by David Bergen
Here the Dark
A Novella and Stories
David Bergen
Biblioasis
windsor, ontario
Contents
April in Snow Lake
How Can n Men Share a Bottle of Vodka?
Hungry
Never Too Late
Saved
Leo Fell
Man Lost
Here the Dark
Copyright
The following stories have been published in various magazines. Never Too Late and Saved in The Walrus. April in Snow Lake in Prairie Fire. Leo Fell in Toronto Life. How Can n Men Share a Bottle of Vodka? won the CBC Short Story Prize and was published in Saturday Night. Hungry, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, was published in Hobart.
April in Snow Lake
1.
The summer I turned nineteen my girlfriend went to Italy to work as a cook for a crew that was rebuilding houses in the aftermath of the earthquake in Udine Province. She wrote me long letters on thin sheets of paper. The letters arrived two weeks after she wrote them and as I read her words I was aware that what I was reading had already passed, she had moved on to some new experience, and so I felt as if I was following her from some great distance, catching a brief glimpse of her, only to have her disappear into a future that I would hear about fourteen days later. She had met a wonderful group of people from Belgium and Holland and France. There was Paul, who was six-and-a-half-feet tall and played the banjo and admired Woody Guthrie. He wore a bandana. And there was Lillian, who was German Swiss, and was teaching her French. Lillian had taken her to Venice one Sunday, on their day off, and they had stayed overnight in a tiny villa. They had shared a bed and woken in the morning and made coffee on a hotplate and then had leaned out the window of their room and watched the lovers pass by below. It is all so romantic, she wrote. When I read this I was forlorn and I wondered how I would last the rest of the summer without her. I had found a job driving a truck for the local feed company, a job that required a lot of sitting and waiting, usually in the lot of an abattoir where I had been sent to pick up several tons of meat meal. Every evening I showered and scrubbed myself in order to remove the smell of dead animals from my hair and skin.
A year earlier I had decided to become a novelist, or a writer of short stories, or a poet, though I did not truly understand poetry and was more attached to narrative crescendo. I would write in a frenzy over the weekend and show my stories to my girlfriend on Monday evening. Of course we talked about my lack of life experience and my lack of voice and my lack of worldliness. She thought that my religious background, my faith in God, how I saw the world, would be a detriment to my writing. She said that Ernest Hemingway’s father had been religious like my father was, but that Hemingway had managed quite nicely to walk away from all the baggage. I said that I had no desire to walk away. There was room for grace as well as sin in the world of novels.
One morning, before I left for work, my girlfriend telephoned from Italy. At first I didn’t know it was her because I had not expected the call, and then when I finally recognized her voice I told her that I missed her horribly and I couldn’t wait for her to come home. She said that she knew that but she planned to travel after finishing at the work camp. She might visit Lillian in Basel and then hitchhike up to Amsterdam where Paul lived. I’ll be home at the end of the summer, she said. Then we’ll get married.
This had been our plan, to marry in the fall. It had been my idea, my wish. She would just as happily have moved in together, but I had convinced her that we should marry. She agreed. But first, she said, she wanted to spend time travelling. She was quite willing for me to join her but the offer felt too easy. She knew that I could not afford it.
Her voice on the line faded in and out, and there was a delay, so that our conversation overlapped. At times we were speaking simultaneously and then we had to repeat ourselves and this led to long silences while we waited for the other to speak, and then it started all over again. Finally I just let her talk and as I did so I was aware of the tremendous physical distance between us and that her heart seemed smaller. And then the line went dead. I sat beside the phone for half an hour but she never called back.
That week a letter arrived in which she informed me that she wasn’t sure anymore if we should get married, in fact she wasn’t clear about her love for me. She claimed that the world was a big place and that she had one life and was she ready to spend that life with me? She wasn’t sure. I knew, as I read the letter, that the words had been written before her phone call, and this fact made our conversation irrelevant. She had been talking to me on the phone, promising that she missed me, and that she would return in the autumn and we would marry, while all along she knew that this wasn’t true. The space, the geographical distance, and the gap between what she wrote and what took place after she wrote it, all of this depressed me. Why had she not told me the truth? What was she afraid of? Was there something about me that she feared?
2.
Two weeks later I quit my job driving truck at the feed mill and I rode a bus five hundred miles north to Snow Lake where I worked construction for an old friend of my father who was pouring basements. The crew worked long hours, getting up at five in the morning and working till nine or ten in the evening. The summer nights were short and the light was forever blue and then white and then briefly yellow, and again blue. We did not sleep much and this did not seem to matter. Because darkness barely existed, it felt as if sleep was something that other people might require. Not us. Perhaps it was a madness to behave this way, and perhaps this is why the summer lacked a moral focus. The lack of sleep, the wild dreams when I finally did sleep, the anguished poetry I wrote to my girlfriend, my predilection for feverish musings, an inclination to save the world from sin—all of this might have been the result of some great forfeiture.
