Darren Effect

by Libby Creelman

  Cooper and his father would meet Danny and his grandfather at an Irving station along the Trans-Canada Highway, then they would all get into Danny’s grandfather’s truck and drive an hour down a dirt road. Cooper would fall asleep during the drive, but wake in time to see them approaching a lake and the cabin belonging to Danny’s grandfather. They would get out of the truck and the grandfather would yell, Hey, boys, give us a hand with this gear! A smell that Cooper had forgotten all year would come off the lake. It was fishy and rank, but at the same time fresh and soft. It was a feeling on his face as much as a smell in his nose.

  The four of them would go out in the boat right away to fish before it got dark. Danny’s grandfather would make sure the engine had gas and they would motor out across the lake to a special spot they knew was good for trouting. Just before getting there, Danny would reach over to cut the engine and they would glide quietly across the water. They spoke in whispers.

  They fished, concentrating on the water and where their lines disappeared into it, and the boys would beg not to have to go in. But Danny’s grandfather would remind them there was all of tomorrow and that he needed something more substantial than air to swallow, and Cooper’s father would laugh and say, That’s right, it’s getting dark.

  Cooper liked Danny, and he envied him for having a grandfather with a fishing cabin. But Danny never stopped talking and moving until he fell asleep. The cabin had its own smell too, like dirt and garbage and rot, but after the first night Cooper didn’t mind. The boys had their supper and the two men would sit and have their drinks. Cooper’s father would talk about things Cooper did not understand and had never heard him talk about at home. Every once in a while he would catch Cooper watching him and give him a big grin, and Cooper would remember they had a whole day of trouting to look forward to.

  Meanwhile, Danny would be crawling all over his grandfather, who would just laugh and say, Mind the drink now son, mind the drink.

  Danny hated gutting the fish, so after the first year Cooper got into the habit of doing it. He knew he was good at it and he liked the responsibility of handling the sharp knife. One evening they came back in with dozens of trout, more than they’d ever caught. The other three went in the cabin but Cooper stayed outside to gut the fish. He wanted to get right at it. There were promises of help, but he didn’t mind. He knelt down and began removing the fish from the two baskets. He worked carefully and steadily — cutting off the head, slitting the belly, removing the guts — aware that he was getting faster and more efficient. Each time he reached for another fish he briefly examined it, thinking about who had caught it. He placed the cleaned fish in a row on the ground beside him.

  The door opened and his father and Danny’s grandfather came out with their bottles of beer and stood a few feet away, watching him work.

  “He’s a real crackerjack at that,” Danny’s grandfather said after a while.

  Cooper didn’t look up.

  “He’s my boy all right,” his father said.

  Cooper had a feeling then of bursting. He concentrated on preventing any kind of expression from showing on his face. He wanted his face to look like stone. He didn’t want anyone to know what he felt. He wasn’t really sure himself what he was feeling.

  He heard Danny’s grandfather take a long swallow of beer, then say, “My oh my, what a day,” before going back inside the cabin.

  His father bent down to gaze at the gutted fish. “We’ll have some feed tonight, won’t we?”

  Cooper nodded, but still could not look up.

  He felt his father’s hand tug playfully at his hair.

  Cooper pushed the gas can back under Mr. Foley’s work table. The moment he was outside he saw the truck pulling into the driveway, so he hid his canister behind a bush to retrieve later and went out to see what Mr. Foley had in his truck.

  Mr. Foley was just letting down the tailgate when Cooper came up.

  “What is that thing?” Cooper asked.

  “Christ. Where did you come from?”

  “It’s making a sound like a puppy,” Cooper said. “What is it? What are you going to do with it?”

  “Northern gannet. A type of seabird.”

  Its cries put Cooper off a little, but he couldn’t resist getting closer to it. Mr. Foley was shining a deadly powerful spotlight on it and Cooper could see how the tip of each chocolatecoloured feather bore an identical streak of white. It looked as though a big dark bird had been dusted with white powder so evenly it had been measured. It looked like a math exercise. And its eyes were perfect circles and as beautiful as marbles or sea glass. They looked like the eyes of someone gone crazy.

