by Sheree Fitch
When I reached the corner, I took a last look back but there was nothing out of the ordinary happening as far as I could tell. I began to run but I had to stop because my insides were heaving.
Strolling towards me was a young mother holding the hand of a toddler. When she was by my side, the woman stopped and asked cautiously, “Are you all right, do you need any help?” I shook my head no and looked into her eyes. It was my mother and the little boy was me and you do not have to believe that but I know what I saw and when I blinked they hurried on by. Honest. That is what I saw. Fear brings on hallucinations maybe. I know what I saw.
Cold settled into my bones. I walked away fast as I could from Pineygrove Avenue. Somewhere along the way I’d lost my gloves. Lost my mind. Lost my girl. Lost my way.
x
History lessons. Factoids in the Jakekeeper files. Halifax: Third largest port in the world after New York and Hong Kong. Halifax: The capital of Nova Scotia. Halifax: Home of the grave of Robert Ross, who led the charge on the Burning of Washington in the War of 1812. Halifax: The place where they destroyed Africville, relocating an entire Black community to build a bridge. Halifax: The city where in 1917 the SS Mont-Blanc and the SS Imo collided in the famous Halifax Explosion and two thousand people lost their lives.
I sat in a gazebo on the hill in the Dartmouth Commons with a view overlooking Halifax Harbour trying to get my head back together after that visitation from my mother or whatever the hell you want to call it, and I thought of the things I knew and the things I didn’t know like how do you ever know what’s right and wrong and where the hell was Skye in this big city, and even though I was feeling tired and crazed and nuts by then I noticed the way light sparkled on waves and how that reminded me of her eyes and I thought of fog and ships and tugboats and wartime sailors drunk on life and booze and fiddle music and beer and dead people. Many dead people. I thought of ordinary people waking up on an ordinary day going on about their weary dreary or who knows maybe even happy lives and then wham bam split splat what the fuck and that word explosion and how it broke apart in my mind when I said it and how the explosive disorder I’m told I have made me feel like some sort of ever-ready-to-detonate grenade. I thought of never waking up or waking up to find people you loved most dead beside you or worse, dead miles away from you, blown, flown, nothing left of what they used to call home. Splattered.
I admit I was a guy spinning out of control by then. Skye and fuckin’ Manderson? I kept repeating, and I kept seeing them whispering together at the Cabin Diner.
To my right the bridge arched across the water like a giant steel butterfly and this reminded me of the butterfly clip Skye wore in her hair. Everything was reminding me of everything else because then I imagined myself in Shep’s garden in the summer, real butterflies dancing and Shep doing her meditation thingy on her back deck. Breathe deeply, I could hear her saying. Breathe. Take a pause.
I know being sleep-deprived didn’t exactly help my line of thinking. It’s like my eyeballs rattled in my head. I’m not sure how long I sat there but when a foghorn sounded I realized the sun was gone and just that fast fog had rolled in. It wasn’t even twenty-four hours since I’d left Poplar Hills but it seemed more like a lifetime ago. I stood up and sniffed the air like a dog trying to find a scent. I knew in my gut, deep in my gut, Skye was somewhere over there. I could feel her. I would find her. First things first.
First, I needed to send Robin’s message. Then, I needed to get to a computer. I had started down the hill towards the library and ferry terminal when a text came in from Teddy.
u okay?
wr u now?
okay
no luck finding aunt’s address
With that Teddy was gone. I found a pay phone and dialled the number Robin had given me.
“Yo, who’s your daddy?”
“Got no other daddy but you,” I said.
Even the click on the line crackled with violence to my ears.
Done. Deed was done. Over.
So yeah. Jake Upshore. Guilty: Count one.
Trafficking equipment for the purposes of growing marijuana.
