Milosz

by Cordelia Strube

  ‘Tomorrow’s Sunday.’

  ‘Right. Monday then, you can go to school without worrying about the hamster or what anybody thinks.’

  ‘Billy Kinney is dead.’

  ‘I heard.’

  ‘Did you push him?’ Robertson asks.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Mum thinks you pushed him.’

  ‘She’s mistaken.’

  Robertson begins to walk in circles. Milo would like to take his hand and lead him to Puffy but knows he can’t touch him. Only Tanis can touch Robertson when he’s awake and even then with only two fingers, and he makes sure there is a two-foot gap between them.

  ‘Do you want to see Puffy?’ Milo asks, heading towards the house, hoping Robertson will follow.

  Vera wakens abruptly. ‘What’s all this then?’ she blurts before losing consciousness again.

  ‘Robertson?’ The boy has faded into the darkness. Milo listens for the sliding doors but can hear nothing but Latino trumpets and Wallace yelling, ‘You fucking Mexican!’ The sound of bodies crashing into furniture and Fennel’s screams cause Milo to run to the living room where the two meatheads are locked in a violent embrace. He turns off the stereo and shouts, ‘Party’s over! Everybody out!’ He grabs Fennel’s arm. ‘You too.’

  ‘Where’s my money?’

  ‘Where’s her money, Wallace?’

  ‘You think I’m going to pay that slut?’

  ‘A deal’s a deal,’ Milo says.

  ‘She should pay me, I fucking pimped her to that Mexican.’

  Milo pulls out Gus’s remaining twenty and hands it to her. ‘You got any money, Pablo?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘You just got paid for doing Tanis’s windows and eavestroughs. Hand it over.’

  Pablo disengages from Wallace and feels around in his jeans before pulling out crumpled bills. ‘Me and Fenny can’t help what we feel for each other, Wallace.’

  ‘You say another word and I’ll fucking kill you, you read me? You fucking sex addict.’

  ‘He’s not a sex addict,’ Fennel says.

  ‘Oh no? He’s a fucking pussy junkie. Try talking to his ex, she got sick of putting out for him.’

  ‘That’s a lie,’ Pablo gasps.

  ‘Enough!’ Milo shouts. ‘Out, everybody.’ He tries to shove them towards the door.

  ‘I live here,’ Wallace points out.

  ‘Me too,’ Pablo says.

  ‘What’s all this brouhaha?’ Vera demands. ‘Has anybody seen my glasses?’ The four stand motionless while she looks behind sofa cushions. ‘I had them when we mamboed but then I think I took them off during the samba.’

  ‘They’re probably in the grass by the chair,’ Wallace says. ‘They probably slipped off while you were sleeping.’

  ‘We’ll find them in the morning,’ Milo says. ‘It’s late, you should go to bed, Vera.’

  ‘What about you lot?’

  ‘We’re all going to bed.’

  ‘Fennel’s kipping here, is she?’

  ‘No!’ they all say.

  Vera winks. ‘Don’t be chaste on my account.’

  ‘Up you go, Mother. You get first dibs on the bathroom.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, good idea.’ She takes the stairs slowly, reminding Milo that soon she will slow to a stop and die, leaving behind many negative energy impressions. The front door slams. Nothing remains of Fennel but a whiff of patchouli. Milo finds a flashlight and searches behind the bushes, on and under the trampoline, but sees no trace of Robertson. The sliding doors are locked. The boy must have gone inside.

  Back in the Muskoka chair he tries to make sense of the senseless: Billy dead, Zosia possibly in critical condition, Christopher possibly dying from complications, Gus possibly alive. But there is no sense to be made, only the pounding awareness that he has caused damage that he is powerless to mend.

  he only remaining seat in the minivan is between a large black man named Franklin and a small Chinese man named Sungwon. Milo squeezes between them. Aruthy, the girl in cornrows, sits in front with Hunter, who informs them that Geon Van Der Wyst has requested that they not speak until they arrive at their destination and receive further instructions. When Hunter isn’t swearing at drivers, she talks on her cell, with her left hand draped over the wheel. Bertie, the Australian, and Etienne in the sailor hat occupy the middle seats. Milo suspects he is in the company of non-union performers, possibly illegals. Geon is known for combining cultures. His most acclaimed production, for which he won an award, involved ‘movement performers’ from every continent who spoke only their native tongues and were therefore forced to improvise bodily communication.

