In the Quiet After Slaughter
Stories by Don McLellan
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SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY: Don McLellan on Smashwords
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Acknowledgements
Earlier drafts of the following stories have been previously published: Prologue (Vancouver Sun); Mother’s Day (The Dalhousie Review); Fugitive (Pottersfield Portfolio); Crossing theLine(dANDelion); Group Tour (The Windsor Review); Memory Sandwich (The New Orphic Review); Test Pattern Blues (Pittsburgh Quarterly Online); Ed’s Garage (paperplates); Horse (Front&Centre); Scram (Descant); The Ringmaster (The Windsor Review); Exile (Carousel); Mrs. What’s-Her-Name (Another Toronto Quarterly); Milk & Honey (Snow Monkey)
Contents
Prologue
At the conclusion of the Second World War, Canadian combatants returning from Europe exacerbated an already-chronic housing shortage. In Vancouver, veterans and their families were billeted in downtown hotels. Hallways served as playgrounds, lobbies as nurseries. Indignant returnees halted traffic, prompting authorities to borrow an untested solution from the United States: public housing. In a single summer a forested hillside on the city’s eastern periphery was cleared and the first of hundreds of look-alike bungalows constructed. The newspaper ran a photo of a bulldozer felling the first sacrificial tree. Demand for the rental units outstripped supply, so the coveted homes were let to those who’d endured considerable frontline action. Families were also required to have at least two children, encouraging action amongst hopeful applicants of a more welcome sort. An appropriate moniker for the residential development suggested itself nine months hence: Diaper Hill. Streets were named after memorable battle sites from both world wars, villages in Europe such as Normandy, Vimy, Dieppe, Anzio, Mons. Each narrow corridor had several homes fitted with a wheelchair ramp extending to the sidewalk — at least to where the sidewalks were meant to be. (Homes tenanted by the shell-shocked featured no telling characteristic.) Until financing for paving was secured, rainfall turned roadway and footpath into muddy fjords. Postal workers refused delivery, a slight later avenged by a parliament of snappy canines. By the new millennium few of the bungalows or their original inhabitants stood erect. Folks began referring to the neighbourhood as Widows’ Hill. To many who live there these days, the Renfrew Heights Housing Project for War Veterans, where many of the following fictions are set, is remembered, if at all, as a quaint municipal curiosity. To original residents, however, the Project was a sanctuary, a place to reassemble war-weary lives in the quiet years after slaughter.
The stories in this collection represent a work of fiction. Similarities to any person, living or deceased, are unintended.
Mother’s Day
He hid in the shadows at the end of the hallway and waited for her to drop into the chair facing the mirror. He’d seen it before but needed corroboration. If she caught him watching, he’d say he was looking for the cat.
She held the hatpin up to the light... then plunged it into the palm of her left hand. The crucifixion seemed to divert her fury, at least temporarily. A Kleenex stemmed the bleeding
He must have flinched, because she glanced up at the mirror, eyes glistening with tear. Long after she was gone, long after his own fingers had stiffened, he wondered if she’d known all along of his audience.
I’ll fix dinner soon, she said.
Here kitty, kitty...
#
In its natural state my mother’s mane had the lacquer sheen of a Japanese jewelry box. When liberated the locks splashed across her unhappy shoulders like rainwater. Monthly she entrusted her scalp to Tony, surname unknown, proprietor of Hair By Anthony, a gracious, perfumed soul who worked from photographs of starlets torn from magazines. His haughty companion — an indulged Persian — sunned her royal whiskers in the shop window.
We learned to recognize changes in my mother’s personality that would accompany the makeovers. They appeared like uninvited guests. Depending on the actress she imagined she had become, as well as myriad other factors only she was aware of, my mother would mangle foreign accents or greet acquaintances with a sultry purr.
She’d steal glances at herself in strategically mounted mirrors and take up smoking but never inhale. She’d duck in behind an assortment of eyeglasses despite near-perfect vision. We’d seen her sashay to and fro in the yard, an Anthony.
Our father, on returning home from work and seeing for the first time the latest hairdo, would tactfully say nothing at all, appreciative of the few days respite it afforded him. To brother Burt and me, he’d wag a head and roll amused Celtic eyes — eyes, he’d remind, in the event we’d forgotten — that had seen just about everything.
– Tony’s baloney, he’d guffaw. Baloney by Tony.
He was right, of course. These folic creations crumbled like sand-castles. Exhausted rings unravelled, curls drooped as miserably as the diseased limbs of trees. In a week or so my mother was again the self she’d so desperately hoped to escape. The salon scent was circumvented by a festering despair. It lingered stubbornly, a vagrant after-dinner smell.
With the approach of Mother’s Day, in what had become family tradition, my parents planned, on the Saturday preceding, an evening of dinner and dancing. They would launch the celebration with some Chinese food at the Honey Blossom Restaurant.
– Call for reservations, will ya? my mother asked. I’ve got to be at Anthony’s soon.
Though the restaurant rarely filled its dozen wooden booths, Mom always insisted on reservations. I think the gesture made her feel like someone special, my call serving as official notice that the two of them were stepping out.
I recognized the voice answering the phone. Ming’s white shirt stained yellow at the armpits. The long, curled nail of his small finger was sharp enough to hook a trout.
– Resa-way-shun? he screamed. You wanna make resa-way-shun for Honey Bwossum? Behind him I could hear the clamour of juggling woks, the swell of an alien chatter.
Ming repeated each letter of our surname like a man calling a bingo game.
– Come anytime you wike!
#
My father never learned how to swim, which did not disqualify him during the war for an assignment aboard a Corvette. The idea was that if the vessel sunk in the Atlantic, an ability to stay afloat would only delay the inevitable. He acquired skills in the navy that didn’t transfer easily to a civilian economy. Which is why, when the slaughter was over, he went to work for the first company offering employment, a meat plant on the Vancouver waterfront.
