The High-Rise in Fort Fierce

by Paul Carlucci

  Which means I do remember when I threw the cot over and the mattress was wet, like this really ancient wet, and underneath we saw little bugs and a huge wooden box with bent-over nails sticking out of the lid, and then suddenly we were charging through the bushes and there were ashes caught in the leaves of different trees and ashes in Donny’s black hair like ribbons of dandruff. We went back to the nicer cabin, where I knew there was an axe, and then I was roaring and slamming the blade into the box, just fuckin’ pounding it, missing once and swinging the thing right between my legs, almost chopped off my shin, until finally I’d blown chunks and splinters off the top, and a whole bunch of big yellow bones clattered out.

  The axe slipped through my fingers and thumped the floor. My mouth was dry. Next to me, Donny’s breathing was ragged, because he knew it, too. You didn’t need to have seen them before, because our bones knew exactly what they were looking at—it’s like two mice meeting in the darkness under a cot for the first time ever, and they both know they’re mice. No one has to tell them, and they can’t explain it to each other.

  Then at home I locked my bedroom door and over my head I held the axe, which I swung the thing into my desk, except it was my guitar, not an axe, but I knew that all along, and I was glad to smash the stupid thing, suddenly so glad, and even though my dad hammered on the door for hours, even though he squeaked and squeaked at me all night, I just lay in bed with the whole room spinning and one of my feet planted on the floor trying to stop it.

  In the kitchen the next morning, he asked me why I’d done it, and he looked silly—silly—with his green bathrobe and Home Hardware coffee cup, but even still I felt bad when I saw his face, hanging all soft and pathetic, which only got worse when the cops rang the doorbell, but then changed into something more sympathetic when they told him what happened: me and Donny found a box of human bones in the bush, and he called the cops to report it, and it turned out the bones probably belonged to a murdered person, or at least a person who got all chopped up after death, which news made my dad reach out and squeeze my shoulder and stroke the back of my head.

  “It’s a weird time right now,” one cop said, and he took a picture out of his shirt pocket and showed it to my dad. “A girl went missing last night too, eh? Ever seen her?”

  My dad took the photo. “Yeah. Lives around here. Always dancing in the parking lot, right, Dane?”

  So this cop peered over his moustache at my dad’s face. He chucked me on the shoulder, just another one of those pointless things adults do when they want kids to feel better. “Don’t worry, bud. We’ll find her. Town’s just going through one of its fits, that’s all. Forest fire doesn’t help, eh?”

  Later that night, Donny called me to say sorry for telling the cops, but I wasn’t mad, because even though he was kind of a fat loser, Donny was my friend, and when I told him about Amy, he let me cry and didn’t make fun of me at all. I guess he was sweet like that, which is why I got pissed that time when assholes fucked up his face.

  JOSH’S JOURNAL

  I coughed a lot in those years leading up to the shooting. Sniffed and sneezed and blew my nose. I noticed a lot of people in the building had the same problem, like we were recycling viruses from unit to unit, puffing microbes through the ducts, up the elevator shafts, floor to floor, host to host, and it got stronger and more immortal every time it came around again. I kept an eye on Dane for symptoms, and sometimes he showed them and sometimes he didn’t, which I guess was the same for me, although I felt like he showed them more often. Hard to say.

  Two days after the shooting, and the town was tense the way it always got after one of its nasty spasms. People were suspicious. They were skeptical and withdrawn, eyes blinking between the slats of their blinds, behind the glass of their peepholes. You could get along well enough in a town like that. You worked all week, fished on Sunday mornings, took quads or sleds into the bushes, set up camp a few times a year and saved your money for vacation—Florida, someday.

  But then something would happen, like a cop got shot or some kid stabbed his mom and lit himself on fire or a jealous ex with a shotgun or a fight outside the bar and a fatal crack to the head. Once this woman came up from the States, a hitchhiker, all the way from Oregon, and this younger couple let her stay on their couch, until one morning she wasn’t there anymore but she’d left her wallet, and four weeks later a few guys on a hunting excursion found her hanged from a tree, insects squirming in her eyes and animals had eaten her feet away.