But that doesn’t make me a killer.
y
Inside the library, first thing, I bumped into a parade of preschoolers. There they were, cute little bunch of knee-huggers walking in twos and holding hands, all bundled up in their snowsuits, the girls mostly in pink and the boys in browns and oranges. A little choo-choo train of kids that took forever going by and I guess, well, okay, yes, I must have scowled at them. I mean, remember, I was on a mission and running out of time, and they were in my way. The little girl at the end of the line looked up at me and stopped dead in her tracks. Her eyes were the blue of the delphiniums I’d planted in Shep’s garden and they took in every inch of me. Top to bottom. Maybe it was just my imagination but the kid reminded me a little of Skye when we were that age. “What?” I said finally. I couldn’t help but laugh at her. “What?” Her mouth opened up so wide I could have seen her tonsils. “Bye-bye,” I said, and waved at her. “Bye-bye, run along now, cutie-pie.” Two tiny fingers wiggled back. “Missy! Come on!” said her teacher, coming round to herd her up. She shot me a look like I was some pervert ready to abduct the kid.
“Wook,” said Missy, pointing at me. “Wook.” She pointed to my face. The childcare worker wooked and said, “Man, what happened to you?” “An accident,” I said. “No kidding,” she said, giving me the once-over and curling up her nose like I smelt bad. Then she tugged at Missy, who smiled at me and waddled off like a little penguin, waving, until she was out of sight. I like kids, I told myself. I think I really do. They’re pretty cute when their noses are clean.
You have to wonder about what goes on in little kids’ heads. I mean, how do they learn to read the world, you know? How do you learn the word for bruise? Probably by running into a monster like me.
I asked if I could use a computer and the person behind the desk nodded and pointed to the computer terminal underneath a sign that said “Teen Internet Use.” Duh. I logged on and started searching. Halifax. Abortion clinic. Halifax. I’d camp outside one if I had to. I sent three e-mails to Skye. The last one was simple and calm:
Dear Skye:
I’m in Dartmouth. I sent a million text messages and phoned and all I need to do is talk. No matter what. No matter whose baby it is or not. I just want to talk this out and try to understand. How you feel. Love Jake
So I would wait until I heard from her. I put my head down, exhausted. I figured Derucci and Brett had gotten to her before I had, come in to warn her I was coming maybe. I closed my eyes and opened them, closed and opened. I was so damned tired. If I could just catch a little sleep, I thought, I’d see clearer instead of feeling like I was swimming through a pool of Vaseline. I stood up and stretched. There I was, in a library, of all places. Me the re-lucked-tant reader. All these books I’d never read and all these ideas I’d never understand and stories I’d never know. Books that could help you discover just a little bit more about what life’s all about. See, I believe that part about books. Maybe books didn’t make you smarter, but they could sure make you feel like you were smarter. Help you get a better grip. Talk a better tune. Maybe get a better-paying job. And I thought of how hard my dad worked and how many times he’d told me he regretted not finishing school. He was a big reader when he wasn’t doing his puzzles or out fishing. Once, he told me that he learned more from a school of fish than from any other kind of school anyhow. This made me think I should let him know where I was. But I didn’t. I walked over to the bookshelves, ran my hand over the spines of the books. For half a second I imagined all that knowledge flying right through my fingertips, humming up my arms and seeping into my pea-brain. Zapped. There. No more stunned-arse Jake.
Then I had a kind of déjà vu feeling. No, I’d never been there before. The first and last library I’d ever been in was the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. A place that was like a cathedral filled with books. Marbl
e staircases. Gold-leaf ceilings. Every room overflowing with books and words and mind-boggling facts. I’d wandered off by myself and rounded a corner and there was Skye, standing in a puddle of sunlight, staring up at the ceiling, reading the inscriptions, lost in her own world. I stood there and pretended to read, too, and Skye, not knowing how hard reading was for me or anything, smiled over at me as if I understood. I stood there and realized, yeah, I did understand. There were words and they had power and beauty and truth and all that jazz, and there was silence beyond words even more powerful. Crazy shit. That silence. And thoughts could travel. I wished mine could right then and I wondered what she’d think if she knew I couldn’t even read most of her diary. I sat back down, rested my head on the desk and put my cheek against a page in the binder.
