The Retreat

by David Bergen

  The following morning, early, his father asked him where he was going and he told him that he went up to Bare Point to fish.

  His father looked at him and smiled and said, “You never liked fishing in your life, Ev.”

  “I grew to like it,” he said.

  “Oh, really, when was that? And where’s the fishing rod?”

  “I have one there. It’s one I found.”

  “How come you never bring back fish for supper.”

  Everett shrugged. He said that they were too small too eat. He held his hands apart to indicate the size.

  “Big enough,” his father said.

  Everett climbed on his bike and rode off, looking back to see if his father was watching him. He was.

  He rode slowly, smelling the air. By now he had given up any attempt to disguise himself. Gone were the blanket and the tuna tins. Gone the precautionary trek through the watery ditch. It had rained earlier, a light drizzle and the roads were damp. The wildflowers in the ditch gave off a scent that mixed with the smell of barely wet dust on the road. Swallows rose and fell. There was a falcon high above. He saw two deer in the ditch. They lifted their heads and observed him, tails twitching. He had, in his satchel, two rings of smoked sausage. A vehicle approached him from behind. He pulled to the shoulder and hopped off his bike. A purple Ford pickup, beat up, with a very old man inside. The pickup slowed and stopped and then sat there, engine ticking. Broad lettering, “CM,” was painted on the passenger door. The old man rolled down his window, called out, “Want a ride?” Then, not waiting for a response, he descended from the pickup and came around to Everett and hefted the bicycle into the box.

  “Climb in,” he said.

  Everett looked at the man and thought that anyone this old must be harmless. He climbed into the truck.

  The old man got back in, ground the stick shift forward, revved the engine, let out the clutch, and the pickup jumped forward. He wheezed, “Only got third and fourth. Lost first and second in the war.” He laughed. “Where you going so early?”

  “Fishing,” Everett said. “Up at Bare Point.”

  The old man said that he used to fish for a living but there was no living to be had in fishing these days. He said he was now a collector of garbage. “Amazing the good shit people throw out. The other day I found a set of dinner plates like brand new. Gave them to my wife for her birthday. Another time I recovered a motorcycle in working order. A Norton. Perhaps it was stolen, perhaps not. I wasn’t asking. People look at me as a saviour. I salvage what is lost and forsaken. I retool it and sell it. Or give it away. Children these days are lost and forsaken. Do you have children?”

  Everett shook his head.

  “You’re old enough. Sixteen?”

  “Almost,” Everett said.

  “I had a child when I was sixteen. And a boy who died when he was sixteen. My wife broke apart and all the king’s horses couldn’t fix her.” He paused and glanced at Everett. “Where do you live?”

  Everett said that he lived at the Retreat.

  “What’s that?” The hole of the old man’s ear was covered by grey wires of hair.

  Everett repeated his answer.

  The old man nodded. He said he knew the place. It was a den for the iniquitous and indolent. This is what he had heard from a faithful source. His wife. He laughed again. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his front pocket and worked one of them free while he drove. He lit the cigarette with a book of matches held in his left hand. He did a little trick with his fingers, twisting the match around the back of the book and holding the head of it against the flint pad with his thumb and flicking lightly until the match ignited. He held the book up like a single candle to the tip of the cigarette. He exhaled and this breath extinguished the match. His hands were dark with grease and oil. His fingernails were long. He asked Everett where his fishing rod had gone.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You fish with your hands?” He showed Everett a scarred palm.

  “Oh,” Everett said. “It’s at the point.”

  The old man said that it could get stolen that way. “Never know who’s going to take what doesn’t belong to them. You hear the one about the police dog?” He didn’t wait for an answer, just kept going. “An Ojibway fellow named Jack drives into town on a really hot day and he’s got his dog with him, so he leaves his dog under the shade of a tree. Jack goes into the bar for a cold beer. Twenty minutes later, a policeman comes in and asks who owns the dog under the tree. Jack says it’s his dog. The policeman says, ‘Your dog’s in heat.’ Jack says no way his dog’s in heat ’cause he’s under the tree. The policeman says, ‘No, you don’t understand, your dog needs to be bred.’ Jack shakes his head. ‘No way he needs bread. He’s not hungry ’cause I fed him fish this morning.’ And the policeman gets mad now and says, ‘Look, your dog wants to have sex.’ Jack looks up and says, ‘Go ahead, I always wanted a police dog.’ ”

