The Girl in a Coma

by John Moss

  Fifteen

  Allison

  Before I turned into a turnip, my dreams never made sense. Usually, they’d fall to bits and pieces when I woke up. Like a slow explosion.

  I wonder if it’s possible to have a slow explosion. Probably not. But that’s what my dreams were like.

  Then along came Rebecca Haun. And now I have Lizzie. Lizzie is as real as I am. In a way, she’s more real than I am. She’s living her life.

  Well, so am I! I’m living her life and mine as well. I’m in here. Get used to it, Allison.

  But not too used to it.

  I’m not going to be here forever.

  Well, none of us are.

  Through the last couple of days, I’ve been thinking a lot about Maddie O’Rourke, the most beautiful girl in Peterborough. Just wondering what it would be like to be her. She must wonder what it would be like to be me. I mean, she talks to me like I’m a person. So does David.

  So, damn it, I must be in here!

  Don’t swear.

  I, Allison Briscoe, swore not to swear. Before Jaimie Retzinger, there was that stupid dumb creep who tried to slap me around. I beat him up—I refuse to remember his name—but that guy, he swore a lot. A lot. So I don’t swear. It’s an absolute rule for being Allison Briscoe. Except I occasionally do. Swear. A little.

  I’m being cranky. But who else is going to bawl me out, if it isn’t me?

  I’m not thinking anything in particular about Maddie O’Rourke. It just makes me feel good, knowing she’s out there. I hope she comes in again soon to see Doris. Poor Doris, she’s getting worse. She gurgles and wheezes. I hope she’s in a real coma, not just lying there listening to herself.

  As a detective, I’m a bust. A potato detective. The nursing staff talks openly in front of me like I’m not even here. I keep up with the Shady Nook news. And so far, no one has seen the pattern. Every seventeen days.

  They worry there are more deaths than usual. But they talk like it’s a problem in arithmetic. You know, one plus one, plus one, plus one. Death is just a part of the job around here. Oops, there goes another one.

  It has to be an insider. This place is locked up at night like the Kingston Pen. I know, because Jaimie Retzinger stayed past eleven two nights ago. He practically went nuts before they agreed to turn off the alarm to let him out.

  Myself, I would have just walked out. If the alarm went off, so what? It’s not like he robbed a bank. He just wanted to escape.

  Me too!

  I guess Shady Nook is my real home, now.

  Last night, David and my mom came in. It was a bit distressing.

  “Hi Potato,” he said.

  I like potato, although now I usually think of myself as a turnip.

  “Mom’s here,” he explained, as if she couldn’t talk by herself. He mumbled a bit and then he said: “We just wanted you to know we’ve moved your stuff out of your room. It’s mostly in the basement.”

  David must have leaned closer because his voice softened to a whisper: “I’ll help you set up again once you get out of here.”

  So that’s why he was upset the last time he visited. He knew this was coming. I was being moved out of my home. They weren’t asking permission. Like, how could they? They just went ahead and did it. I was now officially a permanent resident of Shady Nook.

  My mom hugged me and cried. You’ve got to feel sorry for her. David tapped the back of my hand. That’s what I figure he’s doing when he touches me. I can’t actually tell where I’m being touched. But I’m learning. If it feels like tapping, it must be my hand.

  After Mom left, I was sad. David stayed. I saw him as he moved around to sit on the side of my bed. Then I could only see the hair on the top of his head. It’s dark brown, the same as mine, only his is what they call unkempt. He combs it carefully to make it look like he doesn’t. He’s got hazel eyes, too, the same as me. I tried to bring his hair into focus until I got caught up in his story.

