by Lee Gowan
“Do your parents call you Ai?”
Her tongue disappeared. “No. To them I’m still Irene.”
She didn’t look at him—seemed to be speaking to the gravel with the slight annoyance of one who has not been recognized, though introduced many times before.
“I just wondered. I once thought about changing my name.”
“Really? Why?”
She did not sound interested.
“Because at the bank, down east, everybody calls me Cowboy, and I thought maybe it was the name. Sam. It sounds like a cowboy. I’m named after my grandfather, and he was a bit of a cowboy. Well, a rancher, anyway.”
“And you don’t like being called Cowboy?”
“No. I’m not interested in living in the past.”
“Why? The past is very hip at the moment.”
“You think so? I don’t think so. Maybe it’s cool to make reference to the colourful idiocy of the past.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, my sons will probably soon feel the aching longing of nostalgia for the nineties, a grander time they can only experience in images because they were too young to enjoy the real thing.”
She nodded slowly, and he imagined he could see her perspective shifting, the world tilting in a slightly different direction, the engine humming at a somewhat shriller pitch, the light a little more golden than it had ever been before. As he looked down at the wild rosebushes in a draw at the edge of the road, it occurred to him for the tenth time in the last fifteen minutes that everything around them made reference to the colourful idiocy of the past. And he could no longer stop himself from telling her: “The Broken Head chief of police rolled his new car right here, down into that draw, but he was going in the other direction.”
“Is that right?”
She did not sound interested.
“Yeah. The chief was a friend of my grandpa’s. Chief Bailey. He stopped at our place to show Grandpa this lynx he’d shot while he was hunting moose down around Eastend. Southwest of here.” They’d reached the bottom of the hill and were passing his house. Sam’s car was parked in the driveway, and Michael was pumping away on the swing set. Ai’s eyes were glued to the road, and she did not seem to notice the beautiful house or the perfect child on the swing. “Anyway, he stops, and he shows off this lynx, which Grandpa and Dad are pretty impressed by, because they’ve never seen a cat that big before, except in pictures. While he’s showing off his kill, one of our barn cats climbs through his window and into the back seat of his car, but nobody notices it. So when they’ve finished their chat, the chief throws the lynx carcass into the back seat and drives off, and he gets halfway up the hill when our cat leaps onto his shoulder.”
She laughed. She had been listening. “He thought it was the lynx and rolled the car?” she said.
“That’s right. He panicked and let go of the wheel completely.”
“Was he hurt?”
“The chief? Just a few scratches. From the cat, who wasn’t hurt either. The lynx didn’t make it, though. You wanna turn just up on the right here.”
Vern’s trailer hunched in the afternoon sun, streaks of yellowed rust leeching down like tears from each corroded rivet. “Park over there in front of the shop.” He pointed to the gleaming steel Quonset, Gwen’s Buick parked in the doorway with the hood wide open, the yard scattered with the hulks of abandoned technology: washing machines and driving machines and agricultural implements. Between the trailer and the Quonset rested a huge metal object that looked like part of the wing of a Boeing 747.
“That’s the shop? What’s that over there, then?” She pointed at the rusty trailer on the foundation of crisscrossed creosote railroad ties that Vern had salvaged when they tore up the branch line.
“That’s where the dog lives. It’s kind of ugly for a doghouse, isn’t it? I’m not sure why he doesn’t live in the shop. I guess he doesn’t like to be too comfortable.”
“Are you gonna be okay?” she asked him, studying him for evidence of impending breakdown or violence. Her nose was large, but there was even something beautiful about that nose.
“I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. We’ll find out where your cliff is. Why don’t you get some pictures?”
She nodded. “Thanks, Sam,” she said, surveying the trailer, her smile so wide, so full of irony, that he was sure he knew what it must feel like to point out the man who had tried to erase you as he lined up against a white wall with black lines marked off in one-foot intervals. She picked up her camera.
Sam got out, stretched and leaned against her car, watching her snap an entire roll of film. He was imagining some hypothetical gathering of pierced and perfumed bodies near Queen Street poring over Vern’s world framed on white walls. It was a few moments before Vern emerged, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and pulling on a grease-marked white undershirt as he trotted down the front steps he’d built himself from those old railroad ties.
Ai lowered her camera.
JANUARY 2nd, 1971: BROKEN HEAD
“WHAT ABOUT THE BOY? What about that poor little boy freezing out there on his own in the cold?”
It did not matter how many times she asked them, the officers would not listen. Instead, they escorted them, one at a time, first Irene and then Luke, to the police car, and sat them in the back. They wouldn’t even let Luke park the car in the lot beside the hospital. The young one did it himself, and pocketed the keys when he was done.
When Luke was seated beside her, Irene put her hand on his, but he would not look at her. “Everything’ll be all right,” she told him. Still, he would not turn to her. She squeezed his hand and said a prayer in her head, moving her lips so that He might read them if He could not hear her thoughts. It was not that she believed He was going deaf, as her mother had once told her, but she needed to be sure He heard her.
