by Lee Gowan
“Hi, Sam,” the cowboy says. “Here’s your jacket, and here’s Grandpa’s gun.”
He distinguishes the offerings by lifting the appropriate hand as he names its holdings. Gwen turns and walks away, disappearing back into the house.
“I didn’t—this has nothing to do with me,” Sam turns and pleads his innocence to his retreating wife. He runs a hand through his thinning hair, looking accusingly from the cowboy to me, as though our appearance has just snapped the final thread of their marriage. “Where’s Michael?” he says, craning his neck, trying to see around corners. The cowboy looks around.
“Didn’t notice him.”
He drapes the jacket over Sam’s shoulder and holds the shoebox out to him. Sam bats the box out of his hand, and it falls to the ground, the gun spilling out and skittering across the doorstep.
“Jesus, Sam. That’s no way to treat Grandpa’s gun.” The cowboy kneels and picks it up, examining it for damage before he looks up to where Sam stands looking down at him. “Do you want it or don’t you?”
“Go away,” Sam says, and he steps back and closes the door.
The cowboy eyes me, wondering what to do now. I should walk to the car and get in and be gone, but I stand there, taking it all in, the way someone might watch someone else’s house burning slowly to the ground. There is a hypnotic beauty in fire that cannot be matched by any face; a beauty that is impossible to capture on film. Perhaps it is the heat and the smoke. I take a picture. The cowboy tries the door, but finds it locked. He turns and looks directly at me one more time, challenging me for my stupid opinion.
“I don’t think he wants to shoot you,” I say.
He turns his back to me. I see his body clench, and he kicks the door. It doesn’t give.
“Vern?” I say.
He braces himself a little more deeply, lowering his centre of gravity, and kicks again. The door doesn’t give.
“Vern, why don’t we …”
He kicks a third time, but before he can try a fourth the door opens and Sam steps out to face him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
There is the sound of a young child crying.
The cowboy hands Sam the gun. “You asked for it. Here it is. Put it in a safe place where the kids can’t reach it. You gotta be careful with guns.”
Sam raises the gun and points it at Vern’s face. “Get out of here!”
That reaches me. I’m about to dash for the car, when I see a young boy standing near the hedge, watching us from beside the old pickup truck. He isn’t crying. He’s just watching, in awe, as the world comes rushing for him. He looks into my eyes, and I cannot take a step.
“You said you wanted the gun,” I hear the cowboy say, “and I brought it to you.”
“I said get out of here.”
“There’s a boy here,” I tell them. “Could somebody introduce me to him?”
Neither of them responds, but when I look back I see they have stopped their performance to look at us. The gun is still in Sam’s hand, but is dangling at his side.
“What are you doing?” the boy asks.
Both men shake their heads.
“I was just givin’ your dad an old gun,” the cowboy says. “It was your great grandpa’s. Great Grandpa Sam.”
Sam raises the gun to show it to his son.
“You’re not gonna shoot Uncle Vern, are you, Dad?” the boy asks.
“No … nobody’s gonna shoot anybody, Michael. Why don’t you come inside and … watch television or something.”
“Who’s she?” the boy points at me.
No one answers for me.
“I’m Ai. I’m looking for a cliff to put in a movie. I look for places for movies.”
“You’re who?”
“Ai. My name is Ai.”
He makes a funny face. “A real movie?”
“A real movie.”
“Sweet. I saw Independence Day. It was pretty good.”
“Was it? I haven’t seen it yet.”
“It’s not bad. I’ve seen better.”
“Michael,” Sam’s wife appears in the doorway, an even younger child burrowing his face into the hollow of her shoulder, “come on inside.” She looks at me accusingly.
“Are you making a movie about Uncle Vern and Dad?”
“No,” I shake my head. “I’m not making a movie about anybody real.”
“I’m trying to get him into the house,” Sam explains to his wife. “And I’ve asked Vern and his friend to leave us alone.”
