“Stop,” she said, trying not to smile. She removed his hands from her face. She didn’t press him. He was not a man who would be pressed. Instead he told her about the cops chasing them down in Algonquin Park. They were canoeing but had left an itinerary at the park offices. They hadn’t gotten far.
“We fell asleep to the sound of the wind in the pines, the water lapping on the rocky shore, the baying of wolves. We woke up in the dark to a helicopter. It was like something from E.T.” They left the tent pitched and hitched a ride back to where their car was parked. He would have to go back to recover whatever the bears hadn’t destroyed.
“Local OPP gave us a police escort as far as the end of his jurisdiction. First time I’ve ever driven at warp speed on the Trans-Canada.”
He sat and stretched out his legs, his hands pressed together between his thighs. He was one of those happy-faced men. She imagined that he would look like he was smiling even in his sleep. But now his brow was filled with consternation. Their rude awakening, the long drive home, and what they found in the ICU had obviously taken a toll.
He moaned. “I’ll never get her to go anywhere ever again without her cell phone,” he said. Then he took Bee’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “Thank God you were here for him,” he said.
She nodded, then looked away. “I need the ladies’ room,” she said. She walked away, head bowed. Seeing them, Trish and Scott, had relieved the pressure of being Donovan’s sole support, but all her strength and resolve had abandoned her now, left her exhausted beyond belief. She washed her face repeatedly, splashing cold water in her eyes, then drying her face on the horrible brown paper that seemed more tree than towel.
When she came back to the waiting room, Scott was gone. Good, she thought. Trish needs him more than I. But the woman with the noisy kids wasn’t quite as oblivious as she had seemed.
“Something’s happened,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“Your friend. They came to get him. One of the greeters.”
Bee turned and faced the doors to the ICU. She saw a solemn-faced doctor in scrubs buzzed through the swinging doors into the unit. The doors clicked shut behind him. She heard a clangor in her head, sirens as loud as an air raid. She saw Donovan rise from his bed into the dim mechanical air of his chamber, watched the wires and cables and tubes fall away, saw the capsule of his room suddenly fall out of orbit and drift off until its glinting surface was lost in dark matter.
He passed through the garden, everything bent from the storm but not beaten. There was a sandy path that led around to the front of the house and to a gate. He passed through the gate. He seemed even to remember the slight screech of it as he pushed it open and closed it behind him.
“Always close the gate or the rabbits and deer will eat us out of house and home.” He smiled. His mother’s voice had come to him out of nowhere. He stood gazing at the screened-in porch. He turned and there was Dad’s car, the Subaru wagon with the busted front bumper. And there was the water, sparkling, for there was no mist here — not on this side of the island. The river was wide and green except where it was mottled gold in the morning light. The red canoe was tied to the dock. He smiled. His father was home.
He heard sounds inside. He walked to the screen door and opened it, felt the slight tug and click of the spring catch releasing the door to his grip. He stood for a moment on the threshold, then his mother’s voice came to him again.
“Don’t just stand there letting in the mosquitoes.”
He hurried inside and let the screen door close behind him. Click. At the last second he had stopped it from slapping with his butt. He stepped into the dim front room. Mom was at the counter washing up. She was in jean shorts and a pale-peach-colored top with loose sleeves she had to keep rolling up. Her hair was up and held in place by a chopstick. She was humming a song by Duran Duran, her shoulders bopping along. He knew the song, “Come Undone.” Sometimes she would sing the words and hum the parts she didn’t know or was too preoccupied to remember.
“Hey child, stay wilder . . .”
He liked that part. She would sometimes say that to him with a big grin on her face and he would cover his ears because she didn’t have a very good voice. He would scrinch up his nose and beg her to stop and she would laugh all the more and sing all the louder and tickle him. But now she was just singing to herself.
Dad came into the front room from the darkness of the little bedroom. There were two bedrooms: one small and one smaller — not much more than a closet. But it was big enough for Donovan, as tall as he was for a seven-year-old. Dad was in shorts, too, his legs tanned and strong. He was wearing a spotless white T-shirt. His face was newly shaved, his hair tousled and still wet from a shower.
