The Mercy Journals (14 page)

I’d risked it all for a chance to keep her. I’d had no choice. I was in a boxed canyon.

She looked at me. I was disconcerted because there was blood on her teeth from my lip. She looked at me for a long time and went out the door.

I am still trying to comprehend that look. It wasn’t goodbye. It wasn’t despair. It wasn’t hatred. There was rage, fiery rage, an intent to destroy, and maybe the merest flicker of curiosity.

April 10 |

The cupboard’s empty, the fridge is empty, the bottles are empty, my journal is almost full. I put my pencil down and stare at the wall. I hear a noise, a hesitant throat clearing, from near the window. The last hue of slate-grey sky darkens and wind gusts against the windowpane.

The spokesworm steps out from behind the curtain into a pool of white light. He is wearing a top hat and tails and carrying a cane with a silver top. He holds a cordless mike and gazes out into space as though over the heads of an anonymous crowd. He looks down at his feet at the end of his short threadlike legs, as though waiting for the crowd to finish their applause and get out their last coughs and whispers, then he looks up, directly at me, and starts to sing the old 1970s classic “Send in the Clowns.”

As he begins, “Isn’t it rich …,” a chorus of worms dressed as clowns shuffles into position in a pool of light floating just behind his right shoulder. They are wearing red, orange, yellow, and rainbow wigs, floppy hats with daisies in them, big red noses, big shoes, and loose onesies with pompom buttons. Some are happy, with big smiles painted over their mouths, and others are sad, with a teardrop painted on their cheeks. Once they are all assembled and in position—a process that involves quite a bit of jostling, friends trying to stand together, showboats striving for the centre of the spotlight—they stare soulfully straight ahead.

The song has a melancholy, world-weary, ironic tone and the spokesworm sings with all the rich smoothness and shabby grace it demands. As the lyrics contrast one of the
lovers’ frenetic, constant motions with the other’s complete paralysis, lights come up softly on a raised platform floating behind and to the right of the chorus with a steel coffin on a viewing stand. Two worms are frantically trying to pry the lid open with crowbars.

The spokesworm looks meaningfully at me and croons the refrain, but instead of “clowns” he sings “worms”—send in the worms—which gives the song a whole new twist. He goes on to describe how one of the lovers finally decided to stop philandering and make a commitment only to find that the object of their love was no longer there, they’d moved on.

Here the clown-worms leave their pool of light and queue up by the coffin, having pried the lid open, and slowly begin to shuffle past, looking inside with exaggerated sadness. As the spokesworm sings that no one is there, the worms tilt the coffin toward me so I can see it’s empty, and I know that I was the one who was supposed to be inside.

The spokesworm continues the song’s wry lament about poor timing and missed connections, his voice like warm clear water gliding over smooth rocks, and the clown-worms commence a series of tumbling somersaults and handsprings in and out of the empty coffin like a troupe of gymnasts, reverting to their baseline carnival exuberance. The spokesworm looks down at his wristwatch as though seeking an answer there, but finding none, reprises the chorus, “send in the worms.” The spotlight on the clown-worms fades to black.

The spokesworm stands alone, still brightly illuminated, and looks over at me with wistful hopefulness, then he shrugs and walks off the stage whispering, Maybe next year.

April 11 |

I woke up this morning with my pillow damp from tears and the image of Ruby looking at me, crouching and swaying back and forth, back and forth. Unusually, the sun is shining, which means everyone will be indoors. If I can get myself out before the cloud returns, I can have the world to myself.

But first, this final entry. I’ve made my tea—oh, it tastes good. The last few nights I’ve been Sinbad the Sailor with my dead clamped on my shoulders ready to cut off my air lest I forget them. Today something has lifted.

I dropped the spoon with the sugar I was about to put in my tea. My hand isn’t exactly steady this morning. As I wiped the white grains of sugar into a pile and enfolded it in the cold damp cloth, something red caught my eye from under the armchair. I crawled over, lowered my cheek to the floor, and fished out a red sandal. It must’ve fallen out of her bag when she was getting her raingear out.

