The Journey Prize Stories 23

by Alexander Macleod; Alison Pick; Sarah Selecky

  —Thanks for helping us, Vic said. She sat down on an upturned log, whiskey on her knee.

  —My dad tells me if you’re cooking stew, and you don’t put meat in it, you can’t bitch when yer eating it, Walla said, and he grinned to show his pearly teeth, and Vic laughed and so did I, though I didn’t know what the hell he meant. Then he said: —Now I need a lift down to the station.

  Vic froze in the middle of sipping her whiskey and Animal looked up from his smouldering fire. —What’dya mean.

  —I told you, I’m shittered, and the pigs have it out for me.

  —I’m buildin’ the fire, Animal said, but Walla had his eyes on Vic, anyway. Vic glanced from Walla to me and I knew she wouldn’t ask me to step in, because she won’t do that, ever. One time she figured out how to fix a circuit fault on her Ranger all her own, because she didn’t want to ask her old man how.

  —I’ll do it, I said to Walla, and then I dumped my half-empty beer over Animal’s wimpy fire and he cursed at me like a foreman.

  Walla flicked me his keys and I palmed them from the air and got in the driver seat, and he swung into passenger like a buddy. Not thirty seconds into the drive his stench soured up the cab, but at least he smelled like a working man, like he just forgot to shower, and not like some hobo. On the way down, the poly over the rear panel smacked about and more than once he leaned sideways to inspect the tape. He spread one leg across the seat, draped his arm clear out the window, and I half-wondered if his knuckles bobbed along the gravel. In the distance, the horizon glowed from the park lights and the treetops resembled hundreds of heated needles. I kept the high beams on and scanned for marble eyes, but Walla told me the all the deer fled north with the beetles. —Nothin’ here but us and the flies, he said. —Gas, bloodweed. A thousand dead acres.

  —The dead roads, or something.

  —I don’t mind that, Walla said. Then: —They’re an odd couple, eh?

  —Who.

  —The girl and him, Animal.

  —They’re not a couple.

  —Sure they are. Or gonna be, he said, and punched me on the arm like we were friends. —The way he looks at her? Sure.

  —He looks at all girls like that. Walla smiled like a mason jar. He had fillings in his teeth. —Her, too. She was lookin’ at him too.

  The station and the clown face swept into view and I geared down and my fist touched Walla’s knee and I imagined Vic and Animal bent together at his shitty fire, red marks scraped over Vic’s neck and collar bones from his barbed-wire stubble.

  —You got a thing for her eh, he said.

  —No.

  —Might be you need to take him down a notch.

  —We’re buds, I said, and parked the truck.

  Walla extracted himself from the passenger seat. —Nah man, he said across the hood, —we’re buds.

  Whatever the hell he meant I’ll never know, since I ditched him and started walking back along the road, toward the summit. The whole way I thought about Animal and Vic and I tried not think about them at the same time. I’d known them so long. The outside smelled more like drift wood than a forest. Wind kicked dirt at my face, and though it breezed around the treetops they just creaked like power poles. I wouldn’t have been surprised if a goddamn wolfman came pounding out the dark or something. A few times headlights tear-assed up the road and a few times I almost barreled sideways and I just got madder even thinking of it.

  Then the slope evened out, which meant I was nearing the summit, and then the trees flickered campfire-orange a short ways off. The road looped our campsite so I cut through the forest. Never been so scared in my life, those last steps. Animal atop Vic, grinding away, probably still in his stupid commie hat and his Converses – no sight in the world could be worse. I’d rather get shot. Walla was right – Animal’d been gunning for her the whole goddamn trip. Right from the start when he kicked me to the backseat, some big plan – some big, selfish plan.

  I got close enough to see the flames. Vic sat under her sleeping bag, off near the cliff-side, but I could only make out her outline in the orange light. Animal was MIA. They might have already finished, how could I know. I crept along the tree line, scanned for him. Not sure what I hoped to accomplish. It’s not like he kept a dark secret.

  I found Animal outside the campsite with his back to the slope and his cock in his hand. It was dark enough that I didn’t get the whole picture, thank God for that. He’d crossed the road so he could piss on a big pine that might have been a little bit alive – for some reason he got real uncomfortable around those dead trees. I had some things to say to him. Vic’s old man once told me a guy needs to know when to pick his battles, and as I watched Animal, pissing as if nothing mattered, I figured it out: a guy needs to know what he cares about most, and Animal, well, he didn’t care about stuff. But he had to know I did. Christ, everybody in the valley knew I did. It’d be like if I tried to steal his car for a joyride. I’m his friend, for fucker’s sake.

