Blackfly Season

by Giles Blunt

  They drove up Sumner and made a left onto O’Riley. The Pocket was a couple of blocks up, handily located near Ojibwa High, which was why Toof liked to hang out there. He’d hustle the after-school crowd of boys and make himself a few bucks.

  Unlike Duane’s, which was run by a closet thug with a head shaped like an anvil, the Corner Pocket was run by an old couple. They were constantly in a bad mood, and no one knew if that was their normal demeanour or if catering to successive squadrons of teenage boys had soured them.

  The old man glared at Kevin and Leon over the cash register as they entered.

  They found Toof at the bar, drinking a Cherry Coke and scarfing down a Turkish Delight chocolate bar.

  “Hey guys, what’s up?” Bits of chocolate clung to his snaggletooth. He pointed to Leon’s feet. “You’re wearing your fancy hiking boots again. You going mountain climbing?”

  “Gotta go for a drive,” Leon said.

  “Gimme twenty minutes, eh? I wanna take this guy out.” He pointed with his Coke at a beanpole of a youth who was clearing a table with one decisive thunk after another.

  Leon took Toof’s Coke and placed it on the counter. “Now.”

  19

  THE MEMORIES WERE COMING thick and fast now; she couldn’t stop them. One moment she was yearning to remember more, the next moment she wanted nothing but oblivion. The nurses would give her Tylenol, but no more of the heavy-duty painkillers. She wanted to sleep, but it was the middle of the day and she was wide awake.

  The patients’ lounge was noisy. Sophie, one of the suicide wannabes, had three blond witches visiting her and they were all giggling maniacally. Terri huddled in a corner with a Glamour magazine, but she couldn’t concentrate. The memories dropped into her mind in no order, unbidden, with stomach-flipping changes in intensity and obsessive repetition.

  For example, the flies. For the hundredth time she was remembering the flies. Not just the ones that bit her, although she certainly remembered the itch and sting of bites on her forehead and ankles. Those flies were small, silent. But she could also hear the buzzing, thick and multi-layered, of other, fatter flies. Great clouds of them in the sunlight. Where had that been?

  Then there was the train station. Kevin had come to meet her. He had been nervous, shifting from foot to foot as if they were strangers. Terri had known instantly that he was using again. She hadn’t confronted him about it right away, not there in the station with the crying children, and the drunks wobbling about, and a madwoman yelling incoherently.

  Kevin’s place. Nothing but a camp bed and a rickety wooden table in a weird little cabin somewhere in the woods by a lake. Sunlight pouring in through the window, making the sweat glisten on Kevin’s brow.

  “I know you’re using again,” Terri said. It just came out. She couldn’t bear to see him looking so furtive and guilty.

  “I’m not mainlining. Whole reason I came back to Algonquin Bay was to get clean. I was happy growing up here. It kinda helped me get some clarity.”

  “Kevin, I can see it in your face.”

  “I’m just skin-popping,” he told her.

  “Uh-huh. And where will that go?”

  “It’s just something I have to do right now. I’m under a lot of stress.”

  He’d had a pout on his face as he’d said it, a child who’s been chastised. A lot of girls found Kevin’s boyishness charming. Terri supposed she could see it. That curly hair—dark, not red like hers. Her brother looked like a guy who was up for a ball game, or for a night of poker, sometimes as if he might pull a frog from his pocket. Unfortunately, along with the boyishness came a lot of immaturity. He’d already done two years in a correctional facility. If he got caught trafficking, or even using, he could get sent away for a long, long time. There was no way she could so much as mention his name to the police, no matter how nice they were to her.

  The camp. That’s what Kevin had called the place he shared out by the lake. Apparently, the collection of cabins had at one time been a summer camp for handicapped kids. Once upon a time the cabins might have been white, but now they were discoloured, sagging, sorry old huts that barely kept out the flies. He’d dug up a key for the cabin next to his and told Terri she could stay there, but only for a couple of nights. Red Bear didn’t like outsiders hanging around, even family.

  “Isn’t it great?” Kevin said, waving his hand at the view of the lake, the overgrown baseball diamond. “Isn’t it fantastic? Look at that lake, Ter, it’s huge. We took a boat ride across it last week, and it took, like, an hour, even going really fast. You should see the stars from out there. Incredible.”

