Prairie Ostrich (6 page)

Our Father, whose Art in Heaven,

hollow be thy name;

thy kingdom come,

thy will be done

on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Give us this day,

our daily bread

and forgive us our trespasses,

as we forgive those who trespass against us

and lead us not onto the Temptations

but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom,

for power and for glory,

forever and never.

Amen
.

And so Egg, banished from the doors of Mrs. MacDonnell's Sunday school class, her head bowed against the heavy hand of God, whispers a prayer for the lost souls who have turned away from Jesus who loves the little children, all the children of the world. But then she thinks of all the little ones who have not heard the Word and she shivers. She knows that there are places without Jesus and radios and
Gilligan's Island
. Hellfire burns hot and eternal and forever is a long, long time. Deep in the darkest depths of her soul, Egg knows that something is wrong, very wrong, wronger than all the burning barns and bloody lambs in all the Bibles, in all the world, so that when the church bell rings and Martin Fisken finally comes and hits her, she is almost happy.

…

In the kitchen, Egg opens the cupboards, peers into the corners, behind the boxes and bins. The days have tumbled by and Egg still does not have any answers. It seems like she can't even get the questions right. If she were smarter, and older, she would know what to do. She needs the bigger picture, the Moral of the Story. Yesterday she found the magnifying glass in her father's tool box along with a cat's eye marble. She promises herself that she will put it back. It's not stealing if you put it back.

If you hold a marble up in the air, you can see the world shift through different colours. Everything changes, Egg thinks. Newton will tell you that.

Mama's Jack Daniel's hides behind the flour bin. Egg sloshes the half-bottle in her hand. She knows that whiskey makes her Mama blurry. She holds up the bottle against the late afternoon light and peers into the liquid that looks like the last moment of sunset, a deep summer honey that has mellowed into autumn. Carefully, she tops it up with water. She stares at the bottle. This is what makes Mama Not-Mama. This grown-up stuff, like cigarettes, like S - E - X. Egg brings the bottle close and wrinkles her nose against the sour. Quickly, she takes a sip. Poison! She spits out the burn. Without a second thought, she dumps the bottle into the sink and watches the amber swirl away from her.

Now she's done it.

The bottle is empty.

For a second she thinks of putting maple syrup into the bottle but Mama would know because of the taste. Then she thinks of her secret hiding place: the loft. Egg must get rid of the evidence. Bottle tucked under her armpit, she runs to the side of the barn, to the ladder by the side shed. Up she goes, to the creaking roof of the shed. The splinters prick against her knees and elbows as she makes her way across the slanting overhang, into the small window of the barn's loft. She closes the shutter behind her.

She has stashed her comics here, in the darkness of the barn above the ostriches. Albert's blanket, the one she has pinched from the boxes below, makes a cozy berth. A wooden crate holds her comics and clippings of her favourite TV shows, along with odds and ends: Botan candy toys from Nakashima's in Lethbridge, a pin of the USS
Uganda
that she found on Centre Street in Calgary. Her Evel Knievel doll, the one she bought at the Stampede, sits coldly observing from his ledge. And here, a stack of her precious
TV Guides
, a rarity in Bittercreek — she can look up
The Streets of San Francisco
even if Kathy won't let her watch it. She places Mama's bottle beside the crate and jams her candle stub in the stopper. Here, above the restless ostriches, she flips through her superhero comics: secret identities and double lives. In the back pages of the comics there are miracles — Johnny Altas transformed from a ninety-pound weakling, Kung Fu Secrets Revealed, Learn Hypnotism, and Rubber Masks that are Amazingly Real! The X-ray glasses are the best — Egg wants them more than anything else in the world. X-ray, like a superhero. Egg knows that only a few letters set invisibility from invincibility: that must be a sign.

Her father scrapes the shovel in the pens below her, a syncopated
shh-shh, shh-shh
that is unexpectedly comforting. Egg presses her nose against the floorboards and peers through the gap in the slats. But he is only a sliver here, so she scoots near the crate, to the hole in the wood, her special eye-knot, spy-knot.

