The Mercy Journals (18 page)

The male eventually stopped eating and skittered toward the trunk of my tree. I worried he was going to climb it—I hadn’t factored in offspring—but he lay down in the shade beneath me and started to groom. I wondered if the movement from my breathing would catch his eye. Eventually a huffing sound came from the mother and all the young stopped and looked at her.

The carcass moved back toward the bush. She must’ve come round under the bushes to pull it in because I couldn’t
see anything. The young disappeared into the bush one after the other. I waited a long time, then lowered the rope down, waited another interval, then eased myself down.

Walking home I felt emptied out and filled up at the same time. I wanted to return the next day to watch her. I was mesmerized.

Then I thought of Parker and the baby and Griffin and Leo back at the house without me and sped up. I no longer liked the thought of the three of them there without me.

The air had lost the last traces of morning damp and the temperature was rising. I got a noseful of ocean as I walked past the meteor onto our peninsula, the incoming tide picking up whatever had died at low tide—crabs, mussels, sea worms—and wafting their scent inland with the breeze. Ravens cawed excitedly. For a moment, as I stood in the warm sun, the world seemed a perfect place. Then the sun started to burn.

I returned to the kill site the next morning, excited. As I approached I noticed turkey vultures in the trees. The carcass had been pulled out into the clearing and was picked clean. I sat and stared at it until the pressure of the waiting vultures activated my departure. On my return to the cabin, I felt low.

I came in through the sun porch, lay on my bed, and started writing. The house is quiet. Leo and Griffin are probably working in the field. I’m thinking that the goats and chickens may not escape the cougars’ notice for long. Four top-down predators are four too many.

Yesterday we discussed what to do about them. Leo was for killing them, but even Parker isn’t enthusiastic about killing a mother and her cubs. Leo pointed out that they’d be full-grown soon. I said that would mean they’d strike out for their own territories, though I had to admit waiting that out didn’t seem like much of a strategy. I reiterated that once the deer was eaten they’d probably leave. If they hung around I suggested we could scare them away. I actually suggested banging pot lids. Griffin took over at that point and said we should at least clear the brush from around the cabin, the goat pen and chicken coop, the outhouse and the kitchen garden, to eliminate hiding places.

The quiet around here is starting to bother me. I have a feeling of doom again, of things closing in, hanging by a thread, of this interval being some kind of pivot. I feel that what I do next could have bad repercussions if I fail to read the signs correctly.

Leo walked in on me as I was writing.

What’s that?

I closed this journal.

He cocked his head. You keeping a list? Naughty and nice?

What do you want?

That’s a little hostile, brother. I just came to talk about the cougars. I was hoping that upon reflection you weren’t still endorsing the let’s sit around and do fuck all approach.

I am.

Are you nuts? That thing attacked you, a grown man, with other men nearby. You have to believe it could try again. Parker isn’t safe.

If it’s the same one, Griffin managed to hit her hard with the frying pan, and she came away with nothing. She’s going to think deer are easier prey.

If. Wouldn’t it be more prudent to eliminate it? Even exciting? Kill the mother and the rest will scamper. I’ve never tasted cougar meat. Cat soup!

Do you even know who you’re talking to? They’ve got as much right to be here as we do. They haven’t harmed us.

Oh please. I’m going to vomit. You’re a soldier for fuck’s sake.

If it’s the same one, it was me she attacked. I decide. I paused. I
was
a soldier remember, twenty years ago.

He looked at the journal, deciding if there was any reason to obey me.

Let me read your book.

No.

He looked out the open door. What did you do with your goldfish? I was wondering, what did Mr Pure and Noble do with his pets? Did he flush them down the toilet? Did he risk being busted and give them to someone to look after? Did he abandon them? What would Allen have done with those fish, I was asking myself?

I gave them to Velma at work. I put the pencil down on the bed, but held onto the journal. Odd you’d wonder.

Yeah, the things a person thinks about, eh? If those cougars hurt someone you’re not going to feel all fucking Jane Goodall then.

