The Afterlife of Birds

by Elizabeth Philips

  “Dan, I’ve got a customer,” Henry cuts him off. “Maybe you should just go back to bed.” The customer is tapping his keys impatiently on the counter.

  Dan says something about Rae not getting home till dark, and Henry warns him that the storm could delay her, but Dan doesn’t seem to take it in. Dan mentions the treadmill — and Henry gets off the line before his brother can tell him again what a wonderful thing it is to be as sick as a dog.

  Ed is snapping earmuffs on as Henry types up the invoice. He says over his shoulder, “If the storm is bad, you might want to put the Taurus off till tomorrow.” Ed is going home, to his house just across the alley from the shop, to check on his ancient mother, who has been known to go out and do the shovelling. His mother is in her nineties, and tiny, and so hunched over that she doesn’t have far to bend to manoeuver the shovel along the sidewalk.

  By three-thirty, the street is already blown in and cars are crawling by. Loose white sheets of snow coalesce and then disperse, making and unmaking lofty, amorphous shapes. The temperature has dropped again, to around minus twenty-six, and the hard flakes, more like pellets now, scritch dryly against the pane. A string of colossal, loosely connected vertebrae forms and then dissolves. Henry is just about to turn away from the window, to go back to his desk, when Mrs. Bogdanov’s Mercedes lurches into the parking lot.

  The driver-side door swings open and she emerges wearing a mink coat and hat that make her look twice her usual size. He hasn’t seen her outside of her own house for months and can’t believe she drove twenty blocks in the middle of a storm, a storm that’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. She treads purposefully across the parking lot in her reddish brown pelt.

  Inside the door, she stamps her boots on the carpet, her hat crowned with snow.

  “Good afternoon, Henry,” she sings out cheerfully. She was in the neighbourhood, she says, because she needed to get a few things from Safeway, and she had another thought, it was stupid of her to forget earlier, she didn’t want to inconvenience him, but there is one more thing she needs to ask him, more of a favour, really, though of course she will pay him.

  Her large eyes blink, sage-coloured under the fluorescent light. “I have to have a procedure,” she says, lowering her voice and leaning toward him, though there is no one else in the room, “nothing major, though it is —” she breaks off. “Well, anything to do with doctors, it is never minor. I will need for you to come by. I could ask Michael,” her old friend, also Russian, “but he is so busy. He will take me to the hospital — okay,” she holds up a hand, as if to reassure Henry on that point, “but I will afterwards need some little assistance.” She’s holding her black leather purse with both hands; he can feel the intensity of her grip from across the counter.

  “Of course, that should be no problem, Mrs. Bogdanov,” he says smoothly, though he wants to equivocate, to draw a line somehow, but then Ed comes down the hall from the back entrance, returned from wrestling the snow shovel out of his mother’s hands, and Henry is glad to see his bald pate, the shoulders of his blue sweater vest covered with snow.

  “Maria,” Ed says, “what you out in this weather for? It’s the storm of the century out there, that’s what they’re sayin’ on the radio.” Ed sees the Mercedes in the lot. “You drove over. For god’s sake, Henry.” Ed glowers at him. “Listen, you drive the lady home and I’ll tail you. I’ll fetch Henry back here in no time,” he says to Mrs. Bogdanov to stifle any objections. He hustles, in his duck-footed way, toward the door, where he spins the OPEN sign to CLOSED.

  “But Ed,” Henry says, “the guys are still working on the Ram. The owner’s coming by in the next half-hour to pick it up.”

  They agree that Ed will drive Mrs. Bogdanov home and Henry will deliver the Mercedes the next day. They’ll park it in one of the bays overnight, because of course the thing won’t start if they leave it outside. Henry is a little surprised by how readily she agrees to this arrangement.

  BY FOUR-THIRTY, the garage is almost empty. Both the mechanics are in the lunchroom drinking yet more lousy coffee. Every few minutes a blast of laughter ricochets down the hall toward Henry at the reception desk. An air of festivity has probably arisen all across the city, a heady mix of communal misery and excitement.

