This River Awakens (4 page)

Some things, she concluded as she staked down the last of the chicken wire in her garden, were just too big to believe in.

*   *   *

West St John’s school stood between the highway and the railway. It had been there when the grain fields covered this part of the land, when the farmhouses wore healthy paint and all the children had rural faces and rural hands. Built of Tyndal stone – a golden limestone crowded with fossils – it was blockish and small, an edifice of stability.

And like all country schools, it was a communal teaching ground sown with virtues and morals rooted deep in the land. It had stood in this immovable obstinacy for fifty years before the highway was widened and houses crept out from the city and urban children crept out from the houses. In this new age the changes forced on the small country school proved too much for it to bear, and so an addition was built by city planners and city builders. The edifice sank into the shadow of a tall, square concrete temple at its side.

Jennifer Louper sat with her friends behind the school, facing the railway track and the open sky above it.

The four boys had just passed beyond their view, making for the highway and the river beyond it.

‘Who was that new boy?’ Barb asked. ‘I’ve never seen him before.’

Jennifer studied her friend from under lowered lids. ‘Watching boys now?’

‘Well, no—’

‘Don’t bother,’ Jennifer continued. ‘At least not with them.’ She sat cross-legged, her lower back against the wall. ‘None of those guys,’ she said as she slowly leaned forward and began squeezing the tobacco from her cigarette, ‘even know where their dicks are.’

Sandy giggled, her face hidden by black bangs. She sat leaning forward on Jennifer’s right, crushing marijuana leaves between her fingers.

‘Could be Lynk’s cousin or something,’ Barb said. ‘They sort of looked like each other.’

‘I don’t know.’ Sandy looked up. ‘The new guy’s bigger.’

Jennifer paused and eyed Barb. ‘Oh yeah? What size is his underwear?’

Barb shrieked a laugh. ‘Yeah, Sandy, why don’t you ask him?’

‘Fuck off both of you.’ Sandy whipped her head back, tossing the hair from her eyes, and looked away. Then she said in a low tone, ‘I was talking to Roland yesterday. He said the new guy’s name is Owen, and he’s got an older sister. They moved into the Masters’ old place.’

Barb sneered. ‘Talking to Roland, huh?’

‘Shut up, Barb,’ Jennifer said quietly, studying Sandy’s face. ‘How old’s this sister?’

‘Sixteen.’

‘Give me the grass.’

Sandy slid the flattened paper bag with its small mound of marijuana to Jennifer.

Everyone fell silent as Jennifer began refilling the cigarette tube. She knew Barb and Sandy were watching her every move, and she could feel their tension. Chicken shit sucks, she thought. ‘This way you got a filter, so I don’t have to hear you coughing your lungs out. We’ll roll the next one.’

Barb asked in a hushed voice, ‘We’re gonna smoke two?’

‘Sure, maybe three. Maybe four.’

‘I don’t know,’ Sandy said. ‘My throat still gets sore from cigarettes.’

Jennifer exchanged a glance with Barb at this admission, but neither said anything.

The match flared like the beginning of an occult ritual. Jennifer slowly lit the cigarette, pulling even but hard. She handed it to Sandy, then leaned back, waiting to feel the now familiar loosening of her senses. She tilted her head upward and gazed at the dull grey sky, but it was not dullness that she saw. Mists swirled up there, heavy with rain. The clouds, rolling towards the setting sun, would soon swallow fire and somewhere, far off beyond the horizon, the rain would fall hot and steaming, and its rhythm as it fell on the slick steel and concrete buildings of a city, as it filled the streets and rushed into the sewers and tumbled down into the dark underworld – the rhythm of all this – came to her as music.

Now thirteen, she hadn’t played the piano in two years. There’d be no songs of innocence coming from her. That had been their dream, not hers. And yet, down deep in her own underworld, the music played on. A promise of power, a promise of thunder and lightning.

‘Jennifer?’

She blinked, then, smiling, reached for the cigarette.

IX

We tried to ignore the empty chair at the end of the table, while the clanging from the driveway continued. Mother served the food stiffly, letting the plates clunk as she set them down.

I sat between the twins so they wouldn’t fight, but the gesture had little meaning these days. Meals passed in silence, with the placing at the table’s end unoccupied more often than not. Tanya and William ate without protest, methodically, their gazes rarely leaving their plates. To me, they didn’t act like normal six-year-olds. Opposite me, Debbie spent most of her time casting surreptitious glances at Mother.

