After our call ended, I opened my laptop on a whim and typed out our conversation. Looking at it in black and white, I realized something: I’d always assumed that it was only the big, dramatic stories that had formed who I was and my beliefs about myself, but it was also the smaller things—the firsts and lasts, the passing moments of recognition, the modest triumphs I didn’t bother celebrating, and the little failures I couldn’t forgive myself for. Especially the failures, and the guilt I still carried for them even when I wasn’t to blame. Moments that seemed to render all my adult perspective and intelligence and analysis useless, as if I were stuck inside my child-mind with my childish definition of reality still running like one of my mother’s old cassette tapes on an endless loop.
1975
Central British Columbia
The boy was about six or seven, a year or two older than me. Our eyes met as he passed our truck on the highway somewhere in central British Columbia. He was riding on the back of a motorcycle, leaning into the driver as the wind whipped the hair away from his face. I stared at them, wondering if the driver was the boy’s father. Then I noticed something else.
“Mom,” I said, shaking her awake. She’d been dozing between Karl and me while he drove.
“What is it?” she asked, snapping her head up.
I pointed. The motorcycle was right beside us now, and in between the two bodies I could see a puppy’s head peeking out.
“Cute.” Mom smiled, rubbing her neck. Reaching between her feet, she found her stash pouch and started rolling a joint. She and Karl passed it back and forth as he drove.
“Another hour or so,” Karl said, waving at a passing sign. “Better stop for gas.”
Karl always looked like a man with a purpose, but never more so than when he was driving. Even when we weren’t sure exactly where we were going, he would lean forward in his seat as if he couldn’t wait to be there. His dark hair was raked back from his face as the sun reflected off his blue eyes. Mom rested against his side. She never wore makeup, but today she had on her favourite fringed top, a macramé belt and, as always, a Swiss Army knife through one belt loop and two long leather cords hanging from another. Mom always told me how important it was to look good for your man, but we were also still spending a lot of time in the wilderness, and Papa Dick had taught her to always be prepared.
Exactly where we were driving to or from on that day, I don’t recall. Mom had met Karl when he came to my grandparents’ tipi camp as a visitor and quickly decided it would be a great idea if we went to live with him. Until then I hadn’t realized that you could live with someone without actually having somewhere to live. Karl was a man with ideas as big as his dazzling white smile, and most of them depended on us keeping moving. The torn vinyl bench seat that I occupied between Mom and the passenger window that framed my world felt as familiar to me as another child’s bedroom might to them. And whether we were running from the cops to escape a drug bust, stealing from or spending the night in empty summer cottages or moving from one canvas shelter in the forest to another, Mom never had much to say about it. She sometimes cried when the two of us were alone, but she always wiped her tears away before Karl could see them.
Karl put the joint out, exited the highway and pulled into a gas station. After filling up the tank, he lit up a cigarette and then disappeared into the small building.
“Do you need to pee?” Mom asked me.
I shook my head.
“Okay. Be right back.”
After Mom slid from the truck, I rolled my window down and hung Suzie Doll outside by the arm, swinging her back and forth. When I leaned out far enough, her feet traced a trail in the dust.
“My dad’s buying me a box of Mike and Ike,” said a voice, and I snapped Suzie Doll back into the cab. Standing in front of me was the boy from the motorcycle, still holding the puppy in his arms.
“What’s Mike and Ike?” I asked, sitting Suzie Doll beside me on the seat.
“Candy,” the boy answered. “It’s green and red and blue and purple and tastes like fruity stuff, and it’s my favourite. Dad promised me, since we have to get rid of Shyla.”
“Shyla? Who’s that?”
Instead of answering, the boy held the puppy out to me. I slowly reached my hand out to her. She tilted her head to the side and licked my fingers, so I pulled away and wiped my hand on my pants. I hated dog slobber.
“Why do you have to get rid of her?”
“Dad says she’s slowin’ us down. Too many poop and pee breaks.”
“Oh. Do you have to go somewhere fast?”
