The Mercy Journals

by Claudia Casper

  When I next woke she was cradling my head in her paw, her rose-coloured tongue licking my face, her leg rubbing my thigh. She smiled—a Cheshire cat—teeth showing. I almost swooned with pleasure. The claw marks on my cheek sang and crackled. My mind shunted back, her tongue lifting traces of brain from my cheek and my sweat running like rain across bodies tinged blue, diluting their dried blood till it ran watery red to the ground.

  Something fell clear in my mind, like a coin in a slot.

  The seed pods floated down and covered everything with gossamer. I blinked, and the white down stuck to my eyelashes. The earth was covering herself with down.

  I woke with this riddle in my mind. It had an aura of significance, like the feeling epileptics report just before a seizure.

  I open wide

  No teeth to hide

  My dear, they’ve long since crumbled!

  I take all comers

  Not fussy I

  But neither am I humbled

  With open thighs

  To girls and guys

  I’m really quite a slut

  Who resists

  When I insist

  A tryst upon my crust

  A selfish mother

  like no other

  Your curfew’s come around

  Lay a wreath

  And leave your teeth

  Before you come to Mama

  Who am I?

  The cougar is gone. The seed pods are gone. The fever has abated somewhat, but my head pounds. I hurt, I am weak. Griffin came in with soup, his hands shaking. Leo’s got the pistol, he said.

  I felt under me.

  He saw the cougar. Out by the field. He’s gone looking for it.

  No! I tried to stand.

  I know, I know, Griffin said as though he understood.

  He’ll kill her for nothing, for living … I started to pull my pants on.

  You’re too sick, Uncle Allen. He won’t get her, don’t worry. Griffin made me get back into bed and spooned some soup into me.

  He noticed the riddle and asked to read it. I am death? he guessed.

  I am Mother Earth, I said.

  Somehow I knew the answer.

  The next time I opened my eyes the dirty knees of Leo’s pants were in front of me. He was standing reading this journal.

  I shut my eyes. I had to get it back before he read another word.

  You can’t kill the cougar, I said, keeping my eyes closed.

  Who’s going to stop me? Leo’s voice was cold.

  I’m asking you.

  Who are you to ask me?

  Your brother. Your brother’s asking you.

  The brother who tricked me?

  Tricked you? How?

  A chill went through me. The room closed in. What had I written down? You must kill him. He’s not a good man. Had I written that down? Had he read it?

  You know, Allen, your boys are better men than you. Better warriors.

  How would you know? I pretended anger.

  How would I know?

  I’m asking.

  I found them for you. But you didn’t seem interested. Ruby had all your attention.

  Where are they? I grabbed his arm. He closed the journal and held it in his other hand.

  You sure you want to know?

  Tell me.

  I don’t think I’m going to.

  You lying fuck.

  Temper, temper. And better watch your tongue. I’m pretty sure the new messiah doesn’t swear.

  Prove you saw them.

  He opened my journal again and skimmed through the pages to the end.

  I didn’t know you were a poet too.

  It’s a riddle. Griffin figured out the answer, I lied.

  He started to read it. For the first time since I woke I felt a small shift toward me. He wanted to guess the answer.

  Griffin pounded down the stairs and ran in, eyes wide. I think her water broke.

  Leo turned to him, his back to me. I directed Griffin wildly to the journal with my eyes. God bless him if he didn’t walk right over and take the journal from Leo, lay it on the side table where I could reach it, and grab Leo’s hand in both his.

  Leo. Let’s hit the reset button. We need to work together now.

  Leo looked down at me. I wanted to grab the journal and slip it under the covers.

  Griffin, I said, you remember everything I told you? Boiling water? Towels? Sterilize everything.

  Leo extracted his hand from Griffin’s. A moan came from upstairs. The look Leo gave me—I couldn’t decode it—strangled, lonely, defiant. He left. Griffin ran back upstairs.

  The thought of Leo reading the words You must kill your brother is making sirens go off in my head. Maybe he’s thinking of murdering me now. Or Parker. Or all of us. Parker’s panting is too fast upstairs. Griffin has come down, started the fire, and gone out to the well with the pails.

