Furr

by Axel Howerton

  His eyes are misty and far-off as he tells his story. I’m staring at the wolf cub. I don’t know what it means.

  “Me and your dad, we were the same. Friends. Ktunaxa and Strong Wolf. What he did, he was trying to do for you. I told him. No use in trying to change what you’re born with. Might as well wish you had flippers for feet just because you take a bath once a week.” Nothing Bob says seems to make any sense.

  “What he did? For me? What does that mean?”

  “A father always wants to change the world for his son, make it better. Make it easier. Not always the right thing to do, but love makes us weak, Finn. Love makes us do strange things. Like your mother, running away with you, hiding you away.”

  “Where is he, Bob?”

  “He made that statue for you, Finn. Out of guilt. Out of love. That guilt and love ate him alive for a long time. He made me promise.”

  “Promise what? Where the fuck is he?” I know the answer. I’m looking at him. “He didn’t send for me, did he?”

  Bob seems lost in his own reminiscence. There are tears in the corners of his eyes. His voice begins to crack.

  “Made no sense to bury him here. Makes no sense to bury anybody anywhere. Should feed them to the world, like any other animal. But I did it anyways, because of guilt. Because of love. Because I promised him.”

  There it is. The answer I already had. I just needed somebody else to say the words. I try to muster any recollection of my father outside of the absolute fear I’ve lived with for my entire life, the nightmare creature chasing me in my dreams. The boogeyman my mother let haunt every shadow. I try to call back the image of him, tall and blonde, smiling, pushing me on that tire swing in front of a house I barely recognized.

  “Why can’t I remember anything about him?” More to myself, to the ether, than to Bob.

  He answers anyways, wiping at his eyes. “Funny thing, brains. Delicate machinery. Easy to mess up. Hard to fix.”

  “Delicate machinery, that’s exactly what Devil called it.”

  “Guess he’d know.” Bob says, “He’s the one used the right tool for Larry. Sounds like a smart man, your Devil.” Bob winks and leaves me standing in front of my father. I feel like I should say something. Do something.

  “Day’s wasting, little Finn,” he calls from the truck. “Time to get you home.”

  He’s grinning at me again with his sad eyes when I climb up beside him.

  I look out across the green valley. The houses look worn, but well-kept. Wood cabins, three of them along the right treeline, on this side of a stream leading from the opposite mountain, and out to a small lake in the distance, in front of the biggest house, the one that looks like a hotel. There’s a little wooden bridge over the creek that leads to that house.

  “Who lives here?” I ask, pointing to the cabins as we pass them.

  “Used to be everybody lived together in the big house, whole family. Over the years, people wanted their own space. Some of ’em moved away completely. Your dad, he built your place up the mountain to get away from your grandfather. Hard man, your grandfather.

  “Now there’s hardly none of you left. Jules lives there,” he says, pointing to the first cabin. “The rest of hers live in that one, just Jamie and Kev left. Your Aunt Siobhan’s gone a few months now. Lot of people dying up here the last year.” There’s something suspicious in his voice. For once it doesn’t sound like a simple fact.

  “That one there was Sean and Oonagh’s, Emma’s house.” He says, pointing at the last little cabin, “None of the rest wanted anything to do with that place after . . .” he lets the thought trail off. “The hunter is in there now.”

  “The hunter?”

  “McQueen.”

  I catch a strong stink of animal as we pass. Strong and ripe, something I’ve had stuck in my nostrils before.

  “Another cousin?”

  Bob’s craggy face hardens into rock.

  “He ain’t nothing to nobody.”

  The truck rattles as we cross the tiny bridge over the stream, and the big house is laid out in front of us.

  It’s actually three houses. Three buildings, anyways. The centre building is wide and massive, two stories of warm looking pine, with big, inviting windows on both floors. The place looks sturdy, strong. To one side is a flat wide building, maybe a garage or a workshop. To the other side is another small cabin, a worn drive and several vehicles, all utility-type vehicles—SUVs and Jeeps—much newer and much nicer than Bob’s truck. The stream runs in front of the buildings, to a wide blue pool, with a small gazebo on its shore, made from the same soft, yellow pine as the rest. There’s another stream branched off from the far side of the little lake, and I notice white conduits hidden just in the trees, leading up into the small cabin, where there’s the definite hum of machinery.

