Traplines

by Eden Robinson

  Amanda and Matthew had a game called Take It. The first time I played, we were behind a black van in the school parking lot. They stood beside me as I rubbed a patch of skin on my calf with sandpaper until I started to bleed. The trick to this game is to be extremely high or just not give a shit.

  Amanda squeezed lemon juice onto my calf. I looked straight into her eyes. “Thank you,” I said.

  Matthew pulled a glue stick out of his schoolbag and smeared it on my calf. “Thank you,” I said.

  Back to Amanda, who had been poking around in the bald patch of earth by the parking lot and had come back with a hairy spider as large as a quarter. It wriggled in her hands. Fuck, I thought. Oh, fuck.

  She tilted her hands toward my calf. The spider struggled against falling, its long, thin legs scrabbling against her palm, trying to grab something.

  Long before it touched me, I knew I’d lost. I yanked my leg back so that the spider tickled the inside of my leg as it fell, missing the mess on my calf completely. I brought my foot up and squashed it before anyone thought of picking it up again.

  When I was twelve, I took the Polaroid picture Officer Wilkenson had given me to a police station in Vancouver.

  In the picture, Aunt Genna and Officer Wilkenson are both blurs, but there is a little brown-haired girl in the foreground clutching a broom handle and squinting into the camera.

  I showed the Polaroid to a man behind a desk. “That’s my Aunt Genna,” I said. “My mama killed her, but she’s not in the picture.”

  He glanced at the picture, then at me. “We’re very busy,” he said. “Sit down.” He waved me toward a chair. “Crazies,” he muttered as I turned away. “All day long I got nuts walking in off the street.”

  After a while a policewoman took me to another room, where a grave-looking man in a navy-blue suit asked a lot of questions. He had a flat, nasal voice.

  “So this is you, right? And you say this is Officer Wilkenson?”

  He made a few calls. It all took a long time, but he was getting more and more excited. Then someone else came in and they made me say it all over again.

  “I already told you. That’s Aunt Genna. Yes,” I said, “that’s the officer. And that’s me.”

  “Holy smokaroonies,” said the navy-blue suit. “We’ve got her.”

  The third time I tried to commit suicide, I found out where Paul kept his small automatic at work. It was supposed to be protection against robbers, but it wasn’t loaded and I had a hard time finding the ammunition. When he was busy with an order, I put the gun in my purse.

  This time I was going to get it right.

  I remember it was a Wednesday. The sky was clear and there was no moon. I didn’t want to mess up Paul and Janet’s house, so I was going to do it at Lookout Point, where I could watch the waves and listen to the ocean.

  I left no note. Couldn’t think of anything to say, really. Nothing I could explain. There was already a queer deadness to my body as I walked up the road trying to hitch a ride. This time was the last time.

  Cars passed me. I didn’t care. I was willing to be benevolent. They didn’t know. How ironic, I thought, when Matthew pulled over and powered down his windows.

  “Where to?”

  “You going anywhere near Lookout?”

  “I am now.”

  I opened the door and got in. He was surprisingly low-key for Matthew. He had on a purple muscle shirt and black studded shorts.

  “Going to a party?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Me and a few old friends.”

  Something British was on the radio. We drove, not saying anything until we came to the turnoff.

  “You were supposed to go left,” I said.

  Matthew said nothing.

  “We’re going the wrong way,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Lookout’s that way.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Matthew, quit fucking around.”

  “Ooh. Nasty language.”

  “Matthew, stop the car.”

  “Scared?”

  “Shitting my pants. Pull over.”

  “You know,” he said casually. “I could do anything to you out here and no one would ever know.”

  “I think you’d better stop the car before we both do something we might regret.”

  “Are you scared now?”

  “Pull the car over, Matthew.”

  “Babe, call me Matt.”

  “You are making a big mistake,” I said.

  “Shitting my pants,” he said.

  I unbuttoned my purse. Felt around until the smooth handle of the gun slid into my palm. The deadness was gone now, and I felt electrified. Every nerve in my body sang.

