Boy Lost in Wild

by Brenda Hasiuk

  Marc straightens, steps away, crushes a soft metal downspout with his rancid runner, stumbles back against a stuccoed garage wall. The pain is immediate and sharp, but he does not cry out. The black dog in the dying light watches him from the middle of the lane, then takes three small steps closer. He sniffs the sweet and sour air and takes two more steps.

  Their mother said she first had Marc tested when he was two-and-a-half because he couldn’t tell the difference between the neigbour’s dog and the neighbour’s cat. He remembers watching a show, not long ago, about a three-year-old black standard poodle that could tell when his master was about to have a seizure. The dog could tell maybe thirty minutes before it happened.

  Still crumpled against the wall, Marc fishes the half-doughnut from his shirt pocket. They’d handed them out at the shelter, and the crust of sugar covering the trans-fatty goo had been too much for his senses, like grinding chewy sand between his teeth. He holds out the sticky remains in his palm and the dog bounds at him, no holds barred, inhales the doughnut, begins to lick every last grain of goodness from the generous stranger’s hand. Marc lets him, almost likes the wet, rough tongue appealing to his skin for more, more, more. The dog pauses, waits, shoves his muzzle into Marc’s broad chest, nestles there, sniffs, breathes, pauses. Somewhere, a door slams and the black dog runs, disappears into the dying light.

  Marc almost wishes he’d had more squished doughnut to offer, almost wishes the dog, with its hot saliva and opaque eyes, had stayed with him longer (forever = ∞).

  “Twenty-seven,” he says aloud. Twenty-seven bits of gravel went flying beneath the wheel.

  Her brother has not been home for five nights when Monique approaches their mother. It’s fairly late, past eleven, and she’s buoyed by a recent sub sandwich trip. Her mother is fresh from a long bath, and with her wet hair combed back her eyes look squinty, as if the hot water hasn’t just wrinkled her fingers and toes but turned all of her into an old lady. She slathers cream over her face as Monique comes up from behind, flops on the unmade king-sized bed. “So is Dad Métis?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Dad. Is he Métis?”

  Her mother studies herself and sighs, starts dousing cream on her neck. “Depends. His grandmother was Cree, I think. So I suppose that would qualify. You’d have to ask him.”

  Monique absently tugs at a loose thread on the quilt, wonders whether, if she pulled and pulled, the whole thing would come apart. “Why don’t you know? Shouldn’t we know?”

  Her mother sighs again, tosses the lotion aside, and lies down beside Monique, the way they used to do sometimes. It started the year Monique was ten and got her period and Marc was elected president of the chemistry club. “What are you going on about, hon? She died a long time ago, when Dad’s mom was a baby. He never knew her.”

  “Okay, but the name. Traverse? It’s Métis?”

  Her mother hooks her pinkie into Monique’s and gives it a tug, like she used to do sometimes. “Yeah, I suppose. Yeah.”

  But it wasn’t like it used to be. She sounded so tired, so old, that Monique didn’t have the heart to take it further. Not the Métis thing, and certainly not the weight thing. Even though her mother has warned her of the “personal nature” of her blog, Monique can’t resist taking a peek now and then.

  I fear the youngest, my so-called normal child, has paid a price for her brother’s journey into our world. Our Monique was always so healthy, so hardy, I hardly noticed when she literally began bursting at the seams, as if by taking up more physical space she might get her due. That third glass of chocolate milk, that second croissant, that bag of butterscotch chips in the back of the fridge, it was all so easy to provide, so natural, in a household where every day was a fight for her brother’s retreating mind.

  So she tracks down her father in the garage workshop. Years ago, he’d set it up to be Marc-friendly—no fluorescent lighting, no fans, nothing flashy or loud or smelly—and the two of them had spent hours upon hours out there.

  “Leave the boys be,” her mother would say. “They’re tinkering.” Those were good days, the period between Marc’s tantrums and his obsession with sports cards.

  The overhead door is open and Monique patters in her slippers across the immaculate concrete floor. Her father is pouring something into the engine of a red antique farm truck.

