The Retreat

by David Bergen

  “Why?” Fish asked.

  “I’d like to hear that story,” Lizzy said.

  “Because it’s sick,” Harris said. He moved his leg up and down slowly, and then pulled it back towards his wheelchair. He looked at Lizzy and said that he would tell the story another day, though, from one day to the next, the facts would be slightly altered. “Everything depends on place and time and mood,” he said.

  Lizzy wanted to say that she did not understand, but she kept quiet, then finally said, “That’s okay. No problem. Whatever.”

  And then, one morning after breakfast, the boy came with his chickens. He lived up the road and twice a week he arrived in an old pickup and parked at the edge of the clearing and walked to the Hall. Lizzy and Fish had just come back from the pond and were sitting on the stairs to their cabin, hair still wet, when she saw Raymond’s truck. She knew his name was Raymond because she had seen him once before, just after her family had arrived at the Retreat. He’d shown up for dinner one evening and had sat beside the Doctor at one end of the long table. Lizzy, several seats down from him, had been aware that he was younger than she first thought, closer to her age, and this stirred her interest. He had his hair in a ponytail and she noticed that he rarely spoke, except when the Doctor addressed him. He ate with his face close to his plate. No one else spoke to him. When he was finished eating he said thank you, stood, and left. The Doctor had asked if he wanted coffee, but he shook his head and said he had to go. She had hoped that he would notice her, but he kept his eyes lowered. Later, she had asked Margaret, the Doctor’s wife, who the tall, dark boy was. Margaret had told her his name, and that he lived in a cabin not far from the Retreat, and that every summer he provided them with chickens and rabbits. She said that her husband thought it was important to reach out to the community, and inviting boys like Raymond to dinner was one way to do that.

  Raymond sat in the pickup, smoking and looking out the windshield. Lizzy thought he might be watching Fish and her on the stairs by the cabin, but it was hard to tell because he wore sunglasses, and his baseball cap was pulled down low. The only movement she could discern was that of his hand lifting the cigarette to his mouth and then dropping again.

  Lizzy looked down at her legs. She liked their long slimness, a feature she had inherited from her mother. She had, according to her father, inherited other attributes from her mother – a soft vanity, wilfulness, and a heightened sense of longing – but Lizzy, at seventeen, believed that she was more hopeful and generous than her mother.

  Raymond ducked slightly, shouldered the door, and climbed out. He stood in the sunlight. His cap said Black Cat. He reached into the box of the pickup and then walked, with his slight limp, down the path towards the kitchen, carrying several dead chickens. One pigeon toe, Lizzy thought. She could see that the chickens were headless and they’d been plucked. When Raymond passed by, Fish said, “What’s that?” and Lizzy said, “Chickens.”

  “Naked chickens?”

  Raymond looked at them both briefly and then continued on.

  The Doctor stepped out of his door and stood on the porch, then walked out across the clearing and disappeared into the bush. When Raymond came back a few minutes later he was empty-handed.

  Lizzy stood and said, “I’m Lizzy, Lizzy Byrd, and this is Fish, my brother. I saw you at dinner one night last week. Remember? We had scalloped potatoes. So, you the chicken guy?”

  “Guess I am.” He gave his first name and then, after a pause, his last. Seymour.

  Lizzy looked at him and said, “Can’t see your eyes to know if that’s true or not.”

  The side of his mouth went up a little. He lifted his glasses.

  “They’re normal,” she said.

  “I know that,” he said. “And I can see you’re not a bird.”

  Lizzy wondered if he was trying to tell her something. His voice was soft but somehow coded. Maybe he thought she was fat. She lifted Fish up onto her hip and said, “Funny guy, eh? Not a bird.”

  “Why?” Fish asked.

  Raymond nodded, and then set his sunglasses back into place and went to his pickup, got in, and drove away.

