Cataract City

by Craig Davidson

  You ever see an old clown, boys? Clowns don’t die. But sometimes they come back … oh, yessss …

  “It’s him,” I said. “It’s Bruiser.”

  “It’s not. It’s something, but not that.”

  Except it was Mahoney. His hair hung in tangled, mud-clotted ropes. His stomach ballooned up with gas and his joints twisted with rigor mortis. Bones sticking out of his skin where he’d broken them on rocks, not noticing that he’d done so or not caring. The sounds suddenly made sense. The first was the rubber-band sound of Mahoney’s naked muscles: with the skin stripped off his arms and legs, his tendons had cured in the sun and now they creaked when he flexed them. The sucking sound was Mahoney’s rotted lungs.

  God rot me, boys …

  His lungs were filling and emptying—not because he needed to breathe, but because his body was still mindlessly doing what it had always done.

  God’ll rot you, too, soon enough …

  Would he eat us? Or just tear us apart? His rage seemed so unfair. We couldn’t have taken him with us—he weighed a million pounds.

  The sticks caught. Firelight pushed back the darkness. Dunk stood, baby bird in one hand, gun in the other. Did he even know how to shoot? You could only learn so much from watching The Equalizer and Magnum, P.I.

  Firelight bled to the edge of the clearing, flickering against the thickets. My heart was pounding so hard, my body so keyed up, that I saw everything in hyper-intense detail. Every dew-tipped blade of grass. The knife-edge serration of every leaf. My eyes hunted for the gleam of Bruiser Mahoney’s black eyes, my nose probing the breeze for his decaying stench. A gun would do nothing against him. It might chip off a little hide but you couldn’t kill something that was already dead.

  “Over there,” Dunk said.

  It skulked out of the bushes, sleek body pressed to the ground. Its fur shone like pewter. Its skull was a sloped wedge like a doorstop, eyes midnight-black, the yellow tips of its canine teeth showing.

  “Just a coyote,” said Dunk. “A stupid coydog.”

  I’d never seen one up close. It was about the size of a springer spaniel. But there was nothing doglike about it, at least not like the floppy-eared, slobbering, ball-chasing dogs in our neighbourhood. This creature was built for wild living, a coiled tension in its every movement. It didn’t run circles around the kitchen yelping for kibble: what it caught, it ate, and if it didn’t catch anything it starved. A ball of muscle was packed behind its jaw, built by cracking bones to lap up the marrow. It made no sound at all: its next meal could be anywhere, so it had learned to creep silently.

  “Go on,” Dunk said sharply.

  It melted into the darkness.

  I woke with razor blades slashing my guts.

  Air hissed between my teeth in a tea-kettle shriek. The slashing gave way to a steady pulse and grind: a clock’s worth of rusted gears meshing in my stomach.

  I crawled to the bushes. Dots burst before my eyes in crazy gnat-swarms. My gut kicked and I puked so hard that everything went black. My nostrils filled with bile, thick strings of drool swaying from my lips. I’d hardly thrown up anything, just a sad yellow mess in the clover. It was awful, feeling sick and starving at the same time.

  I sat cross-legged, knees hugged to my chest, listening to terrible wet retching sounds from the trees. Dunk walked out wiping his lips. The skin around his eyes was butter-yellow and his hands were shaking.

  “Must have been something I ate,” he said, and managed to laugh.

  The sun tilted over the scrub and tinder-wood, glinting off shards of granite in the rocks but not giving any heat. I was so thirsty. I wiped sticky white paste off my lips and smeared it on my jeans. I ducked behind some bushes and unzipped my fly. The colour of my urine shocked me: dark yellow, like I was pissing tea. I didn’t know if I was sick or if it was the extra vitamins my body was getting rid of, the ones it couldn’t use.

  Dunk breathed heavily, bending over and bracing his palms on his knees.

  “We should get going, Owe.”

  “I’m so thirsty.”

  “Me, too. Maybe there’s a stream soon, like the one we crossed yesterday.”

  I thought about that stream with its Chia Pet rocks and muddy bottom. I wouldn’t have drunk from it then, but if that same stream were running in front of me now I’d guzzle it dry.

  We packed everything up, though there wasn’t much left. The baby bird lay on its side in the rag, peeping softly.

