Orphan Love

by Nadia Bozak

  We sat close to the fire. Dave rolled a cigarette and added some pot he had, and we passed it back and forth and after that we were calm.

  We didn’t want to talk about Pickles anymore, his boots, and my dirty fingernails, so I asked Dave if he had any friends at all, any family.

  “No,” Dave said.

  “Like me too.”

  “You have no one?”

  “Except Bellyache, my uncle. But he’s a total asshole. Once I would have said that I had Slava O’Right.”

  “But he’s an asshole too.” Dave said he knew the dirty business those half-brothers were in, how he’d likely even seen Slava O’Right’s truck around where he was from. “Those capitalist pigs. Above board or below it, it’s all just money.”

  From across the river came the bawl of wolf. A freezing midnight breeze yawned in from the west and harassed the flames of our campfire.

  We were quiet.

  Dave was stoking the fire hard, like he was mad at something, sending sparks flying up into the starlit sky.

  “I bet he was way older than you,” Dave said after a while.

  “He was,” I said. “He was living in Vancouver for a while. Saw Black Flag and doa and snfu, all kinds of shit. He was in that scene until he fucked someone over and had to get out.”

  “Nice,” said Dave. “A real tough guy. He didn’t have proof, I bet. Like proof he saw Flag and shit.”

  “No,” I said. “But anything he said, I just always believed it.”

  He spat into the fire and stood. “Should forget him. I know guys like that way better than you do. They don’t give a shit about you, and I know because I hear them talk about girls when the girls aren’t around to hear them.”

  Mad about something, he went off into the bushes and came back out with all kinds of dead wood and branches. Took it down to the river’s edge and built a raft, which he then set on fire before sending it out into the night water. Saw the shadow of him against the sailing blaze, looking out, watching the fire wash away with the flow of the water. A mad goddamn message to somebody, somewhere.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  We were trying to go by night as it seemed safer that way on account of Dave’s dad favouring the dark and also because of the territory we were in, not wanting to get shot at by hunters. Woke up into day, therefore, on the south shore of Ox Head Lake, our camp buried back and hidden in the bush. But it was not the sun that forced my eyes to open, it was the sound of men’s voices. Ears stiff, I listened. Eyes darting, blood shooting fast, I lay still and waited. Felt the old heart turning inside out. Maybe just some campers. Liked this goddamn country better when it was empty.

  Slid out of my sleeping bag, hand gripping the hunting knife. Voices were getting closer and soon enough I heard footsteps. There was no way out, the voices were too close, and there was no time to run anywhere without making noise and maybe making things worse. But then the forest stood still and was again silent. The voices were done and gone. Heard a raven call. Wind licked the trees, all shivery and silver.

  Waited there, crouched up, my heart taking its time to slow back down to a beat. Heard something coming through the bushes, branches slapping and rustling, duff crackling. Smelled something foul, animal. On my knees, knife in one hand, I was tearing through my gear for that goddamn can of spray and then this black bear came nosing out of the bush. A male, skinny, raw. Dark sticky fur, marred with white scars, dangled from its full-grown frame, loose from winter’s starvation. Just me and that mangy bear, and though both of us were all shredded and scraped, trashed out and roughed up, it wasn’t hard to say which of us was hungrier, more desperate. This bear smelled my menstrual spill, had tracked me for miles maybe, all the time licking its tight black lips with a sharp pink tongue. Two seconds and one lunge and my sticky sack of womb would be slashed out, dragged off to be licked and sucked.

  Crouched there, I should have been yelling my head off, but instead my throat felt choked with sand. Like old Bellyache had taught me, scream, yell, make some goddamn noise, they’d get scared off. Bears would come up to our trailer, summer and spring, growling around the porch, banging on the door even. They were zombies, I thought, staggering around and drooling, dumbly following the scent of any goddamn thing to rip apart and devour. But being this close now, I was sunk into this silence of shitlessness.

