Glory

by Gillian Wigmore

  A band of clouds rested on the horizon, so the sun hung hidden as it set. The clouds were rimmed with gold. I loved that sky so much it hurt. It felt like no one in this town ever looked up. I thought of the hundreds of blurred sunsets Glory and I had sung through at the beach hut. I walked by the bandstand in Cottonwood Park and sat down on the edge of the stage. The view when we played here was water, mountain, sky, water. Miles of it. Worlds of it.

  What if we never sang together again? What if the last time had already happened? When we sang, when we were inside the song, there was no Glory and no me. There was no audience, no waiting for Christmas or summer or some new thing to come down the pipe, just our fingers and our voices. Sometimes it felt like we were barking or wailing, and that’s just what we had to do—I had to pull at Glory’s voice, tear it down, replace it with mine, and then sometimes she would climb back up, and for a second our two voices would share the same wave, stretching and slipping back. Then the steel of the strings, a break, and then we came crashing down.

  When we were girls, we sang at family barbecues and birthday parties. We were cute, at the start—funny and awkward, with messy hair and corduroy hand-me-down pants from our brothers. I remember aunties pinching our cheeks. Glory was always the leader. She had a big voice, even then, and I’d do whatever she told me. Uncle Dave bought us guitars when we were ten. Glory got really good at hers, but mine didn’t make the sounds I wanted it to. Later, when I saw a bluegrass band at the summer festival, I knew I wanted a banjo, just didn’t know how to get it. Glory said we’d make money singing and I believed her, so we sang everywhere we could—at parties, grad, outside the liquor store—a cousin novelty act with no competition. We made some cash. I traded in my Yamaha for a second-hand banjo and I learned to pick. First time I got a clawhammer going, we screamed in joy.

  Glory’s always been a hog and a crowd-stealer, with that smile and that hair. I never stood a chance. But alone, she was half an act and she knew it. She needed me to fill out the sound, back her up, make her realer than real. She’d never admit it, but she owed me a lot. Maybe it was her who helped me come up with banjo money, but it’s me who helped her get gigs, it’s me who held her voice up when it wanted to fall. It’s me who held back her hair when she was gagging over the toilet.

  I never loved anyone as hard as I loved her. I’ve never hated someone so hard, neither. You can’t tell me there’s nothing in that. If I never did anything better than that, I’d still have done better than most. There was nothing else I wanted, just us. The songs. Glory’s voice raising mine as close as it was ever going to get to heaven. Mine raising hers higher than it ever would’ve got on its own.

  I felt so sick, so lonely and small and cheated. Then I got mad. Who did she think she was? She couldn’t leave me behind. I was the one who thought up the melodies, even if everyone liked the words better—she’d have nowhere to put the words if she didn’t have a melody.

  I sat on the edge of the bandstand and fumed. Who would I be, if I wasn’t half of her? Maybe no one. I stood up quick, making my head reel. Me and Glory were on the verge of something so big I couldn’t get my mind around its edges.

  This was worse than when her baby was born. When she kicked me out of the hospital, her all weak and sick on the bed with the baby wrapped up tight in a yellow blanket in the bassinet beside her. I’d walked down the street to Hardy’s house. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I’d seen Glory through a screaming hell and I wanted him to know it. I should have known better—I didn’t even know if the baby was his. When he hit me with the flat of his hand and knocked the wind out of me, it was that I was thinking of—maybe it wasn’t his kid. I didn’t go back to the hospital after that. I didn’t want Glory to see my split lip and the bruise around my eye. But I didn’t need to go. She sorted it out without me. I’d had this secret vision of Glory and me raising the girl out at Southside, making money I don’t know how, buying formula, singing songs. Glory gave the baby away to her dad and went on a legendary bender. Uncle Mac having the baby turned out alright, but there was part of me felt cheated out of that, too: a little baby that could have been half-mine and a future where Glory needed me to keep her and our little family afloat.