  My heart pounds. The thought of Leo out there killing the cougar, just lifting the corner of that thought, makes me want to roar and bite and tear. He cannot be life’s timekeeper. He cannot choose when she dies. He’s a black hole, a lifesuck, a dead end, the end of the line—he does not have the right.

  I got up and got my leg halfway into my pants, but the fabric was all twisted and in my frenzied rush my foot tore through, leaving the pant leg flapping like a flag behind my calf. I pulled on boots and grabbed my knife and walking stick. I must leave before Griffin returns and tries to make me stay.

  I may not be able to finish my story after today. I am thinking of murdering my brother. A murder to ward off murder. I will murder murder with murder. What better man for the job?

  I stopped and listened. My neck was frozen so I had to turn my whole body to hear. I turned a full circle. I felt like a giant. I heard the wind, nothing else. The light hurt my eyes. A longer louder moan from Parker rode out through the upstairs window. I started to hump and stump toward the field where he last saw her, the bottom half of my pant leg flapping in the wind. The wind was at my head, whipping my hair, trying to convince everything on the earth’s surface—trees, grass, birds—to follow its lead. It pushed me toward the field.

  The path was flanked by the root systems of ancient trees knocked over by storms. I passed a place where several trees had fallen against each other. The debris looked like the limbs of wrestling titans frozen in time, and something flashed across the base of my mind, a subliminal image made by me but unseeable, yet the dread tailing it was clear—the willy-nilly angles of branches and trunks against each other, the gouged earth, prone positions, circling back—Finish the job, Mercy.

  A short distance ahead the bush was all blackberry, salal, young alder. A flash of red on my left made me look—a cluster of roses, spent but for the last few, a remnant of our mother’s gardening, her tiny rebellion to plant it in the forest. I saw her in her plastic gardening clogs, baggy pants, and straw hat, squinting toward the future, squinting toward this moment.

  A new wail from Parker shattered the vision and lit up my blood. The wail came on the wind pushing me forward, if, if, if. I burst onto the open field looking for the cougar, for Leo. Nothing was there, yet the contour of the land meant I couldn’t see the whole field at a glance—it was a hump of a field—to see the far side I’d have to make my way up toward the centre.

  Great clods of earth lay where the hand plough had turned them over. I stumbled forward, the memory of Leo’s hand on one side of the plough and mine on the other, three feet and a prosthesis pushing against the ground, driving the plough forward in case next year comes. My brother, Mr Big Time, the man who had to have servants or see himself a failure, bending himself to strain and sweat beside his brother.

  I was fully exposed crossing the open field, yet it felt as though I was entering a boxed canyon. Wind blasted across the field and grabbed the trees on the edges and shook them, making their tops fly back and forth like the heads of children being shaken to death.

  A quarter of the way across, on the far sid
e, I spied the top of a head. It vanished. Reappeared. Vanished. It looked like a dried grey-brown cow pie. A few more steps and I saw the blade of a shovel rise to the sky and let fly a shower of dirt. What was he doing? Our work in the field was done. The seeds were planted and covered over. I looked down and saw the first tiny growths poking out from between clumps of dirt like albino worms timidly probing the open air, white from their subterranean, lightless births, with tiny heads of new green. I killed five or six with each step. Why was Leo tromping through our field, killing seedlings?

  I paused. Whatever force I’d possessed to arrive here turned unstable and trembly, mired in the thick earth. I tried to lean on my walking stick, but its tip sank deep into the soft dirt. A clamouring chorus rose up from among the seedlings and I felt the hands of corpses just below the surface, waiting to grip my ankles and pull me down. I looked to the sky. I could only move forward, but the inertia gripping me was viscous and black as tar.

  A crow flew over the field, turning its bright eye to look for food, flap, flap, flap, and I moved forward again over the clods of earth, like a man wearing cement shoes, gravity pulling me down.