  “Dad,” she says.

  He starts and the liquid, probably oil, misses its mark for just a moment. He doesn’t speak until he’s finished the job, thrown the empty bottle in the recycling bin, wiped his hands, and settled down on the green camping chair where he drinks his daily Scotch on the rocks. “Jesus, Mon. You scared me.”

  Monique tightens the belt around her terry towel robe, as if suddenly shy. “Sorry.”

  He shoves his thumb and forefinger beneath his glasses and does the rub. He’s wearing a white work T-shirt that’s been washed too many times, and when he slouches back in the chair his stomach bulges a little over his belt. This is new.

  “I was just wondering,” Monique says, suddenly feeling like a giant standing over him in the low chair, “why we never talk about being Métis.”

  He shrugs, as if he’s been expecting the question. “No reason. It’s just not my thing, Mon. I barely remember my mom and it was her side that was Ojibway.”

  “Mom said Cree.”

  He shrugs again. “Cree, Ojibway, they all occupied the same space.”

  “But shouldn’t you be proud of your Métis heritage?” Monique asks. The counsellor’s voice was so clear, so confident, so caring. It’s like he was missing the point. “They need role models.”

  Her father laughs and kicks her knee playfully with his runner. “I’m no more Métis than anyone else around here. That’s not my thing, Mon. But you go for it. Be proud. Fly the flag.”

  It’s good to see him laugh, but she will not let herself be deterred. “Did diabetes run in your family?

  He scratches his chin, acts like he is finally paying attention. “Well, my parents died young of other causes, so it wasn’t much of an issue. But probably. That’s why I worry about you.”

  “You worry? You never say anything.”

  He sits up, tugs at the belt of her robe. “That doesn’t mean I don’t worry.”

  What good is it if I don’t know? Monique wants to ask.

  But her father has removed his glasses completely and the time for real questions is probably over.

  “You’re still growing,” he says. “The doc says it may all even out in the end. Okay, Mon? You’re good. You’re great.”

  Monique makes a couple of body builder poses, and then turns away before he can see her cry. It strikes her for the first time, at fourteen years old, that the world is a frightening place. Marc has always seemed to know that, spending most of their childhood hollering in fear and rage over things no one else seemed to notice. It was the small things that made him crazy, but never the big ones—the ones you had no idea even existed until you grew older and it all got complicated.

  Outside the garage, Monique kneels down on her father’s meticulous grass. She’d read once in the blog: Many autistics will not see a regular suburban back yard and think “there is a lawn,” but instead, they will see each individual blade of grass. Imagine.

  Could it be that her brother’s brilliance lay not in his weird talents, but his ability to avoid wading into real life? To avoid his screwed-up self, his screwed-up family, this screwed-up world?

  She was alone, on the blades, beneath the suburban stars, and there was no one to ask, to check in with—not Del, not her parents, and certainly not her brother. Marc had buggered off, deserted her here, alone with her strangely silent grown-up tears.

  Marc walks along the gravel shoulder of Highway 6, before the turn-off to Grand Beach. Long-weekend traffic roars by and he almost welcomes the whiz of their breeze. He can feel the back of his neck burning, feel his underpants sopping wet against him. He is not suited to being on the run, he knows this, b
ut he soldiers on, one foot in front of the other, heading to The Shack like a homing pigeon. He is too hot to count, too tired to panic. He barely notices when a vehicle eases onto the shoulder, rumbles up beside him. A hand reaches out but doesn’t touch.

  “Marc. Marc, honey.” It’s a women’s voice, but not the voice, not the three-letter word with no image to give it shape—mom.

  She is practically hanging out the window now. “It’s Marlene. Marlene Knight. What you doing, hon? You going to the cabin? You need a ride?”

  It’s the red Subaru 4X4 from down the road, near the chip stand. Before that, they drove a red Honda hatchback. She asks questions so quickly it’s like she doesn’t expect answers.

  “Marc, hon? You look a sight, honey. Do you have water? We’ve got water here. Chris and I are heading right your way. Climb in. We’ll give you a lift.”