He worked in a freezer, sorting animal carcasses. The cold caused his face to flush as though he was suffering from permanent discomfiture. People sometimes wondered if he’d recently returned from California or Hawaii. My father enjoyed being mistaken for someone wealthy enough to afford such a holiday. From the neck down he was eggshell white.
Weekends my dad hung out at the Hastings Park Racetrack. In the off-season he made wagers through a bookie, mumbling peculiar equations into the phone, pretending to talk union or hockey whenever my mother roamed within earshot. He would visit a barbershop downtown to settle his accounts. It was his modus operandi.
One Sunday, in an attempt to sabotage this unsanctioned liaison, my mother hid the car keys. Dad hadn’t been paying her enough attention, a common lament. The family Plymouth sat forlornly at the curb while they revisited schisms pre-dating my birth. When Dad reached for the coin jar in the cupboard, having decided to catch a bus, he discovered it empty — her modus operandi.
I’m going, my father vowed. You can’t stop me.
Then start walking, buster, our mother returned. And so he did, she following like an obstinate virus. From our house in the Project a brisk stroll downtown took about two hours. My father later revealed that he’d hoped to lose her in the crowds of Chinatown, but that his height — over six feet, toe to crown — prevented a getaway.
– I was like a noodle in a rice bowl, he said.
– Why don’t you tell everybody where you’re going, big shot? my mother reportedly exclaimed over tables stacked high with bok choy, ducking between the hapless torsos of barbecued poultry. Tell ’em why you’re sneaking off!
She paced outside the barbershop until my father completed his business. I can see him chuckling nervously as he tries explaining her behaviour to the congress of punters. Hear from behind an arc of steaming lather, What’s with the dame?
But their censure didn’t weaken her resolve. She savoured my father’s embarrassment — and cursed his having been conceived every step of the way home.
He drank with old navy buddies at one of the Canadian Legion branches and foolishly denied doing so. He attempted to disguise the alcohol on his breath with Halls Cough Drops. Tobacco fumes clung to his clothes like an invisible lint. Sometimes my mother alleged the scent of woman.
On occasion, it was true, my father would take off for a few days — to where, no one knows. Going absent without leave guaranteed an intensified resumption of their conflict at some future date. The air in our house crackled in anticipation of the rematch.
Once, to regain entry, he claimed to have gone angling with friends. My mother circled him warily, a dog sniffing a fire hydrant.
– Lying bastard!
Punishment often entailed his eviction from their bedroom. Banishment could stretch from three days to three months, depending. He appeared relieved to be sentenced to an air mattress on the living-room floor. Because my brother Burt and I often took my father’s side, it was self-serve in the kitchen until a truce was reached. Our body weights fluctuated accordingly.
I viewed my father’s carousing like this: he was born during the First World War and orphaned in the Depression. He spent the best part of his 20s fighting the Second World War. I reckoned the occasional disappearance was his way of making up for lost time.
People sometimes remarked that my parents seemed to have little in common. This may have been the case. But there had to be a reason they were able to cohabit for as long as they did. I think they were joined together, as many unions are, by the sum of their unfulfilled expectations, and because as the years passed, options decreased and habits fossilized.
My parents, you see, were either in love or at war. Rancour seemed an aphrodisiac. There was no Switzerland, no neutral ground. It was the one thing they seemed to agree on: the enemy of love is indifference.
#
My mother, in anticipation of their evening fete, had passed the afternoon tethered to the dresser. Her features had been transformed by a mysterious fusion of lotion, cream and paint, the ancient alchemy of pulchritude. The new hairdo balanced precariously atop her head, a plumage of swirls and frizzy ringlets, every strand tinted and teased.
Mirror, mirror on the wall...
My brother appeared shortly, two pals in tow. Burt was 16. The tattoo of a cobra snaked up his bony arm and under a Harley-Davidson T-shirt. The fuzz germinating on his chin had the lax bristle of pubic hair.
– Home, Ma! The walls trembled as the trio stampeded down the basement stairs.
– Where the heck have you been? my mother asked sleepily. The pills the doctor said would help control her mood swings had kicked in. So had the delayed reactions.
Burt emerged from the basement moments later, a bulky paper bag tucked under an arm.
– Later, Ma!
– TV dinners are in the freezer, she said. Or you can warm up the meat loaf.
#
My father had promised to be home by six; I heard him. Quarter past seven finds my mother positioned at the living room window waiting for the Plymouth to slide down Mons Drive, the slamming shut of its rusty door, his workboots on the porch. She sucks on a Pilsner, shredding its label with swipes of her sharp crimson nails.
– Better be home soon, she mutters, throttling the bottle’s neck. Bloody well better.
By 9 p.m. a half-dozen empties collide at her feet. Images from the black-and-white TV cavort across the walls. Whenever she darts to the bathroom I hear the tinkling of pee, a rattling of pills.
I have a morning paper route and must retire early. From my bedroom directly below I hear her heels pacing the floor; they sound like a pair of spikes being driven through lumber. Then she moves to the telephone where she begins ordering the Legion bartenders to page Dad.
– You think I don’t know he’s there? she accuses. Think I don’t know what he’s up to?
The last sound I hear before drifting off is a bottle cap skimming across the floor, a stone skipping the surface of a pond.
Tap, tap, tap...
Dad’s inebriated face is shoved up against my bedroom window.
– Locked out, son. Let me in? He thinks he’s whispering. The clock radio says 2:30 a.m.