I don’t think you’re particularly worried about them hurting someone.

Why did God burden me with such a sanctimonious, self-righteous prick of a brother? He smiled and left.

I smiled back because he was partly right. I could be a sanctimonious, self-righteous prick.

I stared at the spines of the books in front of me in the spalted alder bookshelf I’d made for Mom in woodworking, and the green cloth spines of
Treasure Island
and
Kidnapped
by Robert Louis Stevenson stood out, and with them came a memory of reading on the couch on a rainy afternoon, me on one couch with
Kidnapped
and Leo on the other with
Treasure Island.
He was eating cherries and he started lobbing them at me. I ate the ones he lobbed and spat the pits back at him. Idyllic, really.

The couches were upholstered in light green, I think, so Leo’s cushion was soon covered in dark-red spots from the pits. Mom came through the living room on her way to the bedroom, smiling at first because we were laughing, and then she saw the stains.

Things got kind of strange then because she got angry with Leo but not with me, though clearly I was the main culprit. Leo started to cry and apologize, saying he’d save up and buy her new cushion covers. He begged her not to be mad anymore and I remember wishing Mom would just hug him or at least be mad at both of us, but she didn’t soften.
When she left the room Leo stopped crying and turned his face into the cushion. I kept on reading and got back into the story. I didn’t know what else to do. She’d sucked all the happiness out of the room.

What a memory.

I woke the next morning from a deep sleep surprised to be alive. I don’t know why. Thinking about a river. Ruby’s eyes. Birds chirping. Newness. Outside the window some of the tulips my mother and father planted twenty years ago are blooming. Wind ruffled the trees and the clouds were dark. I was savouring the warmth of bed when Parker pounded up the back steps.

A goat!

It had been missing when they went to water them. She and Griffin went to check the fishing net Parker had strung up across the peninsula access to keep deer out and had seen it just on the other side. I got dressed and we went together. It was three metres on the other side of the net. The wind was now thrashing the trees about.

It lay on its side, cold and stiffening. Its legs were slightly bent, the blood on its coat was coagulated and hardening. Its shoulder and chest were partially eaten. There was no blood on the ground around the body. I wondered how it had got past the net. Goats don’t swim unless they have no choice. I couldn’t see a cougar being able to jump the net while carrying the goat.

Griffin and I carried it back to the cabin, skinned and gutted it, cut around the eaten part. We salted and
transferred most of the meat to the root cellar, except for what we roasted that evening.

The cougar is not going to be happy finding its carcass gone, Leo observed.

We have to try and kill them, Parker said.

They’re going to go after goats and chickens way before they tackle a full-grown human, I said.

We need those goats and chickens, Parker said, turning on me.

If one attacks you, dear girl, Leo spoke while looking at me, what you do is jam your arm so far down its throat it starts to suffocate. It won’t be able to bite down. You might get a scratch or two but you’ll live. For the record, though, I agree. It’s time to deal with them.

We’re going to need the gun, Griffin said.

It’s going to be useful. Yes.

I didn’t like the way this conversation was going. I asked, Has anyone wondered how that goat ended up on the other side of the net?

The cougar carried it there for the cubs? Griffin suggested.

Really? Leapt over the net with the goat in its mouth? I don’t even know if that’s possible.

What are you suggesting? Leo sneered. An eagle?

I don’t know how that goat got there, Parker said, and I don’t care. We know cougars killed the deer, something killed the goat. I want them gone.

Leo looked at me. The shadow of a smile crossed his face.

I had the thought—Leo put the goat there. He killed it. Maybe to scare us. An act of terrorism. Maybe because he’s bored and had an impulse to stir things up. Maybe he had a hankering for goat meat. Maybe he has no idea why he did it. I am not letting him kill those cougars. If they are around, I’ll find a way to scare them off.

It took us two days to build a shed to keep the remaining goats in at night, and we’re taking turns shepherding them during the day. Leo will not share the pistol he “found,” which annoys the hell out of us. Griffin and I have to use a whistle, a knife, and spears we’ve made. Parker is accompanied everywhere outside. She’s getting very big, walking with her legs wide apart, and stopping intermittently because of Braxton Hicks contractions. We haven’t seen further evidence of the cougars, but we’re all on edge. Predators will do that.