  I hitchhiked out to the coast after Juniper was born, after I found out Glory’d given her away. Through the windows of strangers’ cars, I saw the Skeena surge out toward the Pacific Ocean, seals pop up in the salty river water near Port Edward, then Rupert. It was only natural to keep going once I got there. I caught the ferry to the Charlottes and holed up in a hostel for a few nights until I found my feet.

  That was the longest we were ever apart, that summer after Juniper was born. Ten years ago, now. I met a logger in Queen Charlotte City who bought me coffee, then supper, then gave me a place to stay for a month. It was easy enough to leave. I never met his wife. I didn’t have to deal with the aftermath of a ghost lover on an island the size of a nickel.

  The wind was getting serious and I was drunk and sad with it, even as the heat from the drink wore off. I shivered. I started walking again. I took the scenic route around the bay to the foot of the mountain. I wasn’t thinking about it, but I knew where I was going: Mac and Juniper’s. I wanted to be in a home, a homemade home, so I could quit feeling like I was sick or broken. They would take me in, like they always did, and give me tea and cake. Juniper was a little baker. That made me smile. Her mother sure as hell wasn’t.

  The road climbed, once past the wooden church, over a hill, the marina down below. I walked fast to get warm. No cars passed. The lake was rippled with the first little stirrings of waves.

  What got me most about Juniper was her looks: she looked like a china teacup, that breakable and that beautiful. You could see through her skin to her veins. She cut her hair short this winter and she looked like Beaker from the Muppets, but also like a pixie. Mac loved her. He didn’t talk much, but he loved her and she knew it. He was a good grandpa-dad.

  I’d watched him fade and turn dumb when Glory’s mom died. All that spring, when he and Glory sat at her bedside and watched the cancer eat her, I saw what it did to them—June, who’d always been nut-brown from the sun, faded from spending so much time in bed, then Glory turned hard and mean, and Mac, old Mac who used to take us for walks and tell us legends about the soapalally and the bear brothers, lost his will to speak because nothing he could say would save her. She died and their family exploded.

  Anton and Tiny, who were already halfway gone, disappeared into the bush or the bar. Mac went back home to their place on Chance Bay and shut the gate, shut the blinds, holed up, determined never to come out. Glory just left. She didn’t say much when she got back and she didn’t have to tell me she didn’t want to be back. I could see it in her. The skin was tight across her face and she looked like she’d shrunk even though her belly was huge. She was funny about the pregnancy to begin with, but after June died, she didn’t even once touch her belly that I saw. Then, she did what the town will never forgive her for, and what broke my heart—instead of the fairy-tale songs-and-roses-falling-in-love-with-the-baby redemption everyone expected, Glory gave the baby away. To her dad, sure, but she still gave her away. Even the softest of the hard-assed won’t forgive her for that.

  What they don’t know is that Mac roused to raise that girl and built the both of them a decent life. That kid knows every bush and berry in these woods for miles around. Word around town is Mac quit talking completely, but I’ve heard a word or two come out of his mouth, all kind, except if the topic is Glory. Juniper’s perfect and it’s because she’s got Mac, and what no one cares to understand is she’s got Mac because of Glory. Simple as that.

  I went to their place whenever I was tired or when I needed proof that the world wasn’t so bad. I used to read to Juniper sometimes, but mostly I just slept on their couch. It was the one place in town I could be sure I wouldn’t run into Glory—it was another little hideaway. So, of course I headed there now.

  Thing is,
it’s three miles from town. I walked on the muddy shoulder, but it was slippery and I was drunk, so I walked in the road. There wasn’t any traffic. Until Bud Shinnerd showed up.

  He roared up beside me in his F-150, grinning and shouting over the noise. He killed the engine. “Hey there, Crystal. It’s been a long time since I seen you.”

  “Fuck you, Bud.”

  “Hey!”

  I started walking again. I heard him open his truck door and jump out.

  “Crystal! Wait up.”

  He knew enough not to touch me. He matched my stride and walked with me, not talking, and it was good that he didn’t talk, because sparks were flying off me, I was so hot. Bud Shinnerd! I glanced back and saw his truck door opened wide to the road.