  Then a truck hauled ass up the road, kicking gravel at its mudflaps. It had a good clip and its rear end fishtailed side to side, out of control or so the passengers could get a laugh. Its headlamps swung around but on that switchback the dead trees broke the light – no way the driver would see Animal, not before clobbering him. Animal turned as if to check what the commotion was about. Either he couldn’t see or he was too stupid to dive for cover or he figured no truck would dare to run him down. I saw the trajectory, though, loud and clear: the pickup’s rear end would swing into him, knock him ass-over-tea-kettle into the woods, and that’d be that for Animal Brooks. But I didn’t yell out. I didn’t make a sound. Because all I could think of was his hand on Vic’s thigh, over and over the whole trip, his wild grin in the rearview, and all the stuff he’d pulled to be alone with her. So nope, I didn’t yell out, and the truck fishtailed right toward him and he yowled like a dog and I lost track of where he went.

  Vic bolted from the tree line, almost right into me, and I scrambled after her. She gave me a look, as if surprised, but I just nodded like I ought to be there. Animal was already on his feet. Moss and dead twigs stuck to his face and his commie hat had been biffed away and the forest floor was beat up where he’d rolled across it. He pulled a pinecone from his hair and stared at it in wonder.

  —Animal, Vic barked, —you okay?

  He flicked the pinecone aside, seemed to notice us. —Why the hell didn’t yuh say sompthen, he said, staring at me.

  —What?

  —Yuh were across the road. Why didn’t yuh yell out or sompthen. Fucken truck nearly killed me.

  —I just got here, I told him.

  —Yuh just got here eh.

  —Yeah, got back right now. Animal swiped his commie hat from the ground. He banged it against his thigh to dust it off. —Just en time to see muh kung fu reflexes, he said, and grinned.

  —So you’re okay? Vic said.

  —Shaken up, yeah.

  Vic grabbed Animal’s chin and turned his head sideways. His cheek was scraped and dirty and Vic licked her thumb to rub it clean. —Mighta pulled uh groin muscle, too, he said when she stepped back, and Vic lasted a full two seconds of his leer before she punched him in the chest hard enough to make him wheeze.

  Afterward, by the fire, Animal shook out his adrenaline. —Woulda sucked to run that truck over, he said, and laughed – a deep, throaty laugh like a guy does when he’s survived an event that should have killed him. Then he dug into the cooler and started skulling beers to drown his jitters.

  Vic and me shared a mickey of Canadian Club, away from the camp fire so we could look over the cliff-side at this bizarre piece of land. She took a big chug from the bottle and handed it over. Vic can drink like a tradesman when times come. The moonlight made her cheeks silver and that lazy eye of hers acted out. She spread her sleeping bag across her legs and I inched my way under it and the vinyl clung to my shins. Vic smelled like a campfire. Vic smelled like citrus shampoo or something. Vic smelled like Vic.

/>   —This an alright place to sleep, she said and wiggled in the dirt and the dried bloodweed and made a little nest.

  —I’m not picky, I said.

  —You smell like a dog.

  —Sorry, Vic.

  She belted me on the shoulder and I leaned into her. Below us, a couple semis zoomed north and the ferris wheel spun and I thought I could hear Walla chopping lumber. Christ, a weirder place. By the fire, Animal sounded out words from his book, finger under each sentence. Then Vic unbuttoned her flannel coat. She always wore it, or if not the coat then a flannel shirt. Sexiest thing, swear to God. I remember how she took it off, first time we ever boned, all awkward and struggling so I had to help her with the sleeves. A different kind of time back then. A different way of going about things, even. Sometimes I wish I was smarter so I could’ve gone to university with Vic.

  Vic put her hand under my chin and jacked my head to eye level. I guess I was looking at her breasts. She leaned in and kissed me and she tasted all cabbagey like dope, and soft, and her smooth chin ground on my middle-of-the-night stubble. But I couldn’t kiss her right then. I don’t know why. She slicked her tongue over my lips and I couldn’t get my head around the whole thing, the ferris wheel and what Walla said and how I almost got Animal killed, and Vic, you know, and the whole god damn thing.

