Fauna (20 page)

It turned out the maples along the driveway were sugars—you could tell by the dark grey bark in long, erratic strips, the smooth-topped leaves with U-shaped notches between their lobes. The more Edal learned, the better. When she met Jim Dale again—and somehow she felt certain she would—she’d amaze him with all she knew.

T
he first time Darius laid the table for Grandmother, he was surprised when she told him to set it for four. Someone was coming to join them, and for a minute his baby mind let him believe it could be Faye. But why would his poor mother be allowed at the table if even her name was banned? And anyway, his poor mother was dead.

It turned out the fourth place was indeed for someone no longer among the living, as near as Darius could make out. He’d never been to church, and there wasn’t much talk about such things in school, but he knew a little from staying with the Miskes. God was like a man and he wasn’t; he had a long white beard and he lived in the clouds. His son was even more human. His beard was shorter and the colour of gold, and even though his father ran the world, the son was nailed up under that father’s nose and left to die. What Darius didn’t know was that the younger man-not-man—the dead one—could sit down across from you when supper was served.

Except that they started without him. Grandfather planted his elbows alongside his knife and fork, interlaced his fingers and rested his forehead on their knuckled ridge. Grandmother did the same, but not before shooting Darius an urgent glance that told him to follow suit.

“Bless us, O Lord,” the old man began. “Bless this house built by Your grace and by the sweat of my humble brow, and bless this land that stands between it and all the wickedness of the world. Lord, in all Your might and wisdom, protect us from the governments that would run us down like lambs to slaughter, and from the Churches that make a mockery of Your holy name.” He drew a noisy breath. “Bless this food we are about to receive, and keep it clean from all contagion. And Lord, bless this boy beside me, who is returned unto this house by Your righteous and merciful hand.”

Grandmother made a sound then, so slight it might have been the sound of a heart pausing then picking up again.

“As ever, Lord,” Grandfather went on, “we reserve the place at my right hand for Your Son, Jesus. We do this to honour the sacrifice He made, and to remind ourselves that He is with us throughout every trial and tribulation of this earthly life. Amen.”

“Amen,” Grandmother echoed, her slippered foot making contact with Darius’s shin. He did his best to weigh the word down as they had, but it came out squeaky and small.

Jesus never made it to supper that night, nor any other. Every time Grandmother stood up to clear, she took Jesus’s full plate first, carrying it in both hands and tipping the untouched portion into the garbage pail. It hardly seemed fair, given that Darius had to eat every scrap he was served.
There’s half a pig left on that bone, boy. Pick it up. That’s right, use the teeth the Lord gave you
.

He’d never had meat with bones in it before. Faye had favoured boiled wieners, baloney. Once in a while, on days that were bright and friendly, they would walk to the store together for bacon. She liked to cook the whole package in one go, set the pan down on the table between them so they could pluck the fragrant strips direct from their fatty pool. Darius always ate long after he stopped feeling hungry. He couldn’t help it—Faye smiled at him every time he reached into the pan.

Jesus must have been hungry, missing supper every single time. Maybe he did make it sometimes, only he got there too late, after everyone was already in bed. Maybe it wasn’t animals Darius could hear outside his little window, shuffling past the backhouse, lumbering up to the locked shed. The garbage cans stood side by side in there, stinking. There was always something scratching at its door.

Darius woke up needing to go. He thought first of the old bathroom, Faye’s grubby soap ring in the tub. Next, he remembered the dead plant by the window. Finally, upon waking fully, he realized he was in his mother’s childhood bed, in the log cabin she’d left behind. No bathroom, no plant. Only the pot by the kitchen door.

He couldn’t have been asleep long; the coals were still showing colour through the grate of the stove, and he could hear the old couple moving around in their room. Their door stood ajar. He should’ve kept his eyes to himself as he passed, but their bedside lamp was on, and the dark of the room he
was passing through lay thick. Grandmother was already in her nightgown, but Grandfather had yet to undress. Or, as it turned out, to be undressed. Like a baby. Even Darius had been pulling on his own pyjamas since he was three.

Standing before the old man, Grandmother reached up and undid the top button of his denim shirt. Grandfather let his chin drop. Another button, and he made a gurgling sound, like something slipping away down a drain. One more, and then Grandmother slid both hands inside his shirt. After working at something for a moment, she began gently to pull.

The cord was long. She seemed to be drawing it from between Grandfather’s ribs, but that was wrong, Darius knew; if it came from inside him, it would be bloody, or at the very least, wet. Instead, it looked dry, almost dusty, and flatter than it had first appeared. A strip more than a cord. A ribbon. If ribbons were meant to make things look ugly instead of nice.

Whatever it was, Grandmother looped it several times around her thumb and elbow then set it aside on the bed. Grandfather turned and bent over the greyish twist, as though he too were trying to determine what it might possibly be. He made an odd, nonsensical picture: head and shoulders curling forward while his shirt kept its shape, seeming to stand up straight on its own. Darius wondered if this was the first distorted hint of a dream—if he’d somehow fallen asleep on his feet.

Grandmother stood behind the old man now. She hugged him around the middle to reach the last few buttons then eased his shirt off, the way men sometimes removed women’s coats on TV. Darius caught his breath. The board stood stiff as a fence post, jutting up from the back of Grandfather’s pants. The man it had held upright braced himself, hands flat
on the bed. Bare arms brown from the midpoint down, the rest pinkish against the old-tooth white of his undershirt.

Faye’s houseplant had needed help standing too; it came tied to a dark green stake with three hairy slips of twine. Long after the stem had given up trying, the stake still held it in place. It seemed cruel. One day, after he’d wet its dead roots with his pee, Darius brought the big knife from the middle drawer, sawed through the three loops and let the poor thing lie down.

