The stairs are flooded with people now, a bottleneck at the top, with three guys jogging in place while another group ascends. One of the joggers is wearing a bright blue jacket and a black bandana that doesn’t quite hide what could be very short red hair. The bottleneck clears and all three are descending at a terrific clip, so fast it’s like they’re in a controlled fall, and yes, that’s definitely Dan in the blue jacket. Henry can’t believe his luck — a search of not hours but minutes. He’ll talk to the idiot then go home and work on his crow.
Dan’s well ahead of the other two and almost at the bottom of the stairs; nobody can keep up with a guy who runs all the time.
Henry trots toward the bridge, and is within speaking distance of his brother when Dan’s feet hit the ground and he begins to run with a fresh shot of energy.
“Dan!” Henry rifles his brother’s name at his bright blue back.
The wind seems to be buoying Dan up the incline away from the bridge while simultaneously buffeting Henry, catching in his pant legs, hobbling him.
“Dan!” Henry hollers, breaking into a run himself now, and this time Dan casts a look over his shoulder, his face impassive for a beat, and then he grins, and Henry can’t help himself, he grins back.
“Hey Dan! I need to talk —” He’s yelling into an empty space that’s opened up, no one between him and Dan, but his perverse sibling isn’t stopping, isn’t even slowing down, in fact he’s running backwards up the snow-packed trail, the distance between them stretching like taffy.
“Hank,” Dan yells, smiling wickedly now. “You coming with?”
“Wait!” Henry squawks, his legs thrashing uselessly beneath him, stiff as blocks of wood.
As Dan glides farther and farther away, Henry stumbles to a halt; his brother is facing away from him again, floating up and over the shoulder of the riverbank, where he pirouettes, and calls to Henry, in long, drawn-out syllables, “Where’s my wolverine?” Henry thinks he sees Lazenby’s grizzled head and in heartbeat they’re both out of sight.
Henry walks slowly back toward the weir. If Dan had stopped, if his brother were walking with him now, if Dan were still with Rae — if Dan gave a shit about anything other than running. If he had agreed to call, maybe even visit, their mother, who hasn’t talked to him since his birthday party. If Henry weren’t the only one sitting at the kitchen table as their sixty-two-year-old mother lists all the reasons she just might want to do something different at this juncture in her life, like travel to BC and see the gardens there, or take a cruise down the Nile with friends, or visit that cousin of hers who moved to Australia and has scarcely been heard from since. “If, if, if,” Henry mutters, stumbling over a lump of ice on the path.
He takes a deep breath and trains his binoculars on the river island upstream. A pair of small dark birds, goldeneyes, are swimming in what must be a terrific current, twenty-five feet above the weir.
Henry gradually realizes that someone is standing a little too near him and he lowers the glasses to find Marcie at his side. She’s wearing a voluminous yellow coat, and her face, always round but usually taut, is verging on pudgy.
“You know, I had a feeling I might run into you here,” she says with a big smile.
“Did you?” Henry says.
“It’s so peaceful.” She gestures at the waterfall, the sleek, unceasing flow.
“There’ll be pelicans, come April,” Henry says. “I’d never seen pelicans up close before I moved to the city. They fish right in this corner,” and he points to the spot where the big white birds like to bob, dipping their heads into the current.
“I’ll look forward to that,” Marcie says. “I think I’m taking an apartment on 9th Avenue.”
“Only a few blocks from me,” he says just as a mountain bike, with its dark-visored rider, bears down on them — Henry has to pull Marcie to one side as the bike swooshes by.
“We’re just supposed to get out of their goddamn way,” Henry says from between clenched teeth.
“Easy, Henry,” Marcie says.
“Sorry,” he says, “but I’m a little frustrated right now.” And then he’s telling her that he hasn’t been able to get Dan to return phone calls, even though their mother is desperate to talk to him. Henry doesn’t say about what.
“He sure doesn’t want to stop moving, does he,” Marcie says.