  Then tension. No more dinner invitations. No more hanging around the campfire or fishing hole or out to the cabin in the woods. People closed ranks, stuck to their clans, hid from their neighbours. Anyone could’ve hurt you, given the right motivation, real or perceived, and that was a motive itself, which was another one, and another one, and so on.

  Because you were way up in the woods, and the only things around were a cool lake and the river that feeds it, and miles away was the edge of the treeline then past that the top of the world and the salty spray of the occasional whale.

  Our kids weren’t spared the fallout. Dane did his best to hide it, sitting at the breakfast table with his hands in his lap and his cereal turning to mush and his eyes locked on a housefly buzzing around the corner of his placemat. Suzanne had a word for him: taciturn. Means he was quiet, even silent, but there was something inside and I’m pretty sure I knew what it was, just not how to say it, which I think was his problem, too, so I sipped my coffee, cold now, and I set the journal on his placemat, cleared my throat, made a tiny, shut-mouth smile.

  Dane didn’t reach for his journal, but he did look, eyes sitting on it like flies, then darting to my face, then diving down again.

  “You keep a record in there,” I told him. “Like over time. Then in a couple years, you look back on it, and you get to see what all you learned.”

  He snorted and wiped his nose. He shook his head.

  “Come on, Dane. It’ll be good for you.”

  He grabbed it by the edge, dragged it off the table, pushed his chair back. “Gotta go,” he said, and then he was off to his room, the door clicking shut behind him.

  DANE’S JOURNAL

  There was Blake in the trailer park with his shirt off, and he was standing on top of the silly purple doghouse, dancing around in his bare feet and blasting the garden hose at his Rottweiler named Marigold, which the whole goddamn town knew because Blake was always stumbling around, waving a leash, shouting her name, up and down the cratered roads of the trailer park, over at the town hall parking lot, in front of the closed-down bakery, and down the trails along the river. Fuckin’ Blake. Loved that dog. Loved her so much, I was tempted to blow up her stupid purple house instead of his, fill it with T-bones, lure her in, leave a crater, and picture fuckin’ Blake kneeling in the debris, pounding his chest, throwing his head back, his mom inside sucking off an oxygen tank and watching bingo. Fuckin’ goddamn Blake. Just unbelievable.

  Most people thought he was one of those kids who’d gone beyond rules, an older kid, like seventeen, lost already, a movie character, because he didn’t go to school and he stayed out all night and everyone knew he stole DVDs from the dollar store and sold them in the trailer park or at the high-rise. There was a shield around him, like this shield of allowance or forgiveness or something, but maybe just pity, because his dad died at the mines and his mom was sick with something no one talked about, probably just whatever disease you got from living there so long, which if you looked close enough, we all had it, just different stages.

  But that didn’t fly with me. Blake wasn’t beyond the rules. I’d known him since he lived in the high-rise, before his dad died falling down a mine shaft, which was a busy time for me, because that was when mom left dad for some guy with a management position at those very same mines, because dad sent too much money to his own dad in Edmonton—I don’t know, like gambling or dying or something like that, but lots of lawyers and loads of bills and shouting all night—so he had to sell the
auto garage and settle for the position of supervising gas attendant, which was a make-believe title, we all knew it, and then mom’s man got transferred to Labrador—gone—and dad said everything would’ve been okay if she could’ve only waited a little longer for everything to be okay.

  Anyway, I spent a lot of time in the lobby back then, and that’s why I saw so much of Amy, always dancing around down there, twirling on the tips of her toes, but also why I saw so much of Blake. They were the same age, see? So it was like he thought they were destined for each other, two stray kids in a stray town, and this one time I found five dollars in the elevator, so I took it to the store and bought a bag of sour candies, and I went up to Amy with my treasure in my palm, arm extended, all for her, and like a twit I tripped in a pothole, spilled them on the ground, this great big sky way up in the air above us, and me and her beneath it, so tiny, so small. I fell to my knees, scrambled to gather them up, my little sour cola keys, and she asked if I needed help, bent down before I could answer, strands of her hair tickling my neck, chipped red nail polish and her hand maybe an inch from my shoulder, like she was going to lean on me, use my body for support—until Blake appeared and shoved me over and I fell and he laughed and he told her I had herpes and grabbed her hand and pulled her off, but not so fast she couldn’t throw a pitying look over her shoulder, pout her lips, wink her eye, turn away—our first meaningful communication.