It seemed Grandmother was doing the same. She reached around Grandfather’s middle again and unbuckled his belt. Fumbled at his pants button, his fly. Took a small step back and closed her fingers around the board.

“Easy,” Grandfather said hoarsely as she lifted it up and away. He drooped further with it gone, arms giving way at the elbows, forehead kissing the quilt.

Grandmother set the board at an angle against the wall. Turning back, she caught sight of Darius through the crack in the door. Her eyes opened wide. Despite the soft drag of her cheeks, he could clearly make out the muscled contraction of her jaw.

He didn’t dare continue on to the pot. Turning in place seemed an equally foolish idea, bound to cause the floorboards beneath him to groan. Walking backwards was the thing to do, stepping silently into the invisible tracks he’d made.

Faye’s bed may have been old, but it had been built to last. Two-by-fours bolted tight, no springs in the foam mattress to cry out. Darius lay down like a leaf on a river. His bladder complained, but he knew from experience he was a long way from losing control.

Coyote Cop’s Blog

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Ever notice how when common sense tells us life is one way theres always some smartass who looks up a bogus study and uses it to deny the plain truth? Just like when theres dirty work to be done and that same smartass stands around making up excuses. Well some of us see through that particular brand of bullshit soldierboy. Some of us can’t be fooled.

POSTED BY Coyote Cop at 7:57 AM

The female is grey, but her belly is palest gold—the colour of a fresh peanut freed from its shell. His own coat is black, pure calm, save for the point of white awareness at the tip of his tail.

The grey ones tend to be flighty. She’s taken refuge in a tree hole for the time being, but he can still make out the twitch of her pretty tail. Between them, a chain of hopeful suitors jostle on the branch. The white-tipped male holds back. When the female leaves her hidey-hole to lead them in the next leg of the chase, he’ll be well placed to head up the queue.

He wasn’t the first to answer her silent, scented call, though he’s played that part with others in the past: the days-long, tentative dance; the first hard-won sniff; the wild morning when she emerges with her perfume fully blown. Her
quack
is a soft question, his
whick
the only possible response. Little can match the thrill of that initial burst of speed, the sight of her ripe hindquarters bounding away.

That’s the best of it, though; first on the scene rarely seals the deal. No female wants the nearest male, a dull neighbour who might well be her own close blood. She wants the fleet-footed outlier, the squirrel she barely knows. She wants him.

And now, forsaking the tree hole in a flurry of softness, she offers him his chance.

Following the trunk’s impetus, she breaks for the leafy heights. The other males—a black-and-tan, two greys and a straggler with a reddish tinge—follow her like a multi-toned tail. Meantime, the white-tipped male rises handily, limb to limb. Foresight pays off: he’s the first to fall in behind her when she angles back along horizontal lines.

The high branch bucks and sways, bearing her weight, then his, then the mass of the other males—trailing for form’s sake now, the long race all but won. They’re closing in on the female’s territorial core. Any moment now she’ll show him how fast she can really run. She’ll put a last, maddening distance
between her bright body and his, then crouch and await him at the heart of her own home ground.

First, though, there remains the small matter of a road. The female may be skittish, but she’s no fool. She keeps to the high pathways, springing from her twig to the black line of a human wire. Absorbing her after-bounce, the white-tipped male lets go on the upswing and sails splay-legged through the air. He lands in an echo of her landing, walks hand over hand in her steps. Her balance is a thing of beauty. She runs with a confidence bordering on madness, her small feet singing to him through the wire.

She’s a short hop from the pole when the others crowd onto the line behind him. He anticipates a leap to the nearby tree—her coat disappearing against its bark as she descends—but she surprises him, scrambling up onto the storm-coloured swelling that’s fastened to the pole. He freezes, clinging to the wagging wire. Something he knows and doesn’t know has hold of him—some dim loop of memory, his own or older, wiser. His rivals bunch up behind him and still he doesn’t move.

The female rises up on her hind legs, showing a glimpse of her golden front. Reaching beyond a second, smaller growth, she gropes for the dark link to the highest of the human wires.

The screen goes blank. It’s unsettling, as though Stephen’s posting itself has somehow blown the system. He stares mutely into the monitor’s empty frame. Several seconds pass before it occurs to him to test the desk lamp. Nothing. He rises,
feeling awkward, almost ashamed. He hasn’t closed the window, let alone the browser. Everything left lying open inside the silent machine.

He finds Guy in the kitchen, looking mournfully at the coffee maker. “Power’s out.”

“Yeah.” Stephen thinks for a moment. “Wonder if it’s working on Broadview.”

“Maybe.”

“I’ll go to the Rose.” He opens a cupboard and stares into it. “Where’s the Thermos?”

“Right there.”

“Where?”

Guy reaches past him for the squat, plaid-patterned flask. “You okay?”

“Sure.”

“You seem a little—I don’t know, freaked out.”

“No.” He’s not sure why he hasn’t told Guy about the blog—why he doesn’t do so now. “I’m fine.” Thermos in hand, he turns and heads for the door.

“Hey,” Guy says behind him.

Stephen busies himself with his bootlaces. “Yeah?”

“Get me a sub, will you?” He fishes the wallet from the back pocket of his jeans. “Barbecued pork with everything. Extra chilies.”

“For breakfast?”

“Yeah, why not.” Guy slides out a twenty. “Get one for yourself too.”

“It’s okay.” He’s out the screen door before Guy can reach him. “It’s on me.”