  That afternoon she sat on her bed and wrote a letter to Cyril, though by the time she had finished, she knew that it would never be sent. In it she described the Retreat as desolate, and she said that she was surrounded by old people and children, and that she had become a nanny, a kitten killer, and a nursemaid. Her mother had promised that all this would be great fun, but it turned out that this was not true; fun was hard to come by, as was illicit pleasure. There was nothing to do all day while the adults gathered in their silly discussion groups or listened to the Doctor talk about the compartments of the soul. She didn’t know how she was going to stand it here for the next two months. She had tried on her miniskirt the other day, the mauve silk one, and she had walked around inside her cabin, because there was nowhere to go here, nothing to dress up for. She had been alone, which was a rare thing, and she had stood with her back against the cabin wall and imagined hands sliding up under her skirt. She wrote, however, that the hands did not belong to him; they were disembodied hands, with skilful and knowing fingers. She said that he was rarely in her thoughts now, and that she had discovered here a man called Harris. He asked lots of questions. He was not embarrassed by candour. She said that she had been a child and now she was putting off childish things. Harris had a wife who appeared to have a lover, though this didn’t seem to disturb him, and she wondered if she could ever live that way. Could she ever be so uninvolved in the world, so cold, that betrayal would mean nothing? Then she wrote that this was sort of humorous, because even as she was writing these words she was betraying him. Cyril. Though it wasn’t really a betrayal, she was simply stepping through a door from one room into another. She wasn’t lonely; she didn’t think that loneliness would ever plague her. Speaking of which, she had been reading a novel Harris had handed to her, The Plague, and though the story was weird and somewhat difficult, she was winding her way through it. She wrote that there was a boy who brought chickens to the Retreat. He wore cowboy boots with yellow stitching and he was quiet. He held his fork with his fist. Maybe more shy than quiet, she wrote. Or were they the same? She might, she thought, write a poem titled “Basic Problems,” or some such thing.

  She studied her handwriting and the words and how the words, to a foreigner with a different language, would appear as beautiful nonsense. She tore the letter from her notebook, folded it, and pushed it into the drawer of the bureau next to her bed. Outside, in the clearing, she heard the voices of her mother and William. Her mother was talking and William was interjecting, asking questions, and though nothing was clear, and no words were understood, the familiar sounds were consoling.

  Raymond came back four days later bearing skinned rabbits that resembled chickens, only they were smaller and shinier. It had been raining and Lizzy was lying on her bed, reading to Fish. When she heard a truck, she got up and went out onto the porch and watched Raymond pass by. Fish stood behind her, holding her right leg.

  Raymond nodded as he limped by. It was still drizzling slightly, and the bill of his cap was pulled down low.

  “Chickens?” Fish asked.

  Lizzy said, “Yeah, chickens,” because she knew that Fish was in love with rabbits.

  When Raymond came back she asked him where he was going and he said, “Town.”

  She asked if she and Fish could come along. “It’s raining,” she said.

  Raymond looked up at the sky and then at the ground. “True.” He kept walking and got into the truck.

  Lizzy waited, not sure. Then she picked up Fish and said, “Come on.” She ran to the pickup. She was wearing yellow shorts and she was barefoot and the path was slippery, and when she almost fell, Fish called out, “Ohh.” She climbed in the passenger’s side. Her feet were muddy and her legs were slick and wet and she thought of the shiny rabbits. She put Fish in the middle seat and said, “Here we go.”

 
Raymond started the engine and backed up and then pulled out onto the driveway. When they were on the highway, the rain began to fall more heavily. Only the wiper on the driver’s side worked. Lizzy felt a heaviness and wondered what she was doing, how could she have gotten in the truck. And with Fish. She thought she might ask Raymond to bring them back and then he turned and said, “Fish.”

  Fish looked up at him.

  “That your real name?”

  Fish nodded.

  “Huh.” He reached into a front jacket pocket and pulled out a cigarette and lit it, exhaling out the half-open window. “Last year there was a different girl with your name. Liz, though.”

  Lizzy was surprised that Raymond should talk about the Retreat so casually, as if it was a permanent and normal place, and she was curious about this other girl called Liz. She wondered how well Raymond knew her, if perhaps she too had climbed into his pickup. She felt jealous and then felt embarrassed that she was jealous. She could smell Raymond, a slightly wet musky scent, and she saw his hands on the wheel and the shape of his forearms. She said, “How old was this other Liz?”

  Raymond shrugged. “Old enough. Maybe twenty. Closer to twenty-five.”

