The Summer Is Ended and We Are Not Yet Saved (9 page)

Everyone here is really mean to each other, and so people get surprised when I smile at them on the street and say hello. They act like I’m completely insane, raving at them and foaming from my mouth. I met a man from Uganda just this morning, when I was walking home. I smiled and said hello, and he looked at me like I had asked him what his hair tasted like.

He turned out to be nice, though. He was just surprised. He told me that he had lived in a lot of cities, but Toronto was the only city he felt alone in. He asked me where I was from, and I told him that I lived with my son in Halifax. He loved Halifax, he said. He told me all about his trips to the Maritimes, and finally deciding to study there. He studied music at Dalhousie. It’s a small world, I guess. Anyway, before he left he told me that I should leave Toronto and never come back. He said it very seriously, like an ominous warning.

And the buildings here are so big, Martin. One of them looks like it’s made out of gold. There is actually gold in the glass. What a strange thing! I wonder what it’s like inside. I think the secret council of Toronto must live in there, but what kind of secret council would base their operations in a huge gold building? Not very subtle. No, it’s probably just another bank.

It feels like you’re in a movie sometimes, when you walk around downtown. And there’s a whole other city underground. There are subways screaming and wailing underneath you all the time, and there’s a mall down there that stretches for blocks and blocks under the city. In my head I picture it as being the exact same as the city up here, only with the skyscrapers hanging downward toward the centre of the earth. Maybe down there they have a happy CN Tower, glowing blue and singing in the night. Up here the blood spire just wails and screams, and still nobody notices. I guess you get used to it after a while.

Anyway, the big city is a bit overwhelming for a small-town girl, you know? But I haven’t been murdered yet, so that’s good. I’ve just been working. Work work work.

But today I’m going to make a human heart that keeps beating after the monster takes it out of someone’s rib cage, so I guess there are worse jobs to have. I hope that you’re making friends and not causing too much trouble. Maybe you’ll even have a tan the next time I see you. Have you met any nice girls? (Or boys? You know I will love you no matter if you’re gay or straight, right, Martin? I’ve told you that, haven’t I? In fact, I would probably love you a little more if you were gay.)

Write me back soon.

Love always,

Your Mother.

After chapel, John Dee followed Father Tony. Mitchell hadn’t been in any of the pews at chapel, either. That was the last place he could think to look. Unless his brother was out in the woods somewhere. The inside of the chapel was big, with a tall echoing ceiling, and John Dee had sat there the whole time, just worrying. The other campers had their Bibles open and were reading along with the priest. Mitchell was definitely missing, and Tony was the last person to see him. So John Dee followed him after the morning chapel, pushing through the clumps of other campers on the path through the woods, trying to catch up.

Tony was fast though, and he disappeared around a curve in the path while John Dee was still struggling along. When he finally did get to the head of the crowd, he ran down the path after the priest.

Tony was standing in front of the tuck shop, just beside the path. He was laughing and talking with the woman who sold the chocolate bars and candy and drinks. His black shirt and pants were crisp and ironed and his priest collar was bright white. The tuck shop woman looked messy in comparison.

“Can I help you?” the tuck shop woman said, but John Dee shook his head and looked at the priest.

“Have you seen my brother, Mitchell?” he said, and Tony patted his hand on the tuck shop counter as a goodbye to the woman. Then he motioned for John Dee to follow him and headed up toward the cabins.

“I have indeed seen Mitchell,” he said. “You’re his brother, John Dee? Chip told me that you were looking for me. I just sent someone looking for you, actually. Your brother Mitchell is up at the main building. He’s been there since this morning. He’s having a hard time with camp, I think. I’m sure you know how sensitive your brother can be?” He smiled at John Dee, who didn’t nod. “I tried to calm him down and reassure him, but there’s only so much I can do. I don’t think that camp life agrees with him. Fair enough, I suppose,” Tony put his hand on John Dee’s shoulder. “Not everyone is cut out for the outdoors, John. Personally, I think modern life has made people too delicate. We don’t get out and appreciate God’s work as often as we should any more. Look at how beautiful this is.” He gestured around them. “God’s handiwork, John, and we view it as a nuisance.” He laughed. “People are ridiculous,” he said, and he laughed a bit harder. “We’re a part of nature, too, you know. You can cut a person down with an axe just as easily as a tree.” He made a chopping motion with both hands. “Chop chop chop!” he said, but John Dee just stared at him. Tony cleared his throat, and his face got more serious. “But I digress,” he said.

“Mitchell is at the main building?” John Dee said. “I was just up there, I didn’t see him.”

