Blackstrap Hawco (32 page)

‘i was watching the fire,' junior said, accustomed to his grandmother's antics with holy water, one night, during a wind storm, he had opened his door only to recoil back from the shock of holy water sprinkled in his face, his grandmother wandering the house, reciting a prayer while tossing water against the doors and into the rooms, now, he wondered in whose house he was living, his grandmother, eyes on his face, a son he could be to her, once removed, smiling quietly, her eyes blackening, draining, ‘yes, da whistle were sounding, it woke me,' eyes blacker still, ‘fire a'ways awakens me,'

‘i believe it's out now,' mouth so dry, confounded, ‘the fire,' his grandmother noticed and mistook it as a need for sleep, ‘it's started in raining,' droplets shimmering in her pupils,

he glanced toward the window, having not heard, now hearing the gush beyond the pane,

‘it's pour'n buckets, get some rest, me love, ya need it after saving dat man, rest be da cure o' ye,'

‘i hope so,' regarding her again, her face that would never leave him, he assured himself, tears streaming down his face, there but not, never to be again, licking them from his lips, her lips, missus neary remained, stood in front of him, wanting or capturing the unspoken, a voice, her dead face a mysterious history he would never know nor understand, she not present at all, him neither, the shiver he never felt, the tears not his, he wanted to say, tell me, and that was all it took, at once he knew everything there was of her, millions of tiny images pulsing through time, of feeling, of small and large objects changing, each a birth, a finger on a petal,

‘ye have such a lovely complexion,' spoke missus neary, junior bursting out with laughter, wiping at his mouth, then at his eyes, ‘thanks, sorry, i wasn't expecting that, thanks, really,'

‘have ye got enough blankets in dere ta keep yerself warm,'

‘yeah,' a quick glance back, ‘i'm fine,'

‘i'm poisoned with dis weather,' she said, ‘it bodders me poor ol' knees,'

‘it's not nice at all,' gently a smile, and junior's heart gracefully relieved, his grandmother again, her features showing through the flicker, the complete opposite of harrowing,

‘sleep tight,' she said, ‘don't let da bedbugs bite,' and she turned to fling holy water in her path, carefully drifting off in her slippers, down the corridor toward the rows of rooms to all sides of her, a boarder sleeping in each wrought-iron bed, missus neary compelled, one foot in front of the other, only because she believed it probable, junior's eyes with the image of her disappearance into the shadows that she called into, then he closed the door, stood in silence, marvelling at the endearing quality of this life, in this dark house, on this dark land, while the rain poured beyond the window, tears from the sky where he
thought the glass pane his face, the cellar his feet, and the siren had been shut down, as the fire was now extinguished,

 

shab reardon woke to the sound of his own roar cut in half, tossing in the bedsheets, the slosh in his brain, chemistry a dreadful mix from birth, made to die by his mother, drunk all her life, his fist slamming the wall, knocking flakes of plaster down onto his greasy hair, the reverberating boom, a punch always preferred, from the moment of waking, waking the orphan girl, nil, ten years old, her eyes fluttering open, muscles tensing as she flinched a dreadful stare toward the doorway, gertie, asleep beside her on the mattress, a four-year-old boy, none, son of gertie's dead cousin, dreaming on the floor in a broken-railed crib salvaged from the crack,

nil knew what-was-called-her-mother wouldn't wake, her arm still hurting from three nights ago, she wanted to visit the surgery where it would be fixed, her mother refusing, too many bruises, too many scrapes and scars, mended breaks and snaps, grabbed at her arm and bent it one way, then the other, scowling and muttering, nut'n da matter, shut up widt dat nonsense, or ye'll get da back of me hand, ya liddle nuisance, but it still hurt, it ached and the pain was a knife going in every time she moved, she rolled toward her mother, her arm dead almost, not wanting to watch the door, believing if shab saw her back-on he might think she was sleeping, holding on to what-was-called-her-mother, holding on as she was pried away, not yet, her grip never strong enough,

listening, peeking a look over her shoulder, the doorway dark, she blinked and breathed, the knobby knot of a man in her black rememberings, cuddled closer to what-was-called-her-mother, the smell off her, a blend of scent she knew might mean love, the bottom of nil's nightdress cold against her legs, the sheet damp beneath her, she had peed the bed again, reached down and touched her nightdress, felt that it was wet, squeezed it, what-was-called-her-mother would be mad, she would be smacked, she would be forced to kneel, to clean, to show her tongue, to hide her face in her hands, while words kept coming, she dared not look over her shoulder although she heard the breathing knobby knot of a bulk, tightened her muscles, held on, if only her hands bigger, cursed by childhood, the breath and the footsteps toward the bed
and the yanking, stinging pull of her hair that shocked tears to her eyes and stole strength from her limbs in the flesh of panic, she let go, what-was-called-her-mother did not wake, but she thought she saw her turning, groggily checking over her shoulder as nil was dragged off the edge of the bed, hard across the floor, knowing better than to kick, only hurt her feet, her neck at that bent angle, it would not stop anything, kicking and screaming, she thought she heard a hacking laugh from what-was-called-her-mother's bed,

mommy,

where are you,

my mommy,

mine,

the knobby knot with her in the room where it happened, the door shut in daylight, knelt on the floor, her mouth shaped, pinned against the bed with one big stump, leg, knee, arm,