  “What’s that?” I ask him, pointing to the shed.

  “Water pumps, sewage treatment, that kind of stuff. Barry designed all that.”

  Bob pulls into the drive and turns around to park, pointed out the way we came. I hop out into the grass, take a deep breath of mountain air. I’m about to ask Bob more about the machines and the piping, when a cheery voice, carrying the trace of an accent, comes from behind us.

  “Well! This is a lovely surprise. What brings you all the way up the mountain, Robert? And who is your friend?”

  Something about that voice vibrates through my bones and strikes that tiny lantern in the deep of me, stronger and brighter, lighting the cavern in my soul. Little Finn stands up in the dark, searching the space above him.

  The old man is sniffing at the air when I step out from behind the truck. He’s a natty gentleman, tweed coat, vest, even a goddamn bowtie. He’s leaning on a cane. He has a wild mop of snow white curls.

  “Bob?” The old man’s watery eyes, olive green and deep like the ocean, turn from Bob to me, and back again. He pats Bob on both shoulders with a hearty laugh and turns toward me, arms wide open.

  “Oh my goodness! Finn! Come here, my boy!” His eyes are wide and intense, and his smile is full of mischief and life.

  Part of me is surprised that there is no hesitation. I fall into this strange old man’s embrace and that little lantern light burns fierce and hot and bright, and every shadow inside me is torn away, as if I had walked directly into the centre of the sun.

  “Ahh! Finn, my boy!” He’s laughing, squeezing the life out of me. “Welcome home, lad!” And I believe him.

  I look at Bob through wet eyes and catch a rare glimpse of teeth under his wide smile. I can feel my heart, pounding and huge, lodged at the bottom of my throat.

  “Finn, this here is your Uncle Arthur.”

  19

  “OH, MY BOY! My boy!” The old man is laughing, spinning me around with much more strength than I would have expected in a man half his age.

  “Take it easy on him, Artie,” Bob says to the old man. “He doesn’t remember too much. And he only just found out about Barry.”

  “Well now,” he says, setting me down on my feet and fixing me with his wild stare, “let us not dwell on sad things. Today is a joyous day! At long last we have found you, and you are back home where you belong.”

  I want to ask about my father, about Bensonhall, about everything, but I’m so entranced by the positive energy of this old man. Uncle Arthur. Family. I’ve never had family—outside of my mother—and I’ve never even really known somebody with the kind of family that I saw on TV or in the movies. Some big group of people who loved you just for being a part of them, and they looked out for you, protected you, like you were one of their own limbs. Is that what this place was? Bensonhall? A family?

  Arthur puts a finger to the side of his nose and leans in with a wink, reading my mind somehow.

  “Plenty of time for questions, Finn. Plenty of time, indeed.”

  He slides his arm inside mine, leaning on his cane, and pulls me along beside him.

  “Now, shall we go and explore? You have a lot to catch up
on, and there are, doubtless, a great many things to rekindle that memory here, yes?”

  “Sure,” I say, though every atom of me is rattling around confused and unsure. I’m giddy. It’s Christmas morning, and my stocking is finally filled.

  I throw a glance to say as much to Bob, but he shakes his head and gives me a tired grin.

  “I gotta get back down the mountain. Work to do. I’ll come back in the morning.”

  He waves as he rattles back across the little wooden bridge and disappears into a cloud of dust just before the trees.

  “Now then,” Uncle Arthur says, pulling me toward the big house, “shall we?”

  THERE IS SO much inside this house that I remember. Certainly not the big screen television, or the gleaming chrome fixtures in the very modern kitchen, but the wood of the staircase, the plaster mouldings, the high ceilings like some Victorian mansion. The floors especially, the grain of wood, the vast open spaces of wood floor, real hardwood floor, polished to gleaming. I get down on my knees and put my face close to it. The smell of pine is everywhere. I look across the floor, eyes level, making it as big and wide and endless as possible. I remember this floor.