  “Must be hungry,” Dunk said. He picked it up.

  “What does a baby bird eat?”

  “No idea. Let’s go.”

  He walked ahead, hopping over rocks and stomping through low bushes. I had to pump my legs to keep up. Even if Dunk was sick—and he was, at least as sick as me—it wouldn’t slow him down. He had that same machinelike intensity I’d seen the day we’d met in the schoolyard. He’d keep pushing until his body broke to pieces. It didn’t matter if his opponent was another kid or Mother Nature herself.

  The sound of rushing water was so sly at first—an almost imperceptible gurgle that knit with the rustle of the leaves. Dunk pushed an armload of whiplike willow branches aside and there it was.

  The stream was much narrower than the one we’d crossed the day before. It was clear with an undernote of heavy blue, which might have been the darkened reflection of the sky on its surface. It bent like a gooseneck around an outcrop of ragged-edged rocks and continued on through some willows.

  It looked like heaven.

  We stood by the bank, dumbfounded. Dunk turned and gave me a sideways smile.

  “It’s probably okay to drink,” I said.

  “Aren’t we supposed to boil it?”

  “That’s only water that’s not flowing, like a pond or a lake.”

  It was as if, since there were no adults around, we had to try to act like grown-ups and make the grown-up choice. Which was stupid because we were kids and we’d make a kid’s choice: we would drink the water no matter what.

  We dipped our Coke cans, our hands trembling with anticipation. It was all I could do not to plunge my head in the stream. I tilted the can to my lips and tasted the water behind my molars: clean and sweet with the residue of Coke at the bottom of the can.

  Had water ever tasted this good? Had anything? It hit my stomach like iced lead. I threw some up, took two deep breaths and forced myself to keep drinking. The buzz inside my head subsided.

  We drank until our bellies were swollen and let go of giant, watery belches. Dunk wet his fingertips and let a few droplets fall into the baby bird’s mouth.

  We hopped over the stream, water sloshing in our guts. I was still starving but I felt a thousand times better. I spotted a heron downstream, balanced on one leg like a ballerina. White tail feathers and a monstrous air sac pulsating from its blue breast. Seeing me, it made a hoarse stuttering cry full of pips and croaks like rust in a pivot. It muscled itself into the air, arrowing into the lightening blue, and a part of my heart went with it, wanting to see what it saw, to know if we were near a house or a road or if—as I feared—there was nothing but marsh and scrub and hungering bugs.

  Late in the afternoon we entered a glade of enormous maples and oaks. It was dark and heavy in there; the forest greenness tinted the air. I ached all over and my ass stung and my thighs chafed with every step.

  My foot had been bothering me the last hour. I sat on a tree sawed in half by lightning and unlaced my sneaker. A blister had spread across my heel, the dead white skin at its edges milky like fish gills while the flesh inside was tender-pink.

  “That’s a doozy,” said Dunk.

  I pulled the sock on gingerly. Socks, matches—items you generally possess in such abundance that you forget how valuable they are.

  Isolated raindrops pattered the ground. Soon the sky opened and rain sheeted down. Water collected on the leaves, draining into the glade in ragged streamers. Rain hit the back of my hand and ran between my fingers. A wave of despair rocked me; I concentrate
d on the things tying me to the world. My favourite movie was E.T. The number one song on 97.7’s Top Nine at Nine countdown was “Pour Some Sugar on Me.” My bed at home had a Star Wars bedspread with a grape juice stain on C-3PO’s face.

  We came upon an anthill that looked like a miniature volcano. It rose to a tall spouted opening, from which ants poured in abundance. They chained down the hill in the chlorophyll-green light, moving in dark shining braids like soldiers on the march.

  “You figure the bird eats ants?” Dunk asked.

  How would I know if a baby bird ate ants? Besides which, grubbing around in an anthill while the sun went down was a waste of time, and I said so.

  But Dunk insisted. We got down on our knees and tried to catch a few. The hill’s caldera crumbled the instant my fingers touched it. Ants poured out in a mad frenzy, racing up our legs and down our sleeves. It was funny—their legs tickled as they picked along the soft hairs on our arms—until they started to bite.

