The Dirt Chronicles

by Kristyn Dunnion

  So you see. That night, sitting outside, smoking my lonely joint, I heard some awful crying. I followed the sounds into the slaughterhouse through the open side door, right to the killing room. It was dark in there, pretty empty. Just the silver ceiling tracks with their chains hanging down, their shining hooks on the ends. There she was, like a ghost in the shadows—long socks, shorts, and some kind of skirt glowing white in the back corner, a darker shape moving around her. I flicked on the big overhead lights. It was the King, his black hair greased into a pompadour like usual. He blinked against the bright light. He wasn’t wearing his uniform and that made him seem softer than usual, older, maybe. He could have been any of the men cruising us on the corner. And behind him, half under him, it was Ferret, alright. Whatever was left of her. When I seen him crouched over her like that, I had to do something.

  “You better run, cuz you’re next,” he yelled, still holding her down.

  I wasn’t even scared. He’d already taken everything from me.

  I just punched the red “safety,” the way Eddie always did after his break, and pulled the long, black lever, hard as I could. Those machines start up pretty quick. One huge hanging chain on a pulley moved down its ceiling track, swinging close behind him. The hook at the end gleamed. He didn’t see it coming, he was staring me down from across the room. The chain kept moving forward and the hook swung heavily back again. It struck him. He looked surprised. Ferret grabbed onto the King’s sweater sleeve to pull herself up. He shook his arm violently but she clung to it; she was like a rag doll flopping. I ramped up the speed and the chain jerked again, smacking into his broad back. Ferret slammed against his chest with her whole weight then slid to the ground. The King stumbled backward onto the hook. His mouth dropped open. It must have pierced into his back. Air whooshed out of him with a funny sound. I pulled another lever; the machinery almost ground to a halt, then shook back to high hear. The chain and the hook with the King attached to it began shortening as it retracted toward the ceiling. The hook lifted him right up. His body dangled, legs kicking like a giant puppet. Then there was another gear grinding, a jolt, and his weight shifted. He screamed when that big hook pierced all the way through, his middle settling around it. His hands clutched for the hook tip, and I’ll never forget his ugly face opening up like that, his throat screaming itself raw with the pain.

  The chain jerked again, bringing the King down the track, closer to me. My hand was still on the lever. I remember the feel of it frozen there. My legs were slow and woozy like syrup. I thought I might puke.

  “Let me down, you fucking cunt.”

  Eddie would laugh at that. Couldn’t be nice to save his own life. The King was a couple feet away. Blood pumped steadily out of him, soaking the front of his clothes, pouring over his hands, dripping onto the already stained cement floor. I looked into his red eyes, his veiny face, his Elvis hair, and I wasn’t sorry. Not one bit.

  Normally the pigs would be stunned by this point, from electroshock or a bolt pistol to the back of the head. They’d be hanging upside down by the back legs, and this was when Eddie would do his thing, knifing the carotid artery and the jugular vein, bleeding them to death.

  I could’ve left him there.

  Meanwhile, Ferret had got up. I squinted. She looked different. Her dreads were all cut off. She was wearing some crazy get-up, all skin and bones. She’d been missing for quite a while already. Nobody knew what happened after the King came and took her from my old place. Mine and Eddie’s. After Darcy ratted us out. Kids put bets that we’d never see her again. But here she was. Ferret was hurt bad. She was bruised and swollen in the face, dead in the eyes. She limped carefully around the machinery. She avoided the King flailing. She seen him up there, couldn’t believe it probably.

  She stood beside me. We looked up at him, and he swore. He squirmed and kicked and screamed. I was thinking how could we try and get him to admit what he’d done—killed Digit and framed Eddie for murder. Who knows what else?

  “You fucking diseased shits, let me down.”

  Ferret and I looked at each other. We looked back at the King. He was pretty pale. He was losing a lot of blood.

  “If you sp-spring Eddie yu-yu-you can live.”

  His eyes lost focus for a sec. Then he stared hard at me. “Screw you, faggot.”

  I gulped.

  “I fucked your gold star butch,” he growled at Ferret. “She was even tighter than you.”

  I felt her body tense, saw her hands ball into fists.

  “No.” Ferret said this loudly. “No,” she shouted. Her body shook. She repeated that word, screaming and spitting with a hate that scared me.