  “You used to bring your little toy cars here and skate them across the floors as if it was your very own racing track. Quite a rambunctious boy you were. A pair, really, you and my Emma.”

  I betray myself again at the sound of her name.

  “Ah, so we come to it!” He laughs, “Some things are much harder to forget than others.”

  A streak of late afternoon sun cuts through the big room, landing just in front of my face, almost touching me. I can feel the warmth of it just out of my reach.

  “Time enough, my boy. Time enough.” Arthur puts a hand under my arm to help me to my feet. Again, I wonder at the strength in this little old man.

  He leads me down hallways and up a wide staircase, past mounted heads of deer bucks and antelope, past paintings and photographs of people I should know, but don’t.

  There’s a painting of a tall, broad-shouldered man, sandy blonde hair with mutton chops grown thick around his jaw. He’s standing with an Indian . . . Native . . . a brave in buckskins with long braided black hair.

  “This is Connor MacTyre. The one who led our families here to Bensonhall.”

  “And Bob’s great-grandfather?”

  Arthur nods.

  “Bensonhall.” I ask, remembering Devil’s history lesson, “Is that a misappropriation? Binn Connall?”

  Arthur turns, beaming at me. “Yes! Yes indeed! Very good, Finn! Excellent!”

  He continues down the hall slowly, leaning on his cane again.

  “We came here more than a hundred and fifty years ago. Persecuted as we were—as were many, shall we say ethnic groups—in those days. Connor—your great-grandfather—was something of an explorer. He came north from San Francisco, up the coast and to Vancouver, what is now known as British Columbia, ironically enough. You see, originally. . .” he turned to face me, to be sure I understood, “. . . originally, my boy, we were the oldest of families from what is now called Ireland.”

  “I know that much. When we left here, my mother changed my name to Jimmy. Jimmy Finn. And she would sometimes get a trace of an accent when she was angry, or upset.”

  I catch the slightest of furrows in his brow, but I am distracted, looking around the halls, at the accumulated history of my family, my family, and I have the strangest need to have her beside me, holding my hand like she did when I was small.

  “Bless her for that. You can take the girl from the village, hmm? Not so easy to take the village out of the girl.”

  I run a hand through the fur of a bear standing angry guard next to a doorway. It’s real, and four times my size, and even in death, looks like it could tear me to ribbons of pink flesh for its dinner.

  “What are we?”

  I need that answer.

  More than anything else. I need that answer.

  Arthur pauses and fixes me with his rheumy eyes, that mad hatter smile creeping back across his lips.

  “We are family, Finn. The last of a great family that once held the green hills and great halls of the land of wolves. Laignech Faelad. Ireland. We were driven from our ancestral home by the Roman Catholics, chased across this New World by the further followers of Christ, and finally came to rest in this sanctuary in the mountains, mountains far higher, far greater, than any in our own past. This is Binn Connall, Mountain of the Strong Wolf, and we are the wolves, Finn. You are the last of us. All that remains of the thousands of years of our families. MacTyre and Fallon, and many others now lost to us. You are the last. Well, there are Jules and James and Kevin, yes. But you, Finn. You and Emma . . .”

  “I dream about her.”

  Arthur stops, a look equal parts surprise and pleasure making its way across his face.

  “Oh yes? Isn’t that interesting? Tell me about these dreams, my boy.”

  He hooks his arms in mine again, shuffling close, conspiring.

  An odd little man, but I feel a warmth for him that I didn’t think I was even capable of. A warmth that opens me up to him, and I tell him the whole thing, the dreams, the running in white, the blood, the teeth, my mother calling us away. And how it’s the same dream I’d had every night of my life, for as long as I could remember.

  “That was an unfortunate day,” is all he says.

  The warmth inside me doesn’t stem the fury at being denied a real answer for the millionth time in a lifetime.

