When the Saints (16 page)

“Like Uncle Bird,” Janis says, wagging a brown crayon back and forth on the paper to make Swimmer’s hair.

“Oh my God!” Ma leaps up. “I forgot to feed Bird! Shit! It’s been two days. Janis, fetch my bra!”

“Sit down, Ma. I’ll go.”

“Really?” She sinks back on the sofa. “Would you mind?”

Janis watches me put on my boots. “Want me to come show you where they keep the tuna fish cans?”

“Nah, you stay here and finish the posters.”

I gulp in the fresh air as I step outside. The sky looks like Solace River after a rainfall, clouds curdling into pale green clusters. I cut across the backyards instead of taking the road.

I think about what Poppy said, that if she was me she’d have taken off by now. I don’t know myself what’s holding me here. All I know is that after I got kicked out of Blood Rain, I’d never felt more like an outsider in my life. I started imagining some happy movie ending in which my family had been watching the horizon
for years, that as soon as they saw my face they’d shed tears of joy and dig out the good china. We’d feast on ham and scalloped potatoes as they hung on my every word, taking turns refreshing my drink.

I should have at least questioned myself on the good china. I mean, Christ, where would Ma have kept it—in the chest next to the good white linens?

Through the side window, I make out the shape of Bird’s head, and when I walk in, I find all three Musketeers seated at the table.

“Hey, gang,” I say. “You had anything to eat today?”

Three sets of eyes stare back at me.

“I’ll fix you something, okay?”

The fat one mumbles something about it being goddamn time. He’s wearing pants today, thank God. I go into the kitchen and open the cupboards. They’ve got cans of soup, some old crackers, Shake ‘n Bake mixture and mouldy bread. There’s a forty of spiced rum in the fridge, half a bag of onions and three jars of homemade pickles. In the freezer, I find a whole chicken, so I defrost it in the microwave, season it with the Shake ‘n Bake and stick it in the oven.

“It’ll be ready soon,” I say, coming back to the table. “What are you playing?”

“Gin rummy,” the fat one finally answers.

“You ever play crazy eights?”

“Gin rummy,” he repeats.

The one with the eye patch turns to stare at him with his good eye. “Crazy eights.”

I sit and show them the simplest rules of the game. We play a few hands and even Bird catches on, solemnly laying down each card. When the chicken is ready, I serve it to them with fried onions and pickles on the side. I have to cut up Bird’s into little tiny pieces and feed it to him. Sitting this close, I notice how strong his body odour is. I find the washroom, and the bathtub looks as if no one’s been using it. I clean it with dish detergent then fill it halfway.

“Come on, Bird.” I wheel him away from his empty plate. “Let’s get you in the bath.” I park him in the washroom and pull his shirt off over his head. “Can you stand up?”

He sticks his spindly arms straight out. I take them and hoist him up a little out of the chair. I’m not sure that’s the best move, so I sit him back down and pull his pants and underpants down and shimmy them over his feet. Then we try again. Eventually, I have him standing naked, holding on to me. His skin is hanging slack on his bones and he seems so shrunken. In the photograph I saw on Jackie’s fridge, Bird towered over Jackie. Now he’s my height and probably weighs about the same.

He reeks so bad I have to hold my breath while trying to lower him into the tub without dropping him. Once he’s seated, I gently grab his ankles and stretch his legs out in front of him. He smiles as all the warm water wraps around his body.

“How’s that?” I ask.

He points to the taps, so I run a little more hot water. I find a skinny bar of soap, wipe the crud off it with some toilet paper, then use it to lather his chest and shoulders. I clean his whole head and face and then each arm. Then I slap the soap in his
hand and get him to clean the rest. I have to tell him in parts: Clean your legs. Clean your knees. Clean your privates. Clean your belly. I watch him and think about how for all these years I was so pissed off about not having a family to take care of me, it never occurred to me I was getting off scot-free of taking care of them.

When we’re done, Bird leans back in the water and closes his eyes. For a moment, he looks like any normal man. I sit on the toilet seat lid and study the war museum of his body. He’s got a crooked forearm from the time Daddy chucked him and Jackie out the window like a sack of garbage, and there are tattoos of his daughters’ names branded on either side of his sunken chest. Up close, the scarred flesh across his face is so shiny I can practically see my reflection in it. For some reason he’s missing half his ring finger. I lean in for a better look and his eyes fly open.

“Tabby got bit by a king cobra.”

I’m stunned for a second. “Yes, she did.” I lift my pant leg to show him the scar.