It was all hard to understand. Before I’d become used to that absence, I would try to think of things to say. Normal, meaningless words. No one ever picked up on my efforts, leaving me feeling stupid.

Just one more scene we’d brought with us from the city. Within this, the last border, little had changed. I think we all felt the disappointment – even Tanya and William, with their occasional squalls and tantrums that acted out what they couldn’t say. While this vague sense of failure persisted, I nevertheless held on to a sense of optimism. Some things had changed.

We’d left the cramped apartments behind in the city. For the first time, we lived in a house, and it was ours. In the city our yearly changes of address had somehow made our lives private, isolated. We seemed to live like ghosts, slipping through places unnoticed.

I’d pictured in my imagination the new world we’d be entering. Scenes of back-yard barbecues, rakes borrowed and then returned with handshakes, laughing faces and greetings tossed across wooden fences, living rooms full of people – scenes tightly framed, complete in themselves. They filled my mind and created a longing for a familiarity I’d never known.

This was the world of people who lived in houses. A world where I wasn’t embarrassed by the thought of inviting a school friend home to dinner, or the Saturday night hockey game on television. It was a world where we were the same as everyone else, not different.

In the first couple of weeks I waited with growing impatience for the first of the neighbours to arrive. Meeting Roland, Lynk and Carl was something I took for granted; they didn’t count in my expectations. What I wanted was to see my parents find friends, to play out the roles naturally, to enter those scenes I had created in my mind.

I’d thought we had left our unbroken isolation from others behind – in the city, in those anonymous apartment suites. But it turned out that I was wrong, and it was slowly dawning on me that being poor had little to do with where you lived; that maybe, after all, being poor was a state of mind.

I still felt it, clinging to us like musty cobwebs. I had begun to believe we would never escape that feeling.

Surrounded by tall trees in a giant shadowed yard, this house seemed perfectly designed for my family. It stood alone, hidden, wrapped in a cocoon of privacy.

We ate in silence for a long five minutes, then Debbie rose from her chair. She glanced at Mother. ‘I’ll go call him again.’

Mother shook her head. ‘He’ll come when he can,’ she said.

‘But—’

Mother’s eyes hardened. ‘No. Your father is in a hurry to finish rebuilding that engine. We all have to be patient.’

Debbie sat down.

I nodded. ‘He’s working on a bolt right now. It shouldn’t take much longer, he said.’

‘Can’t he at least take a break?’ Debbie demanded, her face reddening.

‘He’ll come in when he’s finished!’

‘No more arguing,’ Mother ordered in a low voice.

Tanya stood and pointed. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘a furry thing.’

As one we turned. In the hallway near the front door, I saw a flash of movement.

‘Good God.’ Mother lurched up from her chair, sending it toppling backwards. ‘A rat.’

Grey and round, the rat paused to look up at us, lifting one paw. I sat in my chair, staring at it. Its smooth fur looked soft, and its black eyes glistened like tiny marbles. Then it moved down the hall.

Her face pale, Mother jerked a step forward, then shouted: ‘Jim! There’s a rat!’

Outside, the clanging stopped. Then heavy boots thumped up the porch steps and the screen door flew open. Father stood in the doorway, seeming to fill it. In one hand was the mallet. His gaze fixed on something down the hallway, beyond our line of sight. Expressionless, he strode forward.

I leapt from my chair. Three fast steps carried me into the hallway. Near the basement door stood Father, his arm raised, the mallet high in the air above him. There was a sudden scampering at his feet, then the rat leapt past him, half climbing the wall as it ran. I froze. It had been so fat, it had looked so slow. Now it moved, and it was fast, coming straight down the hallway and darting past me before I could even react.

I whirled around just as Mother, still in the dining room, let out a scream.

Father wheeled and came lumbering towards me. Stepping to one side to let him pass, I said, ‘In the dining room.’

Mother stood beside the dinner table. Up on their chairs, Tanya and William stared into the living room, their eyes wide and faces flushed. Debbie leaned against a wall, her arms crossed, her expression closed and her face white.

‘It went into the living room, Jim,’ Mother said, her voice taut. ‘Under the couch.’

He pushed past her and entered the living room, walking slowly, the mallet ready in his hand.

