Fauna (14 page)

After standing for a time gripping the sink, Darius backed out of the bathroom on tiptoe. He made two baloney sandwiches—one for now, one for lunch—and he went to school, leaving the door to the apartment ajar.

He never did learn whether it was the super, Mr. Kane, or maybe the old Indian lady down the hall who noticed the
open door. Somebody called out to see if anyone was home, then pushed the door wide and went inside. Somebody telephoned the police. Not from the apartment, though; the phone on the kitchen wall had been dead for as long as Darius had understood about phones.

The officer who came to his class had a lady with him. She was old like Mrs. Gamble, but her silvery hair was cut short instead of wound up like a doughnut and pinned to her head. She asked him about his family.

“There’s only us,” he told her. And then, remembering, “Only me.”

But it turned out he was wrong. After only a few days back in the happy canned-soup smell of the Miskes’ house, the short-haired lady came again. This time the man at her side had no uniform, though he stood as though he might be wearing one under his stiff tan coat. He was the wrong size for the Miskes’ crowded kitchen, his shoulders the width of their refrigerator, his forehead reflecting a white slash of fluorescent tube. His hair was the colour of metal. Slicked close to his skull, it was long enough to curl over the collar of his coat. His eyes, when he brought them closer, bending awkwardly at the waist, were a familiar green.

Darius didn’t notice the woman at first, but when she eased out from behind the big man, he saw that she wore his mother’s mouth. She was older than Faye, though, and she had more flesh on her bones. She looked as though she just might last.

She knelt down before him on the Miskes’ kitchen floor. She was like a dog then. Darius had never had one of his own, but he’d talked to plenty of them in the parkette. The woman
looked at him the way they all did—the secret streak of wildness, the well of bald, beseeching love.

It was a long drive back to his grandparents’ home, soft light in the foothills, abrupt night once they truly began to climb. While he could manage to stay awake, Darius maintained a fair grasp on things: he was in the cab of a truck, wedged between the man and woman who had made Faye. She’d never spoken of them as far as he could remember, but then she’d tended to keep her thoughts to herself. Anyway, the fact that he’d never heard of Ron and Agnes Grimes didn’t mean they were strangers. Mrs. Miske had told him so that very morning while she’d helped him dress.
They’re family, sweetie. They’re your flesh and blood
.

The road wound on and on, the Rocky Mountains crowding close. Try as he might to keep his wits about him, Darius succumbed to a rumbling sleep.
Flesh and blood, flesh and blood
—his dreaming mind made a taunt of the words, and then a horror. The woman on his right became
flesh
, pinkish-white and formless. The man on his left—hard-thighed, hard-sided—became a brilliant crimson rush.

Once, when they hit a pothole, he jolted awake for the space of a brief exchange.

“Slips in the bathtub and dies.
In the bathtub
. Can’t even manage to take a bath.”

“Ron—”

“Ron what?”

“He might wake up.”

“What if he does? Boy’s got a right to know what his mother was.”

——

They roused him from both sides as the truck juddered to a stop—a gentle
Darius
, a hand dropping from the gearshift to close on his knee. In the headlights’ beam, there stood a small, solitary house. It was made of logs, and for the first time ever, Darius saw wood for what it was: the bodies of fallen trees.

His grandfather cut the engine, making the naked bulb above the front door the only light in the world. Darius would learn the next morning that the source of all that spongy, whispering darkness was nothing more sinister than trees. He’d never imagined they could grow in such staggering numbers. Never seen them cross branches and block out the stars.

Inside, the house was no larger than the apartment where Faye lay floating. No, Faye was down in the dirt now, remember? She’d never have a good soak again.

Darius assumed one of the two inside doors led to a bathroom, so the other one had to be for his grandparents’ room. He would sleep on the couch like always, and that was a small comfort in itself. Except it turned out there was no bathroom, and certainly no tub. During the night you went in a big white bowl with handles by the back door—the pot, his grandmother called it. In the daytime you went out to the backhouse. Which left a door unaccounted for, the door that opened onto his very own room.