“So you saw me chasing after him like an idiot?”
“Not much else you could have done, Henry,” she murmurs sympathetically.
“And then all he can think about is the wolverine —”
“Wolverine — did I hear you right?”
“Well, the wolverine thing is — just something I’d promised him. A bone. I hoped he’d forgotten all about it. But apparently not.”
“I didn’t know he was interested in bones too.”
“He’s not, usually. This is a bone he wants to carry,” he says, “as a kind of talisman.”
A couple of women are approaching on the viewing platform, each of them walking an enormous long-legged dog the colour of a cougar. They call hello to Marcie and the dogs tug at their leashes but they don’t stop and when they’ve left, she tells him the women are sisters and the dogs are brothers. “That’s a new kind of family,” she says, suppressing a laugh.
“Come on, let’s walk. I’m getting chilled.” She puts a gloved hand on his arm and clasps it firmly, and he feels his breath catch, like a hitch in his chest. Her eyes are very green in the sunlight.
“What does he want with a wolverine bone?” she asks as they wander along the path. “And what bone exactly?”
Henry hesitates, then grins. “I’ve promised to find Dan the penis bone of a wolverine.”
She hoots with laughter. “Now that’s a funny bone,” she says. “Why on earth —?”
“It’s supposed to be a kind of good luck charm. To help him finish the race.” He doesn’t admit this was his own bright idea.
“What race?”
“A marathon — in a few months, apparently. But who knows, it’s been so long since I’ve really talked to him. It just burns me that he’s left everyone hanging. Mom needs to make some decisions …”
They’ve wandered down to the viewing platform and are just above the waterfall now, leaning against the railing.
“She’s thinking of selling, isn’t she?” Marcie has to raise her voice above the sound of the rushing river.
“You know?”
“Well, it could be a great time to sell. Lots of acreages popping up nearby and they’ll all want plants and trees. It shouldn’t be too hard for her to find a buyer, maybe get quite a good price.”
“Hmm,” Henry says, and shuts his eyes for a moment, his hand on the railing. The thought of his mother selling the place — he can’t quite imagine it.
“The sun is almost warm,” she says, as if that’s what he’s doing, catching a few rays.
They stroll upstream of the weir and Marcie takes his arm as they edge down the icy path into the cottonwoods. At the bottom, where the path curves along the water’s edge, Marcie observes, “Wow, from here you can’t tell that there’s a waterfall ahead.”
“That’s why this area is closed to all boats.” He shows her where the city installs a boom further upriver, once the ice has gone.
Marcie sighs. “I wish you could do that with a life.”
“Put up a boom?”
“Yeah — and stay well back from the falls.” She takes his arm again as they cross a narrow bridge over a little creek. “So, does your mom know about Rae’s illness?”
“I kept feeling like it was up to Dan to tell her — but then I finally did because I thought maybe it would help her understand his weird behaviour. At least, that’s how I pitched it, because really, Marcie, I have no idea if Dan is running away — or just bloody running.” Rae phoned him a couple of days ago, to ask if he had a number for one of Dan’s friends — he didn’t — and he remembers the strained casualness with which she used the words che
motherapy and cancer clinic.
Henry bends to retie one of his boot laces. “So how do you think Rae is doing?” he asks when they’re moving again.
“Her mom’s staying with her now. And I’m going to stay for a few days after her operation. You know Rae. She’s scared but she’s pretty tough.”
“And she still doesn’t know where her boyfriend — or whatever, ex-boyfriend — is living?”
“Not unless she found out today,” Marcie says, “because yesterday she complained about a bill she wanted to send him, she didn’t say for what — hard as it is to believe, she still cuts him some slack.”
They’ve emerged from the woods and are now facing the art gallery. Marcie pats her stomach. “You just don’t know what life is going to throw at you, do you, Henry?”
Henry looks at her in alarm. “You’re not sick too, are you?” Then his eye travels down the length of her jacket to the swell of her belly.
