The front door opened and Ruth flounced onto the porch in a heavy, ankle-length skirt. She wore a woolly cardigan and her arms were folded against the cold. “Right on! You made it!”
“You weren’t kiddin’ about moving to the wilds,” my father said to her as he got out of the car.
She beamed. “It’s a hump, huh?”
Banging out the screen door, Gord bellowed, “Come in, you’re out!”
My father and I skittered up the wet steps, ditched our muddy shoes at the door.
A fire burned in the stove—an actual wood-burning stove—and the place smelled warm and savoury. I turned around and took it all in, feeling as if I were in an ad for country living though with a bit of a Haight-Ashbury feel: there were paisley curtains, dozens of candles, lighted oil lamps, God’s-eyes in the windows and, in the centre of the room, a multicoloured rag rug.
“Nice job, Ruth. You did this all yourself?”
She smiled. “My old man chipped in a little.”
“Chipped shmipped!” He squeezed her from behind. “Such a little bugger you are.” He glanced at me and then kissed Ruth’s cheek before blowing a raspberry into her neck.
I looked away.
“See those cupboards?” Gord said, releasing Ruth. “These babies are all mine!”
My father went to inspect Gord’s carpentry while Ruth walked me up the wood ladder to the loft that was their feathered nest of a bedroom.
No bathroom, no running water. They used an outhouse and well water.
Dinner was wild rabbit. Gord had shot it and Ruth had cleaned and cooked it.
“No hormones or dye or preservatives, just good food,” Gord reported from over his plate. He said there was no electricity out here to screw up your brains. He lectured us on the ill effects of power lines.
“Babe,” Ruth cut him off. “Mellow.”
“No. I won’t mellow.” His voice was sharp. “This is a dangerous world and when you know something you got to talk about it.”
“There goes Gordie, spreadin’ the gospel,” Dad teased. “How’re you living these days?”
“Look around! I’m living great!”
Ruth winked at me. The tight smile I gave her reminded me of my mother’s and so I mentioned again how good the rabbit tasted.
My father kept at him. “Gordie! What are you living on?”
“Don’t worry about us, brother. We got it covered. Ruth makes her jewellery; she takes in sewing once in a while—these are her curtains, you know. I do a little carpentry, that sort of thing. See this, this”—he waved his fork around—“is what the government does not want. They don’t want people living off the grid: killing and cooking their own food. They don’t like this one bit—no phone lines to tap, no cookies in the computer.”
“Cookies now, Gordie?” Coming from me, Gordie had a snide sound to it. The tines of my fork mewled against the plate.
“That’s right, Dotter.”
He hadn’t called me that in a while. Ruth glanced at my father.
“A little cookie attaches itself to your browser with every stop you make on the Web. Same goes for your television. Don’t kid yourself, that’s how they getcha. Here in the woods, the infrared is screwed. Can’t track you any more because of the warmth of the trees; the energy keeps the boys from being able to tell what’s tree, what’s deer, what’s man.”
My father stared.
I looked at my uncle. “What do they care what you’re doing?”
Gord looked at me with a kind of pained disgust, as though the shared dot between our toes surely must be fading.
Ruth glanced from me to Gord. “Speaking of cookies, guess what’s for dessert.” She added, “The way this is going I should’ve put a little weed into them.”
We didn’t hear from them again for another few months. Between starting a new job and moving into my first apartment, I didn’t have time to give Gord and Ruth much thought. My name was in the phone book for the first time.
Staring at my number on the grey-white page, I was in the midst of noting whose names sandwiched my own when the phone rang. It was Ruth. Calling from the gas station. She had tried calling me at my parents’ and they’d given her my number.
“I’m in the book now,” I told her.
The phone line rustled and crackled. It sounded as if she spat. “Sorry, the wind’s going nuts here. My hair keeps blowing into my mouth. Amy, listen man, I hate to lay this shit on you but you’re Gord’s niece and it seems like you guys have a connection and, you know, I got no one here. Except for Irene at The Store, but I hardly know her except for selling jewellery.”
