by Lee Kvern
Lloyd tips his hat at the judge. He’s going to need all the good Ukrainian luck he can find. He stuffs the napkin sight unseen into the breast pocket of his beige shirt.
Corporal Lloyd and Constable Pete leave through the back door. The inspector from Edmonton enters through the front door.
Judge Wade waves him over, impervious.
“Seen Corporal Lloyd?” The inspector asks, dense black brows knotted on his porpoise-broad forehead.
Judge Wade gestures in the thick air, puffs on his cigar.
“Not today,” the judge says.
The inspector’s mouth is set in a straight lip as he surveys the patrons of the lounge, the RCMP parka on the back of the chair across from the judge, the still-burning cigar in the ashtray. Judge Wade watches him through half-closed eyes, sips his Southern Comfort. He’s got nothing to worry about; more power than an inspector, and they both know it. The inspector doesn’t bother saying goodbye.
Wednesday, October 1987 » Lesa, age 31
In the trench, Lesa thinks she sees the animal’s soul rising like discernible vapours, like a watery wake of smoke from its inert body, heavenbound for good, for great, for God this time. She lets out a final sob, takes a deep breath, regains herself, looks up at the wide blue sky, finds an undersized comfort, like too-small underwear, but consoling nonetheless.
She digs around her Spandex body for a tissue, finds a slightly used Air Canada napkin tucked into the top of her boots, wipes the salt water leaking from her eyes, down her cheeks, her chin, her neck. She glances over at the dead animal, realizes in horror/joy that the animal’s chest is heaving. The thing is still alive! The coyote is alive! She jumps to her feet, unsteady in the wake of everything, dances around the ditch. She checks her non-existent pockets again for something to stop the bleeding. Comes up with nothing. She fumbles with the knotted string at her throat, instead rips it off, and holds the black cape out like the Grim Reaper’s toreador.
The animal’s chest is labouring heavily, plainly, she doesn’t know how she missed that before. And the troubling pool of black blood around the coyote’s mouth is spreading, but its dark eye is alive, glittering with the life she and Saint Francis hold so dear. Oh, she’s sure, she’s so sure she can save it. She’s elated at this second chance. The idea of darning the hole in her thin kismet. She stops dancing, crouches down on her hands and knees so as not to terrify the poor animal. But then as she moves closer, the coyote bares its awful yellow sharp(!) teeth and snarls. She stands up abruptly, alpha woman. The animal watches wildly through one eye, tries to drag its chest-labouring shattered body away from her. Oh God, she thinks, not that. She can’t be yet the second coming of the coyote’s demise. She puts her hand out as if to stop the animal or perhaps herself, but the coyote struggles back anyway, leaving the slick dark trail of its leaky blood over the blond stubble wheat. Each drag pierces her body.
Maintaining a safe distance from the coyote, she averts her eyes, so as not to appear confrontational; wonders if she should run up and find another pay phone, call Mr. Green at his office? Would he be back yet? She glances at her watch, 10:30 AM. He’s likely not back. Not really an option given the circumstances of her sudden disappearance. Perhaps she could flag down a truck driver on the highway, get him to radio a veterinarian. Although she doesn’t know what vet would come out to fight a flea-infested coyote for its life. Fish and Game possibly, but she knows in her animal heart that the solution would be a single gunshot wound to the head, not the reassurance of a fire-retardant cape belonging to a super woman. She looks down the ditch at the kilometres of garbage, everything, including herself, the waning coyote, covered in grey highway grit from the passing cars above.
She realizes there is nothing to be done, flimsy kismet and knitted sweaters alike. All she can do in this definitive moment, which has nothing to do with God is good or God is great, let us thank him for our food, but everything earthly, human: morass, muck and thorny crowns. All she can do is act as witness. Carry out the animal’s rightful wake, watch it draw its last secular breath. She gazes up at the wild blue sky, a white cloud congealing on the distant horizon. She looks back at the coyote, but all she sees is her mother in the front seat of her father’s Plymouth Fury, something in her arms, a lethal white cloud solidifying in a closed car. Lesa powerless to stop it.
Wednesday, July 1961 » Jacqueline, age 27
Sheets of white light flash across the dark horizon for a split second, followed by the distant reverberation of thunder. A summer storm is brewing. Jacqueline is grateful; the humidity in the house is unbearable, though thunder makes her uneasy. She counts after each flash: one, two, three, four seconds waiting for the disquieting crack like a leather whip as she sits on their split toilet lid, smoking, watching Sylvie play in the tub.
