The light changed suddenly—it was like someone had switched on a spotlight. I turned back the beach. In silhouette, Glory was black against the brighter flames of the bonfire with a gas can in her hand. There was no burning boat anymore, just fire. I looked back at the fight and saw Hardy lean over and spit on Todd, who lay still on the ground, before he started running for the beach.
Bud and Danny knelt near Todd, but I watched Hardy go, until two silhouettes stood together in front of the fire. They didn’t look real—they were flat in the glare of the fire, small, like drawings in a children’s book.
I heard Renee say, “Danny, I think we should go to Glory.”
He looked up at her but stayed crouched. “This man needs our help.”
“He’s going to hurt her.”
“Who?” But Danny had turned back to Todd, shucking off his jacket to staunch the flow of blood from Todd’s head.
“Glory,” I said. I looked back to the beach, where one of the figures had dropped to the ground. I started running. I could hear Renee right behind me.
I felt the heat of the fire on my face as I reached Glory. I reached for her, but Hardy rose up, and fell on both of us like a tree. My ribs crushed under his weight, Glory underneath me, elbows and knees. He rained punches down on both of us. I fought to get away, to haul Glory away, but Hardy was like an octopus, his fists everywhere. He smacked my ear, knocking me sideways with the blow, and suddenly the noise was gone—no crackling flames or wind or waves, no sound, just sheer, mad panic to get away. Stars and static threatened me. I felt on the verge of passing out—I couldn’t get a good lungful of air, but I could see Glory struggling, still underneath Hardy, and I had to get her away. I scrambled toward them on the sand—and then Renee threw herself onto Hardy and knocked him off Glory. Glory reached for me and I grabbed her and rolled us away.
When I looked up, the whole beach was streaming toward us—people screaming and running. I saw Bud. Bud! I struggled to my feet and ran for him. I looked back for Glory, but she wasn’t where we’d landed. I stopped running, and saw her just as she hauled herself into the cab of Bud’s truck. The roar of the truck broke through the ringing in my ears. Over the engine noise, I heard myself scream her name. Glory ground the truck into gear and floored it. Then Hardy had me by one arm, shaking me, yelling in my face. Bud ran up and grabbed my other arm. Both men pulled, but Bud held my waist and pulled harder. We broke away and Hardy staggered. He caught Renee by the arm. She scratched at his hand to make him let go. Hardy reached into the fire and came out with a driftwood board, flames shooting out of the end, and then he froze, lit up bright in the truck’s headlights.
Everything slowed—Renee slipped Hardy’s grasp and scrambled away. Hardy dropped the flaming log just as the truck slammed into him. The truck kept going, plowing into the fire, and then into the lake. Flames and water flooded over the hood and the windshield. The engine squealed, then stalled. The noise stopped. The black lake swallowed Glory whole.
DANNY
The crowd milled around on the beach; chests heaving, they stamped through the embers, yelling at one another. I held Renee back. She fought me, but there was no way I’d let her go in there. Waves rolled over the truck cab, knocking everyone back. Crystal was in the water, up to her hips, the waves sucking at her as she clawed at the door.
“Crystal!” Renee yelled, snatching at my hands.
Crystal smashed against the truck with every wave. Her feet slipped, and she slid away from the cab, sucked out in the undertow, but she caught the side mirror on the way down and held on. It gave under her weight, and broke off, and she grabbed for the handle. The cab door fell open. Glory tumbled out into the lake and both of them went under.
Bud dove in after them.
Too much time passed—endless time. I felt the concussion of each wave hitting the shore. The lights across the lake came into and out of view with each massive wave. Renee shook, convulsive shivers. It was dark with the fire gone, the embers strewn across the beach—darker than I’d ever seen it.