“I’m heading out,” he said.
Mom didn’t answer, but her hands stopped moving. She stopped singing as well. Her shoulders stopped bopping.
“I’m going to paddle up to that creek I was telling you about,” he said, gathering his watch from the arm of a huge old armchair. “Might be a while. Have no idea how long it is,” he said, as if she’d asked a question. He chuckled. “If I’m not back by dark, call the emergency response team.”
Mom’s shoulders relaxed and her hands started to move again. She picked up the song where she’d left off.
Dad turned for the door then something made him stop. For one astounding moment Donovan thought his father’d seen him standing there in the doorway, a spindly silhouette, framed in morning light, but it wasn’t that. Dad made his way back through the front room to the kitchen area and gave Mom a peck on the cheek, squeezed her arm.
She inclined her neck for him to kiss, but he didn’t. He turned and headed for the door.
“Hope the fish are biting this time,” she said.
He stopped and slowly turned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Mom only whooshed a strainer out of the soapy water and clanged it down into the drying rack. Dad made a sour face and headed toward the door.
Donovan stepped aside to let him pass, but he didn’t want to. He wanted to stop him. Wanted to stand his ground, grab on to his father’s hairy wrist and hold on tight. But he couldn’t, couldn’t have even now, when he was ten years older and taller than his father — ten times stronger. It didn’t matter. You can’t ever stop your father.
Donovan took one last look at Mom and then followed his father outside, watching him half run down to the dock, in such a hurry to get away.
There was no fishing rod in the canoe. Had Donovan noticed that before, when he had stood here all those years ago? His father bent down, grabbed the gunwales of the canoe, and expertly pushed himself off from the dock, out into the dappled green, settling onto his wicker seat without a fuss, picking up his paddle. The paddle was made of cherrywood. Donovan knew that because he had given it to him. Well, Mom had bought it for him to give to his father. She had given Al the canoe.
“Follow him,” said a voice behind Donovan.
He turned. It was Jilly. She had moved up the hill, up toward the head of the trail that led from this secluded cottage back up the island to the settlement. She nodded her chin toward the dock. “Go,” she said.
He turned and, surprisingly, his father had not left the dock. He was just now reaching down to grab the gunwales, preparing to kick off. But . . . Donovan turned to her.
“Go, Donovan.”
“There’s no boat,” he said.
She laughed. “Well, walk,” she said.
He turned again, in time to see his father bend down, grab the gunwales a third time. Donovan looked back at Jilly for direction. “Like Jesus?” he said.
“No,” she said. “You are part fish, you know. We’re all part fish. We came from the sea. We never lose it, really.”
“I’m not much of a swimmer.”
Again she shook her head. “Walk,” she said.
This was getting nowhere. He turned, scanned the shore for a bridge, a spit of land, the slippery wet sur
face of a stepping-stone. But he knew this beach, this stretch of river. The water got deep quickly.
When he turned back to her, he gasped because she was right behind him. She took him lightly by the shoulders and turned him around to face the dock, the red canoe, his father, who still kept leaving and not leaving. “Follow him,” she whispered in his ear. Then she kissed the back of his head and gave him a gentle shove.
Somehow he understood now. He walked down to the beach and stepped into the water. He turned, hoping for a nod — something to let him know he was on the right track — but she was gone this time, and he was filled with uncertainty.
“Jilly?”
He turned yet again to the dock and was not surprised to see his father reach the canoe, bend down to grab the gunwales, as if he would always be stepping into the red canoe.
“Boy!”
Donovan turned back toward the forest in time to see the brush part at the trailhead. The lion stepped out. He was as unkempt as ever, dragging weeds and bramble in his wretched clothing. His body was pockmarked with bullet wounds. Smoke drifted from some of the rude holes in his chest and head and legs. He swiped the air in front of his bearded face, clearing the smoke, while a bleeding hand pushed aside his mane of hair, picking out leaves and branches and throwing them aside.