Gord hadn’t had a real conversation with me since he had left Lydia, and Lydia never would have talked to me about their marital problems. Ruth had not really made any friendship overtures before now. I felt caught in the crosshairs of her effrontery and my own greedy curiosity.
“What’s going on?”
“He’s wiggin’ out. I thought he’d calm down out of the city, but he’s worse. He’s out hunting now and I’m supposed to be peddling my wares in town, whatever the hell that means. Anyone who wears jewellery’s already bought all they want and everyone else grows their own anyway …” She sighed.
“Grows their own what?”
“Weed.”
“Weed? What does Gord know about growing weed?”
“I used to grow it in Nelson. Nelson’s a real town though, man. Not like this. I can’t handle being cut off from people. There’s no socializing. I couldn’t get a job if I wanted and he’s nowhere with the carpentry thing either cuz he got rid of the car. He’s on this trip about how a car can be traced.”
“What have you been living on?”
“His severance package, I guess. I don’t usually even talk about money, but this whole year has been so trippy and fucked up. We paid seventy grand to buy the cabin. He totally demanded it be in my name, which is cool. But it’s weird too. I don’t think this is my scene.”
She paused. I pictured her long mane whipping in the wind, round the phone cord, and her neck.
“And he keeps catching these goddamn grasshoppers—it’s like he’s relieved every time he gets another one. Keeps saying, ‘And his meat was locusts and wild honey.’”
I told my father about Ruth’s call.
“He never got a severance package. I thought they were renting. Are you sure that’s what she said?”
“Why would he put new cupboards up in a place he doesn’t even own?” I asked.
“Christ. The bugger must have looted Gibraltar. Sonofabitch. When they find out, they’ll have his ass. Or they’ll go after Lydia and the house … How’d you leave it with her?”
“By the end, she was talking about inviting some chick named Irene over for dinner. She said they’d get through it, that he was just having an attack of middle-age crazies.”
“You buy a Corvette when you catch that disease, you don’t collect grasshoppers.” My father sighed. “When we were kids, right after my father took off, your grandmother sent Gord and me to Sunday school. I guess she wanted us to fly right. Or maybe she just wanted Sunday mornings to herself. Anyways, Gord was fascinated when we learned the story of John the Baptist. He liked how this guy lived in the wilderness and his meat was locusts and honey—sounded full of principle or something, ascetic. And he liked all that King Herod stuff too: John denounced Herod for ditching his wife and taking up with his brother’s wife. You know, our dad had run off with his buddy’s wife. Struck a chord.” He breathed into the phone. “I used to think he was in love with your mother when we were in college. He never wanted to go out with his own girl unless it was a double date with us, and then he’d spend the whole night talking to Peg. Here we go round the mulberry bush, I thought.”
In the end we did nothing. Nobody told Aunt Lydia—if Gibraltar Insurance still hadn’t caught the loss, maybe they never would. Dad decided to let his brother and Ruth sort themselves out. He asked me not to discuss it with Mom. I did not n
eed to be told.
A couple of weeks later, we got another phone call. I was at my parents’ doing laundry. It was Irene, Ruth’s friend from The Store, and she was in such a state that Mom couldn’t make out half her words.
Gord had shot Ruth.
Apparently, unable to take the mania any longer, Ruth had taken the fish tank filled with Gord’s grasshoppers from the closet. Tank on the table, she threatened to let them all go if things didn’t change. Without a word, Gord grabbed his hunting rifle and shot her in the leg. Irene was there. She saw it all, the fish tank hitting the floor, grasshoppers shooting around the room, lighting on the stove and landing on Ruth.
Irene held Ruth on the smooth wood floor of the kitchen, screaming at Gord to get an ambulance. Gord wouldn’t let anyone out the door. Irene begged, telling him that Ruth would bleed to death. It wasn’t that serious yet; they could get a doctor.
Instead Gord scrambled for his grasshoppers, zigzagging through the kitchen, slipping in Ruth’s blood. He told Irene he would cut both their heads off if she dared open the front door. There they lay, Ruth whispering, “Call your brother, Gord,” over and over, Irene begging, and all the while Gord tried to get the bugs into a paper bag, hollering for the door to stay closed.