Bud burst from the water, Crystal’s hands gripped tight in his, and they stumbled toward shore. He dropped to his knees, pulling Crystal with him, pinning her to the beach, where she coughed until she gagged. He held her while she vomited. They lay together on the sand when she was through, people leaning over them, reaching in, talking to them to see if they were okay, but they couldn’t answer, couldn’t stop looking at one another. The clouds broke and in the thin light from the quarter moon I could see the fine, silvery lines of the truck sliding further underwater. Waves broke over the hood, the windscreen, the roof of the cab.
“Glory,” Crystal said. I could hardly hear her over the wind. Her head sagged on Bud’s arm. “She won’t make it.”
“Shhhh, Crystal, don’t,” he said.
The waves sloshed into the truck’s bed, sucking it further into the lake. The crowd pushed up closer to us, trying to see if Renee was alright. Renee turned her face into my chest to avoid their eyes.
“Look!” someone called.
Glory stood, streaming water, in the shallows. A wave knocked her down. She tried to stand again, but couldn’t get her legs under her. She crawled until she was out of the water, then stood on wobbly legs. Her hair hid her face. Crystal lunged for her, but Bud held her back. Crystal pushed him off and ran for her cousin. She grabbed her and they both fell in the shallows, the waves rolling them back toward the lake.
They struggled and stood, then Glory shook Crystal’s hands off. They stood staring at one another, swaying in the waves, trying to keep their footing. Neither of them spoke, but they looked like they couldn’t move apart, like they were tethered together with some invisible rope. Crystal opened her mouth and said something, but I was too far away to hear. She brought up her hands like she wanted to grab Glory, but Glory shoved her, and Crystal fell to her knees. A waved knocked her sideways and she scrambled to stay upright, to get to her feet, to stop Glory from walking away. Her mouth was wide open, she was shouting something, but Glory didn’t hesitate. She walked away.
There was something brave about it, even though Glory stumbled on the rocky shore. She looked spent, slope-shouldered, her hair hanging down her back, but she didn’t look back. She walked through the crowd and away up the beach, and no one, not even Renee, tried to stop her.
Bud helped Crystal up. The rest of us stood in the ashes of the fire, milling around, watching the truck slip into the lake, burnt wood floating all around. I couldn’t make sense of the night—it was like all the stories my dad had told me about the town had come true at once, and it was just as brutal as he’d made it sound. Bud’s truck was gone, swallowed whole. Glory’s brothers were lost on the lake, shipwrecked maybe. I hugged Renee. We were on the shore, at least. We were whole. I tried to warm her up, to stop her shivering, but I couldn’t. We stared at the water.
“Danny? What just happened?”
“I don’t even know.” I was shaking, too—the aftershock of adrenaline and fear. I turned her face to me and kissed her. I held her tight, so she wouldn’t slip away again.
CHORUS
Ruth Harmer, notes toward a news article, never written
Afterward, even people who weren’t at the pub that night, even they’d describe how Glory drowned, or else how she walked away free.
Some versions told how weirdly high the water was, the way the trees were in it up to their roots.
There were stories that had Glory firing off guns, shooting at everyone, trying to kill someone before she killed herself.
What we know for sure is Anton’s body washed up on a rock at the mouth of the Stuart a month later. Tiny was found in the wreck of the boat up in Whitefish Bay. And Glory? Nobody found Glory, but we heard Glory found herself, got a record deal and a hit single.
Some swear she drowned in the lake that night, but lots of people saw her climb out of the water, disown her cousin. Some say they saw wet footprints lead all the way out of town to the highway.
There are other versions, too. Todd, for one, never tells the same story twice. If you ask him, he says he was set upon by bandits—that the scar on his forehead is from a bludgeon, the dent in his skull from a fall from the sky. But too many people saw him get shit-kicked by Hardy to believe him. His brain broke that night. He never told a true story again, if he ever had before.
Afterward, once the interviews with police petered out, and once the rumours and suspicions died down to whispers, there was calm, and it was almost like everyone started to forget about it. Then Glory got caught and the rumours started zipping around again. All that time she was out at her place on Southside. The police had her in custody in no time at all.