  I’d had no idea ants could bite—sting, to be exact. Fiery needles stabbed me. Dunk and I jumped up, shrieking and swatting ourselves. Ants were everywhere: my chest, my armpits. Each individual bite wasn’t so bad—yellowjacket stings were much worse—but they peppered me all over.

  “My back!” Dunk said. “Slap my back!”

  I did, raising puffs of dust from his T-shirt. He did the same for me. After what felt like an endless battle the stings lessened. I peeled my shirt off. My sweat-stung skin was dotted with inflamed bumps that itched like the devil. My body was smeared with ant anatomies: their thoraxes and antennae and abdomens and legs squashed all over.

  “Holy hell,” Dunk said, breathing raggedly. “That was a baaaaad idea, Kemosabe.”

  “I told you it was a dumb idea.”

  “No you didn’t,” Dunk said with a bewildered smile. “You said you had no clue.”

  “It was stupid.” I was spoiling for a fight by then, uninterested in logical arguments. “Moronic,” I said, a word I’d heard my father use in conversation with a drywaller who’d gypped him.

  “Well, sor-ree,” Dunk said. He slanted his head at me quizzically—but the slant held an edge of menace.

  “It’s not funny, man. My dad always says, Measure twice, cut once—which means think before you act.”

  “Yeah? My dad says don’t be a fuckin’ pussy.”

  “Your dad doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

  Dunk’s chin jutted. “He knows as much as your dad does.”

  “Then why isn’t he in an office at the Bisk instead of on the line? Why doesn’t he smell of aftershave instead of Chips Ahoy?”

  Dunk rounded his shoulders and stuffed his bird-free hand in his pocket, where it balled into a fist.

  “I’m not my dad, Owe. And you’re not your dad, either.” He chewed the inside of his cheek. His arms quivered all the way down to his fingers; the hand that held the bird shook it in its sock nest. Looking back, I can tell Dunk had to summon every ounce of self-control—otherwise he’d’ve punched the living shit out of me right then.

  When the rain let up we exited the glade, Dunk leading and me trudging behind. Mist rolled over our sneakers, perfuming the air with the scent of every green thing.

  Late-afternoon sun baked down, prickling the burn on my neck and the raw bites on my arms. Dunk and I were beyond tired now. It seemed as if every topic of conversation—our favourite TV show (The Beachcombers), our favourite gum (Gold Rush, which came in a cloth sack, the gum shaped like gold nuggets)—funnelled towards a senseless argument.

  When you and your best friend start arguing about bubble gum, you settle on silence as the best policy.

  The cave lay halfway up an embankment studded with straggly pines. The incline was rinsed with grey stones each the size of a baby’s fist. Dunk picked one up and tossed it into the cave. It plinked somewhere past the mouth, giving way to a series of soft tinkles.

  “Sounds empty,” he said.

  The cave fell away in layers of flat grey rock. We stood under the overhang taking in the scent of our own stink, sweat and grime mixed with wood sap and smoke and dirt and dead bugs. I was aware of my body in ways that a twelve-year-old boy probably shouldn’t be. My guts were full of hardening concrete. Moon-slices of blood rimmed my fingernails.

  We spent the next half-hour gathering firewood. I wondered if we ought to build the fire outside the cave, in the open where someone could see it. A helicopter maybe, searching for two lost boys. Late that afternoon I thought I’d heard the whuppa-whuppa of helicopter blades; they sounded incredibly close, just overhead, and a part of me actually believed that I’d look up and see it: a helicopter just like the one rich tourists rented out to get a bird’s-eye view of the Falls, the one that had its own landing pad on the roof of the Hilton Fallsview hotel.

  But when I’d peered above me, the sky was empty. Maybe what I’d heard was the drone of mosquitoes. Afterwards the notion was one I continued to fixate on: hundreds of searchers looking for us. Perhaps hikers had stumbled across Mahoney’s van after it had showed up on a police all-points-bulletin sheet. If so, the cops and a small citizen’s brigade might be stomping through the woods right now. They’d have dogs with incredible noses hot on our scent; they’d be armed with walkie-talkies and bullhorns. If the wind died down and I strained my ears, I’d probably hear the distant barks of the search dogs.

