Blood Sports

by Eden Robinson

  He scrubbed himself down with the anti-bacterial soap from the sink. He didn’t have a towel, didn’t know where the towels were, and couldn’t be bothered to ask. He used paper towels, dabbing the yellowing shoe-shaped bruises on his torso. The egg on the left side of his head was quiet now unless Tom touched it. The round scabs on his shoulders were starting to peel away.

  One month and a bit. Zip. Gone. As if aliens had abducted him and he was missing time. What he did remember he didn’t trust because it felt unreal, like a TV show he’d watched while he was stoned, losing chunks of the plot to snack runs during the commercial breaks.

  Tom jumped as someone knocked on the washroom door.

  “You still alive in there?” Paulie said.

  “Yeah,” Tom said, wondering how long he’d been washing up. It didn’t feel like that long, but he couldn’t be sure.

  Doctors and nurses came and went; specialists and technicians popped in and out; patients left and were replaced. Everyone spun in a blur of coming and going except Paulie, who was never more than five feet from him. Not counting the bathroom trips when she’d return wired and bright-eyed, Paulie was always within earshot and if he wasn’t sure he was tracking what someone was telling him, he’d call for her and she’d straighten things out.

  They waited in the hospital room for a nurse to wheel in another round of blood tests. Paulie sat in the visitor’s chair she’d dragged in from the hallway. It did feel weird having Paulie around. But he was afraid if he admitted it, she would leave. She hunched into herself, wrapped her arms tight, and hugged herself. It wouldn’t take much to make her leave. He should. If she could give him up once, she could do it again. Judging from the shakes and cutback on trips to the bathroom, she was probably running low. It looked like she was hurting, a lot, and she was still here. She was going to be disappointed if she was expecting another reward from Jer. If Willy could hunt him down, Jer would have had no problem finding Tom if he’d wanted to. But all that was over. She had to know that. She wasn’t an idiot.

  So here they were and, for whatever her reasons, Paulie had bothered to drag him to the hospital and had stuck around while he got his shit together. Paulie didn’t like fuss and he appreciated that. He wanted to know his mom was safe, was being taken care of, but the only people he could call to find out where his mother was were the people he didn’t want to go into detail with: Jeremy’s mother, Faith. Aunt Rhoda. Uncle Jeremiah.

  When life gets you down for the count, it’s not a sin to rest for a while, his mom always said when he was sick and restless. As long you pick yourself up before the ref calls the match, you’ll be okay.

  Paulie rolled the table tray over and sat on the side of the bed. She lifted the plastic cover, and they surveyed the selection. Lunch was beef broth and saltine crackers, mashed potatoes with a pat of butter, some kind of brown meat and green beans. Dessert was Jell-O, red today. Paulie claimed the tea first, drinking half before she handed it back. He sugared it up and she made a face.

  “You’re ruining good tea,” she said.

  “You want the broth?” Tom said.

  “Sure.”

  He ate the potatoes. The menu said the meat was Salisbury steak, but it looked like meatloaf. He pushed it to Paulie’s side of the tray, and she split it and pushed half back. He cut it into chunks to make eyes and a nose in the gravy, adding a set of green-bean lips. Paulie scowled, resolutely chomping on a piece.

  “I’m mel-ting,” Tom said, moving the lips. “What a world! What a world.”

  “Why don’t you hate me?” Paulie said.

  “What?” he said.

  “Open your eyes, Tom,” she said. “People keep looking at me. They’re scared. They’re disgusted. They can’t get away fast enough.”

  He looked up and caught two nurses in the hallway watching them. “So?”

  She sighed. “Tom …”

  “If you’re the scariest person they’ve seen,” Tom said, “they must live in Care Bear land, man.”

  The nurses pretended to be examining a chart, but kept looking up from behind their station. Paulie inspected her fingernails, her expression carefully composed. “I did some horrible things. To you. I … I wish sorry was good enough …”

  “It’s history,” Tom said. “I’m sorry you got dragged in, but I’m not sorry you’re here.”

  The sides of her lips pulled down further and further until she turned her head toward the window, gulping. He pushed the tray out of the way and pulled her in for a hug. He expected her to slug his shoulder but she slumped back against him, turned her head into the crook of his neck, and pulled her lips back over tightly clenched teeth, her body heaving like she was throwing up.

