Fauna (42 page)

Grandfather’s eyes were dark in their sockets. He was powdered like a doughnut, leaking a cherry-coloured mess.
What’s black and white and red all over?
The laugh caught Darius off guard, bubbling from his lips as he dropped to his knees at the old man’s side. He caught it in the nick of time, twisted it into a sob.

“Agnes,”
Grandfather moaned.

Darius’s mind was quicker than he’d ever known it to be. “She was right behind me. She must’ve gone for help.”

The old man let out a sound—or was it the animal beneath him?—a wordless, deflating complaint.

Darius fought back a second wave of the giggles. “What should I do, Grandfather?” he wailed. “What should I do?”

“Get a knife,” the old man said through his teeth. “The big carving knife. You know where it is?”

“I’ll get it.” Darius rose and pelted for the open back door.
You want the fork too?
Inside, he let himself laugh out loud, covering the sound by rattling the cutlery in the drawer. Closing his hand around the stub of antler that was the knife’s handle, he clamped his crazy mouth shut.

He judged it best to say nothing while he followed Grandfather’s instructions, opening first the old man’s coat, then his snap-button shirt. “Cut it,” the old man said of the bloodied undershirt, and then again, “Cut it,” referring to the bandage beneath. Darius breathed evenly and did what he was told.

As always, there was the dark, scented presence of spruce. Beneath it, the smell of blood, like a penny fished from a fountain; Faye had always let him fill his sopping pockets, even when another boy’s mother said he was undoing somebody’s wish. The cougar itself smelled like an abiding secret. Piss and raw pollen and meat. Was this the
rich sort of smell
that came over Lucy-Faye’s sister in the book, when the lion rose from the dead and licked her face? Darius wasn’t fool enough to imagine the cougar would ever work its tongue again; no denying the sweet, unseemly odour that wafted from the cleft in its head.

He sawed through the bandage, loop by loop.

“Easy, now, easy. Okay, undo my belt. The button too.” The old man’s breath was smoky and sour, like bacon grease turned yellow in the pan.

He needed help sitting up. Without his board to harden him, he was more plant than man, drooping forward under the weight of his own head. The grey ducktail lifting. The curve of naked neck exposed. Darius flashed on the picture of a different boy—one who could prop his grandfather up with one hand while he reached for a length of split wood with the
other. Who could fix his dead eyes on a target and do what had to be done.

It took a lifetime to half stagger, half drag the old man inside.

“Agnes!” he bellowed the first time he stumbled and went down in the snow, taking Darius with him. Then again, as he crashed against the door jamb, “AGNES!”

“She went for help, Grandfather.”

They lurched together to the table.

“This is good.” The old man fumbled for a chair.

“Shouldn’t you lie—”

“I said, this is good.” He sagged sideways into the seat. Grabbed the table edge and righted himself, then let his forehead meet the planks with a crack.

Darius worked what was left of the coat down the old man’s arms. The shirt was torn to a skein, each shoulder a bundle of ribbons, festive and bright.

“Get the kettle on,” Grandfather said. “Get a basin and a bar of soap. And a rag. A clean one from the drawer.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And shut that door.”

“Shut the door. Yes.” He slammed it accidentally.

“And put some more wood in the stove.”

Washing the wounds took another lifetime. Grandfather’s flesh jumped under the sudsy rag, but the man himself held perfectly still.

“Really get in there. Harder. That’s right.”

Darius was shaking by then, but he could still make his fingers do what he asked. Wrapping the index in a layer of cloth, he pushed the tip in deep.

“Where’s Agnes?” Grandfather said to the table planks. “Where is she?”

“She went for help, Grandfather, remember?”

“Help.” The old man laid his cheek on the table and fixed Darius with a one-eyed stare. “How?”

Darius looked away, dipping the rag, greasing it against the soap. “She took the truck.”

“My truck?”

“Yes, sir.” He touched the rag to a gash along the old man’s spine.

