Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club

by Megan Gail Coles

  Red Bull gave him wings, you can’t fly on one wing, he was on the wing, winging it, she was a little bird, come here, Tweety. Sufferin’ succotash, he said as he leered at her, each time shaking his head from side to side like a dog with something in its teeth.

  The others laughing and saying go on, Rog b’y, leave her alone.

  Rog rubbing the spittle from his bottom lip with the inside of his thumb and forefinger like someone thinking thoughts she would rather not know about but was sure he would share eventually. He made her nervous like the men who wanted to give her a pony ride over their sock. She drained her first drink to dampen the regret rising in her. All that fear handed down through all those stories in the sleigh.

  Olive had immediately regretted her red tights.

  She had bought them in a fleeting moment of merriment.

  They had felt festive and sexy under Iris’s black dress deemed too faded for dinner service. That’s what Iris had said. It wasn’t dark enough anymore. And Olive thought it a funny thing to say considering half the world worried about being too dark. But she had not objected because she wanted the dress Iris held in her hands.

  I’ll probably never wear it again, Iris had said.

  Olive stayed quiet because Iris looked very near tears. If she broke the moment, the dress might be reclaimed or reconsidered. And it was a real pretty dress. It had a lacy black collar with matching lace cuffs and trim just above the knee. There were tiny skull buttons down the chest to a neat, smaller lace trim just below the bust, and Olive really wanted to wear that dress to Calv’s Christmas party. The one he had mentioned in his text. Calv would remember why he liked her when he saw her in that dress. He would not let weeks go without saying hello again.

  Olive knew now that the dress you wear is of little consequence.

  A dress can’t make a man fall in love with you. Perhaps, that is how the dress came to her in the first place. Perhaps, that dress was cursed. Had she asked Iris she would have found a contrary voodoo at work. Iris would no longer wear it because it had been her lucky dress, the one she had worn the first night John had kissed her.

  In retrospect, Iris had decided that it was not any kind of luck she wanted.

  That kind of luck would see you quick to the grave. She probably should have destroyed it rather than give it to Olive. But Iris could not bring herself to do so. No more than she could bring herself to clear her kitchen of John’s little gadgets and gifts. John wanted to have everything he needed within reach wherever he was so he had supplied Iris with all the same small appliances he regularly used. He had even brought over dishes for the dogs and placed them under the table while confessing that he felt bad when she watered them from her own bowls. Iris would wonder what about this made him feel bad exactly. Everything was open to interpretation. And the dishes remained. But the little black dress with its girlish lace had to go, and as she turned away from Olive on the walkway, Iris had called over her shoulder, through a sob, that she always wore it with coloured tights.

  Iris doesn’t wear coloured tights anymore either.

  Olive had settled on the red ones after a prolonged internal debate.

  There had been green ones there at the grocery store as well. She had wanted them both but she could only afford the one pair. Couldn’t afford those really but would spare no expense for Calv. This was what Olive was like, she didn’t know any other way to be.

  Everything was very immediate for her. Her immediate needs were the most pressing needs. And she needed to look pretty. Calv had texted that he’d had a shit time. He was telling her about his troubles so that must mean something. He was turning to her. He said he needed to have some fun. Actually, he said, the b’ys really needed to have some fun. They had all gotten laid off and right before the holidays, too, which only made everything worse. Most of them had already bought stuff they couldn’t return. That is to say, they could return it, but they would not under any circumstances. So they were having a party at a hotel. Everyone was bringing someone. Did she want to go?

  Olive wanted to go anywhere with Calv as his someone.

  The Canadian Tire in Mount Pearl was a desirable destination if she was with Calv. She would happily wander the aisles while he shopped for premium motor oil and a mixer for his mother. Calv did not buy a gift for his girlfriend so Olive hoped that meant she was not his girlfriend anymore. Calv told her about playing 120s as a kid on Christmas Eve and eating eggy French toast in the morning and all this made her feel part of his family and holiday preparation. She would gladly listen to him complain about his sister’s boyfriend and muse about going back to school. One day he wanted to be a cabinetmaker, a mason the next. He wanted to do something with his hands, he said. Calv told quiet Olive that he would like to make things. His sister made things. Plays and shows and songs and stuff. His mother and father beamed with pride at Amanda’s creations. Because they made her and she made something and everyone liked it. He wanted his mother to feel that same way about him.

  The red tights had won out because she could wear them again later.

  In Olive’s reforming fantasy of her future with Calv, she had more than one occasion to wear coloured tights. She had decided that this was the first holiday party. There would be others. She took her time getting clean, shaved all of her important parts which were all of them, and dried her hair on a low setting. Its diesel colour not nearly oily slick as she remembered and isn’t that just the way, she thought. As a child she had despised the dark sheen that set her apart from the blond-headed ones, now she grieves after it. Not that Calv cared about the colour of her hair.