  He wanted to tell me the latest news about Russell Miller. It seems Russell told the shrink at his hospital that the Devil was trying to control him. He said he was fighting back. The Devil told him to rob me after my shift at Timmy’s. He wouldn’t say what he was supposed to steal. Russell decided to kill me, instead. To protect me. Then he was going to kill himself and shoot the Devil as well. David laughed. Neither of us believes in Satan, the Devil, or hell with a capital H. Then Russell tried to put me out of my misery in the hospital. He meant to be kind. That’s when Jaimie Retzinger rescued me. David says Jaimie tells people around town he wants to be called Zinger, now. David says no one does it, even though he’s had Zinger painted on the side of his Harley. Who gives themselves their own nickname? But then, who brags that his girlfriend is in a comma. He says “comma,” like I’ve been punctuated. Not c-oh-ma. And I’m not his girlfriend, whether he saved me or not.

  David heard all this because the cops are snooping around, asking if anyone has seen the Devil. Well, you know, the guy who told Russell to rob me. They’re having trouble since Russell only told them he was, like, very ordinary.

  David stopped talking. Or I stopped listening. I lay here thinking about a stranger who came into Timmy’s a week or so before I was shot. He said he admired my silver medallion. I thought he was looking down my blouse. Just another creep. Then he offered to buy it, the medallion. I didn’t even bother to answer him. Some things aren’t for sale. But one thing about him I can’t forget: He was extremely ordinary. Like, not handsome not homely, not young not old, not rich-looking not poor, not tall not short. Just exceptionally ordinary. Partly bald. Very pale.

  He came in a couple of evenings later. He stared at me but we didn’t talk.

  Someone religious once told me the Devil looks like everyone else, that’s what makes him so scary. Since I don’t believe in such things, I’m not ascared—afraid, I’m supposed to say. There’s no such word as “ascared.”

  Well, there is, I just used it, didn’t I?

  So, trying to picture the ordinary man in my mind, I fell asleep. I didn’t hear David go out.

  Lizzie

  After General Brock and Colonel McDonnell left, the other men talked among themselves. No one asked Lizzie for her opinion, yet when she offered it, they listened. She liked that, even if it was only because she had money.

  “We’re caught between Peter and Paul,” she finally said. Several of the older men nodded in solemn agreement, but the younger men were nervous she might be talking about religion.

  Whatever was happening, it was politics. Religion had nothing to do with it. Nor language. The settlers spoke English the same as the British Redcoats, the same as the Americans.

  At her father’s table, the men often discussed how the British wanted control of the routes to the west for trading furs. The Americans wanted their dream of a continent. They wanted to see Napoleon in distant Europe defeat the British, and if they could, they would help. No one, she suspected, cared much about what really happened to the farmers and tradesmen of Upper Canada except the Upper Canadians themselves.

  “We are a far off corner of the Empire,” she said. “But we are important strategically to Britain.”

  “About as important as Gibraltar,” chimed in a man with a thick grey beard. “Strategically, speaking.” He liked using such an unfamiliar word.

  “Perhaps more so,” Lizzie shot back. She knew where Gibraltar was. She wondered if the graybeard did. “If we join the Americans, we will be swallowed up and forgotten. So we must remain British.”

  The men were listening but they were restless.

  “But,” she declared, “we must be free.”

  Rebecca Haun’s kitchen parlor turned quiet. To speak of such things was scandalous. The Americans believed in freedom and kept thousands of black people in slavery and bondage. The French had tried freedom in their own revolution but ended up
chopping off peoples’ heads willy-nilly. They preferred to be ruled by Napoleon who made himself an emperor. And as for the British, freedom was subversive. King George III might consider it treason.

  “Some day…” Lizzie said, but she let her thoughts die out in the embarrassing silence.

  In the end, the men all agreed that they would throw their support behind Brock. They were British now and would remain British forever.

  Nothing lasts forever, Lizzie thought. But she said nothing. She agreed that, at least in her lifetime, being British was the best protection against the vast wilderness at the edge of their fields.

  In the morning, she would walk back to retrieve her treasure. She would deliver it to General Brock to support his Canadian militia. They were either at Queenston Heights on the Lake Ontario side of Niagara, or Fort George at Niagara-on-the-Lake. It wouldn’t be hard to find them. Then she would return home to her father’s household.