Soon Ruth didn’t make a sound. Tears but no noise, just waiting. Eventually Gord’s frenzy ebbed. Shortly after Ruth stopped breathing, he told Irene to get out. So she ran, grasshoppers fleeing out the door behind her.
By the time police arrived, Gord was gone, the door was wide open and Ruth lay dead.
“Do you hate me, Amy?” The two of us in the diner. “I know how it seems, but I swear to God, I’m not crazy. Ruth was—I’d kill myself before I’d ever hurt you.”
“I know, Uncle Gord.” Felt strange to say Uncle. It had always been just plain Gord.
“You’re not afraid of me, are you?”
No. Not afraid. I couldn’t get a feeling sitting there with him, couldn’t get a vein. I listened as a new patron came into the café and remarked loudly about the downpour. I heard the wet soles of his shoes complain against the linoleum as he found a seat.
“I called the police,” Gord said, “when I went to the washroom. I couldn’t bear it if you were afraid of me. Just let me give you these things. Then you can take off before they get here. You’re the only one who’s really part of me.” His eyes were watery. He took out a narrow tin box and slid it across the table. It was the sort of tin that housed miniature whisky bottles. I pulled at the lid.
“No.” He stopped my fingers. “They’ll be here soon. It’s for you. You’ll understand.” Reaching under the table he wrenched a gym bag up onto the seat beside him and looked past me. “Oh, shit. No-no-no. I don’t want them here yet.”
I looked behind me and saw two squad cars out front. All lights, no sirens. Four cops started toward the door.
“I’m not ready,” Gord cried as the front door jangled open. Clutching the gym bag, he unzipped it and pulled out something long and brown and alive. A rumpled paper sack fell onto the table. Tiny bodies flitted up Gord’s arms, spitting from the rifle in his hands, from the gym bag, the paper bag, grasshoppers filling the room.
He stood and hollered toward the door. “Stay outside. I am not ready!”
Someone yelled, “Police!”
“Jesus Christ!” I looked for a way to disappear.
“Get out! Or I’ll do it,” Gord sobbed. He wrestled the barrel toward himself, trying to get hold of the trigger.
Screams careened, everything waving, dancing with kicking legs and flapping arms.
Gord’s name came out of me and then, “Stop it. Please stop it!” As I slid under the table I cracked my head against the edge, feeling the crunch of insects under my knees.
Drop your weapon! Place your hands behind your head!
I could see the barrel of his rifle now; he had let it fall forward away from himself.
Then an explosion, the smell of firecrackers.
He dropped, flat on his rump the way a toddler might. His face was big-eyed shocked before it crumpled and a long howl poured out.
Heavy leather shoes rushed his way.
From under the table I watched as he reached for his foot, blood oozing from the sole of his shoe, rifle abandoned beside him.
The cops slammed him down onto his back and Gord’s head smacked the floor before they turned him onto his belly. His howl was a wail now as they yanked his wrists behind his back, jammed cuffs into place.
I felt it running down my side, warm and sticky, and opened my eyes to Gord’s whisky tin, lid off, lodged between my shoulder and the red vinyl seat, honey lolling thick from my arm and onto a crippled grasshopper on the floor. A muscle twitched in my wet cheek as I gauged the length of the bug’s antennae, his legs pumping in the gold ooze. Shuddering, I picked him up, set him there on my shoe, about where my big and second toe would be, and rocked him with my heel.
Make Yourself Feel Better
I WANT TO STEAL SOMETHING SO BAD. I am standing in a music store, ogling new shrink-wrapped CDs and thinking of the rush I would feel waltzing past their anti-theft devices with my pockets full.
I just came from an annual checkup with my doctor, who believes I don’t drink, don’t smoke and jog three kilometres, three times a week. Really, I love gin, smoke Matinees and don’t own a pair of running shoes. The clean version of me makes my doctor happy though. And that is healthy for me. Normally, as I walk into her office, my pulse races and I get knots in my stomach—nothing good can come of the whole exercise. The lies I tell her calm my pulse.
