No Good Asking

by Fran Kimmel

  This room had the same kind of feel, like anything might be possible, enough bits and pieces to build a new world from scratch. She took one step, testing the floorboard, then another, then another, until she stood right in front of the wooden table under the window. It was smaller than the one at the store, but there were glass jars lined up of every size and shape, and inside beautiful little bits were sorted—baby pompoms, thread spools—as tempting as candy. She wished she could lift the lids, one by one, reach down, and pull out handfuls from each to spread across the table in a spiral.

  She felt dizzy then, like she might topple over and smash her face against the glass jars, so she backtracked soundlessly across the room and sat on the bed’s edge, holding her face in her hands, and taking low, deep breaths to stop her head from spinning.

  It was very late. Or very early. Maybe the sun was ready to pop its round head over the field, yawning its morning greeting—I’m here, but I won’t keep you warm.

  She stayed there, too tired to think, too tired to move. She had the strange feeling that it had taken her whole life to get here. Her head dropped and bobbed, her body swaying. She was an open gate, forgotten in the wind.

  Part Two

  Like Soldiers When They Come Home from War

  Saturday, December 21

  Six

  Eric spent a few sleepless hours in bed beside Ellie before leaving the house as quietly as he could manage. The thermometer outside their back door read minus twenty-seven Celsius, but that was only the half of it. An ugly wind blew in from the north, slicking up the roads, making it impossible to think straight. He was grateful the car started, despite its squealing objections. After the engine sputtered to life, he opened the trunk and reached for the girl’s stiff cat, frozen to the towel, and carried it like a football to the empty barn.

  He entered the detachment office at 5:16 a.m. Constable King sat hunched over his desk filling out some paperwork. When he saw Eric, he stood at attention before striding over to greet him.

  “Sergeant Nyland,” he said, extending his hand.

  “Just Nyland. Eric is fine. You’ve had a long night.” There were no other constables in sight. “You alone here?”

  “Constable Tanner is picking up Timbits.” King’s face reddened. “How’s the girl?” King asked.

  “Sleeping. Has Wilson lawyered up yet?”

  “Lawyered up?” King said. “He hasn’t even sat up,” pointing to the video monitor on his desk.

  Eric walked over to King’s desk and stared down at the monitor. Wilson was in the furthest cell down the skinny corridor. Eric had trouble making him out on the screen. A big ruddy guy with a straggly beard lay in another bed, his cell door wide open.

  “That’s just John,” King said.

  “John Welsh?” Eric recognized the man’s great sloping shoulders, his bewildered look even in sleep.

  “Yes, sir. They moved him to a group home in Caylee last summer, but he makes his way back often enough. When the group home reported him missing, we found him in the penalty box, over at the arena.”

  John grew up in Neesley and Eric knew him well. The whole town did. He and his single mother had lived in the matchbox house at the end of 16th Street for fifty-some years, spitting distance from the tracks, their family portraits of two glued to the wall so they wouldn’t jolt off their hooks when the daily trains rumbled past. John Welsh could recite the strangest particulars, like times and dates for garbage pickup and town council meetings, but he couldn’t count change for a hot dog and Pepsi.

  “I was sorry to hear his mother passed,” Eric said.

  King nodded. “We keep space for his things in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet—his toothbrush, Spiderman comics, a few of his favourite chocolate bars. We bring him hot chocolate before bed.” Eric thought about the John Welshes of the world. All those kids who started out different. Sammy was one of the lucky ones. He might have his oddities, but he would grow up capable. He would not end up in an unlocked cell, a Neesley obligation, evil breathing down his neck from the next bed over.

  King shrugged as if there was no getting around it. “John is happy as a clam to stay here. It’s kind of a lark for him. We’ll run him home after he gets his Timbits.”

  Eric needed to see Wilson more clearly. When he squinted at the monitor, King hesitated, as if calculating the risk, then reached to the controls and enlarged the image of Wilson’s cell.

  Wilson was sprawled on his back, arm dangling. Eric watched him wheeze through his nose and imagined a cloud of his booze stench wafting toward the ceiling. No belt or shoes on, and he’d scrunched his shirt under his head for a pillow. The blankets lay heaped on the floor, his undershirt crawling up his soft belly like he was posed for a seedy rag. Eric thought of the long row of pressed shirts in that upstairs room. He wanted to squeeze his hands through the bars and pull Wilson against him with a fistful of undershirt.

  But he turned and said to King instead, “Will you need anything more from me today?”

  “No, sir,” King said, looking as confused as he ought to be. Eric had not been called in; he had no reason to be here at five in the morning. “We’ve got your statement. Everything’s in order.”

  “Good then. You know where to find me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Eric got back in the car and drove slowly, unable to get Wilson out of his head, neither the boy he had been nor the man he’d become. He’d wished over the years that he could forget about that afternoon—chalk it up to a childhood prank and let that be the end of it. But on long car rides, anywhere, he could not help but see a hawk perched on a fence post or telephone pole or circling the sky, eyes fixed on him.