  “You went for a boat ride at night? Why would you do that?”

  “I don’t know. It was fun. Come on, Terri, you have to admit it’s pretty cool to have a whole camp for the summer.”

  All Terri had discerned in the leaning huts and the rocky beach was the dispirited air of a place long abandoned. It had reminded her of photographs she’d seen of the Great Depression.

  And what a collection of people living in it. Kevin and Red Bear and the dim guy with the funny tooth. Supposedly, there was some other character she’d never met. Kevin had never mentioned any of them in his occasional e-mails, a fact that made her suspicious of his new friends right from the start.

  “Don’t you think it’s a little much for only four guys to live in?” she had said. “You could house forty people in all these cabins.”

  “Naw,” Kevin said. “Most of them are ruined. There’s only maybe six you could live in.”

  “Still. Four guys.”

  Kevin walked her over to the biggest cabin, Red Bear’s, the only one with more than one room. It stood in a copse of birch trees, a miniature house with cedar siding and a broad window overlooking the lake. Hung from the ceiling were fly strips, where tiny creatures buzzed out their last moments of existence.

  Red Bear had been completely charming. Or rather, everything he’d done and said certainly would have been charming, if it hadn’t also seemed a little too … overstated.

  “Yes, Kevin has told me a lot about you,” he had said. His smile was like a theatre marquee. Those teeth. “He told me you were the perfect sister, and now I can see why.”

  Well, right there, that didn’t ring true. It didn’t sound like anything Kevin would say about her, or anyone else for that matter.

  Red Bear’s handshake was dry and firm. He was not a big man, but he was wide in the shoulders and it gave him a look of strength. His hair was so black it had gleams of blue in it, like crow feathers, and seemed to flash against his clothes. His shirt was so white you needed sunglasses to look at him.

  “Come, I will read your cards,” he said. He offered them chairs at a large table of country pine, where he proceeded to set out cards in interesting patterns.

  “Ace of diamonds,” he said. “This is perfect. A completely sunny outlook for you, Terri.”

  Remembering someone’s name was supposed to be a mark of politeness, but Red Bear’s use of it made her uncomfortable.

  “Financial outlook is favourable. Health, excellent. No enemies that I can see. You must really be the saint Kevin says you are.” This with a sidelong glance at Kevin, who smiled on cue, but Terri knew Kevin was not the sort to call his sister a saint. Why would he?

  Snap, snap, snap. One after another, the cards went down. As Red Bear slotted each one into place, he made cheerful comments about Terri’s future. Then the jack of clubs slapped down across the king of hearts, and Red Bear’s manner changed.

  “All right. A cloud on the horizon. A setback. Maybe something worse.”

  His eyes had some kind of genetic defect, with almost pigmentless irises.

  “Tell me,” Terri said when he hesitated. Not that she believed in cards, or reading palms or any of that New Age stuff, but she read her horoscope in the paper now and again just to see how far off it was. “Tell me,” she said again. “I can take it.”

  “All right, Terri,” Red Bear said. He sat
back and folded his arms across his chest. Biceps shifted under white sleeves. He spoke matter-of-factly, a doctor conveying bad news. “Everything I told you just now? Good health, good money, no problems, et cetera? All of that is true. All of that is yours …”

  “But?”

  He tapped the jack of clubs with a manicured finger. “This is a death card.”

  “Hey, take it easy.” Kevin had been leaning on the table, chin on fist, almost asleep, but now he sat up. “You’re not supposed to tell people stuff like that.”

  “Kevin,” Red Bear said quietly, “you’re overreacting.”

  “You can’t just go round telling people they’re going to die. What are you trying to do? Freak her out? She’s my sister, man.”

  “Will you listen to me?”

  “It’s okay,” Terri said. “Relax, Kevin.”

  Red Bear pointed again at the card. “It’s true. This is indeed a death card. But death in the cards does not necessarily mean death. It’s like death in a dream. It could just mean great change.” Red Bear gathered up the cards. “Please, let’s not be so solemn. I didn’t mean to upset you. I only tell you what I see—the possibilities. We’re all in control of our own lives.”