  Matthew opened his mouth, but I shut him up by slowly leveling the gun at his stomach.

  “You could try to slap this out of my hand, but I’d probably end up blowing your nuts off. Do you know what dumdum bullets are, asshole?”

  He nodded, his eyes fixed on the windshield.

  “Didn’t I tell you to stop the car?” I clicked off the safety. Matthew pulled over to the embankment. The radio played “Mr. Sandman.” A semi rumbled past, throwing up dust that blew around us like a faint fog.

  He lifted his finger and put it in the barrel of the gun.

  “Bang,” he said.

  Mama would never have hesitated. She’d have enjoyed killing him.

  I had waited too long. Matthew popped his finger out of the barrel. I put the gun back in my purse. He closed his eyes, rested his head on the steering wheel. The horn let out a long wail.

  I can’t kill, I decided then. That is the difference. I can betray, but I can’t kill. Mama would say that betrayal is worse.

  A long time ago in Bended River, Manitoba, six people were reported missing:

  Daniel Smenderson, 32, last seen going out to the nearby 7-Eleven for cigarettes

  Angela Iyttenier, 18, hitchhiking

  Geraldine Aksword, 89, on her way to a curling match

  Joseph Rykman, 45, taking a lunch break at the construction site where he worked

  Peter Brendenhaust, 56, from the St. Paul Mission Home for the Homeless.

  Calvin Colnier, 62, also from the St. Paul Mission

  After a snowstorm cut off power to three different subsections near Bended River, a police officer, investigating complaints of a foul smell, went to 978 West Junction Road. A little girl greeted him at the door in her nightgown. The house was hot. He could smell wood smoke from the fireplace in the living room. Chopped wood was piled to the ceiling. As he stomped the snow off his boots, he asked if her parents were home. She said her daddy was in the basement.

  “Where’s your mommy?” he asked.

  “Gone,” she said.

  “How long have you been here on your own?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Do you know where your mommy went?” he asked.

  “A-hunting we will go,” the little girl sang. “A-hunting we will go. Heigh-ho the derry-oh, a-hunting we will go.”

  He took her hand, but she wouldn’t go down to the basement with him.

  “Mama says it’s bad.”

  “How come?”

  “Daddy’s down there.”

  As he opened the door, the reek grew stronger. Covering his mouth with a handkerchief, he took a deep breath and flicked the light switch, but it didn’t work. He went back to his car, radioed for backup, and was refused. The other officer on the Bended River police force was on lunch break. So he got his flashlight, then descended.

  And found nothing. The smell seemed to be coming from everywhere. Nauseated, he called out, asking if anyone was down there.

  The basement had neatly tiled floors. Everything sparkled under the flashlight’s beam. Faintly, beneath the overpowering stench, he could smell something antiseptic, like the hospitals used. There was a large, thick butcher’s block with a marble counter against the wall in the center room.

  “It smelled something like rotten s
teaks,” he told friends later. “But more like the smell my wife gets when she has her period.”

  There were only three rooms in the basement. A bathroom, a storeroom, and the center room with the marble counter. After checking them all twice, he noticed that the butcher’s block was hinged. He heaved and strained but couldn’t lift it. His fingers, though, felt a small button on one of the drawers. What did he have to lose? He pressed it.

  The countertop popped up an inch. He tried to move it again and managed to slide it open. Beneath the butcher’s block was a freezer. It was making no sound, no humming or purring. It was dead. The stench intensified and he thought he was going to faint.

  He reached down and lifted the lid. For a moment, the skinned carcasses inside the freezer looked to him like deer or calves. Then he saw the arms and legs, sealed in extra-large plastic bags piled high.

  Three days later, Moreen Lisa Rutford was charged with seven counts of murder. The bodies were identified only with difficulty, as they had no heads or fingers and Moreen refused to cooperate. The easiest to identify was David Jonah Rutford, Moreen’s husband, who was missing only his heart.

  Death should have a handmaiden: her pale, pale skin should be crossed with scars. Her hair should be light brown with blond streaks. Maybe her dress should only be splattered artistically with blood, like the well-placed smudge of dirt on a movie heroine’s face after she’s battled bad guys and saved the world. Maybe her dress should be turquoise.