I’m thinking about that pistol. Where did it come from? It seems too new to have been Dad’s. Did Leo bring it with him? That would mean he had it when the cougar attacked me. Why wouldn’t he have used it then? The way it just showed up bothers me. The way he guards it.

I’m remembering something Griffin mentioned. He was checking out the old highway and spotted Leo from a distance coming down the mountain. Leo froze when he saw Griffin, then covered with a wave. He told Griffin he’d been hiking up to a lookout to survey Desolation Sound and see what other settlements were nearby and if they were
inhabited. He never mentioned what he saw. I wonder if he has some kind of stash. I wonder if that’s where the pistol came from. I wonder why.

I don’t know what I just witnessed. I was on my way to the outhouse but decided I wanted a book to read and turned back. At the door to the house, something made me stop, hold the door open; it must have been a sound, I can’t remember, but the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

Don’t. Parker’s voice was strangely strangled.

That kid won’t be able to keep this baby alive.

I should have waited to hear more but I walked in and let the door slam.

From the hall I heard a movement in the kitchen. I went to the kitchen. Leo was turning away from Parker who stood with her back to the counter, her hand covering her belly.

A simple no would have sufficed, he said for my benefit and walked out of the room. Parker started to cry. She waved me away.

I can see problems laid out for miles. Leo was always a law of the jungle type—his law, his jungle. He isn’t giving up on getting Parker and he’s obsessive when he zeroes in. I can only think of one plan. Two plans. I could suggest he go back with me to the city. I could say I needed to and that I can’t do it alone. I’m almost certain he has no interest in leaving Nirvana though. He is staking a claim. Plan two is to keep things stable until Parker has her baby and then move her out of here. With Griffin if she wants and he wants,
and the goats and the chickens. Leo can live happily ever after in Nirvana.

I can just see that.

I wonder if Parker will tell Griffin when he returns from fishing.

After dinner I went up to Leo’s room. He was lying in bed, the covers under his armpits, reading some papers. He put them face down when I came in and never took his hand off them.

Whattup? he said with an ironic mimicry of ease.

I went in and sat in the chair in the corner, a low-slung thing with no arms that had been our great-grandmother’s.

What was that this morning?

What was what?

Parker started crying when you left.

I guess I should take that as an insult.

How about a signal to leave her alone.

She’s a big girl. She can take care of herself, believe me.

She’s pregnant, Leo. And she’s with Griffin.

She hasn’t fully committed.

There were a bunch of framed photographs turned face down on the dresser near my chair. I turned one over. Our parents, arm in arm, in Palm Springs. A photo from another epoch. I got a stab of nostalgia.

Can I take this? He nodded. What are you up to, Leo?

Up to?

Hey, I’m your brother. Something’s going on.

But are you my keeper?

Yeah. Sure. Maybe I’ll even keep you from yourself.

We were quiet for a bit.

The pistol. Parker. The cupboards. You’re looking for something and you don’t want to tell me about it.

I do things. The way everyone does, not
always
in a straight line.

But never without a purpose.

He shrugged. His feet moved under the covers. They distracted me for a moment, thinking about his bare feet. Why do I think you killed that goat?

We looked at each other. Why do you?

It wasn’t lying right. A cougar would have eaten more. And dragged it into the bush. The cubs would have demolished it.

You’re getting paranoid, big brother. Must be that post-stress thing. Why would I kill the goat? Although I admit I
was
getting sick of fish and shellfish and eggs.

The cougars didn’t kill it. If they show up, I’m going to scare them off. I want the pistol to do it.

Yeah, well, let’s see what Parker and Griffin think about that.

On this I don’t care what they think.

Ooh, the boss rears his head. Leo put his hand behind his head, keeping the other on the papers.

What do you care? I asked. You don’t even really want to live.

And now you do?