“I know. But I didn’t . . . I mean, do . . . a lot of things . . . that I . . . wish I had, and . . . and . . .”
“Yeah. Well.” Melissa swallowed, shifting her weight onto her other hip, recrossing her arms. “So, anyway, you were saying, you turned around and you . . . ? How did you know . . . where I live? Did you stop and ask someone or something?”
Cedric waved a hand to give a simple answer but found, confusingly, that he didn’t have one. “I . . .” he searched the carpet near his feet, then the coffee table. “That’s a good point. I . . . you know I don’t know. I just . . . I . . . just came. I just . . . drove here.”
As Cedric looked back up at her, the room was wavering, the paint becoming unfocused, the pictures on the walls shaking in a soundless blur. Then his daughter, standing in front of him, flickered into transparency a few times, reappearing as solid and concrete as she was before, watching him, waiting for him to answer. Then her image flickered again, much in the way that the old eight millimetre projectors did, he thought, just before reaching the end of a reel or slipping through an amateur splice job, a few frames from a blank section flittering in, flashing out; or like words, words that you know you’ve seen in a text before, being repeated somewhere else, lighting up, fading away. Until her form fluttered a last time and vanished from in front of him, instantly reappearing on the couch, sitting there now, suddenly comfortable, reading an earmarked page, a cup of tea in her other hand, like she’d never gotten up to answer the door in the first place.
“Melissa.” Cedric heard that his voice had become hollow, fragmented, remote. He could barely hear it himself, while she, judging by her lack of reaction, couldn’t hear it at all. He spoke louder, almost a shout, “Melissa!” Nothing.
The cat, a young tabby, who had been staring groggily into the centre of the room, approximately where Cedric was standing, swished its tail, an ear cupping to the side. Its tired stare rose a bit, nearing Cedric’s face, distantly listening to something, for something.
Cedric, baffled and squinting, turned around to look at his car in the driveway. It wasn’t there. Then he lifted his hand in front of his face, looked down at his feet, his legs, and things started to become clear to him, started to fall into place. Of course, he thought, of course. It had been almost obvious, the whole time. He’d just never let himself consider it.
He turned again to his daughter on the couch. “You know what’s crazy?” he asked in a normal volume, not trying to get her attention anymore, speaking at her, not with her. “I’ve been trying to convince all these people—these people who I open my eyes to and flash away from a minute later—trying to convince them that something was happening to me, something strange and profound and mysterious. I’ve been trying to get them to believe that this experience was real, that it was important, and . . . While there was really only one person that had to get it, you know? That had to believe what this was all about.” And finally—finally—Cedric did. He understood. And with that understanding, he grinned softly.
He noticed from the cover of her book that she was reading poetry, and it made him think of something else he wanted to say. “Melissa.” The cat’s glare lifted to another part of the room, still searching distractedly, sleepily. “You probably don’t remember this, but you weren’t there when I picked up the last of my things from the house, and your mother wasn’t either. And with no one around, do you know what I did? I went into your room, where you kept all those poems you were always writing, and I looked through some of them, even read a few. I picked one, for no real reason that I can remember, and took it with me. Stole it. I kept it in the top drawer of my desk. It was a long poem, or a series of them anyway, stapled together, numbered with roman numerals. They were recounting a man’s life, a famous chemist or botanist I think, something like that. And I can’t help but think that, maybe, when you find out . . . you might write something like it . . . about me. My life. You know. Maybe.”
The cat, giving up on the sounds, put its chin onto the sofa and closed its eyes, intent on finding sleep again as soon as it could. It licked its tiny lips, swallowed, sighed.
Melissa turned the page.
In the living room’s bay window, a myriad of individual clouds—the kind that are only seen in autumn—glided through the sky, all of them moving in the same direction. From one nameless place, to another.
( xii )
How gently the tires rolled off the shoulder,
swathing through the grass to the trees;
where some of the smaller ones splintered
and the thickest were bark-gashed, bleeding resin.