He blinks at it for a while. Then his tongue rolls out of the side of his mouth as he smiles at me.

S
WIMMER HAS BEEN GONE FOUR NIGHTS NOW.
M
A HAS
the police scanner on all the time. Janis had a nightmare about naked vampires lying in bathtubs and now she won’t go pee without a steak knife in her hand. Sitting around doing nothing is
making me stir-crazy. I tell Ma I’m going to buy toilet paper and take off in her car.

Troy’s house is a beige, two-storey rectangle up on a hill at the end of a long paved driveway empty of vehicles. I park at the bottom and walk right up, heart pounding. I peek around back and see a swimming pool that no one’s been looking after. I try not to think of Swimmer wandering out there and falling in. There are some empty booze bottles and cigarette butts in a can on the deck. I knock, wait a few minutes, then try the doorbell. I can’t see anything through the curtains. I’m just about to leave when a window slides open on the second floor. A hard-looking woman in a pink bathrobe sticks her head out.

“You get your ass off my property,” she yells down. “And tell Jackie if he drives by here again, Troy will slit Bird’s throat.”

I bite down hard on my tongue. “Our nephew’s gone missing,” I say, tasting blood. “We’re talking to everyone. He’s only three years old and has medications he needs to be taking. He can get real sick with the runs.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You haven’t seen all the posters or turned on a television?”

Her mouth tightens. “I said get your ass off my property.”

“I want to talk to Troy.”

She slams the window shut. I try the doorknob, but it’s locked. I bang on the door and the window opens again. I see the barrel of a rifle sliding out.

“Okay, okay.” I raise my hands. As I retreat down the driveway, I spy some jelly beans amongst the rocks. It rained overnight,
but their colours are still vivid. I pause, look back over my shoulder, and she’s still pointing that thing at me.

I peel out of there and drive straight to the police station. When I barge into Detective Surette’s office, he’s on the phone. I have to sit and listen to him order a deer antler chandelier from some catalogue. He tucks his credit card back in his wallet and scratches the loose skin under his chin before hanging up.

“I don’t investigate missing persons.” He closes his door. “You have to talk to Detective McNeil.”

“That’s not why I’m here.”

He sits on his desk and cracks each of his knuckles. “Then what can I do for you?”

“We own land in Solace River. If there’s taxes owing, I want it taken care of. And I want the old house bulldozed. We’ll sleep in a goddamn lean-to if we have to.”

“That’s a tall order.” He puts his glasses on and flips through a Rolodex.

“So’s asking us to leave. We’re about as welcome in Solace River as we are here.”

“You’d be taking Jackie?”

“All of them. As soon as we get Swimmer.”

He plucks one of the Rolodex cards. “I’ll make some calls.”

“There’s one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

I think back to the other day when I fed Bird. He kept biting the spoon and when I swatted his arm, he screeched and wrenched away from me so fast his wheelchair almost keeled over.

“Tell me why you didn’t go after the people who almost killed Bird.”

Surette removes his glasses and places them on the desk. A MedicAlert bracelet on his wrist catches the sun as he folds his hands. “We’re pretty sure we know who did it. But they had solid alibis, every one of them. We had nothing on them. Couldn’t get a decent footprint, no weapon recovered, no witnesses.”

“So he’s no dummy, this Troy?”

“Not when it could send him to prison.”

A few seconds pass in silence before he returns to his Rolodex. I snatch the catalogue and flip through it till I find the chandelier.

“Eight hundred dollars is a rip-off. Jackie could shoot a buck and rig you up one for a hundred.”

Surette looks at me over the rim of his glasses. “He wouldn’t need to shoot one. Antlers fall off.”

“Sure, if you want to follow it around the forest waiting for the magical moment.” I stand up. “I guess that’s how it goes down here at the station. You all sit around expecting everything to tie itself up in a big fucking bow.”

I slam the catalogue on the desk and walk out.

I
HAVE TO DRINK THE DREGS OF A BOTTLE OF SHERRY TO
work up the nerve to call West. I half expect him to tell me to take care and have a nice life, but instead he says everyone in Solace River is talking about Swimmer.

“Are they saying it serves us right?”

“Christ, no, Tabby. Give people a little credit.”

I balance the telephone receiver in my neck as I open a can of chili, not sure what to say next. “Was the tavern locked when you got back?”

“I locked the register, but not the door. Weird enough, no one was in here. This town is getting lazy.”

I dump the chili into a pot. I can’t find a clean spoon, so I stir it with a butter knife. Then I grab the receiver in both hands and press it to my ear. I hear West toss a beer cap at the garbage can and miss. Then there’s a long creak and I know which chair he sat on.