“I let him use the phone in the janitor’s office,” Tony said. “He’s in the basement. He was upset. I thought maybe it would be embarrassing for him if the other campers saw him crying. I think he stayed down there to wait for your father.”

“Oh,” John Dee nodded. Of course he’d called their father. Fucking Mitchell. “So he’s going home?”

He was going to be stuck here by himself now, while Mitchell went home to video games and air conditioning and Internet. All because Mitchell was such a pussy.

“You both are,” Tony said. “Your father thought it would be best. Do you think you could fetch your bags, and Mitchell’s, from your cabins, and bring them up to the main building?” He smiled. “Everyone will be doing their morning activities, so you don’t have to worry about anyone seeing Mitchell crying. Your dad’ll be here soon. I’ll just get some things ready and I’ll meet you up there,” Father Tony said.

The priest seemed almost excited that their father was coming.

Martin held Joan’s hand, even after they stopped walking. Melissa and Courtney hadn’t said anything else about the kiss, and Martin didn’t plan on bringing it up. Everything seemed pretty normal. And normal was nice, right now. They were following around one of the counsellors, Jackie, as she demonstrated how to use the playground equipment. This should have been boring, but Jackie was incredibly clumsy, and it was a lot funnier than it had any right to be.

“Oh god,” Melissa said. “I hope she does the Flying Fox. Oh, I hope she does the Flying Fox next.”

The counsellor, Jackie, was sitting on a swing, getting some speed up.

“I know everybody probably knows how to use a swing,” she said. “But these are perfectly placed so that you can jump to the grass if you get enough speed. Check it out,” and she pumped her legs on last time, swinging backward in a strong arc and then forward.

Martin clutched Joan’s hand. Jackie was going to hurt herself. He could feel it.

But she didn’t. Instead, her arm got caught in the swing chain, and when she tried to jump, she just slipped down off the seat before it dragged her backwards, ass in the dirt. Everyone laughed and clapped, and Jackie jumped back to her feet, grinning.

“Okay,” she said. “That wasn’t exactly what I meant. My arm got caught on the chain there, I think.” She was examining the chain as though trying to figure out what had happened. Martin did the same thing when he was embarrassed sometimes.

“Oh, what’s that?” Courtney said, loudly. She pointed over to where the Flying Fox stretched across the playing field.

“That’s the Flying Fox!” Jackie said.

“The Flying Fox?” Courtney was trying to sound curious, but she was a terrible actor.

Jackie, however, didn’t notice. She led the group over to the taller post, where the handle sat waiting for someone to grab it.

“The Flying Fox is the oldest piece of equipment here,” Jackie said. “When I first came here five years ago, all this was different. We didn’t have a swing or slides. There was no jungle gym. All we had was the Flying Fox.”

“Show us!” Courtney said, and Melissa elbowed her in the ribs. But both girls were grinning.

Martin looked over, but Joan was just watching, like always. It was impossible to figure out what she was thinking. But he wanted Melissa and Courtney to like him, too.

“Show us how fast it goes!” he said, and Courtney nodded.

“Yeah!” she said. “How fast can it go? It looks exciting.”

“It is exciting,” Jackie said. “It’s my favourite. And all you have to do to use it is pull the handle up to this end with the rope. See how it slides along the wire?” She grabbed the handle and moved it back and forth on the taut wire. “Then you just hold on for dear life, and try not to scream,” she said.

“Show us!” Courtney said.

“Show us!” Martin said.

Martin!

Here’s a picture of the beating heart. It’s not beating in the picture, because that isn’t how pictures work. But trust me when I say that it is beating in real life. If I had the time, I would devise some kind of perpetual battery, something that could charge itself again and again with the movement of the Earth, that would run until the end of the universe, and I would use it to power this heart. Imagine, a heart beating forever. Without a body, just sitting in a glass display in some giant gold bank, like a piece of corporate art? It’s the saddest immortality ever.

I wouldn’t really love you more if you were gay. That was just a joke. I would love you the same either way. I tried to call the camp this morning. I had a fake emergency all made up, a reason why I needed to speak with you. I was going to tell them that I’d forgotten the code to our giant floor safe, and all of the diamonds were inside and I had to pay a ransom. You were the only other person who knew the combination. I think they would have bought it. I just wanted to hear your voice for a minute. To make you laugh. I’m not used to being so far away from you. But I couldn’t get through. The phone just rang and rang, so I assume you were all out having fun in the sunshine, getting tans and learning how to start forest fires.

That old man ghost called back, this morning. The phone ring sounded like clanking chains.