He is right below her. Egg thinks that he looks flat, like all the gravity has pressed him down but she knows the word for this — perspective. His hair falls, uneven, as if he had hacked blindly at his head. Egg remembers her Papa before he moved into the ostrich barn, his hair, so black, the cut, precise. Now, it's like he is undone. Papa is unravelling.

Chirp chirp
, from the crate. He has lengthened the run and there is new chicken wire along the bottom of the last pen. The hatchlings have grown into chicks, their dun-coloured feathers still short and stiff. Some chicks have twine looped around their splaying knees — her father's own remedy for the ones who have trouble walking on the jute.

With a click of the gate latch, her father goes through the grill to the outside pens. Egg runs to the corner of the loft, to the creaking ladder that leads down to the boxes. Cautiously, with foot to foot and hand to hand, she descends. Ladders always feel like the edge of the world.

She rummages through Albert's suitcase that holds his ties, his best shoes, and his jangles and jingles — pins, a watch, an old key chain of Tetsuwan Atom. She has his set of Disappearing Cups but she wants real magic, not some sleight of hand. Those are tricks and tricks are not fair.

She picks up Albert's silver dollar and tries to do his knuckle roll but the silver glints and slips through her fingers. The coin rolls in a spiral loop, into the chick's pen.

Damn, she swears in a grown-up way. Damn.

Her father is still raking the outside pens. If she cranes her neck far enough, she can see him through the grill.

Plan A, Egg thinks. She grabs a handful of feed pellets.

She slides to the door of the chick pen, making herself as small as possible. She opens the latch and squeezes herself inside. Quiet, quiet, she tells herself but it is too late — the chicks run towards her, cheeping, flapping, their excitement mounting. Egg will be overrun soon so she flings the feed pellets to the back of the pen and laughs as the chicks dart madly after the bait. She picks up Albert's silver dollar and pockets it.

Pluck. She feels a pluck at her elbow. A chick, smaller than the rest of the brood, no more than a ball of fuzz and a twitchy head, topples at her side. Its feet scrabble against the jute. The head, held up by a noodle neck, bobs, insistent. Its beak opens with a squawk, calling the other fledglings who rush over, trampling it.

Egg reaches out for the fallen chick and remembers her father's instruction — scoop from below, her arm to cradle, not to crush, her hand to support. The chick is the smallest, the slowest one, the one whose pipping had not broken through. A runt, like Wilbur in
Charlotte's Web
, an underdog. Egg holds it loose yet not too loose. Like the Goldilocks story, she does it just right. She runs her fingers through the soft brown feathers, over its downy fuzz-covered head. Its eyes are luminous, magically liquid, magically light. Egg shivers at the chick's fragility. Holding its skittery body, wiggling head, and jutting legs dangling ridiculously, she can feel its beating heart, right in the palm of her hand.

This one she will call Esmeralda.

…

Today is a
D
day.
D
days start off wrong — like don't and dumb and doorknob.
D
days and Mama can't get up from bed and Kathy is a grouch.
D
is dead and damn and dump and ditch.

D
day and Egg must be careful. She rubs the outline of Albert's silver dollar stashed safely in her pocket. At least she has a plan.

In the science room, the glass display holds the skeletons of prairie dogs and field mice. A stuffed fox, with a red-devil grin, stands above the chemistry cabinets with the sign: “Danger. Mixing Explosives May Be Harmful To Your Health.” In the science room, the granite floor is a cold, speckled grey. On the long side-counter there are lines and lines of Bunsen burners and test tubes. Jars and jars of impaled and drowning potatoes clutter the shelf by the window. It hurts Egg's eyes just to look at them. Potatoes have eyes. She tries not to think of this.

This is the most dangerous time for Egg, the second half of lunch break. Martin Fisken, along with the rest of the townies, is back from his house, after
The Buck Shot Show
. With the rain, all the students are corralled in the halls and the common rooms. Students sit at the tables, textbooks open.

Today, Egg will try the science room. Martin has spotted her in the library too many times before.