  Then Ferret reached behind me and took a long rubber apron off Eddie’s old shelf. She draped it over herself the way he used to. It was too big for her and dragged on the floor. She tied it loose around her small waist, then picked up a knife, just like the one Eddie used every day on shift. It was big for her, too. She wasn’t used to hauling it around the way he was. She had to use both hands just to lift it.

  The King muttered some more. Told us what he’d do when he got down from there. What he’d do to us, to all of us.

  Ferret goes, “Shut up, Earl.”

  That must have been his real name, I guess. I still couldn’t move. I couldn’t say a word. I just watched. It took a long time. We’d all seen Eddie at work. Mostly you’d wish you hadn’t. Those aren’t pictures you can erase from your mind easy. Ferret had the general idea, but was not used to doing this sort of thing, obviously. Even after his head came off—not cleanly, either, that took a lot of work—the rest of him kicked and twitched. Blood sprayed, it hit us in the face, it coated the walls. It was gruesome. The smell was awful. Let’s just say she finally finished him off and dumped him where the rest of the meat was kept, in the freezing cold storage, where it got boxed and sent out to be eaten. I might have helped carrying stuff, I don’t even remember.

  After all that, we hosed down the floor, the walls, the hooks, the apron. The slippery knife. Our shoes. We didn’t know what to do about his clothes, his belt, but there was a separate place for all the terrible pig parts nobody could sell—and that’s where we dumped them in the end. We put everything else back where it belonged. And then we went outside to sit on the ledge.

  We sat there a long time not talking. We’d have smoked, but we didn’t have any. Our feet matched up, side by side, leaving prints in the soft ground. I was looking down at them and at the arc of cigarette butts flicked all around. This ledge was where all the men used to take their break, Eddie included. There were hundreds of pinched filters stubbed out in the ground. Each one marked a long shift, ten to twelve hours cut up into manageable parts, just like the meat inside.

  “W-we make a good p-p-pair,” I said at last.

  That’s when she started to cry, and me, too.

  “None of this was supposed to happen,” she sobbed.

  “C-course n-not.” I was supposed to be with my Eddie, Ferret with Oreo. All of us, all us reject kids, should’ve been left alone to make our own way in this fucked-up world, the best we could.

  I leaned closer to Ferret. Her shoulder pressed against me. Her hands were messed up, splintered something bad. I held them gently. There was blood around her nails still. My own fingers were filthy, the skin chewed, hangnails angry red.

  It was that special bold sky time, just before dawn. Dark blues burst out of black, clouds of colour brooding around the city. I tried not to look at the Factory anymore, cop tape flapping in the breeze, orange construction flags posted here and there. The city was going to demolish it. They’d taken the roof off with a wrecking ball already. It was so wrong. Like a half-dead thing, still crawling. The slaughterhouse would be closed for good, too. The soil would be treated, and then they’d start building. A drawing of the condos stood at the end of the gravel road, next to the little information office the company put up the other day.

  If you bought in now, you could save a bundle off
your new luxury home.

  Bush

  “So now you’re up here hanging with the Rezbians. How’s that for ya?” Phoebe cracks open a Blue Light for Ferret. Before Ferret can answer, Phoebe says, “Sorry about the beer. Doc says I got to watch my calories. I says, ‘You want to love a little less of all this?’ and he goes, ‘That’s what I’m telling ya, Phoebe Marie. You got to shave a few pounds off your lovely behind.’” Phoebe chuckles, and the mountain that is her, glorious her, shakes in her Moose FM T-shirt. Her laugh turns to a cough that sounds like an outboard motor turning over in her big bosom.

  “It’s good to see you, Phoebes,” I say. Phoebe is older and heavier and more tired since I left two years ago. Her feet bother her so much she’s using a cane now. But her smile still lights up the room and her hugs, those warm, strong arms of hers, still squeeze the badness right out of me. I’ve got a goofy smile plastered on my face in spite of the shit we’ve waded through just to be here, now.

  Ferret sips her beer. I squeeze her hand. I can tell by her worried face that she doesn’t know what to make of things. She keeps looking sideways to the front door where our backpacks sit in a mud-sprayed lump, all we have left on this earth.

  Phoebe runs a hand through her greying hair. “Now don’t be polite, Oreo; be yourself. Sure yous aren’t hungry?”