He could scarcely believe it. There was a bed, a desk and a chest of drawers—not exactly child-sized, yet somehow not fully grown. His grandmother stood beside him on the braided rug. “We’ll get your things put away in the morning. Come on now, pants off and let’s get you into bed.”

She turned the covers back while he worked his elastic-waist jeans down, stood aside while he climbed in. He saw then that the walls of his little room cut off before they reached the ceiling’s peak. Rafters and the shadows they made. Until then the only ceilings he’d known had been flat. Water-stained in the apartment, pocked in school, brushed with stucco swirls at the Miskes’—but flat.

“This was her room.” Her voice so low he could barely hear it. “Her bed.”

Darius nodded. He could feel the slight dip his mother’s body had made. Not just girl-like then, but an actual girl. He wished his grandmother would leave, preferring the threat of the unknown dark to her miserable hovering.

“We won’t talk about her, though. Not when he can hear.”

He nodded again.

“You must be tired.” She patted him through the blanket, the same knee her husband had clutched in the truck. “Good night, Darius.” She sighed his name, as though the sound of it made her sorry.

“Good night …”

“Grandmother. You call us Grandmother and Grandfather.” She found the whisper again. “I like Grandma, but he won’t hear of it.” She bent in close, her words more breath than sound. “You be sure and mind him. Mind everything he says.”

M
etal, Guy thinks. His first thought of the day. Someone striking metal with—not a hammer, the sound has a slipping quality to it. A chisel? He sits up, blinking. Dawn, but only just. It’s not like Stephen to be out in the yard this early, and Lily always comes quietly, bearing her terrified birds. Who, then?

The sound rings out again, and he rises in his boxers, stepping to the window and sliding it open wide. Head and shoulders in the morning air, he turns. A blue jay bobs on top of the red-tail’s cage. It spots him and squawks again.

The hawk twists to turn a malevolent eye skyward. The jay must feel that look along its pale underparts, but it’s a brainy bird, well aware of the barrier it stands on. Its fourth gloating cry elicits a murderous shriek. Guy feels the hawk’s note in his neck bones. Reaching back for the blanket, he drags it up over his shoulders like a shawl.

The jay takes a jaunty step. It turns up its tail—flick, flick—then parts its beak and releases a perfect echo of the hawk’s cry.
The red-tail takes the bait: doubling its volume, it pumps on the branch like a set of bellows, blasting the jay. No sign of yesterday’s sore foot, much to Guy’s relief. The hawk’s tormentor answers, and the pair of them let rip with a skirling duel.

It’s a hell of a racket to start the day on, but he can’t help smiling to see the red-tail give as good as it gets. For days after he first installed the diminished hawk in its temporary home, it endured vigorous protest from the local birds. A robin tutted from the bushes; waves of indignant sparrows came chipping; a pair of house wrens stalked and whistled along the top of the cage. Through it all, the red-tail hunkered glumly, prompting Guy to wonder if its spirit was broken beyond repair.

Suddenly, the screeching halts. A standoff? Could be, only the hawk’s holding itself like a victor, the jay merely holding still. It may just be the angle of the day, but the balance of colour seems to have shifted too. The blue jay’s blue is waning, while the red-tail’s red seems to pulse.

Guy turns back to his empty, rumpled bed. If Carlotta were still coming to see him from time to time, she might be lying there now, snoring gently, dead to the world. Nothing could wake her when she wasn’t on duty. Strange, given how alert and attentive she’d been with Aunt Jan—dozing like a guard dog on the cot Guy set up alongside the old four-poster, stirring at even the slightest moan. She’d worked the morphine drip like an artist, finessing the dosage so the dying woman could keep her wits about her while they still mattered and then lose them when they were no longer any use.

The first time Carlotta climbed into Guy’s bed, he knew it could only be because his aunt didn’t need her anymore. It wasn’t love—not for either of them—but that didn’t mean
it wasn’t good. When she was awake, Carlotta was more awake than most. The sex was vigorous, therapeutic; it left him feeling contentedly weak. How often she visited depended on the requirements of her latest patient. Then came Mr. Havelock, her most demanding patient of all.