The science room sparkles with a crisp, clean glamour. It's all falling stars and comet tails, prism rainbows with a Reach for the Future poster that reminds her of the Jetsons. A model of the Solar System dangles from the ceiling with icy Pluto banished to the corner. Jupiter is the Roman name for Zeus, the Greek God of Thunder. Jupiter has a spot. At the centre of the science room, the Earth spins. A segment slides out to reveal a pie-cut of crust, mantle, and core.

Science is the very big and the very small. The glass cases of butterflies pinned to the whiteboard. The jewel eyes of dragonflies. The gossamer wings of cicadas.

Egg bows her head over these tiny crucifixions. They are the Jesuses of the insect world, a sacrifice for science. Troubled, she turns away.

Egg wants something solid, not this crash and bang of plates and shifts and continental drifts. In the science room, a model of the volcano smoulders in the corner. Egg knows that volcanoes, like dinosaurs, can go extinct, but she has seen the pictures of Pompeii. The science room is not at all like the library. Science strips and bares but the library builds on words, like an
abracadabra
that becomes an adventure. Egg has read the
Young Reader's Guide to Science
but that is more like a story: Galileo recanting in the face of the Inquisition. But Galileo won after all because science is like that. Facts are not lies. Facts win out in the end. It bothers Egg though, how could the Bible be wrong? She will have to ask Mrs. MacDonnell about that. Mrs. MacDonnell does not like questions. Anything less than blind faith makes a heretic and heretics burn. There is the black and white of it but Egg doesn't understand; there is black and white and good and evil — but where does the Japanese fit in?

Did Galileo burn?

Egg picks her way through the chrome taps and microscopes, weaving her way through the crowd. At least with so many people about, it is easier to hide. She skulks by the beaker cabinet then dashes by the dinosaur dino-rama. A crowd of Mr. Gooch's keeners heads her way so Egg crawls underneath the film strip table. Camouflage, like on the
Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom
.

The bottom of the table holds an impressive array of chewing gum, wads of pink Bubble-Deelight and green smears of Minty Freeze. Rumour is that Bubble-Deelight is filled with spiders' eggs so Egg scoots deeper, far from the edge. Spiders have eight legs so they are not insects. Egg knows there are rules for everything. With the
Young Reader's Guide to Science
, Egg can tell you about the planets and the constellations and sometimes, at night, she can look out of her window and see Orion's Belt. The universe is vast, this she knows. The Big Bang is so huge, you can't even imagine it and the speed of light is the fastest thing ever.

“Has anyone seen that stupid Egghead?” Martin's voice rings out.

Egg freezes. She can see Martin Fisken's sneakers by the dino-rama but she is safe under the film strip table. When she peeps at the clock above the door, she knows that there are thirty more minutes until the bell rings. An eternity.

She hugs her knees and begins her list:

a – armadillo

b – baboon

c – crocodile

d – dugong

e – elephant

f – flamingo

g – giraffe

h – hippopotamus

i – ibis

j – jellyfish

k – kangaroo

l – llama

m – monkey

n –

none

never

no

n n n n n n n n n

There is no Dictionary beneath the table. Egg is stuck.
Nnnnnn
on her tongue. Few animals start with the letter
n
.
N
is a tricky one: knolls, knots, and gnarls try to hide the
n
away.
Nnnnnn
. She counts the passing penny loafers and sneakers, but the
nnnn
presses anxiously against her throat.

The Dictionary has the answers.

She darts from beneath the table, away from the fossilized bones of the science room, the whiteboard displays of genus and species. She rushes along the corridor, under the harsh fluorescent lights of the hallway, past the lunchroom. The staccato notes from the music room echo behind her, until at last, she reaches the library. She slips through the swing of the doors and ducks under the sight of Miss Granger, who, distracted by her Dewey decimals, does not see her shadow flit into the aisle of Afghanistan. Egg's fingers brush the spines of the books as she tiptoes to Upper Volta.

She taps her feet. Everything will be all right.

A crackle fills the air. Evangeline Granger has turned on the radio to the lulling tones of the midday CBC. Now Egg knows that the library is really empty for the radio is Miss Granger's secret indulgence. Home free, Egg sighs, but the words seem hollow.