  “You left your truck door open. It’s gonna get ripped off.”

  “Someone will shut it for me.” The ever-optimist.

  “First they’ll steal your stereo, then they’ll shut your door.”

  He shrugged. “Don’t matter. The keys are in the ignition. If they want it, they can have it.”

  I stopped. “Dammit, Bud, that’s just stupid. You go shut that door so nobody steals your shit.”

  He smiled. “Nothing good in there, anyway, except one CD and it’s pretty old. I was hoping maybe you’d give me a new one.”

  Now, that pissed me off. He didn’t know our music was a sore spot, but it smarted to get hit there all the same. “If all’s you got is shit, all’s you got is shit, don’t even pretend that old CD of ours is any good.”

  “I’m not pretending, Crystal.” He peeked at me from under his giant eyebrows. “I never was.”

  He stared at me till I wanted to slap the eyes out of his head.

  I ran away from him up the road toward the lookout. I knew he would follow.

  At the lookout, there’s a monument to the old Hudson’s Bay Fort, a model of a boat with sails, a plaque and a little fence around it. By the time Bud caught up with me, I’d knocked off the mast with a log I found and was winding up to take the nose off the boat, too.

  “Jesus, Crystal! Stop it.”

  “Why?” I swung and the nose of the boat went sailing off the point. “Why should I? This place never did me any favours.” I wound up again.

  “What’s wrong? Why’re you so mad?”

  I kicked a chunk of plaster, the log over my shoulder like a baseball bat. “I never once got a break. I never once had an easy time of it. Glory’s bloody leaving and I’m stuck here in this shithole to do what? What can I do?”

  “Glory’s leaving?”

  “I just said so, didn’t I?”

  “But what about your band?”

  I gave him a glare.

  “What did she say?”

  “Nothing.” I smashed my log down on the boat’s middle, and it stuck in the hollow innards. I tugged, but it wouldn’t come out. I screamed at it, embarrassed and furious that Bud was seeing me act like a lunatic.

  He came over and pulled the log out for me. I took it and swung again, sending the rest of the mast off the point. I wound up and smashed the boat’s hull, but the log stuck again and I fell over it, landing on my ass. Bud smothered a laugh. I jumped up and decked the fucker in the eye. He didn’t see that coming, but he did see the next one I lined up. He caught my fist and grabbed me around the waist and sat me in his lap. I struggled, I really meant to punch him again, but he had me tight. I melted in his lap and started to cry.

  “Crystal. Don’t cry. Shhhh,” he said to me. He held me and talked nonsense and I sobbed and listened to his voice and it felt so good. His breath against my ear, my tears wetting the front of his shirt. I could have been sixteen again.

  Us at sixteen had just as much fists and hysterics, all mine, and just as much shrugging and grinning, all his. We only went out for two seasons, one winter and spring, and I’d never been so happy and crazy at the same time. It was so messy—I was all over the shop.

  The only good memory I kept from that time was a day in February. We’d walked out from town onto the lake ice, just talking and walking. We followed Ski-Doo tracks out toward the horizon, then stopped, and I don’t know how long we stayed there, but the sky wheeled around us like the earth was still for once and no time passed. I stared at his face for what could’ve been hours. I told him every single thing I was going to do in my life and he listened. And after that I couldn’t help but break up with him, because I didn’t end up doing even one of those things. The planet turned and time passed and all we got was older. Every time I seen him in town since then he’s smiled at me like it’s okay with him, he understands. There’s almost nothing worse than him smiling at me. Except if he didn’t.

  I cried and cried and he sat us down under the Saskatoon bushes and held me. Night came for real and the bats started up zipping through the bushes. Bud watched them and I leaned on his chest and listened to him breathing.

