No Call Too Small

by Oscar Martens

  —Whatever.

  No, not whatever, Farah thinks. You’ve got to be able to take the good with the bad. Sometimes people know what they’re doing. Sometimes you’ve got to give credit. This event, this shining, perfect event deserves more than whatever. They worked as a team, bringing that boat in as they had probably done dozens of times before. Chances are they enjoyed themselves out there, the wife peering over the bow at her reflection in the flat, calm water, the husband enjoying the high tones of his perfectly maintained and operated engine as they motored up Indian Arm for a quiet picnic lunch of goat cheese, fruit, and Raincoast Crisps. That’s what fun is, not standing on the sidelines and criticizing everything.

  Amalio would be good in a boat. He’d tinker and caress their sputtering old outboard until it ran again and that victory, bringing the damn thing back from the dead, would be more fun than if it had never broken down. He’d be fully there, loving everything, coiling a line with the same pleasure with which he’d rub lotion on her back. They’d be fine with no words, rocking gently in their little rented skiff.

  The deep, sickening crack is the sound of a boat that has broken its spine. Every head on the rail swings toward the large, inboard overnighter that just slid off the back of a trailer onto the cement. Reynold thrills to the technical challenges facing the driver, who comes out screaming, unwilling to own this one. The object of blame is the teenager near the winch. The driver can’t back it into the water because the weight of the boat is resting on the skeg. He can’t winch the boat back onto the trailer because it’s too heavy. His only option is to stare at this magnificent display of incompetence until someone with skills and intelligence shows up.

  Farah watches Reynold reach deep-hearted ecstasy. The teenager is paralyzed, shocked by the scope of the damage. The father is not taking in any input from anyone or anything. His world has changed; his day is ruined; a hot red flush of embarrassment spreads across his face. A more experienced man, maybe someone waiting to launch, should come down and talk to the guy, put a hand on his shoulder and tell him, this is what we’re going to do. Some kind man with strong hands and a big truck with a winch in front could come down here and pull that boat back into the cradle. We stop to help the lady who tripped and landed on her groceries, or the kid who didn’t quite pull off the stunt on his skateboard. We rush over and we ask if they’re all right, but no one on the rail is going to do that, not today.

  Reynold watches Farah walk away on those ridiculous lime-green wedge shoes she insists on wearing. She has strange ideas about what’s attractive, and if men sometimes turn and stare is it because they like what they see or they can’t believe someone that young could have such hideous taste? If your income allows you to dress better than your white-trash peers, why not donate that slutty miniskirt and buy something an adult would wear? And hoop earrings? Seriously? This one’s broken, untrainable, more trouble than she’s worth. Sure, maybe she has a big insurance cheque coming, but he’s already bored with the sex, and she already wants to change him. It’s a doomed effort, but for tonight at least, they’ll share the same bed. Between now and then they’re in for exhausting repairs, patching it together one more time.

  The seat belt had held Farah tight long past the impact. She opened her door and twisted the key to turn off the chime. She didn’t know it, but it would be the last time she would see her faithful six-year-old Cavalier. For the first time she thought the name odd. Why not a Buick Indignant or a Ford Sarcastic? Over the ticking sound of the cooling metal, she could hear the drunk that hit her making his walking-speed getaway in a small, crappy car that was making a horrible, most definitely terminal, grinding sound. After that it was quiet. A cool, fresh wind blew down the street, scrubbed clean by fir trees in Mundy Park, perhaps. She took in the smell of cut grass and the very faint sound of someone’s wind chimes. A light turned on over the steps of a nearby house, and it wasn’t long before a man about her father’s age was there to help her, to ask quietly if she was all right, if she was bleeding. He didn’t watch from the window, point and laugh until the ambulance came. He didn’t leave her lying in a cradle of broken glass and twisted metal. After he checked to see that she wasn’t bleeding out, he held her hand lightly and asked her again if she was okay. Together they listened to the sirens get louder, because that’s what people do.

