The Fire-Dwellers (32 page)

Thor’s been offered a head office job in Montreal and he’s decided to take it. They want me to be manager here.

Mac! You don’t mean it.

  —
Thor
is leaving? Thor is
leaving?
But he was the god here, and he won’t be that in head office. Was he really invited to go, or did he ask for a transfer himself, for his own reasons? Val, did you get stoned one night and go to see him? You didn’t have any cause to do me a favor, that’s for sure. I couldn’t even bring myself to ask you around – I didn’t want you swearing in front of my kids. Did you say something to Thor? Was it settling an old score, for you? I’ll never know. And I’ll never find out from you, either, because I’ll never find you. No fixed address. Val – I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Too late.
Was
it you?

Mac is smiling.

Yeh, it’s true all right. I was pretty taken aback myself. Anyway, I’m going to accept. It’s a funny thing – I had just about decided to quit. In fact, I was going to hand in my notice this week.

You didn’t say anything.

Yeh, well I was going to tell you

  — Thanks.

I can’t take it in all at once, Mac. When – when did you hear about Thor?

Just today. And the offer came to me at the same time.

Mac that’s great it’s really wonderful

I thought you’d be pleased. Apparently they decided to offer me the job on account of the fact that I’ve actually sold more than any of the other guys here. I’m going to change a few things. A lot of the jazz in the campaign was Thor’s, not head office’s. The charts and quiz and that. We can cut out that crap. It’ll be a pretty good job. It’s a going firm.

Sure. I know it is. Gee, that’s just fine, Mac. It’s marvelous.

  — Life’s games. He knocks himself out because he thinks Thor’s got it in for him, and he winds up manager in an outfit he really thinks is a load of phony baloney. Dear Lord and Father of mankind, forgive our foolish ways, as some goon once said. Reclothe us in our rightful mind. And so on. But what if this
is
our rightful mind, or at least the only one we’re likely to have? Anyway, it
is
a good job. It’s somewhere. It’s better than nowhere.

  — Okay, Stacey, simmer down. The fun is over. It’s been over for some time, only you didn’t see it before. No – you saw it all right but you couldn’t take it. You’re nearly forty. You got four kids and a mortgage, and in just over three years Katie will be ready for university if she works hard enough, which is dubious. I guess the fun’s been over for Mac for quite awhile. It would be nice if we were different people but we are not different people. We are ourselves and we are sure as hell not going to undergo some total transformation at this point. That’s right, doll. Mrs. C. MacAindra, by an overwhelming majority voted The Most Sensible Woman of the Year. We can save our money. When we’ve got all four kids through university or launched somewhere, and Mac retires and is so thin you have to look twice to seem him and I’m so portly I can hardly waddle, we can go to Acapulco and do the Mexican hat dance. I can’t stand it. I cannot. I can’t take it. Yeh, I can, though. By God, I can, if I set my mind to it. And I’m not going to tell him about Thor. It’s not actually like lying. It’s just refraining from saying. The silences aren’t all bad. How do I know how many times Mac has protected me by not saying? He probably noticed the burn on my hand that time.

Mac, I don’t know what to say. I think it’s just terrific.

Yeh. It’s good. We’re getting somewhere.

Only one thing

What?

Let’s not move, eh? I mean, we’ll be able sometime to afford another house – you know, bigger or like that – but I don’t want to.

For Christ’s sake, Stacey, why not?

I just don’t

You can’t mean it. Listen, honey, it’ll be me who has to have the staff parties and all that. Can you see us having them
here? There isn’t room to swing a cat, and the kids’ stuff is littered all over the place. We need at least a decent-sized living room, and for the boys to have their own bedrooms, and now that Dad is here it would be pretty convenient to have a house that had a downstairs john as well as an upstairs one.

You’ve got it all figured out, eh? That was quick work.

Now, listen Stacey

I don’t want to move. I like this old dump. I’m used to it. It’s not you who has to be around the house all day long.

I know. I know. I’m only saying I just don’t see how we can manage here indefinitely. That’s all I’m saying. I’m not suggesting we should move tomorrow. I’m only saying that at some point it’s going to become

Okay. So we’ll move, if you want to so much. But don’t be stunned if I bitch about it, eh?