“Skye! Skye! Skye! Why did you have to do this?” I muttered to myself. “Skye, where are you?” I whispered. “Please answer.” The guy beside me looked over and scowled. I scowled back. He scowled again. I almost said what’s yer problem arse-hole but I actually got control. Pictured him like a teeny-weeny bug underneath my foot and squished him. Dead. Kaput. I pulled down my hood and the guy got up and left.
I went back to my search. Abortion clinics. I typed in the letters and hit Search. I got 178,000 results. I narrowed my search to locations and copied down a few addresses. Then, because I thought maybe I should have some facts if I wanted to have an intelligent discussion with Skye when I found her, I typed in “when does a baby’s heart begin to beat” and Wikipedia told me the answer was around thirty days. I found another site and I started reading at my snail’s pace about the stages of fetal development. Talk about getting messed in the head. Sometimes, you really should leave things to your imagination. Some of those pictures made babies look just like little aliens. Creatures from other planets. Who knows? Maybe we all are. Maybe some of us end up on the wrong planet and never quite get the hang of adjusting to this one. That’s a comforting idea to someone like me. I mean, you never know. You just never know. New word: Speculation. Translate: Anybody’s guess.
z
The minutes ticked by and I grew even antsier. I started scribbling some lyrics in my notebook. Something about underground caverns and Pluto and how me and Skye ended up that night making love. It got hot in that library. Think steam bath. Think stiff as a stalagmite. Everyone thought we’d had this big drunken orgy in Virginia after that day in the caverns. But it wasn’t like that. Only Teddy and Jennifer were drunk. Drunker than skunks. Skye and me woke up, arms and legs still around each other—that I remember, how good it felt to wake up, her face next to mine. So anyway, there was this commotion in the hallway. Latin music was blaring. There was this high-pitched giggle and there they were, Teddy and Jennifer, doing some kind of mambo up and down the hallway. It was 2:35 a.m. I remember the red numbers glowing in the dark. Like a little smiling demon face. Skye opened the door a crack and started laughing.
“Jake, oh my God, come see!”
Jennifer was in her underwear, jockey shorts and a tight muscle shirt pulled over her large breasts, sorry but they were, breasts that jiggled like they were having a party of their own inside that shirt. Teddy had some sort of scarf wrapped around his head. He was wearing just his boxers.
“Come on out and mambo,” they were saying.
That’s when Shep shot out of her room like a firecracker, and Mr. Trimble came tearing around the corner. Doors opened and, well, it seemed there was a lot of hanky-panky going on during that trip besides between just me and Skye.
Skye was hiding, wrapped in blankets, but I still think Brett Manderson spotted us. In the confusion, no one else did and everyone got back to their assigned rooms.
Shep didn’t look at anyone much the next morning.
“This incident,” she said, as we headed by bus to the airport, “best stay behind us. I do hope, however, that all of you are using precautions.”
It was all we could do not to howl with laughter. But she wasn’t laughing. She went down the aisle, passing out assignment sheets on birth control questions. Everyone received condoms.
I’m not one to kiss and tell and this is not to dishonour my girl because after we got home and started seeing each other, in secret mind you, we decided to take it easy, we really did. Well, okay, Skye did. Mostly we fooled around but didn’t go all the way. Most of the time. When we did we were so careful. Very. But…well, like my dad said, it’s that one percent that could get you every time. What were the chances? Too many, I guess. Every part of me went limp as a day-old party balloon.
The librarian was looking at her watch and back at me because the place was emptying. She walked towards me, still looking at her watch. “Are you okay?” she asked me. “Did you find everything you wanted?” Her smile was the U of a watermelon rind. “Not exactly.” I smiled back. Can you help me find my girl? Can you help me raise a kid? Can you find my heart? Maybe we could look in shelf 800, am I filed under H for heart? My heart was sinking when I realized I was no closer to figuring out where Skye might be. “Anything I can do?” she said. I shook my head no. She smelled good. Like roses. “Well, take a few more minutes.” She cocked her head to one side and looked me over. I grinned my thanks and bowed my head and started packing up my backpack. Before I logged off, I checked my e-mail one last time. Then I had to blink and swallow hard and reread and blink again to make sure what I was seeing in my inbox was for real.
