. Let it out slow. Crystal…” He couldn’t get it out.
I didn’t want to watch him try, so I interrupted. “I know,” I said. “Me, too.”
As I left, Juniper was crying into the phone.
CHORUS
Leah Janine Anderson, outside the high school
This town’s a motherfucker. You get born here, you live for a while, you grow and go to school and eat and drink and party, maybe you even get married and have babies, and then you die.
I hate the assholes who move away and then move back. What the hell is wrong with them? Why’d they move away in the first place if they’re only gonna come back? I bet I know. I been thinking about it. They got nothing more to prove here. Everyone knows how great they were when they were young and partied hard. But everyone knows all their fuck-ups, too. Can’t get away from it here. Even their kids will grow up knowing all the sucky ways they fucked up when they were young. In your own hometown you’re sort of famous, though. And that’s something. You got a light?
I heard about a girl here who was going to be famous for real, outside of Fort. I heard she was this great musician who was going to play in California or Hollywood or somewhere, and then something bad happened and she never went. Someone said she was that one who sings at the pub, but I don’t believe them. She’s too old and she’s ugly. She doesn’t sing good, either. My uncle says she could sing like kite strings, whatever that means. I think he meant like an angel. I heard that before. But I think he meant the other one—there are two of them, sisters or cousins. That one only whores around. I heard that, too. You hear everything in a small town.
Cousins, probably. That’s not hard to believe—everyone is your cousin here. My aunt had ten kids, so I have lots of cousins. I hate some of them, too. Some of them are real assholes.
I go to school with that one’s daughter. No one says she’s her daughter, but lots of people know Juniper was raised by someone else because her mother was busy singing and whoring. And Juniper? She’s smarter than anyone in my school. She’ll get scholarships and she’ll get out of here. I might, too, because I’m good at volleyball, even though I’m not real tall. So, there’s a good chance I’ll leave, but Juniper, she�
�ll go, and she’ll go far. No one’s worried about her.
I worry about me, though. If I’ll get out for real. You hear so many stories about kids with big hopes and kids with talent who fuck it up, or get knocked up, or die in the lake before they can go. I’m real careful when I hear a story like that. I wear a life jacket in a boat and I make my boyfriend wear a condom even though he hates them. I try hard at school, but I’ll never be as good as Juniper. But if I were Juniper, I’d work hard, too, coming from that mother and all those stories about her.
CRYSTAL
I retraced the drunk journey I’d walked earlier that day. My heart ached when I remembered the shit I’d said to Glory over breakfast.
I drove the five kilometres to the pub in silence, struggling with the truck—its high cab and man-shaped seat and gears made me stretch and lurch; I had to almost stand on the clutch to downshift.
The pub’s parking lot was packed—junky cars and skooked-up pickups, a semi with no trailer, naked-looking, butted up right to the front door. Somebody’s idea of a joke: parking like a maniac. I wanted to see if she’d come into town before I headed all the way out to her place. The pub was a likely spot.
I walked in. The night was rocking: a tree-planting crew had taken over the whole pool-table side and a game of full-contact pool was underway. Sandy had jugs lined up on the bar for Lou-Ellen to deliver, but Lou-Ellen was stuck talking to a man in low-riding jeans who had her pinned against the wall near the toilets. I could see her trying to squeeze her tray under his arm to get away. The TV was on over the mantel and two tables were shouting at a hockey game. I was scanning the pub for Glory but my eyes stopped at the bar—a familiar back, ball cap, low-hanging head. Hardy.
Shit. I knew Hardy was likely to know where Glory was, but I didn’t want to talk to him. Oh God, I didn’t want to. I made my legs move, anyway, and sidled up to the bar. Sandy was there in a flash.
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