  Ferret shakes her head. Food smells fill the little house, but there is nothing vegan about them. I nudge her with my pointy chin. She doesn’t budge. It’s been over a day since we ate anything other than extra-strength Wake-Ups. My stomach is sour and tight from them, and can’t take food yet. The pills kept us up for the whole trek north from Toronto. Hitching can be fun, but not when you’re tired and beat up and broken-hearted, not with every cop in the province hunting your ass. You got to be alert, and then some.

  Afternoon sun pours in the big window of Phoebe’s front room, onto the back of my head, making me dozy. Chemicals twitch in random parts of my body, but the tension I’ve been carrying in my shoulders, my back, starts to unwind. My feet throb now that I’ve kicked off my rank boots. Me and Ferret are wedged between a dozen hand-made cushions on Phoebe’s dog couch, covered in the bristly fur of her old mutt, Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels is lying on the front porch, keeping six.

  For sure I thought we’d never make it.

  Phoebe sits across from us in her favourite chair, an old La-Z Boy recliner that faces the big window so she can see everyone going up and down the main paved road that cuts our land in half. She knows when the mail is in, when Andy’s General Store has got the fresh meat delivery, and if Alan Fox is late to call the seven o’clock bingo.

  “I know if the RCMP are coming almost before they do,” she says. “Tribal Police get the heads up, and they’d call me first. I don’t know what exactly happened to yous girls, but you’re safe here.”

  I don’t know what to say to her, where to start. I pick the skin around a torn cuticle on my dirty fingers.

  “I know what sent you running away from here, Oreo, and that was bad. Whatever chased you back must be way worse.”

  I nod. I stretch my arm around Ferret’s shoulders, and say, “It is, Phoebe. It’s messed up. Last thing I want is to get you in trouble, though.”

  “I figure I can handle my bad self just fine.” Phoebe is not smiling, but her voice is. It’s warm and rough and in charge. “This is your home, Oreo. Time you come back to it.”

  She gestures behind her, meaning my mom’s house next door. I walked the long way around to Phoebe’s bungalow porch, just so I wouldn’t have to look at it.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Just tired. Long haul, lots of stops.”

  It started out pretty good. We caught our first truck going north all the way to Owen Sound. We dumpstered bagels from behind an artsy café, and one of the cashiers gave us free coffee. She let us crash in the back corner until they locked the doors late that night. Then Ferret lay low while I panhandled, keeping one eye on news headlines to make sure there was no mention of us and the whole cop-killing thing back in Toronto. I was looking for a drive north and got pointed to a high school teacher—nice, kind of dorky. She promised to pick us up in front of the café at six a.m. and take us to the ferry docks in Tobermory, where we could cross over to the island first thing. She didn’t mind giving us a lift at all. I wanted to stuff this act of kindness in my mouth and swallow it, to keep it safe. Instead, I crawled under a park bench with Ferret and nestled my face on the back of her neck, whispering the plan. The hard knot in my stomach loosened just thinking about going home, finally. By the time morning rolled around, of course, things had gone bad for us, as usual.

  Doesn’t matter, I tell myself. We got here anyways.

  I try to forget it all—the drunk boys who found us in the park early that morning and had to be fought off. Someone called the cops. This scared off the assholes, but lost us our ride with the nice teacher. Frigging pigs skulked around uselessly, drinking coffee and shooting the shit for an hour, right in front of the bush we hid behind. Later, we took the first ride we could, even though we ended up going the long way, up 69 north to Sudbury where we sat for half a day at a truck stop, waiting for a ride without a hand-job clause in the fine print. Finally we caught a four-by-four with headbangers who raced to Espanola to pick up weed, smoked it, then drove way below the speed limit to the Island, crossing the swing bridge at Little Current at dawn. What a shit show.

  I focus on the here and now—Phoebe and her small, familiar house. Ferret—skinny and bruised and scared, her pretty dreads cut off so she looks like a half-starved boy: seriously damaged goods but still alive, at least. Me—holding it together the best I can.

  I realize that Phoebe’s mouth has been moving and I have no idea what she’s saying. She looks at me strangely and moves her mouth some more. “You all right, Oreo? Jeez, you’ve been gone some time, huh?”