  The red-tailed hawk had had her babies. That’s what Nigel Wilson had said. Nigel wanted to show Eric the nest, so he could see for himself.

  Eric should have realized there was something not right in the invitation. They were fourteen years old and it was one of the first warm days in May. When they stepped off the school bus, Nigel tapped him on the back before they separated. That in itself was unusual. They avoided each other for the most part, Eric surrounded by his large, raucous group, Nigel on the edge of their world, the last boy to cross the finish line during track class, the only boy on the sidelines during tag-football games or eating his lunch alone in the cafeteria. He kept to himself, out of sight, out of mind.

  “She’s had two chicks,” Nigel told Eric. “They’re getting big and rowdy.”

  “I got chores,” Eric told him. His mother had gone to the city to visit his aunt in the hospital, which meant he was alone with his father, buffer-less; he needed to stay cautious. The chickens needed tending and he had a pile of manure to shovel. But Eric was obsessed with the majesty of the red-tailed hawk soaring in circles above the open fields, a top predator, swooping down and grabbing a rabbit in its talons. He’d said as much just the week before when the English teacher had forced him to stand in front of the class to read his essay out loud, haltingly.

  “It’s your only chance,” Nigel insisted. “They’re ready to fly. They’ll be gone in a day or two. It won’t take long.”

  How Nigel knew about the nestlings, Eric never asked. They walked along the hot gravel road, awkwardly silent, until they got to where Eric’s father’s land ended and the clearing began. Beyond it, the patch of trees, mostly spruce but towering poplars as well, their branches dwarfing the others, dappled the ground with dark shadows. The nest was huge, a mess of sticks wedged into a branch fork, so high in the poplar that Eric had to step back and crane his neck to get a good look. He could see the white heads and black eyes of the babies, the pair of them teetering on their stick bed, standing wobbly, falling into each other, pecking each other’s heads. It was spectacular.

  “They’re sure something,” Eric said. The parent hawks soared above them, a hoarse, thrilling scream, kee-eeeee-arr, the babies rising up,
spreading their wings.

  “We shouldn’t be this close to the nest,” Eric whispered, mesmerized by the fierceness of this family. The hawks circled down, their wings beating slow and heavy like great hearts. The mother—the bigger one—perched on the edge of the nest while the father took guard on a nearby branch. “We need to move back.”

  “Courage,” Nigel said, pulling a bottle out of his back pack. Nigel unscrewed the lid and tilted his head backward. He took his time, impressively unflinching, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand when he was done. “Your turn, I dare you,” Nigel said.

  Eric stood dumbstruck. First the nest, then the tequila. He had no choice. A dare was a dare, even if it was only from Nigel Wilson. He could ill afford to look weak to the dorky boy from across the road, so he took the bottle, the rank liquid burning all the way down.

  They backed away from the nesting tree and chose a spot sheltered by branches to protect themselves from being dive-bombed. They sat on green moss, leaning against the dark trunk of a dead aspen, passing the tequila bottle back and forth while they watched the hawks watch them. Looking up, Eric felt small under the hawks’ sustained scrutiny, like the earth had shifted and he’d become prey. The mother screamed into the air.

  “I gotta do the chickens,” Eric might have said out loud, though he knew it was too late to turn it around. Nigel laughed and passed him the bottle and Eric drank until his world became too slippery to hold on to. It was innocent enough, even then.

  But then Eric was left in the forest with only the hawks. He might have been unconscious because when his eyes opened at the sound of footsteps, the light had shifted, the sun low in the sky, the air crisp and wet. He was paralyzed, none of his body parts connected to each other. A spurt of nausea rose up in his throat and he leaned forward, his head cracking in two. At first there were two Walters standing before him, two twitchy sets of legs, two black scowls. But they melded into one as Eric got hauled to his feet, kicking and flailing. Nigel Wilson came into focus, standing a safe distance back, arms crossed, a smirk of satisfaction on his face.

  —

  There were no other cars on the road as Eric drove home from the detachment. It was bitter cold, pitch black. The more he thought about Nigel Wilson, the more he wanted to get back home and watch over his family. It was senseless of him to have gone there in the first place. He no longer had a uniform. He was no longer a man to be looked up to except by those in his house—Ellie, Dan, Sammy. And now Hannah, tucked under the covers in the room down the hall, reminding him of what mattered, of the man he had wanted to be.

  He pulled into the long driveway. The house was dark, dead quiet inside. He thought with relief that they might still be asleep and he could just slip in unnoticed, as if he’d never left.

  But he saw her in the shadows of the kitchen, his wife, small and alone. He wanted to go to her, but he took the time to hang up his coat, fold his gloves in his pocket, and leave his keys on the hallway table. He wanted to tell Ellie how Nigel Wilson had planned the betrayal. Nigel had waited until Myrtle left town. He had pressed the bottle to his lips, without ever taking a drink. He’d calculated precisely how long to let Eric wallow in his drunkenness before delivering him to his father’s fury. Eric wanted to tell Ellie how ashamed he felt that the red-tailed hawks had witnessed what came next.