  She should walk beside a dark, flat lake.

  In the morning, with rain hissing and rippling the lake’s gray surface, a moose should rise slowly from the water, its eyes blind, its mouth dripping mud and whispering secrets.

  She should raise a shotgun and kill it.

  Mama wore her best dress to go calling. She sat me at the kitchen table and we ate pizza, Hawaiian, my favorite. She was cheerful that morning and I was happy because Daddy was gone so they hadn’t argued. The house, for once, was quiet and peaceful.

  She said, “I’m going to have to leave you alone for a bit, honey. Can you take care of yourself? Just for a little while?”

  I nodded. “Yup.”

  “I made you some lunch. And some dinner, just in case I take too long. You know how to pour cereal, don’t you?”

  “Yup.”

  “Don’t let anyone in,” she said. “Don’t go out. You just watch TV and Mama will be back before you know it. I got you some comics.”

  “Yay!” I said.

  And I never saw her again until she came to get me at Aunt Genna’s.

  She kissed me all over my face and gave me a big hug before she left. Then she hefted her backpack onto one shoulder and pulled her baseball cap low over her face.

  I watched her bounce down the walkway to the car, wave once, and drive away, smiling and happy and lethal.

  First Contact

  They’d smoked some pot in the garage and it was already wearing off. He was getting melancholy. The high had been short and mild, barely even a buzz. Lousy skunkweed, he thought. Oh well, you get what you pay for.

  Sometimes, coming down, he pretended he lived at Mike’s house. It was stupid, he felt like a moron doing it. But sitting in the outdoor Jacuzzi with the portable TV blaring Sunday football, his stomach filled with the low-fat mango crepes that Patricia’s part-time chef-slash-personal trainer had made for breakfast, he started to imagine what it would be like to change places with Mike.

  “Fucking rain,” Mike said to no one in particular.

  “Language,” Mike’s aunt Patricia yelled from the balcony.

  Mike flipped her the bird. Luckily she wasn’t looking their way. Tom tilted his head. The world shifted. Maybe the skunk had a kick after all. Mike looked very weird. Tom stared at him. Mike had his hair slicked back and tied in a topknot. His forehead was big but his jawline came to a small point, making him look like one of those talking animals in The Wind in the Willows, Mr. Fox, whatever its name was. Mike scowled at Tom. “Doesn’t the sun ever come out here?”

  Tom hadn’t noticed the drizzle. “In about four months, for about two days.” Someone scored and the TV erupted into cheering. The sound made him happy.

  “This whole place sucks,” Mike said. “Vancouver is the shittiest place on earth.”

  “Unlike Toronto,” Tom said, smiling.

  “Fuck off, Tommy,” Mike said.

  So. Mike wanted to spread a little joy. That was the problem with getting stoned with him. He turned into such a miserable bastard. Fuck you, Tom thought. I’m having a good time and you aren’t going to spoil it. “Someone’s having a nic fit,” Tom said. “Why don’t you ask Patricia for a Nicorette?”

  Mike transferred his glare from Tom to the horizon and maintained a sullen silence until Tom’s mother phoned. Patricia brought her cellular phone to the Jacuzzi.

  “Tommy,” his mom said, her voice tight and upset. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  Tom instantly felt his day going downhill. The buzz vanished. “What?”

  “Someone’s coming today. You’re supposed to be here.”

  Tom waited, puzzled.

  “Your cousin,” his mother said. “You said you’d be here to meet him. You promised.”

  Shit, Tom thought, remembering. Him. “Yeah, yeah. I’m coming.”

  He hung up and sighed.

  “Gotta go.”

  “Aww, what a shame,” Mike said, almost yawning in his face. “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

  Patricia smiled at Tom as she took back her phone. “My Mr. Happy,” she said, batting Mike’s topknot back and forth. Mike swatted her hand away. In a syrupy voice she added, “Be nice or your friends won’t play with you anymore.”

