Cracked Pots
A Novel
Heather Tucker
Contents
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Forty-Five
Forty-Six
Forty-Seven
Forty-Eight
Forty-Nine
Fifty
Fifty-One
Fifty-Two
Fifty-Three
Fifty-Four
Fifty-Five
Fifty-Six
Fifty-Seven
Fifty-Eight
Fifty-Nine
Sixty
Sixty-One
Sixty-Two
Sixty-Three
Sixty-Four
Sixty-Five
Sixty-Six
Sixty-Seven
Sixty-Eight
Sixty-Nine
Seventy
Seventy-One
Seventy-Two
Seventy-Three
Seventy-Four
Seventy-Five
Seventy-Six
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
Dedication
For my sister, Susanne Rayner, the gold filling the cracks in this world.
One
The train slows. Mechanical wizardry, air and friction working together, is bringing this massive locomotive to a precise stop. Mikey tells me this. At eight years old, he loves the physics involved. Me? I just wonder how I’ll move my one hundred and twenty-six pounds of cells through the warped space and time ahead.
I know where I am without clearing the window; still, I wipe away the condensation. The familiar landmark comes into view. When I was eight, “JOHN 3:16” was painted in big letters on the barn’s roof. Now, at sixteen, just rusty holes and a faint “OH 6” remain. My Oh shit point on each journey back to Toronto. It’s here when I feel most stretched in two, pulled east, back to my aunts, to clay, to Jake—and forced west, to chaos, to waste, to—
Aaron.
Bloody hell, Jasper, don’t start stirring this up again.
Outside, a girl races the train, hair flying like a charm of finches. Her hand lifts and—pop-pop-poppity-pop!
Mikey’s head snaps from the pillow. “What’s that?”
“Just a kid throwing firecrackers.”
“Where are we?”
Eight hundred miles and four long months from Cape Breton. “Quebec.”
The passenger car is hot as soup. Mikey tucks up, stretching a worn undershirt over summer-scraped legs. He studies my swollen cheek. “Does it hurt?”
“Really bad.”
“I heard Missus Butters tell Huey that the rockslide was an omen.”
Neck hairs startle up with the draft from doors opening. “You know the Missus is the Cove’s tall tale spinner. She’s always telling shivery stories. It was just the heavy rains and growing roots that caused it.”
He scratches at a mosquito bite on his ankle. “Maybe so. Just seems off when water breaks rock. And, and . . . there was all that other stuff.”
William, the train’s steward, directs a roly-poly man our way. “Well, little miss, look what I’ve found.” I’m years, and inches, past being little, but through all my rides, I can’t recall a trip where William hasn’t taken care of me.
The man is a doctor, conscripted from somewhere on the train. He plunks down, eyeing my cheek with half spectacles. “Good gracious. What happened here?”
Mikey says, “A rock dinged her.”
“Now, who’d throw stones at such a pretty girl?” He opens his bag. “When’d this happen?”
“Friday.”
* * *
Eyes open. Eyes closed. I see it. Birds rocketing from the ridge seconds before the sonic crack. Then a boulder, big as a bus, ripping away, cartwheeling into the ocean. Water, red with dirt, pluming. Rocks, stones, pebbles cascading, trickling, then—dead quiet. In the settling dust, I looked up. The path to the acres we named Moondance, gone. By a root, a young cedar swung like an acrobat. Atop the ridge, Jake stood, peering down, looking as terrified as me.
Weeks before, same night as men walked on the moon, Jake and I went all the way. Sleeping with a boy was still cosmic with newness, and there I was, in the rubble, sensing in three days, two nights, one morning, I’d be launched away.
* * *
Now, on the train heading further into Jakeless space, Mikey quavers, like the words are haunted. “And you know what?”
“What, son?”
“Our dog snatched Ari’s shoe. Spinner ran circles before giving it back. Then, Ari met Huey walking a cranky foster. She took the baby so Huey could go off and take a pee and wouldn’t you know it, a bear was blocking the path back. If not for all the holdups, Ari would’ve been right where it happened.”
“So, instead, she caught a bit of shrapnel?”
“Yes.” I bury a scream as the doctor digs.
“Quite the whale tale.”
It is. The kind of yarn that will become a down-home legend, a ballad even. Mikey shrugs. “Maybe, but it’s not a lie.”