  Marc walks on, lets the sweat drip into his eyes, waits for them to grow as tired as he is.

  “Do your folks know you’re here? Do you want me to call them? I have their number somewhere.”

  “I’m of age,” Marc says. “I’m eighteen.”

  “Marlene, take it easy.” It’s a male voice, the driver who likes red. “Let him be. It’s not far.”

  They drive along beside him for thirty-four seconds more, then are gone. He has no more sense of time, no sense of his body moving through space until he is submerged in water.

  The shallow lake, the tenth largest in the world, has always been abnormally warm for a fresh body of water, but the brownish film is more recent.

  For centuries, his father told him, the sandy bottom has taken down fishers in the mildest of storms. “It doesn’t take much to stir this pot. Twice, my own father, your grandfather, nearly died beneath the whitecaps, but then he lived to drown in his own bathtub when his heart gave out. One of the perils of living alone, I guess.”

  Marc has read that due to run-off of agricultural fertilizers and pesticides, nitrogen and phosphorus levels in the lake have climbed steadily in the last several decades, and algae blooms have skyrocketed. Floating now, he cannot see his fingers beneath the sediment. Some scientists say it’s probably too late to save the lake—the chemical, physical, and biological parameters of the water have shifted past the point of no return.

  When Monique gets the phone call from Marlene, her father has just taken off for a meeting in Chicago and her mother is at the spa getting the works.

  “She desperately needs respite,” her father had said before he left. “Just one day to herself.”

  Monique ponders her next step, then calls Del, whose family is heading to the cabin for the weekend. She makes up a strategic, premeditated, grown-up lie for the first time in her life. She tells Del and her parents that her own mother is already at Grand Beach, her father is delayed, and supper will be waiting. The whole way there in the backseat with her friend, Monique plays gin rummy and makes the usual conversation, amazed at how easily more lies come.

  When they drop her off, The Shack shows no sign of life. Monique immediately makes her way down the gravel road, onto the path obscured by tall grass, and through the willow bush to the rocky cove they used to treat like their own private hideaway. As kids, they called it Ladybug Beach for no particular reason. If anything, it’s a haven for mosquitoes and teenagers looking for a place to drink. But it was the only place Marc would put even a toe in the lake.

  Monique kicks off her sandals as she sinks into the powdery sand. She’s an expert at avoiding the small sticks and stones that can puncture your bare soles and send you howling. At the foamy shore, she contemplates taking off her sweaty T-shirt and size 16 nylon skort, then wades right in, as Marc did, clothes be damned.

  He’s floating with his eyes closed, disgustingly worn-out runners still on, poking out of the water like beach litter. The water is still only at Monique’s waist, so she crouches down, immerses herself completely, then returns puffing to the air. She leans back alongside her brother, lets herself become light, just like that. For the first time, she waits, without a word.

  “The one with the crooked teeth and the black dog,” Marc says, “she kept getting close, I don’t know why, she was out of her head and so I threw her, and she flew.” He laughs, not ha-ha, but can you believe it? “She flew.”

  Monique closes her eyes. She hasn’t eaten since breakfast, and her stomach is growling pathetically, like a toy poodle.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Marc says.

  “It’s okay, Marc,” she says. “It’s okay not to know. It’s okay.”

  And for one happy moment, Marc and Monique float in the shallow lake, side-by-side, light and cool, their fingers touching now and then by accident. Nothing matters, not Métis blood, or blood sugar. Not the distant constellations or the dying lake. They are floating side-by-side and that’s enough.

  Roma Raj

  Five Facts

  1. More than a million Asian Indians are millionaires, but most live on less than $2 per day. An estimated 35% of India’s population lives below the poverty line.

  2. The absence of a written history has meant that the origin of the Romani people has long been a mystery. But recent genetic studies suggest that Roma gypsies are descended from low-caste “untouchables” who migrated from the Indian sub-continent 1,400 years ago.