“Oh,” is all Henry can manage.
Marcie is grinning now. “I thought you knew,” she says.
He shakes his head. Is this why she’s moving to the city? “When are you due?”
“The end of June.”
THEY’VE TURNED AROUND and are heading back to the weir, where both their cars are parked. He has a flash of Dan running away from him, refusing, or maybe unable, to stop, but mostly he’s following Marcie’s voice, which is warm, confiding, as she tells him all her plans for this birth; the stuff she needs to buy — a car seat, all sorts of clothes; the particular shade of yellow she plans to paint the baby’s room.
DRIVING HOME, Henry decides that he’ll email Dan from work next week and tell him he’s got a penis bone for him from the taxidermist’s brother — Henry doesn’t know if he’ll find one there, but that’s what he’ll tell Dan. He won’t mention his mother’s desire to see him, or Rae, or anything else that really matters. Either the offer of the bone will get Dan to meet him for one of their usual get-togethers for the first time since his birthday party or it won’t. If he doesn’t find a wolverine bone, he’ll take what he can get, Dan won’t know the difference. Even a raccoon’s little tool might do the trick. A raccoon penis bone is like a crude J or an attenuated, crooked finger — any way you look at it, it’s hooked.
MARCH
Sixteen
EARLY MORNING, and he floats through the forest. Yesterday the snow was melting, but it’s been a cold night and today the drifts have a crust so tough even the deer have been able to walk on the pebbled white surface without falling through. For the last hour, he’s moved freely, wearing his old wooden snowshoes, almost levitating, following no trail, wandering wherever he wants.
Now he’s as far from the house as he can get without crossing the river, which will surely hold him, but if he goes on for too long and the sun touches the ice with its end-of-March warmth, he may not be able to cross back. So he retraces his path, treading on his own snowshoe prints, which are like the spoor of some enormous, mythical creature, and when he feels the snow under his feet begin to soften, he strikes out on a more direct path toward home.
Now he’s in the same clearing where he found the bear skull a few summers ago, the skull that sits on top of his kitchen cupboards back in the city (the city which seems like a dream from here). The air is hushed, a held breath — no birdsong, nothing moving. In an hour, maybe sooner, water will stream from the branches, the snow on the ground will loosen, start to fold under the weight of its own melt, and in a matter of days the coyotes and deer, elk and moose, the bears, will walk directly on the earth again.
Beyond the clearing, Jack pine gives way to black spruce, high and thin and crowded together, the woods dark here, enclosed. Coyote sign, urine, and scat mark a fallen tree, its withered needleless branches bristling like quills.
Another few breaths and he’s at the old gate that’s no longer connected to a fence, still strung with barbed wire, and in the lowest strand, red hair caught in a barb. He plucks off a few strands and rolls it between his fingers. Fox hair.
It was during the summer he turned twelve, after his failed attempts to save the fox kits, that he began collecting bones, scouring the grass and pine duff for tracks and finding deer skulls, a pelvis, sprocket-like vertebrae, the bones reassuringly solid in his hands. The next summer he brought home a gull skeleton he’d found embedded in the clay at the edge of the river, all of its bones present, its feathers and flesh rubbed away by the current. That was the August none of his clothes fit and he had growing pains in his legs that kept him awake at night, and he lay in bed trying to imagine how the skeleton fit together, pairing ribs into perfectly married sets, lining up the toe bones. He didn’t tell anyone what he was doing — he didn’t know what he was doing. He had a book from the town library with a small photo of an eagle skeleton on a back page, posed as if it were about to take flight. That was all he had to go on.