  The bush around us was stripped naked of sound and movement. Ravens were gone now, breeze was frozen in place. Slow as molasses, the bear came moving in. Its low growl I felt rumbling in my chest, and then it made ugly, rooting snorts. Shoulder blades rolled like rocks as it placed one little foot in front of the other. Pig nose dripping hot snot, eyes coloured yellow, and I lowered my own, making myself real passive. Smelled its dank fur and I sensed the heat that was its breath.

  Tightened up on the knife, remembering to go for the soft spots, its nose and eyes. The bear stopped some six feet away.

  “Cover your ears, girl.” A voice behind me. A man’s voice, so slow and dark and from out of nowhere, I thought it belonged to the bear.

  Still holding tight to my knife, slowly, I did it. Nice and obedient, and I also bowed my head.

  The forest popped with gunshot, ripping open my stopped ears. Lids peeled back, my eyes bulged from snug sockets, and I saw the animal take the bullet in the shoulder, its loose, hanging flesh giving a violent ripple as its body tumbled back. It looked so sorry now, not at all ugly. Before the second shot could connect, the bear turned, crashed away.

  Unplugged my ears, my hands, one free, the other knifed, went into fists. Eyes spilling salt water. And my bladder starting to leak into the gym sock I was still wearing, so I squeezed my insides shut. Stood slow and turned around. A pair of camouflaged hunters were behind me, reloading their shiny black rifles, shaking their heads because they’d missed that last shot. One was a blonde-faced teenage boy, the other was a man old enough that the thick, round beard he wore, where it was not stained with nicotine, was coloured grey.

  “You’re lucky,” the boy said.

  Took me in, waiting for me to say something. Maybe a word to thank them. But I said nothing.

  Their shots had rattled some crazy, rusted valve deep in my heart, causing it to come unstuck, and from it now leaked the sadness of how goddamn stupid I was to be out there. That bear knew I did not belong in the bush just as sure as these hunters did.

  Tears were making mud on my face, and that they saw me like that made me hate them. “Didn’t have to shoot it,” I said. “You made it worse, now it’s in angry pain.”

  Big Beard snorted. “Rather we left the two of you alone?”

  “Was just getting set to fucking yell,” I said, blowing my nose into my mitt.

  “He was a tough old boy,” Big Beard said, putting the safety on his rifle.

  “So it’s OK for it to die a slow goddamn death?”

  “Don’t worry about that bear,” he said, trying to catch me with a slippery smile.

  They were running their eyes all over me and my sleeping bag, the fire pit, the gear strewn around at my feet. Then they saw the ratty old canoe. Waited for Dave to come crawling out from underneath, but he didn’t. Felt how bad I looked. How fucked up and alone. Was on my own out there in the bush, I could tell they thought that about me. Whether Dave would appear before or after these assholes tried to pull something on me, is what I wanted to know.

  The boy, he stepped over to the canoe and looked at it and said to me, “Where’d you find this thing? At the dump?”

  He ran his fingers along the stapled keel and whistled. “This sure is one piece of shit canoe.”

  “Fuck you,” I said.

  Then Big Beard, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, said, “That’s no way to talk to me and my son after we took care of that bear for you.”

  So I said back, “That doesn’t mean I got to kiss your ass. Get on you
r way now. Leave me alone.”

  The boy, his face wrung with anger, his teeth showing like claws, he went, “You little bitch.”

  That blonde hair he was sprouting, those farm-fed cheeks of raw and red—I hated how healthy he was, and that he was out there with his wise old dad. They loved that lousy bitch of a northern bush because they didn’t ever have to live it, survive it. They just come along and take its meat and leave the shit, and then they drive away. Go home in time to watch the game, have a beer, then a bath.

  “Not even close to big game season,” I said. “How come you’re here in those goddamn suits?”

  The kid stepped up next to me, close enough that I smelled creamed coffee on his breath.

  “No, how come you’re out here?” he asked me.

  Spat near his boots, was feeling my guts bleeding, surging, rushing back. Had the knife out and still poised even though their guns had long since been lowered.

  “Hey, Dave,” I said. “Get your ass out here and give me a goddamn hand.” Kept my eyes on them the whole time I said this so they wouldn’t know from which direction he was going to come.

  They blinked at me, tightened the grip on the butts of their rifles.

  Then I sidestepped over to the canoe and got my boot under the gunwale lip and flipped the thing right over.

  Dave could’ve shown anyone up just then. Laid out wax-stiff, his face wearing nothing at all for an expression. Arms folded across his chest, his jacket was zipped up tight, his army pants patched at the knees with duct tape where they’d gone thin from days and weeks of kneeling at the bow, the toes of his muddy black boots worn down to the steel.

  All of us stood there, staring down at Dave Bashed-up-Boat laid out like in an open grave, still as a corpse. Waited for him to breathe or to twitch or do something to show that he lived. Nothing happened for a long couple of minutes, so those hunters got all impatient and the younger one came over and toed at Dave with his boot. Still, Dave didn’t move.

  “This here Indian must be passed out drunk,” is what the boy said. And then he kicked Dave, hard, in the side of the leg.

  Quick as light, Dave had a hold of the boot that had kicked him and then he was up and the boy was down, flipped over and onto his belly, hands twisted behind his back and held tight under Dave’s knees. The rifle fell from his hands and was on the ground, so I swooped down and grabbed it, cocked it, pointed it at Big Beard, who cocked his own at me, but not before swallowing deep and stepping back.

  “Now there’s gonna be a fight,” I said. “Now you have to fight him fair and square, and you know this fucker’s a mean goddamn fighter. But you asked for it, ass wipe, kicking a man when he’s down.”

  So Big Beard said for Dave to let his kid go. “We don’t want any trouble, me and my boy.”

  Dave was sprawled across the kid. One knee on the neck, the other shoved up between the legs, the boy’s hands were pinned under the weight of both bodies combined. Dave wriggled out of his jackets, the leather one and the lumberjack plaid underneath, tossed them away.

  Me, I said, “You ever seen a movie called—what’s that movie, Dave?”

  “Deliverance.”

  “That’s it. You seen it?”

  Big Beard, he swallowed again like if he wasn’t scared before, he sure as shit was now. “We’re going. Never saw you kids, won’t say a thing about it to anyone.”

  “What the fuck?” I said. “You start a fight and then walk away from it? Just like the bear—wound it and then let it go?”

  So Dave said to Big Beard to throw down his weapon, but he wouldn’t at first. Then Dave dug his knee into his kid’s neck, making him choke.

  When Big Beard did what he was told, I picked up the rifle and Dave got back onto his feet. He kicked the kid softly in the side, pushing him away.

  That boy stood next to his dad, choking and coughing and his face all red, and I passed Dave the second shotgun, these hunters being our hostages.

  “Kid here’s right. Too early to be out for big game, and I don’t know of any goddamn turkeys around here. Could get into a lot of trouble.”

  Big Beard’s eyes shrunk up and his mouth disappeared into the tough, nicotined hairs that surrounded it. He was angry. “You aim to report us?”

  Dave shook his head. “We’re too hungry for that.”

  When Dave said for them to empty their packs, they took them off and did it. Daypacks so inside was not much, but there were packed lunches, booze flasks, and store-bought cigarettes. Dave emptied the rifle he was holding. Put the bullets in the side pockets of his army pants. Said for me to do the same.

  “No fucking way. I’m keeping this goddamn gun.”

  Dave knelt down and picked up the stuff from the packs—booze, tobacco, food, ammo—and loaded it into the canoe. He stepped over and gave the dad back the empty rifle, and then he grabbed the boy’s from me. Yanked it away so fast, he had it unloaded and passed back to the boy, and I was still looking at my empty hands.

  Wished to smear my blood on them, lick their faces with that bloody gym sock between my legs, but knew Dave wouldn’t have let me. “Better get out of here before that bear comes back,” I said. “But if he does, you just got to clap your hands. Yell your fucking heads off.”

  Then we left those guys standing there with their empty packs at their feet and their empty guns, lowered and let down like limp dicks.

  “Goddamn pieces of garbage,” the boy called out, and then, “Get out of the woods.” We’d almost reached the lake by then, but we heard how his voice was flamed with hate.

  And me and Dave, we didn’t look back or at each other. We’d shamed those men, earned their spit, changed the way that boy would look at his dad, forever maybe. Once we got on the water, we paddled away pretty goddamn fast. Miles before we finally stopped on the water to smoke their store-boughts and have a pull on their whisky and make a supper of their trail mix and peanut butter sandwiches, chunks of bitter baker’s chocolate for dessert. And then the sun set and the night came and we, me and Dave and the moon and the stars, we were all of us together again.

  Loons out skimming on Ox Head, their secret cries were enough to give even the meanest girl and the deadest soul another chance to dream.

  “Hate guns,” Dave said, dropping the shells in the water, one at a time. “Just hate the fucking things. Better to have balls and guts.”

  “Yeah, well, not everybody has the luck to be a goddamn karate kid.”

  “Luck?” said Dave. “Not luck. The opposite of that.”

  “However you want to call it, we’re going to wish we had that gun.”

  “You’ll wish, kid.”

  “Yeah, ’cause I’m the asshole that menstruates.”

  Dave looked at me. He’d forgotten that part, about me being a girl.

  “But if I shot a bear, I’d kill it. Not like those fuckers.”

  “Next time you try yelling, just like you said.” Shaking his head, Dave turned away, picked up his paddle.

  When we saw dawn, I called for Dave to keep going and not turn around, stuck my hand down my pants, and pulled Dave’s sock from between my legs. To the nose there was nothing fresh, to the touch nothing was wet. Done with all that bullshit now, I threw it in the water.

  “OK,” I said.

  Dave stopped paddling then, and he turned around and we watched that stained tongue floating along beside the boat. “Some dumb ass is going to find that thing, think someone’s had to cut his foot out of a goddamn trap,” he said.

  With his paddle he flicked the menstrual sock away and then further into the morning we went. Away from bears, away from their goddamn hunters.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Escape with your loved ones to a land of long, slender lakes and sparkling waterfalls. Finger Lakes, New York.

  DAYS ARE GETTING LONGER. AND WE KEEP DRIVING WELL AFTER the
sun goes down. Already on the i-90, picked up back at Rochester after stopping to grab hot coffee and cold Cokes. It’s quiet in the darkening cab and the stranger’s getting sleepy. The lights of the oncoming lane skitter and shake. Night-riding makes for bad nerves—bones begin to tense, sensing the impact of a coming crash. The cassette goes back on, and sounds of Berlin Babies unfurl faster than the speed limit. This is not the north. These highways are weighed down by the gravity of law enforcement, are regulated and controlled. A whisky sip. A smoke is lit. Once-cold Coke is sucked with greed. In a town called Malice, the truck pulls off the road and into the parking lot of a Motel 6.

  The stranger waits for “Force Fed” to play out. It’s been too long since hearing that song. The music stops, but memories go on without it. A moment of quiet dedicated to Berlin Babies. Babies. Berlin. Baby. Baby.

  Hours from the border and the stranger finally remembers the smuggled kid’s still locked in the glove compartment.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Morning was clear and the sun was nice and ripe. Nothing but freshness for a thousand miles. Started out hard, strokes quickly built up a momentum so the canoe seemed not to touch the water, flat as mercury under bright yellow sun. Right then even hunger could not slow us. We sliced the water, paddles like an engine’s pistons, and soon the shore was just a lot of nowhere and nothing, fading out behind our backs.

  We portaged on to another lake, paddled it, then portaged again, and once more we paddled, going on like that such that we lost track of what this or that lake ought to be called. Dave let loose these whoops and cries that shook the walls of that empty universe, and then we laughed, going a bit crazy with the rush of running away. And always there was wind, always water that was hard like an ocean, always paddles like pistons. Paving on through. Getting on and going places.

  Spring clipped the wings of night, extending those of day. Mornings turned faster to afternoons, and the white sun fried the tops of our bare heads and bounced off the water, hitting us full in the face. We sweated under sun and soon enough, we paddled with our arms bare, and me, I even had my mitts off.