  “Maybe it’s just my pits,” Paulie said, pushing herself up and wiping her nose on the back of her hand. “I should hit the showers.”

  “Want to borrow a shirt?” Tom said. He had a selection of T-shirts from lost and found.

  She shook her head.

  “I’m going to watch some boob tube,” Tom said.

  “Meet you there,” Paulie said.

  Tom settled into the TV room. A puffy-faced woman with a big white bandage around her head and over one ear was watching Oprah. He didn’t care. He needed background noise to shut his brain up.

  A tall, brown-haired orderly with a beer gut wandered in and sat in the chair beside Tom’s even though there were lots of chairs empty. Tom considered moving, but the orderly didn’t look like he wanted to chat.

  “Get your damn hands off me!” Paulie shouted.

  The orderly lunged to grab Tom’s forearms and held him to the chair.

  “Tom! Tom!” Paulie shouted. “Get off! Now! I mean it! You cunt! You dirty, lousy cunt! You get –”

  “Could you turn the TV up?” the orderly said.

  The puffy-faced woman shot a worried glance at them both, and then turned the TV up before going to stand in the doorway. The TV’S speakers distorted as the audience clapped its approval. Paulie’s voice grew fainter and farther away and then stopped.

  “It’s okay, Tom,” the orderly kept saying. “Everything’s okay.”

  The private room seemed small and closed off. He’d gotten used to hearing the other patients, their monitoring machines, their visitors. The tranks made his head wobble. His mother pulled her chair close to the bed and held his hand as if he was dying and she was comforting him.

  “… silly, old Mrs. Tupper left her frying pan on,” his mother said, indignant. “She denies it, of course, but the firefighters knew. Well. Our place went next –”

  “Did anyone die?” Tom said. “Did they find a body?”

  “A body?” his mom said. “No, sweetie, no one died. Just me! Oh, I thought you were burned to death! I couldn’t find you anywhere! I went to Mike’s! I phoned the police!”

  He did imagine it then. The attempted robbery and bashing the guy’s head in were part of a hallucination. Unless the guy’s partner had dragged out the body. But you’d think someone would have noticed that. Especially if the building was on fire. Maybe they hadn’t happened on the same day. “When did our building burn down? What day?”

  “When? Oh! I tried to get BCTV to do a story on you! And The Province! I called every day.” She lifted her purse onto her lap and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. “Look. I put up posters everywhere. I went to your school. They let me make a speech in front of all your friends at assembly! Oh, I couldn’t stop crying! And they were all so kind. But nobody knew where you were, honey bunny. You just disappeared after the fire –”

  His mother talked and talked, and he waited for her to pause so he could break in, but she didn’t.

  “Where’s Paulie?” he finally said.

  “She went home,” she said. “I told you that already, honey bunny. Remember?”

  “Does she know I changed rooms?”

  “I’ll leave a note with the nursing staff,” she said. “Paulina will know where to go.”

  “I want to sit in the
hall. She might come back.”

  “Gosh, here I am yakking your ear off when you should be sleeping.”

  She kissed his hand, leaned her cheek against it, and sighed. Tom struggled to keep his eyes open.

  “Did you see her leave? Did she say anything?”

  “Were you with that Mazenkowski girl the whole time, Tommy?”

  Tom pulled his hand away from her. “She found me, Mom. She brought me here. You shouldn’t have done that. She was trying to help.”

  Her lips thinned and she sat up, ramrod straight. “Herself. She was trying to help herself, Tommy.”

  He pretended to sleep until his mother left, and then he sat in the hallway and pretended to read an Enquirer. He stared at the pictures, nodded off, and then snapped awake. After a long doze, he found himself in bed, tucked under the sheets.

  He noticed he wasn’t alone, caught a small movement from the corner of his eye. A guy in his early twenties wearing a black suit with a brown shirt unbuttoned at the top sat in the visitor’s chair, watching him the same way you’d watch an interesting zoo animal.

  “Jer-e-my,” Jeremy said slowly and loudly. “I am your cousin. Cousin Jer-e-my.”

