Blasted (51 page)

After Queenie left that night I lay alone on my cot in the dark. I felt sick; the kitchen smelled of fish. It reminded me of spring days as a kid when the cod fishery still thrived, shagging around on the wharves down the road, getting in the way of the men unloading their catches, full of the smell and sounds, tar and fish and ocean and boat. Cod, sometimes three feet long. Once a man grabbed a fish by the gills and, laughing, tried to frighten me with it, shoving it close to my face, but I wasn't easily frightened and I stuck my tongue out at him and put my face up to the fish like I'd kiss it.

But there, inside the fish's mouth, writhing where its pale dead insides should have been, was a lamprey's big, round, voracious mouth. The lamprey had eaten its way through that fish as it lived, from tail to head, hollowed it out, until it devoured its host's heart. Still the lamprey swam inside the fish skin until it got caught in the fisherman's nets.

The fisherman had looked then, and flung it away from him with an expression of superstitious disgust. He'd wiped his hands on his clothes, reached into his pocket and given me a candy.

The fear grew, filling up that hollow hunger inside me with shadows until in terror I called
her
to me again, pulling at the dead to cradle the living. It was child-like, the way I did it, as it used to be before I saw the group at the rock on the Hill, just a child's fantasy of a friend. When I felt her with me, at last I could sleep. That night, for the first time, my dreams were not about the shadow paths.

I am standing before a gathering of women. Queenie's at the back with a glass of whiskey, smiling at me, but the rest don't see me. The women sit, talk in languages various and strange. There is something here… some thing that I don't understand but I long for, that I have tried to take in fragments. And suddenly a sigh goes around the room, some laughter, and the women start to sing a song, casually, happily, ragged but certain – the way I might come in on the Lord's Prayer, it is no effort. Some clap a rhythm. I am delighted and startled. They sing.

The song is so beautiful and it makes me feel like I could rest inside it and then something moves inside me. It comes shoving up out of me, a great pale eyeless worm, out of my throat, with its big, round voracious mouth trying to eat the song. The thing rises up, voiceless howling over the brightness. I cannot breathe, its tail slides out of my throat. And then it disappears. It blows away, pale blue like a ghost.

The song is over. The women begin to speak together again, they go off in groups. I fall to my knees. They are leaving. One of the women seems to be walking through her own fog, it goes with her – Shanawdithit. She turns back and approaches me, takes my face between her palms and lays her cheek against the top of my head. I close my eyes, and the touch of her hands on me seems to shimmer over my skin. She goes, and beside her walk her children, found, after all her wandering the woods searching and mourning those last years of her life: her own, and one little one, a girl, the one I asked her to carry for me. She has taken my fragile burden of bones, she will carry her until I join them in the mist beyond the living.

The next day Juanita came over with Dennis. He and Tina stared suspiciously at each other, then Dennis said, “Wanna play outside?” and Tina said “Okay,” and they put on their coats and ran into the back yard, Juanita yelling after them, “And stay off the road!” Then she turned to me. “Let's see about that eye, now.” I sat up on the cot, gritting my teeth against aches and pains, raised my face to her. With professional gentleness she lifted the pad. “Looked healed up the last time I came over, but I wanted to be sure… Yes… there we go.”

Air cooled the damp, soft skin that had been covered. I tried to open the eye: stiff, sore, but it opened and light flooded the retina. My fingers touched the gash from the blast. It was knobbly, scabby, but healing and no longer swollen. I could see Juanita with the right eye just fine, but the new eye sparked and jumped; she was surrounded by a pale halo of yellowish light that shuddered and shifted as I tried to blink it away. “How does it feel?”

“Fine, I think.” I could hear the children's voices outside. “Go ahead,
play
with your stupid truck. What am
I
supposed to do, then?” “Aw, come on, Tina, you can play too.” “It's
stupid
.” “Why, what do you like to play with?
Barbies
?” “Shut
up
.” Juanita went to the linny, cold November air whooshing through the open door.

“Be nice, you two, for God's sake.”

