Critical Injuries

by Joan Barfoot

  Roddy misses a whole lot of things. For one thing, he misses this morning. Time shouldn’t be like this. A person should be able to go back and start over if they find out something that looked okay is a huge mistake. There should be a few hours’ leeway.

  If he was home, his grandmother would set out with blankets and hot chocolate to get him warmed up, but he’s seen enough shocked, horrified eyes for one day. He couldn’t stand shocked, horrified, disappointed, betrayed eyes.

  Maybe he should just kill himself: try to sneak off to the river and walk straight out into the water. Or there must be something sharp lying around someplace close that he could slice himself open with. Then he wouldn’t have to see anyone’s face. Also then, if he was cold, he wouldn’t have to feel being cold. He wouldn’t feel anything if he was dead.

  Except what if he changed his mind? Waded in one footstep too far, or lost one drop of blood too many, no way back, floundering or seeping his regretful way out of life? Which would completely figure, on a day when he hasn’t made a single good choice. So maybe till he can work out a few things, he’d better keep lying low out here in the tall grass, shivering and watching the early glow of town lights and stars. Darkness takes forever to fall this time of year. Usually it can’t stay light long enough to suit him, but tonight he is a mole, a bat. An owl, except that he’s hiding, not hunting.

  In full darkness he could probably navigate out of here pretty easily. He knows this turf well, has spent hours of his life following fence lines and ditches, tramping through fields, not doing anything much, really, except seeing what’s there. Which keeps changing: frogs, daisies, dead dried-up snakes; then all of a sudden a strip mall. Fox tracks, sometimes, in winter. Groundhogs and different kinds and textures of grasses and grains; then a new clump of houses. On the other side of this field is a bare and brittle dead elm, its limbs an eerie sort of landmark even in full light. Now it’s both eerie and comforting. He knows where he is. If it were dark he could maybe get somewhere else.

  How did he even get this far?

  He never pictured having to hide, any more than he pictured being so cold. He’s so stupid! All the stuff he didn’t expect, when he thought it was all simple and his cleverness was just figuring out its simplicity.

  By now everybody must know. His grandmother will probably be telling everybody how wrong they must be, but underneath he bets she knows. Underneath he bets her heart is in pieces. He wouldn’t hurt her for anything, but he has. Why didn’t he see that this morning? How could he not have understood?

  His dad’ll probably be sitting in his chair in the living room, downwind from the TV, shaking his head, looking mournful. Nothing new there, he looks mournful a lot of the time. This time he’ll have something to look mournful about. Roddy can just hear his father’s limp voice saying over and over, “I don’t know,” and sighing. “I really don’t know.”

  Once, a few years ago, in Roddy’s last year of public school, his dad didn’t show up for the play Roddy had a pretty big part in, even though he’d promised. Roddy’s grandmother tried to smooth it over. “Your dad’s had a lot of disappointments in his life. Sometimes he just doesn’t manage everything very well.”

  “Why should I care?” What Roddy meant was, it wasn’t fair, if his father’d had so many disappointments, for him to go around spreading disappointment to other people. If he’d had so many himself, he ought to know better.

  Roddy’s grandmother is totally different. “You’ll be a fine man,” she tells Roddy, and “Set your sights high, you can be whatever you want in this world.” Only, she wouldn’t have dreamed this could possibly have been, even briefly, even for the few thrilling weeks since the idea cropped up, what he could want.

  Now he most fervently doesn’t want it. He cannot believe this has happened to him. He doesn’t want to think about that woman, either. Oh God.

  Just a little bit darker and he can try making a run for it. For what? But he can’t just lie here freezing and waiting for somebody else to make the next move.

  It might be nice if somebody did, though. It might be nice not to have to make any more decisions and choices. He’s awfully tired.

  He curls onto his side. He wants to make himself small and, if possible, cozy. He has no spare flesh. That’s maybe partly why he’s so cold. His grandmother’s big, there’s lots of extra to her, and in the winter she laughs and says the bulk helps keep her warm. This time of year, though, she really suffers, sometimes looks as if she can’t breathe deep enough, isn’t getting air through all that flesh. Last summer for the first time she didn’t do any baking, and not much cooking either, during the real hot spells. “I’m getting too old for all that,” she said, although actually she’s only sixty-two, which, while fairly ancient, isn’t exactly the end of the road.