  That was Blake for you. He didn’t have Marigold back then. He had us instead. He’d zero in on different kids and make you the centre of his life, days of torment, rocks beamed at the back of your head, frantic chases down the shore of the river, cornered behind the fire hall, spit sliding down your face, tears boiling in your eyes. Then one day he’d get bored and move on to someone else and you’d feel relieved, but then he’d run out of people and start all over again.

  Which is maybe where Donny came in, just Blake cycling through victims, which brings us to the Summer of Donny’s Blackened Eyes, but it was also the Summer I Learned How to Make an IED—improvised explosive device!—and so it was a couple months after the shooting and the summer we blew up the back end of Blake’s mother’s trailer.

  We’d come up with a plan. Donny didn’t like it because he had to outrun Blake and Marigold, which we both knew he couldn’t do, no chance, he was fucked. He’d make it to the end of the street, maybe halfway down another, and then they’d be all over him, and when finally he stood up again, he’d be sore and bloody and embarrassed.

  So we spent the morning drinking whisky and I wound up missing the bit where I change from one me to the next, but that part was so far behind this next part, it couldn’t be less important. The important thing was Donny threw a rock at Marigold, pelted her ribs so she yelped and Blake’s whole body snapped toward us, like the neck of a wolf, and he was slipping in the mud around the doghouse, his ankles tangled in the hose, but this offered Donny no reprieve, because Marigold was already after him, and a second later Blake was, too, human feet slapping off the ground, dog feet scraping off ahead, and the bellowed threats that burst from a scene like that. All I had to do was crouch behind some garbage cans, then slip into the yard, past the rusty, mangled lawn chairs and the coffee tins full of cigarette butts and a yellow toothbrush handle poking through a tuft of yellow weeds, then I was under the trailer, wriggling through bald truck tires and mounds of hard dog shit, and I taped my device to the underside, rolled out, ran away to the high-rise, where Donny was supposed to meet me after he was done taking his beating, so we could go wash his face and finish the whisky while my dad dicked around on that stupid computer and tried to think of ways to ask me about the shooting in the spring, as if it had anything to do with anything else, which I guess it both did and didn’t.

  JOSH’S JOURNAL

  All of which brings me here. To this thought I had while trying to fall asleep last night. Here’s my thought:

  Let’s say there’s a plane crash. Up in the mountains. Middle of nowhere. Let’s say the pilots have been stabbed or wounded or maybe they’re just sleeping or maybe it’s the plane malfunctioning. Let’s say the weather ate the plane, spat it out broken. You imagine oxygen masks dangling from the ceiling. Luggage bursting out the cargo holds and thumping people in the chest, in the head. Turbulence. Shrieking hydraulics. Seatbelt lights dinging, no-smoking signs—kind of funny. There’s a harrowed silence from one passenger, a hysterical meltdown from another. Someone drops a baby. Someone drops a fork.

  But let’s say you know, as a group, that at least one of you will survive, maybe more. Maybe two or six or twelve. Maybe everyone. Doesn’t matter. Someone survives, walks away from the crash, hikes down the mountain or through the woods, smoke signals spotted by search and rescue, wrapped in blankets, interviewed by journalists, enveloped by family. There’s solace in that, for all the people who aren’t going to make it. Solace in the notion of a survivor, in the knowledge, whether divined or intuited or only hoped for, and because of this knowledge, people behave just a little bit differently, sometimes a lot. Terror makes them gracious, not savage. It makes them gentle. There’s so much to do before we hit the ground. So many people to take care of.