  “I don’t like this card business,” Kevin said.

  “That’s like not liking the weather,” Red Bear said. “Not liking it won’t improve it. Now, please, let’s cheer up. Your sister is here, it’s a sunny day, it’s no time to be gloomy.”

  The cabin, the camp and Kevin dissolved, and Terri was back in the present, back in the patients’ lounge.

  The girls on the other side of the room were collapsing in laughter. Their voices echoed off the tile walls and the plastic furnishings and hurt Terri’s ears. She shot them a dirty look, but then another memory flashed before her, obliterating the girls, the lounge, the hospital.

  Waking up to sunlight sparkling in cascading water, miniature rainbows arcing in the spray. Waking up to the sound of falling water merging with the buzz of insects. The flies. There weren’t even that many of them. Just a handful buzzing around the hideous shape on the floor of the cave. And the smell. That evil smell. Where was that place? How had she got there? The memory was over, but even that split second was enough to send waves of fear and nausea coursing through her body.

  “Are you all right?”

  Terri looked up into the concerned face of a nurse’s aide.

  “I need the washroom,” she said. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  20

  “WHY DON’T YOU DRIVE,” Leon said. “I’m gonna stretch out in the back. My knee’s killing me.”

  Kevin got behind the wheel, and Toof sat in the passenger seat beside him. His clothes reeked of weed.

  “I can’t believe it,” Toof said. “You’re letting someone else drive your Trans Am?”

  “My knee’s acting up,” Leon said. He was lying down in the back. “It’s not a big deal.”

  But it was weird, Kevin knew. Leon was obsessive about his Trans Am. Took it to the car wash every week.

  “So, what’s Red Bear want to see me about?” Toof said, when they were moving. “Am I in trouble again?”

  “Naw,” Leon said. “At least, I don’t think so.”

  Kevin didn’t say anything. Leon had told him to keep his mouth shut and drive out toward West Rock. Leon would give him more directions once they got off the highway.

  “Are you sure?” Toof turned around to face Leon. “Why’s he yank me out of a pool game and drag me back to camp if he’s not pissed off?”

  “I don’t know, Toofie-Doof. Have you got something on your conscience?”

  “Like what? What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t know, Toofie-Doof.”

  “Don’t call me that. I hate that. Toof’s okay, but Toofie-Doof is stupid.”

  “Unlike Toof. Fine. I repeat: Have you got something on your conscience? Have you been stealing from the supply, for example? You know Red Bear is going to take a seriously dim view of that.”

  “I don’t use H. You know that. I just smoke dope.”

  This was true, Kevin knew. And so did Leon, so he wasn’t sure why he was playing this game with their less-than-genius colleague.

  “Well, if you haven’t been dipping into the supply, then maybe you did something else.”

  Kevin made a left off the bypass onto West Rock Road. After only a couple of hundred yards they were into pretty thick bush on either side of the road. There were some nice houses out here, though.

  “Something else, like what?”

  “Well, something that doesn’t involve the death penalty. I don’t know, Toof. Have you been talking to the wrong people?”

  “I don’t talk to anybody. Not about our business.” Toof faced forward again and stared at the emerald green of passing trees. “Except maybe to my family.”

  “We are your family, Toof. That’s a quote from the man himself, remember?”

  “I remember. I didn’t tell nobody nothing.”

  “Then what are you worrying for? Relax and enjoy the scenery.”

  They drove a couple of miles in silence. Kevin switched on the radio and they listened to Alanis Morissette yodel about her mistreatment at the hands of some mysterious man. Kevin still didn’t know why they were driving out to West Rock.

  “Hey, where are we going?” Toof said.

  “Shortcut. You’ve seen it before.”

  “I have? It doesn’t look familiar.”

  “Well, maybe that’s why you’re always getting lost.”

  “Could be, I guess …”

  Kevin remembered one time he had arranged to meet Toof at the Bull & Bear pub. He’d even drawn him a little map, and Toof had still gotten lost.

  “I know why Red Bear wants me,” Toof said, and slapped his knee. “I’m so dumb sometimes.”