“I dunno.” The boy shrugged. “That’s just what Dad says. Plus we found her at a garbage can, so Dad says she’s probably got bugs and stuff.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say. I saw Karl in the distance, heading back toward the truck. Shyla whined and gazed up at the boy, landing a lick on his chin. “My mom’s in the bathroom,” I said finally, waving at the building. “She takes a super long time.”
“That’s okay. I don’t have a mom anymore.”
“You don’t?” I looked at the boy a little harder. I’d never met someone who didn’t have a mom before, except Karl, whose mom died when he was fifteen. He didn’t really count, though, because he was a grown-up. “What happened to her? Did she die?”
“No. She liked another guy better than my dad, so she went to live with him in Regina.”
“Wow. Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh. Regina rhymes with vagina, you know.”
The boy didn’t say anything. He was staring at the ground, pounding his heel into the dirt. I suddenly felt like giving him a hug, like I did when Mom was feeling blue. But there was a truck door between us, and besides, his puppy would probably try to lick me again.
“Well, I don’t have a dad,” I said instead. “I mean, I do, but he lives in California and everything. Mom says I met him when I was two, but I can’t remember.” I dropped my eyes. Whenever I thought about my father, I saw in my mind the exact same thing: the only photo I’d ever seen of us, him holding me and looking sad while I looked mad. Mom told me that when she met Greg, she thought they would be together forever, but that forever had turned out to be just over a year. He hadn’t even stuck around long enough for me to be born. But Mom said my dad was a good man who sent her a hundred dollars every month even though he couldn’t afford it, and the reason he hadn’t stayed was that it would have hurt him too much to see me. As much as I tried, I couldn’t figure out why looking at some baby would hurt anyone’s feelings.
The boy grunted something and pointed past me. “What about him, then?”
I turned to see Karl back in the driver’s seat, shuffling through our eight-tracks with an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips.
“That’s Karl,” I said, as if it explained everything. And maybe it did, because suddenly the boy smiled and held the puppy out to me again.
“Do you want her? ’Cause Dad says if someone don’t take her, we’re gonna have to leave her by the road. Let someone else pick her up.”
“Oh, I don’t think—”
“Sure she does,” Karl said. “We could use us a guard dog, couldn’t we, Small Fry? Hand her over, partner.”
I turned to Karl in surprise.
The boy smiled at him. “Really?”
“I wouldn’t kid ya, kid,” Karl replied, lighting his cigarette.
“Okay.” The boy looked down at Shyla, then he closed his eyes and pulled her hard against his face. They stayed like that for a minute, and then he passed Shyla to me through my window. “’Kay. Bye, then.”
“Bye,” I said softly.
And with that, he turned and ran back to the motorcycle. His father was just coming out of the gas station. The sun glinted off his black leather jacket. He caught the boy in his arms and bent down to say something in his ear. The boy laughed and threw his arms around his dad, and I wondered just what he had said to make him so happy.
“Hey. Sh
e’s pretty cute, eh?” Karl said behind me.
“Yeah. I guess so,” I said, still staring out the window.
“Did you catch her name?”
“Her name? Um . . . Shyla,” I replied.
“Shyla. Nice.”
I finally turned to look at Karl. Shyla was on the seat between us, flipped on her back to show us her tummy. She sighed happily as Karl scratched her side.
“I wonder what’s taking Mom so long?” I asked, glancing back at the gas station.
“Lady things . . . who knows?” Karl lifted Shyla onto his lap. For some reason, my eyes filled with tears. Karl took a drag on his cigarette. “Hey there. Small Fry?”
“Yeah?”
“Nobody has to know for sure you don’t have a dad. You dig? I mean, I know I’m not the real deal and all, but . . . you know?”
I blinked at him. If anyone had asked me how long Karl had been with us, I wouldn’t have been able to say, but it was long enough that my memories of life before him were a little fuzzy. The times when it was me and Mom and Papa Dick and Grandma Jeanne and my aunts seemed kind of like a dream. And my uncle Dane. More than anything, Uncle Dane felt like a dream. Karl’s hand landed on my shoulder and patted it, kind of like he had patted Shyla.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “Okay.”