Donovan stood ankle deep in the river.
They sweep down, all unsuspecting, and kill every living soul in horrible ways. Happens over and over.
Now the leopard arrived, pushing aside a branch and stepping up beside Mervin, dragging his badly twisted right leg. His face was smashed in from his fall from the cliff, his nose a black mess of congealed blood. He made a face at Donovan and then, reaching down, straightened his knee as best he could, so that it was the right way around. He hitched up his pants and crossed his arms as if to say, You have a lot to answer for, kid.
“You seen Jilly?” asked the lion.
Donovan nodded. “She was here,” he said. The two men looked around and then returned their attention to Donovan. He shrugged. “I don’t know where she went. She was here. Then she was just gone.”
There was an angry shout from still farther up the path, behind the two men. They didn’t turn, just kept a weather eye on Donovan as if he might also disappear if they didn’t pin him down with their gaze. The new voice belonged to Charlie. He pushed his way urgently between the two men. He was carrying his dog, Minos. The big black body lay across Charlie’s arms. There was an arrow in his neck.
“The bowhunter,” said Donovan. It just came to him. Like what had happened to Jilly’s dog.
“We’ve got to find him,” said Charlie.
“We’ve got to find Jilly first,” said the lion.
“No,” said Shouldice, raising his arm and pointing at Donovan. “The first thing we’ve got to do is destroy him.”
Which is when Donovan turned toward the river and waded in. Not in any great hurry. They weren’t going to follow him. They called after him, but he didn’t turn around. He was going to take Jilly at her word, believe in his fishy past and just go. Glancing sideways, he saw his father take off from the dock — at last for real — and glide out onto the golden-green water. It was as if he had been waiting for Donovan — as if he would have waited as long as it took for him to enter that river. He shot ahead with strong, sure strokes and Donovan followed, walking forward until his head was underwater.
“You ain’t getting away that easy!” yelled the leopard.
“Where’s Jilly?” yelled the lion.
“Damned bowhunter!” yelled Charlie.
He could hear them all, even down here, but he paid them no mind, just walked on the sandy floor of the river. At one point he looked up and saw the canoe passing over his head. He had gotten ahead of his father. He waited, then followed, like a man walking on the moon in graceful, long bounds.
This stretch of the river was mostly weed free and Donovan made good time. He breathed normally, didn’t think too much about it. When everything was impossible, a little thing like breathing underwater didn’t seem that remarkable. He kept his head cocked upward at the dark hull of the canoe just ahead of him, not so far that he lost sight of it. It was beautiful down here, really. The sunlight streamed into the depths, gilding what weeds there were, swaying in the gentle current. Fish darted about, too busy chasing minute particles of drifting breakfast to pay much heed to this gangly stranger in their midst.
Then the water grew shallow. In a matter of moments, Donovan’s head pushed through the skin of the river. He shook the water from his hair, and there ahead saw his father glide into a grassy shore, where a woman was waiting. Donovan dug his fists into his eyes and wiped them clean. The woman bent down to catch the prow of the canoe. She was young, wearing sandals and a long summer dress that looked as if it had been spun out of sunlight. Her hair was long — longer than when he had last seen her. Longer and bleached by the sun. And his father was hopping from the canoe into shallow water and splashing in it like a child in a rain puddle, which made her laugh and hold out her arms, and then he was in her arms and they were embracing.
Donovan stood, waist deep now, and watched as they turned toward a little cottage up among the trees.
“Dad,” he called. He waded in toward the shore. “Dad!”
His father didn’t hear him. Didn’t know he existed at that moment, or that anything existed other than this woman that his arm was wrapped around. But the woman heard Donovan. She turned and smiled at him, a sweet, sad smile.
“Jilly,” he said. Then everything went black.
“But you guys were winning, Dono,” said Max. “Way ahead.”
“It was still a crap call,” said Donovan.