  “Where’s Paulie,” Tom said. “Where’d Paulie go?”

  Jeremy sighed. “I thought you were faking it for the jury. Now I know you’re nuts.”

  They drove against the Sunday-night traffic. Cars and suvs and tour buses headed back to Vancouver formed a conga line of headlights. Everybody returning to their normal lives. The Sea to Sky Highway took a serious climb. The air conditioner in their truck didn’t seem to be working. Jeremy kept his window open so he could flick his cigarette ashes out. He wore cammies and a khaki fishing hat, with “Don’t touch my fly” embroidered in blue thread. Tom wore a baseball cap and a vest with a hundred puffy pockets over his hospital lost and found T-shirt.

  Earlier that day, they’d loaded the back of the truck with two large, metal coolers and assorted fishing and camping gear. When the truck came to a sudden stop, the bones in the coolers rattled like stones tumbling in the surf. The truck smelled like it had been washed down with the contents of a septic tank. Tom had retched as he’d helped Jeremy drag the coolers up a thick plank and push them into position by the cab.

  “We’re going to get caught,” Tom had said.

  “People are dumber than a sack of hammers,” Jeremy had said. “They believe what they see. As far as anyone knows or cares, we’re going fishing.”

  They stopped in Squamish at a roadside greasy spoon. Tourists in athletic gear of various styles ranging from Hollywood starlet tight and pink to skateboarder loose and grimy lounged with their après tour beers.

  “This is obstruction of justice,” Jeremy said as the waitress walked away with their order. “Eighteen months. Maybe less. Depends on how hard you cry and how many grannies you get on your jury. Grannies cream over your kind of face.”

  Tom glanced at the nearby tables, nervous. Jeremy whacked a packet of sugar against the back of his hand before he opened it and poured it in his coffee.

  “No one’s listening,” Jeremy said. “And no one cares. You could stand up right now and confess and it wouldn’t matter. Rusty Letourneau was scum. You’re scum. What scum do in the pond stays in the pond.”

  Jer was suddenly propping him up by the shoulders, and Tom didn’t remember seeing Jeremy move. Jer shoved him back against his chair.

  “Tom, he was skimming off his uncle. And flaunting it. That put him past his best-before date, not you.”

  “Who’s in the other cooler?” Tom said.

  Jeremy considered him for so long Tom wondered if he’d said it out loud or if it had stayed in his head.

  “His partner,” Jer said. “Forget him. His daddy’s a janitor at Wal-Mart. No one’s going to put a biker hit on us for killing him.”

  The logging road narrowed until it was two tire tracks in the gravel. Morose brown-needled trees leaned over the road, drooping in the heat. The headlights arbitrarily spotlighted tree trunks, yellowed brush, and the occasional set of red eyes.

  Tom took streetlights for granted. Their absence made him uneasy. The dashboard lights made Tom’s reflection glow green against the flat black surrounding them. The darkness behind them was tempered with a faint halo of light from Whistler.

  The truck rumbled down the road, finally slowing. At the end of the tracks, a shack with a green roof stood in a clearing, the windows sparking as the headlights passed over them. Jeremy cut the engine. He reached under the seat and brought up a flashlight. He opened the door and stepped outside, sucking in a deep breath. Tom hunched into himself.

  “Grab the gear,” he said.

  Tom turned to stare at the shack. The lopsided porch gave the shack a smirk.

  “Get your fucking lazy ass out of the truck before I kick it out,” Jeremy said.

  The shack had four bunks, a wood stove in the centre, and a kitchen. Jeremy lit a kerosene lamp. Tom unrolled his sleeping bag on the lower bunk opposite Jer’s. The floors whined whenever one of them moved. Mice pitter-pattered through the rafters. The kerosene lamp on the stove hissed. Tom took off his shoes and lay down on the sleeping bag. The bunk’s musty smell made his nose itch. Jer drank out of a mickey of vodka. He sat on his sleeping bag and leaned over, offering Tom a drink. Tom shook his head.

  “We should call your mom,” Jeremy said.

  Tom couldn’t think of anything he wanted to do less. Hi, Mom. I’m in hell. How are you? “Okay.”