“But Mom…”

“But Juanita…”

She looked back at me, exasperated, and went outside. “Now, you guys.” The kitchen door swung shut behind her.

I sat there, blinking. The tea tin emitted faint radiance, and the stove shimmered. The old scarred kitchen table was smeared with light like fingerprints, and the doorway seemed to shift in the air. I sat for some time, listening to the voices outside, then stood and shuffled to the window. Juanita bent over her son and spoke into his ear, kissed it – around the kiss, pink light bloomed – he looked sullen but the rosy light went through him, he was pleased. Tina stood apart, her usual expression of disdain on her little face; her translucent skin barely concealed from me, now, how she was knotted around herself, red light pulsing dully in her stomach. Juanita's yellow light I'd seen in the kitchen – the colour of the force of her will, it seemed to me – sprang upward into the sky. Colours I'd never seen before sparked against my retina, blurring the edges of things; every blade of dying grass sent out light, there were surges between the figures outside. I put my forehead against the cold glass of the window and looked up. The top of the Hill throbbed against the sky like the slow, deep beating of a great heart.

Juanita came back in. “Those guys. Already carping like an old married couple… Ruby?”

I moved from my corner by the window and she jumped, her eyes wide. “Jesus, you scared the hell out of me.” I saw in her face what she had seen: me, disappeared, suddenly there like a ghost, my eyes blank as pools under a pale, bloody, slowly knitting knob of flesh. “So… the eye's okay?” Her voice was a little too bright.

“I'm seeing. Light.”

“It's bound to be a little sensitive at first. Should clear up, though; let me know if it doesn't.” She came close to me, a little too abruptly, and looked at the eye again. “H'm,” she mumbled, turning away. “It's healed nicely. I have to say, I had my doubts when all that crap was coming out of the wound. I don't know, maybe we should have taken you in for a couple of stitches, but your grandfather…” She paused. “But it seems right on track now.” She sat down and lit a cigarette.

“I want to look.” Grandpa and Queenie had created a makeshift bathroom for my convalescence; located in a closet with the hot water heater, it consisted of a travel toilet and a small mirror. I leaned into the mirror and squinted. Bruises almost healed now, and the blood blister on my lower lip nearly gone. The new eye blinked, a gash traversing my eyebrow.

“Do you think I'll get a scar?” I called out.

“Your eyebrow hair might not grow back just there, that's all.”

The thought of a scar pleased me a little. Bits of light coalesced in the dimness, shimmering around my face. I leaned back and stared at myself.

“I'm seeing, Juanita,” I said. “I'm seeing.”

I called Blue that evening and talked with him for over an hour.

Brendan wanted to go to Malta. Gil wanted to quit his job. Some actor I was supposed to remember meeting at parties had suddenly come out as a straight guy. Blue's accountant had just quit accounting and become a writer.

“I miss you. I'm lonely,” he surprised me by saying.

“Aw, shucks…”

“I'm serious. Life is so boring.”

“No hysterical dawn phone calls. No drunken benders. No psychotic episodes.”

“You sound better, Ruby. I mean, you sound well. Like yourself.”

“I never stopped being myself.”

A pause. “No, I suppose you didn't.”

Tad and Judith had gotten money from her parents and were buying a house. Steve had broken his nose managing a bar brawl. Jason had gotten engaged to some chick out West.

“
What
? I mean, I'm so happy for him.”

“Ah,” he said. I silently wished Jason the best and sent it out to him. Neither Blue nor I said anything for a while. Then, “I had the strangest dream last night,” he said. “I think it was about you.”

“Well, now you have to tell me.”

“It was one of those dreams where you think you're awake, you know what I mean?”

“How do you know you weren't awake?”

“Because later, I woke up.”

“Oh.”

“So, I was here, at home, it was night and I was sitting alone on the couch thinking I'd better go to bed. And then I hear this tapping on the window…”

“The big one?”

“Yes. I look out and there's this man there.”

“Did you scream?”

