The World More Full of Weeping (2 page)

She shrugged. “Two hours on the freeway. Could do it
with my eyes closed.”

He smiled.

The argument that had ended their marriage had, in
fact, grown out of their very first disagreement. It had
started as a conversation seventeen years before, and had
played through the intervening time like background music
to every disagreement between them.

Seventeen years before, she had said it as if there had
been no question: “You don't really want to stay here.”

They had been sitting at the table in his father's
kitchen — this kitchen — drinking the day's first cup of
coffee after their first night together in the house where
he had grown up. The house where he now lived with their
son, though not for much longer.

“What do you mean?”

She had looked at him as if she didn't understand the
question. He knew the feeling.

It wasn't the first time they had seemed to be coming
from different worlds.

They had both been going to school, BCIT in Vancouver.
Jeff was qualifying for his apprenticeship, and Diane had
been taking some introductory broadcasting classes. They
had met at a party; Jeff didn't even know how he had ended
up there, standing alone in the corner with a warm beer.

She had rescued him by swooping in and dancing him
away. That was the way she saw it, at least.

It had been three months before he brought her home
for the weekend, to meet and be met.

“Why would I go anywhere else?” he had asked in
response to her question.

She had shaken her head. “There's a whole world to
see out there. So much more than this.” She had gestured
around her, at the kitchen, the house, the town. His world.

If she had been at all mean, at all disparaging, it would
have been over right then. But there had been no trace of
haughtiness, no condescension. She was trying to rescue
him again, he understood.

It hadn't worked.

“You made good time,” he said, tossing his rag onto his
workbench. “You're early.”

She glanced at her watch and shook her head.

He turned sharply to glance at the shop clock. 4:20.

“I even tried calling to say I was going to be a little
late.”

Four-twenty. Later, he would wonder where the time
had gone. How he had gotten so involved in a simple engine
rebuild that he had lost track of the hours? Had lost track
of Brian?

“He's probably in the house,” he said, gesturing toward
the back porch. “I told him to be back by 3:30 to get cleaned
up for you.”

But Brian wasn't in the house.

Brian had first met Carly several weeks before, early on a
Saturday morning.

His dad had still been asleep when Brian had gotten
up. He had moved around the house as quietly as he could,
dressing, going to the bathroom, loading his knapsack. At
a time when most of the kids from school would be settling
in front of the TV for a morning of cartoons, Brian poured
a large measure of Cheerios into a plastic sandwich bag and
crammed it into his jacket pocket. Pulling on his boots, he
let himself out the back door and set out across the field for
the woods.

Just behind the old barn, the spaces between the trees
were pretty clear: it was easy to walk through, easy to find
a place to sit and munch on a handful of cereal. The air was
bright and clear, filled with the sound of birds. From where
he sat, Brian could look out at the back of his father's shop,
the backyard, the house, and the road beyond it. The whole
time he was sitting there, he didn't see a single car pass.

Farther back into the woods, it grew darker and quieter.
He zipped up his coat against the chill. After he crossed the
old fence-line, Brian stayed close to the few beaten trails.
Off the paths, the undergrowth was thick and tough. It
changed, too, depending on where he was in the woods.
Sometimes he would be in the midst of a swollen, twisted
stand of blackberry vines. Other times he'd pull his arms
in to avoid the trunks and branches of a patch of devil's
club, the spines of which would pierce you right through
your clothes, bury themselves deep in your skin and keep
working their way in.

Deeper in the woods, it was almost silent. What birds
there were flew quietly and alone. The loudest sounds were
Brian's breath, the scrunch of his boots on the earth, and
the rustle of leaves or branches that he pushed out of his
way with a stick.

Sometimes he heard a scrambling in the underbrush
as an animal dodged away. When this happened, he would
stop, stand stock-still and listen, his eyes following his ears
as he tried to find the animal, to see what kind it was.

He was never scared, only curious, and he could
wait, motionless, for an eternity, just for a glimpse of
something wild. He wasn't disappointed if it turned out
to be a squirrel — he loved squirrels — but he treasured the
memory of the day he saw the yellow eyes of the coyote
looking at him through the bramble, the time he had come
upon the family of raccoons at play in the dimming of the
late afternoon, the day he thought he had seen a bear, the
crashing in the underbrush too long and too loud to have
been caused by anything smaller.

He hadn't told his father about the bear.

