by David Nickle
Janie looked at the floor where her head had been, and although she knew it would hurt, she touched the cut over her ear. The cut was shaped like a crescent, and had scabbed over it felt like. Janie knew better than to pick at it. She looked outside again.
Mr. Swayze’s island wasn’t very big — it didn’t have room on it for more than his lodge, a shed for the gas generator and one dock for a motorboat. That was all Mr. Swayze needed, though. He liked to come out here to write his stories these days, and like he told them both when he gave them the keys last month, too much room is distracting.
Ernie was gone. He had given her a beating for no good reason and now he was gone. It didn’t figure.
Somewhere outside, something fell over with a clang and a bong. It was probably a drum, one of the open ones that didn’t seem to do nothing but collect rainwater by the side of the lodge. When she had met Mr. Swayze and they learned that he was a writer of scary stories, Ernie had said, “I guess you want a horror story, can’t find nothing scarier than that acid rain. Kill a whole lake full of fish with just a drop. There’s your horror story.”
“That’s pretty scary all right,” Mr. Swayze had agreed. “I’ll have to put it in my notebook.”
Maybe the rainwater gave Mr. Swayze ideas for his acid rain story. Well, now it had fallen down and was spilt out everywhere and no good to nobody. Janie opened the front door and stepped outside.
The wind felt good on her — it was cold, colder than it had a right to be for early September, and it cooled her cuts and bruises like an ice pack. When she turned to face it, however, it took her breath away, so she moved with her back to the wind, down to the dock.
“Ernie!” She cupped her hands around her mouth, and called off across the waters. “Ernie! Come on back! I ain’t dead! You got nothing to fear!”
For surely, thought Janie, that was what had happened. She had fallen down into her blood, and there had been so much of it, and she had been out like a light, and poor Ernie had thought the worst — that he’d killed her.
So he’d run. The OPP had already come by the house two times, on account of complaints from neighbours, and each time they asked Janie if he’d been doing anything to her. Like hitting or punching or kicking or biting, or even just pushing. Janie’d said no both times, and the second time — with Ernie in earshot — the one policeman had told her that she had to complain; they could only arrest him otherwise if he killed her and it was murder. “I don’t want it to come to that,” said the policeman, and Janie had replied, “Then me neither.”
“Ernie!” She yelled so loud her voice cracked and turned to a scream. “Ernie! It ain’t murder! It’s okay! I won’t complain!”
There was another gust of wind then, and it nearly blew Janie off the dock. It sent the water-drum rolling down the rock face, and it entered the bay with a splash that sprayed ice-cold water up the back of Janie’s dress. Janie steadied herself, and opened her mouth for one more yell, then shut her mouth again.
It wouldn’t do her no good. Ernie was long gone.
The drum clanked up against the dock, and Janie kicked at it as she passed it on the way back. The kick sent the lip of it underwater, and that was enough. The rain-drum started to sink.
There was a shelf in the lodge’s living room that had every one of Mr. Swayze’s books — although not one of them had his name on the cover. Mr. Swayze used what he called a pen name, so all the books were “by” Eric Hookerman even though Mr. Swayze wrote them.
There were a lot of books, and Mr. Swayze said that a lot of people bought them in their time. Janie thought that might be true. Sometimes, she would even see one at the drug store in Fenlan, and they only ever got in the best books. It was no wonder that Mr. Swayze could afford to own all that land outside Fenlan and this island here in Georgian Bay.
“I guess you can’t call me a starving artist anymore,” he joked one time.
“You’re not starving,” said Ernie. “You don’t know what starving is, Mr. Swayze.”
And then Mr. Swayze had laughed — a scary laugh, like those books of his must be. “I guess not,” he said.