DANNY
I didn’t lie. I said what I saw, just like everybody else. I agreed she got in the truck. The officer asked if she drove it at the bonfire. I said yes, she did. He asked if she was upset, I said she was. Her brothers were missing. He said she killed her lover. I said she saved her cousin. I told him she saved my wife. She did. I remember it perfectly. Fire. Truck. Water. Renee in my arms. Glory there, then gone. Bud and Crystal. Footprints.
The officer probed for clarification. I clarified. I described the location of the fire, the logistics of the truck-fire-lake trajectory. I said all the things he asked me to and then he asked me about my wife, and I stopped talking. The interview room at the Fort St. James detachment leaves a lot to be desired. I stared at the stained ceiling tiles and counted my heartbeats. Eventually the interview was over. I drove home. Renee had made split-pea soup.
In twenty years, when Thomas is a man and he comes home to ask advice from his dad about women or love and if he’s about to get married, I’ll say, do it. Love her. Marry her. Make a life together. It won’t be easy. Maybe we’ll be cutting kindling to fill the bin by the stove. Maybe it’ll be late spring, when the ice is off and the air is fresh, but it’s warm enough to be outside without a jacket. Maybe he’ll have a moustache or he’ll wear an old hat of mine over his sandy hair. Maybe he’ll call me Pop. I’ll say, love is hard work. Love is something you make each day. I’ll look down at the beach to where we have our Christmas bonfire every year. I’ll say, love is a thing you make with your heart and hands and it’s got to be something you shore up all the time, that you rebuild to keep the weather out, and that’s where you live, you and your wife—in a changing, hard-won shelter the two of you build up each time you find a weakness. With your heart and your hands. Because you said you would. Because you want to. Because of her.
I heard Glory lives in a halfway house in Vancouver these days. Renee said that all Glory wanted was to get out of here and you can’t deny she did that. I bet she’s alright. No matter what they say about her.
Whatever she’s doing, I hope she’s still singing. But wherever she goes next, I hope it isn’t back here.
RENEE
We set off one day in July in the Swannells’ canoe, the gear loaded up past the gunwales, the baby tucked in front with me, between my knees. The day was perfectly still, the lake a sheet of glass. The Swannells waved at us from shore.
It took us a while to get sorted and get off the beach—Thomas wouldn’t settle unless Danny was holding him, and he couldn’t hold him and paddle at the same time. We tried it with me in the back and Danny in the front, but the back of the canoe stuck up like a toe and the front rode low and we couldn’t go anywhere. Jim laughed at us and helped us move the gear around so the canoe was even in the water. He called it “trim.”
I tried, but I couldn’t make us go straight. We almost ran into the point, and Danny said, “Jesus Christ, Renee,” and I started to cry. We took a break then, and the Swannells held Thomas. Danny walked me down the beach and said he was sorry. I wanted to forget about the trip, but he sweet-talked me, said he had a surprise for me, and he did—he handed me a new journal. I tucked it into my new dry bag, and we got Thomas settled. I sat in the bow of the canoe with Thomas at my feet.
Danny got the hang of steering pretty quickly. He’d take two strokes forward, do a correction stroke or two, and after a time we didn’t zigzag across the bay so badly. I tried to paddle steady and even in the bow. I tried to be strength for Danny’s direction, even though I didn’t want to be there. I’d suggested a road trip to California, something with solid ground, a grocery store nearby. I was trying to be stoic. I didn’t complain. I counted each stroke, and eventually each stroke became a word: here, now, us, this, you.
We paddled away from the bay and the cabin up on the point and it felt good to leave, knowing we had somewhere to come back to, knowing we would come back, and that this was home. I told myself that. I said home. I tried to mean it.
Danny was excited to see the west end of the lake. I wondered if I’d packed enough for us to eat. Thomas watched the birds from under the brim of his sunhat and sucked on his bottle, his eyes at half-mast. Soon he was rocked to sleep by our paddle strokes. We travelled all afternoon. My shoulders ached, but I didn’t rest. I stopped only to sip from my water bottle or to adjust the blanket covering the baby. Once, I glanced back at Danny and the lake behind him was huge, the shore completely gone. It was terrifying. I imagined us from above, just dark dots on the skin of the water, a family-sized speck in a world of blue. I made myself think about the canoe; it was solid, sturdy, full of our gear, our bodies, ourselves. It was enough, I told myself. I started paddling again.