  “What is it?” Leon said and sat forward, leaning on the back of the front seat like a friendly dog. “Why’s he want you?”

  “You know,” Toof said. “You’re just playing dumb to keep me guessing.”

  “No, I don’t know, Toof. Honest.”

  “Get outta town, man. You know what this is about.”

  “But I don’t, Toof. Kevin, do you know why Red Bear wants to see him?”

  “Uh, no. I don’t,” Kevin said.

  “See, neither of us knows, Toof. So if you’ve seen the light, you’re just going to have to let us in on it.”

  “See, it’s ’cause I gave Red Bear my birthday and that, eh? So he could do my chart for me? He knows it’s my birthday tomorrow. That’s what this is about, I bet. It’s like a surprise party—remember, like he threw for you that time?”

  It was true; Red Bear had thrown a party on Leon’s birthday. He had taken them all out to dinner at Bangkok Gardens. He had tried to order Dom Perignon but the restaurant didn’t have anything that good, so they’d had to settle for a Chablis. It had been a good evening; Red Bear had been in an excellent mood.

  “It’s your birthday tomorrow?”

  “Yup. I’ll be twenty-seven. No, twenty-eight. No, wait. I’m not sure. Twenty-eight, I think.”

  “Gee, that’s great, Toof. That must be what this is about.” Leon touched Kevin’s shoulder. “Take the next left.”

  Kevin made the turn onto a dirt road. It rapidly brought them to the construction site of a new subdivision. None of the houses was finished yet. The road became really rough, then, and they passed bulldozers and backhoes. The construction crews had left for the day.

  “Take a right at the end of the road.”

  The car dipped and swung over deep ruts in the mud. Then Kevin made the turn, and the road got even worse until it wasn’t a road at all. They passed a fenced-off equipment yard, and then there was nothing but trees.

  “I’ll tell ya what I’d really like for my birthday,” Toof said. “What I’d really like is a trip to Tahiti. Or, like, maybe Hawaii. Anywhere the girls walk around in grass skirts and no tops.”

 
; “I don’t think Red Bear would give you anything like that, Toof.”

  “Oh, no. I know that. Hey, I’d be happy with a new CD or something. A movie and some popcorn. In fact, yeah, that’s exactly what I’d like to do. Let’s all go to the movies. There’s that new thing with The Rock just opened.”

  “Well, sure. It’s your birthday; you can do whatever you want. Stop anywhere up here, Kevin.”

  “I’m gonna order us a big cake for tomorrow. Dutch chocolate. Three storeys high, man. And maybe after the movies we could go out to the Chinook. I don’t need no place fancy. Fact, I like the Chinook better than that Bangkok joint any day. Yeah, let’s go there.”

  Kevin stopped the car. Toof was still going on about the Chinook Tavern when there was a loud bang. He pitched forward so hard he bashed his head on the dashboard. “What the hell was that?” he said. He sat back, eyes rolling. He shook his head. “Did you guys hear something?”

  The smell of gunpowder was overwhelming. Leon was sitting forward, the gun resting on the back of the front seat.

  Kevin tried to speak, but nothing came out.

  Leon fired again.

  Toof tipped forward, slower this time. He pressed against the dashboard to raise himself. “Man, my eyes aren’t working right,” he said. His voice sounded as if he had just woken up from a long nap. “I’m not seeing so good.”

  Toof got out of the car and stumbled, grabbing on to the fender for support. The back of his head was soaking wet, and blood was running down his jacket in strings.

  “Fucking gun,” Leon said, and got out of the car.

  Kevin wanted to run, he wanted to cry, but found he couldn’t do either. It was as if his legs were full of Novocaine.

  The trunk opened and slammed shut. Then Leon came round the front behind Toof, with a baseball bat. He smashed him across the head, and Toof went down.

  “Happy birthday,” Leon said.

  21

  JOHN CARDINAL WAS A DECENT COOK when he put his mind to it. He was not a man to rely on frozen dinners and pizza deliveries the moment his wife was out of town. Catherine’s many hospitalizations had forced him to learn his way around the kitchen. In fact, some of his favourite memories were of Kelly as a little girl “helping” him, chopping apples into uncookable chunks, her hair matted with pie dough.