  “What are you going to do with it, Mr. Foley?”

  “Let it rest a few days, then let it go. It might just be bruised, or have sprained something.”

  “Can I have it?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Mr. Foley turned off the spotlight and the bird became colourless.

  “Will it find its family after you let it go?”

  “Unlikely.” Mr. Foley leaned towards the bird and placed his forearm right in front of the bird’s face. The bird immediately latched onto his wrist. “But you never know.”

  Cooper stepped back. “Careful.”

  “Not to worry,” Mr. Foley said. “If he grabs my arm he won’t get my eye, right?”

  Mr. Foley placed his other hand over the gannet’s face, covering its spectacular eyes. The gannet released his wrist and Mr. Foley scooped him up under his arm, his hand still shielding the bird’s eyes.

  “Are you looking forward to the barbeque this weekend?” Mr. Foley asked.

  Cooper shrugged.

  “Why not? It’ll be fun.”

  Cooper stood beside the truck, watching Mr. Foley carry the bird upside down into his house.

  Cooper had choked on a candy once. His father had come across the room and picked him up so quickly Cooper didn’t even know what was happening. Suddenly he was upside down and his father was shaking him. Cooper coughed the candy back into his mouth where its sweetness was so familiar, but his father was still shaking him. Finally Cooper spit it out on the carpet, and his father spun him around and hugged him. After a while his father said, Better not tell your mother.

  PART FOUR

  Chapter Fifteen

  How long has it been since she put words on paper? Weeks? Months? Mandy doesn’t remember. She’s been writing her stories in her head, in bed with her eyes open in the middle of the night, Bill wrapped around her and so snuggled in she thinks she might leap from her skin.

  Lying beside him in the dark she has been writing a story about anger. A surprising thing for it to be about because when Suse Hayes starts out looking for that lost cow she isn’t angry. She is a big girl, already her full height and bearing hefty, beautiful breasts with black areolae, though she doesn’t know this is the name for them. Suse’s legs are strong and the hair on them is thick and soft. She would have married a man who picked on her because she was so rugged and unassailable. She would fill a bucket with partridgeberries in fifteen minutes, talking to her companions all the while. She talked non-stop and often repeated herself. Some would have avoided her. Others would have said she was the finest kind. There was something of the little girl that stayed with the grown woman. You thought that when she smiled. Alone, she slipped her hand through the buttons of her dress and lifted one of her breasts, always astonished by its weight.

  *

  The leaves are out, some flowers, but what a miserable spring. And now, a barbeque. Bill could take it or leave it. But they had made up their minds, they’d promised Heather they would go. In fact, Mandy had been quite insistent about it, and now she’s doing this dragging-her-ass routine, stopping at Shop- pers to grab a few things, moving as slowly as she can across the parking lot like she’s Miss Depressed Newfoundland and Labrador.

  Yes, they’d promised Heather, who had emerged after months of recovering from frostbite about to have — surpr
ise — a baby, though no one will tell Bill who the father is.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Bill asks. “Writer’s block?”

  Mandy stops in front of the doors. He figures she thinks they’re automatic and is waiting for them to open, but then she gathers up all of today’s strange anger and says, “Guess again.”

  He follows her inside and then as she tromps up and down the aisles in her boots, collecting the telltale evidence: can of Coke, bag of Doritos, box of tampons, bottle of Advil. He realizes she is giving off that aura: her lank hair, pale forehead, that complex, irrestible body odour. He stands behind her in the lineup, inching his way closer, pretending he’s never met her, doesn’t know squat. She spins around and scowls up at him.

  He steps back into someone.

  “Hey, how’s it going, old man?” It’s Rex Chafe, cradling a bottle of green Scope.

  “Great. Just off for a barbeque.”

  “First barbeque of the season, is it?”

  “First one.” Has he seen all Mandy’s purchases, the nosy bastard?