Janie had never read any of Mr. Swayze’s books — she was just getting to reading stories now; anything bigger than ten pages made her feel sleepy, even if she picked it up in the morning. But she looked at the pictures on the covers, and she read the titles, and she had a pretty good idea what they were about. There was THE HAND, and it had a picture of an old dried-up hand with long fingernails and a drop of blood on the tip of each; THE BOTTOM OF THE WELL, with an old-fashioned hand-pump, and a snake poking its head down out of the spout looking all fierce and frightening; and ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD! THE DEAD BIRD, with a cover that was all black, but had raised parts that Janie could see as the shape of a bird with wings spread, if she held it just so in the light. That cover took some work to enjoy, you couldn’t just look at it and see, but it was her favourite of them all.
When Janie stepped into the living room, she nearly tripped on ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD! THE DEAD BIRD. That book along with most of the rest were spread all over the floor.
“Oh, Ernie,” she muttered, “look at the mess you made.”
Janie flicked the light-switch on the wall, to get a better look at what had happened, but it stayed dark. Did the wind knock out the generator too? If it had, it’d be up to Ernie to fix it — Janie could lift and haul things, she’d always been a big girl that way, but machines and such were beyond her. She flicked the switch once more, to no avail, so bent down and in the grey light from the window she started to gather up the books. Fine thing that’d be, thought Janie. Mr. Swayze loans out his lodge to us, we ruin all the books he wrote. Never invite us to dinner again.
Sometimes, Janie wondered why Mr. Swayze bothered with Ernie and her at all. Mr. Swayze was smart, and he must know a lot of people, and he sure had a lot of money. Ernie and Janie didn’t have much money — Ernie’s work with his chainsaw and his contracting wasn’t steady, and paid poor when it came; they sure didn’t know many people; and smart? They did their best with what they had — but folks in town said Ernie and Janie were a good match for each other, and they didn’t say so in a kindly way either.
Yet from the time he moved up to Fenlan, Mr. Swayze took them on. He bought the land back on Little Bear Lake in the 1980s some time, and after asking around hired Ernie to come lay foundations. Land was no good, and Ernie told him so — more than half of it was swamp, and most of the rest was bare, knobbly rock. Mr. Swayze said he knew that now, but he bought it because he liked the feel of it and hadn’t been thinking practical. Was there nothing that Ernie could do? “Not for cheap,” said Ernie.
“Then let’s not do it cheap,” said Mr. Swayze. “Tell me what it’ll take.”
It took a lot, but Ernie’d done pretty good for him by the time it was done. Found him a level spot on high ground to build his house, then brought in some fill and a digger and made a road across the firmer parts of swamp so Mr. Swayze could get in and out. Sunk a well through the rock, deep — so Mr. Swayze wouldn’t have to be drinking swamp water — and strung a power line in so he wouldn’t have to be using candles and oil lamps to see at night.
Janie’d spent more than a few workdays out at the site — in those days, she was as good a worker as any man and came twice as cheap, or so said Ernie. That was when they’d got to know Mr. Swayze and learned about what he did to make ends meet. And that was when he started inviting them for dinner — first at the farmhouse Mr. Sloan rented him about five miles up the concession road, then once his own house was done, in there.
Got so they’d dine with Mr. Swayze one time a month — whether at his place or theirs. And oh, those dinners would be fine! Mr. Swayze was a real good cook — a magic cook. He could take a chicken and make it taste like Thanksgiving turkey; make a cheap cut of steak into a restaurant-fine meal that’d dissolve on the tip of your tongue. He wasn’t much on vegetables, but that was fine — neither was Ernie, and Janie did
n’t much care one way or the other.
Ernie figured that Mr. Swayze cottoned to them so well because there weren’t many others who’d accept him in town. He lived alone, and Ernie said many in town felt that might be because he was whoo-whoo. When Ernie said whoo-whoo, that meant he was talking about a fellow that liked to lay with men and not women. But Janie didn’t think that was true about Mr. Swayze on a couple of counts.