The basement door squeaks on opening; the sound runs through the house like a shiver. I hear my father at the back of the yard. Our bathroom had recently been renovated; the old toilet had been left in the alley awaiting pickup. Dad is on his knees vomiting into the bowl. For him, cursed with a weak stomach, the porcelain prayer was a familiar posture after a night out. Old habits die hard, I guess.
A soft rain murmurs in the warm spring sky, its lazy descent visible in the glow of the streetlights.
– Thanks a hell of a lot, Burt.
My father slumps against the fence, eyes listing. I get him inside and wrap his arms around a beam. It’s kept the house upright all these years; I’m hoping it’ll do the same for him.
Where’s the car? I ask. You didn’t drive like that, did ya?
Somewhere, he says. I fish the keys from his coat pocket.
We hear a noise, its cause and source indecipherable. I’m hoping it’s faulty water pipes or clanking furnace vents or just groaning floorboards — anything but my mother, her resurrection.
The sound of trickling water makes me suppose the plumbing. This turns out to be partly true. A sigh escapes my father’s lips; a gurgle trickles over his steel-toed boots. The deluge settles between my toes, hot and sticky.
Just then the door at the top of the stairs is flung open. The overhead bulb blazes.
That you, buster? My mother.
Sorry, son, Dad says.
– Let’s talk about it in the morning, woman! he hollers. I had a winner tonight!
– Heard that one before! Mom spits, slamming the door. She begins constructing a barricade with kitchen chairs.
– Come on, doll! he pleads. I need sleep!
– Don’t you doll me! she thunders, muscling table legs across the kitchen floor. You’re not sleeping in my bed!
I slip outside and rinse my feet under the garden hose. The rain is whooshing through drainpipes, gushing along the eaves, a symphonic drumming on wood, metal, plastic. House lights begin to flare up and down the street.
At the top of the stairwell my father shoulders the door; it doesn’t budge. My mother learned the value of a solid defence the night brother Burt was on acid and believed he was being eaten alive by scorpions. I remember wishing he had been.
– This is my house! my father declares. Given the territory each controls, others might disagree.
I’m calling the cops! my mother snarls.
Whatcha gonna charge me with, huh? Breaking curfew?
My father staggers to the back of the basement; I can hear him rooting around in the toolbox. He reappears at my bedroom door.
– This otta do the job, eh? He holds up a hatchet.
My father returns to the top of the stairs and begins hacking. Wood chips ricochet off the walls. With each swing of the blade, splinters of light from the kitchen spill into the dark stairwell. But every time my father tries squeezing through the opening, my mother wallops him with a broom.
A few more chops, the breach widens. He resumes the advance. She falls back, pelting him with dishes. Plates and coffee mugs explode. Dad retreats.
– You still got that football helmet? he asks me.
He is emboldened by its fibreglass shell, the webbed faceguard. On his next foray my father pokes his fortified skull through the hole in the door, but he comes under heavy fire once more. This time he’s pinned down by a fusillade of footwear.
Eventually my mother exhausts her ammo. A hush falls over the battlefield. The lights in the homes of our somnolent neighbours are extinguished. Sleep at last.
#
Blood dripping from the ceiling. Brain matter splattered across the walls. That’s what I expect to find upon waking that Mother’s Day, the sun peeking above the asphalt rooftops, our house silent. Vapours hover over the sodden lawn in a primordial smolder.
In the living room I discover my mother on the sofa; she’s curled up in a sleeping bag. Dad has taken the bedroom; I can smell him. It would probably take a stick of dynamite to pry loose the helmet. I knew someone keen to light the fuse.
I strap the newspaper satchels to the handlebar of my bike and push off. When I return later that morning the sofa has been vacated. My mother’s recent presence has been left behind like a palm print in wet cement.
A spear of light jabs the curtained gloom of my parents’ bedroom. I can make out the headless helmet standing guard on a nightstand. Under the twisted bedsheets their sleeping bodies resemble alabaster figurines. Legs entangled, arms entwined, a perfect fit.
Fugitive
Shortly before the meeting, Esther Rhodes swallowed two sedatives.
– I’ve got a lot of appointments today, said Lois Daniels, the social worker, sliding the papers across the kitchen table. Is he in his room?
According to the re-telling — Mom was present by request, a legal witness to the proceedings — Mrs. Rhodes glared at the social worker before attaching a signature to the consent form.
– Well, asked Dad. Was he?
My mother lost her train of thought spooning macaroni and wieners onto four plates. As always, the largest share, to satiate the neediest stomach, went to our father.
– Do I have to do everything? she snapped. Somebody get the
ketchup! Once seated, she asked of no one: Now... who was what?
The ’tard, my brother reminded her. Was he in his room? Mom waved a butter knife in Burt’s face.
Use that word one more time, buster...
Mrs. Rhodes was on Mom’s bowling team, the Renfrew Heights All-Stars. Her son Fender was what people these days refer to as mentally challenged. Back then he was called other things. The papers Mrs. Rhodes signed that morning, the reason for the pills, turned temporary guardianship of her only living offspring over to the Department of Social Services. A spot had opened up in a group home. Mom explained that if Mrs. Rhodes wanted Fender to partake in a program that taught self-sufficiency, she had little choice.
– Don’t blame me, Lois Daniels had said. It’s the system.
The Rhodes had been our neighbours since the development — the Renfrew Heights Housing Project for War Veterans — had been a work-in-progress. On account of all the babies about, it was known as Diaper Hill.
A few years after the family took possession of its new bungalow, Mr. Rhodes, who drove a truck, was killed in a traffic accident. The Mrs. had already lost her firstborn, a girl, to a heart defect.
In the early days of the Project the streets were unpaved and unidentified, lined on both sides by the skeletons of unfinished homes. It was a world of lumber and brick, of bulldozers and mud, the air rank with dust and diesel fumes.