  What is it between you and Nigel Wilson, she’d asked him once. They’d just moved back, not yet even unpacked. When Eric discovered that Wilson had returned too, he told his boys to stay away from him. You’re not to go there under any circumstances, do you understand?

  It would have been simple to describe the events of that afternoon to his practical, no-nonsense wife, then or now. What he couldn’t explain was how it had changed him. His father was the one who had beaten him senseless, yet it was Nigel he hadn’t seen coming. Nigel the one he feared more. How could she understand it, when he didn’t himself?

  —

  Ellie felt achy all over, like her body was fighting a low-grade flu. She clamped her fingers around the back of her neck’s flesh, squeezing so hard she left a trail of red marks. She had not slept. Not a minute.

  Eric skipped the couch and came to bed with her last night. He stayed on his side, back turned, motionless, his breathing shallow. They didn’t speak. Sometime before five, he lifted the covers and rose to his feet, then dressed in the dark without a word and walked out the door. Ellie heard the car’s engine sputter and squeal, the scraper peel back the new ice, the crunch of tires on snow. She assumed he had driven to the detachment. Where else could he go? She supposed he had statements to give, his decades of experience to share in times such as these. He’d be gone the bloody day, leaving her with the turmoil he’d left behind.

  But he was back before sunrise, unusually alert and helpful. He found her in the kitchen and told her to go sit; he’d put on a pot of coffee. When they heard Sammy stirring in his room, he raised his hand and said, no, let me, then led his son into the bathroom and closed the door. They stayed in there a long time. When they came out, Eric was freshly shaved, and Sammy, hair slicked back, looked not the least bit put out. Eric laid out Sammy’s breakfast, cereal and milk, got him his right spoon, and led him to the table without touching.

  Walter rumbled down the hallway, plunked himself at the kitchen table, and started to read the old newspaper that Eric had fished out of the recycling box for him. Eric made him two pieces of toast, slathered with butter and farmers’ market jam and cut into triangles, and carried them to the table on a good china plate.

  “Who you gonna vote for?” Walter shoved a triangle in his mouth. He had an unusually good appetite, especially in the morning. “Election day, don’t you know.” Walter slammed his hand against the table. “You got to mark a X. And don’t try and get out of it. It’s your civic duty.”

  “So it is,” he said. “Who do you suggest then?” Walter held an election six days out of seven, and Ellie found it odd, Eric’s patience this morning.

  “Christ.” Walter had a mouthful of toast, and soggy crumbs flew into the air. “None of the sorry bastards worth their salt.”

  Ellie watched all this, silent on a bar stool at the kitchen island. Eric poured them both a coffee and sat down beside her.

  “Morning.” It was simple, the way he said it, but it made her feel surer. He glanced toward the hallway. “That dog’s been there all night.”

  Ellie nodded. Ellie had stepped on some part of him, a leg or a tail, when she walked past in the dark. He’d snorted but stayed where he was.

  “I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck,” she said.

  He pushed her hair off her cheek with the tip of his baby finger. “You look fresh as a buttercup.”

  She couldn’t help but laugh. “A buttercup. Really? You don’t even know what one is.”

  “It’s buttery.”

  Walter scanned through the old headlines while he finished his toast. “Remembrance Day on Thursday,” he announced. “Service at the Legion. Ten o’clock. Free coffee. The old coots be expecting a salute, I suppose.”

  Eric had taken Walter to that Remembrance Day service weeks ago; he caused a ruckus during the minute of silence, precisely the minute he needed the bathroom on the far side of the room.

  Sammy finished, got up from the table, and marched past without a word. He sat cross-legged on the carpet in front of the fireplace and chose Lego pieces from the box. Ellie and Eric turned on their stools to watch their son. He had started building with Lego before he was potty trained, conceptualizing complex structures from small basic parts. They had often tried to help him, but Sammy preferred to play alone. This week’s project was a series of skyscrapers, New York in a frenzy, buildings racing skyward as fast as his small fingers could click each brick in place.

  “Should we warn him now?” Ellie asked, thinking about the girl.

  “Let’s wait,” Eric said. “Sammy
is quiet and happy. And we need to let her sleep.”

  She pictured Hannah as she’d left her, there in Myrtle’s room, her used smell and her tangled hair. Ellie had found the girl’s motionlessness unnerving. The males in her life were always flapping and fidgeting. Sammy especially, but Daniel squirmed and wriggled too, at the dinner table, in front of the TV, in the van. Walter incessantly scratched the parts he could reach, armpits and balls, his wrinkled, old ass. Eric was at his most restless at night, when his guard let down. Once his mind shut down, his legs twitched and jumped, rocking the whole bed.

  “But then what?” Ellie felt her stomach tighten. She should have checked on her in the night. She should check on her right now.