“Keep the water in the tub, Sylvie,” she says every minute or so, regardless of what Sylvie is doing, to remind her not to raise both her arms then drop them like rag doll limbs into the water. Sylvie looks at her curiously, and then goes back to plummeting Lesa’s Barbie that Sylvie cut all the hair off of last week into the cloud of white bubbles. She puts her arms over her head.
“Arms down, Sylvie.”
Sylvie looks at her again, startled, as if she just realizes Jacqueline is there.
Jacqueline shakes her head. Sylvie puts her arms down.
“Let’s get you to bed. It’s almost midnight. Mommy wash your hair?” Jacqueline says. Sylvie loves getting her hair washed. It’s one of three things, along with Smarties and drawing, that Sylvie can be still through.
Jacqueline folds a towel beside the tub and gets down on her knees.
“Lay back, Sylvie. Mommy will hold your head.”
Sylvie stretches out freely, trusting herself wholly to Jacqueline, who cradles her head in her hands. Sylvie moves her small, sinewy body back and forth, agile like a snake as she floats on the surface of the water; lucent ripples radiate out from her, lap against the side of the tub, spill over.
“Be still, Sylvie.”
But Sylvie can’t hear her; she’s in her own faraway world.
Such sweet purity, Jacqueline thinks as she pours water from a plastic measuring cup over Sylvie’s thick black hair. Jacqueline massages shampoo that smells like lilacs into Sylvie’s scalp. Sylvie stops moving and closes her eyes. She loves this part. Jacqueline examines her sun-browned face, her marred lips, the uneven tilt of her eyes. And all at once, Jacqueline feels the weight of mother love, dangerous, crashing, crushing; it takes her breath away. She comprehends in this simple act of hair washing what she’s always known—that Sylvie will never be capable of looking after herself, never be able to navigate the world without her or the very least her sister, Lesa, at her side.
Sylvie opens her eyes as if on cue and Jacqueline looks into them searching for something that will ease the moment. Some silvery lining, however tarnished, some slim sliver of hope that says otherwise. How can Jacqueline keep her safe for an entire lifetime when she narrowly managed to save her from that man this afternoon? Simply because she left coffee simmering on the stove? What kind of shaky providence is that? Certainly not the divine intervention of the God that Mary-Lynn mentioned earlier. How anyone can find solace in a God capable of such treachery and flimsy intercession eludes Jacqueline. Perhaps it’s fear, out-and-out fear that keeps people in faith, keeps faith in check. The unknown worse than the known, however horrific that may be. She looks deep inside Sylvie’s eyes to where the daughter of her dreams lies: lucid Sylvie, smart Sylvie, safe Sylvie, but Sylvie’s darkness is as indecipherable as any God’s.
Jacqueline pulls the plug and waits for Sylvie, who rolls stomach-down in their sea-green tub, following the mini cyclone of water as it twirls down the drain. Headed for the ocean, every last drop of it, Jacqueline tells her. When the cyclone is gone, Sylvie allows her mother to lift her, towel her off, pull on cotton underwear, cotton T-shirt, and carry her down the hall to her room. Jacqueline lays Sylvie on her metal-framed b
ed without turning on the light so as not to disrupt her sleepiness. Jacqueline sits in the dark, patting Sylvie’s back, a nightly ritual. She sees a flash of lightning outside Sylvie’s window, hears the sharp rupture of thunder not a second later. Goosebumps undulate along the surface of her freckled skin.
Wednesday, February 1973 » Lloyd, age 40
On the heels of younger, faster Constable Pete, Corporal Lloyd rounds the corner behind Neville’s hotel. They wait while the inspector gets into his car, drives slowly, the odd townsperson on the street, otherwise not much else moving in this kind of weather. The snow has stopped, the sky low, socked-in, Frigidaire white. The north wind picking up so that Lloyd feels it penetrate his undershirt like pinpricks, tiny arrows of ice on his vulnerable skin. He left his parka in Neville’s lounge. Damn stupid. He can’t go back in case the inspector’s not alone, nor can he risk the inspector finding him on the street—a simple Breathalyzer will do him in. The cold makes his thoughts thick, slow. Likely the inspector’s in town for the night; he’ll be staking out the detachment, waiting for Lloyd or Constable Pete to show up.