  “How old are you?” Fish asked, looking up at the underside of Raymond’s chin.

  “How old are you?” Raymond dropped his spent cigarette to the floor of the pickup and ground it with his boot.

  “Four,” Fish said.

  “Well, Fish, add fifteen onto four.”

  Fish closed his eyes and opened them again. Looked down at his fingers and began to count.

  It had stopped raining so they went to an outdoor hamburger stand, on Second Street, and sat at a picnic table under a green umbrella. Fish was beside Lizzy, across from Raymond, who asked why his name was Fish.

  “Because,” Fish said. He lifted his shoulders and let them drop. He appeared to be pondering the question.

  “It’s a nickname,” Lizzy said. “His name’s Jack and then my dad started calling him Jackfish and then it became Fish. Now it’s just Fish. And I have a brother called Everett, who’s weird and three years younger than me. He’s fourteen. And then there’s William, who is really Will, but my dad loves Shakespeare and so he’s sometimes William Shakespeare or just Shakespeare. He’s nine.”

  Fish’s mouth was full of fries. He looked at Lizzy and then back at Raymond. He said, “Lizzy and I are getting married.”

  “That so?” Raymond grinned.

  In the pickup later, Fish wanted to sit by the window. Lizzy said it would be cozier if he was in the middle but Fish insisted. Raymond said, “Let him,” and she said, “Okay, for a bit.” Fish fell asleep, pushed against Lizzy’s hip. It was raining again, the one wiper slapped at the windshield. The pickup had a floor shift and she sat with her left thigh pressed against the stick, which had a dark worn knob with numbers on a grid, 1, 2, 3, and an “R” that was closest to her hip. When Raymond shifted, his palm covered the knob, and his wrist brushed her bare thigh.

  Lizzy felt like she did sometimes at the beach or the pool back in Calgary where the boys would stare at her. She felt almost naked. Raymond’s face was right beside her and she knew what he looked like because she had studied him at the hamburger stand. He had a small scar on his upper lip, in the middle, and she liked how it broke up his face, which was smooth all over, perfect. He had small ears. His jeans had a hole at the knee. She put an index finger there and traced the cloth. She said that a colourful patch would look good and that she knew how to sew. He looked down at her hand and back at the road. It appeared he might say something, but he didn’t.

  They were still sitting like that as they passed the turnoff to the Retreat. Lizzy made note of the road but she said nothing. She experienced a slight moment of panic, until Raymond lifted a finger and pointed into the distance and said, “My place is right up there.” He drove fast, the palm of his left hand on the wheel. A few minutes later they turned off the main highway and drove up a gravel road, past houses that had signs with numbers on them, all the way up to sixteen. In the yards, there were trailers with boats, pickups on blocks, bicycles lying down as if in wait for something or someone. The gravel road fell into a tunnel of trees and the further they wound into the backcountry, the more Lizzy felt a sinking, a falling away.

  When Raymond slowed, she held her breath and looked around, but there were just trees and trees. Raymond shifted, his hand pushing up against the stick, away from her. He turned onto a narrow trail and followed the tracks, which were muddy and slippery and full of holes that held the rainwater. He kept the pickup in low gear and reached with one hand into his jacket pocket, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and handed it to her. “Light me one.”

  Lizzy removed a cigarette and put it in her mouth. Fish stirred beside her, and slept on. She slipped the pack between her thighs and took the book of matches from the dash. She lit the cigarette and inhaled as his hand reached up and asked for the cigarette.

  He said, “You’re okay,” and at first Lizzy thought this might be a question, but it wasn’t. He was proclaiming something, or laying out an assessment of sorts, and she knew she was supposed to be pleased.

  “Better than,” he said, and he grinned and flicked the cigarette ash out the window.

  They came to a stop before a small cabin with a sagging roof and a faded blue door and windows that had plastic taped over a few broken panes. The door was open. Fish sat up and said, “Where?” and he rubbed his eyes and then lay down again, eyes open, staring at the dashboard. Lizzy stroked his forehead, which was sweaty and hot.