Pressing my chin against the door frame, I looked at the boy and his dad. They were back at the motorcycle, and the boy was giggling while his father chased him around and around. What was that boy’s secret? I wondered. After all, he didn’t even have a mom. I did, plus someone who said he would be my pretend dad. Mom always said I should be grateful just to have a mother to love me, and I was. But I knew that no matter what, I’d never be as happy as that boy looked right now.
Our home after we got Shyla was a log cabin on a creek, somewhere in time between the stealing sprees on Shuswap Lake and our year in Lake Minnewanka in the stolen wall tent. The cabin was tiny, just a square room with a wood stove and a few cupboards built into one corner. There was a path that led down to the creek, and every morning I would walk there to fetch the water before Mom and Karl got up. A bucket in each hand kept me balanced as I climbed the slope back up to the cabin, trying not to let the water slop over the sides. Then it was time for breakfast. Mom had taught me how to slice her homemade bread with a knife, so I’d hack off a piece and spread it with butter and molasses. While I ate, Shyla would sit at my feet without even begging, because she knew she was next. Karl bought Shyla’s food in town—a huge shiny bag that I used Mom’s measuring cup to scoop little brown pebbles out of. One time I’d tried eating a few of them, just for the heck of it, but they tasted like I thought sawdust must taste. I thought it would be pretty boring to be a dog, eating the same old sawdusty food every day, but Shyla didn’t seem to mind.
Shyla was the second dog Karl had owned since Mom and I had been with him. The first one had been a big orange thing with a black tongue named Bear. He’d bitten me on the chin a few weeks after Mom and Karl met. When we left my grandparents’ tipi camp in Morley to go live with Karl, Karl had dropped Bear off at the Indian reservation and told them they could just go ahead and shoot him if he got too out of hand. When he said that, I could feel a little worm crawling around in my stomach. The worm felt hot and mean and like it wanted Bear to get shot, because he had bitten me and I still had a scar on my chin and it would serve him right. But Shyla was different. I knew she’d never bite me. She played in the creek with me and sprayed me when she shook the water from her fur. She ran beside me as I bounced on my big red ball in front of our cabin. She slept in my bed, keeping my mind off the noises Mom and Karl made at night that I hated. Shyla was almost bigger than me now, and her fur was grey and black and white. She even knew better than to lick me, because I told her I didn’t like dog slobber. And she was good at keeping strangers away. One day a man walked through the woods and right up to our cabin, and Shyla ran up and bit him on the leg. After that, Karl got really mad. He kept telling Mom it was the third time, and they were going to get in trouble.
I didn’t know the name of the creek we lived on or how long we would stay there. I didn’t know if the cabin belonged to us or some other people who might show up and be mad and kick us out. What I did know was that I loved Mom and Karl, and especially Shyla, because she made everything seem okay even when it wasn’t.
I sat on a chair, squeezing my eyes shut while Mom brushed the knots from my hair.
“Almost done, almost done,” Mom said soothingly.
“Can’t you just cut it off?” I asked, but she laughed as if that were the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard.
“Darling. You know men don’t like short hair. They like it long, and yours is beautiful.”
“But I don’t care about any men.”
“You’ll understand when you’re older. It’s very important for men to like how you look.”
“But I don’t even know any men besides Karl, and anyway, he already likes me, right?” I glanced around our cabin. “Hey. Where is Karl, anyway?”
“He went into town early to get supplies.”
“With Shyla?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” I hated it when Shyla was out of my sight. When she was, I couldn’t help but imagine all the horrible things that might happen to her. She could get lost, or run over by a car, or stolen by someone who thought they loved her more than we did. She could even get shot by accident like Apache. “When will they be back?”
“I don’t know, sweetie. Soon, I guess.” Mom pulled the brush through my hair one last time, picked up her mirror and rubbed it with some spit. “There, see? My gorgeous girl. There isn’t a person in the world who wouldn’t think so.”
I looked away, bored. I looked the same as I did on any other old day. “Can I go play now?”
“Of course.”
I grabbed Suzie Doll and went down to the creek. She needed a bath and a change of clothes. I was halfway through sewing a new dress for her out of one of Mom’s old dish towels, and Shyla always snoozed by my feet as I sewed by candlelight.