Her animal face looked at me, fight or flight, focused on flight but fight was right there. Her eyes weren’t connecting with me. I remembered her squeezing my arm at the flea market, letting me know she understood how things were with her, strong and weak, but she was helpless to change them.

I held her shoe in both my hands and rubbed its worn leather with my thumbs. I know how to find her. I have found my One Pure Thing, and when I find her, I will
OPT
out.

Someone’s pounding on my door, making it hard to concentrate on writing. Brother Leo’s hand reaching out to me. I am neither alive nor dead, drunk nor sober, neither
dreaming nor fully awake. It’s a race to write these last words before his pounding breaks the catch. He is not reaching out because he wants to save me. He is reaching out because he wants something from me.

Salvation comes in many forms.

JOURNAL TWO

Late April, 2047 |

I opened my eyes. I couldn’t distinguish the morning mist from the fog. I was alert, which made me guess something external to myself had woken me. I scanned for scent, searched for a visual.

My cheek was out of the tent on the ground. The forest floor smelled of late-winter rot, not punky, but a fresh, loamy smell. The dead leaves and needles were brown and damp, darker where they had already begun turning to earth, yet the humus on the surface seemed red, a dark, brick red, aggressively absorbing the growing white light of day through the mist until it was almost fluorescent.

The coldest time of day is just after the sun rises, when a biting draft comes up. This morning was no different. I was frozen.

I listened for a repetition of the sound that might have woken me. I let my breath out very slowly. I did not yet dare feel for the knife I’d left beside me when I went to sleep.

I am alone and badly wounded.

I listened, but all I heard was my heart straining to push large volumes of blood to my muscles in preparation for battle. All I heard was the drip, drip of moisture that had coalesced in drops too heavy to cling to leaves or needles, plinking down in the forest. What I heard was nothing from the birds. Two knives would have been better, one for each hand. I cursed myself for not bringing the Beretta.

A new leaf on a salmonberry bobbed on its stem. I heard a swish, like a short out-breath or the back suck of
a small wave on a pebble beach, and knew that she’d left. She’d been watching.

I lifted my head from the ground and my hand found the knife’s handle. I sniffed. The mist smelled like grass before it’s cut, or a trout still dripping from the river.

I don’t want to give her another chance to pierce my skin.

The pain is just beginning to recede from my mind and adhere to the actual wounds. The cells on the edges are knitting together and soon they’ll get itchy.

This is how I woke this morning, which is to say marginally better than yesterday.

I’m foggy about Griffin and Leo. They built a windbreak around the tent, leaving only the entrance exposed. Griffin cleaned my wounds and Leo tacked my scalp back on. They left yesterday. I think. One to paddle, one to fish. They wanted to supplement our food supplies.

I have enough wood to keep a fire burning for several days, boiled water to drink and to clean my wounds, and a small bag of salt.

My scalp is re-grafting though the tissue has shrunk and left a gap about a centimetre wide where new scar tissue is growing. The hair on the injured part of my scalp, the whole top, is coming out in tufts, and part of my upper lip is gone. Under my right eye, wounds, either from teeth or claws, I can’t remember, are deep. I’ll be a striking piece of work when this is done. Ruby will get a thrill, if I am ever lucky enough to see her again.

It was like getting hit with a bag of sand. The impact threw me forward onto the ground. Wildly I reached back—I had no idea at what—and got a handful of fur. She got me at the hairline, ripped my scalp back, got a new grip on my skull, dug her claws into my shoulder. My pack protected my neck.

Griffin heard something and turned back, came around the trees, and saw us. He yelled for Leo. The cougar looked up, unafraid. Leo dropped his pack and started to look for a big stick or rock. The cougar twisted her jaw, ripping deeper. I groaned. Griffin started talking to me. He took his pack off and held it in front of him and walked toward us, hoping to get her to back off.

Her breath smelled like dried spit and oil. I didn’t move because I didn’t want her teeth or claws to go deeper. Griffin kept talking to me, keeping her attention. She growled in a low rumble. He said her tail swished back and forth on the ground like she wanted to play. He thought it was only a question of size that made him less afraid, because he was almost twice as big.