Oh for God’s sake what’s the matter now?

Nothing nothing’s the matter

The sand of the beach is fine and pale brown, lightly strewn with fringed yellow-green fronds of seafern and bulbous kelp cast up and drying in the late August sun. Stacey and Jen walk barefoot, picking up grey-white coarse clam shells, small purple shells paired and open like moth wings, greenly iridescent shells shaped like miniature coolie hats.

Hey, that’s a nice one, angel bud. Shall I put it in my bag?

Jen nods and Stacey gravely takes the cracked shell and stows it away. The tide is low. Some distance out, Ian and Duncan have gone to the retreating sea. Stacey glances up and sees the two auburn heads. Then she looks back to Jen.

C’mon, flower. What’ve you got? That’s a crab claw – you don’t really want that, do you? Oh, all right.

Ian’s voice, thin and far.

Mum!

Stacey looks up and sees Ian’s hair caught by the sun. Not Duncan’s. She places her hands briefly on Jen’s shoulders.

Stay here, Jen. Don’t move. Don’t follow me. Understand? I’ll be right back.

Then she runs. Through the dry sand and after that the wet heavy sand and the shallow water, until the water is halfway up her thighs. Ian’s face is unrecognizable and he is straining, tugging at one of Duncan’s arms. By the time she reaches Ian, he has pulled Duncan out of the water, but only part of the way.

Mum – I think his foot is caught under the rock

What happened? Ian –
what happened?

She is not aware of having spoken. She kneels and manages to dislodge Duncan’s foot, hauling him up and out of the now-brown muddied water. Ian’s voice comes to her, treble with fright.

He tripped – I don’t know how – I guess the seaweed. I looked and he’d gone down and I thought he’d get up right away. It’s not even deep, Mum. But the tide’s low. So we came out as far as the rocks. Look – he hit his head when he fell. Maybe it sort of stunned him, but it didn’t knock him out or anything, because I saw him thrashing around and I thought he was okay. But he must’ve got his foot hooked under the rock. By the time I got to him, he wasn’t thrashing around any more. He was just lying there.

Duncan Duncan

His head is bleeding and the sea pours from his nostrils. His mouth is open, and his eyes. But he is not seeing anything and he does not seem to be breathing. His seven-year-old body is heavy in Stacey’s arms, a dead weight. She flounders through the water and weed-netted mud, back to the damp exposed
sand. She puts Duncan down. She cannot think what to do. She cannot seem to think at all.

Ian – get my bag and take the change purse and go phone Dad. You know where the call box is?

Yes. Sure.

Ian runs, sprints, and she does not even know that he is no longer beside her. She places Duncan on his front and presses down on the place where she thinks his lungs are. Seawater trickles yellowly from his mouth. But he remains inert.

  — I don’t know what to do. I never learned artificial respiration. How could he fall like that? So quickly? I wasn’t watching. I should’ve been watching. Why wasn’t I? I thought they were all right. The tide was out. It was shallow, the water. The rocks covered with barnacles. But he knew they were there. He’s been there dozens of times. How could it happen like that, so quickly? It couldn’t. But it did. Duncan! You’ve got to be all right.

Duncan! You’ve got to be all right
.

The words have been screamed, and although she does not hear her own voice, she is suddenly aware of the words’ total lie. They are rune words, trinket charms to ward off the evil eye, and that is all. There is nothing she can do.

Now several people on the beach are running towards her, two women and a man, but when they get there, they stand talking at her because they do not know what to do, either.

What happened?

What’s the matter?

How did it happen?

I saw those two kids out there and they were perfectly okay and then

Stacey does not hear their voices.

  — God, let him be all right, and I’ll never want to get away
again, I promise. If it was anything I did, take it out on me, not on him – that’s too much punishment for me.

She wants to hold Duncan in her arms, but some vestigial knowledge tells her this might be harmful. She is still pressing down on Duncan’s ribs, on his warm limp back, her hands filled with the fear of their own ignorance. Then she feels herself pushed aside by a pair of unknown hands and a man is kneeling over Duncan, kneading his body until the brackish water gushes again from his mouth. The man is no more than twenty, tanned, wearing a red swimsuit. One of the lifeguards.