“Stupid.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“I said, stupid. She’ll put it in the ditch.”

The old man was wrong about that. It wasn’t a ditch so much as a gully—at least, that was the word the RCMP constable used. He arrived not long after sun-up. Grandfather was still hunched over the table, where he’d insisted on spending the night. Darius was on the couch. He’d slept little, flinching awake every time the old man twitched or snored, rising every couple of hours to add wood to the stove. When the sound of a truck engine finally came, the pitch was entirely wrong.

He could picture it, plain as the breaking day beyond the Mountie’s back—the truck snout-down in the head-high drift, Grandmother resting her brow on the wheel.

Darius turned in time to see Grandfather lift his head. “What did I tell you?”

“Jesus Murphy,” the Mountie said, stepping inside. “What the hell happened to you?”

“Don’t you take the Lord’s name in vain in this house,” Grandfather croaked. “Don’t you dare.”

It was only later—after Darius had taken the Mountie outside to see the cougar on its back, with the axe in its head and the board still jammed between its teeth; after Grandfather had refused to go into town for treatment, and the Mountie had told him he was sending a doctor out to the cabin whether the old man liked it or not; after Darius had made coffee for both men, and Grandfather had propped himself up and told all about the attack in his own words—that the Mountie let slip exactly where Grandmother had died. Forty clicks south of town. South. Which meant she’d passed clean through help and kept on going.

Darius saw clearly then. He was the chunk of meat you throw back over your shoulder while you’re sprinting for the gate. Faye probably would’ve done the same if he hadn’t been clinging on tight to her insides.

Grandfather said nothing about it. Not then, not ever. The story was simple: A cougar had dropped down on him by the shed. Grandmother had gone for help and somehow gone off the road.

It turned out Grandmother had been wrong too. Something could indeed kill the old man, and it only took five years to come.

The time whistled through Darius, stretching him to the height, if not the heft, of a man. He kept his head down in school, hovering at the C-minus line. At home he made the bread and rubbed clean the clothes, served up supper for
three every night and scraped the third plate clean when, as ever, the Lord Christ Almighty didn’t show. It fell to him to strap Grandfather to his board each morning and release him from it each night. The eyeless skin of the cougar watched them, nailed like a flattened sun to the old man’s bedroom wall. With Grandmother gone, Darius took every beating Grandfather had left in him to give. If anything, the scars from the attack seemed to have made him stronger. A man who could kill the king of the forest while lying prone on his belly was more than a match for a skinny sneak of fourteen, sixteen or eighteen years.

It was hard not to blame the old bitch—all those times Darius stood bracing himself over the shithole, taking her share. Five years. She could’ve stuck it out. Could’ve held on until the thing that could finish the old man off finally did.

It happened, through some sweet, unfathomable symmetry, out by the winter woodpile. Darius was in Grandfather’s bedroom, making up the bed, when his brain registered a silence that had lasted too long. He looked up at the cat skin, and it fixed him with an empty stare. Leaving the top sheet untucked, he walked out into the main room.

The back-door window beckoned. Looking out, he saw the old man lying broken across the split and scattered wood—the attack internal this time. Darius took his coat from the hook and drew it on. Fed each foot into its boot. Pushed open the back door. He advanced evenly, making use of Grandfather’s fresh tracks in the snow.

The old man was dead. No doubt about it. Darius had seen staring green eyes like that before. All the same, he approached the body warily, stood over it scarcely daring to
breathe. When he finally got up the guts to make contact, it was with his foot. First a nudge with his toe, just by the shoulder, just in case. Then, when the bright eyes didn’t blink, he used the entire boot.

T
he house stands shabby and alone. To begin with, Edal is locked out, her dream-body pacing the porch. She halts at the door, knocks and knocks. Then, just as she’s about to begin pacing again, her fist becomes a spout and pours her inside. Little wonder her mother hasn’t answered. How could she hear with the door bricked over like that, volumes deep.