For one thing, the way Mr. Swayze was working, she didn’t think he’d have time to lay with anyone, man or woman. The day he moved into his house at Fenlan, he started writing. From dawn to dusk, he wrote and wrote or so it seemed. When she was working in his yard, the typewriter was going clackity-clack all the day long. When they got together, there was always a new stack of paper by the typewriter and he would often go and just look at it, making a mark here and there. One time she asked him how he wrote so much, and Mr. Swayze said, “Because when I’m here, I feel like it. The place here inspires me. It’s got a soul to it. I just look at the rocks, and there’s a spirit in them. Sometimes I can find it written in their face. Do you understand what I’m saying?” “No,” she’d said, which was the truth. So he winked at her. “Maybe you just inspire me, Janie.”
Which was another reason she didn’t think he liked to lie with men.
When she got up with a stack of books in her arms to look at the shelf, she saw what’d happened. The shelf was the kind that screwed into the walls, and right on this wall a couple of those screws had come loose. The shelf must have fallen off. Screw-holes must’ve been stripped, and it must’ve fallen off. Probably happened while she was outside just now.
Probably the wind shook it down.
Janie set the books down on the floor beneath it, and tried to reset the shelf. She found the screws on the floor okay, and the bracket for the shelf, and after feeling around on the wall found the holes they’d come out of. But when she lined up the bracket and tried to push the screw in with her thumb it wouldn’t go. Even though it must’ve been stripped, the hole in the wood wasn’t big enough. It’d take a screwdriver to put the bracket back on. Just like it hadn’t been shook out at all — but unscrewed.
Janie punched the wall in front of her with her good arm, and even though she knew she’d likely be punished for it, she swore. What the hell was she worrying about the books for? Her Ernie’d gone off in his rented boat because he thought he killed her, and now there was a storm up on the Bay that’d swamp him in a second if he were out on it, and here she was stuck on an island with no phone or nothing. Mr. Swayze didn’t even keep a radio here. He said he bought the place a long time before anyone had a radio on these islands, and he liked the privacy — like his place in Fenlan wasn’t private enough. These days, Mr. Swayze had a radio in his boat, and he said another one here would just be a distraction.
“I’d welcome that distraction now,” said Janie. “Goddamned right.”
She giggled — let Ernie come and punish her now for Goddamn swearing — and felt bad about it almost right away. Then she took a breath, and felt her rib aching and her elbow starting to smart, and remembered the cut in her head, and thought about Ernie doing all those things for no better reason than because she was reading a story magazine . . . and she let herself laugh again.
“Let him,” she said. “Let him come.”
When she got to the kitchen, Janie wasn’t laughing any more. She went there figuring to empty out the fridge into the big cooler they’d brought with them, so that she’d at least have fresh food for a day or so longer. But the cooler was gone from where she’d put it by the stove, and when she opened the fridge, it was all empty — but for a little jar of French’s Mustard and a quarter stick of butter that’d gone rancid yellow where the wrapping didn’t cover it right.
The three steaks, the potato salad, the jar of pickles, the big jug of milk, two-dozen eggs and near a pound of bacon were all gone. She went and checked the cupboard next, and sure enough, the case of Campbell’s Soup was gone too.
Lord, Ernie must’ve thought her dead for sure — in his big panic to get out, he’d left nothing behind to sustain her alive.
Nothing but the butter and the mustard that was here when they arrived. Janie thought about making a meal of that — she was starting to get hungry despite all her pains — but no matter how you made it, a dinner of butter and mustard just wouldn’t taste right. Even Mr. Swayze, with all his kitchen smarts, wouldn’t be able to make much of that.
“Butter and mustard go on food — they ain’t food themselves,” she said, and the little window by the stove rattled in its frame, like it agreed with her.
Outside, something cracked — like a tree-stem breaking when Ernie’d bend it back over his boot. Janie didn’t look to see what it was, though. The wind would blow hard, and it would break things, and if you were fool enough to have a boat in open water, it would drive you to and fro and send waves as big as a house over your bow, and those waves would swamp you if your boat wasn’t a big one too. There was no need to look outside again, because whatever it was that broke, it would just be another bad thing Janie could do nothing about.
And anyway, Janie was already started through the rest of the lodge. She was pretty hungry all right — it felt like she hadn’t eaten in days — and she needed to do something for that.