  But as shadows thickened and the colour drained out of the sky until only black was left, I heard no dogs. The mental image of a search faded. I trudged into the cave, where I made a teepee of sticks with the scrounged wood.

  “We can’t do it there,” Dunk said. “Smoke will fill the cave and we’ll get affix … affix … affixated.”

  “Asphyxiated.”

  “Whatever. We’ll be dead.”

  “So why don’t we light it here and move it out front? We only got one match.”

  “Whatever.”

  Dunk dug the matchbook out. The match looked so pitiful, half bent with red phosphorus flaking off the head. I almost didn’t care if it lit. If it didn’t we’d probably die tonight. If it did, we were simply granted another day. The sun would rise and our lot would be the same: starving, thirsty, alone and lonely. We’d be more lost, more bitten and scratched and burnt under the merciless sun, and tomorrow night we wouldn’t bother building a fire. We’d sit in the dark and freeze to death. Or the things in the woods with us would sense our weakness and take their due. Either way, we died. The only difference was that we’d suffer a little longer. Now or tomorrow or the day after. It was going to happen, right?

  Dunk lit the fire. One match. Textbook. Our Scout leader would have shit a brick. We moved flaming sticks to the mouth of the cave. The fire sent up an orange cone that obscured everything beyond it, locking us in with its warmth and light. For the first time all day, I felt safe.

  Dunk rooted through the pack. We both knew there was nothing in it. He pulled out the candy bar wrapper—it seemed like we’d eaten that about a billion years ago—and inspected it for leftover crumbs of chocolate. Finding none, he flicked it into the fire. The heat caved it in like a flower blooming in reverse. He picked up a pebble and put it in his mouth.

  “Dad says if you suck on a stone it gets the saliva flowing so you don’t feel as thirsty.”

  I put a pebble in my mouth, relishing its coolness beneath my tongue.

  “Banana cream pie,” I said.

  “What?”

  “My mom says that if you, um, really concentrate and pretend you’re eating your favourite foods, you feel as full as if you’ve actually eaten them.”

  “Yeah?”

  “She says.”

  Dunk scratched the ant stings on his legs—the heat was irritating my stings, too—and said: “Shepherd’s pie.”

  “Tootsie Rolls.”

  “Tollhouse cookies.”

  “Sour cream and onion chips.”

  “What brand?”

  “Pringles.”

  “Nice,” sa
id Dunk. “Hungarian goulash.”

  “Hawaiian pizza.”

  “Kraft caramels.”

  “Ballpark franks.”

  Dunk dropped his head between his legs. “I don’t think it’s working.”

  “Are you thinking about them? I mean, hard? You really have to picture it.”

  “I’m seeing them … it just doesn’t work for me, Owe. Sorry.”

  You have a wild imagination. That was what my parents said to me all the time. Having a wild imagination wasn’t so hot sometimes. I spat my pebble out.

  Dunk lay on the cave floor and shaped his body around the fire. The cave stones glittered around his head, firelight making them move like insects.

  I said: “You shouldn’t sleep with your ear on the ground. Bovine …”

  I laboured over it—one simple word, two syllables: Bovine. Bovine the word was attached to Bovine the person, who was attached to many other things: schools and malls and phones and pizza parlours and my parents … and to policemen who helped kids who’d lost their way. And all those things were so, so far away.

  “Bovine what?”

  “Bovine says that earwigs crawl in your ears when you sleep. Said his dad had to bury a guy whose whole brain was eaten away by earwigs.”

  Instinctively, Dunk cupped a hand over his ear. “How?”

  “An earwig just crawled into the guy’s ear. Guy didn’t even know. Our brains don’t feel any pain, right? No nerves. If it was just one earwig, no big deal. But it was a female earwig, man—she laid eggs. They hatched inside the guy’s head and they started eating. Like, a giant buffet.

  “But guess what? We only use ten percent of our brains, so it took a long time. Like, he’d forget where his car keys were. He was blinking all the time and couldn’t stop. Finally he couldn’t even remember his dog’s name. When he died Bovine says his dad took the body into the funeral parlour to prepare it for the casket. When he touched the guy’s face it caved right in. A million earwigs ran out of the eye sockets and nostrils and mouth. His dad almost went crazy on the spot, but he smoked a cigar to calm down.”