  “It’s good to be back, Phoebe. Thanks.” I kick my feet up on the coffee table and try to smile, even though I feel wrung out and dry as an old rag.

  “Comfortable?” Phoebe playfully swats my feet with her cane. “What kind of manners you learn down south?” Phoebe winks at Ferret. “White folks turned you into a savage, that’s what.” She laughs, a belly laugh with a thigh slap to go with it that makes me feel even more at home. “Yous going to the arena dance Friday?”

  Ferret’s fingers tighten their hold on my thigh. Her forehead creases deeply so I know the last thing she wants to do is go to the damn dance.

  “We’ll see,” I say.

  Phoebe says, “We don’t get your punk bands up here. Dances are pretty much it. If you don’t go, you might be bored before you know it.”

  “It’s probably better if no one knows we’re here,” I say quickly. Sooner or later I’m going to have to tell Phoebe the real truth: that we’re not just in trouble, as she put it, but seriously on the lam. Possibly even wanted for first-degree murder, for killing a city cop. Which would make her an accessory to the crime, and that doesn’t sit right.

  I stroke Ferret’s almost bald head. Each stroke softens the lines in her forehead, lowers the lids of her eyes. If she were a cat, she’d maybe start to purr.

  Phoebe raises an eyebrow. “How else you gonna get the gossip wheels spinning? I can only do so much damage on the Facebook.” She points her cane to the computer in the corner.

  “What?” My stomach churns.

  “Sure enough. I updated my status: ‘Long-lost Indian warrior returns to the Rez, dragging her young wife.’ What do you think? That’ll get tongues wagging, eh?”

  “Ha,” I say, weakly. “You didn’t use my name, did you?”

  “Course not.” Phoebe says to Ferret, “I bet you never got to hear any embarrassing stories about Oreo. Never had anyone to tell them, huh?”

  “Uh, no,” Ferret says quietly. Her eyes are huge right now, dark and shining.

  “That’s too bad. I’m the only one around who knows.” She tries to say it lightly, but
it’s not. It’s hard and sad and leaves an angry echo bouncing around the room. I guess I never thought much about how she felt, being left alone up here with the memories, with all our ghosts.

  I walk to the front door and look out the window, press my forehead against the glass. No one is driving, no one is walking. There’s just the main road with tall grass on either side. There are houses at intervals all the way down, as far as you can see. As a kid, it was great. You could run wild, play where you wanted. But at twelve, thirteen, it was boring and claustrophobic. I hated how you knew everything about everyone else, and they knew everything about you, too. I’d watch MuchMusic, wear tons of eyeliner, and dream about moving south to start a band, dream about meeting lots of other gays and eventually getting a girlfriend. Once Aunt Tam said, “So go there. Go find out like everyone else that the city is a burial ground, nothing but a place to go and die alone.”

  A sudden lump sits in my throat like a clogged drain. Of course I didn’t listen to Tam, who probably knew a thing or two about living rough in the city. Who might be doing more of the same right now, wherever she is, out west. Summers were fun at first—meeting other punks and partying, hooking up with girls. In the city, nobody gave a shit what we did, as long as we didn’t do it on or near their property. Later, it was more work. Fighting for a place to sleep, for food, to not get raped or fucked with, running from cops and thugs and jocks. Always fighting, always running. That gets harder to take.

  “Oreo, go get my glasses from the bedroom,” says Phoebe brightly. “Now Ferret,” she says, “did Oreo ever tell you how she got her name?”

  I groan.

  Ferret kisses my cheek. She says in a sing-song voice, “She’s dry and crusty on the outside and gooey sweet inside?”

  “That’s right. Now what you don’t know about Oreo is …”

  Phoebe’s kitchen is smaller than I remember. The little gas stove is busy as ever. There’s the culprit, a large pot simmering on the back burner. I lift the hot lid. Moose stew. The smell hits me hard. One thing, I haven’t been around cooked meat in a long time, especially not wild game. But mostly those smells remind me of my mom and the aunties. They’d have it bubbling, be baking scones or bannock, sometimes have wild rice in another small pot. Good times happened in this kitchen and in ours. Fights got worked out, jokes told over and over again, marriages were arranged, repaired, and dissolved around these Formica tables with Phoebe and my mom, with my aunties holding court, the swag lamps collecting all of our secrets in their dusty bulbs.