  But Olive had worried his friends would.

  Lots of Newfoundlanders did, but Olive assured herself Calv’s friends would not be like that. Or at least not all of them. And even if they were, they wouldn’t bother with Olive because she was nobody to them. It was just a party. Calv said after they might even go dancing.

  Just us, he had texted, just us will maybe go dancing, Olive.

  And imagining them an us made Olive breathe faster which made her slow down her external self. Don’t panic and mess it up. She got ready so slowly it was painful. She started getting ready at six o’clock even though Calv would not be by to get her until after nine. She force-fed herself two apples. It was all she could eat, though she had very little else to choose from. Olive thought maybe there would be cheese and crackers at the party.

  People love cheese and crackers at their holiday parties and Olive still thought she was going to a holiday party. An auspicious one sure, but a holiday party none the less. Olive was not at the party very long before realizing this would not be an eating party.

  She was the only woman. Or girl. Iris was right. Olive would always only ever be a girl.

  This happens sometimes when people are mistreated like Olive was mistreated.

  They cannot grow out of it. They remain stuck in their first hurt. And the frustration felt is further amplified by the world’s insistence they do the thing they are struggling to do. Grow up. Get on with it. Sort yourself out. Get your shit together.

  Occasionally, Olive searched about the place for her shit to gather together only to discover she didn’t have the shit they were speaking of. No one ever gave it to her. She received her fair share of shit now mind, but not the kind anyone would willingly collect. When Olive thought on it like this, she wished after some record of it as proof to show those who grew impatient.

  A museum exhibit to walk through recounting all the unkindness shown her recklessly and randomly by people who determined her value less.

  A monst
er book of pain to read safely in bed handy to someone who loved you. A dog even. At the very least, a cat.

  Before Olive had language to communicate, her issues were already well forming. Mother left. Came back. Left. And came back again until she didn’t. Still in Alberta somewhere. Before going last off, she had raged so hard at Olive for approaching Brian on the wharf. Screaming. Wailing. Olive wasn’t allowed over to the wharf. Or handy to any of the Youngs.

  Her mother was full on horrified at history’s tendency to repeat itself.

  If Olive had been home, or not out alone, or ever alone, nothing could have happened. But the reality is Olive was often alone because, well, that’s how her mother left her. And then being alone was made easier and easier because being not alone often resulted in a bad memory. Olive felt no feelings about her whereabouts.

  Now Olive makes bad attachments out of loneliness.

  She cannot help herself. She cannot help it.

  There will be another study but it is no great mystery.

  They will have her entertain it all over again on the news. Papers will be published one hundred times over recounting the concurrent issues that contributed to Olive’s inability to discern a positive attachment from the alternative. But the truth of her person is that Olive had no parents because her parents didn’t want to be her parents. Or themselves. They did not want to be.

  She was her mother’s living rejection. Her father’s secret lark. She had tried to make them parent her. She had demanded their attention when she was only little. She had even attempted with her extended family. Her grandmother had shushed her out of concern.

  My dollie, don’t want for people who don’t want for you.

  She had been punched in the mouth upon confessing her paternity.

  I think your dad is my dad.

  The blood running down her gashed lip as the older girl cried in the principal’s office.

  Make her stop saying that!

  Her beautiful mother sighing as she left once again for the mainland.

  Men around here only want pretty women for one thing.

  The tights had been an attempt at being pretty and Olive gravely regretted her less than smart choice upon entering that hotel room. Five men were sitting across the two double beds facing off without touching. They were all holding red plastic cups. One man held two. Another man sat on a chair by the window, he held a green frozen mug that was significantly thawed already from his hand sweat. He brought a special drinking cup. Rog fancied himself the head of this wolf pack, mangy as they were, this was apparent upon first glance. He spoke as if men lived in the forest and required ritual and regular hunts.

  He acknowledged them as they entered, commenting on everything he had heard about Olive. Things she had never heard about herself, and she looked to Calv for clarification, wondering if she had told him about her landlord. Olive was certain that she had not.

  This was the man she wanted to like her.

  Calv countered almost immediately that it wasn’t like that and that he thought everyone was bringing a friend to the party. Top dog said that no one else had friends like Olive. Calv must have misunderstood. They argued the point momentarily like two people familiar with the act of arguing moot points. Calv let it drop away as quickly as it was picked up. Olive wondered how many such topics Calv dropped, and felt uneasy. In hindsight, this is where Olive knows now she should have fled. Should have turned on her heel or reversed out of that room. Because Rog had a snarl about him she had seen many times before. Rog ended lots of sentences by informing people that he had intended humour.

  Just joking with ya, b’y.