“You want me to come get you?” he asks.

I’m so stunned, I don’t answer.

“You there?”

“Yeah.” I reach over and turn down the burner as hot brown bubbles jump in the air. “I can’t go anywhere. I’m the only one feeding Janis and Bird. Ma won’t even leave the house or take a bath because she’s afraid she’ll miss a phone call. She’d kill me if she knew I was tying up the line right now.”

On cue, Ma barges in and putters around the cupboards, muttering that there’s a pay phone down the frigging road.

“Listen,” West blurts. “I got my divorce papers ready to serve. Abriel thinks she’s entitled to half the tavern, but the lawyer I talked to says there’s no way.”

I drop the phone by mistake and Ma picks it up, tells West goodbye and hangs it back on the hook. My heart pounds in my ears as I transfer the chili to a bowl and cover it with foil. I cart it over to the Musketeers, and I’m so distracted feeding Bird I don’t notice he’s wearing a bolo tie until I’m about to leave. When I
get back to the trailer, Ma’s standing outside. She’s wearing a nice blouse and combed her hair a different way. Janis is sitting on the stairs behind her with a little pink sequined purse slung over her arm.

“I just got a call from the hospital,” Ma says. “They don’t think your father will make it to the end of the week.” She won’t look at me. “I was going to go up there anyway to see Poppy. She’s asking for Janis.”

“Are you going to say goodbye to him?”

She won’t answer, just gets in the car and checks her teeth in the mirror. When we get to the hospital, she walks in ahead of Janis and me. We follow ten feet behind her as she goes up to the second floor and into Poppy’s room.

“How are you doing, Poppy?” Ma asks the wall. She looks around the room and fixes her gaze on a stock painting of a basket of wine and cheese.

Poppy sits up limply and holds her arms out for Janis. Janis doesn’t budge, unzips her purse and pulls out a folded homemade card. Poppy opens it and her face breaks into hard lines. She puts it on the nightstand and I lean back to read what’s printed inside. It says, I STIL LUV YOO, BUT YOO BETUR SMRTAN UP.

“Daddy’s almost dead,” Poppy says. “I think seeing me made him sicker. He just started shutting down. First he couldn’t walk, now he can’t chew his food.”

“Is he still talking?” Ma asks.

“He was last night.”

“What did he say?”

“That he’s not ready to go.”

“That it?” Ma fidgets with her glasses. “Did he ask for me?”

“Just go up there,” Poppy says.

Ma stands and walks out of the room. The three of us stare at the empty doorway for a minute.

“Why is there two beds in here?” Janis asks.

“I asked for another one so you can sleep over,” Poppy tells her.

It’s a lie. The nurse told Ma Poppy’s been having withdrawal nightmares and tried to attack her roommate in her sleep. They had to move the poor woman to the other end of the hospital.

“No, thanks,” Janis says.

Poppy clenches her jaw. “Go play in the lounge around the corner a minute. I need to talk to Tabby.”

Janis sits down and picks up a barf tray instead, turns it over in her hands trying to figure out what it does.

“Janis Jean,” Poppy warns. “What did I just say?”

Janis pretends not to hear, so I tell her I saw a book about bats in the lounge.

She looks up. “What kind of bats?”

“The gross kind.”

She sighs, but then she gets up and stomps out of the room.

“That was some trick pushing Daddy in here,” Poppy says. “He wouldn’t let them take him back to his room. He never shut up, talked until I passed out cold. Then he made his nurse bring him back down the next morning and picked up right where he left off.”

“What did he have to say?”

“He went on and on. Why he is who he is, how Grandpa Jack used to torture him. He talked about how his teacher always
called him stupid, how he got fed up one day and told her he wasn’t stupid, he was just hungry because Grandpa Jack was on a world-class bender and there was nothing in the house to eat. The teacher made him stand up in front of the class and eat a jar of glue for talking back to her.” Poppy tucks her greasy hair behind her ears. “He said he learned to hate from birth and couldn’t unlearn it, blah blah blah. It was a load of horseshit.” She reaches under her pillow, pulls out a map scrawled in blue ink on a piece of foolscap. “He only gave this to me when he realized he ain’t walking out of here and not a moment before. So don’t go thinking it was meant for us.” She covers it with her hand and motions for me to tuck it in my purse. “You know what else? He asked me to get him a priest, said it had to be a black man or a Mi’kmaq because he don’t trust white men in robes.”