“The ball was totally outside,” said Daisy, “but still —”
“And what do we do on a called strike three?” said Max, cutting her off. “Let me remind you, Dono, my butthead friend: The batter pauses for just a moment. He looks out into the distance, beyond the scoreboard, stoic, silent. In this way, he registers his complaint —”
“His disappointment at the ump’s obvious ocular impairment,” said Daisy.
“Exactly,” said Max. “And then he leaves the batter’s box, walks slowly, manfully, and proudly back to the dugout.”
“Instead of —”
“That ump never calls me fair,” said Donovan. “I don’t know why.”
“Well, you sure showed him,” said Max. “I can’t think of a better way to make your point than getting ejected from the game.”
“Tickets?” They had reached the front of the line and Bee handed over hers and Donovan’s to the girl.
The Cineplex Odeon. A Saturday night in the summer of 2015.
Bee squeezed Donovan’s arm, shook it, trying to shake a smile out of the tightness in his face. He knew the drill: shake it off, make the effort. Something like a smile cracked the surface.
Their destination? Paper Towns. High school train-wrecks, thinks Bee, wondering if maybe the new Judd Apatow might have been a better choice.
“I am totally overdoing it tonight,” said Daisy.
“Popcorn and Maltesers and a drink,” said Max. “Combo numero uno.”
“Uh, no, actually number five,” said Daisy.
“That’s a regular-size popcorn. I thought you said you were totally overdoing it. Didn’t she say she was totally overdoing it?”
“Uh-huh,” said Bee. “But she meant totally overdoing it in a Daisy-size way. What are you drinking, Daisy?”
“Uh, Evian?”
“Told you.”
And then there was the jostling and joking that Max and Daisy seemed to have abundant stores of as they argued over who was paying. Bee bought herself some Skittles. “Anything?” she asked Donovan. He shook his head. “Come on,” she said. “Live it up.” She tugged on his arm again, managed to shake another crumb of a smile out of him.
“I’ll grab a latte,” he said and then walked away to the coffee place across the lobby.
So it was going to be like that. She watched him go, shoulders hunched, hands in pockets. As she turned back to the counter, Daisy flashed one of her Big Sympathy smiles. “It’s not as if they lost the game,” she said.
The douchebags had been drinking.
“How do you know they’re douchebags?” whispered Daisy to Max. “I mean, and not just jerks?”
Max sipped on his Coke, swallowed. “According to the Urban Dictionary, a douchebag has surpassed the level of jerk and asshole but hasn’t quite reached motherfucker.”
“Enlightening,” said Bee, but she was looking across the lobby to where Donovan had just paid for his latte and was heading over to join them. And between him and them were the douchebags, who seemed to have no other purpose in life, right at the moment, than to spout douchebaggery at anyone who passed within hailing distance: different kinds of douchebaggery for girls than for guys.
“Uh-oh,” said Max under his breath.
“Do something,” said Bee.
But it was already too late.
“Eww! What’s that, fagboy?” said DB-1 as Donovan passed by.
“So frothy!” said DB-2. “Looks like cum in a blender.”
That got them going — laughing their heads off. It should have gotten Donovan going, too, but he stood and waited until they stopped.
Somehow, DB-3 had managed, in his addled brain, to link Donovan to Bee and Daisy and Max. “Shouldn’t you be saving that stuff up for your girlfriend, dude?” And just in case this remark was too subtle for Donovan to interpret, he made as if he were jacking off.
Next thing he knew, he was lying on the floor howling, with his face bloodied. And Donovan was standing over him, having miraculously not spilled even a drop of his latte.
There might have been retaliation, but Max handed off his mountain of junk food and made his large presence known to DBs-1, -2, -3, and -4, who finally got his chance to join in the banter. “D’ju fuckin’ see that?” he said.
And then security swooped down and guided Donovan out of the theater, with Bee and the other two friends tailing along, balancing popcorn and drinks.
The Ruinous Sweep Page 16