I was not a drinker, and at nights, when the men were finally free, they went to the local bar while I stayed in my motel room, or sat out on a chair on a rock and read John Steinbeck. And the Bible. The other men on the crew, mostly older than me, kept trying to drag me down to the bar for some intercourse. This was their way of talking to me. I told them that I was engaged to be married in the fall. Shit, they said, that’s exactly why you need to get laid. I smiled and humoured them and shook my head. They went off to get drunk and find a woman, or at least to imagine that possibility, and I read. They had taken to calling me Preacher, because I had let them know that I was a Christian. That fact amused them.
On Sundays, our day off, I was lonely and so I wandered through the town. I noticed that the children on the streets and in the yards were aimless and, my nature being inclined towards industry, I decided to organize a Sunday Day Camp for youth. The ages would be 14 to 17. I didn’t want any small children. I planned to do some hiking and orienteering and I planned to tell these kids stories that were mature and I planned to save their souls. I knew that a sixteen-year-old was able to think along the lines of metaphor more easily. At the local hardware store I purchased several compasses, a filleting knife, a hatchet, and two fishing rods. I canvassed the town, knocked on doors, and asked if there were teenagers living there who might be interested in joining my Day Camp. We would meet under the shelter at the town park. Some folks said no and closed the door, others were willing to listen, and one older woman who had no children asked me in and brewed tea and we sat in her dark living room and listened to the clock tick on the mantle as she cautioned me against presumption.
The first Sunday, three kids appeared. Two sisters, Beverly and April, and a boy named Rodney. I told them a little about myself—I was nineteen, I came from a small town in the south, I liked to re
ad, I wrote poetry and songs, and I believed in God. I asked them to tell about their lives. They looked at each other and giggled. Finally April said that she was there because her younger sister Beverly wanted to come. She shrugged. April had long dark hair that she wore in a single braid and, unlike the other two, she looked right at me when she spoke. She was seventeen. I found her very attractive and so I concentrated on Beverly and Rodney, sneaking looks at April when I thought she didn’t notice.
That afternoon I taught them how to build a lean to, and how to use the compasses, and we caught two fish and filleted them by the lake. These were all things that my father, who considered himself a bit of an outdoorsman, had taught me. We built a fire using the log cabin method and we fried the fish and ate it with our hands, right from the frying pan. Later, I played a few songs and I sang and then I told them the story of how I had become a Christian. I had asked Jesus into my heart. Everyone needs to do that, I said. Would you like to do that? I asked. They looked at me and then April said, Maybe. Someday.
That’s good, I said. Really good.
That night I went to bed imagining that I might fall in love with April, or if not that, we would walk in the park at the edge of town and hold hands. At that time in my life I was full of ego and pride and I could not imagine April liking anyone more than me, in fact I thought that if I were to be with her, I would be the gentlest and kindest person she had ever known. These were similar to the thoughts I used to have about my girlfriend.
I had not heard from her since the last letter, and though I had asked my parents to forward my mail, no letter had arrived. I believed at the time that she would come to regret her decision.
On Thursday evening, three days before the next Sunday meeting, I was out walking when April rode past me on her bicycle. She was going in the opposite direction, on the other side of the road. She slowed down and stopped and straddled her bike. It was late, but it didn’t feel late because the sun had just set and it would rise again in several hours. She was wearing jean shorts and a pink T-shirt and black running shoes. She had released her hair from the braid and it hung long and shiny. In the dusk, and from across the road, I could not see her eyes properly.
I see you walking, she said. Every night. Kinda stupid.
Why?
Nowhere to go ’cept in circles.
I don’t mind, I said. The word stupid had surprised me. It sounded rough and wrong in her mouth. And forward, as if she were flirting.
She looked down the road back to town. You have a girlfriend? she asked.
I said I did but that our relationship was on hold.
What does that mean?
It means that we might get back together.
Is that why you go walking? You walk and you think about her?
She smiled when she said this, in a teasing manner, as if by talking in this way we were moving sideways into more open territory.
Beverly thinks you’re cute, she said. Kinda like David Cassidy.
Ha.
And our grandma says to stay away from white boys.
To that I had no good response, and so I simply shrugged.
A half-ton approached in the distance, coming from town. It slowed and stopped. The driver, a man, rolled down the window and talked to April. The truck blocked my view of her and all I saw was the back of the man’s head as he spoke. I couldn’t hear anything. Then he put the truck in gear and carried on. The dust from the truck rose and settled and the night air grew quiet once again.
Uncle Frank, she said.
I waited. The gravel road between us seemed wider now, as if the half-ton, or the presence of her uncle in the half-ton, had created a rift.
And then I said something that I immediately regretted. It was not in my nature but it came off my tongue spontaneously.
I’m going to write a poem about you, I said. April in Snow Lake.