The quiet that followed was a devoted one, assuring,
the only sound the vivid foliage, dropping
with a gentle plink onto the roof, tapping
the pulverized safety glass, its intricate geometry
opaque and glimmering as crystalline snow, leaves
sliding down it with the fffff of toboggans.
Like torn triangles of construction paper,
they piled onto the wipers,
a glueless collage.
Meanwhile the powder from the airbags cascaded a slat of sun,
dust pale as talcum, or as the flour I was once allowed to touch
on frosted rolling pins, doughy countertops where
cookie-cut entrails lay limp and forgotten.
Resting my head against the driving wheel
I found the pillow to be hard and rubber-coated,
far from the afternoon bed of an elementary sick day;
an observation I tried to get out of my head, tried to replace
with something a little more inspired or noteworthy, momentous.
But I never did.
October 21, 2007, 4:29 PM
The phone was red. And what William hated most about it, besides the fact that it was inconveniently mounted on a wall in a tight corner (and at a strange angle), was that when it rang it was so gratingly loud that you could actually see the cherry receiver quavering as you picked it up. He shook his head in the relieving silence, put it to his ear. “Yes?” Then he leaned over the tiny and strangely angled desk to write on a pad of paper there, pen out of his jacket pocket, clicked and already jotting down the information, a glance at his watch, time and date scrawled onto the top left-hand corner. “Mm-hmm, all right. And how long ago did the call come in? Mm-hmm. Okay. So you’re more or less ten minutes away then, is that about right, John? All right. We’ll be ready for you. Thanks.” William hung up, fiddling with the twists of the phone cord afterwards, flattening them against the wall, and stepped back out of the corner, giving the receiver a final disapproving look.
William walked into the reception area and listed off the information to one of the nurses in passing, who put down what she was doing and walked away in a relative hurry. He continued down the hall to a small office where Hanif Khaled, who’d just arrived for his shift, was looking over some patients’ charts. Technically, William was free to go, having handed off his responsibilities to Hanif the moment the intern had arrived, but he also knew that, with a call like this, coming from the red phone as it had, he wouldn’t be leaving any time soon. Not that that was a problem; it was the nature of the beast of rural medicine really, and something you had to get used to if you wanted to practise it.
“Hanif,” William spoke in a low and direct tone. “It sounds . . .” he checked his watch, “like we’ve got a code coming in in about eight minutes. Janet’s prepping the room now. So uh . . .” he adjusted the watch on his wrist, “I’ll be staying behind to help out of course.”
Hanif, who, in the few days that he’d been there had already made the impression of being a confident and competent intern, paled a bit with the news, though quickly postured and gave a solid nod, already on his toes and striding out of the room. “Thank you. I would . . . appreciate thahd very much, Doctor Kirbee.”
He rounded the corner and in a glimmer of subtle body language, William, who was followin
g right behind him, understood—without needing to verify or point it out—that so far in Hanif’s brief career, he hadn’t yet handled a code, and maybe hadn’t even assisted in one. This would be his first. William hoped things went well for him.
William Kirby had been a doctor in Haliburton for twenty-four years. He’d schooled in London, Ontario, grown up in Oshawa, and spent every summer of his childhood on Spruce Lake, one of the hundreds of bodies of water around Haliburton, jumping from his parents’ dock, with the family’s golden retriever stretching out in the dripping air behind him. When he’d made the move from the city, it was in 1983, the same week a Boeing 767 sunk out of the sky due to a metric conversion error with its fuel levels, having to land on a small Manitoba runway as a jawdroppingly oversized glider. William remembers talking about the incident with the neighbour on either side of him, and getting the feeling that there was going to be more to this rural living than what he’d drawn from holiday recollections and reveries. To begin with, he realized that people there could be divided into two groups, his neighbours representative of one each: vacationers and locals. The former thought of themselves, unequivocally, as the latter; and the latter detested, unequivocally, the former.