  This could kill her. Now and then, just for a few seconds, Roddy forgets why he’s lying here. What has he done? Why didn’t he think? He pounds a fist into his forehead. Pain is what he deserves. In a matter of one day, or one night, he has stupidly, carelessly, thoughtlessly changed his whole, entire life.

  That’s too strange: that everything that happens from now on has to spin off from this single day.

  He wonders how Mike is doing, how Mike has done. He wonders what happens to buddies in very bad times. Mike has been Roddy’s best friend forever, right from when he and his mother knocked on Roddy’s grandmother’s door the first day Roddy and his dad came there to live. Roddy was seven, upset and skinny, Mike was eight and stocky and had a weird short spiky haircut and bold eyes. The grown-ups sent them out to ride their bikes around the neighbourhood together. “Be careful,” Mike’s mother warned. “Show Roddy the stop signs and lights. Show him the school, too, why don’t you?” That was ten years ago, more than half their lives. Now their interests have suddenly, after all this time, gone in different directions. Mike, although not innocent, isn’t quite guilty, either, at least not of how things turned out. When it comes to that one huge, grave moment, Roddy was, is, on his own.

  It made sense at the time, their idea. How could it have?

  They nurtured it, admired it, went over and over together how sleekly it would work, how smoothly events would follow one after another. It was like in other summers when they’d figure out some trip out of town on their bikes, or last year in Mike’s parents’ car when he got his licence, and even if they were only going to be gone a little while, they went over routes, good stopping places, what food they might feel like. Planning was part of the whole thing, talking about it beforehand wasn’t separate from the excursion itself. It didn’t mean they ruled out surprises. They took surprises for granted. Surprises were why they went.

  Maybe they didn’t think so much about surprises this time because they weren’t planning something that would be fun, exactly. They did practise, though, more than usual, because this project had a real thrilling edginess to it, a new sort of adventure. They grew attached to rehearsing their moves. They refined the words over and over although the plan looked so simple, just another walk in the country. Roddy’s pretty sure Mike started it, and it was just a laugh, a bit of a joke between them at first. Who made it start to be serious? How did that happen, and when?

  Maybe Roddy did that part. Sometimes Mike, who’s eighteen, which makes a difference, slugs Roddy’s shoulder when Roddy’s been actually trying to think something through and says, “Lighten up, don’t be so serious.”

  He keeps seeing what happened. The little quick unwanted pictures flashing on his eyelids are bad enough, without putting words to them.

  There were sirens, lots of them. By the time he arrived in this field breathless after walking fast and straight through a few streets where there might be people, then starting to run, and running doubled down for quite a while, and dodging behind trees, into ditches, over fences, scrambling and panting and very near tears, even the echo of sirens had stopped.
In the distance, though, when he peered back, he could see red whirling lights going slowly up and down streets. They must have called in cops from outside the town, too, the ones that patrol in the country. The lights are still out there.

  As soon as it’s pitch dark he’ll start moving again.

  He only has a couple of bucks on him, and no food, nothing to drink, no wheels. He and Mike never went off so unprepared, not even when they were little kids. Once it’s dark he can start moving again, but where’ll he go, and what’ll he do when he gets there?

  It’s just, he can’t think of anything else.

  Unless he could sneak home, creep upstairs, get hold of a whole pile of blankets and burrow in till he was warm again. Except he’s never going to be safe. The house’ll be crawling with cops; or they’ll be watching it, anyway.

  He’s kind of mad at Mike now. He shouldn’t have to be out here alone.

  Well, he is. And it’s almost dark enough to get moving. Past the shadowy elm there’s a fence, then another wide field, a pasture with short, exposing grass, and then another fence, a ditch and a big wooded area, not quite a forest. Once he gets there, there’s a creek, even though the water’s probably full of shit, and some walnut trees and probably berries.