She got a better grip on my head and dragged me a couple of feet sideways toward a steep downward slope. Griffin yelled, Leave him! and moved to cut her off. She shook her head and I yelled out in pain and reached back desperately, trying to find her eyes, her throat.

Griffin yelled for Leo again and unclipped a frying pan from his backpack. I’m going to hit her with a frying pan, Uncle Allen. When I do, fight back as hard as you can. We can take her together. She’s not that big.

He lunged forward, and she pulled me further toward the slope. He whacked her with the pan on the head, though not solidly. I felt the vibration of the blow through her teeth into my skull. She snarled, increased the pressure of her jaw. He hit her again, a solid blow, and she let go, backed up, low to the ground, ready to spring at him. I got to my feet, blinded by blood. Leo came out of the forest with a big branch in one hand and a rock in the other. She glanced at Leo, turned tail, and disappeared.

Holy shit! Leo said, memorably.

If Leo and Griffin don’t come back, if my wounds get infected, if the cougar returns, I want there to be more than a few bones and some rusty tent poles to tell what happened to me. I am keeping a record for as long as I can.

It’s more than that. During the month I prepared for this journey I missed writing. It had become a habit, like a daily conversation, a practice. It made me feel witnessed the way, I imagine, that someone who believes in God feels witnessed. You, my future reader, have become my witness, my companion. I may not be a writer, but I have become someone who writes.

I’ve also started reading my other journal. There’s nothing else to do. I’ve thrown another log on the fire, and I’m shivering in my sleeping bag. I can only write and read in short spurts before my head starts to hurt.

The cougar was beautiful. Griffin told me. I never saw her but I remember the weight and smell of her. Somewhere in the struggle I noticed that her teats were hard as fingernails and damp with milk. I’m weak but oddly
energized. I feel chosen. I am giddy when not asleep.

I’m almost out of water. Tomorrow I’ll have to get more. Griffin and Leo have been gone two days.

I looked up through the branches to see what time of day it was and glimpsed black clouds racing by. High up in the canopy, treetops are getting whipped around, yet down here there’s no wind.

I chuck some wood on the embers. Smoke darts a tongue out from under the wood, licking its sides, squirming up into the flame wriggles into existence, vanishes, wriggles, vanishes. Raindrops begin to hit the fire, making it hiss. If there was a storm yesterday, I was too out of it to notice. I hope Griffin and Leo are on land, waiting for the storm to pass. I hope that’s the explanation.

I’ll say one thing: reading is an act that should definitely take place between two minds. Reading your own writing is onanistic (a word I learned in Sunday school) and embarrassing. It has none of the pleasure that normally comes with reading.

The fight scene with the mob over Leo’s vehicle infraction, meeting Ruby, the goldfish—they’re accurate but I left so much out. The part is made to stand for the whole, and then the part becomes the whole.

The memories I left out are already different from the ones I included; they’ve transformed and morphed. My
journal has become a barricade, a closed border: the memories on the inside are uniform and almost foreign to me, the ones on the outside are smoky and intimate; the ones on the inside are like the army, and the ones on the outside are like guerilla fighters.

I am apprehensive about reading to the end. Things are bad enough without stirring up that pot. I might not.

I am going for water. Griffin said the creek isn’t far. I don’t want to bust my stitches or bleed again so I’m only taking two empties.

I’m wearing three sweaters under my coat. I wrapped a T-shirt around my head, eased a knit hat over that, and tied the hat on with a scarf under my chin. I’m wearing two pairs of pants with a third wrapped around my neck. I’m carrying the knife open. I will advance while slowly turning 360 degrees. I would have painted a face on the back of my hat—cougars prefer to attack from the rear—but lack the means. I’ll be scanning for changes in sound, smell, air pressure.

My face felt her. She was watching. I felt her presence the way you know when a woman is looking at you. My stitches burned. I had to walk out into the river to a place deep enough to fill the bottles. I was completely exposed. I drained a bottle, refilled it, filled the other.

The birds weren’t silent, but they didn’t sound relaxed either. She was there, but I didn’t think she was hunting me. She was just watching. It bothers me that she can see me but I never see her. I’m sure she’s killed something else. That’s why I’m getting a rest.