When the rat made its dash across the centre of the floor, Father was ready. With a quickness that surprised me, he whirled and swung down. The floor shook, and then there was silence.

I gaped. A new colour had come to the living room, startlingly bright. It stood out in tiny spots on the couch and the chairs, on the lampshade and the curtains. It spattered my father’s forearms, his coveralls, his face.

The rat’s mangled body twitched in the centre of the room, intestines lying pink and wet beside it. All on the new rug.

Behind me, Mother bolted for the kitchen, where she threw up in the sink.

‘Yuck,’ Debbie said.

I stared at Father until he looked at me. ‘Where did all that blood come from?’

His answering grin was strange. He slowly straightened, the mallet hanging limp and glistening in his hand.

Debbie laughed. ‘Where d’you think, dummy?’

I shook my head. There was too much of it. There had to be. It was just a rat. ‘But it was just a rat. Rats don’t have…’

Father walked past me, holding his arms out to either side. ‘You’d be surprised,’ he said as he walked into the kitchen.

I crouched down beside the rat. ‘It’s still alive,’ I whispered.

Debbie glanced at it, then away. ‘Nerves,’ she said.

‘No way. It’s blinking at me.’

My sister came close, kneeling down. I heard her gasp. ‘What’s that coming out of its mouth?’

I bent closer. ‘Huh?’

‘That!’ Debbie pointed. ‘Crawling out of its mouth!’

‘Oh, that’s its tongue.’

Gagging, Debbie ran into the kitchen.

I looked back at the eyes, but they had already glazed over. The excitement I had felt now faded. I stared hard into those eyes, wondering what it would be like to watch the darkness closing in from all sides, and the light glittering inside dimming, winking fitfully, then vanishing. I felt like crying.

CHAPTER TWO

I

It was Saturday, and the sun beat down with a force that made the ice flowing down the river crack and shatter like buried thunder. I left the house and strode the gloomy length of the driveway. The machinery squatting along the edges seemed almost threatening, as if the shadowy darkness had leaked from their blackened, seized insides.

I emerged into sunlight at the driveway’s end. My three friends were waiting.

‘You bring the tools?’ I asked Roland.

He nodded, lifting an old tattered backpack.

‘I brought a hammer,’ Lynk said, stepping forward. He raised the tool and swung it through the air between us.

I scowled. ‘What do we need a hammer for?’

He bared his teeth. ‘In case it’s all rusted up.’

‘You never hammer seized bolts,’ I said. ‘Besides, they’d hear us for sure.’

Lynk’s grin broadened. ‘Maybe I’ll bust some windows.’

‘Let’s go,’ said Roland.

As we walked, I once again felt the urge to tell them about the rat. Again, however, something held me back. The rat hadn’t been outside. It hadn’t been in the garage. It had been in the house, and that made a difference. But it was more than that. I was afraid if I told the story I’d start crying. I still remembered vividly those black eyes, though they had changed, and now when I resurrected the scene I saw intelligence in them, an awareness. The creature, I was now convinced, had known the difference between life and death.

We continued down the road until it began its sharp bend back up to the highway. Branching off from the corner was a narrow paved track crowded on either side by gnarled oaks. It led to the grounds of the Yacht Club. We slipped into the track, which opened out after a dozen paces. The driveway divided here, turning to the right and forming a broad circle that ran up to the red-and-white house that was the club proper. Straight ahead, beyond the ringed road and beyond the gravel parking lot, lay the yards, our destination.

We crossed the gravel lot at a lithe run that took us over its milky-white puddles in soft bounds. Apart from the potholes, the lot was empty.

The Yacht Club’s dry-docks and hangars waited like a graveyard. Reeking of rancid grease, its ground was mostly packed clay and crushed limestone, glittering with broken window panes and pieces of metal. Here and there twisted yellow grass lay pasted to the ground like oily hair.

In three ragged rows the yachts stood high in their scaffolding like corpses laid out on pitched wooden pyres. The newer ones had locked doors and shaded windows. The old ones had been looted long ago.

Between the yards and the main house rose a screen of red-needled pine trees and rampant elm and dogwood thickets. There was a watchman who lived in a cottage just beyond the last of the boats. Once in the yards, we had only him to worry about. Roland said the old man’s name was Gribbs, but I’d yet to see him. By late afternoon, and from our secret vantage point, we’d see a dim yellow light burning steadily behind the dusty window of the cottage, but he never seemed to venture outside.