But the lodge was picked clean of food — there wasn’t even any liquor on hand, though she managed to find quite a few empties stashed in the wood-bin.
Janie searched the three bedrooms, looked under the mattresses and in all the wardrobes. She found her clothes — Ernie hadn’t taken them with him, at least — and among them was her raincoat and boots. So after she’d satisfied herself there was nothing to eat inside, she pulled on her boots and did up her raincoat and went outside to see what was what on the rest of the island.
The wind was blowing worse by then. She had to lean against the door to make sure it’d open, and when she managed to get out it was a good thing she was wearing her yellow slicker and boots, because she would have been soaked to the skin if she weren’t.
It wasn’t raining. The water was coming up, not down, as it smashed against the high rocks on the edge of the little island and funnelled up through their cracks and bends in white fingers of spray. She squinted down to the dock, but she couldn’t see it for all the flying water. Ernie’s boat could be tied up there right now, and she’d never know it.
Janie didn’t go down to check it out, though — she didn’t think there was anything at that dock, and anyway . . .
She thought she’d figured something better. The lodge was on the lower of two rises on the island, built on the kind of bare rock that Ernie said made for bad land, and Janie thought she’d make for the higher one. At the top of that one, there were a few trees that’d managed to fight their way out between the boulders, and she knew that on some of these islands, you could find blueberry patches in such places.
And Janie did like her blueberries.
So although the rock was slippery most of the way and hard to see at times on account of the water, and although her arm was hurting and her rib still ached, Janie managed the climb. She was more than hungry now. She was starving, it felt like she hadn’t eaten in days, and it was like she could taste those blueberries already.
Janie got her foot into a crack in the rock, and found another crack higher up with her fingers, and then it was just one more pull, and she was up —
And over.
“Ow!”
Janie fell on her behind, which didn’t much hurt, but bumped her bad elbow on the way, which did. She could scarcely believe it, but the wind didn’t seem to get up here.
She’d gone over a kind of lip of rock at the top, and as she looked around she saw she was surrounded by rocks about as high as her neck, with a half-dozen tree-trunks growing up right at the edge. It was like she was sheltered in the palm of some giant hand, the trees were its fingers, all pointing upward. “Wonder if there’s blood drops on the fingertip
s,” she said to herself, and giggled again.
Then she remembered what she’d come for: the blueberries.
Janie got up off her duff and started looking for them. The palm of this great big hand was covered in all kinds of greenery, so it would take some searching. She walked bent over for a little while, but her leg started to hurt so she got down on her hands and knees going through the low greenery. For awhile, she wasn’t sure she was going to find anything — nothing but ferns and tiny little evergreens barely spawned from their daddies’ seed — but finally, in a little corner of the palm where maybe the thumb would crick out, she found a patch of them.
“You-hee!” she howled when she sighted the familiar leaves. She didn’t get up — just crawled over on hands and knees, like a baby hurrying across the lawn for his new toy. Saliva fed into her mouth and her still-sore stomach glowered and muttered impatient.
She grabbed at one of the blueberry plants, turned it over. Nothing there, so she grabbed at another one. And another after that. And one more —
And then she howled again.
Because it looked as though someone had been here before her too. Only they hadn’t picked the blueberries.
They’d stomped them. Taken a pair of boots, and stomped over every square inch of this little blueberry patch. Janie’s fingers were blue where she touched the leaves — but when she licked them, there wasn’t even enough berry there for a sweet.
Jeez, but Ernie’d taken time to do a lot of things for his dead wife, before he ran away in his boat. Janie felt the hot coming on.
“Baaa-sterd!” she yowled, head turned up to the sky. “Baaa-sterd!”
She didn’t care who heard it. She didn’t care if she caused an embarrassment, or broke something valuable, or swore, or just did something stupid. She didn’t care if Ernie was down at the dock now, listening to her — she didn’t care if he came back up here right now to teach her another lesson. If there was a wasp’s nest here, she’d probably find a shovel and hit it.