This being the middle of October, it was the time of year when, with the last of the leaves, the last of the vacationers left; and so was also a time when William, as a local, was supposed to rejoice at their departure, supposed to be glad for the rustling quietude they left behind; squirrels free to skitter along the baring branches frenetic and nervy, the sound of fishing boats eerily absent, while hunters patrolled the back roads with their guns and camouflage, beer-bellied soldiers ranked and filed for winter bragging rights. But, truth be told, he found himself more leaden than lightened, found the shoulder season one that made his shoulders hunch, turned him inward, left him more introspective and reticent. He noticed the smell of leaves that burned through the autumn drizzle, the mist of raindrops seeming less to put out the fires and more to feed the smoke. Noticed the pine needles that collected along the windward shores, floating and undulating on the surfaces of the lakes, pressed into a tight carpet of geometric patterns, sodden-matchstick mosaics. He became aware of the autumn flowers speckling the ditches in their carefully subdued hues, drawing little attention to themselves, as if deliberately, as if working quietly and tirelessly at some mysterious aim, something that hovered just above their mere survival, stamens prodding spellbindingly into the cool air: witch hazel, goldenrod, ladies’ tress, aster.
William Kirby knew that, to many people, such observations might be considered flights of fancy, which were discordant with his profession and personality. But he didn’t see it that way. Einstein had often quoted that a sense of the mystic—that a wonderment at what is all around us, yet impenetrable—was the germ of all true science and art. William agreed. He loved medicine (and all the sciences really) because of the driving force behind them, the disciplined and systematic search to understand what we don’t when it would be better for humanity if we did. And William didn’t see this teasing out of the natural world’s mysteries as an attempt to control them, but as a means of being closer to them, and even, in some way, to honour them, revere them.
With opinions like these, it was incredible to think that he’d been called a skeptic more than a few times in his life and, once, even a cynic. Though he remembered the circumstances. The problem was, thought William, that people naturally linked any kind of infatuation with the mystical with things of a much less credible nature. Like the ridiculous pseudosciences (astrology, numerology, phrenology) or the endless splay of New Age egocentricities. Now these things, on the other hand, William was happy to dismiss with a snide remark or roll of the eyes. Sure the mystical was alluring, a kind of intoxicant, but if he found that others, or even himself, were crossing the line, feeling a little light-headed with it, it was best, in William’s opinion, to stamp a solid foot on the ground and keep it there. One must—must—always fall firmly on the side of reason, on quantifiable, evidence-based principles that could stand up to peer review and rigorous scrutiny.
Which is maybe why William liked to keep a thumb on the pulse of how quickly things were changing, scrolling through the biggest online science magazines in the evenings, why he was a devout follower of Boing Boing. Because every passing week saw incidents surfacing that laws hadn’t yet been designed for, or had even considered; let alone corresponding ethical codes and conduct. The speed at which society was being asked to adapt was an exponential one. A fact that most people probably found daunting, but which seemed to fuel William, absorb him. All the more because the upshots and spinoffs of the progressive global village, the urban displacements, eclectic cosmopolitana, and the newly invented alternative lifestyles could even be seen in rural Ontario life.
There was Lynn, with her tattoos and piercings, living just up the road with another woman her age, both of them young enough to be his daughters. The couple had bought a small farm on the outskirts of town and had slotted themselves into the same chores and rounds that the family before them had maintained, every day, for more than fifty years. They kept chickens, horses, a few milk cows, a large enough garden to keep them cooking over the summer and fill their freezer for the winter. He’d met Lynn like he met most people, as a patient, which, as with most people, led to cordial hellos in passing, but then, as a pleasant surprise, to a few eggs or surplus produce from her vegetable patch, handed over the fence when he sauntered by on his daily walks. Once, William saw her feeding a few of those eggs, presumably rotten ones, to her horses, holding them out in front of their noses, one at a time, until the horse had wrapped its velvety mouth around it, lifted its head, rolled the egg down the length of its tongue, and quietly crushed it at the back of its throat. Until he saw this, he had no idea that a horse would eat an egg. Another time, around New Year’s, she gave him a chicken she’d butchered herself. A young woman from the city, butchering a chicken. William imagined the physical act, how she would do it, how discomfiting it probably was, knowing he couldn’t do it himself.