“Here’s the trouble.” A granite shard, smaller than the tip of an eyelash, is in his tweezers. Disinfecting stings, but the agony is gone—poof. He gives me a tiny tube. “Dab of this and it should settle right down.”
William leans over the plush seat. “Imagine that: a beagle, a babe, and a bear kept you from being squashed. There’s big magic in that.”
“You see good ahead, William?”
“Truth?”
I lengthen my spine. “Give it to me straight.”
“Dark roads to come.” Into a small leather pouch, William drops ten pennies, then tosses it to me. “But fret not, ’cause one by one, I’ll collect these and when the last coin drops, you’ll be home.”
“In the Cove, right?”
“On my whiskers, day’ll come when this walrus and your seahorse will dance along that shore, and you’ll know that it’s your own solid legs that carried you there.”
Mikey asks, “Me too, William?”
“Sure as sure. But I suspect you’ll travel back on a wing, laddie.” He tips his hat and moves along.
Across the aisle, a lady, sleek as an eel, tucks her skirt away from the disruption that always surrounds me.
Mikey asks, “Hey, how’d William know
Spinner’s a beagle?”
“Aunties M&N say he’s got second sight.”
“Because he’s walrus kin?”
“It’s as good an answer as any.”
“That doctor was a penguin.”
“Right. My cheek does feel cooler.”
“If I died, would my dragonfly die too?”
“Yeah, Kira would be gone, gone, gone. Inner animals are like those cleaner fish who live because other creatures need someone to eat their fungus.”
“They’re symbolic.”
“Symbiotic.”
“If I died, you could stay in Pleasant Cove.”
“Nah. The Dick would just go after my sisters to force me back.”
“You’re just saying that so I don’t feel like the worm that hooked you.”
Mikey is indeed the millstone dragging me back, but he’s guilt-weighted enough without me adding to it. “Think about it, bro. When you go fishing with Jake, does the bait have any say in what happens?” I pat down his sea-urchin hair. “The Dick’s not letting me off his hook before all Len’s money comes to me. Why’d you think he got hitched to my mum this summer?” Mikey’s dad, Richard Irwin, aka the Dick, is husband number three, giving me an Oreo of dads, two complete shits, with soft, sweet Len Zajac in the middle. If Len had known the trouble his money would cause me, he’d have burned every dollar. “Um, while we’re talking Dickshit, think we better keep this whole animal friend thing hush-hush.”
“So he can’t comet you to the loony bin?”
“Commit. Yeah. And maybe keep under wraps that the Missus taught you to knit.”
“Jacques Plante’s a knitter and a goalie.”
“The Dick thinks Plante’s a sissy for wearing a mask.”
“I hate hockey.”
What Mikey hates is the boozy fury when the home team loses. “Worry less, bro. We’ll come up with a lie that gets us out of crapdom on game nights.”
“How come those Commandments say we shouldn’t lie?”
“Because Moses never walked through our wilderness. Just imagine life in Toronto without Sabina helping us.”
“It’d be awful, but why even think it?”
“Lies got Len and his family out of Poland. Sabina was the best liar in the resistance, helped the good guys win the war. It’s just story-weaving and we’re going to spin one that gets us out of crapdom for good.”
“If Pops died, we could both live in Pleasant Cove.”
“We’ll get back. Jasper says so.”
“Has Jasper always been with you?”
“Since the moment Huey and Jake found me bundled on the shore.”
“Is he really real or pretend?”
“All I know is Jasper gets me started and stopped like the magic that gets this train where it’s supposed to be.”
“I never told anyone about my dragonfly, not ’til you.” Mikey blots a bead of blood from my cheek before dabbing on a pearl of ointment. “How come everyone doesn’t have a talking animal?”
“They do. Most just stop listening.”
Mikey offers me his pillow and starts a round of our favourite game, Death to Dick by Alphabet. He singsongs, “Arsenic applesauce. Bowling ball bomb. Cyanide cookies. Dynamite doughnuts. Electric eels. Fire-ant fog . . . Here’s a new one, ground-glass gingersnaps.”
“With our luck he’d just shit chandeliers and clog the toilet.” There’s pulsing under me as the train picks up speed, like Celtic drums. I relax into it, closing my eyes to eel lady’s disapproval of Mikey in raggedy hand-me-downs, plotting murder, and of me in quote-scribbled jeans, talking crazy.
“Hemlock hamburgers. Icepick injections. Killer kangaroos.”