“My friend? Sam just introduced us, didn’t he, Ai?”
“Put that thing away,” Gwen motions to the gun in Sam’s hand. “Come here, Michael. Come inside.”
“He’s okay, Gwen,” the cowboy says.
“Come inside, Michael.”
The boy gives me one more look, still trying to verify whether I’m real, and he leaves without saying goodbye, walking past his mother and disappearing into the house. Sam stands at his doorway, shaking his head.
“Please go away,” he says to his brother and to me.
“And you go away too,” the woman says. The three-year-old clings to her shoulder, hiding his face. “Your suitcases are in the trunk. The keys are in the ignition. But don’t take the car. I need it.”
She closes the door firmly.
Sam glares at us. He looks down at the gun in his hand, then hurls it at the hedge. The cowboy cringes slightly as it flies. When it’s landed and bounced and come to rest against the delphiniums, he turns to his brother, shaking his head. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
The cowboy walks over to retrieve the gun, while Sam marches to the car and opens the trunk and pulls out the two suitcases.
“Do you want … a ride somewhere?” I ask him, as I walk to my car, but he only glares at me.
He picks up the suitcases and throws them in the back of the pickup truck, gets into the truck and tries to start it. The starter grinds. He tries again. The starter grinds. He tries again. The starter grinds.
“I gotta change that starter,” the cowboy says.
Sam gets out of the truck and starts to push past the cowboy, but the cowboy stops him by placing both hands on his shoulders, one of the hands still holding the gun. “I’m sorry, Sam.”
The banker shrugs off the cowboy without even looking at him. He takes the suitcases from the back of the truck, and starts walking down the driveway.
“I can give you a ride,” I call.
He doesn’t look back.
“I guess you’re right. I guess nobody’s gonna get shot today,” the cowboy says. He looks down at the gun and spins the magazine playfully.
I get into the car.
I start the car, but before I can press the brake and get it in gear the cowboy has slipped in the passenger door. “Let’s go see a cliff,” he says.
I consider telling him to get out. “Do you really think we should take the gun?”
He looks at it as though he’d forgotten he was carrying it. “Better not leave it here. Wouldn’t want Michael to find it,” he says.
How can I argue? I put the car in gear.
I drive slowly past Sam, but he doesn’t even glance our way.
JANUARY 2nd, 1971: NEAR BROKEN HEAD
NOTHING TO DO but leave the calf on the ground and wade back in the water and search for the boy—dive in after him and dive again and again and again and do my best to find him before I pass out and get swept away under the ice. Before that. Which should not take long. My teeth are chattering like a telegraph machine sending me an invitation to my own funeral, and I’m still standing at the edge, looking into the black water. Never would have believed it could happen. Water flowing down from the rapids kept enough energy to cut a secret channel there under the surface, I suppose. Kept it thin, when by all rights it should have been at least two feet thick. Snow insulated it from the cold air so it could keep bubbling through, even over deep water that generally runs so still. Never would have believed it.
Just need to make myself take the one step, at least fumble around for him. But let’s face the face, there’s no saving him now. He’s gone. It can happen that fast. There’s no angels up above to announce such moments, but he’s definitely gone, and I’m standing here staring into his grave without one good word to say for my own eulogy.
I ought to go in and be done with it. If I just step right in and hold my breath long enough to float away under the ice, it won’t take a second and I’ll be down there with him, looking him in the blue of the eyes, that young face spattered across the nose with freckles, his cowlick frozen on his forehead, and there won’t be any turning back for either of us, nothing to come between us, no survival instinct to save me from a fate worse than worms, which would be having to face my son and my daughter-in-law.
All I have to do is take one step. One long step. Just move the muscles the same way I’ve moved them a million times before, and I’ll never have to do anything again. The water would probably not seem cold for long. I’d likely be asleep before the end of the story. Just drift off.