  As they transcend industrial parkland and track housing and begin to see trees and fields, the tension that has been grappling Milo lessens slightly. Being relegated to silence as they escape civilization allows him to doze, lulled by the movement of the van, until it comes to an abrupt halt on a dirt road behind several other vehicles.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Milo asks before remembering he is forbidden to speak. Already he is blowing the audition.

  Hunter climbs out, still on her cell, and pushes her way into a group of agitated drivers. Milo looks at his companions. ‘Did you see anything?’

  Sungwon holds his finger against his lips.

  ‘I think we can talk now,’ Milo says. ‘This might be an emergency.’

  His collaborators stare at him as though he has suggested mutiny. Hunter yanks open the door and clambers back in. ‘Roadkill.’

  ‘Can’t we move it?’

  ‘It’s not totally dead. They’re waiting for a forestry guy.’ She calls Geon to give him the news.

  Milo taps her shoulder. ‘Can you ask him if it’s all right for us to talk under these exceptional circumstances?’

  ‘Milo wants to know if they can talk,’ Hunter says. She flips down the sun visor and checks her eyeliner in the mirror. ‘Gotcha,’ she says, pocketing the phone.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He says you can’t talk.’

  ‘That’s absurd.’

  ‘He says “use it.”’

  What can this possibly mean? Is Geon Van Der Wyst insane? Has Milo put his life at risk travelling north to nowhere with strangers? Is a group sacrifice pending? No one will be able to trace the illegals. And, of course, Milo revealed his plans to no one. He hid in his room while the hungover stumbled about and fried animal parts below.

  Use it. Is this part of the audition? Maybe there is no roadkill. This is Geon’s way of testing to see who will challenge the status quo. No way will Milo sit unquestioningly in the overheated van. The irritated drivers, in Firestone caps and fishing hats, do not welcome a stranger.

  ‘Where’d you come from?’ a goat-faced man inquires.

  ‘Toronto. We’re trying to get through here.’

  ‘We’re all trying to get through here, mister, you just wait your turn.’

  Milo sees the deer sprawled on the road, its rear legs twisted at awkward angles like Christopher’s.

  ‘We could cut us some good steaks out of that one,’ a man in a fishing hat comments.

  ‘Shit like this happens all the time in Newfoundland,’ a man in a Firestone cap says. ‘They got moose runnin’ all over the place. My brother-in-law got killed instantly hitting a moose.’

  ‘What happened to the moose?’ Milo asks, approaching the doe carefully, not wanting to add to her terror.

  ‘Who is this guy?’ the man in the Firestone cap demands.

  ‘From Toronto,’ the man in the fishing hat says.

  Blood leaks from the doe’s nostrils as she tries to pull herself onto her front legs, but her battered hind legs betray her. Milo speaks softly to her as he pulls off his sweatshirt and lays it over her shoulders. ‘You’ll be fine,’ he murmurs, knowing that she is beyond help, that the forestry guy will inject her with lethal chemicals. No more will headlights stun her. He wants to apologize for cars, roads, the human race.

  ‘Is he nuts or
what?’ the goat-faced man demands.

  Milo strokes the doe as he has seen cowboys stroke skittish horses in movies. If he can offer some comfort in her last moments, maybe she will not feel that she is dying alone. It’s when he removes his T-shirt to blot the blood on her haunches that she swings a front leg at him. At first the impact seems tolerable – she is frightened, of course she must strike out. But the pain, rather than subsiding, increases. It’s as though his ribs have been crushed and, with every inhalation, his shattered bones puncture his lungs. The goat-faced man slams a spade into the doe’s head, not once but three times. Her blood spatters Milo’s face and torso while he wheezes, ‘Stop!’ at the goat-faced man. The doe falls back, and Milo, breathless, feels as though he is being slashed from within.

  ‘A fractured rib,’ the doctor says. Very tall, she looms over the examining table.

  ‘Just one? It feels like more.’