  Right, like he’d know how to live off the land. But it’s something, anyway. It’s the start of some kind of possibility, maybe.

  Two fields back the way he came, from out by the first concession road out of town, he hears barking. Has that been going on long? It’s like sometimes he tunes out, gets tuned into just his own head. The barking sounds deep and focused. Two dogs, maybe. Not small ones. Eager ones. Kind of excited, sort of happy-sounding, like Buster when he was younger and got a squirrel up a tree.

  Oh shit, oh Jesus. Roddy’s up on his feet and running. His arms pump like a whole track team put together, he flies through the thigh-high grain with his eyes on the elm, and past it vaults one-handed over the fence. The pasture is stony and rough. Are there cattle, is there a bull? The barking doesn’t diminish, it gets closer and louder and acquires a thrilled sort of tone. Then it stops, which is worse. Nothing else stops, though. Roddy keeps flying, so agile and young and light, so desperate and exhausted and grief-stricken, tears and sweat mingling and blurring until finally, mercifully, there’s a whoosh through the air behind him, a large form leaping, careful jaws closing around one of his arms, tilting him off balance, bringing him thumping, bruisingly, down, and he’s on his back looking up into stars and a solemn, pointed, alert face on one side, a matching one on the other, and he hears the shouts and thuddings of men and closes his eyes for a moment because everything’s over and whatever happens now will be happening to somebody completely different, with a completely new life, all of it that quick, that sharp, that unbelievable.

  Tied Up, Bound Down

  The doctor’s name, the younger, dark-haired guy she saw hovering over her, across her bedside from Lyle, is apparently Grant. “Thanks, Dr. Grant,” Isla hears Lyle’s ragged voice saying from, it must be, a doorway which, from her angle, she cannot see. “I’d like her children to be able to talk to you tomorrow. What time works best?”

  Good Lyle. Knowing that would be important, and then making it happen, forcing it to. She knows, although not very personally, about the rushed lives of doctors, and their reluctance, too, to get very involved with families. They have a point. She isn’t sure herself that she wants Jamie and Alix hanging over her, disrupting further what is already an odd and awful disruption. But it’s necessary, among family, to bear anything; and maybe they’ll rise to the occasion, who knows? Depending, perhaps, on what the occasion actually is. Or on how weary they are of their troublesome parents’ distressing events.

  Well though, it’s her turn, isn’t it?

  At least she can assume she’s not dying. If Jamie and Alix don’t need to see Dr. Grant till tomorrow, it implies there will be a tomorrow, and that there’s something to talk about. She would like to know what that is. Jamie and Alix aren’t the only ones in the dark.

  She would like at least not to be scared; not this scared.

  When she says, “Lyle?” the word comes out plain. So she is making some progress here, unless of course it’s only plain in her ears and not in the room. But if it is clear, surely next thing she knows she’ll be swinging her legs over the side of the bed, standing up, getting out.

  Getting out of where? Hospital, obviously, but which one and what sort? Lyle must have gone off with the doctor. Within the range of her vision, there’s only off-whiteness, broken by chrome. A creamy, pitted-tiled ceiling. Something nearby is making slow whuffing sounds, like the breath of a giant. There’s also something stuck into her nose, although it doesn’t impede breathing, which seems strange. The actual terror, though, lies in this business of feeling nothing, except in her head. She can’t figure it out, a circumstance in which there’s no sensation, not even pain. If she is lying down, which she obviously is, there should be a feeling of flatness, of her spine, shoulders, legs, and arms actually resting on something. If she is in a bed, she should also be able to feel some weight and pressure, even if it’s only of a sheet tucking her in.

  Oh please, she wants to be home. She wants whatever this is to be undone, so that she can go back with Lyle to their miraculous life. This isn’t fair, she has had, in the scheme of things, barely a taste of this reward, this well-earned achievement. She is owed so much more! She wants to go home.

  Eight years ago, the first time she saw Lyle’s farm, or at least the house and the property directly around it on what isn’t quite a farm, more a country place, she thought she’d died and gone to heaven. “But this is perfect,” she said as they joggled the final potholed metres in his truck up the laneway. “Perfect.”