There’s not much to recommend the alternative. Only more miserable life. The blistering and burping and bumping and bleating. The incredibly excruciating pain when my blood starts bubbling through my frozen toes on its doomed journey to what passes for my heart. The shame of looking into my own damned eyes every morning and thinking about how I killed him.
He’s nine and I’m seventy.
I couldn’t save a penny from a jackrabbit. The calf lies over there, laughing at me. Never seen anything so funny in his entire life, but then he’s only been alive four hours at the most. Maybe that’s long enough to know a fool when you see one. Worse than a fool. The boy was the fool, ’cause he came along for the ride. I’m only the coward. I’m afraid of the cold. Can’t face it anymore, though I’m still standing here in it, watching the water flow by, which is the nearest way out. Float right on down to Mexico. No. If only. We’re the wrong side of the divide. I’d go north, out to the Saskatchewan, and on up to Hudson’s Bay. I’d never be warm again.
The boy will never be warm again.
Playing lifeguard’s pointless—the current will have dragged him all the way to the bridge by now—but I should at least make some effort. If I don’t have the gumption to die with him, I should at least step in up to my knees and fumble around a bit to make sure he’s not somewhere in these hundred square feet of water we opened up like a big present from the devil. But he couldn’t still be there. I know full well he’s long gone, or I’d have seen him struggling. He was gone the minute he went under, swept beneath the ice, bumping along down there like a cloud scudding across the sky, tapping out a message maybe, if he knew some sort of code. What would he say to me if he still had words? What could he teach me? He’s only nine, and he’s arrived before I have. He already knows more than me. What right do I have to call him a fool? I should go down there and ask him for the answers. They’re probably on the exam.
I take a step, and then another, and then another, and then another, until I am standing over the calf, and the cow looks up to ask me what I have in mind. To answer, I pick up her calf and start walking up the hill. She follows.
It is the longest walk I’ve ever taken, but I finally arrive at the barn.
The boy’s horse is waiting in its stall. I unsaddle it, peel off the blanket and do the same with my own, then give the tired beasts half a pail of chop to stoke their fires. Should wipe them down, I suppose, but I’m too cold myself. All the while, the cow’s nuzzling the calf, licking him all over, lowing softly, some lullaby about angels taking babies away to a better place than this one. Some warm place, where no one’s likely to dump you in the water and leave you there to die. I kneel down and pat the calf’s hind quarter, and his mother looks up at me, suspicious. I suppose I could bed him in here, and maybe he’d be all right, momma, but it would be best if I took him in the house and warmed him right through until he’s good and dry. Maybe we’d get a little blood flowing in those poor frozen ears of his.
I lift him up, his mother more than concerned about this repetition of history, and I walk back out into the storm, the old lady right behind, sniffing her baby in my arms, bawling at me to leave him alone. Guess she’s seen enough of my babysitting abilities.
Wind hasn’t lost any of its flavour.
If I’d just left him to watch his television show, he’d be there waiting for me in the house, and I’d growl at him something about the wonderful ride he’d missed and how he’s not worthy of my name, and he’d help me out of my wet boots and socks, and I’d go up and get into a warm bath and wait for the pain, while he stayed down and watched the end of his program.
But he’s gone.
Can’t feel a thing in my feet. Might be floating along above the ground and wouldn’t know it. Damn cow’s bawling in my ear, giving me instructions on how to make milk from water. Sorry, lady, but I’ll never track down the proper ingredients. Would hot chocolate be okay? Would have made the boy a cup if he’d wanted, even though he didn’t come out with me. Calf’s bloody heavy.
The truck drives into the yard, and the son jumps out, looking at me with wild eyes like he’s never seen me before. She’s there too, her mouth open in the middle of her pretty face, and the other boy’s watching.
“Where were you? Where’s Sam? We came back and saw you were gone and went lookin’ for you.”
“Went for a ride. Took the horses. Found this calf.”
“Where’s Sam?”
I just keep walking, ’cause if I stop now I likely won’t get there, and it wouldn’t make much sense to give up this close to the finish line. The legs are moving, and I don’t think I could stop them now if I wanted anyway. The son gets to the door first and has it open for me, and I walk in and set the calf down on the floor by the stove. Go to fetch a rag from under the sink.
“Dad, where’s Sam?” the boy asks again.
There, beside the soap dish, are his stupid glasses, a ball of dirty masking tape holding them together. Too vain to wear them unless he was reading or watching television, so he’d carry them in his pocket and fall and break them. I could take them down to the creek and throw them in and go in after them.
When I get back to the calf with the rag, the whole family’s standing around in their winter armour, watching me, wondering why I was standing there staring at his glasses that way, the question they’re too scared to ask already in their eyes.
“Is Sam still out in the barn?” the son’s wife gets it out.
I kneel down and start to wipe down the calf. He bawls weakly.
“Sam’s gone,” I say.
That clock on the stove is doing its three beats a second, and I can feel the calf’s heart doing about the same. The wailing starts, a small gasp at first, and then a terrified “No!” that tells me she knows exactly what I’m trying to say, but the son figures it might help to be a bit obtuse.
“What do you mean, gone? Where did you last see him?
I shake my head, trying to find some words. “You can’t see. Everythin’s light out there, and you can’t see a damn thing. It’s the damnedest light. Won’t show you anythin’.”
“Did he … Is he still out there on the horse? Where did you find the calf?”
“Where it was born. Right there on the ground. He’s not a bad size either, is he? Born out there in the middle of a blizzard, and not three chances in hell he’d survive, and here he is, in a warm kitchen. What must he be thinkin’?”
“Dad. Where’s Sam?”
“He was a good kid. We fell through the ice at the swim-min’ hole. It should have been thick enough there. The ice’s always been good and thick there. He was a damned good kid. Could somebody help me get my bo
ots off? I can’t feel my feet, so I’d best get them dry.”
She’s screaming, and I can’t even tell her to stop.
“Stay with your grandpa,” the son says, and grabs his wife and pulls her out the door and I suppose down to the creek to look into the black hole that I should have stepped into if I had any sense at all. Then they’d have put up a rock for both of us and told the story about how we died there together in the cold, saving that calf they found on the ground at the edge of the water. That miracle calf. They’d have raised it up for a bull, let it keep its balls, even though it had the conformation of a sway-backed mule. He’d have been our tribute, the boy’s and mine.
The other boy stares down at me, a look in his eye that’s only slightly less painful than his mother’s wailing. He kneels and begins to unlace my boots, while I keep drying the amniotic fluid and snow water off the calf, and it bleats dully like it’s not too sure about all of this but has calculated a decision not to complain too awful much, considering that this strange place is so beautifully warm.
When the boy pulls off my second boot, I look at him and catch him looking at me that way again.
“Yes,” I say. “I’ve killed your brother.”
JUNE 29th, 2000: NEAR BROKEN HEAD
THERE IS A pretty farmhouse to my right, the eaves and window frames painted an emerald green, but the trees surrounding it are dying, either from lack of water or lack of attention. Here, the cowboy has told me, trees really can die from lack of attention.
“That’s the Brock Place, but nobody lives there anymore,” is his latest lesson. “Bankers took so much of the land, the Brocks gave up and sold everything they had left. If they had anything. Must be ten years ago.”
“Was it Sam?” I ask.
The cowboy looks at me. “Mighta been.” He turns back to the road. “Sam keeps busy.”
He drives with one hand, while rolling himself a cigarette with the other. The gravel was too much for me—it was all too much, and I could no longer concentrate—and he suggested he drive, and I pulled over and let him. If I hadn’t, I don’t know if I’d have made it back to civilization alive. I still don’t know if I will. I’m not sure where the gun is, but I think it’s under my seat. My father is waiting for me. I’m out of cigarettes.