  NEW

  THE LAST TIME MERCER CHECKED A trash bag in the middle of his field it was full of dead kittens. He automatically thought of Nathan Wills, the neighbour’s kid, doing donuts on his field, wrecking crops, until the black garbage bag came sliding out over the dropped tailgate, the kid too drunk to notice or care. What other explanation was there? If you didn’t want to burn your trash, or take it to the dump, you chucked it in the ditch, or in the woods. No one sane and sober would take the time to dump a single trash bag in the middle of his field. It may have been unfair to blame the kid every time a shovel went missing or someone backed into a fence post, but it was easy, so things mysterious attached themselves to Nathan, a sixteen-year-old alcoholic.

  Mercer walks over the stubble toward another black garbage bag. He squints, his eyes reluctant to accept that the semi-transparent, shredded crepe material forms a sack shape but is not a plastic bag. He slows, more confused, his foot sinking into something squishy. His boot tread is filled with mashed guts that trail off into a tail. He uses a pen to pick it out and then notices three more creatures, moving slowly through the stubble. On his knees he moves closer to the nearest one, which looks like a small halibut with the tail of a stingray. The speckled bumps resemble fish scales, but closer in he sees it’s the rough texture of the skin. Two slits near the tail open, and red powder puffs out in superfine particles, practically aerosol. It makes him sneeze. He turns the thing over with a stick, revealing dozens of short white stalks that move in coordinated waves. The word peristalsis comes to mind, however inaccurate. Creepy and beautiful.

  The creatures seem to move together, and drawing a line from the black sack to their current location, it looks like they’re headed for the ditch. Beyond the road there is another stubbled hay field, bush, then the river. Kat takes her time getting to the site, unaffected by Mercer’s excited tone on the phone. She brings a shovel. He didn’t ask her to bring a shovel. Her truck is still running, the door open, the annoying chime telling them so, while Kat stands over the things, stern-faced and ready.

  —What are they?

  —I don’t know. I think they’re new. What’s the shovel for?

  —I’m going to smash them.

  —Why?

  —They might breed. They might eat crops. They might be dangerous.

  Mercer grabs the shovel from her and stands between her and the things.

  —You don’t know that. They could be perfectly harmless.

  —Okay, but you remember this moment and what you did when there were only three of them.

  Kat yells over her shoulder as she walks back to the truck: Ernie is coming on Wednesday at nine to look at the PTO on the tractor, and Wendy called from the bank. By this time, Walter has seen two trucks stopped by the road, one with the door open, and two people standing in the middle of the field staring down at something. He simply can’t pass by. He meets Kat halfway.

  —Everything okay, Kat?

  —Everything’s fine, Walter. Mercer made some friends. They’re new.

  —What do you mean, new?

  —Go check it out for yourself.

  Walter is the first to be ready to help out a neighbour, whatever is required. Walter will also be the first to update everyone he meets on the status of an event in the middle of Mercer’s field.

  —Looks like a grouper.

  —It doesn’t look anything like a grouper. It looks like a halibut fish with a stingray’s tail.

  —Nope, looks like a marbled grouper.

  The two men eventually agree that what the things look like has nothing to do with what they are. Walter claims they must be amphibians, given their fi
sh-like body shape, possibly nocturnal, most certainly used to much warmer climates. The barb on the tail is probably poisonous. He makes many more conclusions and assumptions about the creatures because neither Mercer nor the creatures can dispute any of it. Mercer asks Walter to keep this to himself, which he does on the quiet walk back to his truck, but only because his cell phone is in the glove compartment and there’s no one in yelling distance.

  Turns out Mercer’s concerns about secrecy are overblown. No flood of nosey neighbours appears within the hour or the next three. There’s something new in the middle of his field on this bright October morning, and no one seems to care. Later, Kat calls to say that his dinner has been prepared, served, then wrapped and refrigerated. Around sunset he goes back to the house for a flashlight, a blanket, and a lawn chair. At three in the morning he wishes he’d brought his jacket as well. He heads back to the house and tries to slip into bed without waking Kat. He spends an hour staring at the ceiling, thinking about the creatures, then heads back out to the site. Kat calls at six to tell him that breakfast has been prepared and then thrown in the garbage. Also, the gate isn’t going to fix itself, Wendy called again about the line of credit, and Ernie is coming tomorrow to look at the PTO on the tractor. Mercer has to be there to show him what’s wrong with it, and the guy gets three hundred dollars just for showing up, whether he works on the thing or not, you know? Also, it’s time to clean the shop. She spent half an hour looking for the oil filter wrench and had to use a bicycle chain instead.