Edal listens. Nothing. Then, deep in the heart of the house, something stirs. She’s here, still here—the monster in the maze, the child gone missing in the woods. Endlessly patient, Letty Jones lies waiting to be found.

Edal sits bolt upright in the narrow bed. Guy shifts in the covers, reaching out to circle her hips with his arm.

“I have to go.” She lifts his hand. “I have to go home.”

“Now? It’s not even light out.”

“Not
my
home.
Home.”

He withdraws the arm, rising up on one elbow. “What’s wrong?”

“Not for long. A week, maybe.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“Well, a week might be being a little optimistic.” She swings her legs out, snaps on the lamp. Yesterday’s cotton bikinis lie on the floor by her heel. She bends for them.

“Edal. Hey, Edal, look at me. What’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

“Turn around for a second, would you?”

She busies herself fastening her bra.

“Why won’t you look at me?”

Because now, when she does, it’s like being punctured. The air leaves her in a sound, the weirdest, weakest utterance she’s ever heard. He waits a moment before touching her.

“I have to go home,” she wails.

“Okay. That’s okay.”

“My—my mother.”

“Is she all right?”

“No, she’s not
all right
. She’s dead.”

“Oh, Edal.” He strokes her back. “It’s okay, I’ll come with you. I know all about funerals—”

“No! There is no funeral. Was. She died a month ago.”

“Oh.”

“I haven’t been back.” She draws a deep breath. “I haven’t—Her ashes are waiting to be picked up.”

“Baby.” His hand at the base of her spine. “I’ll come with you.”

“You can’t.”

“Sure I can. I want to.”

“What about Stephen?”

“Stephen will be fine. He knows what he has to do.”

She takes a breath. “You don’t understand. The house—”

“I can help with the house. Whatever needs doing.”

Edal hugs herself. Now or never. “The house is crazy.”

“How do you mean?”

“My mother—” She turns to face him. “The house is insane. It’s packed to the rafters with books.”

“Okay, so she was a reader.”

“No, I mean
to the rafters
. There’s nowhere to sit, no window she hasn’t blocked off.”

“Oh.” He’s quiet for a moment. “Sounds like a big job.”

Edal closes her eyes, sees the flat grey face of the family home. “Yes.”

“So, you’ll need help.”

Yes, she will. She does. She looks at him. “Guy, you have no idea.”

“What are you talking about?” He smiles. “I grew up in a junkyard, remember?”

Darius is immune to it all—the ticks making their way to his warmest parts, the undead numbness in his legs, even the punishing curl in his back. That’s what focus does for a man.

He’s been running low on the stuff the last little while. At first he put it down to plain fatigue—the long vigils and shallow daylight sleeps, the bushwhacking and tree climbing and flat-out running through the dark—but he can see now there’s more to it than that. There’s a reason why generals keep enemy propaganda away from their troops; all that backchat on the blog has been sapping his purpose, clouding his
resolve. He ought to have spotted the problem sooner, but there’s a lot to keep track of when you’re commander and foot soldier in one.

It’s late—so late as to have become early. There’s no way he should have been wasting time watching over the girl; he put the whole operation in jeopardy, chanced getting his throat ripped out, and for what? She’s nothing to him. No one.

Enough. He’s where he needs to be now, the blackened den mouth gaping not ten paces from where he sits. No camera flash to light it this time—only the thinnest hint of dawn. Darius’s pupils have long since opened wide to serve him. He can see just fine.

The twelve-gauge lies quiet in the undergrowth beside him, each barrel holding its cartridge close. Not much in the way of a keepsake, but a man makes do.

After Grandfather died, Darius couldn’t sell up fast enough. The land had to be worth something, and it pleased him to imagine the cabin dismantled, fed log by log to the sawmill the old man had haunted for most of his life. That was before the notary in town explained to him how property was never really free and clear—how the government kept on taking its cut, and if they didn’t get that cut, it became something called back taxes.