Fender dropped out of school in Grade 8. He busied himself doing jobs others declined: cutting lawns and weeding gardens, washing cars, helping out with paper routes — whatever he was asked to do, whatever he was capable of. He was rarely seen without his red baseball cap.
When I was working for Kellman’s Drugs, stocking shelves and delivering prescriptions, Fender was running lunches to store owners too busy to abandon their counters. He swept walkways and cleaned windows. Occasionally something would happen to remind us Fender was different. He would anchor himself on the gravelled shoulder of Rupert Street at rush hour, oblivious to the cars speeding under his nose, unresponsive to concerns for his safety.
– Where’s he going so fast? Fender might ask of a passing motorist. Fire some place?
And if you, strolling by, should shrug your shoulders and walk on, Fender might give chase, as he once did with me, whispering into my ear, Maybe he’s going to the dentist! Maybe he’s late for work! Then he flashes those green eyes of his as though it’s you who’s the simpleton.
Most of the time, though, Fender was simply a little strange. He was a devoted fan of the lowly Vancouver Canucks, following their ineffectual tribulations on a transistor radio. He felt compelled to announce each home-club goal to the world, running breathless into shops to deliver the news.
More troubling was Fender’s habit of scaling telephone poles. He used the steel service pegs running up both sides to make his ascent, positioning himself centimetres from a live wire.
– It’s dangerous, Sgt. Toby McManus warned Mrs. Rhodes. The lad will sizzle.
Fender promised not to ever again, swore to it when saying grace (Thank you Lord for this food ...I will not climb telephone poles), when uttering his prayers (Now I lay me down to sleep ...I will not climb telephone poles). But a few months would pass and there he was again, nimble as a squirrel, scampering above the TV aerials.
– I can hear people talking up there, he told a group of us one night, those emerald orbs sparkling mischievously. I know everyone’s secrets...
The claim was, of course, a feature of his particular looniness. Still, I imagined Fender listening in on calls I made to my girl Sadie, his ears twitching in the chilled air while I muttered the insincerities I believed all women wanted to hear.
When the mood seized him Fender could be seen from blocks away, a pimple-faced Jack in the Beanstock disappearing into the clouds. He was eavesdropping on our arguments and our bullshit, on our complaints and confessions, an uninvited third party to our declarations of love.
Eventually someone would flag down the sergeant. The firefighters would extend their ladders. Mrs. Rhodes would be called away from her cleaning job at the hospital.
How ’bout them Canucks, eh, Fender? Sgt. McManus shouted up to the boy in an incident I remember well. It’s time they traded for some defencemen, doncha think?
You can sit up in the cab with me! the fire chief promised, addressing him through a bullhorn.
But Fender wouldn’t budge. He seemed as content at the top of the pole that day as I had ever seen him — more so, if truth be told, than those at the bottom looking up. We were curious, distracted, bored. And the boy? Positively exuberant.
Because at the top of that pole there were no miscreants like my brother Burt exhorting Fender to swallow dog turds, no snickers as he chatted with secret associates. He clung to the pole’s creosote surface like a child clasping a teddy bear, eyelids heavy, the trace of a smile on his lips, the steady hum of the current racing along the cables an elixir for his tormented soul.
It was as if, at the summit of a telephone pole, Fender Rhodes was...a step closer to God.
Dessert devoured, the dishes stacked in the sink, my mother ignited a DuMaurier, leaned back in her chair and exhaled.
– You’ll never believe, she said, what happened next...
The social worker Lois Daniels went to the front door and gestured to a man behind the wheel of a car. He took up a position on the boulevard.
– He looked like a secret service agent or something, my mother editorialized. Sunglasses and everything.
It takes one to know one, Dad snorted. Mrs. Rhodes knocked on Fender’s bedroom door.
They’re here, sweetness. The boy could be heard shuffling around inside.
– The place has a billiards table, Fender, Mom said. You can play all day.
They took turns listening at the door. Mrs. Rhodes, Lois Daniels, then Mom. The radio was playing a Beatles tune; the boy hummed along.
She told me she worked in the morning and started to laugh . . .
They went outside to talk over their next move. Lois Daniels consulted with the spook, who retrieved a ladder from the side of the house. He climbed to Fender’s second-floor window and peered inside.
– Well? Lois Daniels asked.
Mom interrupted the narrative to fire a volley of smoke rings across the kitchen. Through the haze I could see the despair set like floor tiles in Mrs. Rhodes’ troubled face.
– The kid’s gone, the spook said. Door’s open.
The four of them raced to the rear of the house. They looked under the porch and searched the shed. Lois Daniels poked the long grass pushing up through the fence, a border guard sniffing out illegals. The spook shook the apple tree.
– He seemed disappointed, Mom said. Like he expected Fender to fall to the ground like a piece of fruit.
Mrs. Rhodes climbed the back stairs and beckoned her son home. To those who lived nearby her cry had become as familiar a sound as the passing of the afternoon freight train.
– Fen-der! Fen-der!
They heard the moan of a distempered canine, the howl of a hungry infant, the swell of faraway traffic, but not a peep from the boy. The gate opened and slammed shut again as though instructed to do so by an invisible hand.
#
He’ll be home by dinner, they told Esther Rhodes. He’s at that age, they said. But the assumption that Fender would soon saunter home, as Lois Daniels predicted, proved groundless.
– Call me when he turns up, the social worker said. She left her card on the table.
By early evening the stifling summer air had cooled, shadows lengthened in the yards. I was told to peddle to the drugstore and get Mrs. Rhodes’ prescription refilled.
The All-Stars, their practice cancelled, gathered around our kitchen table. They divided themselves into groups and assigned duties, filing out the front door solemnly in their black and silver club jackets.