  3. India has the world’s largest movie industry, based in the city of Mumbai (known as the City of Dreams). Almost all “Bollywood” movies are musicals.

  4. Romani children are traditionally allowed limited access to non-Romani culture as a way to protect them from outside influence. In the past, Romani gypsies typically married between the ages of nine and fourteen. Today, Romani youth tend to marry in their late teens.

  5. Arranged marriage, which is still widely practised in India, is no longer the norm among Canadian-born Indians. However, marriages are sometimes still arranged by parents within their specific caste or Indian ethnic community. Since it may be difficult to find someone of the same Indian ethnic background with the desired characteristics, some Indo-Canadians now opt to use a “matchmaker” or online services to find a marriage partner.

  * * *

  Jagat, I saw the way you looked at that girl. The one sitting on the curb as we came out of the clinic, with the mammoth black mutt who surely outweighed her, and the sign written with girlishly round letters on cardboard ripped from a detergent box: “Dog and I both in need of kibble. Please give what you can.”

  I fish in my pockets, into the jangle of change I know you make fun of, toss a few loonies in her overturned fedora. You can’t believe, never expected your old man with his European sandals and expensive watch to do such a thing. I know you want to say something, express your surprise, but you don’t, because you think I don’t have much to tell you anymore. You’ve won your scholarships, you’ve proven yourself, you’re ready to walk away and make your mark.

  You would never guess that I was trembling as I threw those coins. What kind of son your age would notice such things about his father? You were too busy gazing down the front of her blouse, perhaps experiencing a more-common-than-you’d-think mix of pity and desire. If I began telling you the story of Gypsy Joan, you’d be quickly bored and think you know how it ends. But again your old man might surprise you.

  Perhaps I’m being presumptuous. At times, your mother has accused me of assuming the world revolves around Raj, whatever that means. You’re probably preoccupied with your own thoughts, your own precarious health, your own gleaming future, didn’t even notice I’d tossed the coins. Your mother, who is probably the better parent, would be preoccupied with you too, would not resent, deep down, having to take you to your oncologist uncle who has hospital wings named after him and thinks his shit doesn’t stink.

  “He’s young, in tip-top shape,” I said to your mother. “Why assume the worst?”

  She looked at me as if I was suggesting we sit and eat chutney as the house burns down around us. “You don’t mess around
with lumps, Raj. You know that.”

  She meant I, as a medical professional, should know that. Although I’m sure, though he has never said it, my brother does not consider optometrists part of the holy brethren of doctors.

  “Who knows how long it’s been there,” she pointed out. “He was probably embarrassed to bring it up.”

  A pea-sized lump on your upper leg, just below the right testicle—almost certainly fatty build-up. But this morning, your uncle, ever the conquering hero, sent it out for biopsy “just to be safe.”

  When was the last time we walked through a downtown street as father and son? Years perhaps, not since I moved the office to St. James, where the rent is cheaper and the parking free. You walk alongside me, practically a grown man, and show no sign of worry or concern over your fate. You notice the parking ticket before I do, slide it out from beneath the windshield wiper as if retrieving an anonymous love letter.

  “Bastards,” you say, in mock rage. You’ve taken to cursing in front of your old man to see how I’ll react, but I refuse to give you any satisfaction.

  My brother had kept us waiting for thirty-five minutes, claiming an early morning emergency at the hospital.

  “I told you to buy an extra half hour,” you say. “Uncle’s always overbooked.”

  I don’t point out that I’ve left my own practice for the entire morning because your mother insisted I accompany you.

  “If I could go, I would,” she said, “but you know I already promised Sonja.” I have no idea what she promised Sonja, but it takes so much energy to argue sometimes. I assume you would’ve preferred to meet with your uncle alone, but as you’ll learn, we have to pick our battles, son.

  My golf jacket from last night sits rumpled into a ball between our seats and you struggle a moment with your seat belt before shoving the jacket testily into the back. It’s not that long ago that I struggled with the belts of your car seat, yanking off my gloves with my teeth, swearing under my breath in the deep freeze, testily making sure you were as safe as humanly possible.