“He’s got this big old house over in Rosedale. You wouldn’t believe it, Guy. There’s so much ivy, it’s a miracle the place can stand.” She took a breath. “He’s going to be sick a good long while. He’s going to need more than a nurse.” After a moment she touched him on the arm. “You understand?”

“Yeah.” And in a way, he did.

Guy stoops to pull the sheet straight, then swings the blanket down from his shoulders and smooths it flat. Still no sound from the warring birds—which reminds him, the hawk must be hungry. He should see if there’s anything new in the traps.

Coyote Cop’s Blog

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

A right to be here. Thats funny coming from a guy like you soldierboy. You don’t seem so concerned about peoples rights. What about the right a little kid has to play in his yard without wondering when a pair of jaws is going to snap shut on him. I bet you grew up watching nature shows and feeling sorry for the poor prisoner animals when your mommy took you to the zoo. Well guess what. While you were standing there thinking oh what a pretty polar bear
why can’t he be free that polar bear was looking back at you and thinking food. Thats all. Food. Some of us know a thing or two about wilderness soldierboy. We know its always there and we know its the enemy. And hey if you understand so much about soldiers and blood then you ought to know what you do with the enemy. Or did you miss that day of basic training? Well nows your chance to catch up.

POSTED BY Coyote Cop at 4:56 AM

soldierboy wrote …

Maybe you’re right. Maybe I don’t get the whole enemy thing. Take coyotes—that’s what this blog is about, right? Farmers say they’re the enemy because they kill livestock. So how come a study out in BC found that mutton made up only 0.2% of the diet of so-called sheep-killing coyotes? Less than half of one percent, and even that could have come from scavenging.

In case you’re wondering, 70% was small rodents (something else farmers don’t like), and other wild animals and plants made up the rest. So coyotes are the enemy because they eat sheep—only it looks as though they hardly ever do. The same goes for attacks on humans. Seriously, how often does it really happen? Rover and Fido are more of a worry. And you know who attacks people even more than dogs do? Never mind murder, way more people die by suicide than by any
kind of animal attack. Which means the average human being has more to fear from his own hand than from any coyote’s jaws. In which case, maybe you can explain to me what this war of yours is really all about.

POSTED AT 9:08 AM, May 28, 2008

Stephen rises and crosses to the Naugahyde couch. It squeaks when he stretches out on it. He hooks an arm over his eyes. It’s a question he can’t seem to get shut of—a stupid question, really. What is any war about?

As a boy, he was taught not to sully his karma by using physical force. Beacon Hill Alternative wasn’t so different from other elementary schools in Victoria; there was violence on the playground—everything from dodge ball with intent to Indian burns—but being the biggest kid in school meant he could sidestep the worst of it. When weaker kids required protection, he wasn’t so much the sheepdog as the sheltering tree. Ruby Hopper found her way to that shelter more often than most. Home-schooled until her mother remarried and reconsidered her ideas, Ruby wore whatever she felt like wearing, said whatever she thought.

Things changed with the move to junior high. Here was a forest rather than an open field; Stephen was surrounded by trees taller than himself—grade tens in hoodies or, worse, in rugby jerseys gone wet beneath the arms. He became a master of passive resistance. When slammed into lockers, he righted himself and stood with his fists at his sides.

He made it to grade ten without ever lifting his hand. Then, one afternoon during his final semester at that
unhappy, piss-yellow school, he walked around back to unlock his bike and came upon Ruby Hopper in the centre of a crowd—girls and their boyfriends, maybe a dozen in all. Ruby had spoken her mind, or worn something she shouldn’t have, or done nothing, absolutely nothing at all. Stephen saw her drop, saw the Nikes and ballet flats and boots of the group draw back. He didn’t actually bare his teeth and come bounding on all fours—it only felt that way. In truth, he ran headlong into the cluster, taking as many of them down as he could.