‘stay,' threatened using one hand to swipe the nightdress over her thin hips, heavy arm sliding along her chest, across her throat, lifted her against the mattress edge, light as a feather-doll, pressed down hard while working calloused fingers along her underwear's elastic leg hole, fingertips rough and rubbing too hard, pinching in the catch of flesh between her legs, three fingers forced deep, digging and twisting,
hurts,
nil thought,

nil crying,

nil nothing not,
hurts, hurts, stings like fire, dead be the light gone from me, paled in the shadow of men be the larger always,

nil sobbing
, the darker, the nightmare,
i be zero carrying a curse in a candy-flavoured beaded purse, forever, fucked, if i

i

i only knew the word, fuuuuuucked,

nil knowing not knowing like razor blades dragged vertically across the left eye, then the right, eyes oozing toward understanding,

cunt, he said, not a word, not a word to anyone, in the mouth of a peep-squeak girl who sings it away, hums in a see-sawing melody, those words not nice, uhn-uhn,

now hers to hold and hide from others,

shab smacked her bottom, sore arm behind her back, swiped down his underwear,

nil felt the fob of flesh probing, searching blindly, jabbing until it broke the hole and the first stinging entry, then burning and tearing into nothing as everything widened and surged upward, a body within her body rising to break loose, the pain, that entire body climbing up her spine, one hand around front, over her shrieking mouth,
i am the death of humanity,
thought nil, nil cried,
i am the death of humanity, i am the death of humanity
, opened mouth into the grey pillow, if only the words the feeling spoke, skin against skin, a red-black shadow in the corner of her eyes, gertie biting her lips, nervously smoking a cigarette, fire outside the windows, she stepped hesitantly toward the bed, took a draw, handed shab the cigarette, fidgeting and giggling for the years she knew of this taught her, of what she stood in, where she crawled from, what was done to her in the name of other dark nights, surviving to show how to survive, how easy now the knowing of what he would do to her, the brutal thrill, to it, it, it, knowing where he would put it, one step back, an explosion of excitement tingling in her blood, reversing, back but forward, ahead into the black-red wound, her legs atremble as she settled in the doorway, the watcher, her large eyes staring, fixed on the struggle, the nightdress-hiked-higher punishment, in a bedroom, in a house built by a father gone, the muffled shreds of screeching that she should almost stop, and more explosions, as shab broke the foster girl from someone/somewhere else, broke nil with a savagery that made none of it livingly real, her foster son, none, not a part of this, sleeping in his rattling crib, dreaming of cowboys and indians, not dead yet, not yet in that hell, a dynamite explosion on the island, ripping through half of them, nil, gertie, shab, missus neary, but not yet none, the dreaming boy, tossed from the wreckage, up into a tree, balanced in the highest limbs, hell raging beneath none, what he would live from this point on, a boy, soon a man, with two words in his cock, his muscles, fucking destroy,

 

taught, said nil

taught, said gertie

taught, said shab

II

dust

the woods smelled dank from the previous night's rain, blackstrap's boots glistened with moisture from the clumps of grass and moss he trudged through, the shotgun heavy, broken open the way it was made no difference, it was how blackstrap's father told him to carry the shotgun, hand on the barrel, stock pushed up into his armpit, he was looking for crows, black and big and worthless, his eyes sharp into the shadows of limbs and trunks and down along the tangle of grass and thick roots that made the ground troublesome to tread through, his pockets stuffed with hard bread for fairies, just in case, so they wouldn't carry him off, his mother insisting, putting the bread in his pockets, her son not believing, laughing off the idea while doing just that,

crows ate their garden, plucked out the carrots and flew away with them, dug up the potatoes, ate whatever they could steal in the clutch of their sleek black beaks, gathered together and made early morning noise, one squawk passed from bird to bird, treetop to treetop, until the entire sky echoed in an uproar at daybreak,