  Raymond said, “Here we are. My brother’s here. He came back home a month ago. He has a cat.” He got out and stood beside the pickup, looking out across the tops of the trees. Then he walked towards the cabin and disappeared inside. Lizzy sat and waited. There was a black cat in the sun near the side of the house and just over to the side of the cat was a swing made from thick chains and the seat of a car. When Raymond reappeared he was with a boy who looked like him, only his hair was shorter and he was heavier. Raymond’s head moved slightly as if to indicate something and then the other boy said her name, “Lizzy.” He walked over to the pickup and leaned into the passenger door. He said that his name was Nelson and that his brother was too shy to be polite and they should come into the house. It had sounded like he’d said hose, and at first Lizzy was confused. She gathered up Fish and said, “Okay,” then climbed out and stood on the muddy ground in her bare feet.

  “Lizzy and Fish,” Nelson said. He led them into the cabin and offered them two chairs, one covered in blue plastic and the other wood, painted red. He sat on the corner of the table and asked if she wanted a beer.

  “Sure,” she said. There was a propane tank in the corner with a gas burner beside it. A few pots and plates and cups in a wooden box. Some tins, beans and corn, beside the box. And beside the box a large green garbage pail that held water. There was a dipper floating in the water. The walls of the cabin were rough and unpainted. Beyond the makeshift kitchen was a door that led somewhere, perhaps to a bedroom. The light in the room they were standing in was muted by the plastic on the windows.

  Raymond stood in the doorway, smoking. Lizzy took a beer from Nelson and went over to Raymond and stood beside him and because she didn’t know what else to say, she said, “So, this is where you live.”

  “In the summer,” Raymond said. He gestured towards Nelson and said that his brother had just moved in. Nelson was the cook and the cleaning lady. He grinned and said, “Not doing a very good job.”

  “That’s right,” Nelson said. In the dusty light he raised his bottle as if proposing a toast. He drank. “No electricity, so warm beer.”

  Lizzy asked Raymond if he wanted to share her beer, and she offered it up for him to take. He shook his head and said that he was fine. He wasn’t thirsty. Fish, who was still dazed from sleep, slipped off his chair and went to Lizzy and wrapped his arms around her bare leg.

  “Funny thing,” Nelso
n said. “Ray said there was this girl down at that place who was pretty good-looking. That’d be you, I guess.”

  “Or someone.”

  “It’s you,” Raymond said. He seemed embarrassed; he made a slight grimace as he leaned back out the doorway and spun his cigarette towards the pickup.

  Fish pulled at Lizzy. “Swing?”

  She looked at Raymond and said, “He wants to swing. That okay?”

  “Course it is. Come on, Fish.” He held out a hand and Fish let go of Lizzy’s leg and went outside. Raymond turned to look at Lizzy as he stepped out the door. “My brother was taken away to live with a perfect family in Manitoba and now he comes back full of bullshit.” He nodded gravely at Lizzy and then he grinned.

  Nelson lifted his beer in a salute and told Raymond to fuck off. His hand was big on the bottle and his wrists were thick. He seemed to be much stronger than Raymond. From where she sat, she could see the swing and Raymond’s back as he faced Fish, who was talking, and she felt a sudden affection for Raymond. The sound of the swing came in through the open door. Lizzy said, “We gotta get back. I didn’t tell anyone where we were going.”

  “Raymond told me about the Retreat,” Nelson said. “Every year the Doctor arrives, and every year there’s this new group of followers.”

  “We’re not followers,” Lizzy said.

  “Ray manages to make money there selling chickens to city people who think chickens don’t have to be raised and then killed. You don’t look like that kind of person. What do you do down there?”

  “The Doctor who runs it says that it’s a place to gather and make sense of the world,” Lizzy said. She shrugged, looked about at her surroundings, and then said that she shouldn’t have to defend it. “Maybe it doesn’t have to have a purpose. It just is. People live there for the summer and then go home.”

  Nelson’s skin was slightly mottled, like he’d had acne when he was younger. He wasn’t as handsome as Raymond but he seemed surer of himself, with his bigger vocabulary, his wider mouth. He was a little too sure of himself, as if he had some secret he was hiding. He asked why Lizzy had gone there anyway.