“Oh, no, it wasn't frightening. He was pale against the night sky, and he was standing there, grinning at me…”

“Standing on
what
?”

“I don't know; it was a
dream
, Ruby.”

“Oh.”

“He was hovering there, outside the window. He looked like a crazy person, a homeless guy maybe, wearing a dirty white plastic raincoat and pilot's goggles. Skinny and tall, grinning like a maniac. He held up his hand in a fist, and he was wearing a cheap plastic ring, like you get in a bubblegum machine. It had a big red plastic gem on it. And he said,
She's through, she's through.
” Blue paused. “He seemed satisfied about it all.”

I cleared my throat. “What happened then?”

“He got on his bicycle and rode away.”

“In the air?”

“
Yes
, in the air. His bike made a clattering noise as he went off, and it woke me up. And I realized that there
was
a bike-clattering sound, and it was in the hall outside my apartment, and it sounded like
my
bike. I was half-asleep, but…”

“Was it?”

“Sure enough, some jerk was taking off down the stairs with
my bicycle
.” “God.”

“My supposedly unbreakable lock was lying on the floor.”

“Did you chase him?”

“Yes. He dropped my bike and ran down the stairwell, but I jumped over it and went after him. Almost got him too,” he laughed.

I cradled Birdman to myself. “What makes you think that dream was about me?”

“The ruby ring. A message, maybe.”

I paused. “I'm glad you got your bike back.” Lily, who was leaning up against my leg as I talked, stirred and nosed at me. I reached down and patted her head; her eyes blinked with pleasure. “You know, Blue, I think my grandfather's damn dog likes me. I'm petting her, right now.”

“You? Petting a dog?”

“I've changed…” I laughed, and so did he. I wanted to tell him more, about Tina, about the way my grandfather couldn't look at me or talk to me. But at that moment my grandfather himself appeared, dull red around him. He called Lily to him like he was afraid I'd hurt her. They went down the hall together into the kitchen.

“I'd better go, Blue. It's been good to talk to you.”

“You too, love. We'll talk again soon.”

I limped to the kitchen where Tina was jumping around like a flea.

“Lily wants to go for a walk!” she observed, clapping her hands. “Let's go, Uncle John. Can Ruby come too?”

Grandpa's face opened with sadness, covered so quickly that I couldn't be sure I'd seen it. “You two go ahead,” I said. Lily barked. “Three, I mean; sorry, dog. I don't really feel up to it.” Tina was pulling on the sleeve of Grandpa's sweater, dragging him to his feet.

Grandpa hesitated. He wouldn't look at me. “You'll be fine on your own.” It was almost a question.

“I'll be fine. You go, Grandpa.”

It had been one of those days: grey and cold, then at evening time the clouds peel back and the sun bursts out golden and red before it sinks. I saw them out the back door, dog clattering down the wooden steps on her leash, Tina jumping stair by stair with both arms wrapped around the metal railing as she slid and hopped to the street. I watched them until they were out of sight, then turned to go back into the empty house.

A gull called from high up in the sky, an irritable, gorgeous shriek.

Suddenly, leaving the door swinging open, I grabbed Grandpa's old coat where it hung on a nail. I stepped out into the evening air.

It was my first time outside since Queenie and Grandpa had brought me home. My body felt thin inside the big coat, and I shivered, did up the leather buttons. More gulls called, and the sun would soon be gone from sight; without stopping to think, I walked out into the little patch of garden and hopped up over the stone walls, onto the slopes of the Hill.

I moved slowly, my feet planting themselves one after the other. The grass was a bit slippery and wet and I was still weak, but I found myself whistling as I climbed. I got up above the Arterial Road, above the overpass; nothing but hill and sky before me now. I turned and looked out.

Light washed the city in brilliance. Birds called from the sky, and the wind was at my back. I stretched my arms out as if I could fly; the air smelled good. And slowly, slowly, delighted and dizzy, I let myself topple into the wind. I fell backwards into the grass, my eyes full of light.

CHAPTER 38