  “Sure, they’re calling for snow.”

  Bill shrugs.

  “What’s a barbeque without snow?”

  “Right on.”

  Back in the car she starts in again about Suse Hayes.

  “All I want you to do is admit to the possibility of foul play. Just admit to the possibility.”

  “I can’t. I don’t believe it happened. I believe she got lost in the woods. That’s all I believe. That’s one hundred percent all I believe.”

  “And she just died? People don’t just die.”

  “Yes. They do.”

  “But there has to be a reason.”

  He doesn’t have an answer to that. He knows he’s being pigheaded, but doesn’t care.

  “You can’t admit to even the tiniest possibility?”

  “No.”

  “Well, fuck you.”

  “Are we picking up Heather?”

  “Stop worrying about Heather all the time. She’s got a car, mister fucking helpful. Oh, perfect, it’s raining.”

  “I’m not worrying about her. I thought you were worrying about her.”

  “Not me.”

  “Then let’s not go to this thing.”

  “Shut up, Bill. We’re going, okay?”

  “Are you sure Heather is coming?”

  Silence.

  “A get-together with the granola crowd is not my idea of a good time.”

  “It’s not the granola crowd, it’s the nature crowd. You’re so out of it. Where are you going?”

  “Making sure Heather is coming.”

  Bill pulls into Heather’s driveway and parks behind her Echo. They sit and look at the house. Though it’s late afternoon, all the blinds are closed. It had been sunny earlier and the sky is still partly blue. A solid grey cloud is closing over it like a lid over an eye. Bill, who grew up in a suburb similar to this one, hates the hollow look of them this time of year. The yards, trees, houses, cars — all seem stripped down to their skeletal essentials. Everything is rigid and inflexible, like metal, and the wind, which has been gaining force, can only tease free some paper scraps and old leaves.

  Mandy gets out of the car and walks up to the house. Bill watches her press the doorbell, knock, then try the doorknob. She turns her back to the wind and the few spits of rain. She looks young.

  She returns to the car. “It’s locked. She must already be there.”

  “But her car is here.”

  “So?”

  Bill gets out and hurries up to the door. He’s prepared to pound on it, but when he tries the doorknob, it opens. He steps in. It’s not until he’s inside that he realizes how fierce the wind was outside. The foyer is dark and still. There is a pleasant smell, like tomato sauce.

  “Heather?”

  “Hello?”

  He doesn’t know the house well, but it’s small and he finds her in her bedroom, sitting in a large armchair. Her face and neck are drawn and thin. She seems to have lost weight, except for that protrusion. The place is not as tidy as he would have expected.

  “Hey, Heather. What’s up?” He’s surprised he doesn’t feel more awkward.

  “What do you mean?”

  “All set for the barbeque?”

  “Well, I was just sitting here thinking about that. I don’t know if I can go, after all, Bill. Where’s Mandy?”

  “Car.”

  Heather nods. For a moment it looks like she can’t speak. “Is she mad at me?’

  “Mad at everyone.”

  “You know, I can barely move with this stomach. And I hate barbeques.”

  Heather is slowly running her hands over her stomach, as though she is caressing herself, but it’s not really her, Bill thinks, it’s somebody else — the baby. “Barbeques? The great social leveller? Come on.”

  She laughs.

  “Are you cooking something?”

  “It’s potluck, right?”

  “What?”

  “The barbeque. You’re supposed to bring something. I made a casserole.”

  Bill realizes he and Mandy will fail to make a contribution. “Well, then. Better get it. We’re not leaving without you.”

  Heather pushes herself to the edge of the chair. “I guess Mandy is insisting you go?”

  “Come on. We’re all going.”

  “I promise to meet you there. Bill, I promise.”

  “Should I believe you?”

  “Yes.”