  Jer rummaged through his knapsack and pulled out his cell. He shuffled around the cabin trying to get a signal and ended up on the porch. Tom could hear him laughing, chatting. Jer poked his head in the door and gave Tom a look. Tom pushed himself off the bunk and went to take the phone from Jer.

  “Hi, honey bunny,” his mom said, her voice choppy with static.

  “Hi, Mom,” he said. The two coolers glowed in the light coming out of the shack.

  “You sound tired.”

  “Long trip,” Tom said.

  “Are you car sick? Oh, dear. I told Jeremy you were too weak to go fishing. I told him. You can’t go straight from the hospital to the wilderness and –”

  “I’m fine, Mom. Just tired, that’s all.”

  “Oh! Tom, do you want one of the bedrooms that faces north or south?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “The south ones face Pender. But they’re farther away from the living room. Maybe we should wait and see. I wish that man’d move out of Jer’s condo faster. I’m tired of the hotel. Honestly, how long does it take to move one old man into a nursing home?”

  Tom massaged his temples. “Okay.”

  “I should let you get your sleep,” she said. “Love you.”

  “Love you, too,” he mumbled.

  “Hugs and squishies! Have fun!”

  “Bye,” Tom said.

  “Catch lots of fish!” She seemed to be picking up enthusiasm as the phone call drew to an end.

  “Bye, Mom.”

  “Kisses!”

  An endless period of smacking sounds, like deranged dolphin sonar, and then dial tone. Tom handed the phone back to Jer.

  “She’d be easy to get rid of,” Jeremy said. “Give her enough money for a really big bender and then beat her to death and dump the body in an alley.”

  The back of his neck prickled – not from the threat, but the casualness of it, the comfortable way Jer said it, as if he’d thought about it, considered his options and knew exactly what he wanted for dinner or which socks he was going to wear.

  “I’m doing everything you say,” Tom said.

  “We’re going to have a long day tomorrow,” Jeremy said. “Get some rest.”

  He could hear Jeremy breathing, but Tom couldn’t tell if his cousin was asleep or not. Tom raised his hand and held it in front of his face. He couldn’t see it. His own breathing sounded like an overheated dog panting.

  Trees scratched the window. Just a few days ago, he’d be
en so bored, he thought he was going to die if he stayed in the hospital another minute. Tom wished he was back. He wished Paulina was lying with him, thrashing around and hogging the blankets. He wondered what she was doing right now. He wished he could talk to her. She had a way of cutting through the bullshit that made things clear when his brain was fogged. He tried to imagine what she’d say about this: lying awake in the dark knowing that in the morning you were going to bury the rotting bodies Jeremy had dismembered to fit inside the coolers.

  “People aren’t that tough,” Jeremy had said. “It’s like de-boning a chicken. All you need is a little elbow grease and a decent carving knife.”

  Left to ferment in an abandoned house, the bodies in the coolers had sloshed and rattled when Jeremy and Tom carried them to the truck. Tom didn’t think he was going to make it through tomorrow. Couldn’t imagine it. But Jeremy. Jeremy wanted him to clean up his mess. And Tom wanted to keep breathing. He didn’t want to be a problem that Jeremy would have to solve with kitchen utensils.

  A trickle of a stream ran behind the shack. (Sunshine almost always) A John Denver song from the radio alarm looped in Tom’s head. (Makes me high) They used a dolly to bring the coolers down the path to the edge of the stream. Long grass slithered against their dark green hip waders. The thick rubber gloves made Tom clumsy as they manhandled the dolly into position. Jeremy opened the drainage plugs on the coolers. Brown sludge oozed into the stream, heavy trails that sank to the bottom. The sweet stench of rancid meat had a metallic undertone. Flies whined in the cool morning air.

  Jeremy unlocked the first cooler. Deflated clothes covered humps of bones. How long did it take a body to liquefy? Something that burned his nose hairs and smelled vaguely like his mother’s home perm solution had been used to speed things up. Jeremy snapped a pair of tongs like castanets before he pulled the sopping clothes out of the cooler and dropped them into an open garbage bag at his feet. He held up a black balaclava, paused, and then smiled at Tom as if he was posing for a picture, as if he’d caught a fish he was particularly proud of.