  Her mother Edwina wasn’t well, and more and more, Lizzie ran the home. She also helped with the various Erb businesses, including the mill and a foundry. She looked after the accounts. Christian Erb depended on her. So important had she become to the family’s prosperity, it seemed unlikely she would ever find time to secure a husband. After the men left, she kissed her Aunt Rebecca good night and settled into the cot beside the fire. She watched as the flames flickered and died into embers and the embers slowly faded to ash. When the fire grew cold she fell asleep.

  Lizzie woke up with the rising sun. While she was pouring icy water into the basin for a good wash, Rebecca appeared, still dressed in her nightclothes.

  “You’ve made up your mind, child. You’re going to put your Papa’s money into our side, aren’t you?”

  “It’s not just my father’s money, Aunt Becky. It’s from most of the farmers in the Grand River valley. And, yes, if by ‘our side’ you mean the British, that’s what I’m going to do.”

  “We’re all British here, Lizzie. We don’t have a choice.”

  Was that true? Lizzie wondered, as she ate a breakfast of bread and strawberry jam. Is choice an illusion?

  She could hear the falls. They seemed to be rumbling inside her head. She found Fleetfire in the stable and an old leather bridle with reins and a large steel bit hanging from the stall door. She held the bit out to him and he took it in his mouth with no hesitation. There was no saddle but she was an excellent rider. She positioned the horse near a fence and then clambered up onto his back. With a last look to see Rebecca Haun waving through the window, she struck out for the road that would take her onto the escarpment where her treasure was hidden.

  As she guided her horse up a narrow lane to the main road past Wilson’s Hotel, she couldn’t help wondering whatever happened to the handsome young frontiersman with the blue eyes and bushy mustache. He had helped her escape the fire. Did he know she was also trying to escape from the murderous Captain Blaine?

  In the neighboring village of Chippewa, Lizzie noticed a pair of young ruffians skulking around Macklem’s Tavern. It looked like they had slept outdoors all night in their clothes and were nearly frozen to death. They appeared to be waiting for the bar to open so they could get a drink to warm up.

  Lizzie drew her horse to a stop beside the two men.

  “Gentlemen,” she said, “no wonder you’re cold, you seem to have lost your red coats.”

  “We threw ’em away, ma’am,” said the short stout one. “We isn’t soldiers no more. Better cold than dead, we was thinking.”

  “Oh, you’re going to get caught, Mr. Beazley,” she said. “You’ll hang or they’ll shoot you.”

  “Who’re you?” he asked nervously. “And how do you know me damned name?”

  “Damned you are, I am sure,” she said. Then she turned to the taller man. “You speak a little better, sir, and with a fine Scottish brogue. You must be Mr. Cameron.”

  “From Lochiel, yes,” said Cameron. “You observed us last night when the fire got started. That’s how you know who we are. And you saved the animals. I’d glad you escaped.”

  “My God,” said Beazley, “you’re that woman we was supposed to murder.”

  “But there’s no point, now,” said Lizzie. “You’re on the run, same as me.”

  “Only it’s just Captain Blaine that wants you dead,” said Beazley. “And it’s the whole bloody British army what’s after us. Maybe if we killed you right here, we could go back.”

  Lizzie smiled. “Do you want to?” she asked.

  “Kill you? I don’t much care. Go back? Of course. I ain’t no American. I’m a poor Yorkshireman who has lost his way.”

  “We could take you prisoner,” said Cameron.

  “If you turn me over to Captain Blaine, that’s fine. I’m sure he will give you a very good welcome. And after he does, he will have you shot as deserters.”

  “A convincing argument,” Cameron observed.

  “Or you will be hanged for murder,” she said.

  “It were the captain hisself. It weren’t us who killed that farmer,” said Beazley.

  “He was my uncle’s hired man,” said Lizzie.

  “Well, it were the captain that shot him dead.”

  “I’m sorry we accidentally burned down your uncle’s barn,” said Cameron. His Scottish cadence was easier to grasp than Beazley’s heavy Yorkshire accent.

  “We was supposed to do the fire on purpose,” said Beazley.

  “But we didn’t,” said Cameron. “It was an accident, ma’am.”