He didn't tell his father much about his days in the
woods. It wasn't that his father wouldn't understand: he
knew some of the trails he walked had been cut by his father
and his uncles when they were boys. And it wasn't that he
was afraid he would be reined in, that the revelation he had
seen a bear — maybe — would result in him being kept to
the yard or the open early woods where the cows used to
graze. That thought hadn't even occurred to him.

No, he didn't talk about the woods because to talk about
them would have meant sharing them.

The woods were something that belonged to Brian, a rare
thing he didn't have to share, a rare place where he could
truly be himself, where he could watch the slow progress of
bugs along a branch, or study the skeletal webbing on the
underside of a leaf. A place where he didn't have to explain
himself to anyone, where he didn't have to pretend to be
anyone else.

The woods were his world, and his alone.

Until the moment Carly stepped out of the brush by the
creek and raised her hand in greeting.

“Hello?”

Jeff struggled to keep the worry out of his voice,
speaking loudly to be sure the old man on the other end of
the phone line would be able to hear. “John? It's Jeff from
up the road.” He looked at Diane as he said the words, but
she was staring out the kitchen window, out at the woods,
and she hadn't even heard. “I was just wondering — have
you seen Brian at all today? He went out into the woods a
few hours ago and I was expecting him back.”

He and Diane had come into the house together,
expecting to see Brian at the table with a sandwich, or to
hear him crashing around in his room, belatedly packing
for his week away. As soon as they stepped through the
door, though, they knew he wasn't there: the house felt
empty, cold, and silent.

When they called out his name, it was more to puncture
the quiet around them than in any hope that he might
answer.

“I haven't seen him, Jeff. Not today. Sometimes he
comes out back of the house here and Claire'll give him a
hot chocolate and some cookies before he heads for home,
but I haven't seen him today.”

Jeff felt a door closing within himself. “Thanks, John.
I'll — ”

“How long's he been gone for?” John's voice was thin
and brittle, but still strong. John Joseph had the voice of a
man who was used to being listened to, who never needed
to shout to be heard.

Diane stepped away from the window and looked at
him.

“I'm not entirely sure,” he confessed. “I got caught up in
some work and I didn't notice the time.”

“That's probably exactly what happened with your boy,
too. Got caught up in what he was doin'.”

“Like father like son,” Jeff muttered.

John chuckled drily. “Not the first time that's been said.
At any rate, it's probably too early to be worried. I'll take a
wander out the back and see if I can spot him.”

“Thanks, John.” Just talking with the older man had
helped blunt the knife-edge of panic in his stomach.

“And you tell that ex-wife of yours we say hello, all
right?”

Jeff smiled. Not much escaped his neighbours' notice.
John and Claire Joseph mostly kept to themselves, but they
seemed to have the blood of the whole town running in their
veins. “Will do, John. You take care.” He was about to say
goodbye when he remembered. “Hey, actually, John, do you
know of anyone in the area, any of the kids, named Carly?”

“Carly?”

“Yeah. I didn't recognize the name but I thought you
might know if her family had just moved here. Brian's
mentioned her a couple of times over the last few weeks.”

“Carly,” the old man repeated, as if leafing through his
memory.

“Probably about Brian's age. Ten or eleven maybe. I think
he's been playing with her in the woods.”

“Jeff.” This time there was no thinness to the voice, not
even a hint of age. “I think it might be best if you call Chuck
Minette at the Search and Rescue. I think it might be best
that you call him right now.”

The day they first met, Brian didn't hear Carly so much as
sense her presence behind him.

He was hunched over the still backwater of Russell
Creek, leaning forward with one of his tools to take a
sample of the green slime that clung to the edges of the
pond. The rock he was leaning on was rough and cold, and
he huffed as he stretched himself as far as he could, but he
got the sample.

When he straightened up, rubbing the rock indentations
on his palm with his other hand, he felt a wave of cold run
through him, a nervous certainty that he was not alone.

“Hello?” he called, his voice barely raised, as he glanced
around the clearing. There was no one there.

A light breeze rustled in the branches around the still
pond.

He felt someone's eyes upon him.

“Dad?” he called, rising slowly to his feet. The sample
spoon dangled limply by his side.

“Hello?”

He turned in a slow circle, taking in all of the clearing as
he thought of the stories in the books he had read. Stories
about bear attacks, and what would happen if a wolf pack
got you. Or worse. The stories of crazy people who took
little boys like him out to the woods where no one would
hear them —

“Hello?” he called again, his voice cracking. “Is anybody
there?”

“I'm here,” came a soft voice from the tree line behind
him. A girl's voice.