  But what if everyone assumes they’re doomed to die, no survivors? What if the plane is breaking up, and the smoky sky leaks through the cracks, and there’s a piercing screech in the wind? There’s the promise of disintegration, of body parts scattered across hundreds of kilometres of wilderness, and teddy bears, and a debris field filmed from a helicopter, families weeping in nearby airports, framed on the front page, last names later chiseled into a marble memorial. That would be so much worse, that moment you realize no one’s going to make it, everyone’s going to die, because no survivors means the end of your world, ugliness all the way down, fear and its resulting cruelty, until the wings slice the treetops and the cabin bursts into flames. No survivors is the end of everything.

  I wish I could’ve explained that to Dane somehow. Wish I could’ve assured him of his survival. But I didn’t. I tried to, but I didn’t succeed. I haven’t seen him in eight months now. He’s in Edmonton, in juvenile hall, and he doesn’t write me or return my calls. I get progress reports from the institution, but calling them that is a joke, because there’s no progress. He gets in fights. He mounts silent protests, refuses to eat, refuses to move. The reports are delivered cold and clinical, but between the lines I detect hatred. They think Dane’s a monster. They want their institution to devour my son.

  I guess I understand. All they know is he blew up a trailer. All they know is a senior lady wound up in the hospital, lucky to be alive. I understand why they think what they think, but I won’t buy in. Instead, I bought out.

  Thanks in great part to Suzanne. We put the money together. Almost a split, but she’s actually paying a bit more. So I’m going to drive to Edmonton. I’m going to board a plane, my travel bag full of dirt-bike magazines Lewis gave me for the trip. I’m going to bail on the winter, catch me a slice of singeing hot beach, Suzanne right next to me, maybe with a strip of zinc on her nose.

  But first, I’ve got plans to stop by the hall and visit Dane. On his desk in his bedroom at home, the journal I got him is shut tight, the spine pristine, because he never bothered to use it, or even open it, although maybe he was too busy. I pick it up, tap my fingers on the sharp corner of the cover, and slide it into a plastic bag. I don’t know why, but he might want it now, because what else is there to do, in a place like that?

  I

  The party starts at Rick’s, which is because a couple of the working boys want a pop or two and don’t feel right sitting at the pub in uniform. Rick’s a newbie, got off the plane in August with a parka hanging off his broad-ass shoulders. Thirty-five degrees. Air choked with smoke from the forest fires. Here’s this guy, this kid, from the Okanagan, squinting in the haze, right vexed, like maybe his recruiter pulled a prank, not sure if he’s allowed to step down onto the tarmac or what.

  He got a place in the same old one-
bedroom townhouses they been putting Mounties in ever since we started coming here. I used to live in the next one down, left my initials in black marker on the back of the closet door. Now, it’s the trailer park for me, a single-wide with no siding, just this yellowy house wrap flapping in the winds, plywood exposed at every corner, park brats scribbling their names all over it. If the high-rise were still standing, I’d be, oh, probably good enough for the eighth floor. Until my business gets going. Then I’d be fourteenth floor material for sure. That’s me, hoss. Big man above the rabble.

  “Morris,” says Rick, and he’s sporting this grey, collared shirt that sparkles somehow whenever he moves. He’s presenting himself in the middle of the kitchen like the fridge is a dressing-room door he’s just blown through. The radio is broadcasting Fort Fierce’s local station, which is unattended media, just a computer slogging through the only playlist ever arranged on its hard drive: dance hits from thirty fucking years ago. “Whatcha think of this shirt, Morris? How’s this for a statement?”

  “Steve,” I say, because I’m going by my middle name now.

  Rick cocks his head and his muscles pop. It’s weird because Norman Franklin used to tweak his head like that. We’d knock on his door, hammer-fist sometimes, looking to gain access to one of the units in the little cracktown he and his dad had engineered on floors six and seven. He’d open his door and tilt his bean just at the sight of us. Every single time, like a dumbstruck terrier. Sit boy, we used to say, headed to the elevator after presenting the warrants. Fetch!

  Rick laughs and sits across from me at the kitchen table. “It’s Rick, man,” he says, shaking his head. “You forget already?”