  The old man squeezed his eyes closed and chuckled and then opened his eyes wide and said, “The other day the police show up at my place with dogs and guns, looking for something, and they rattled my goat something bad. Made his milk go sour. You believe that?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Of course you’re not. You’re too young to be sure. Here we are.” He pulled up to the point and got out and off-loaded the bicycle. Patted the seat and said, “Good luck with the fish.” The truck rolled away in a cloud of blue smoke and Everett watched it go. Then he climbed back on his bike and returned the way he had come, arriving at the dump mid-morning, just as the rain began to fall once again. He climbed up to the hole and found the bananas untouched.

  He did not know what to do. In fact, he did not know why he was acting in this manner, riding his bike up here every morning to deliver food to a ghost. At first, when he had heard of Nelson’s escape, he had imagined that he could help him. But this idea seemed far-fetched now. Yet he still felt something, anger perhaps, or sorrow, though he would not have been able to identify it as sorrow. He stood and surveyed the dump. The rain fell more strongly and lightning dropped from the dark clouds in the distance and thunder rolled in and surrounded him and then more lightning and rain came down, furiously, and with no other purpose it seemed than to soak him through. He did not know that he was crying until he swiped at his face and found there warmth that could not have come from the rain. Finally he stopped crying, pulled the rings of sausage from the satchel, and laid them in the shelter of the entrance to the hole.

  Nelson had left his brother at the side of the road and walked in the ditch for a while and then come up out of the water and climbed the hill above the dump and descended to the fence on the south side. He had put his duffle bag and rifle through an opening in the fence, and then gone through as well. He picked up the gun and the bag and heard the mewling of Bull. He slid down through the garbage and came to rest at the centre of the pit. Small fires smouldered within the dump and it might have been an undersized campground suddenly abandoned, or the remains of a bombed-out village. A rat passed by his feet and he swore and kicked out in vain. Stumbled and fell and scrambled to his feet, panicking. He stood, breathing quickly, aware of the fresh blood at his chest. He stooped, opened the bag, and pulled out his cat. She clawed at his arm, trying to escape. He let her go and she fell, landed on her feet, ran a bit, and then jumped onto the lid of a large white box. A freezer. An older model, with rounded corners and a lock handle. Nelson stepped over a pile of twisted steel rods and studied the freezer. He pulled at the handle and opened the lid. The staleness of dead air. In the darkness he could not see what the freezer held, if anything. He leaned forward and peered into the maw, swept his hand back and forth and found it empty. He dropped his bag down inside and took his rifle and leaned it against the container. Then he kicked his way through the garbage, looking for a blanket or something soft to lie down on as a bed. He found a child’s mattress, plasticized, and he took this and dragged it back to the freezer, moved the du
ffle bag, and settled the mattress at the bottom. He eyed the lock handle on the freezer. He took the rifle and ejected the shells from the chamber and put them in the back pocket of his jeans. Then he lowered the lid of the freezer and he held the rifle aloft and brought the stock down hard on the handle of the freezer. He felt the shock of the blow and severe pain in his chest. The lock was still intact. He attempted this one more time, but the pain was even greater and he had begun to bleed again. He held the rifle under his arm, retrieved the shells from his pocket, and re-inserted them in the chamber. He moved back, levered the action on the rifle, held it to his shoulder, aimed at the handle on the freezer, and fired. The bullet entered the lock mechanism, blew it apart, and exited from the rear of the freezer. He aimed then at one side of the freezer, squeezed the trigger, and a bullet went through the other end of the freezer. He now had his breathing holes. The sound of the two shots had lifted into the air and echoed up the far rocks and then come back at him. He did not know if anyone had heard the shots but he imagined it was possible. The first shot had sent Bull over to the fence and up the hill. He called for the cat, but she did not come. He placed the rifle alongside the plastic mattress and then he surveyed the place to which he’d come, and he climbed down into the freezer and pulled the lid shut.