  ‘X-rays don’t lie. We’ll wrap you to stabilize it. And give you some more pain medication. Just be glad it wasn’t a horse. A kick from a horse can kill you. The doe was half-dead from the sounds of it, didn’t have much strength left. Count yourself lucky.’

  ‘What’s happened to her?’ Milo asks, feeling the drugs beginning to work, causing the present moment to matter intensely as he can’t rush to the next. Stalled by opioids, he fixates on the deer’s fate. ‘Is she dead?’

  ‘You rest now,’ the giantess says. ‘I’ll let your friends take you home once you’re good and calm.’

  ‘What happened to the deer?’ He pictures the men in fishing hats carving steaks out of her flanks.

  ‘What’s done is done,’ the giantess says. ‘No point fretting about it. Rest now.’ She exits, closing the door behind her. Milo stares at the doe’s blood speckling his arms. What’s done is done. Does that mean he’s responsible? Did he cause her death as well? Had he not interfered, would the forestry guy have found a way to save her? Has he caused the demise of yet another living being? What right has he to live with the blood of innocents on his hands? Although Billy wasn’t innocent. Or was he? What if he wasn’t a sociopath, just misunderstood and mistreated? What if he began his short life full of light and love only to be rebuffed at every turn, despised for shows of weakness, applauded for ­displays of aggression? What if he, like Gus, survived hardship only to become hardened as he trudged onward in the only manner known to him?

  Hunter leans over him. ‘Ready to roll? Geon wants to talk to you.’ She hands him the phone.

  ‘Milo? Milo, are you there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Bad accident.’

  ‘Worse for the deer.’

  ‘Do you think you can work or do you want to go home?’

  The thought of returning to Gus’s house induces a deadening sensation. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Of course nothing, Milo. Does it hurt?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Can you run?’

  ‘Sure.’ He can’t possibly run but actors always lie about their capabilities.

  ‘Use it. Give me back to Hunter.’

  Milo passes her the phone. She says ‘gotcha’ several times then pockets the phone.

  ‘Time to hit the road,’ she says.

  ‘We need to fill my prescription.’ He waves it at her.

  ‘We’ll get it when we stop for water.’

  There’s no water where they’re going?

  Franklin and Sungwon prop him up in the van. After another dose of painkillers, an intoxicating sense of well-being permeates Milo, a feeling that he wishes to share. ‘Aren’t we lucky to be here?’ he says. ‘Breathing this air and communing with nature? I can’t remember the last time I was in the wilderness. Seriously, I mean, I just never go. We have lost touch with the earth, with the pulse of living things. How can we expect to live in this world without a connection to nature? No wonder we think we can control it, we’re never in it.’

  ‘Is he allowed to talk?’ Franklin asks Hunter, whose cell is no longer working due to the remoteness of their location. As they turn up yet another dirt road, there is only forest.

  ‘We’re here,’ Hunter says.

  They all look at the trees.

  ‘There’s a path,’ Hunter explains, climbing out of the van.

  They follow her, swatting at bugs. Branches snap in their faces, long grass and weeds snag their ankles until they arrive at a small clearing.

  ‘Teepees,’ Milo exclaims. ‘How wonderful. Are they real? I mean, made by Indians?’

  ‘First Nations people,’ Hunter corrects.

  ‘Right. Did they make them?’

  ‘This is part of a reservation.’

  ‘Do they know we’re here?’

  A gaunt First Nations person in a Chicago Fire Department T-shirt steps out of one of the teepees. ‘Want some Kool-Aid?’ he inquires.

  ‘Gary’s going to look after you,’ Hunter explains, turning back down the path.

  ‘You’re leaving us?’ Aruthy asks.

  ‘I’ll pick you up tomorrow. Give me your watches and cells.’

  ‘Are you crazy?’ Etienne says.

  ‘Geon wants you to forget your urban existence for twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Where is the little fucker?’ Bertie demands.

  ‘Toronto.’

  ‘What?’ Franklin says, looking smaller surrounded by trees.

  With night closing in, Milo becomes giddy from the woodsy smells, the silence, the inky darkness. He has always wanted to sleep in a teepee. ‘It’s going to be great, guys. Just us in the wilderness with Gary as our guide.’

  ‘I’m no guide,’ Gary says.