  —Don’t fuck around, she said, but the words were all breath.

  —Just thinken is all.

  She bit down on my lip. —Well, stop it.

  —I like you a lot, Vic.

  For a second she stopped and turned her head and her neon hair grazed my nose, and I’d have given anything to know what she was going on in her head right then. She had her lips squished shut and her forehead a little scrunched as if figuring something out – same look as the day she left for university. That’d have been in ’99, and her and her old man and me stayed at a hotel in Calgary, so she could catch her west-coast flight in the wee hours, and while she showered her old man told me not to let her get away. —It’ll happen Duncan, he said, his face drawn in and lined around his eyes, as if he knew what the hell he was talking about. —I swear to God you’ll lose her if you don’t take action soon. And I nodded and tried not to grin, because I understood exactly what he meant.

  On the mountaintop, Vic hooked hair behind her ear. —You’re my guy, Dunc, she said as though it were true.

  —I know Vic. But sometimes I don’t know. You know?

  Then she cuffed me, all playful, and pulled me into her.

  But that’s Vic for you. Afterward, when we were done and Animal’s moans were snores and the fire glowed down to embers, Vic sat up and stretched. Her ribs made bumps under her skin and the muscles along her spine tensed and eased and it felt alright right then. That’s Vic for you, that’s how she can make you feel, that easy. Never liked a girl so much. Nothing else to it. I just cared about her more than the university guy did or Animal did or maybe her old man did. I should’ve told her so, or how I wished she didn’t have to go west, or how I’d had a ring for her for years but lacked the balls to do anything with it. Even then, the mountaintop seemed like a last chance or something.

  She sucked the rest of the whiskey and pointed at the sky where a trail of turquoise streaked across the horizon – the northern lights, earlier than I’d ever known them. She just stood there for a second with her back to me and those lights around her. Christ, she was so pretty. Then she whipped the empty bottle off the summit, and I stared at her and thought about her and waited for the sound of the bottle breaking way, way below us.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Jay Brown recently moved to Toronto from Victoria, British Columbia. His award-winning writing has appeared in many journals and magazines across Canada, including Vancouver Review, Prairie Fire, Grain, and, most recently, the anthology Darwin’s Bastards. He has just completed a fiction collection tentatively titled The Hollow Earth. He is at work on more stories and a novel.

  Michael Christie received his MFA in Creative Writing from UBC in 2008. Before that, he worked in a homeless shelter in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and also did outreach helping the severely mentally ill attend court. “The Extra” appears in his fiction collection, The Beggar’s Garden (HarperCollins Canada, 2011). Another story from this collection, “Goodbye Porkpie Hat,” appeared in The Journey Prize Stories 20. He lives in Thunder Bay, where he is at work on a novel.

  Seyward Goodhand’s short fiction has appeared in Queen Street Quarterly, echolocation, and PRISM international. This year, she won a fellowship in the SLS Fiction Poetry Contest. She is currently working on a collection of stories and finishing a doctorate in Early Modern Literature from the University of Toronto.

  Miranda Hill is a recent graduate of UBC’s Optional Residency MFA program. “Petitions to Saint Chronic” was her first published story. Her fiction has subsequently appeared in The New Quarterly, and her collection of stories is forthcoming from Doubleday Canada. Hill is also the founder of Project Bookmark Canada, a national charitable organization that places text from stories and poems in the exact physical locations where literary scenes are set. She lives in Hamilton, Ontario.

  Fran Kimmel’s short fiction has appeared in Grain, Prairie Fire, The Fiddlehead, filling Station, Room, FreeFall Magazine, and The Journey Prize Stories 21. Her writing has been nominated for the CBC Literary Awards, and has won both CBC Anthology and Write for Radio Awards. Born in Calgary, she now lives in Lacombe, Alberta. Her first novel, The Shore Girl Clippings, will be published in 2012 by NeWest Press.

  Ross Klatte, born in Minneapolis and raised on a Minnesota dairy farm, immigrated to Canada in 1971. His fiction has appeared in Event and The New Orphic Review, and he is the author of Leaving the Farm (Oolichan Books, 2007), a memoir that began as the prize-winning essay for the 1990 CBC Literary Awards. He’s now at work on a novel about going back-to-the-land in British Columbia at the end of the Sixties. He and his wife live near Balfour, B.C.