Your other boy fetched me. Just keep a little aside, eh?

He turns Duncan over onto his back, and puts his mouth to Duncan’s, breathing from one pair of lungs into the other. Stacey, crouched on the sand, is momentarily blinded, her sight extinguished by saltwater not from the sea. Her mind is empty of everything except Duncan’s name which repeats itself over and over. When her sight clears, Duncan is half propped up by the man’s arm and is vomiting and also struggling to breathe, his breath creaking and uncertain. Then he begins to cry, the attenuated wail of a very young child, an infant voice, not his own voice at all. Stacey puts her arms around him. Once again she cannot see him because of her sight-destroying tears, but she can feel him moving even through her own trembling.

Will he be okay? Mum – will he be okay?

Ian. Stacey does not know the answer. She looks at the young man, who nods and replies for her.

Yeh. He’ll be okay, I think. Good job you fetched me, though. It wouldn’t have been too good for him to have gone that much longer. He swallowed quite a bit of sea.

Ian does not say anything. He turns away because he does not want either Stacey or the university student to see his
face. But Stacey sees that his shoulders are shaking with his dry sobbing, which he has to deal with himself. Then she turns again to Duncan.

His head

Yeh. Well, if you’ll bring him along, we can patch that up until you can get him to a doctor. He had quite a wallop, but I don’t think it’s all that deep. Scalp wounds always bleed a lot.

Stacey! Duncan – I got here as soon as I could – is he

Mac is on his knees beside Duncan in the sand, uncaring about the vomited slime in which he is kneeling.

He’s okay now. I think. I think he is. Mac – he nearly

I know. Ian said. Is he really okay?

Duncan has almost stopped crying now. His eyes are half closed. The young man, semi-embarrassed, tries to explain, seeing that Stacey cannot.

He’ll be okay, I’m pretty sure. Shock – he’ll probably go to sleep. If you want to bring him along to the first-aid post, I can mop up that

But Mac somehow replies unequivocally.

No. Thanks. I think we better take him straight to the Emergency. Thanks all the same. What did you do?

Mouth-to-mouth

My God. Not much point saying thanks, is there? But thanks

That’s okay

Mac lifts Duncan out of Stacey’s arms. For a moment, she protests.

It’s okay, Mac. I can take him.

No. Let me. I’ll carry him.

She looks at Mac dazedly. His face is under control, but only just. He picks up Duncan carefully, and for an instant,
his own head bowed over Duncan’s, holds him tightly, almost cradlingly.

  — He’s never held Duncan before, not ever. Why did I think he didn’t care about Duncan? Maybe he didn’t, once. But he does now. Why didn’t I see how much, before? He never showed it, that’s why.

We’ll take my car, Stacey, eh?

Yes. But – Mac, I don’t think I can drive.

That’s okay. I never meant you should. You take him in the back seat.

All right. Mac – I never thought to call the lifeguard. I wasn’t thinking straight. It was Ian, on his way to phone you.

Mac puts Duncan in the back seat of the Buick. Stacey and Jen climb in beside him, Jen very quiet. Mac and Ian go into the front seat. Duncan is nearly asleep. Stacey holds him. Mac starts the car and speaks to Ian in a low gruff voice.

Ian?

Yeh?

You did fine.

Stacey looks at the two unbending necks in the front seat.

  — That’s the most Mac will ever be able to say. They’re not like me, either of them. They don’t want to say it in full technicolor and intense detail. And that’s okay, I guess. Ian gets the message. It’s his language, too. I wish it were mine. All I can do is accept that it is a language, and that it works, at least sometimes. And maybe it’s mine more than I like to admit. Whatever I think that I think of it, it’s the one I most use.

Unbiddenly, then, she remembers what she was thinking out there on the sand when she did not know what to do and when Duncan’s still-warm but nearly unhuman body seemed to be going beyond reach.

  — Judgment. All the things I don’t like to think I believe in. But at the severe moments, up they rise, the tomb birds, scaring the guts out of me with their vulture wings. Maybe it’s as well to know they’re there. Maybe knowing might help to keep them at least a little in their place. Or maybe not. I used to think about Buckle that he was as superstitious as a caveman. I didn’t know then that I was too.