After a while, I started to wonder where Karl was. I ran up to the cabin a couple times to ask Mom, but she just shrugged and kept on puttering. Finally, when the sun was starting to drop in the sky, I heard Karl’s voice, and then Shyla’s bark. I snatched up Suzie Doll and made a dash for home.
As soon as I walked into the cabin, I could tell something was wrong. Karl was pacing back and forth and talking too fast. Shyla sat in a corner, following him with her eyes.
“What’s wrong? What happened?” I asked.
“Shyla. She bit someone again,” Mom said. “The man threatened to come after Karl.”
My stomach dropped. “Come after him how? Does he know where we live?”
No one answered me. Suddenly Karl walked over to the gun rack and took down his rifle.
“You stay here with your mother, Small Fry. I’ll be right back.”
“But where are you—?” My voice stuck in my throat as he clipped Shyla’s leash onto her collar and pulled her outside. “What are you doing? No! No!”
But Karl had already shut the door behind him, and Mom was wrapping her arms tightly around me.
“It’s for the best,” she said to me. “She’s going to get us into trouble. We just can’t afford any more trouble than we already have.”
“But we can train her to stop! We can—”
“No, honey. I’m sorry. You’ll . . . you’ll understand when you’re older.”
I hated it when Mom said that to me, because I knew that no matter how much older I got, I would never do some of the dumb things grown-ups did. I squirmed and kicked and jabbed my elbows at her until I finally broke free. Then I ran out the door, not even caring that she was screaming at me to stop.
Down the path, over the fallen log, falling flat on my face, getting up again, down to the creek, branches tearing at my sweater. “Shyla! Karl! Shyla!” No answer. Had I heard a shot yet? Stumbling along t
he creek, water splashing, Mom still screaming for me. I turned and headed into the forest, ran toward the sound of barking.
Blasting through the trees, I saw Karl first. He was standing with his back to me, loading his rifle. And there was Shyla beside him. Tied to a tree trunk, barking and tugging against her short leash. She stopped barking when she saw me, and her tail wagged, just once. Then she whined a little, her eyes never leaving mine. I wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand and tried to send her a secret message: Don’t worry. I’ll save you.
“Karl!” I shouted, running up to him and grabbing his arm. “Please. Please don’t.”
He finished loading his rifle and snapped it back together with a horrible metallic click. “It’s for the best, Small Fry.”
“No. It’s—I can train her, I promise.”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry. Now go on home.” He raised the gun to his eye. Shyla started jumping wildly with her tongue hanging out, and I was sure she knew what was coming.
I needed to think fast. I searched my brain for something, anything, that I could say to stop him. And then I had it. Taking a deep breath, I yelled as loud as I could, “Dad! Please don’t do it! Don’t do it, Dad!”
Karl lowered the gun and looked at me, and his eyes were sad. Then he gave his head another little shake. “Turn away, Small Fry,” he said quietly. “Turn away.”
I covered my ears and did as I was told. After the shot rang out, I ran as fast as I could back to the cabin and slammed into Mom’s arms. She held me tightly, stroking my hair as she murmured into my ear.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “Everything will be okay.”
“No, it won’t!” I shook my head hard, shook it so many times that after a while I wondered if I could even stop shaking it if I tried. I saw Apache, lying on his side in a pool of blood. When he died, everyone had been sad, not just me. Papa Dick had even gotten mad at the hunters and sent them away. But this was different. I’d trusted Karl, even let him try to be my dad, but he hadn’t loved me enough to stop. Would I have mattered enough to him if I’d been his real daughter? I could still see Shyla looking at me, begging me with her eyes to save her. I’d failed the one being who’d never failed me. And as my head finally came to a rest and my hysteria turned to hitching sobs, I realized the truth. Shyla had died because of the mean worm in my belly. I’d wanted Bear to get shot, so it had happened to Shyla instead. I should have listened to Papa Dick, I thought. After all, he’d always told me that the things we think about come true even more than the things we try to make happen.
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