  “Boo hoo,” Mike said.

  Mike refused to get out of the Jacuzzi, even when Patricia shut off the bubbles. Tom changed into his sweats and waved good-bye to Patricia. When she wasn’t looking, Mike flipped him the bird. Tom laughed, then flipped him one back.

  He rode his bike home through the Mount Pleasant back alleys. Since the Shame-the-Johns picketers and the police cruisers had begun patrolling the area, there were fewer prostitutes around. He missed them. A couple of them had started to say hi to him.

  The elevator in their apartment block was out of order, so he carried his bike up to the third floor. One of the Baker twins had spray painted the stairwells with anatomically correct pictures of impossibly proportioned comic-book women. Tom could never remember which twin was out on parole, Wayne or Willy.

  Uncle Richard, his mom’s latest attempt at giving him a father figure, was reading the paper in front of the TV. When Uncle Richard had started calling him Tommy, Tom started calling him Ricky and—when he found out that it really pissed him off—Ricky Ricardo. Uncle Richard slept over every Saturday. He was some kind of security guard, an ex-military type going soft around the middle. Tom’s mom had encouraged them to go to baseball and hockey games, but by an unspoken agreement Tom and Uncle Richard avoided each other as much as they could. Still, his mom felt it was just a matter of time before they started repairing cars together or going fishing, God forbid.

  As Tom came into the apartment, Uncle Richard looked up but said nothing.

  Tom put his bike down and rolled it into the hallway closet. He lifted the bottom of his sweatshirt and wiped his forehead. On top of dealing with crappy grades and finding another job now that Chuckie Burgers was closing, Tom had Uncle Richard, who lost his temper if his toast was too dark. God, Tom thought, let him be one of her really short fucks.

  His mom was waiting by the front window. He almost didn’t recognize her. Her hair was no longer fire-engine red but brown and pulled back into an uncharacteristic bun. She was wearing a pastel yellow dress, too, like she was ready for ballet lessons or something. More than that, she gave off an intense nervous energy when she was sober that always took Tom by surprise. Even though she was completely still, Tom could tell that she was excited.

  She glanced at him, th
en back out the window. “He’s late. You think he’s coming?”

  You’d think Jesus Christ was coming, Tom thought. “He said he would.”

  She bit her lip nervously. Tom went over and hugged her. She was so small he had to bend down. She patted his back, distracted.

  “You eat?” Tom said.

  She shook her head. “Later.”

  “You should eat.”

  “You’re a good boy, Tommy.” She pushed him back. “But you stink. Go take a shower.”

  “Don’t worry, he’ll come,” he said.

  In the shower, Tom tried to remember his cousin. Jeremy had once held a chocolate Easter bunny out of his reach until he screamed in frustration and Jeremy had started laughing. He’d been six? Seven?

  Jeremy was supposed to be in the army or something. Tom’s mom had been so proud she’d put up pictures of him in uniform. “Jeremy was the only one to follow his father into the military,” she’d said.

  “So why’d he get kicked out?” he’d said.

  She’d looked at him with widened eyes, upset. He had some ideas, but no one would tell him what had really happened, not even Aunt Rhoda, the biggest mouth alive. Jeremy must have fucked up pretty bad if Rhoda wouldn’t even gossip about it.

  Jeremy’s mother, Aunt Faith, was the only family Tom came close to liking. She sent Christmas cards and shortbread cookies that his mom waited for anxiously every year and gave them money when Mom couldn’t make her paycheck stretch. But once, Aunt Faith had sat him down and explained that his mother was a fallen woman, that he’d been born out of wedlock. That was why he had epilepsy, she’d told him. God had cursed him. They’d both burn in hell unless they repented. He found he could stand her better now that she’d joined them in the family Hall of Shame.

  Family was Mom. He didn’t need anyone else. Especially some Bible-thumping bully.

  The hot water ran out suddenly, and shivering, Tom had to rinse the soap from his hair fast. He swore and hopped out of the shower.

  His mom was still by the window when he came back into the living room. Tom stood beside her and waited.