Then there was Jack, living along the Drag River Walkway, who welded sculptures together out of salvaged metal. Or Walter, the hunting outfitter who’d moved there from Kansas City, spoke with what sounded like an exaggerated American accent and had a certificate in animal-assisted therapy, his clientele split between gruff hunters and timid children, rifle casings jingling in his pockets while he coaxed a youthful hand to pet a therapy llama.
Even the most no-nonsense people in the area could have hidden eccentricities to them, say things that surprised you. Like two years ago, when William had had a double load of firewood brought in and piled under his deck in the backyard. It was the third year that he’d gotten his wood from the same guy, Steven Greig, who spent the season cutting, drying, and delivering it himself; though William knew that he also worked on a selective logging crew, doing some tree pruning and other grunt work for a horticulturalist in town, some snow plowing for a contractor in the winter. He was a serious fellow, quiet, hard-working, who always wore a stern expression. He lived with a local woman with similar traits, and they had three children, whom they’d christened with interesting names that William had a hard time remembering, like Nodin and Sade. As he was finishing with the wood—immaculate rows, stacked into stable walls, already divided into thick rolls and halved logs that could be easily cut into kindling—William decided he would give him a little extra this year, waiting for him to run his sleeve across his brow before handing him a beer.
“Thanks,” Steven had said, twisting the bottle open but not taking a sip until he’d caught his breath. They stepped into William’s spacious backyard.
“You do good work, Steve. Thanks a lot.”
Steven nodded firmly.
“So,” William, straining for a bit of light conversation, “your last name’s Greig. Is that British? German? What is that?”
“Hell if I know.” Steven shrugged, almost cutting himself short wit
h a swill of beer.
“So did you grow up up north then? Sudbury or something?”
“No . . .” he said hesitantly, a deep mumble. “No-no. Grew up all over the place. Mostly in Tronno, I guess. Kind of an orphan. Kind of a street kid. Gettin’ inta all kinds a trouble.”
William studied his face, suddenly intent on his expression, trying to read into the details between the words. “Who knew? Living on the street, eh?” He took a swig of beer himself, shook his head. “Wow.”
Steven took another steep sip. “Yup,” he said with finality. They chatted about the yard for a few minutes before Steven handed his empty bottle back to William. “Thanks for the beer. Gotta get goin’. Send ya the bill.”
“Hey, thanks a lot again. It looks great under there. No kiddin’.”
“N’probems. Anytime. Bye.” He walked to his truck, visibly self-conscious, and jostled into the cab, slamming the door hard.
William watched the truck as he pulled away, wondering about him, never having thought of Steven as one of those people who might be coming out on the better end of a tough life. He wondered what kind of trouble he’d gotten into, knowing, at the same time however, that he’d never find out. Then, as the truck turned onto the road, William saw that one of Steven’s kids had written into the thin layer of dirt that coated the vehicle’s paintjob, a child’s fingertip dragging clean the words DaDs Truk. William smiled. He was beginning to develop a weakness for graffiti. With a fling of his arms, he drained the last of both of the bottles onto the grass and went back inside.
William followed Hanif into the crash room, where Janet had turned on the machines and instruments and was busy checking the monitor. Hanif asked her where the crash cart was, and after she’d pointed to it, he began going through the items, seeming overly calm, moving fluidly, lifting the glass vials to read the labels. “The atropine is . . . ? Oh wait, eer it is. Sorrie.”
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