  ‘Hand over your watches and cells,’ Hunter repeats, hardly visible in the darkness. ‘Gary’s got hotdogs. He’ll tell you what to do.’

  Bertie stands firm with arms crossed. ‘How are you and Geon going to bloody know what we’re up to if you’re not here?’

  ‘We’ll know.’ She vanishes before they can stop her.

  ‘It’ll be fun, guys,’ Milo says.

  Gary builds the campfire with ease.

  ‘Are you going to burn ceremonial grasses?’ Milo asks.

  ‘Marshmallows,’ Gary says.

  ‘Marshmallows. How marvellous.’ Milo spears a hotdog with a twig. ‘Isn’t there a marshmallow plant? Didn’t you use to make something medicinal from its root? Or maybe its bark? Medicine men were always boiling bark.’

  Gary hands him a hotdog bun.

  ‘Please tell me there are no snakes here,’ Aruthy says.

  ‘They don’t bite,’ Gary responds.

  ‘What about bears?’ Etienne inquires.

  ‘Don’t carry food around. They smell food.’

  ‘What about wolves and wildcats?’ Bertie adds.

  ‘They don’t bother you. But there is water.’

  ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ Milo asks.

  ‘If you can swim.’ Gary squirts ketchup on a hotdog.

  They offer Aruthy a teepee to herself but she insists she’ll be too scared on her own. ‘It’s not like we’re getting naked,’ she says. Bedding down in the teepees creates a camaraderie, or at least Milo – on pill number six – thinks so. They have been well-chosen; he sees that now in his altered state. Maybe Geon is a genius. After smearing themselves with bug repellant, they lie listening to croaking frogs, the utterances and foraging of nocturnal animals, and the wind rustling in the trees.

  ‘Can somebody tell me a bedtime story?’ Aruthy asks.

  Bertie doesn’t volunteer so Milo begins. ‘There was once a young Polish boy who lived on a farm. He helped his father tend the animals, and seed and harvest the crops. The boy trusted and loved the animals and always, when it was time to slaughter the pig, he would run into the woods, away from its squeals.’

  Bertie snaps open a plastic container and pulls out what looks like tissues, which he uses to wipe his armpits.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Aruthy asks.

  ‘Baby wipes. Brad Pitt uses them.’


  ‘But then a war starts,’ Milo continues, ‘and soldiers invade the village. They steal food, and rape women and girls. They march Jews out of their homes into the fields. When some of them resist, they are shot. A terrified boy runs for the woods but the Germans send the dogs after him. As the canines tear into the boy’s flesh the mother’s screams are muffled by a Nazi’s gloved hand. The boy’s father breaks away and tries to pull the dogs off his son but he is shot instantly. The other sobbing children cling to their mothers while their fathers stand powerless, staring at the soldiers. And then the order is given. Soldiers line up in front of them, take aim and fire.’

  ‘I think I saw this movie,’ Aruthy says.

  ‘It better have a bloody happy ending,’ Bertie says.

  ‘Fortunately, the farm boy and his family are safe in a neighbouring village. They give the Germans whatever they demand. This leaves them starving but they manage to survive on three potatoes a day. They didn’t have internet back then, so when the Russian invasion happens, nobody in the village knows about it. The farmer and his wife leave to attend to a sick relative. When they return they find their son under a table with a gash in his face and their daughter unconscious on the floor, her skirt pulled above her waist, her blouse and underwear ripped and blood leaking from her vagina.’

  ‘I don’t like this story,’ Aruthy says.

  ‘Here’s the happy part,’ Milo says. ‘The boy becomes a teenager and crosses the ocean to begin a new life.’

  ‘What happens to his sis?’ Bertie asks.

  ‘She drowns.’

  ‘On purpose?’ Aruthy asks.

  ‘Nobody knows. The boy finds her body caught in the rocks. It’s possible that she slipped. That’s what the farmer tells everyone. He says it was an accident.’

  ‘What does the boy think?’

  ‘He doesn’t say, and rarely talks about the war in his new life in the new land. He’s too busy building a business and a family. Unfortunately, his wife gives him only one son. She tries and tries but fails to produce a live birth until finally she has a heart attack, leaving the boy, who is now a man, with a small son. Now there are two lost boys.’

  ‘That better not be the bloody happy ending.’