  Previous to meeting him she would, mistakenly and urbanly, have called the laneway a driveway. She was nervous then, too, about travelling into what as far as she knew was a wilderness, like a movie, like Deliverance, something like that, with a man she’d only known a few weeks. Because who knows what can happen in a man’s heart when he’s removed from influences, controls? There was something good in his features, both kindness and sharpness around his eyes, but who really knew?

  So she drove with him up that long driveway, laneway, wondering and slightly fearful. Then was struck in the heart by what she saw. “It’s a classic, all right,” he agreed. It was early days. Isla mistrusted the business of getting to know each other, perhaps he did, too, because it would simply, likely, mean moving towards outcomes in which she had no faith and for which she mainly thought, after James, she’d lost heart. “Takes a lot of work, though.” She could feel Lyle’s pride as he watched her regarding the place.

  “But it must be worth every minute. It’s beautiful.” So it was. Beautiful was inadequate. Even perfect fell short. Sanctuary might have come close.

  For him, too, he said. He had lived there for three years by the time he and Isla drove up that laneway. He had spent almost all his spare time in those years improving it, tearing down, building up, making it his. If Isla was already inclining, dubiously, in favour of affection for him, she fell in love with his home. As far as she knows he has never been jealous of that, or suspicious of motives. In fact she has thought that if she hadn’t fallen in love at first sight with the place he’d cared for and worked on so hard, he would have thought less of her. His home was not exactly a test, but it was still something that could be failed.

  The laneway was lined densely and arced over with big, leaning old weeping willows and maples. “It washes out every year,” he said, explaining the potholes and ruts. “Takes a few loads of fill and gravel, late spring.” Then abruptly, what was revealed at the end, around a slight curve, was a two-storey, yellow brick house, solid and plain except for its copper-toned roof and intricate corners designed with extra interlaced bricks. Dark green shutters sheltered spare, rectangular window
s, and a deep-green-painted porch wrapped itself around two sides of the house, one side at that moment in full sunshine, the other shaded by another arching maple. Curved wooden and wicker chairs and tables, a roll-up sailcloth blind at one end, also deep green.

  This was where he came after his wife Sandra died, of breast cancer, which had led to clusters of other cancers, more than rampant enough to eat her alive, and after he’d shepherded his two nearly grown sons, twins, whom Isla hadn’t yet met, through adolescence and grief, and after he’d recovered his own balance and begun looking around, observing what his solitary desires might be, and had gone out in pursuit of them, coming, finally, upon this place.

  “What I decided I wanted,” he told her, “after all the years in the city, was space. Just elbow room. Perhaps it’s partly longing for something you haven’t had, but do you find that in one situation, you sometimes have dreams of another?” Oh yes. Isla nodded, but although he paused, eyebrows raised, she didn’t begin saying why, or how, or in what circumstances that had occurred.

  “All those years I’d lived with Sandy, and then, very shortly, the boys, and I had no idea what being alone would be like. Frightening, of course, I expected that in a way, trying something that would seriously require some effort, but a challenge. And a kind of triumph if it turned out. I made a couple of real estate agents nuts showing me this, showing me that, when all I knew was that it had to be within driving distance of work and that I’d know when I saw it.

  “And then the agent called, said something had just come on the market, an estate sale, she hadn’t seen it but it might be a good deal, although she’d heard it was also fairly rundown. I came out on my own, mostly out of guilt by then about wasting her time. Couldn’t find the place to begin with, went back and forth past the laneway, because it doesn’t look as if it goes anywhere, but finally I gave up and turned in. Hit bottom a couple of times on the laneway, bounced around, got pissed off and then — there it was. Coming around that curve and that was it. I didn’t care what it cost, or how much work it was going to take, or what I’d have to do. It was the most amazing thing ever happened to me in my life. Well, except for the boys being born, but that’s different. This was mine. It was just me. And it was a surprise, even a shock. The boys were totally right, and so was this, but it was an entirely different thing.” Isla had thought of the births of her own kids: magic, yes. Shocks and surprises, indeed.