He looks at his watch, 1:15. It’s only a matter of time before the vet’s feline op wanders in for their 2:00 AM appointment and likewise the veterinarian wanders next door to the detachment looking for him. He’s got to get Jimmy out of there. He won’t send Constable Pete; he doesn’t want Pete mixed up in his mess.
“Got your car today?” Lloyd asks Pete, who is standing with his back up against Neville’s building out of the blasting cold wind.
“The wife has it. She’s going to Warspite this afternoon for something or other.” Constable Pete checks his watch. “She should still be home, want me to call?”
“That would be dandy, Pete.”
Constable Pete goes the long way round to Neville’s café while Lloyd watches the inspector drive across the street to the courthouse. He gets out and peers into the frosted windows of Lloyd’s cruiser. The frost bodes well, Corporal Lloyd knows. Gives him the excuse of elongated business inside. The inspector goes into the courthouse. Lloyd can see him at the front desk, Doris Michelchuk’s chocolate soufflé hair tilting this way and that. He’s glad he called her a prize earlier, can only hope she misplaces her razor-sharp Rota memory on his whereabouts.
The inspector comes out. He glances back at Doris, who’s standing at the courthouse window with her hands on her generous hips pointing down Main Street, her head nodding in the direction of the hardware store. Irritation etched on the inspector’s face, he gets into his car and drives the opposite direction.
Corporal Lloyd smiles. He owes Doris one.
Constable Pete comes back, confirms that the car, his wife are accounted for. He’s got Lloyd’s parka and one leather glove.
“Who’s on late shift?” Lloyd pulls the still-warm parka on, zips it up beneath his chin. No longer the cardamom smell of babies but the dank, fusty compulsion of Neville’s lounge. He puts on the one glove, stuffs his other hand in his pocket.
“Boykos and Sasyniuk,” says Constable Pete.
“Good, they can manage on their own.”
Lloyd hands him the keys to the cruiser.
“Run me over to your car, then go out and visit the Fleck brothers. Tell them I need them at the detachment tomorrow morning, 9:00 AM sharp.”
He knows the Fleck brothers won’t show up. He hasn’t got any real hard evidence against them beyond Jimmy Widman’s word—there’s not a shadow of doubt in Lloyd’s mind where Jimmy is concerned, but he’s seasoned enough to know Fleck democracy will rule in this case. He simply wants the Fleck boys to enjoy a sleepless night on his behalf.
“Will do,” says Pete. “After that?”
“Stay home with your wife, it’s too cold to go to Warspite today.” He winks at Constable Pete, who flushes red.
Constable Pete jogs easily across the street to the courthouse, climbs into the cruiser, and starts it. Doris Michelchuk watches from the window. Constable Pete drives down the alley behind Neville’s hotel. She waves at the two of them as they pull onto Main Street, then turn right down a back alley.
Wednesday, October 1987 » Lesa, age 31
When she’s sure the coyote is dead, Lesa goes over, lays the Grim Reaper’s cape across the animal’s stock-still warm body, her own body cold, in shock. She shivers in the October trench, then lies down beside the coyote, as close as she dares to the infested animal. She can see fleas jumping ship as the host’s body cools. She doesn’t care. She runs her fingers along the bridge of the coyote’s snout, the soft fur like velveteen, like the smooth skin on the inside of her mother’s freckled arms. She feels the animal’s heat extinguish completely, can no longer see its vaporous soul, imagined or otherwise. After a while she sits up, wipes her face with her numb hands, dusts the grey highway grit off her black Spandex, then claws her way back up the embankment to her mother’s waiting car.
Mercifully the cigarette butt in the back seat has extinguished, but not before burning a perfectly symmetrical circle in the velour of her mother’s car. Lesa glances once more at the lifeless coyote in the highway ditch. An image she’ll conjure up days, nights, years from now, along with the image of her mother in her father’s car, for the futile purpose of self-torment. Nothing she can change, but like certain troubling luggage it’s perpetually transportable.
Lesa digs through her red suitcase, finds her blue jeans, white tennis shoes, her Moroccan sweater. She unzips her pleather boots, slides the jeans over her Spandex, pulls on the thick sweater, glad for the double layers, the warmth. Then she takes her boots, props them up against a mileage sign on the side of Highway 2, and plants the stiletto heels into the soft gravel in the off chance that the waitress from Carstairs might drive by and claim them. Someone needs to have a good/God Wednesday. She starts her mother’s car and drives the rest of the way to Red Deer in the dead quiet.