A few teammates sat with Esther as she worked the phone. She called kids Fender had gone to school with, fellow idiots, people he’d done odd jobs for. When, at 9 p.m., he still hadn’t returned, she called the police.
Others fanned out across the neighbourhood. They knocked on doors and scoured the woods. The All-Stars aimed their flashlights into garages and yards, under parked cars, behind every bush. They rang bells and blew whistles.
Sgt. McManus turned up at the house to explain to Esther that police don’t file reports until someone has been missing 24 hours. People in the Project respected the veteran policeman. He had fought at Dieppe.
– We’ll find him, he said. I’ll bring him straight home when we do.
But they didn’t find Fender that night or the following evening either. Esther Rhodes looked like she was about to unravel. I think she had so many pharmaceuticals coursing through her bloodstream that she no longer knew what was going on, which was, I suppose, their purpose. After three days the All-Stars declared a moratorium: no more frames tossed until Fender was found.
– Esther has already lost a husband and a baby, a team member reminded. She might not have the strength to survive the loss of her angel.
A week passed without a sighting. It was as if the boy had vapourized. If Fender was still in the vicinity, people reasoned, someone should have seen him by now. Fears that he might have wandered into unfamiliar territory, into an unsympathetic street or — worse — into the clutches of a you-know-what, were left unexpressed. The All-Stars sought solace in the Ouija board.
If he was on the run from welfare authorities, the prevailing suspicion, few knew their local geography like our Fender. He knew where the best berries grew, the bountiful vegetable gardens. He was familiar with the dumpsters likely to yield the most refundables.
As news of his disappearance spread, more volunteers turned up at Esther Rhodes’ door. Kids skipped classes, adults booked off work. I was press-ganged into acting as courier and delivery boy, the search party’s factotum. A photo of Fender was mimeographed and taped to the rear window of automobiles. It was posted in the laundromat and on the notice board in the community centre.
The disappearance galvanized the Project. Mobilization became a kind of social event. It brought people out of their homes — out of themselves, a respite from their own narrow concerns. New friendships were formed, animosities put on hold. The fellow who broadcast the hockey games went on air to plead with Fender to return home, as we knew the boy carried his transistor. Porch lights were left on throughout the night.
Finally, the boy missing two weeks, evidence turned up that he was still alive. An old gentleman from the top of Normandy Drive reported that the previous evening he had been wakened by a noise. In the morning he found a branch of his plum tree stripped clean.
Fender was crazy about plums, wasn’t he? inquired one of the All-Stars.
He raids our tree every summer, confirmed Alice Travers, the Rhodes’ next-door neighbour.
You never know, someone else cautioned. Plums aren’t ripe yet. It could’ve been the starlings.
– I found this, the man said.
He spread a sheet of paper on Mrs. Rhodes’ coffee table. It was a tracing of the footprint he’d found in the wet grass. One of Fender’s shoes was retrieved. It was a match.
Then a lady living on Vimy Crescent called to say that a few nights previous she had heard someone tearing up her tomato plants.
– It was dark and I didn’t have my glasses on, she said. But I could see he was about the same height as the boy. He ran like hell when Cookie started barking. She’s got quite the temper, you know. Why, I remember —.
People were also finding that their milk bottles — delivered early in the a.m. in those days and left on the front stairs — were drained, yet the exact change was rattling around inside the empties left for the delivery man. And then a young lady called to say that while walking home from the bus stop one night she noticed a pair of eyes following her from a row of hedges.
– His eyes, she said, were as green as the grass.
Buoyed by the news, the All-Stars redoubled their efforts. They sought clues in horoscope columns and tea leaves. Some scrutinized religious literature, others read Tarot cards. Strangers were eyed with renewed suspicion.
Though Sgt. McManus had set up a mobile command centre at the back of the Shop Eazy parking lot, team members walked the railway tracks, as Fender often did, tramping through vacant homes and boarded-up buildings. They peered into those damp, sunless spaces where the underaged smoked and cats coupled. They looked under stairways where old dogs retreated to die.
#
Then something happened...The most popular program on TV at the time was The Fugitive, which was loosely based on a real case. Airing Tuesday evenings, it was about an American doctor — Dr. Richard Kimble — accused of murdering his wife. Each episode was about the people helping him elude a Lt. Philip Gerard, who had become obsessed with his capture, and the doctor’s hunt for the one-armed man he believed responsible for the slaying.
For the 60 minutes The Fugitive was on TV, the search for Fender ceased. Even Mrs. Rhodes stopped bawling and pulled up a chair. It was impossible to pinpoint exactly which episode encouraged the metamorphosis, but as the TV season progressed, as Fender’s flight from the Department of Social Services became more widely known, our young neighbour shed his identity as the local nut. Somehow, in people’s minds, Fender became like Dr. Richard Kimble: an innocent on the run.
On the walk to school, discussing the search on park benches, mulling over the specials at the supermarket, folks no longer said they thought they saw the boy hopping a fence or skipping through a yard. They began to say they saw Kimble. People who formerly supported the manhunt, just like some of the characters on the TV program, were now actively assisting his escape.
The Widow Nighs, for example, an enthusiastic follower of the drama, left cakes and soft drinks under a cardboard box on her patio. And the Bartons, it was later learned, left their garage unlocked at night. They added a cot and sleeping bag, a stack of comics, grilled-cheese sandwiches. Mr. Barton hooked up an electric heater on evenings the temperature dipped.
The manner in which our neighbours referred to the police also changed. Of course, most appreciated the presence of Sgt. McManus. His baton disciplined the delinquents in ways no parent could. But while these strange doings were unfolding, all cops — not just the sergeant — became the feared Lt. Gerard. Even the TV character thought to be the killer of the doctor’s wife, the one-armed man, landed a role in our mystery. Teens took to walking around with an arm tucked inside a shirt. I did it. So did my pals. It was cool.