further in, he came upon his favourite spot, an area with the softest, brightest green grass and ferns he had ever seen, reaching down, brushing his fingers along the grass, the shaded luxury, the trees high above him, the sense of enclosure, he stood, breathing the sweetness of damp grass, he dug a shell from his pocket, slid it into the chamber where it fitted exactly, butting the metal end with his palm to make certain, snugly set, he snapped shut the dull steel, cradled the heavy straightness of it in both his hands, held it like a small animal, far above, he heard a cry that startled him, a cry unlike a bird's, he aimed overhead, but found nothing, staring down the barrel, aiming, it and his eye, the trees towering away from him, maybe the whistle he sometimes heard from bell isle, sound blowing this way when the wind carried it, but this too loud and remaining fully inside him, startling him toward fright, his
nine-year-old heart skipped a beat, gasping, he checked toward the shadows of ferns, something darker had moved there, an animal, the height and bulk of a person, blackstrap stopped, needing to breathe, aware of that, sweat rising at his temples, his brother smiling behind the dusty sunlight sifting vertically through the criss-cross design of limbs, tilting back his head, his brother's white jaw easing open to speak, pink dust spilling from his mouth, over his chin, a mound like an hourglass on the earth, a dull thud against the grass, against blackstrap's feet, looking down, fearing he had lost a limb, dropping off in trance, he saw the shotgun, fallen from his hands, he looked toward the ferns again, where he came to escape, to hide from his father's demands, nothing there, only the sound of his heart stampeding in his chest, like a wild animal cut loose and thrashing through the brush, broken, lame, his brother's gentle laugh, coolness against his face and hands, against his armpits and crotch, a cool breeze and then a moose without antlers, a cow, its glassy eyes watching him, carefully, he reached with one hand, squatting for the shotgun, hoping the moose would not break the stillness, sway in turning and stride crashing through the trees, snapping branches while it bolted away,

blackstrap's fingers touched metal, then higher, wood, the stock, he peeked at the ground, both small hands reaching, his eyes floating higher, rising to see the moose, the statue, he remained crouched and took each moment as a full measure to raise the shotgun, the barrel hole pointed at the moose, aiming for where his father told him, the place where the heart pumped, just there, one eye shut, a hazy blur inching on the barrel, he focused to see a spider, brown legs and a lighter brown spot on its back, the spot inside a light brown circle, he remembered the bigger ones he had shot with his homemade slingshot, cut from the Y of a branch, sling made from rubber salvaged from the nearby dump he picked through,

blackstrap had watched the bigger spider walk along a length of clapboard on the shed, then pulled back the rock, pinched between the rubber, and let it go, dead aim, the spider splattered into a beige blob, the stone ricocheting off,

‘why'd you do that,' junior had asked, snatching away the slingshot, blackstrap with eyes on the stopped thing smeared on the shed wall,

‘how would you like it if someone squashed you,'

‘who,' one eye shut, staring down the length of the barrel, he refocused on the moose, found where his father told him to shoot and there came a cry, a call, a shout, that might have been an explosion but sounded like a voice heard when waking, almost recognized, a flinch from the moose, a realization as its body thought to move, and he pulled the trigger, a sharp blast in his face and right ear ringing, thrown backwards, landing, he saw up, the treetops, the blue sky high above him, his shoulder aching as though punched, he scraped his hand on a rock trying to sit quickly, to make certain the moose was not charging toward him in a blur of hoof hammering to trample, the moose gone, without knowing, in fright, in action, blackstrap picked up the shotgun and stood, moved nearer, trembling from the shock of the blast that still rattled in his body, on his feet, he caught sight of the brown bulk in the grass, bigger now that it was on its side, he cautiously trod toward it, expecting it to kick back up, those legs a mystery, raise its head and struggle in reverse, but it did not whip itself into movement, dead as a doornail, crouching again to watch, close but not beside it, the warm shotgun resting on his lap, a rug was what it looked like, a lumpy rug, still squat down, he shifted nearer, in a duck walk through the grass and bushes and buried acorns sprouting spruce, fir, pine, until beside it, he reached out to touch the long hairs, the warmth of fur, warmer than the shotgun, thought of lying down beside it and resting his head on its heat, like he had done with his dog, he felt sleepy, the strange hairs on the fur, long and rough, what sort of animal, not a pet, bigger, to blast into oblivion, the bulk of the body beneath the fur, bigger than a man, his first moose, something to show his father, he turned and searched back through the woods, his father proud of this, he thought of the hunting knife strapped to his belt, the one that had belonged to his great-grandfather, patrick hawco, passed on to junior, who didn't want it, claimed by blackstrap instead, and wondered about cutting away the hide, what was meant to be done, the necessary next step, but decided to leave it as it was until his father saw, so they could skin it together,