  “What the fuck does that mean? An unfortunate day? What happened to me? I was taken away from this place, from my life. I’ve been poked, prodded, locked up like a fucking animal! I’ve had pills crammed down my goddamn throat for thirty years! This dream has haunted me every day of my life! You say that there are advantages to being in this family? I’m not part of this family! I grew up without a family. I don’t know you. I don’t know this place. I have some kind of monster inside of me! And all you can say is that it was an unfortunate day?”

  I’m backed against the wall, fists clenched, nails curling into my palms, digging deep enough that I can feel it. I want to draw blood and feel it dripping from my fingers.

  He sees my rage, and his face drops, flushed and sad.

  “I’m sorry, Finn. You have every reason to be angry, every right to know. I’m only sorry that your mother never . . .”

  That doubles the rage into the red zone. I feel my heart pounding in my head. I see the demons behind my eyes, the teeth, the blood. I hear the screams somewhere inside of me.

  “She’s the one that locked me up!” I trail off into a garbled approximation of actual words and rise to a scream. I can’t hold it back anymore. The scream fills me up, then bursts out of me, blasting out of every pore. My fists, like wrecking balls, thrown wild from my sides, one hand smashing through the railing at my hip, the other landing somewhere inside the wall. They return to my face, pounding into my forehead, trying to drive back the ghosts I’ve unleashed there. I drop to my knees, hammer my fists into the floor, again and again.

  Still, the screaming won’t stop.

  It becomes a howl, wild and untethered from reality. Pure, and primal, and more animal than man. I let it come. I can’t fight it anymore. If I’m some kind of monster, just let it come out and take me. No more games. No more riddles, no more fucking mystery. Come what may.

  Arthur falls to his knees in front of me, adds his voice, his pain, to mine. We’re howling, calling out to the woods around us. The pain, the misery, the terror of my life left behind.

  I hear other voices join in, from beneath us, from outside, far away. A terrible orchestra of pain and abandon. I hear it, and I feel it in my bones, reverberating there like a tuning fork, vibrating with life, and the pain is replaced with power. The misery becomes a song of victory. The ghosts become tame. Tethered in front of me, guiding me into the night, instead of swirling in mad chaos around me. The birds scream and call, cutting through the howls in a dark sympho
ny of wild fury.

  The other voices rise and cut through the ether, adding their strength to mine, holding me up, charging me full. They fill all of those empty spaces inside of me. They call with me. I’m not alone. For the first time. I am not alone.

  I am home.

  20

  ARTHUR RUSHES FORWARD and embraces me again, tears rolling down his cheeks.

  “Oh my boy! My boy!”

  I feel a new strength in my muscles, a new hardness in my bones.

  “I’ve not called like that in years!” He slaps my back and beckons me past him into a large, open parlour of some kind. The smell of it opens something in the back of my mind. The outside walls are lined with white linen curtains that run the length of the walls, the whole room is white. The drapes are open slightly, and I can see the windowed doors open to the afternoon air. The strong smell of pines and fresh water. I can hear the water running outside, babbling over the rocks in the stream bed. I can hear the birds and squirrels running through the branches. Everything echoes inside this room. Echoes in white.

  The far side of the room holds a wide white piano. What I think they call a Baby Grand. Arthur sits in front of it and begins to tinkle on the keys, a soft beautiful melody echoing off of the walls and circling me.

  “You have to understand, Finn. Emma has lost her family also. These are the things you have confused in your mind. Your grandfather was the first. His name was Fionn Bharr. You are, in fact, named for him. My brother. He was the first to rail against the change. Thinking he could master it as he mastered so many other things.” Arthur continues to tinkle away at the piano, the lovely tune spinning me with it, and I’m dancing, enveloped in white.

  “A veritable genius of a man, your grandfather. Fionn Bharr brought so much to all of us and to the town below. He and I were the first to leave this place, to adventure in the wider world, always with the promise to return to our home, always with the promise to manage our gifts when away from Bensonhall.