This time though, I wanted a prescription for some Ativan or maybe some Zopiclone. Insomnia comes and goes for me and I prefer to nip it in the bud. True to form, if I tell the truth, she wants me to see a shrink. She thinks I have abandonment issues. My mother didn’t abandon me. She died. When I was a baby, for chrissake. Try arguing with a doctor though. They all think they’re gods. My father did not abandon me either, but she starts in with the ancient history: child services and how my dad was a pothead and a dealer and lacked judgment. That’s not entirely accurate. Whenever I leave my doctor’s office, I feel the need to do something terrible and immediate. I want to key expensive cars and break new china.
I pick a CD off the shelf and stare at Janis Joplin’s sad grinning face and then over at the security guard by the door. Chewing my inner cheek, I remember it’s two o’clock. I’ve got to be somewhere in fifteen minutes and I use up six of them, standing in line, paying for Janis.
Outside on Seymour Street, the sun has come out. A few feet down the sidewalk from me, a feral-looking street guy is pacing in small circles, shouting into the air and smacking one hand with the other as though he’s trying to make a point to an invisible listener. I can’t help but watch him as he looks up at the sky and hollers, “It’s just a whole lotta How come around here. Isn’t it? Isn’t it?” Then he lowers his chin and stares right at me. He’s stocky and dirty, and his hair is matted into dreads with a dried leaf or blade of grass stuck here and there. Above his beard, he’s got lonesome brown eyes that remind me of my dad’s. I smile a little. He doesn’t smile back and I feel guilty. As if I’ve been eavesdropping.
I check my watch and get going, walk at a good clip and consider how many words per minute I’ll claim to type when I get there. I rehearse lines like “Where I excel is problem solving” and “I am a team player at heart,” then decide this pace is only making me nervous. Better to be a little late than a lot nervous. I slow just enough to sponge up the smiles of vaguely desperate-looking stockbroker types; they’ve got their hunting faces on. They’ve either won or lost big but either way they’d like to get laid on their lunch break.
Two minutes left now to get there and up to the thirteenth floor, talk them into believing what a good receptionist/file-clerk/data-inputter I would make. I can’t believe they’ve got a thirteenth floor. What’s the big deal about thirteen anyway? Oh yes, Christ and His Last Supper. You’d think
the Lamb of God would be good luck; thirteen should be a rabbit’s foot. Then again, “touch wood” is good luck and that refers to touching the crucifix, the wood that killed the poor bastard. I’m stuck on this thought—dead Jesus things deemed arbitrarily bad or good luck—when a slamming pain in the centre of my back sends me flying forward onto the sidewalk. I land on one knee.
Shock is lodged in my throat; a half-scream has stuffed me speechless. People stop to stare and I am ready to cry. Imprinted by cement, I stand and turn to face the wild man from Seymour Street. His fist still raised, his face triumphant.
I flinch as a man in a suit grabs the wild man’s arm. Another, in jeans, gets him in a stranglehold from behind and they wrestle him to the ground.
The suit asks if I’m okay. “You don’t know him, do you?”
“I … no.” I look up at 1550 Pender, the building in which they will ascertain whether I am a worthy office temp.
The man on the ground struggles with the vagueness of a nature-show cheetah just shot with tranquilizer. The guy in jeans barks, “Call the police!” and he and the suit each pull a phone from their pocket.
My watch says 2:02. “I just … I have a job interview.” I cup a palm over my knee. There is only one spot of blood, but as I straighten a run zippers my thigh.
I leave the three of them dogpiled on the sidewalk and rush through the doors and onto the elevator. I punch thirteen, pushing a smile at the woman already inside. She looks away.
“Some crazy person just punched me,” I say.
She raises her eyebrows. “Never know who’ll run into you downtown.”
We stare up at the floor numbers lighting one after another.
Seconds later, I limp through the doors of Lowen Temporary Placement. “I have an appointment with Evelyn,” I say to the receptionist.
She tells me to take a seat.
I wait with both hands over my roughed knee. When my name is called, I stand and shake a smiling woman’s hand.
“I’m Evelyn, come on in.”
Greedy Little Eyes Page 2