At the station they took Luke in the opposite direction, and even as they were leading him away he still did not so much as glance at her, and so she called to him. He turned as though she’d only managed to reach him through a deep sleep, and she could see in his empty eyes that he was lost somewhere inside himself.
“Indians,” she heard someone say.
The young officer took her to a small room with no windows and asked her if she would like some coffee. “You should go look for that boy,” she told him, and he nodded blankly and went away. There was a desk and two chairs in the room, and absolutely nothing on the walls, which were lined with that material with the holes in it that are designed to suck up sound. How did they do that, Irene wondered? How was the sound swallowed by those holes? Anyway, they could not block her prayers. He would hear her anywhere.
Where had they taken Luke? She imagined him in another room like this one, thinking of her. She imagined a boy stumbling through the snow, a smaller version of the old man, singing her name to the cold.
After twenty minutes the young officer came back and sat down across the desk from her. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” she said, somehow grateful, despite herself, that he’d been kind enough to ask.
“So what’s a pretty girl like you doing out on a day like today?”
He was looking at her chest. She crossed her arms and looked at the floor. “You should be looking for that boy. I hope you have somebody out there looking for him.”
“What makes you think there’s a boy?”
“The old man said so. You should be looking for him instead of wasting your time bothering us.”
“Are we bothering you? We just want to talk to you about your car.”
“It’s not my car. It’s not Luke’s car either. He borrowed it from his cousin.”
“From his cousin? What’s his cousin’s name?”
And so she told him Luke’s cousin’s name, and he wrote that down in his little book.
“The registration’s in Calgary. We’ll take it to the cop shop and show them when we get to Calgary. Won’t that be good enough?”
“When was the first time you saw the car?”
“What difference does it make? You should be looking for that boy.”
“When was the first time you saw the car?”
She recalled the thud of an engine beating its rhythm through the wall of her mother’s new government home. Irene had walked to the window, and there was the car. Just a big old blue car. The door opened, and Luke stepped out, and her heart turned completely upside down. He had driven all the way from Calgary to the reserve without stopping except the once for gas. He must have come right through this place on the way. His heart was in his eyes when he knocked on their door. He was borne on the wings of love, her mother had told her. That car was his wings. A ′52 Studebaker, the same age as her. She did not tell the officer these things. She told him only the day and the place and the shadow of the reason he had come: he was taking her back to Calgary to look for a job.
“And he told you it was his cousin’s car?”
“Yes. It is his cousin’s car.”
“And did you wonder why his cousin would lend his car for so long? Wouldn’t he need his car?”
“His cousin loaned it to him. Why would I wonder? Nobody ever loaned you nothing?”
“I’m asking the questions here,” he said.
“That’s right, you are. Why aren’t you out looking for the boy before he freezes to death?”
“I am asking the questions here.”
“You are, and they’re stupid questions. There’s a boy out in the cold you should be looking for.”
“They’re stupid questions, are they?”
“Do you need me to tell you again?”
He smacked her across the face. There was no time to react. She couldn’t quite believe it. She sat there staring at him, feeling the imprint of his hand on her face. Slowly, pleased by her silence, a smile came over his face.
“Did you help him steal the car? Or is that a stupid question?”
She didn’t answer.
“You did help him steal it, didn’t you? Was it your idea to rob the old man?”
“Rob who?” She started to cry. She did not want to show him how afraid she was, but she couldn’t help it. “We saved his life. He was wandering out there in the cold. And that boy’s still out there. You should be out looking for him.”
He sighed and shook his head. “What’s this?” he said, and set a brown leather wallet down on the desk. She had never seen the wallet before.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“No. I said I don’t know.”
“All right. I’ll tell you then. It’s the old man’s wallet, and we found it on the floor of your car.”
How could that be? Was he telling the truth?
“It must have fallen out.”
“It was on the floor of the front seat. The old man was in the back seat. You never mentioned him being in the front.”
She didn’t respond. Luke. How could he? How could he possibly have done such a stupid thing?
“Where did you pick up the old man?”
“I don’t know. Out in the middle of nowhere somewhere. We could show you. The boy must be somewhere around there.”
“In the middle of nowhere? Can you be a little more specific?”
“I don’t know. I told you we can show you.”
“Tell me first.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been there before. I could find it. I think.”
“The old man kept repeating your name. He seemed to have a bit of a crush on you, like he’d been with you awhile. I guess that’s not so surprising with a pretty girl like you. You must be used to that. You didn’t pick him up on the highway?”
“No.”
“You were off the highway?”
“Yes.”
“What direction? How far?
“South. Two, three, four miles. I don’t know.
“In the middle of nowhere.”
“In a farmyard. There was no one living there.”
“How do you know there was no one living there?”
“It was an old house. The windows were broken. There was no one living in that house on a day like today.”