  He must have fallen into an immediate and deep sleep, because when he opened his eyes he saw only darkness and he did not know where he was until he heard what he thought was the sound of a fire burning and he smelled the plastic mattress beneath him. He shifted, and in doing so almost fainted from pain. He touched his chest and his palm came away sticky. When he lifted the freezer lid slightly he saw a grey light, which might have been dusk or dawn. He breathed slowly and fished around for his duffle bag and reached inside for the water. He drank sloppily, the water spilling over his mouth and down onto his neck and shoulders. He peeled a banana with some difficulty, took two bites and then fell asleep again. He dreamed of sliding down a muddy hill into a hole that contained mad dogs. The dogs brayed and slavered and wept as he dangled by one hand from a root just above them. He woke and the tumult of his dream became hollers and yapping in the world beyond his coffin. Two pricks of light entered the freezer through the bullet holes at his feet and head. He sat up, breathing hard, trying to ascertain the proximity of what he knew were the hunters. He lifted the lid slightly and saw only the hillside of garbage and the fence, and beyond the fence, rocks and trees. A gull flapped and settled nearby. He closed the lid, heard vaguely a whistle and a cry, and then the wailing of the dogs diminished and finally disappeared.

  In his delirium he saw himself holding Hart. They were out in deep water and Hart could not swim and so Nelson had to keep him afloat, only he was failing to do so. He woke from this dream and felt the pain in his chest. His mouth was dry. His head hot. He was shaking and he knew that he had a fever. He reached for the bottle of whisky and opened it and drank and then he poured some of it onto the wound and he cried out in pain. Then he lost consciousness. When he woke, Bull was sitting on his chest, licking at the edges of the cloth that bound his wound. He did not know how the cat had entered the freezer. He had a half-formed recollection of having heard a scratching sound earlier, but this was all. Bull was purring and her tongue, when it touched his skin, was rough. Nelson could not see the cat but he could feel her and he reached out and stroked her back as she settled onto his chest.

  “Hey,” he said. “You hungry?” He felt for the bag and he found a piece of bread and he broke it and offered it to Bull, who did not want it, and so he put a piece in his own mouth and held it there. Chewed slowly. When Bull scratched to be let out, he lifted the lid and let the cat escape.

  At night, a group of teenagers arrived and set up their vans and cars along the entrance to the dump. They opened their van doors and played music that floated down into the dump to where Nelson lay. Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan and Aerosmith. Nelson heard the songs and imagined that he was back in Lesser at a bush party where boys swam in the river and then stood shirtless by the fire. He lifted the lid of his freezer and peered out into the night. Kids appeared as stick people cavorting before a mammoth fire that lit up their faces and the sides of the vehicles. They seemed apparitions floating across the dark sky. They drank beer and threw the bottles down into the dump, several bottles landing within reach of Nelson’s spot. Girls laughed and swore and a boy called out for someone to show her tits. Voices, soft and irregular, came down into the pit and seemed to walk past Nelson’s hiding place. He heard the voices but he could not make out what was said. A girl and a boy. And then the voices were above him and the freezer rocked slightly. One of them, perhaps the girl, was sitting on the freezer lid. Murmurings and then silence and then the girl said, “Okay. Okay, Main?” Nelson understood that Main was about to fuck this girl on the lid of the freezer. The girl’s voice was ambiguous, clamouring. The boy was silent. “Okay,” the girl said again and then she said, “Oh,” and again she said this and then she called out, “Main, a cat,” and the freezer moved abruptly and the girl said, “A fucking cat. Fuck, Main, it scared me.”

  “Aww, come here,” Main said.

  “It was black. A black fucking cat.” Her voice fell away and fell away some more and then it was gone. Main was still there. He was sitting on the lid of the freezer. He was smoking and kicking with his booted heels at the side of the freezer. And then he called out, “Nicole,” and he called again, and then the freezer shifted and Main was gone, and the din of the party returned.