My brother Burt and his thugs roamed the streets most nights picking fights and boosting anything not chained down. Had they come across Fender in the early days of the search they would have pummelled him ferociously. But because they hated the thought of being allied with Gerard, Burt and his pals began doing whatever they could to atone for their misplaced allegiance.
If Fender was reported hiding out in, say, an empty lot, an anonymous caller would inform the police he’d been spotted elsewhere. We all began wearing red baseball caps identical to Fender’s. It was a craze, like the Hula Hoop — our way of expressing solidarity with the fugitive’s tenacity.
Late one night, when it looked as though the cops had Fender boxed in, Burt’s pals started darting between the houses, yelling, He’s over here! After him! The cops couldn’t distinguish one red cap from another and returned, flummoxed, to the command centre.
But just as school was about to resume, the dew thick in the high grass, the police trapped Fender in the glow of a moonbeam. He was attempting to cross the school grounds accompanied by a family of raccoons.
Sgt. McManus, as promised, delivered Fender to his mother with the promptness of a pizza. Mrs. Rhodes, when she opened the door that night, thought she was hallucinating. Reeking of animal scent, face and hands coated in a layer of slime, Fender had the beginnings of a moustache and appeared to have grown a few inches. And though he had been in hiding for most of the summer, he seemed especially vigorous. His weight gain puzzled the policeman considerably.
It later came out that Fender had used the hour The Fugitive aired on Tuesday evenings to switch hideouts, moving from one refuge to another as the populace gathered around their TV sets. Employing a stealth rare in one so young, he inhabited an abandoned car and then a child’s tree house. He camped out in the brambles that grew along the banks of Still Creek and took advantage of the Bartons’ garage hideaway. The night of his apprehension, Fender was returning to his new abode, a raccoons’ lair under the school portables. In his pocket they found peanut butter cookies baked by the Widow Nighs.
#
Fender Rhodes accompanied the social worker Lois Daniels to the group home. He stayed two years. It was said he learned to tolerate the routine there and that he became a talented billiards player. Eventually, however, the approach to mental health care evolved. It was now thought progressive to integrate Fender into the community that had formerly sought his detention.
A young man now, tall and broad in the shoulders, Fender has returned to his old street corner. He has re-established business relationships. I understand he leaves telephone poles alone, although he has been seen anxiously eyeballing the heights of an old favourite.
If you take a drive through the Project you can see him most days. He’s probably there now. Maybe you’ll find him discussing hockey standings. Or — not that anyone would believe him — describing what it’s like living with a family of raccoons.
Forgiveness
First thing he sees, the dented Datsun pickup gearing down into a clearing, the two of them bouncing over the cratered road like popping corn, is the barrel of a rifle glinting in the Mexican sunshine.The vehicle skids to a halt. An M-16 is poked through the open window. – Out! Pronto!
The boy soldier’s XL uniform sags like a flag without a breeze. There’s a whiff of tequila on his breath. The two travellers haul their luggage to the side of the road.
– Pocita problema, Paco says.
An officer barks an order incomprehensible to Witherspoon’s elementary Spanish. The Canadian presumes the federales are demanding his papers. As he reaches into the duffel bag his feet are kicked out from under him — a language he understands. He sprawls obediently, legs splayed.
– Gringo! The word rockets off the young soldier’s tongue like an imprecation, smooth as spit. The comandante snatches Witherspoon’s papers.
– You play baseball? he asks. –I... Still speaking English, the military leader addresses his troops: If a yanqui plays baseball in Me-hi-co, it can only mean one thing!
–But I’mfrom...
The officer has one gold-plated front tooth and a drooping moustache. An ammunition belt pinches a flaccid abdomen.
– It means, says the comandante, that the yanqui isn’t very good, am I right? The teenaged combatants chuckle nervously. And then the comandante unsheathes a club and turns to Paco.
Witherspoon, if only the soldier had listened, was from Renfrew Heights in Vancouver’s East End, one of the best young chuckers the scouts had ever seen. But the Double A Tennessee Smokies released him after his final start. Too many walks. The pitching coach said that if he improved his control with the affiliate in Nueva Rosita, and if he ditched the attitude, the parent club would give him another look in the spring. To a fella like Pete Witherspoon, hormones and testosterone blasting inside like fireworks, them were two very big ifs.
A month into his first season with the Tamales, a game against Pueblo, Wild Man Witherspoon, as he was known, was cruising along with a two-hitter. The radar gun was clocking his fastball in the mid-90s, and the señoritas in the right field bleachers were chanting his name.
On a called third strike, his tenth K of the game, he felt something pop inside his pitching shoulder. The team doctor supposed that with rest and a little luck he could be back by opening day.
– You’re still young, said the man players suspected of being a veterinarian. Sometimes these injuries heal themselves. If not, there’s a surgeon up north who... Witherspoon called home.
– Maybe it’s time to try something else, son, his father said. You tried your best.
The familiar voice sounded like it was from another galaxy, so far from the despair of Nueva Rosita. He thought he could hear his mother nagging about the cost of the collect call.
He closed his eyes and summoned a picture of the backyard: the sheet of plywood where he’d scratched out a target, the dirt pitching mound, the streets of his childhood at dusk.
But returning to the Project wasn’t on his itinerary. At least not yet. Witherspoon had purchased a plane ticket the day previous, an extravagance for a minor-league budget. Originally he’d been planning to hitchhike to Puerto Angel, a little place on the coast the other players were always going on about. Before making a decision about the shoulder, he thought he’d have some fun.
But then folks staying at the same hotel in Oaxaca had warned that the hills west of town were the playground of guerillas and banditos, and that one was often blamed for the actions of the other.