  Leo lifted the shovel to dig again but as he bent over, his head turned sideways in my direction. I stopped. He was wearing sunglasses. Would he greet me? Would he beckon me?

  He stopped and stood up. Leaned on his shovel. He’d brought the wheelbarrow. I continued toward him.

  If he looked at me with love, with quick affection, even just with welcome, I told myself I wouldn’t kill him. A deal with God, with fate, do this one thing. A wager made in a mirror, dealer’s eyes meeting player’s—twins winking.

  I got within six or seven metres. Leo smiled, but he showed lots of teeth. It couldn’t be described as friendly.

  I advanced, thinking, Leo’s feet must be as heavy as mine. But when I approached, I noticed that his pants were folded up and he was barefoot. He was going to be lighter and faster, though he’d have less traction. I stopped. Leo’s smile thinned to a sneer or a taunt, though not necessarily malicious, and he cocked his head slightly. Oh ho, so that’s how it is, his smirk could be saying, or For all your fine talk. It could also have meant, What do you want?

  Speak, Leo, say my name. Let me hear warmth in your throat.

  He bent back down to his work and drove the blade of the shovel into the ground, leaving me standing there, awkward, lumbering, off balance. The sound of stone and grit against metal made the enamel of my teeth hurt. Because of the high furrows and my position on the hill, I could not see what kind of hole he was digging.

  I clumped forward a few more steps. My peripheral vision was snagged by something on the left, an unexpected brightness in the landscape. I looked away from Leo to see what it was. A chequered tablecloth floated just above the earth, held up, I guessed, by the stubble of the dried, cut wild grass.

  A picnic? Here? Now?

  Leo stood straight again, removed his sunglasses, and wiped the sweat from his brow. I saw a mark across his temple into his greying hair, a smear of red. Was it there before he wiped the sweat from his face?

  The time for questions was now. If I failed to ask what he was doing it would either seem as though I already knew or didn’t care. The crow flew over again, this time followed by a gang of crows. A murder of men. Their flyby focused over Leo and where he was digging.

  The shape of a body took form in my mind—bloody, heavy, lifeless, the tablecloth a shroud—the scrape of shovel blade against stones the sound of a grave being dug.

  This was the moment. Were the figments of my mind bound to what was real, or were they nightmare visions thrown up by a psyche that had raced between horror and the mundane for far too long? Was it possible he would leave? Would he play nice? I faced my brother, wanting to ask what he was doing, but asking was a submissive act; it left you waiting for an answer, vulnerable to a lie. And as I stood I knew there was no point in asking because I could neither believe nor disbelieve his answer. I had to proceed without cover of words and see what my eyes saw.

  What are you doing? I asked.

  Leo looked down at his feet.

  Trickery is so much better than murder, but trick tock, trick tock, I couldn’t think of any tricks. Minutes went by and the silence started to say too much. The more time passed, the more precise became the silence’s meaning. No need for the junk of speech.

  What did the silence say to Leo? It was this uncertainty, this territory that I couldn’t quite see that allowed me to hesitate, that trapped me in a pause. I was the player in his play. I had to wait. Something would be revealed. No amount of patience would prevent that.

  Leo looked me in the eye. I got her at the chickens, he said. He turned to indicate the body and I saw her in my mind’s eye, stretched out, a sacrifice on the altar, because he had no reason to live and could not die. Destruction spread out from him like blood from a cut jugular, and I felt the silent click of a switch turning on. I raised my walking stick in both hands, took it back, and swung it at the back of his head. His head snapped forward then bobbled back, but the tension leaked out of his body. He fell to his knees. I stepped back in preparation to strike him again, though by then I’d rather have killed myself. I struck two more times and heard the sound, like a thick eggshell, not on the edge of a glass but dropped on a floor.

  I flung the stick away from me.

  In the furrow behind the tablecloth, the long body of the cougar nestled in the milky-brown earth, her small flat head partly severed from her body. I stroked her head between the ears. Her body wasn’t cold yet. I touched the blood on her chest then licked my finger so that she could also travel in me as I had in her.