He emerges onto a field of sun-struck drifts and walks in the lee of the aspen, their white and black trunks like columns of light and shade, and he’s sinking deeper with every step — up to his ankles, his shins, then his knees. Each step heavier, more freighted with wet snow than the last. And it seems that the aspen are moving too, the countless slender trunks rippling and flowing shoulder to shoulder with him, marching him toward the house, the house which is in sight now, and when he steps in the door, there will be a message from Marcie, who said she’d call, and she’ll be asking for help, as she promised she would if she needed it, and he’ll agree to go with her when she takes Rae to appointments, and when Rae’s illness makes everything so much more difficult than anyone imagined, he’ll help Marcie in any way he can. He’ll do whatever she says is necessary.
And when he stands there, inside the door, his mother will come toward him, saying his name, and he’ll awaken again into the world where his brother hasn’t been seen for nearly two months, hasn’t answered phone messages or emails, not even when the wolverine bone was offered as a promise or lure, and where Henry’s mother has seemed to have given up on making any decisions about anything until she hears her firstborn’s voice again.
Now, as he approaches the house, the windows have by some trick of light become mirrors, and then they aren’t, and he can see right through them to the open field on the other side, as if the interior walls have dissolved and left only a shell. And he has the absurd idea that only he can keep the house from falling in, only he can break the spell and bring back the life — the strength and colour — to his mother’s house.
JUNE
Seventeen
ON SUNDAY, the first day of June, Henry and Marcie meet down below the gallery. It’s one of those hot spring days on the prairie when you can feel the ground drying out — unless it rains soon, drought is mere weeks away. A Chinese couple wearing straw hats are fishing from the lower bank, an empty basket between them. A beaver dives under, then reappears twenty feet farther out.
The willows rustle behind him, he turns and there Marcie is above him, pushing her way through a too-narrow gap in between the branches. She looks enormous, her cornflower blue maternity top stretched tightly over her belly.
“Stay there. I’ll come up,” Henry calls to her, scrambling up the bank. Reaching her, he takes her arm and directs her to the higher path.
After walking for just a few minutes, she seems breathless. “Wait,” she says.
“Maybe we shouldn’t walk today,” Henry says.
“Yes, I mean, I’d love to but —” She’s on the verge of tears.
“Are you feeling okay? Let’s go sit over there,” he suggests, trying to guide her toward a nearby bench.
She shakes her head. “Rae’s nauseated all the time, and she’s depressed because she’s had to stop working — again — and hand her files over to another lawyer. She’s way too thin, and weak — and I can’t stand it.”
“Is the new drug not —” he starts.
“I want to do something, Henry.”
“It’ll take time,” he say
s, “won’t it, for the new medication to help with the nausea?”
“She has two more treatments to go, Henry. The last one’s not till early July.” Two angry spots of colour flare along her cheekbones. “It’s the not-going-outside that I want to help her with. She doesn’t get out of the damn house enough — and look,” Marcie bobbles her chin around, indicating the trees, the sun on the river. “Such a beautiful spring, day after day of blue sky, but she says she just doesn’t feel like coming down here, not even if I drive her. But she could at least sit in her yard. But her garden — what a mess. I mean, you can’t even call it a garden. A couple of pots with spindly geraniums in them, a tired peony. A big stretch of empty lawn.” She grabs Henry’s wrist. “Rae needs sun, Henry.”
“Marcie,” he says, taking her hands firmly in his own, “sit down for a minute while you tell me what you’ve got in mind.” They sink down onto the bench, into dappled shade.
Marcie shifts her hips slightly so she faces the water, though Henry doubts if she’s actually seeing the river. He studies her profile, her plump cheeks, the sad pouches under her eyes. Only a month, or a little less, till her baby is due. It can’t be good for her to get this worked up.
She inhales, a long, deliberate breath. “I want to build her a garden,” and she adds in a rush, as if she’s afraid Henry is going to interrupt, “I’ve already dug in some compost and new topsoil. Don’t worry, her dad helped me. I didn’t have to lift a thing — he emptied the bags and together we turned over the whole bed — but I don’t want to ask him for more help, he’s got a bad back.”
Her eyes are hazy with tears. “Henry. Rae —”
“We’ll build her a garden then,” he says.
The Afterlife of Birds Page 14