  By five-fifteen, the last customer’s car is gone and the mechanics have cleared off. Henry calls Dan and Rae’s number, then Dan’s cell, and gets no answer. He’d like to go straight home, have something hot to drink, and tinker with the crow while the backyard fills up with snow. But he’ll have to drive across town, and across the river, to check on his brother. Maybe he’s collapsed on his treadmill; maybe his fever has spiked again and he’s so delirious that he’s thinking of putting on his skimpy running gear and going for a run. If only Dan would pick up his damn phone. Henry tries both numbers again — no answer.

  He steps out the back door, shoots the two deadbolts, and kicks his way through the snow to his car. It’s so dark out, it could be midnight or later. While the car’s warming up, he brushes a heavy layer of snow off the windshield.

  The tires groan as he eases the car out of the alley and into the street. He has to guess where the right-hand lane is as he drives slowly down 19th, speeding up whenever he thinks he’s in danger of getting stuck. The white ground is shifting, oceanic.

  At the intersection just before the bridge, the undercarriage catches on a snowdrift, a grab from underneath that slows the car almost to a standstill — and then it frees itself with a sudden surge, and Henry has to steer hard to keep from skidding into the oncoming traffic.

  The snow is pelting his windshield, but the bridge itself is relatively clear, the river below covered in irregular hummocks of ice, the frozen surface piling up against itself in ragged scallops.

  When he reaches Dan’s neighbourhood, the wind lessens and the snow comes down in a curtain, a moving fabric falling soundlessly: storybook snow. A woodcutter wouldn’t be out of place in this idyll, pulling his day’s haul home on a sled, leading his old, tired workhorse. Before he reaches his one-room cabin, he’ll meet a mysterious stranger who will tell him things about himself, or his family, that a stranger couldn’t possibly know. If Henry were the woodcutter, the stranger would know of the old woman who wants to cast a spell over him, of his brother, who is trying to run farther and faster, his feet barely touching the earth. The oracle would know of Henry’s room full of bird skeletons, but like all diviners he answers questions with other questions, refusing to reveal the solution to the conundrum of the bones Henry’s destined to puzzle over again and again.

  Henry brakes cautiously, the white shroud parting; here is the stranger, not a man in an ermine robe but someone stranded in a red Pontiac, a little car dwarfed by the enormous spruce that loom over the street like hooded giants.

  The car, a Sunfire, is wedged at a forty-five degree angle across the intersection, wheels spinning uselessly in the clogged ruts. Henry pulls over, careful not to get stuck himself, and flicks on his hazard lights. He draws his toque down over his ears and gets out into the stinging air, hurries over to the car and raps on the window, which scrolls down immediately. The driver, a woman with blonde, spiked hair, smiles up at him, a hand angled over her eyes to fend off the snow and the glare of the streetlight.

  “Nice night, eh,” she shouts over the car’s racing engine. He glimpses chalk-white skin, a determined jawline.

  “Yeah,” Henry says, meaning it, happy to be out in the snow — a rescuer. “Want me to push?”

  “Yes, please!” She smiles gratefully up at him.

  Walking around to the rear bumper, he calls over his shoulder, “I’ll let you know when to hit the gas.” He’s not going to nag her about her bald tires; he’s not going to call her a tow truck. He’s going to lift her car up with all the strength in his manly shoulders and then wave as she drives safely away. He digs the toes of his boots into the old compacted snow beneath the fresh stuff and leans against the bumper.

  “
Okay! Go!” he hollers, and the engine revs and he throws his weight into it. On the third heave, the wheels grip, the car climbs over the ruts, and Henry plunges after it, all but dropping to his knees in the snow.

  The car is free, on solid ground at the far side of the intersection. The Sunfire’s horn hiccups at him and the woman’s hand appears out the open window: a summons. You are who you are, Henry believes, and a stranger can’t really tell you anything you don’t know about yourself, but he can’t help himself, he’s hopeful.

  Dusting off his pants, he trudges over and bends to the window. A soft breath of warm air rises from the car’s interior. As he meets the woman’s blue eyes he hears the latch on the trunk spring open.

  “Help yourself to a twelve,” she says, gesturing behind her. He steps around to the back of the car and sees that the trunk is packed with cases of lager. Mostly 24s and a few 12s. She must be on her way to a big party, a stag or something. The guys who are going to swill the stuff pride themselves on getting around in their Jeeps and Dodge Rams, their Land Rovers and Humvees. They walk with their hips thrust out, leading with their balls. Henry tried once, when he was a teenager, to walk that way. Dan discovered Henry in front of the hall mirror, practising, and laughed so hard he collapsed and lay on his back drumming his heels against the floor.

  She’s probably the sister of the guy getting married, Henry thinks as he stands staring at almost two hundred bottles of beer, a lump of snow melting between the inside of his boot and his ankle. And he’ll forgive her, or he’ll cover for her, this brother, he’ll say it was his mistake if there is one less case. Henry hopes she isn’t late; he hopes that, if she is, the guys are nice to her when she pulls up with her liquid cargo.

  The car door opens and the woman comes toward him, and Henry is, for a moment, mesmerized by the backlit tumult of snow, and he feels himself rising, flying upwards amidst a dizzying cascade of white on white.

  He scrubs at his face with a mitted hand. The woman is wearing a navy wool suit, very business-like, under her unzipped parka, and a large pair of white moon boots, as if she were heading out into the woods to check her trap line.

  Henry laughs. “Nice boots.” The woman doesn’t look at her feet. She stands by her car’s open trunk. There’s a scattering of snow across the red and blue cases.

  “That’s a lot of brew,” he says conversationally.

  “Yup,” she nods. The snow is falling even faster now. They’ll both be covered if they stand here much longer — waiting for a horse, a sled, a wise sorcerer. “I have an excess of beer in my life, so please take one — I mean,” and she’s speaking slowly now, as if to someone of limited intelligence, “take twelve.” She frees her wrist from her parka sleeve and looks at her watch. “Thanks for the push,” she says, “but I’m late, I’ve gotta run.”

  And she grins. A crooked, heart-lifting grin; he’s slow, but she likes him anyway.

  Henry nods, even though water is his drink. Or orange juice cut with soda. Or, on a night like tonight, scalding black coffee.

  “Have a party,” she says, yanking a case out of the trunk with one swift, almost vicious motion while banging the trunk closed with her other hand. She lobs the case in the direction of his midriff and his hands float out automatically to take it. Maybe she’s a bar maid, he thinks, and feels a line of sweat breaking out at his hairline.

  “You should replace those tires,” Henry calls after her, as she slips into her car. A bar maid, Jesus. “I work at Ed’s Garage —”

  Her head appears out the window, an impatient frown on her face.

  “… and we have a tire sale on,” he finishes lamely.

  “Hell, maybe I will,” she hollers back. Her voice is gravelly, as if she’s been up late smoking and singing. She doesn’t smile again, but he is sure that her eyes soften just a little before the door slams.

  Her smile revealed beautiful, even dentition. The word dentition echoes in his head.

  You are who you are.

  A FEW MINUTES LATER he’s on Dan and Rae’s doorstep, the case of beer under his arm. The TV is blaring so he knocks hard. Almost immediately the door opens and Henry looks into the face of an older man, in his fifties maybe, his reddish hair grizzled with white and shorn like Dan’s, the skin on his face tight over sharp cheekbones. Henry leans back and almost falls off the steps.

  “Careful,” the man says, then pivots neatly out of the way as he sweeps Henry inside with a wave of his arm.

  Henry stamps his feet on the hall mat and bends to remove his boots. The guy is wearing shorts and his bare, bony feet seem incongruous on a day when it can’t seem to stop snowing.

  He straightens up and the man sticks out his hand. His grip is warm and firm, but he isn’t looking at Henry, he’s looking at the case of beer on the floor between them. “Ah,” he murmurs, “refreshments. You are welcome, whoever you are.”

  Henry explains that he’s Dan’s brother, and that he drove across the city to check up on him because Dan didn’t answer his phone.

  “I heard the phone, but … I’m Lazenby,” he says. “You can call me Laz.” He swoops up the twelve-pack in one hand and drops the other onto Henry’s shoulder.

  In the living room, a DVD is playing at full volume, an old Western. Horses and riders are charging across the screen, guns blamming away and hooves churning up grey dust.

  “Join me?” Lazenby says, setting the beer down beside the TV. He shoves a pile of newspapers off the couch where he has obviously made himself at home.

  Henry’s jaw tightens. “I just want to see how Dan is.”

  “Sleeping.” Lazenby jerks his head in the direction of the bedroom. “I made him some soup,” he says, “and after that he couldn’t keep his eyes open.”

  Henry glances toward the kitchen, which is immaculate, no sign of dishes, no clutter of pots and pans. He stands there, uncertain what to do. He wants to go down the hall and at least poke his nose in the door. Lazenby has his eyes on the screen but his body is canted toward Henry. Why does he feel like a man he’s never met before is going to stop him from visiting his ailing brother?

  “I’ll just take a look,” Henry says, forcing his feet to move toward the bedroom as Lazenby helps himself to a beer.

  Dan’s in bed, facing the window. He does seem to be asleep, despite the racket from the TV, which seems louder now, as if Lazenby has cranked up the volume. “You know where the gold is hid,” a man drawls; there’s the sound of gunshots and Lazenby laughs.

  Henry steps toward the bed, the floor creaking under his feet. Dan mumbles something, shifting slowly toward Henry.

  “Laz?” Dan hits the button on the bedside lamp and halfsits up, his mouth raw-looking. “Oh. Hank.” He squints at his watch. “What time is it?”

  “After six,” Henry says. “How are you?”

  Dan makes a sound that’s a cross between a grunt and a groan.

  “Did Rae call? The airport’s probably closed. We must have had six inches in the last two hours. The drifts are big.”

  Dan slides the phone off the bedside table and thumbs it open. “You met the man, eh?”

  “Yeah.” Henry doesn’t mention the woman in the red Sunfire.

  Dan listens for a minute then snaps his cell shut. “Rae’s snowed in. She won’t get home tonight.” He lies down again. “Laz needs a place to crash, so at least he can sleep on the couch without pissing Rae off. She’s been pretty rude to him for some reason. You know how many marathons he’s run?” Dan lowers his voice. “Thirty-six!”

  “What’s he do for work?” Henry can’t resist asking.

  “He’s kind of between things, that’s why he’s couch-surfing.”

  “Well, I think I’ll be going.” Henry doesn’t blame Rae. He wouldn’t want an aging, apparently homeless marathon runner sleeping on his couch either. “Want me to get you anything? Groceries maybe?”

  “Laz got me some things.” Dan gives his pillow a whack and draws the duvet up under his chin. “Anyway, I’ll
be better tomorrow. I’m going running with Laz the day after that so I have to be.”

  Henry has his doubts about this, but if that’s what Dan wants to believe, well, he doesn’t want to get snowed in watching a corny Western while Laz guzzles free beer. Henry longs to be at home, even if all that waits for him there is another grilled cheese sandwich and an unfinished crow skeleton.

  He throws the car into gear, cranks the wheel hard and almost collides with a passing minivan. Was that how Lazenby survived, by helping himself to other people’s stuff?

  As Henry guides his car around the ruts where the Sunfire was stuck, he wonders where the other cases of beer have ended up, where the woman has landed in her moon boots and blue wool suit.

  He can see her standing around a table of finger food, laughing, a bottle of beer in one hand. Her head tipped back, her beautiful little incisors gleaming.

  Five

  IN HIS CAR THE NEXT MORNING, the radio informs Henry that hundreds of people were stranded at the airport overnight, and in a host of other peculiar places, like Walmart and Canadian Tire. The radio broadcasts warnings every few minutes: don’t go out, don’t walk, don’t drive. So what is he doing wrenching the wheel this way and that, dodging two- and three-foot drifts? There’s a whumpff as he batters through another mound of wind-whipped snow and then skids to a stop in front of Mrs. Bogdanov’s brick house.

  The morning is eerily peaceful, the sky full of patchy, roiling cloud, the snow a radiant silky white tinged with blue: morning snow.

  He steps out and is immediately knee-deep as he flounders toward the old woman’s house. Dragging one leg out of and then the other into a roll of snow occupying her lawn like a monument to ocean surf. He’s almost laughing now — though he can’t spare the breath — because the twenty-five-foot walk to her front door has become a serious hike. When every distance is not near, he half-sings, then stands resting, legs encased in thigh-high snow. He listens for the next line but it doesn’t come and he plunges on, almost falling over, one gloved hand punching through white crust.