  He said this readily in an unmistakable smirking way. But everyone knew he was never just joking. Not even a little bit joking. The claim provided him cover to make asinine remarks at everyone. He cloaked himself in a facade sense of humour cape, draped it over his own shoulders and across his face with every barb he sent into the world. If shots were not met with uncomfortable laughter, Rog advised any human hurt to get a sense of humour. Like his. This was just another coded way of saying once again that the hurt man, any hurt man, was like a woman.

  Blow that whistle he did.

  Our jokester felt certain being like a woman was the worst way to be and slandered them all female. The shortest man seated closest to the night table alarm clock seemed to be a particular favourite target. His height made him an easy mark.

  The short guy had a sour disposition and a snotty nose. Not currently, or at least not yet, but as a child his nose had been runny and his attitude poor. This is not the first time Rog has brought this up in the company of these men. It is clear to Olive that he brings it up every single time they congregate, to agitate the short guy, who wears sunglasses on his peaked cap as if a sunshine emergency might overtake him at any second. He must be prepared to shield his eyes at a moment’s notice in the darkest city in North America on the darkest night of the year. Olive should have gone home.

  But instead she drank from the red cup Rog handed her, claiming he knew Olive wanted a drink just from the look of her.

  Rog teased her in that way men do about how much she could pound back, like Olive was a dummy unaware of innuendo. She did not acknowledge because women can’t, so she made the required quizzical facial expressions that made the joke good. Even better. Rog had counted on her going along. So he forged further with it. He said he was sure she’d had a load in her in the past and Calv told him to fuck off with his foolishness.

  But the other men were laughing. Because it was a great joke.

  They liked it as much now as they did the first time they had heard it in high school. And while the jokes were geared to Olive, they were safe from the unfolding comedy. The short one chimed in wholeheartedly. He especially did not want Roger to tire of this new direction. So he made insinuation after insinuation about what they did up in cold places to keep warm. Their animal appetites must be right savage up there. He wanted to know if Olive was savage too. She looked it, he said. And Olive’s little eyes darted toward Calv, darted toward the door, hoping to go dancing, to go anywhere.

  Rog, upon determining that this turn would ruin the fun he had planned, steered it back toward the purely recreational. He pulled a bag out of his inside breast pocket and started cutting fat rails up on the back of the black room service folder. Welcome to Hollywood, he exclaimed. It was a call to which the men all responded, what’s your dream?

  And then all the men, Calv included, recited together in surging volume.

  Some dreams come true, some don’t!

  Room service was passed around, with each dipping and pulling twice. Olive had never seen this much cocaine at one time. Thick powdery lines bigger than minigolf score tally pencils. Longer. Wider. Larger than a cigarette. And disappearing faster than one as well. Followed by ritual shakes of the head, throat clearing, chests puffed, necks stretching. It was all preparation. They were, the lot of them, preparing for going out. Even Calv. So Olive did it too when it was handed to her because she did not want to be removed from Calv. She did not want there to be space between them. She wanted Calv to see them as alike. Kindred. Look, Calv, she felt like saying, all your friends like me, this is how easy it would be to fit me into your life. Olive would take up so little space. Calv would hardly notice her there at all.

  Cocaine makes everyone do a lot of hurried drinking.

  Not the kind of drinking you can feel in your gut. Not even the kind of drinking you can catch up to. This is drinking in an urgent thirsty way found unnerving by level-headed people or even the socially intoxicated. The drun
kest man in the establishment, having gotten normal drunk by drinking, will start to take an inventory of the reasons why he is unable to keep pace. Should have eaten more carbs. Too much coffee, not enough water. Got up last night with the baby. Walked the dog after supper. These are all possible reasons why his buddies from university seem to still be able to drink him under the table.

  No one tells him that it’s actually because the works of them are on drugs.

  Everyone in the hotel room had been pre-emptively refilling their glasses as if worried they might find themselves suddenly and surprisingly out of alcohol. Rog was topping Olive’s glass up after topping Olive’s glass up. She was never near empty. It sloshed around on the rim each time a man stood from the bed to make his point more aggressively or take a piss. There was a lot of pissing. Their kidneys were well aware of the rate at which they were expected to work. The constant up and down had at first concerned her as the boozy mixture slopped against the sides of her cup. They were going to make her spill it on herself. Ruin her whole outfit. But her dress was black and her tights were red and you couldn’t see the proof of it. The concoction dried in to match the mixture. And no one would see that in a bar, Olive assured herself. The start of the evening was what people remembered and used as reference material later. No one mentioned last going off. Or most didn’t. It was an unspoken agreement. The nerves that had initially plagued her subsided for a time.

  There was a brief window ledge where she sat between sober and flattened.

  From it, she looked about the party she was attending because she was at this party. Not just at the party. She was a part of the party. Not just a part of it. She was the party girl at the party. This had taken on prestige while she sat in the transitional window dividing feeling too much from feeling too little. Here in the window, she felt the right amount of whatever feeling it was, and that allowed her to feel a little at ease. The coke helped. At first, coke helps.