  Nathan Wills is suddenly there, and Mercer, startled, kicks over his thermos.

  —What you got there?

  Mercer stands to get between the kid and the creatures. What you got there? Coming out of any other mouth it wouldn’t cause concern, but when the kid smiles you know somehow, somewhere, someone has been or will be hurt, robbed, or lied to. He stands with his hands behind his back, idle and twitchy. There’s nothing but a trail of damage behind the kid, some of it minor but all of it bad, like a long black smear that tars the landscape. The kid’s hands are coming out. His hands are coming out from around his back and Mercer will have to react in some way, to protect the creatures or himself. The hands come out with a phone and Mercer wonders where he stole it.

  Mercer can’t allow the creatures to be covered by a trail of tar, but he’s so desperate to show them off that he takes the kid’s interest at face value. It’s possible the kid is interested in something other than himself this one time. Mercer can’t restrain his fatherly pride, showing the speckled skin that changes colour, the mesmerizing motion tentacles on the underside, the tiny red powder clouds that puff out when you get too close. He looks up mid-sentence and the kid is gone.

  Mercer calculates that the current course and speed will put the little guys at the edge of the road at around five o’clock, half an hour from now. If they feel vibrations when heavy trucks pass, they might have the brains to know what that means, to recognize that as a hazard, but he’s unwilling to gamble their lives on that. Left alone, they would struggle with the gravel for a while until the vibration was detected, the sun would disappear for a quarter second, and then they’d be one with the tire tread. He feels like an ambassador, guiding the little guys away from danger, keeping them safe in their new environment. He races back to the house for a bucket and a spatula when they’re fifteen minutes from crossing. Sure, it’s undignified, and a very baffled Jennifer Muir will have a story after she passes slowly by, trying to make sense of the things in Mercer’s hand, but the only thing to do is to flip them into the bucket and transfer them to the other side of the road.

  Mercer shivers in the dark, praying for someone, a wife even, to bring him a ham sandwich and strong coffee. Catnaps in the chair do little to relieve the fatigue that pulls him down like extra gravity. He was expecting a little support. He assumed there would be just a little understanding, even though his mission can’t be explained and perhaps isn’t rational or productive. Does a smooth marriage depend on restricting himself to a very narrow range of activities? The little guys push on, although the cold seems to slow them down. Maybe a ten-degree drop would be fatal. Mercer isn’t taking a chance tonight, especially with the frost warning. First, he tries a layer of hay, but when he peeks under, they’ve almost stopped. Next he goes back to the house and picks up the global warmer. Heating the outdoors is stupid, but Kat likes the patio heater because it “takes the edge off” after sunset. Why not put on a sweater, like people have been doing for centuries? No, she’s got to fire up a propane torch and heat everything within a twenty-foot radius. She’s sure to be first in line for the outdoor air-conditioning units as soon as the wizards in the create-demand-out-of-nothing department realize the potential market. Tonight the global warmer saves lives, the glowing red beacon reviving the little guys, who start moving forward again, all except one.

  Kat calls mid-morning to scold Mercer for missing Ernie’s call. Ernie checked the PTO and there appeared to be nothing wrong with it. She tried to imitate the noise it made under load but that just made him laugh. He left, insisting it was fine.

  —Fuck all that! Fuck the PTO, and the bank, and the gate, and the shop, and whatever else you got lined up. I just want to do this one thing. Can I have this one thing?

  —There are a lot of things I want that I can’t have. I’m trying to run a farm here. Single-handed, apparently. There’s stuff that’s got to be done, and you’re not helping.