  “I’m Miss, not Ma’am.”

  “Forget about her,” said Beazley to his friend. “She’s only a girl. We’d better get out of here. We can still join up with the Americans, they’ll think we’re heroes.”

  “Or fools,” said Lizzie. “The Americans are practical. You burned a perfectly good barn to the ground.”

  They stared at her as if surprised at her matter-of-fact language.

  “I’ll tell you what,” she continued. “I’ll place you under arrest. Then I will take you directly to my friend General Brock. And we can tell him about your Captain Blaine murdering Mr. Whittington. General Brock will thank you and execute your captain. And you’ll be home by Christmas.”

  “I’m not sure I want to go home,” said Cameron. “I think when the fighting is over, I might settle right here.”

  “If you’re alive,” said Beazley, laughing. Looking at Lizzie, he added: “She’ll be long married by then.”

  “If you mean me, sir. I think you are presumptuous.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I am for sure.”

  “You say you will arrest us,” said Cameron. “How’re you going to do that?” He seemed oddly amused by the whole situation.

  “It is simple. I am a subject of King George the Third and by the king’s authority I place you under a citizen’s arrest.”

  “There isn’t no such thing,” said Beazley.

  “There should be,” she said. “It might save your miserable lives if I am your witness.”

  “Actually,” said Cameron, “it is her obligation by English common law to arrest wrongdoers, malefactors, and scoundrels.”

  “You can speak for yourself, Mr. Cameron,” said Beazley. “I ain’t none of those things.”

  Cameron looked at Beazley, Beazley looked at Cameron. They both looked at Lizzie.

  “You think General Brock would give us a reward?” Beazley asked her.

  “He might,” said Lizzie. “Or he might just decide not to have you shot.”

  “Well, then,” said Cameron, suppressing a smile, “we are under your arrest and protection. You may take us to General Brock.”

  Lizzie Erb sat forward on her huge horse and nuzzled him between the ears. He had the warm smell of the stables that made her homesick. And here she was, the custodian of two foolish men, a girl who would bring Mr. Whittington’s ki
ller to justice.

  “First I have business,” she said.

  She reached into a small leather purse tied around her waist and drew out two coins. “You go into the tavern when it opens, you get cleaned up, you have some refreshments. I’ll be back for you by late afternoon. Then we’ll go and see King George’s good friend and mine, Major-General Sir Isaac Brock.”

  She still had to get the money she’d hidden. Brock had indicated he would need it as soon as possible. He needed it to pay the settlers who had joined in their own defense.

  Beazley bowed to her in an awkward salute and stretched a hand up to take the coins. Cameron, who had a longer reach, took them instead.

  Lizzie was sure the two of them would still be there when she returned with her treasure.

  Sixteen

  Allison

  This evening, when David comes in, I know right away there’s more bad news.

  “Hi, Allison,” he says.

  He tries to tell me a joke. Normally I listen almost desperately. When the only thing you can do is hear, you’re usually all ears. But I can tell he’s anxious. I wait until he goes quiet, then I know the joke must be over. He doesn’t laugh.

  “Potato,” he says.

  I’m Potato again. Thank you, God.

  Actually, I’m not sure about God, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be thankful.

  I was kicked out of Sunday School when I was nine. I think it was because I asked too many questions. They didn’t actually kick me out. They asked me to be seen and not heard. So I left.

  “Allison,” David says, “there was a plane crash in Chicago this morning.”

  I don’t know anyone in Chicago.

  “Nana Friesen was on the plane.”

  Oh, my God. Why on Earth was she going to Chicago?

  “She’s okay.”

  I know that. I would have known if she wasn’t. David would have come in crying.

  Nana lives near Niagara Falls at Niagara-on-the-Lake, which calls itself “the loveliest town in Canada.” They haven’t seen Peterborough! Nana is my mother’s mother. My mom used to dump us on Nana for six weeks every summer. That was before Nana had to use the walker. My dad lives in Vancouver with his new family. He wouldn’t know us if we sat on his chest and scooped out his brains with a spoon.