“Hello?” I said.

“Hello, can you hear me?”

It was Charlie, that ghost I told you about.

“You don’t have to ask that every time,” I told him. “Of course I can hear you.”

“Have you seen Mitchie?”

“Your dog?”

“He wandered off again. He’s about as smart as he is handsome, I’m afraid.”

“I haven’t seen him,” I told him. “But I could help you look? What floor are you staying on in the hotel?”

“Oh, they have us on the fourteenth floor,” Charlie said. “Mitchie’s blind. He’s probably stuck somewhere in a corner with that sheet over his head. They make us wear sheets over our heads. There’s no need of that, but they do. They make us wear sheets and drag around chains like we’re Marley and Marley.”

“You know it’s actually the thirteenth floor,” I said. “They always skip the thirteenth floor, and name it fourteen. But does that make it any less cursed? I mean, if I slapped an old witchy woman in the face, or refused to give her a bank loan, and she cursed me, I don’t think just changing my name would get me out of it, do you?”

“He’s blind,” Charlie said. “He gets stuck in corners sometimes. But he’s my friend, and we need each other. I think he’s been sad here. The other people in the hotel never talk to us. They don’t pet him, or say hello in those obnoxious baby talk voices that perk his ears right up. There are no little girls here. He loves little girls.”

“There must be little girls here,” I said. “If this is where the dead go. Little girls die all the time. It’s part of life’s charm.”

But he had already hung up. I bet none of your friends get this many letters from their moms. Do you think it means their mom’s don’t love them enough? How do they live with themselves, going about their day-to-day business, never thinking of their sons off at camp, never once sitting down and transcribing their ghostly phone calls from beyond, word for word?

Anyway, I hope that camp is good, and that giant insects aren’t burrowing a network of tunnels underneath your cabins right now. Because you know what happens then, right? The tunnels collapse and your cabins fall down into the darkness of an insect nest, and your counsellors will make you listen to idiotic ghost stories.

If they do, though, you can tell my ghost story for me. The ghost who references the
Muppet Christmas Carol
, and his blind stupid dog. I heart you, Martin. My heart beats only for you. You’re heart to deal with sometimes, but it’s even hearter to imagine what I would do without you.

Heart, always,

Your Mother.

John Dee set his suitcases beside Mitchell’s on the side steps of the main building. The parking lot was empty and the woods around the camp seemed dark. He wasn’t angry about going home anymore. At least at home, he would be able to watch TV and play video games. And he’d gotten Gabe’s phone number, so they could hang out later in the summer. This was no big loss. Mitchell might even be doing him a favour. There were no mosquitoes in the city. He could shower by himself, instead of with a room full of other boys.

He kicked Mitchell’s suitcase and looked around for his brother. There were a group of campers down on the beach, yelling and laughing in the waves, and another group over by the Flying Fox. Where was he? Was he still down in the basement crying? What a fucking sissy. Had he been there all day, just crying? Even Mitchell couldn’t cry this long, could he? Maybe there was a TV down there.

There was a sound from inside, like a chair being knocked over. John Dee looked up the steps at the screen door. He couldn’t see very far into the dark front room. It was too bright out here. But everyone was either down at the beach or over at the playground equipment. The only people in the building should be Mitchell and maybe Father Tony.

“Mitchell?” he called.

“Yes, it’s me,” a voice said from the darkness. But it wasn’t Mitchell’s voice. It was high-pitched and too musical. It sounded like an adult pretending to be a child. Like a grown man doing a falsetto. It sounded ridiculous, was how it sounded.

“What?” John Dee said. “Mitchell, are you there?”

“Yes, it’s me, Mitchell,” the weird high-pitched voice said from inside. John Dee squinted his eyes, but he couldn’t see into the building more than a few feet.

It was definitely a man’s voice. Were Mitchell and Tony messing with him? This was too much. It was bad enough he had to sit out here with the suitcases all by himself. It was bad enough he had to wander this camp all day like an idiot, not knowing where his brother was. Before Tony explained things, John Dee had even been worried, at one point. He had been stupidly worried that his brother was hurt or that he’d been pulled out to sea by a strong current or something. Now his brother and Tony were in there, playing jokes. Making fun of him.

He stormed up the stairs and yanked the screen door open. It was silent inside, and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust. The light coming in through the windows made big rectangles on the floor.

“I swear to God, Mitchell—” John Dee started to say, but then Father Tony was there, stepping into view, already swinging the heavy sledgehammer through the air with both hands. It struck John Dee in the side of the head, just under his jaw and behind the ear. His head snapped to the side and the hammer crushed bone somewhere in his neck. He staggered. If there was a sound, John Dee didn’t hear it. Everything went muffled, like he was underwater.

Father Tony swung again. The sledge hit him on the same side of the head, this time higher, on the ear. More bone broke, with a far-away pulling feeling. John Dee tried to lift his hands to guard his face, but they wouldn’t move. Warm blood poured from his ear down his neck and under his shirt collar. The priest was bent over and looking at him, but John Dee didn’t understand.

The screen door banged open, as Jackie ran into the main building holding her nose. She had her head tilted back, trying to stop the blood. Her nose was broken, she was pretty sure. Why did this always happen? There was blood on her chin and her hands and down the front of her shirt. She stopped when she saw that she wasn’t alone.

“I broke my nose,” she said to Tony.

Then she saw John Dee sitting on the floor.

It took her a second to figure out that something was wrong with the boy’s head. It was bent to the side, like he was trying to understand, but it was bent too far. The angle wasn’t natural. Then he slumped forward, and rolled onto his back. Jackie could see the blood. Her first thought was that he had broken his nose, too. But then she looked at Father Tony, smiling at her, friendly as always, a bloody sledgehammer in his hands.

“Oh, thank goodness you’re here,” the priest said. “I think this poor boy tried to kill himself with a sledgehammer.”

Most everyone was on the beach now, gathering around a big bonfire that Chip and Cindy were tossing driftwood onto. The sun was getting low in the sky and the fire was starting to catch. Smoke came up off it in a big plume, and the ocean wind pulled it out over the water. Ricky was coming up the beach toward the fire with driftwood piled in his arms, and Gabe was headed off to find more, holding hands with a girl Martin hadn’t seen before. Everyone else was sitting in the sand, pulling open bags of marshmallows or handing around long thin sticks for the marshmallows.

“I thought everyone had to come to the bonfire?” Melissa said. There were a lot of campers here, but Chip and Cindy were the only counsellors. “I don’t get it. There’s Susan, from our cabin, and the twins, but where’s Sherri-Lynn?”

“I’m right here!” Sherri-Lynn said, grabbing her from behind.

Melissa let out a holler, and spun around. But Sherri-Lynn’s smile was so enthusiastic that Melissa was soon smiling, too. They followed her to the fire, and sat down in the sand. Martin sat last, watching Melissa and Courtney just drop into the sand and kick their feet out. They didn’t seem to notice the sand fleas, or care that sand was going to get into their sneakers and socks.

Joan took his hand and sat down in the sand, too, gently pulling Martin down beside her. He tried to smooth the sand fleas away from where they were sitting, but eventually gave up and took the stick that Sherri-Lynn was offering him.

“Does everybody have a stick?” Chip asked, on the other side of the fire. “We have a few more roasting sticks here,” he said, and Cindy said something, too, but it was too quiet for Martin to hear.

“I’ve never roasted marshmallows,” Joan said.

“Me neither,” Martin said. He immediately regretted saying it, though. Why did he always do that? He didn’t know anything about her, and he kept talking about himself. “Do you like marshmallows?” he said.

“I do,” Joan said. She smiled. “Do you like marshmallows?”

“Oh my god, will you two shut up?” Courtney said. “You sound like morons.” She stood up and moved to sit on the far side of Melissa, closer to where Sherri-Lynn was sitting.

Joan just shrugged, smiling at Martin.

“I wanted to ask,” Martin said to Joan. “What was your grandfather like, before he went to live in the home?” He didn’t know if it was an off-limit topic, but he didn’t know what else to ask her. He couldn’t just say, “Tell me something about you.”

“He was weird, I guess,” Joan said. “He used to let me stay up late to watch science fiction movies all the time. He always acted like we were breaking the rules, and like my parents would be furious if they found out that he let me watch these movies, but they were just old black and white movies about giant monsters and robots and alien invasions. Nobody swore in them, and there wasn’t any sex or anything. But I liked the way he pretended. He made me laugh.”

“He sounds funny,” Martin said, trying to spear a marshmallow on his roasting stick.

“He was,” Joan said. “I miss him.”

“Where is everybody?” Sherri-Lynn said. “Hey, you,” she waved her hand at Martin. “You’re in Chip’s cabin, right? Didn’t there used to be more kids in your cabin?” She gestured with her roasted marshmallow to where Chip was trying to stop Ricky from whipping Adrian with his roasting stick. The only other kids here from the cabin were two boys named Gavin and William. Four kids. Five, counting Martin, out of ten.