  —What has it been, a couple of days? Is everything so fragile it will fall apart if I’m gone for a couple of days? There’s something special happening out here, Kat. Can you look up from your daily grind long enough to be curious?

  Twenty years, over seven thousand days running this farm and a few days off is too much. How is that different from slavery? What if he needed a week off? Or a month? What if he wanted to spend half a year in Australia? Someone calls Mercer and he turns around. Simon, with the look of a wholesome farm kid, claims to be a scientist from the University of Regina. The clip on YouTube was forwarded to him by a colleague whose son had been showing all his friends. The tag listed Bethune as the location, and once in town, Simon was directed by a gas-station attendant and one of Mercer’s neighbours. Simon stops talking when he sees them.

  —Oh, my god!

  A man with a degree, an educated man, who came all the way from Regina to Mercer’s field, gets down on his hands and knees and puts his face inches away from the creatures.

  —Oh, my god!

  Mercer doesn’t know science, but that doesn’t sound like a very scientific thing to say.

  —It looks a bit like a giant Triops, but it isn’t.

  Red powder puffs into his face and he stumbles back, wiping it off.

  —Don’t worry, it’s harmless. It might make you sneeze but that’s all.

  Mercer takes Simon out in the field to see the sack. When Mercer glances back to the road he sees Kat’s truck stopped close to the global warmer. As soon as she lifts the shovel from the back of the truck they’re off, Mercer with a head start, Simon trailing him, shouting questions that are ignored. Kat’s a little faster, carrying the shovel at shoulder height like a spear. She slows in the area where the creatures are and starts searching. Mercer is close, but not fast enough to stop her from raising her shovel high and slamming it down. She raises it again, but Mercer grabs it and twists her around his hips until she lets go and falls over. She’s strong, something he had forgotten. He stands over her with the shovel in his hands. He almost never sees her in anything other than jeans and a T-shirt. In the fall she adds a jean jacket. In the winter she switches to a Carhartt with a thick lining. One time, the hottest day this summer, she wore an undershirt while digging in the garden, unaware of the well-defined muscles in her back and shoulders and the effect they had on him. Everything is fragile and fleeting. How did he ever think otherwise? You can’t protect any one thing from the forces arrayed against it. You can only enjoy it while it’s here. She lies in the dirt, stu
nned by his force. She scrambles away, without turning her back on him, and walks the rest of the way to the truck. He follows her, reaches into the cab, and holds the gearshift in park.

  —That guy back there is a scientist. He came to look at the creature that you just mashed into the ground. What the hell is wrong with you? That’s a scientist from the university and he came all the way out here to look at those things, and all you can think to do is mash one into the ground like it’s a clump of goddamn manure.

  —You stay out here and play with your freaky friends all you want, Mercer. It doesn’t really matter, because Wendy won’t extend our line of credit. You figure out how to stitch together another year. I’m going to my sister’s for a while. Have fun with the farm.

  Kat takes advantage of Mercer’s shock, pulling the stick down into drive and roaring off, the tires shooting stones and dirt at him and into the grill of his truck. Of course a life can fall apart, but it’s the speed of it that’s dizzying. Kat and Wendy are the same: for years you make contributions, and then you have a little rough spot and suddenly you’re shit in their eyes. Everything you built, everything you did is nothing.

  —Mercer, is that your dog?

  Simon is pointing to Mercer’s German shepherd, Thunder, who holds one of the creatures in his mouth. Oh, it’s a fun game for Thunder, yes it is, yes it is. The red powder makes Thunder sneeze, but he’s not letting go of his new toy, no he isn’t. Mercer steps forward and Thunder takes a crouched stance, ready to run. Mercer freezes and Simon calls out from his position, too scared to move.

  —He’s going to bury that somewhere, isn’t he?

  When the two men move at the same time, Thunder is gone. There are no remaining creatures, not even the one Kat splattered, probably snatched by Thunder while Mercer was fighting with her. The only thing left to show Simon is the crepe sack. The black tissue crumbles easily between Simon’s fingers, and he mumbles to himself as if Mercer isn’t there, taking measurements, photos and samples. He asks the question, to no one in particular: