Furr

by Axel Howerton

  She pens me in with her big, pink belly. She leans in close, looking for something in my face. I’m hoping she’s not considering it for a snack. Her brow is furrowed, her face twisted into an old man’s prune-faced grimace. She’s breathing her sour milk stare straight into my ear. I freeze up, looking back at her from the furthest corners of my eyes.

  She reaches out a pudgy hand, still sticky with raisin syrup, and grabs my face, twisting my head toward her to examine my eyes. She looks like she wants to pluck them out.

  “You’ve got those eyes, don’t you? You one of them? From up the mountain? One of those freaks? Dirty gypsy freaks. Mother lovers and sister fornicators. And those filthy godless Indians, sending their whores up there for those beasts. Drugs, and devil-worship, and fucking in the woods.”

  The words are shocking coming from her pudgy little face. All the talk of Jesus and put-on hominess is gone. The look of disgust twists her face up even more until she has completely transformed into some kind of apple-face demon, shrivelled and terrible. She’s a dried-out mummy stinking of ancient dust and spoiled strawberry milkshake.

  I nudge her out of the way and step out, carefully, keeping her in front of me as I back toward the door.

  “Thanks?” I manage, fumbling the door open and falling out into the driving rain.

  She’s still staring at me through the foggy glass of the window. She’s just standing there, watching me, standing guard against whatever devils she thinks I might unleash on her miserable little pie shop. We’re standing there, like gunfighters in the street, separated by a log cabin wall and a deluge of rain.

  I RUN ACROSS to the opposite side of the street and duck under the overhang of the roof at the front doors, hoping for a few seconds out of the rain. I fish the scrap of paper out of my pocket. Devil’s tightly looping script.

  Bob

  Vargas Brothers Garage

  Pitamont, B.C.

  No address, no directions. Fucking Devil. All the answers in the world, except the one thing I need.

  I strain to see through the rain and get my bearings. I don’t see anything resembling a garage out here in the outskirts. When I look up towards the diner, she’s there, at the window, glowering at me. Jesus.

  I hustle down the street, despite the rain, hiking my collar, as much to escape her damning eyes as to stop the rain running down my neck.

  Still, I feel her eyes on me, and her rancid whipped cream whisper seems stuck to me. Athwart the gloom.

  15

  I WALK THE empty rain-soaked main street of Pitamont like a ghost, until I come to the bottom of the hill and stumble across an ancient yellow tow truck, out in front of what looks like a sixty-year-old gas station and garage. I hear a blaring radio playing Lynyrd Skynyrd and machines buzzing and huffing from an open garage bay, so that’s where I head first.

  There’s somebody buried in the hood of an old truck, coverall-clad legs dangling out over the grill.

  “Excuse me?” I say, trying to be polite after my previous encounter in the coffee shop.

  The song is picking up steam as is whatever kind of compressed-air-powered tool he’s blasting away with in there. I holler louder.

  “Excuse me? Are you Bob?”

  A head pops up into sight, looking around for the source of interruption, like a chipmunk checking its surroundings.

  “Bob?” I yell.

  The head turns toward me. He’s a native. Indian. First Nations. Ktunaxa? Fat Larry’s uncle would be, right?

  He has a hound dog face, with baggy eyes, a close-cropped moustache and goatee. His long hair is tied back tight against his head. His thick eyebrows, his hair, and his beard all run the same salt and pepper colours as his grey coveralls and the white t-shirt that shows underneath at the collar. The name tag at his chest says “Bob”. I’m praying that this is the place, that this is the guy.

  He switches off the machine, hops down from his workspace, and snatches up a tiny remote control under a rag on the workbench, turning down the volume on the big guitar-solo finale on “Freebird”.

  “Help you?” he says, in a gruff, but not unpleasant voice.

  I step up awkwardly and extend a hand.

  “Mister Livingston, I presume?” I’ve been holding that in my pocket since the Chinese restaurant.

  “What?” He looks at me, confused, and shuffles past me.

  “Sorry,” I mumble. “You must get that all the time.”

  He looks at me over his nose, lifting his head like he should be wearing glasses.

  “Not really. My name’s Dylan.”

  He catches me off-guard on that one. I stare like an idiot.

  “Bob? Dylan? Your name is Bob Dylan?”

  “That’s me,” he says, matter-of-factly, as if he’s never heard of that other Bob Dylan.

  He turns back to the workbench and wipes his hands on the rag before he holds one out to me.

  I shake it, still slightly confused.

  “You must be Larry’s friend.”

  “I uhm, yeah. We went to school together in Calgary.” Still stumbling to put myself back on track.

  He climbs back up into the engine of the big truck, talking from inside the chest of the thing, voice clattering around between metal panels and bouncing back at me off of the concrete floor.

  “So you a MacTyre, or a Fallon? Have to be both, I guess. Right?”

  He pops back up and looks closer at my face. I feel the ghost of sticky raisin-stained fingers on my cheeks.

  “Hmm. Got them MacTyre eyes though. Must be Barry’s boy, one that moved away . . .”

  “My name is Finn,” I finally manage. “Larry said you’d know where I needed to go?”

  There’s a momentary silence. No tools clanging, not even the sound of his breath. “You want to go up the mountain, to your people. Bensonhall. Right?”

  A sudden swell of emotion rises up out of my chest and bursts into a warm glow in my face. I feel high.

  “Yes! Yeah. Yes. Please.”

  Bob Dylan laughs from inside the truck. The whole room rings with echoes of joy.

  “Been waiting a long time.” His salt-and-pepper head pops up again. “Gonna have to wait just a little bit longer. It’ll take me another hour or two to finish up this manifold.” He pauses, contemplating something.

  “You should go see your cousin, Jules.”

  The look on my face amuses him. A lazy grin forms under his baggy eyes.

  “Place is called Victory. Right down the street. Should be going on stage right about now.”

  “Is he a musician or something?”

  His laughter booms out from inside and underneath the truck again. It feels hopeful and warm.

  “Something,” he says, and turns the volume back up on his stereo, singing along as I hike my jacket up to face the rain.

  “Take an umbrella,” he says from somewhere inside the truck.

  “Sorry?” I look around me for what he’s talking about.

  “Umbrella.”

  Still looking.

  “I uh, I don’t, where is it?”

  “Huh?” He finally reappears from underneath the beast this time, rolling out across the floor.

  “Umbrella?” I ask again.

  “Oh, I don’t have one. Thought you might. You should. It’s really coming down out there.” He slides back under the beast.

  “Yeah, thanks,” I mumble as I step out into the downpour.

  I hear him laughing and singing, even over the roar of the water pouring from the rooftops.

  VICTORY TURNS OUT to be a nightclub three blocks away. What anyone would be doing here at noon on a weekday is beyond me. I shake the rain off of my shoulders and my head, shove past a big metal door, and walk down a long dark hallway. I emerge into a red-lit barroom roadhouse, straight out of any biker movie you’ve ever seen. The place is quiet, except for a few straggling old men at the pool tables and the big bald bastard behind the bar. He is a mountain of a man, with a ripped up Dead Kennedys t-shirt un
der a well-worn leather vest that reeks of beer, sweat, and weed. He has a long, wide scar running over his bald head and down across the left side of his face.

  I order a beer and climb onto a stool, swinging around on my seat to get a better look at the place.

  Every wall, every table, every open space is made out of logs, but anathema to the false kitsch of the Jumpin’ Jesus coffee shop. This place seems hewn out of the forest itself, so comfortable that it has its own musk—a weird combination of beer and whiskey and wood shavings, man-sweat and oil and something animal. Something wild. There’s a stage across the back end of the place, two metal bars propped up at equal space in the middle of it, and a scattering of instruments leaned against the far wall.

  The big biker returns with my beer, eclipsed in his giant fist, and pops the cap against the counter, setting it down firm on the scarred oak of the bar.

  “I’m looking for Jules,” I say.

  He smirks, just on one side of his face, the opposite side of the scar, and he nods behind me as the lights dim and guitar fuzz, backed by a solid heartbeat of drums, comes from the big speakers either side of the stage. I recognize AC/DC from the guitar, but can’t place the song until Bon Scott starts his plaintive wail.

  She said she’d never been . . .

  Never been touched before . . .

  The girl that creeps out of the darkness is thin and blonde. Athletic. Familiar. That she is attractive goes without saying, but the way she moves is hypnotic, every muscle under her absolute control. Men begin floating toward the stage as if under a spell. By the time the chorus hits, there are a dozen of them, wandered in from the street, standing rapt at the edge of the stage, nodding in unison while she twists and spins, flinging herself around the pole, sliding and swirling around the stage like an acrobat, but so natural, so free, that it becomes less a dance and more a primal call.

  The taut muscles of her legs flex and stretch with the beat, as her arms move with the guitar rhythm. Moving faster, smoother, tight ass shaking. Her firm breasts and tight stomach all move in perfect sync with the music. She has a tattoo on her hip—a vintage style portrait of a woman in a headdress, but the headdress is a wolf hide. I can’t catch a good look at her face, enshrouded with a mane of thick honey-blonde hair, until she sweeps it aside with a flip of her head and looks directly at me, brilliant emerald eyes gleaming in the dark. I’m as entranced as the men at the stage, one more deer caught in her headlights, swaying like a zombie under her spell.

  The song comes to a screeching close, and she is neither out-of-breath nor showing a single bead of sweat. The men at her feet, on the other hand, mop their brows and stand breathless as she scoops up the mountain of ten dollar bills—no coins, no fives. We all watch in quiet awe as she moves off of the stage as mysteriously and suddenly as she appeared.

  The men slowly come to their senses, some of them seeming puzzled as to how they ended up in the strip club in the first place. I’m kind of wondering myself.

  A phone rings behind me, and the bartender grunts his compliance before hanging up. He checks me out under half-closed lids, measures me up.

  “You Finn?”

  I nod. It takes me a second to be sure. That is, at least, a part of my name.

  “Jules says go on back. Door to the right of the stage.”

  His eyes are already back on the glass he’s quite literally spit-shining with his filthy rag.

  I’m halfway across the floor on shaky knees at the thought of this woman when he shouts after me.

  “I wouldn’t be fucking around if you know what’s good for you. She’ll tear you to bits, man.”

  I think he’s smiling at me again, just not with the side of his face that he’s pointing to. As if my teenage cousin ripped half of his face off.

  I wave him off and step to the door, knocking quietly.

  16

  “HELLO?” I MURMUR, stepping into the dark.

  Strong hands grab me and spin me around the door and pin me against it, slamming it hard enough to shake the hinges. She’s pressed against me, naked and soft, the heat of her flesh going right through my clothes and into my own skin. Her mouth is on mine, hard, rough kisses. More passion than I’ve ever felt in my life, her pulling at my hair, nipping at my neck, forcing her tongue into my mouth. Her hand is in my pants, and I’m hard as rock, my cock trembling against her fingers, pulsing with life, ready to explode. I want to let her take me, in absolutely any way she wants.

  “Oh god, Finn,” she moans. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “Whoa!” I say, pulling back as far as the door will allow, putting my hands on her shoulders and forcing a space between us. Part of me screaming out in agony. However much I want to taste her, feel her, bury myself in her. I have questions. Questions I’ve waited my whole life to answer.

  “Hang on,” I manage, as she continues to force her way back into my mouth, hands pulling and tearing at my clothes. “Hang on!”

  She stops, steps back, her naked body barely framed by the edges of a silk kimono. Her eyes are ablaze, and her lips are hungry. I have never been with a woman like this. My experience is all drunken fumbling and shy girls in dark rooms, buried under comforters and duvets. This was like some kind of Penthouse letter. So I met my cousin for the first time . . . Cousin.

  “Wait,” I say, hands out. “You are Jules, right? My cousin?”

  “We share a grandfather, if that’s what you mean . . .”

  Her voice is deep and seductive, “Don’t you want me, Finn?”

  God, yes. Can I just say yes? Deal with . . . whatever, later?

  But there’s this monkey on my back, this wolf. Lurking there in my shadow.

  I take a ragged breath and keep my hands in front of me.

  Damn she smells good. Familiar. Welcoming. Wet.

  “I uh, well I mean. I just got here. We’re cousins? Isn’t that kind of . . .”

  “Maybe out there in the city.” She purrs. “Around here, with our family, it’s survival.”

  I side-step her and open up some space between us.

  “Don’t get me wrong, Jules. I really am happy to meet you,” I stammer, “and you are . . . very very attractive.”

  She’s circling me, ready to pounce.

  “Don’t you know how this works, Finn? We’re mated.”

  Mated? “I don’t know what that means.”

  She slides up closer, sniffs at me. Closer. Runs her nose up the length of me, breathing deep. She pauses. Steps back. She gives me a sideways look of concern.

  “You don’t smell right.”

  “What do you mean, I don’t smell right?”

  She sniffs at me again. Backs up again.

  “He said you’d be ready. That you’d know.”

  She’s circling me again, and it’s ceased to be sexy. There’s a panic in her voice, in her steps. She pulls the kimono around her and clings to it. She doesn’t smell right either. Bye-bye fantasy, hello fury. She smells dangerous. Hairs all over me prickle against the skin and stand at attention, ready to run.

  “Do you even know what you are? You’re not him, are you? You’re not him!”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t . . .” She keeps circling me. Watching. Curling herself up, more and more, coiled like a snake.

  “That lying sack of shit!”

  She turns on me, muscles tightening up, her fists balled at her chest.

  “Just get the fuck out!” she growls at me, green eyes gleaming with fury.

  “Can we . . .”

  “Get the fuck out!” she screams. Her teeth are huge and jagged like knives behind her red lips.

  She’s still screaming as I hightail it out the door. Something heavy crashes into the wall behind me, and it sounds as if she’s tearing the place apart. Better the room than me. The big bartender stops me on the way out.

  “You didn’t pay for the beer.”

  I know I’d left a ten on the bar when he brought it to me, but I just want a quick exit. I drop another o
ne in front of him with an awkward grin, “Keep the change.”

  “You’d better fuck off before she finds her way out here, pal.” He gives me the lopsided grin.

  I glance at the door, fighting a strong urge to go back and give her what she wanted. I feel her hot skin against me, her hands groping, and her mouth pressed against mine. The wall shudders again as something else smashes against it. I remember the fury in her eyes, the white teeth behind blood red lips.

  BOB DYLAN IS waiting for me at the garage.

  “Have a good time?”

  “Not really,” I grumble.

  “That’s weird. She was real excited to meet you.”

  “Yeah. She was. I don’t what the hell is going on around here, but the sooner I figure it out the better.”

  Bob chuckles and slaps me on the back. He leads me out to the parking lot and into the yellow tow truck. It looks and smells as old as the rest of the place. I immediately grab for the hand-crank to roll down the window. It doesn’t work. No matter how much I twist and rattle and shove it.

  “Sorry,” Bob says. “I know you guys like the fresh air. Been meaning to fix that.” He leans over me and twists it around with seemingly no effort at all, and the window comes creaking down.

  “Thank you.”

  “No problem, kid,” he says.

  I stick my head out into the rain-fresh air and close my eyes. When I open them, we’re already climbing through the trees, and the black clouds above have cracked, shards of sunlight breaking through. I feel in my pocket for the statue, trying to remember that I’m here to solve my own mystery. Finn’s mystery. Jimmy is dead and gone, and I need to leave him in the city, dead and buried.

  This is the new me. Finn the hero. Finn the Wolf-man. Clinical Lycanthrope. Láng rén. Hero.

  Dressed of fur and fierce of tooth.

  Whatever that means.

  17

  “SO YOU’RE A friend of Larry’s, eh?”

  I jump at the sound of his voice. It’s the first time he’s spoken in a half hour of bucking and creaking over the gravel road. This is less a road than a cut through the trees, at a steep enough incline that Bob’s tow truck grumbles and whines, without ever making more than maybe twenty kilometres an hour.