  The pistol lay unused beside the tablecloth. I checked. The cartridge was full. Nothing had been revealed.

  I screamed at the sky, at whatever had created me, at whatever had created this, because nothing seemed like Leo’s fault anymore. I screamed and screamed until my voice broke and I had no more strength.

  I knelt down and lifted my brother’s broken head in my lap. I stroked his forehead and kissed him and wept and told him how sorry I was.

  Then I went back to the cabin. I walked upstairs. Griffin was holding the baby. Parker was pale and sweaty, but blissful. I was covered in dirt and my brother’s blood.

  This must be the last, I yelled. My eyes burned into her. Do you hear me? What I have done for you must be the last. It is on you to start something new.

  A sob strangled my voice. I howled and the baby cried, but I didn’t care. That baby must know what it owed its life to. Griffin handed the howling baby to Parker and came toward me.

  I looked at Parker and she met my gaze. She was all mother at that moment, which meant feral and ruthless. She couldn’t feel anything that wasn’t related to her baby. I willed her to tell him.

  Leo assaulted Parker, I said. She flinched. And then he refused to leave.

  Griffin turned to Parker.

  I didn’t want the baby to get hurt.

  I left. I could feel their belief in their goodness, in their good intentions, in each other’s good intentions, and that belief was too big a gulf. They believed they were separate from Leo, that they were made of different stuff from him. They’d never understand. They hadn’t been in the furrow, holding his head. They hadn’t heard his skull break. They hadn’t loved him. I belonged with him now.

  I went down to the kitchen to clean my hands. I needed to be clean to think. A bowl of apples sat on the table, yellow ones, transparent, first of the season. Hours ago, those apples would have been for me, but they were no longer. I was in a state of Nirvana, conscious but free of desire. I was a piece of wood. I drank water, knowing the rivers owed me nothing, and drank anyway, because what I did didn’t matter anymore.

  When Leo fell I glimpsed his profile, and what it telegraphed was so uncomplicated, so unjudging. So, it’s you after all, he might have said. It’s you who are the murderer. Not me. Or, You didn’t love me and I thought you did. Or, Oh well,
it doesn’t matter. When he fell, one eye looked at dirt and the other at my ankle.

  Upstairs there were murmurs and a kittenish cry. I decided to go back out to the field and join my brother in his feast of dirt. I wished I’d told him I’d be keeping him company.

  The crows waited for me on the humps of the furrows, loosely gathered like a sidewalk audience after a talented busker starts packing up. They scattered reluctantly but alighted again a short distance away. Leo hadn’t left, which surprised me, weirdly. I looked up at the sky, the grey sky, that upside-down cup of a firmament, and it looked unhinged and unfirm, and I found it strange that I could not see past the light into the ocean of blackness beyond, found it strange that I was stuck in night’s opposite when I was so close to returning to those dark and soundless skirts.

  I would go to ground between my companions. I’d put my arm around my brother’s shoulders and lay my head on the cat’s soft belly, raise the pistol to my head, and pull the trigger. I imagined the crows startling and flapping up, circling in alarm, ready to depart at a second shot but, hearing none, re-alighting amidst the stubble and being there to greet Griffin when he came to see what happened.

  The hole Leo had been digging was neither deep nor wide enough for the three of us, so I started to dig. When it was about three feet deep, I lowered myself in and grabbed one fore paw and one hind paw and pulled the cougar toward me. She thumped into the hole on her back. I heaved her onto her side, then climbed out and went for Leo. I lifted his feet, hooked one under each arm and drove forward, pitting my weight against his. I moved him inch by inch. At the graveside I pulled him around so his head would land beside her head and climbed back in. I pulled first his arm, then his leg, alternating until he thumped in beside her. I shoved him closer to her until he lay inside her embrace. Then I placed her forepaw on his upper arm and placed his arm across her belly. Her head rested near his chest just below his chin. I looked down, heart pounding from exertion, and realized I’d left no room for myself in the middle. And that decided it. The worms would have to wait. The grey sky swirled around me. I climbed out and filled the grave.