Gristle & Bone

by Duncan Ralston

  Dr. Baswell picked up his pad from the desk. "So you felt your meeting with Catherine was somehow related to this call from the Service Dog Foundation?"

  Dean felt a chill rush up his spine. Somehow, he found the nerve to smile. "Because Catherine had a dog."

  "A lot of people have dogs, Dean."

  "Not like this one. Meanest damn thing you ever heard."

  "'Heard.' You never saw it?"

  "Nobody did, but yeah. I did, once. It was always behind their fence. One kid said he saw it once, but it turned out he was just lying to get Catherine to notice him. She was that kind of girl. Every boy wanted to date her, but her dad wouldn't let her out of his sight. Drove her to and from school every single day, right to the door, even though you could tell it embarrassed the hell out of the poor kid. Not just pretty, either—smart, too. Never allowed to go to any of the dances. Not that I know from experience. I never went, either. If Catherine wasn't going, you could count me out."

  "Out of solidarity?"

  "Out of 'If she's not gonna be there, what's the point?'"

  Dr. Baswell nodded thoughtfully.

  "You see what I mean about a pedestal?"

  "I'm beginning to."

  "So, heard—yeah. Always from behind that fence. Hurtling itself at that fence. For most kids on the Lock Side, going past her place was the easiest shortcut to the Elementary school."

  Dr. Baswell seemed to respond to this. "Which street is this?"

  "Danber Avenue," Dean said. "Just a small street, crescent really. There's a laneway at the end of it that runs between two houses. One on the right is Catherine's. It opens up on this parking lo—"

  He stopped, suddenly aware he had almost revealed something very important. He waited for the feeling to pass, watching the grandfather clock swing its big brass counterweight, like the long, dangly testicles of its namesake.

  "I know it," Baswell was saying. "We used to take Greenbury, when I was young."

  Breathe, Dean. Breathe it out. And then the memory was gone, passed under him like the shadow of a dragon in the depths of a black, raging sea. He sighed in relief. "Yeah," he said, returning to reality. "I know Greenbury. Danber is easier though, because of the lane."

  "It wasn't there in my day. Are you okay, Dean? You look peaked." Only Baswell didn't say peaked, he said peekid, vaguely Shakespearean.

  "Huh? Oh, no, I'm—I'm fine. You don't think that's weird, though? The dog thing?"

  "Well, Dean," Baswell rested his fingers beneath his lips. "Things like this happen all the time: pick up the phone to dial a number, and the callee's already picked up the other end, about to call you. Hear a word for the first time, and suddenly you're hearing it everywhere. And so on. They aren't signs or signals from some spooky netherworld beyond ours. There's no special meaning. These things just happen, because at some point events like these are bound to coincide. It's fun to think they may be something more, but if you start to take the idea seriously without any religious grounding, there's a mild danger of solipsism."

  "Solip—?"

  "The idea that things, places, events, all exist inside one's own mind. That everything exists solely because you do."

  "And that's dangerous."

  "Because it devalues those things, Dean. Other people. If they aren't real, they don't matter. Therefore, what's to stop you from harming them?"

  Dean studied the man's expression. It seemed as if Baswell were scrutinizing him, looking for something hidden just below the surface. An emotional response? An apology? A dragon?

  Beethoven signaled the end of the hour. Baswell stood and hugged his hand.

  DEAN STOOD IN the cul-de-sac on Danber Avenue, looking up at Catherine's house.

  It was early morning on a Saturday, an overcast day. Lights were on in the ground floor of the house. He'd told his parents he was going for a run, and he had run for a few miles, shutting off his brain: the screams, the shouted prayers, the hot smell of urine and sweat, the sweaty flesh pressed against his, the dogs barking, the orders, the laughter. When he allowed his brain to turn on again, he had just about stepped into oncoming traffic, or what little there was of it in Dark Pines. He found himself back on the Lock Side, jogging in place at the far-east foot of Quarry Road. He'd come almost full circle back to his house, and had somehow wandered into the route he used to take to school. Danber met Quarry three or four blocks further east. Where there had once been row houses, there was now a corner store, either advertising or owned by Kit Kat candy bars.

  He ran in place, deciding. Home was two blocks west, three south. Catherine's was three—Four, Dean, don't act like you forgot—east, three north.

  He ran north a block, telling himself he wasn't going to go, he didn't need to dredge up any more embarrassment from his pathetic, lonely childhood. Then he veered a sharp right, crossing the road in front of a bicyclist, who angrily jangled her bell before throwing back the middle finger.

  Startled, keyed up with adrenaline, he almost shouted at her. He thought about chasing after her, running alongside until he got her attention, and then punching her in the back of the head, knocking her off the bike. The spandex biking suit made him instantly hate her; her sharp features further annoyed him. That she had the nerve to give him the bird after she'd nearly run him down in the street was the final nail, an insult which could not—would not—go unpunished.

  He breathed. Baswell had suggested it during their third session, but Dean had yet to try it. It seemed too simple, too much like a magic bullet, to be helpful. But he breathed, in through the nose (Innnnnnnnnnnn), out through the mouth (Ouuuuuuuut). Expel the bad juju, Dean-o. In through the nose... ouuuuuut through the mouth.

  His heartbeat slowed. The cyclist rounded the corner onto Quarry and was gone.

  There. That wasn't so hard, was it? And he answered himself: Like fuck, it wasn't. But it worked. Might not work every time, but this time it did.

  Violence had sent him home. After the incident with his commanding officer, Dean had run. He was a runner. It was what he'd always done, ever since he was a child: run from authority, run from responsibility, run from his enemies, run from life. If it was a pattern, then perhaps it was destiny that had driven him off into the desert outside Kandahar, where he'd been stationed, with his fellow officers pursuing him for a time in their M-Gator A3 utility vehicles and "Optimus Prime" (their Armored Heavy Support Vehicle), shouting after him, until he'd leapt into an area dotted with boulders and scrub brush between two sand dunes, where even the Gators couldn't follow. Optimus Prime, unable to transform for the more rugged terrain, had braked minutes behind the others, and had probably already headed back to base by the time he'd lost the Gators. But Dean had kept on running, faster than he'd ever pushed himself—except, maybe, for that day when he was 12. After a time he was certain he'd lost them, that they'd given up, and still he wouldn't dare stop until the sun had beaten him to a pulp, and he'd thrown up everything from his stomach. Then he'd dropped trou and squirted shit into the hard-packed sand, his nerves jangling, his insides like a wrung sponge, every single part of him sore, even his eyelids.

  He'd spent the night in a goat farmer's hovel. The mustached man had fed him stale naan with mashed beans and let him sleep with the goats. Cold. Nobody ever told you how cold the desert got at night. It seemed not to make any sense, that such a place of extremes couldn't possibly exist on earth. The desert was never warm, nor cool. There were no gradations between sweating through your clothes, the kind of heat that squeezed every drop of moisture from your body, and the shivering, huddled-up inside-your-clothes kind, like the most frigid Canadian winter cold, with no place and no one in sight with whom to find warmth. There were no shades of gray; the Afghan desert was all death, hard and unforgiving.

  The goat herder's hovel had been a godsend. That night, Dean had snuggled up to the fattest goat, a skinny female with a distended belly and flat, hanging udders like deflated party balloons. At first, she'd kicked him away—not hard, just enoug
h to show him she wasn't thrilled. He'd snuggled in again, and she'd settled into it with a snorted sigh. Lying against her belly, like a giant, bristly hot water bottle, feeling her heartbeat against his ear, her scrawny chest rising and falling slowly and steadily with her breath, Dean had fallen asleep.

  In the morning, he'd awakened to the man milking his bedmate. Sometime in the night, Dean had shifted or been pushed into a loose pile of straw, his face crisscrossed where he'd slept against it.

  The man had fed him a dish of some sour, curded white stuff—like yoghurt, but as chunky as cottage cheese—and sticky rice. On Dean's way out the door, the farmer had thrust something into his hand: a beaten copy of The Noble Qur'an. That it was an English edition said to Dean the man had kept it around in waiting for a moment like this, since the farmer spoke no English himself.

  This was meant for me, he'd thought, and a tingling sense of religious mysticism had warmed him from chest to anus.

  He couldn't accept it, but he hadn't been able to get the man to take it back, either, and since everything he had said was gibberish to the man, Dean had finally thanked him and tucked the book into the back of his uniform khakis. The man said, "As-salaam alaikum," and though Dean didn't know any Arabic, per se, he'd hear that phrase—Peace be unto you—spoken enough to know the correct response was to repeat it, or something similar. So he had, and a near-toothless smile had creased the man's craggy cheeks, making his mustache look somewhat like a blackbird taking flight above his sunburnt brown lips.

  Heat had returned to the desert. He'd heard the vehicles maybe an hour after leaving the goat herder's house. He had already been reading from the Qur'an for some time by then, tearing off pages as he read them and tossing them into the wind as he walked. He'd still been reading when they caught up to him.

  "'And Jesus said, 'Indeed, I am the servant of Allah!'" Dean had started shouting as they wedged their vehicles in his path, raising a swirling cloud of dust. "'He has given me the Scripture and made me a prophet!'" He'd torn the page and thrown it behind him, where it fluttered. Not the green vehicles of Canadian Armed Forces standard; these were desert-beige Humvees. American soldiers. Marines. "'Have you no desire for my gods, O Abraham? If you do not desist, I will surely stone you, so avoid me a prolonged time!'"

  "Sir, where are you going?" The Marine, a woman, had bright blue eyes—Like a husky's, Dean had thought—and lips so chapped they were mostly white. She'd put a hand on his shoulder, and Dean had shirked it, angrily. The eyes had turned cold then, chapped lips thinning. "Okay, sir, we are only trying to help."

  "'The ink of the scholar is more holy than the blood of the martyr!'" Dean had said, and spat in the grunt's face.

  Her eyes had become merciless, left hand rising to the M4 carbine automatic slung over her shoulder. She'd wiped the spit off with her gloved right. It had only streaked the dirt on her cheek and chin.

  Three men had then approached from the vehicle, boxing him in. Dean had fought them off, thrown a punch at a young guy who still had pimples and kicked the woman in the thigh. They'd overtaken him easily. He'd screamed at them—"Western dogs! Infidels!"—like a wild-eyed Libyan terrorist from an '80s movie. He'd kicked and he'd spat. They'd thrown him into the back of the vehicle, wedged between two Marines in the back, Private Black and Private White, and when he wouldn't shut up (he couldn't shut up, since his anger, his rage wouldn't allow it: he was a Canadian citizen, a soldier!), one of them had backhanded him so hard across the jaw that his teeth had clacked, and maybe it was the heat, the exhaustion or the lack of sustenance, but suddenly Dean had found himself in the dark.

  Running. Running in the dark.

  When the light had come back, they'd been parked at the Bagram Airfield detention facility in Parwan Province, Afghanistan's Guantanamo, 550-something kilometers, 340-something miles away. He'd been out for over 9 hours. The sun had bored holes in his skull through his eyes, and as his Marine friends had escorted him to the building, other soldiers pushed their own detainees past a makeshift schoolyard, where unused children's toys gathered more dust with every sandstorm. Now, he remembered the single sunflower growing in a field of gravel, trudged down by their boots, before springing back hopefully toward the desert sun.

  Running again. Running along Danber Avenue, like he'd done that day when he was 12. And now he stood in front of her house, Catherine's house, and the lights were on, and a cute little hatchback was in the drive as a cool, light rain began to patter against his hot skin. The Priests' backsplit was at the end of a cul-de-sac, and there was nowhere else to go but up to the door.

  You could take the lane, Dean-o.

  Not a fucking chance, he thought back.

  The bungalow on the left side of the lane was gone, ditto the one to the left of that. The two houses had been junked, and a larger one had sprung up in their place. The Priests' big wooden fence, its slats so close together they were almost impenetrable, was gone. Dean had noticed this the moment he'd turned onto Danber. There was only wide-open yard, the dog likely long dead. If they had another dog now, it was either well-trained or wearing one of those awful shock collars. Beyond the yard, with its barbeque and picnic table and giant, rich green pine, the parking lot was gone, too. In its place was a public playground with newish plastic equipment. Past that was Anderson Road, and just two blocks east from there was Dark Pines Elementary. Unless that was gone, too.

  The lights were on in Catherine's house. A television flickered blue in the living room. No movement inside. It was 8:34 AM. Dean caught his breath and let the rain cool him, thinking it over. Breathing deep. The adrenaline still churning. The time was now... or never.

  Fuck it.

  Dean strode to the door. He was reaching for the little brass knocker when it opened inward. The man in the doorway nearly jumped out of his wits.

  Christ—she's married.

  "Jesus, you scared me," the man said. He was about Dean's age, maybe a few years older, and vaguely handsome, even if a bit pudgy and pasty in a British lord sort of way. He wore a plush robe and fuzzy slippers at the ends of his hairy, skinny legs. The man checked out Dean's muscular frame, gave him a puzzled look. "Are you the new paperboy?"

  "No, I..." Defeated. "I'm sorry, I think I must have the wrong address."

  "Who are you looking for?"

  Dean briefly considered making up a name, but he said, "Ca-Catherine Priest? Are you—? Is she—?"

  "Nope, you've got the right place, all right." The man seemed suspicious. "Friend of hers, are you?"

  Dean nodded meekly.

  "She's still sleeping right now. Would you like me to tell her you dropped by, or...?"

  Dean looked at the living room window. The furniture was all different than what he'd seen through her windows back when they were kids.... Classier. Had that been her influence, or her husband's? "No. That's okay." He turned from the door, descended the stairs.

  "Well, okay then," the man called after him, bending for the newspaper. "Have a good one."

  "You too," Dean said, not turning, running out into the swelling rain.

  * * *

  "WHAT ARE YOU running from, Dean?"

  Fourth session. Dr. Baswell knew all about Dean's desertion, his time at Bagram and his eventual release in the wake of scandal. Dean hadn't been the one to tell him: the Armed Forces people had when they'd scheduled the sessions, along with his commanding officer, Master Corporal Sandman, who'd made an impassioned personal call. The rest, Baswell had gleaned from the papers. He had the infamous copy of the Toronto Herald folded on the end table beside his chair.

  "Let's go back. To your childhood."

  "You wanna know if I was fondled by my daddy? If Mommy didn't love me?"

  Baswell flashed a stern glare. "Don't be disrespectful. Anyhow, if Laurenz had felt the need to abuse you, it would first mean he'd have to acknowledge your existence, as something other than a rather disappointing appendage."

  Dean chuckled his scorn. Baswell had a point. It wasn
't as though he'd had a terrible childhood, but his father had been perpetually dissatisfied: with Dean's grades, with the way Dean did his chores, with his extracurricular activities (or lack thereof), his lack of his father's impressive stature (Larry Vogel was six-foot-six, Dean a mere five-nine), his disposition, his apparent weakness and unwillingness to work out, his disinterest in the sciences (he'd hoped for Dean to become a doctor, like himself), and his general lack of motivation. These days, not much had changed, with the notable addition of the shame and embarrassment over his son's desertion and dismissal with disgrace from the military. And when Laurenz Vogel hadn't been voicing his disappointment, he'd been cold and inattentive.

  "When was the first time you skipped school?" Baswell asked.

  "They told you about that?"

  "Educated guess." Dr. Baswell smiled—far too pleased by his own deduction. "Running away is a pattern with you, isn't it? What was it that first time? A test? A speech? The bigger kids picking on you?"

  Dean said nothing.

  "You're too smart for it to have been a test, though I suppose you could have been unprepared. No. The way you lashed out at Master Corporal Sandman, I'm guessing it was bullies. I'm right, aren't I?"

  Dean turned to face the ancient mariner on the old sea map, stern-faced and bearded like his father. Monsters in the open water. HERE BE DRAGONS, all right. You said a fuckin' mouthful, Captain Highliner.

  "All I know about it—the incident when you were twelve—was what happened to the boy." Jesus, no, please, Uncle Tim. I don't wanna remember. Please. "It's very much reminiscent to me of what happened to that Sandman fellow. He was defiant, of course. Said you had it coming, and claimed he would have killed you with his bare hands, if he'd been physically able to run after you. Sandman, I mean. Not the boy. The boy was hospitalized for a month."

  "The things that prick said to me," Dean said through gritted teeth. "He had no right to lay a hand on me. None of them did. No right to... to shove me up against the wall like he did."