She was startled. Her hands went to her handlebars and she climbed back onto her bike. She looked at me with disdain, or so it seemed, and then she rode off. She did not look back. I raised my hand and started to call out, but I said nothing. My statement, I thought, had been a declaration of affection and admiration. I wanted to follow her and apologize, but she was already far away, riding quickly. A vehicle approached from behind me and I stepped off the road to let it pass. It was the same half-ton that had stopped earlier. The truck sped by, and in the distance I saw the lights of the rear brakes come on and the truck pulled to the side of the road. Dimly, in the failing light, I saw a man climb out, walk around, pick up April’s bike and throw it into the bed of the half ton. April climbed into the passenger’s side, and the truck disappeared.
The following Sunday seven kids showed up. The original three plus four more. I was pleased with myself and imagined that the news had gotten around that I had something to offer. I had purchased some rope and wire from the hardware store and that day I showed them how to set rabbit snares. April seemed distant, though at one point she said that I had placed the wire too high, the rabbit would scoot right under, and she showed me her way of doing it. Her hands were nimble as she cut a branch and attached the snare. Her tongue touched the top of her teeth as she worked.
At the end of the day I asked her if she might want to walk with me one evening, maybe out to the shore of the lake. She smiled and shrugged and said that I could come get her. She lived in the yellow house on Larch. With her Uncle Frank. I managed to get off early Monday evening and, after showering, I walked through the town and found her house exactly where she said it would be. This surprised me and I wondered why it surprised me. Who did I think April was? She answered the door and stepped outside into the dusk and without a word we began to walk. Eventually she said that her uncle thought it was strange to go out walking with no purpose. What’s the point?
You enjoy nature, look at the stars, smell the air. I said this with complete authenticity.
She sniffed the air but seemed unimpressed.
April was wearing a different coloured T-shirt, blue. Her bare arms were smooth and brown. I felt extremely lucky but I said nothing. We walked to the town park and sat on the swings and after a bit I pushed her and gave her an under duck, but where any other girl would have screamed and cried out, April said and did nothing. We sat on a bench and she told me a little of her history. She and her sister had lived with her mother in Winnipeg. She went to high school there for a while. And then her mother went away and her uncle, who worked in the zinc mine, took her and Beverly up north. There were four of them in the house, including her grandma.
The next night, Tuesday, we held hands at the edge of the lake.
Wednesday we kissed briefly. One time.
Thursday she asked if I was still writing that poem. And she laughed. She said, My uncle wants to go hunting with you. He heard you liked to snare rabbits and that you fish and stuff. He said he can learn something.
Friday, when I knocked at the door, her Uncle Frank opened it and said, Tomorrow we’ll go hunting. He didn’t ask if I wanted to go.
What’ll we hunt? I asked.
Stope rats, he said. I’ll pick you up at seven.
I was ready and waiting at seven the following morning. Frank showed up at nine wearing a checked jacket and jeans and heavy boots and a baseball cap that said Black Cat. In my backpack I was carrying my filleting knife, hatchet, a sandwich, an apple, and some rope. The compass was in my pocket. First thing he did was take my pack and look through it. Then he tossed it on the porch and said, Don’t need that shit. Trust yourself.
I thought we might be driving somewhere but we weren’t, we were walking. We walked out of town and cut off into the bush. He was a heavy man with short legs but even so I couldn’t keep up with him. He walked straight into the bush and kept walking. The terrain was rocky, interspersed with swamps that he sometimes skirted and sometimes waded through. By noon my runners were soaked. At some
point he chose a flat rock to sit down on and indicated that I should join him. He pulled a chocolate bar from his pocket and gave me half. He had a rifle, what he called his Winchester three aught eight, and when I asked him again what we were hunting he said, Animals. While we were sitting in the sunlight, not talking, a deer stepped delicately in front of us, about a hundred feet up the path, and lifted her head. I pointed. Frank had already seen her but he made no move to raise his rifle. The deer saw us, and bounded away.
Too far to drag out all that meat, he said. He stood, hefted the rifle, and carried on.
We passed by a waterfall at which we kneeled and drank from deeply. The sun was high and hot and I dunked my head and wet my arms and thought at that moment that the world I was in was beautiful and strange and that there was nothing to be afraid of.
Frank sat and lit a cigarette. Offered me one and I shook my head. He talked then. He said, If you get lost in the bush don’t run around in fucking circles. It’ll just tire you out. What’ll kill you is the exposure and lack of water and your own panic. You think you’re pretty smart, he said. He wasn’t being mean, at least his face wasn’t mean, but his words sounded dark and threatening.
I don’t think that.
You like my niece. April.
She’s nice.
’Course she’s nice. Hell. You probably want to marry her.
Oh, I don’t think so.
Not good enough for you? he asked, and he laughed. His laugh was high and loud and I realized that he wasn’t laughing at me but at his own joke. He said, You have to pass a test if you want to be in the Greyeyes family. Two choices. Suck my dick, or catch an eagle with your bare hands. He laughed again. Slapped me on the back. He said, April knows the bush. How to snare and skin a rabbit, how to read the stars, the sun, the moon. She can shoot and gut and bleed a deer, quarter her, and travois her out of the bush single-handed. Bet she never told you any of that.