– Gringos are sometimes kidnapped for sport, warned a Brit. With that hair, you’d be hard not to notice.
The Canadian scoffed at the notion of danger — secretly yearned, in fact, for adventure — and had only decided against thumbing to the coast after witnessing an incident near the zocolo. Men identifying themselves as police had beaten one of the Australians he’d been drinking with, a rugby player built like a bulldozer.
Witherspoon woke late the following morning, his brain cells jumbled by too much mescal. From the hotel balcony he’d watched as the Cessna he was booked to be aboard struggled to clear the treetops. The desk clerk who’d promised to rouse him early — who’d accepted a gratuity to do so — feigned amnesia. The proprietor of the airline refused him a refund.
– The next flight leaves in one week, señor. he said. Would you like to purchase a ticket?
I have a ticket!
Correct, señor. But your ticket has today’s stamp.
#
Paco brakes hard, scattering a clutch of chickens. He rolls down the window and calls to the hitchhiker.
– Dondeva?
With dictionaries open in their laps, they know just enough of the other’s language to be understood. The Mexican says he’s a pharmaceutical student soon to be wed. He’s heard of the Canadian on radio broadcasts.
You like to throw the beanball, no?
I led the league.
Whenever a pretty girl is spotted, Paco toots his horn. She is assigned a number from one to 10, which is then averaged out to much laughter and swigs from a bottle the Mexican keeps under the seat.
Halfway to the coast, Paco stops for a siesta. Witherspoon opts for a dip in the river running parallel to the road. Young housewives, their laundry spread out to dry on its grassy banks, are intrigued by the stranger’s tangerine hair and cornflake freckles. He strips and dashes into the current. The giggling voyeurs float bars of soap downstream inside empty juice cartons.
– Norteamericano, he hears them say. El hombre muy blanco.
Back on the road, rain-streaked fronds slapping at the windshield, parrots screeching in the jacaranda trees, Paco asks if Witherspoon would care to meet his fiancée, Carmela.
– A little detour, he says. It’s not far.
They arrive after nightfall. The settlement is without electricity; oil-fueled torches illuminate the village’s muddy streets. Witherspoon unfolds a map on the hood of the Datsun and searches with his flashlight.
What do you call this place again?
Absolución, Paco says. It means — he consults his phrasebook Carmela’s folks operate a popular eatery. It has a thatched roof, a fire smoldering in the stone hearth. The food is superb and the fiancée as lovely as Paco had claimed. She has copper skin that in the glow of the charcoal embers shines like a newly minted coin.
– Carmela has two sisters, Paco says. Look.
There’s an enclosure walled in by mosquito netting at the rear of the family compound. Witherspoon is able to make out a pair of silhouettes. One sister sways in a hammock, an arm lazily draped over the side as though her fingers trail through water. The other is perched on a stool. She is raking a brush through her hair, the back arched like half a parenthesis, thighs spread.
The Canadian thinks to himself: Forgiveness. What a strange name for a village.
#
A backlog of vehicles has been idled by the roadblock. Lined up around the bend are a few squeaky transport trucks, a second-class bus with threadbare tires, a taxi painted with dust. Youngsters trickle from the jungle to sell refreshments to the inconvenienced.
His guard off scrounging a cigarette, Witherspoon stole a glimpse of the swelling crowd. Some huddled in the shade, readying their bribes. Others made the sign of the cross, wincing with every blow administered to Witherspoon’s new friend. The ballplayer supposed all were as terrified as he — evidently the point of the delay.
The welts on Paco’s face were beginning to change colour. Witherspoon wondered how much more his friend could endure — wondered how much he himself could endure. And was he next?
The comandante reminded Witherspoon of a leering villain in a spaghetti western. The ballplayer tried willing the inebriated soldiers — wrestling in the dirt now, smashing bottles, urinating in the ditches — to vanish, all a mirage. For the film crew to put away its equipment and the brutal caliph to strip off the fake moustache and disappear inside a trailer.
But it wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t a movie. The comandante was swaggering through the clearing.
– El hombre comunista! he roared, a prosecutorial digit aimed at Paco. And then, leaning over Witherspoon, Your Mexican friend is not a student, yanqui! He is a dangerous radical!
But Witherspoon’s formal education had ended prematurely. He wouldn’t have been able to identify a communist if one was standing before him, although he seemed to recall being told that to be one was a bad thing. Since puberty his had been a world of curves and splitters, of wind sprints through a freshly cut outfield grass.
There had been an American teammate in the Florida State League, a prospect from California. Every time he struck out, which was often, the kid muttered, Effing commie bastards! For the longest time Witherspoon believed a communist to be a southpaw who threw breaking balls.
The comandante ordered his centurions to strap Paco to a tree. A mango was placed atop his head. The soldier reached into Witherspoon’s duffel bag and removed a baseball. It was Wild Man’s talisman, the ball used in his first professional victory. He’d intended to place it alongside his father’s war medals.
– It’s very warm today, the comandante addressed the crowd. We need some entertainment, no?
Witherspoon was familiar with the expectations of spectators — knew well that where they collect in sufficient numbers, so must there be a performance.
First in Spanish, then in English, the comandante explained his intentions:
– If the gringo knocks the mango from his friend’s head, the rebel can continue his journey. We’ll pick him up another time. But if he misses...The comandante’s gold tooth gleamed under the blazing afternoon sun.
Witherspoon rose to his feet. He placed his fingers along the seams of the baseball. A murmur rippled through the crowd.
He’d been stoned every day since his arrival in Puerto Angel. He lost track of the girls he’d had up to his room above the bar. With only a few thousand pesos remaining, he settled his account and hailed a taxi, promptly passing out in the back seat.