  Mandy walks Suse across a cobble beach where a man is hunched down repairing his boat in the fog. Seeing the girl pass, and how late in the day it is, the man thinks, That’ll be some job, to go looking for her in this fog. Mandy glares suspiciously at the man, but Suse continues on. There is one cow that always wanders away from the others. It can take half a day, sometimes, to find her and bring her home. But Suse likes cow hunting. She likes work in general. She sings as she walks, stepping briskly. Some say they can hear her singing as far as Admiral’s Cove. The air is cold and wet, and all day the fog hangs over a landscape that is open and mixed — not the dense fir forest that will have grown back when two sisters become lost.

  Twenty-three years after Suse disappears, a father and his son are out in the woods cutting firewood. Mandy recognizes the place. When the father announces it’s time for a break, the son sprints down to the river to fill the kettle. On his way he finds her. In the months to come he will hear it going around that she was in a sitting position, but to the boy, who sees her first, she looks like a pile of animal bones. He comes back up the slope with the water, not mentioning to his father until they are boiling the kettle that he’s found one of their missing sheep. But when the father goes down to have a look for himself, a part of him goes cold. The hair is still on her head. They put her bones in a wooden box and bring her home.

  Bill finds the cul-de-sac — Goodridge Place — just as the rain turns to hail. He shuts off the car and he and Mandy listen to the sound on the roof and windshield: like someone flinging handfuls of gravel at them. They run to the house, then wait several minutes at the front door before a boy lets them in, saying only, “They’re out back.”

  They make their way through to the kitchen where a woman is standing at the window, looking out onto the deck where a second woman and a man are stooped over a barbeque. Bill can see the hail bouncing on the deck floorboards.

  The woman inside turns and says, “She’s not having much luck getting the thing started. And it’s brand new. My brother Darren is helping her.”

  Bill doesn’t have a reply for this woman. He is surprised that after only a few seconds in her company, he doesn’t like her.

  “I’m Jeanette Foley,” she says.“Another disappointing day, isn’t it?”

  “This weather’s cracked,” says the boy, behind them. When they turn, he is crawling into the kitchen on his hands and knees.

  “Cooper, get up off that floor,” Jeanette scolds. “Your poor mother is trying to have a part
y.”

  Bill flinches. He’d like to leave and wishes he hadn’t gone out of his way to convince Heather to come. Mandy is grinning at the boy, her hands on her hips, and Bill has the crazy notion she’s about to get down on the floor and roll around with him, like a pair of puppies.

  The boy stands and shuffles out of the room and down the hall.

  “Honestly,” Jeanette says, shaking her head.

  It develops into one of those parties where most of the women are unfriendly, the men are asleep-standing, and no one really drinks enough. There is an odd assortment of people and the kitchen is cold. Bill hears the hostess, Isabella, announce it’s nearly June, she will not turn on the furnace. He is standing with Mandy, who is talking about being stuck in an elevator, and Jeanette, who is talking about the cost of a new screen door, when he notices the snow. He says nothing, as though he is responsible for it, but after several minutes everyone has seen it coming down and there is a communal moan.

  “Perhaps there won’t be a summer this year,” Isabella remarks. She and Bill are the only ones drinking.

  “That’s cracked,” the boy says.

  “Yes, my darling, it is.”

  “A year with no summer,” Jeanette says. “God help us.”

  “You know, it’s happened before,” Bill says. “A year with no summer.”

  “When was this, Bill?” Mandy asks, stepping directly in front of him.

  “1820s. Maybe.”

  Strangely, both women laugh at him.

  “Go on with your story,” Mandy says.

  Bill’s lost interest. It’s a long story. To get the full impact of it, it’s a long story. “Heather’s arrived,” he points out.

  “Finally. So go on with the story, Bill, for fuck’s sake.”

  He sees Jeanette register shock. “It was cold. Snow stayed on the ground all summer. I mean, in Canada. Fish died. Plants turned black. Very crappy, miserable weather.”

  “Imagine.”

  “Could it happen again?” Jeanette asks.

  “No, it’s not going to happen again,” her brother, the Darren fellow, says. “I wish everyone would just relax. There will be a break in the weather by the weekend.”