“And what were you doing there?”
“Nothing. Driving around.”
“Doing nothing in the middle of nowhere? In a blizzard?”
“The blizzard didn’t start until after we got there.”
“Oh. So you were there for a while? Were you breaking into the house to see if there was anything worth stealing?”
She wiped the tears from her eyes, trying to collect herself.
“We’re not thieves! We didn’t steal anything!”
He picked up the wallet. “What’s this, then?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Luke was looking for his identification. I’ve never stolen anything in my life. The old man came wandering through the blizzard without a jacket, and we saved his life.”
“Then what were you doing there trespassing on somebody’s land?”
“Nothing. Saving that old man’s life.”
“You must have had a reason for going there. If you were on the way to Calgary, then what were you doing a few miles south of the highway in the middle of nowhere?”
Irene stared at her hands, still feeling the blood in her cheek where he’d hit her face. It had not been so hard it would bruise her, but she could not help staring at the hand that did it, resting there on the desk.
“Do you understand why I don’t believe you, Irene? Can I call you Irene?” He waited, but she would not give him permission. “You’re riding around in a stolen car, with a stolen wallet on the floor, and here you were trespassing on somebody’s land. There’s a pattern here, Irene. We see a pattern. And we don’t even know if that old man’s gonna make it. We’d like to know how he got in that condition.”
“It’s thirty below. It’s blizzarding. He was wandering around without a jacket. That’s how he got in that condition. We saved his life.”
“Did you save his life, or did you almost kill him? I’m weighing the evidence you’ve given me, and …”
Holding both his hands up before her, as though he were that woman, Justice, with her eyes blindfolded and her scales raised, he weighed Irene’s fate in his hands, and he let the right hand sink, and she knew his left hand was her, rising into the air, unbearably light, like a feather, like truth, like the Holy Ghost.
“He’d be dead if we hadn’t picked him up. That boy could be dead by now because you won’t go and look for him.”
“But there’s this hole in your story, Irene. What were you doing in that farmyard if you were on your way to Calgary? You didn’t go there to save him, did you?”
She stared at the wall, raising her chin a little to show him she was no longer scared and she no longer cared for his innuendo. “We went there to kiss.”
“Pardon?”
“You heard what I said.”
“Kiss. You said something about kissing.”
She didn’t respond.
“I bet you’re a real good kisser, aren’t you?” He got up and walked around the desk, smiling down at her a moment, then unzipped his fly.
“Would you like to show me what those lips of yours can do? Maybe you could show me? Maybe then we could be friends.”
“I’ll bite it off,” she whispered.
“Pardon?”
“I said, if you try to make me, I’ll bite it off.”
He kicked her, and she crumpled into the corner.
JANUARY 2nd, 1971: NEAR BROKEN HEAD
SO, THIS MUST BE the end of time.
There’s no sign on a post to tell ya, but even if I were to rein in this shivering pony and put one up nobody would be able to see the damn thing to read it. Ride right by and never know they were there. Here. Or maybe walk right by. Here is not a place you could drive to. Or I guess, being as it’s the end of time, that would make this a when and not a here. When is not a place you could drive to. Or is that
wrong? If time’s over, then maybe it is only here, without the when of it entering into the question. It’s always been here, and it’s always been exactly like it is right now. Maybe here is the only place there ever was. I have always been here, and the boy has always been here, and we have both always been exactly this cold, and no one in the world has ever known where we were or are or if we even exist. We are looking for a calf, but there is no one looking for us.
The here of it is a little vague, if that’s all there is to it. I know we’re in that square mile I bought from Janson, and we’re not far from the creek, approaching the old black willow where we used to picnic, but I know that through intuition more than sense. The wind’s howling down the valley from the northwest, pushing us south, and I can barely make out the ground when I look down, and when I do catch a glimpse of it there’s only the white of the fallen snow for the eyes to rest on a moment before it gets wiped away by the white of the blowing snow. There is nothing to here but these million shades of white. Isn’t that what they say about the Eskimos, that they have a million names for white? Perhaps that’s one of the things I have neglected in my sorry life, the learning of the possibilities of white.
We might be riding along in the clouds, the boy and I. He is still back there, isn’t he? Yep, I can just make him out. Hunched over the horn, warming his hands under the saddle. Nothing like horse lather perfume. Should tell him to slick his hair down with a palmful of the stuff. Should warn him not to lose his mitts while he’s trying to keep his fingers warm, but he couldn’t hear me even if I yelled at him. There’s no sound, nothing but light, but white, at this end of time. I’ve tied the horses together so his can’t wander off with him, but I have to remember to check back over my shoulder every few minutes in case he falls asleep and makes that his last fall, or in case the rope should freeze right through and snap off like an icicle, or in case I do ride off into the sky and carry him and his horse dangling underneath me like a couple of frozen marionettes.
Check back every few minutes? How do you measure a minute at the end of time? With a shovel, I suppose.