Wednesday, July 1961 » Jacqueline, age 27
After patting Sylvie’s back for a full three-quarters of an hour until her dark eyes finally gave in, cried uncle, closed, Jacqueline clicks the door shut ever so quietly and goes to retrieve Nate from the living room chesterfield. She carries Nate down the hall and lays him in the twin bed across from Lesa. She pulls the Fantastic Four sheet over Nate, glances across at Lesa, who, asleep, on top of her covers, is still fully dressed in her skort and blouse from this morning. Why didn’t Lesa put her pyjamas on? Likely she didn’t brush her teeth either after her makeshift dinner. Jacqueline examines the sprinkle of umber freckles across Lesa’s nose like her own, a resolve to her jaw even in sleep. Jacqueline feels bad about the Wonder Bread and peanut butter. She didn’t even have time to give Lesa a proper supper. What with young Nate and the mess on the living room carpet and the matter of Sylvie. A relentless constant in her life that she can’t put out of her mind for a brief moment; even in her dreams Sylvie haunts her. Jacqueline knows Lesa gets the short straw. But she’s tired, so full, it seems, of metal burrs these days.
Jacqueline sits down on the bed and soothes her palm over Lesa’s lightly sunburnt cheeks, her smooth forehead. She shouldn’t expect so much from her. She’s five years old, a child. Though Lesa seems to have something that Sylvie responds to, a calming effect, a silent bond, an unconscious way of communicating like twins, perhaps it’s their closeness in age. Jacqueline knows how heavily she relies on Lesa. It’s not fair, but she doesn’t know what else to do. She can’t rely on her husband, and her mother, two provinces away, is of little use. She thought about calling her mother this afternoon, but the last conversation she had with her mother, her mother said, “You make your bed at dawn and every dusk you lie in.” A twist Jacqueline hadn’t heard before and wasn’t quite sure what her mother meant by it either. Nothing good, she’s sure. No, she doesn’t need that right now. Her mother-in-law is even less useful; the sun rises but never sets on her only son.
Lesa stirs and rolls over. Jacqueline puts her hand on Lesa’s back, considers gently waking her and then the tw
o of them can go into the kitchen and share a midnight snack. She feels the day slipping from her tense shoulders. They are two women in this together, she thinks, not just now but for life. Such is the nature of women, be it fate or blight of genetics, she doesn’t know which. They are the caregivers, the nurturers. She pushes Lesa’s strawberry-blond bangs off her forehead. Exhales into the dark, would like to simply lie down beside Lesa and go to sleep too. But she knows she needs to eat something both for herself and the growing fetus in her uterus. She can’t think of it as a baby, not yet, not with the possibility that it could be another Sylvie.
She tucks Nate’s peach towel lightly over Lesa for when the rain comes and cools everything down. She forgives her utterly, completely.
Wednesday, February 1973 » Lloyd, age 40
On Lloyd’s covert operation to the veterinarian’s next to his RCMP detachment, he manages to move Jimmy Widman sight unseen into Constable Pete’s post-pubescent, orange fluorescent ’73 Camaro, a Z28 that has thick black racing stripes up the hood and down the back of the car. Hardly the unobtrusive getaway car Lloyd wanted, but a car nonetheless. Likely the inspector is still wandering the town in search of him, but Lloyd’s not immediately worried. He’s got friends in many places. He fishes through his breast pocket and finds a leftover El Producto from earlier this morning, so long ago it seems like days have passed, but still it’s Wednesday. He pushes the lighter in, waits for the quiet metal click in between Jimmy’s sporadic mouth breathing from the back seat that sounds like a spouting whale, a regular Moby Dick. He lights his cigar.
As he skirts along the unpaved lane in front of his detachment, he checks to see if Jacqueline’s at the kitchen window, smoking, doing the dishes, gazing blankly at the prairie outside. An endless flat earth void covered in white then wheat then white then wheat, year in year out, relentless in its unvarying cycle. What Jacqueline searches for, Lloyd doesn’t know. Not him, he knows, she gave up the search years ago. The children, yes. Always the children for Jacqueline. When they were younger, they ventured bravely across this expansive field to the windbreak where the black and white magpies built their sizeable bowl-shaped nests in the crooks of the poplar trees. The magpie nests, a messy mass of sticks and stones and leaves and twigs and thorny branches tangled up in the stripped-down arms of the winter trees. The nests large and dark and complicated. So ominous in the distance that Nate and Clare and Lesa imagined them dead bodies bundled in the trees—but, no, only the barbed mess of their chaotic quarters.