  Michele Serwatuk’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in The Antigonish Review, Dandelion, Grain, The New Quarterly, Room, The Wascana Review, and other journals. She is a past recipient of the Okanagan Short Story Award. She lives in Toronto where she runs a small animal care business, and is currently working on a non-fiction book entitled It’s Just Us, on the Canada’s public health care system.

  Jessica Westhead is a Toronto writer and editor. Her fiction has appeared in a number of literary magazines, including Geist, The New Quarterly, Taddle Creek, The Puritan, The Antigonish Review, and Indiana Review. She was shortlisted for the 2009 CBC Literary Awards, and her first novel, Pulpy & Midge (Coach House Books, 2007), was nominated for the ReLit Award. “What I Would Say” was first published by This Magazine and appears in her short story collection, And Also Sharks, published by Cormorant Books in spring 2011.

  D. W. Wilson’s short stories and essays have appeared in literary journals across Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. His first book, Once You Break a Knuckle – a collection of interconnected short stories set on the west coast – was published by Hamish Hamilton Canada in September 2011. He is a Canadian citizen by birth and temperament, but currently lives in the United Kingdom while he pursues a Ph.D.

  Michelle Winters is a translator and technical writer from Saint John, N.B. A founding member of Just in a Bowl Productions, she co-wrote and performed two plays with the company, Unsinkable and The Hungarian Suicide Duel. Her work has been published in Peter O’Toole: A Magazine of One-Line Poems and This Magazine. She has just completed a novel entitled I Am a Truck, which she hopes people will one day read.

  ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTING JOURNALS

  For more information about the journals that submitted to this year’s competition, The Journey Prize, and The Journey Prize Stories, please visit www.mcclelland.com/jps or www.facebook.com/TheJourneyPrize.

  The Dalhousie Review has been in operation since 1921 and aspires to be a forum in which seriousness of purpose and playfulness of mind can coexist
in meaningful dialogue. The journal publishes new fiction and poetry in every issue and welcomes submissions from authors around the world. Editor: Anthony Stewart. Submissions and correspondence: The Dalhousie Review, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3H 4R2. Email: dalhousie.review@dal.ca Website: www.dalhousiereview.dal.ca

  The New Orphic Review is a semi-annual literary magazine which publishes fiction and articles up to 10,000 words in length and poetry ranging from sonnets to free verse. It is listed in Poet’s Market, Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market, The Pushcart Prize, and Best American Short Stories. It has featured poetry, fiction, and essays by authors from Finland, Switzerland, Italy, Ireland, Britain, Chile, Canada, and the United States. Editor-in-chief: Ernest Hekkanen. Associate Editor: Margrith Schraner. Submissions and correspondence: The New Orphic Review, 706 Mill Street, Nelson, British Columbia, V1L 4S5. Website: www3.telus.net/neworphicpublishers-hekkanen

  Prairie Fire is a quarterly magazine of contemporary Canadian writing that publishes stories, poems, and literary non-fiction by both emerging and established writers. Prairie Fire’s editorial mix also occasionally features critical or personal essays and interviews with authors. Stories published in Prairie Fire have won awards at the National Magazine Awards and the Western Magazine Awards. Prairie Fire publishes writing from, and has readers in, all parts of Canada. Editor: Andris Taskans. Fiction Editors: Warren Cariou and Heidi Harms. Submissions and correspondence: Prairie Fire, Room 423, 100 Arthur Street, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3B 1H3. Email: prfire@mts.net Website: www.prairiefire.ca

  PRISM international, the oldest literary magazine in Western Canada, was established in 1959 by a group of Vancouver writers. Published four times a year, PRISM features short fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, and translations by both new and established writers from Canada and around the world. The only criteria are originality and quality. PRISM holds three exemplary competitions: the Short Fiction Contest, the Literary Non-fiction Contest, and the Earle Birney Prize for Poetry. Executive Editors: Elizabeth Hand and Erin Flegg. Fiction Editor: Cara Woodruff. Poetry Editor: Jordan Abel. Submissions and correspondence: PRISM international, Creative Writing Program, The University of British Columbia, Buchanan E-462, 1866 Main Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z1. Email (for queries only): prism@interchange.ubc.ca Website: www.prismmagazine.ca