Fr: [email protected]
Shaking, I read the following:
Jake. jst got mess. not what you think. meet me RR grave asap imp watch out for brettmanderson my father. hurry
If you’ve got to be dead, you may as well float in a barrel of rum like Robert Ross, I’d joked to Skye the day I showed her where his grave was. Poor bugger died two weeks after burning down the U.S. capital in 1812 and they’d only managed to ship him back home as far as Halifax. We’d had a field trip into Halifax before Christmas and I even think I impressed Skye with my knowledge of Ross and the British and the War of 1812. Sort of. She wasn’t into burning books and libraries down.
I can tell you I was what was burning as I flew out of the Alderney Gate Library. On fire. The librarian yelled, running after me, because I’d left my backpack. I grabbed it from her and kept running, yelling thanks over my shoulder but I’m not sure she heard that. “Where do I get the ferry?” I said. “Follow the signs,” she said. Great. There were a hundred signs. The world was full of signs. Word signs. No symbols. I stopped dead in my tracks. “Downstairs,” she said when I just stood there looking so messed up. I saluted and spun around. I made my way down the escalator and then I saw it. A sign with a boat and three squiggle lines beneath for the waves. I hurried towards the turnstile. “How much?” “Two twenty-five. Correct change, please. There’s a change machine behind you.” Frustrated, I shot the woman a dirty look, sighed impatiently but did as I was told. I boarded the ferry, went up on deck and braced against the wind. Change machine. The air felt good and clean and woke me up. Change machine. Salt smell in the air. Hear sidewalk shovel sounds.
A change machine. As the ferry left the Dartmouth dock I couldn’t help thinking about the mess we were in, me and Skye, and if only there was a real change machine. You know what I mean? Yeah, I got thinking, too bad there wasn’t a real honest to God change machine. I imagined a chamber, like a chamber of a cave maybe, and you could walk right in and change the person you were. Change things you did, come out the other end free and clear and making different decisions. Jake Upshore: a changed young man. Jake, changed from angry scared jealous dipshit into an I-can-manage-anything cool calm sort of cultured educated dude. “Skye, shall we have a cup of tea and read some poetry?” So. Okay. That was maybe never going to happen.
By the time the ferry reached the Halifax side, fog was rolling in. My own footsteps echoed on the pavement as I made my way up to Barrington Street, towards the cemetery. The entrance gates were closed, so I sort of leapfrogged over the wall and made my way through t
he tombstones towards Ross’s grave. Creepy shit. Even for me. Fog rolled around, low to the ground, nipping my heels. If Skye asked to meet here it had to mean she was sneaking away because Brett and her father were looking for me. I heard footsteps and a yell behind me. It was a homeless guy, across the street, bombed out of his tree, trying to get change out of someone. Change machine. Cha-ching. I slunk towards the centre of the graveyard, edging around the headstones.
“Jake!” Her voice! A kind of whimper. There she was—to my left, waving her arms. I flew to her side. She grabbed my face and kissed me. Fierce, deep kisses. All the time crying and running her hands over my face and through my hair. I’m not afraid to tell you by this time, I was choking back a few tears of my own.
y
“Skye, why did you leave without—?”
“Shh! Shh!” she said. “Just hold me, I’m cold.” Still kissing me all over.
So I held her for what seemed like hundreds of years, just held her and rocked her until the huge breathless sobs gave way to small hiccupy sounds.
“Did you read what I left you—in my binder?” She wiggled away from me and paced back and forth. “We don’t have much time.”
“I know. But I couldn’t read a lot of the diary…I messed up the pages.”
“Then you still don’t know—”