It was early evening when he awoke. The birds were silent and shadows had cooled the pot-holed corridor. He sought out familiar landmarks, but everywhere looked the same. The driver studied his passenger in the rearview mirror.
– Dinero! he demanded. He stopped the car in the middle of the road. Witherspoon invited the driver to count his crumpled bills.
– No mas? the man shouted. He ordered Witherspoon out of his taxi and sped off. The Canadian hiked to the nearest village and began asking for directions, but no one had heard of the place. An old woman suggested he try this road; a shopkeeper suggested that one. Children pelted him with rotten fruit.
He chose a route leading deeper into the jungle. It soon narrowed to a footpath, then to a trail. Further along it split into two, then splintered again, the hanging vines like wet strands of rope striking him hard in the face. Witherspoon grew impatient and began running. But the sky was starless that night and the steaming tropical air thick with squealing bats. The Canadian tripped and pitched forward into a large stone. His skull opened like an egg.
Guava pickers found him a few days later. They used a mule to transport the remains to the nearest church. He was buried in a section of the graveyard set aside for unfortunates. The priest there made inquiries, but he was unable to learn the young man’s identity. Even the place the traveller had been inquiring about was a mystery. Do you know it? The village of Absolución?
Crossing The Line
At the Peace Arch border crossing south of Vancouver, Old Glory snapping in the breeze off Semiahmoo Bay, Reggie Cameron eases the Chevy Impala behind a busload of Vegas-bound retirees.
– Remember, he coaches, a glance in the rearview mirror. When they ask if we’re planning to bring anything back, the answer is... Larry Cameron leans forward and hollers into his father’s unsuspecting ear, No, sir! From the front passenger seat, Mrs. Cameron, consoling Larry’s carsick younger sister Lenore, says, One of these days, Lawrence... Larry mimes terror, stifling his hysteria with a beach towel. Lenore groans, I feel like I’m going to...
– Okay, Mr. Cameron stiffens. Everybody smile.
A U.S. Customs official pokes his head into the Impala’s open window.
Morning, he drawls. Where we all going today? He circles the car, boot heels clicking on the pavement.
Everybody a Canadian citizen?
– We’ve got the neighbour’s boy with us, Mrs. Cameron confesses. I’ve got a letter signed by his father if you wanna see it.
The official steps away from the car. My reflection appears in his mirrored sunglasses. I feel like I’ve done something seriously wrong.
– Plan on doing any shopping? Larry and I roar simultaneously: No, sir! The officer slaps the car’s vinyl roof. You folks have a nice trip! We stop for soft drinks and snacks at the first supermarket. The
Camerons convert the price of each purchase into Canadian currency. Back on the road, horse ranches and trailer parks flit by in a blur. Mrs. Cameron circulates a bag of potato fritters.
– There’s something about these chips, Mr. Cameron says.
Not as good, are they? Mrs. Cameron agrees. Aren’t as crunchy as ours.
Nowhere near, Reggie Cameron replies. He extends an open hand for further testing.
In the back seat, Larry lifts a buttock and releases a burst of sharp anal burps. He elbows me and says, Do your parents allow you to behave this way at home?
#
The postman reported seeing a naked woman in the park. Later she was spotted atop the Kennedys’ garage. She twisted her ankle in the jump. A crowd gathered.
– Get the butterfly net! someone cackled. It’s escaped again! Almost everyone laughed. After the ambulance had left and the looky-loos dispersed, Mrs.
Cameron knocked on our door. Kids had nicknamed her Meat on account of her bulk.
Camping will do the boy good, she told my dad. The two of them sat on the stairs watching her Reg give the Impala a good scrubbing. He buffed the chrome until it gleamed.
I used to be a little nutty myself, she said.
#
We got one of the last campsites at Oceanview Resorts in Birch Bay. Mr. Cameron pitched a family-size tent while Mrs. Cameron barbecued some burgers. Larry and I erected a nylon pup tent.
– If I get any broads in here, Larry said, you’ll have to take a walk.
We lifted our bicycles from the roof rack and took a spin. Some of the other vacationers had motorhomes and vans, but many, like the Camerons, were sleeping under canvas. Most vehicles at the campsite bore Canuck plates.
After lunch we drove into town. Birch Bay consists of a smattering of stores and clapboard cottages facing Juan de Fuca Strait. Droves of oiled tourists fanned out on the sand. The main road was clogged with slow-moving cars blasting loud music.
Well
it’s been building up inside of me
For oh I don’t know how
long...
#
We parked the car and fell in with the procession of shoppers. Larry pestered his parents to let us go off on our own. They wanted us to take Lenore.
The youngest Cameron was a timid 10-year-old with a mouthful of braces. She wore glasses held together with electrician’s tape. In all the years we’d lived on the same street, I’d never once seen Lenore smile.
– Maybe next time, Larry said. Sorry, sis.
After the three of them had left, Larry and me doffed our shirts and sprawled on a bench facing the sea. Lifeguards were perched in elevated lookouts, walkie-talkies crackling, binoculars trained on the overcooked swarms frolicking at water’s edge.
A pair of giggling girls passes in a gust of perfume.
Females liked Larry; they hardly noticed me. There was always a couple following him at school. He trained his hair with a blow dryer like the singer Bobby Vinton. He had muscles; I, freckles.
– ’Merican poontang, Larry said. It was a new word; he liked using it. The pair sat at the end of our bench.
The tall one is mine, Larry says.
Are you from around here?
Nope, Larry replied. Tennessee. You?
Canada, said one.
We never met American guys before, the friend gushed.
It’s your lucky day, Larry winked.
I’m Cindy, the tall one said, sliding closer. She’s Corrine. Larry introduced himself as Tate. I, he said, was Ken. As the girls huddled, he whispered to me: I changed my mind.
The other one’s got bigger jugs.