  There are so many parts of me I’d get an eraser and rub out if I could. I’d wipe out how bad I’d been to Bud. I’d wipe out the parts where me and my brothers used to hide under the bed when Dad got rough with Mom; how I stole nail polish and lipstick with Glory; how I’ve been so jealous of her ever since we were four and I figured out we were two people, not one. I’d spent so much time wishing I was different than I was, and hating the world, cause I wasn’t, that I was exhausted. I could’ve slept on Bud’s chest, but I didn’t. I listened to his heartbeat and the lake against the shore and my eyes dried and we stayed tangled quietly together.

  I’d told Glory that morning she could fuck off and leave if she was going to, it wouldn’t hurt me none, but it hurt so much. Glory leaving was like someone ripping out the carpet after each step I took. And that other woman standing there, listening to all of it. Who was she that Glory’d invite her in, make plans with her instead of me?

  Bud’s chest was better than anyplace I could imagine, and now that I was there, I couldn’t bear to leave it. He stroked my hair and didn’t speak. It felt like, on the bluff above the old road with the lake in front of us and the mountain behind us, we’d built a little shelter out of nothing but our bodies. It was so simple. It was enough. I might have slept a little, sitting there. I might have slept forever if he hadn’t wakened me.

  “Crystal? You asleep?”

  “No. Course not.” I rubbed my eyes.

  “You still drunk?”

  I laughed.

  “You still mad?”

  I said nothing.

  “Where d’you wanna go now?”

  “Mac’s.”

  “You want me to take you there?”

  Only thing I could do was nod.

  We stood up and brushed off the leaves and dirt. Bud checked out the monument.

  “Jeez, Crystal, you did a number on that boat.”

  I turned my back on it and continued to brush myself down.

  “You know why it’s a boat, don’t you?” I knew he’d tell me. “The fur traders used to sail up the lake to Babine Portage once the water was open. When the schooner made it back to the fort, it was the first time the men had seen flour and tobacco since before freeze-up. They partied like crazy when the schooner came in. D’you know they used to eat the dogs if they got too hungry in winter? One time they wrote that in the factor’s journal at New Year’s: Ate the dogs.”

  I looked at him to see if he was making it up. “How do you know that stuff?”

  He blushed, picked up a chunk of boat, and threw it off the point. “I read in the archives sometimes.”

  I was surprised. I didn’t know he read.

  “It’s free,” he said. “They let anyone in there. And it’s really good. They’ll copy big sections out of the factor’s journals if you want them.” He came close to pick a leaf out of my hair. “I made friends with the caretaker last winter when I helped him cut up a tree that’d come down on the fence. He told me some stories. I got hooked.”

  His hand stayed in my hair. In high school, my hair was always long, longer even than
Glory’s but straighter, and I remembered Bud gathering it up off my neck once and holding it in a thick rope.

  He touched my face all over with his eyes and then he leaned in to kiss me. I stopped him just as his moustache tickled my lip.

  “Tell me more about the boat,” I said.

  He took my hand and I let him, and we walked back down to his truck.

  CHORUS

  Duane Fairman, the Cabaret

  That song cracked open like an egg, like a piece of wood splintered off a chunk and went wailing through the air. It smacked like a frozen snowball on a concrete wall, and you know what? It fuckin’ floored me, even though I’d heard her sing every Friday night since forever. But if you ask me, and no one asks, I’d say she’s close to done. She looks pissed off and closed up and she don’t cry after a good song anymore—she’s through breakin’ wide open so everyone can see in.

  She’s just tryin’ to get a buck or two whorin’ the songs, but I can see she wants outta here. Did anyone ever ask her what she wants? Not fuckin’ likely. She’s bound by the tonsils to the notes in her guitar—one strum and she’s busted up and wailing. This town owns her and she knows it. They tell her every goddamn chance they get, but who in hell else would carry them like she does? She’s their stairway up. Fuck. She’s like those fingers of God you get, way out on the lake, after weather, when the clouds slit open a bit and the sun shines through and spikes down to the water and you know even though it’s been shitty here on earth, up in the sky it’s all larks and breezes. Yeah, she’s the fuckin’ fingers of God.