  For a long time Nelson lay and listened and he wondered if Bull was safe. He fell asleep and woke to silence and he lifted the lid and found himself at the edge of another day, the third or fourth in the freezer, he did not know for sure. The kids had left. Their fire burned dimly by the fence. He tried to imagine leaving this place. He pictured climbing up out of the dump and walking down to the road and finding a ride north. The possibility of not being caught was farfetched and so he imagined building himself a house in the bush. Passing the winter. And then the summer. And the winter after that. At some point he would be found. He had not meant to hurt the man. The man had meant to hurt him. And he had accidentally hurt the man. Perhaps Raymond would suggest this. Perhaps he already had.

  His jars of water were empty and his food was gone. He thought that he might manage to crawl out and find some source of water. He tried to climb from the freezer and fell back with the pain and passed out. He woke to a terrible smell and realized he had shit himself. He lay in his own urine and shit and he wept. He was cold. The temperature had dropped and the cold had entered the freezer and crept up around his feet and legs and then to his torso. There was the stench of his own excrement and urine and at some point he realized the wound on his chest was infected and was giving off the smell of rotten meat. He attempted to pour more whisky on it but he was too weak and he spilled the alcohol onto the floor of the freezer, where it pooled at his hips.

  A brief and violent thunderstorm passed overhead and he lifted the lid of the freezer and held out the empty sealer jar to the sky. The effort required was immense, and when he drew the jar back inside, it held only a small amount of water and he drank this. He imagined, in his feverish state, that he would be drowned. He slept for long stretches and once, when he woke, he lifted the lid and saw that night had fallen once more. He slept again and he dreamed and in his dreams he quoted whole passages from Ephesians and the Psalms. He saw Raymond as a young boy standing alone in an empty space. He woke and opened his eyes and his mouth was moving and he was reciting a verse from Isaiah, something he had learned at the age of twelve, at the dining-room table, before he went off to bed. “My help cometh from the Lord, who made Heaven and Earth.”

  He heard a vehicle arrive at the edge of the dump and a door opened and the sound of whistling fell down onto his ears. And at the same time the cat came to him, meowing and scratching on the roof of his house. He imagined that the cat would attract the attention of the person whistling, and so he attempt
ed to draw the cat into the freezer with him. But the cat thought it was a game and stuck her paw into the tiny crack and evaded his hand, scratching him lightly.

  His vision blurred and he pulled at the cat’s paw. He knew, if he caught her, he would break her neck, but she escaped. She left and came back and scratched and meowed. Nelson fell back against the plastic mattress and cursed the cat. He understood that if he was going to survive, he had to leave this place. Later, after he heard the vehicle pull away, he gathered the strength to climb and fall out of the freezer. He landed on a piece of iron, grunted, and then he stood uncertainly. The light of day blinded him. He shielded his eyes and surveyed his land; the sunlight reflected off his possessions and the cat appeared. She slipped sideways, up towards the fence, and Nelson tumbled after her. He could not walk, so he pulled himself up the hill on hands and knees, up into a world in which sacrifice and providence had already occurred. Up he crawled, past a spokeless bicycle wheel, an endless length of rubber hose, broken stained-glass windows, half a pulpit, empty tar barrels, insulation, plaster and lath, cereal boxes, carved wooden beams, a library of tattered and burned books, and finally a pair of boots. The boots were well-worn but they were still in fine shape, and when he touched one of them, the boot moved and he touched it again. He found the boot to be solid with a foot inside and his eye travelled upwards and he saw a leg and a torso and above that was a head of an old man and the man gazed down at him and Nelson lowered his head and began to tremble.

  The old man spoke. “You forsaken son of a bitch,” he said. Then he crouched beside Nelson and he held Nelson’s jaw and looked into his eyes and he said, “Should be dead.” They pondered each other as if they were meeting on the path to hell. The old man said, “Seymour, I guess.” He stood and looked about and then he squatted again and said, “You wanna stay here, in this situation? ’Cause if you do, you’ll die. Christ, you’re already dead. Look at you.” He had very few teeth. He rocked on his haunches and lit a cigarette. Nelson was on his back and from his perspective the old man’s method of extracting and lighting the cigarette was convoluted, all upside down, but rather miraculous. The exhaled smoke appeared to descend rather than ascend. When he had finished his cigarette, the man punched the butt into the dirt near his feet and he told Nelson that he could help him, or he could leave him. The man frowned, or perhaps he smiled, because the sound he offered was one of high spirits.