There are things I say to make it okay, but we all do that, don’t we? There are ways we make the world more manageable, so we can carry its weight. At night, in the dark, when we’re spooned up tight together, we whisper, this happened, then this happened, then this, until we fall asleep. Then we wake up. Together. And we try again.
The spring seems so long ago that it’s like I was a different woman, someone who couldn’t see how good she had it. I needed someone to hold up a mirror, to show me my own face. Funny it was Glory. It turned out she was some kind of messenger. I still remember things she said to me and they sound so strange—I’ll be slinging laundry into the dryer from the washer and I’ll remember her asking, you’re not running away, are you? Strange that I was always running right at myself—the grown-up me with the shitty backwoods haircut, who can split kindling and can finally ask for help when she needs it. And I need it. Now I ask Danny, or Rosie Swannell, or I get Juniper to babysit so I can have a minute to figure myself out.
There’s a name for what I have. There are a few, in fact. And it’s not failure. I might call it ennui, if I’m feeling fancy. Some days it’s just sorrow. Some days it’s the blues, but all in all it’s mourning, and that’s okay. If you’re the type of girl who decides who she’s going to grow up to be and you’re wrong, it takes a while to get over it. Dr. Matthew said I could call it post-partem depression if I wanted to, but I’d rather not. I’m just taking it day by day and writing it all down.
Today, with Danny and Thomas, I dip my paddle in the water and lift it out. I put it in, pull, and push it forward through the air until I grab another bite of water. I pull our little family further into the unknown. Together.
BUD
I found the CD after work, scrambling around for change for a pop in that dark pocket in the door of the truck. Dan was supposed to meet me after shift, but the foreman wanted to talk to him, so I waited in the truck with the motor running, slipped the CD in out of curiosity. I love those first few seconds of tape hiss—when you wonder what comes next.
“Can you hear me?” It was Crystal’s voice. She tapped the mic. “Is it loud enough? Okay… Hi… Alright. Okay. So…Bud? Is Paul recording? Should I start?”
I couldn’t help but smile. I remembered that night. A bit of a clusterfuck trying to set up the recording stuff, but good in the end. She sang alone at the Dream Beaver for the first time. Felt like my chest was gonna burst with pride.
“Right. So, this is Glory’s song. I wrote it. I never did that before because she always wrote the songs. And I’m playing guitar. And it’s her guitar, and I
don’t usually do that, either.
“So, I wrote this song and here it is. I’m not going to talk anymore…I’m just going to sing.”
She cleared her throat. I remembered her fiddling with the mic. I heard glasses clink and a dishwasher start.
“Jesus, Sandy, would you turn that off?” My voice. Made me laugh to hear it.
Sandy’s muffled apology from far away. Then Crystal’s guitar, soft, slow, growing stronger, and then her crackly, beautiful voice:
She says, “Hey, big boy, I’ve got a song you should hear,”
and for just one second, you’re the only guy in the bar
and you wonder, just like everybody wonders,
where she goes between the songs,
and you wonder if it’s her or her guitar,
but you can’t make love to strings and wood
you can’t make love to strings and wood
like she does.
Crystal’s voice, like barnacles and salt water, like the wind off the lake, full of sadness and fear—she didn’t sound like Glory and she didn’t sound like herself, but she gained confidence as she went. I could picture her closing her eyes as she spoke the next words:
She turns her head and spits,
she swears like a trucker,
she laughs right at you,
calls you motherfucker
and then she’s not so pretty anymore.
She says dance me outside,
she says take me higher,
but she’s so high already
she’s crying,
and all you want is more
all you want is her but she’s gone.
Glory Page 15