* * *
The window’s frame creates snapshots as the train pulls into Union Station. Aaron West. Expected. Mr. Ellis. Unexpected. Officer O’Toole. Disturbing. Mikey looks from the platform to me. “Maybe Pops was in a shootout slaughter.” It’s the most hopeful he’s sounded since leaving Pleasant Cove.
I stuff down fear and pick up our gear: Mikey’s small duffle, my carryall, and the sixteen years of Appleton baggage that weights me everywhere.
Before my foot leaves the step, O’Toole snags my arm and my summer of peace and love dissolves.
Two
Without a hello, Aaron untethers Mikey’s hand from mine. In a funeral hush, he says, “Come with me, buddy.”
Inhale knots with exhale as I ready for news of an Appleton apocalypse.
Mr. Ellis, frantic, desperate, asks, “Ari, have you heard anything from Natasha Koshkin?”
“Natasha? From school? No. Why?”
“She’s missing.”
“No way.”
“You hear from her this summer?”
“Um, couple of letters.”
“Anything concerning in them?”
“No.”
“Shit. Shit.” Mr. Ellis is my teacher, mentor, and the most grounded person I know. Right now, he resembles a turtle flipped feet up. “Okay. I’m heading back to the Koshkin’s. Police want you at the station.”
O’Toole manhandles me to a cruiser. He opens the front door, seizing my braid as I make for the back. “Sit where you’re told.”
“Fuzz off.”
“Get uppity with me and I’ll have you over the hood.”
O’Toole is the Dick’s best bud. Never have I met anyone more enamoured with his penis, and I’ve known a few. “You want me to tell the Chief there’s a mole in his ranks and how I happen to know it’s on your pecker?”
He surrenders. Drives me to headquarters.
The Dick is manning the front desk. Sleeves rolled up. Phone held to his ear by his jowly cheek. With a finger flick he commands me over. “Listen up. This has the ears of the top brass. It’s my ticket to detective.” He sucks pastrami from his teeth. “Don’t you go messing this up for me.”
Welcome home, Hariet.
The station is jittery. I’m not surprised to see Ellis’s other half, my art teacher, Mina Burn, helping. She sidesteps desks to reach me. “Ari, can you believe this?”
“No. What happened?”
“Natasha’s family went to the Ex on Friday. She asked to take in the midway with friends. Promised her dad she’d meet them at the Shell Tower at four, but never showed.”
“Natasha never messes up.”
“No, she doesn’t. They’ve questioned everyone. No one had plans with her.”
“Why am I here?”
“We’ve been going over her diaries. You”—she hushes into my ear—“and Jasper are mentioned a lot. They’ll ask. Imagine up a plausible explanation.”
In Pleasant Cove, I’m Ari, clay-conjuring, fey girl, whispering to sea spirits. In Toronto, I’m crazy Hariet, talking to the voices in her head.
“Miss Appleton.” A man in a rumpled suit lifts a folder, waves me to a room, eyes narrowing at my inflamed cheek. “You been in a fight?”
“No, sir. Just a mishap.”
“Hmph. I’m Detective Halpern. Sit.” The walls are the concentrated-urine colour of the unflushed toilet on the train. Smudges and bits of tape remain where papers have been ripped away. “So, where’s it you’ve been?”
“Nova Scotia. I spend summers with my aunts, making pottery.”
“Rough work?”
My hands are a wreck: chapped skin and fresh nicks layer over scars, from years of war—with fosters, with Mum, with myself. “Wood carving. Chisels are tricky.”
He leans across the table. Palms flat. Eyes fixed. “Level with me here. She just running?”
I meet his gaze. “No way. Not Natasha.”
“Drugs?”
“Never.”
He lights a cigarette. “You tellin’ me there’s a kid coming out of the sixties without testing the waters?”
“Wasn’t he
r thing.”
“Is it yours?”
My head shake is more a wobble than definitive.
“Tell me about your friendship.”
“Walked together after school to collect our brothers. Shared books. We’d hang at my aunt’s boutique making stuff while our brothers played.”
“Stuff?”
“Tie-dye, purses, junk like that.”
“She date?”
“Don’t think she was allowed.”
“Crushes?”
“Ringo. Elvis. Micky Dolenz.”
“Who?”
“Drummer for the Monkees.”
He peruses a coffee-ringed file. “In her diary she mentions someone named Chase?”
“He’s my friend, from my old school. He and Nat were on the mayor’s youth council.”
“You know where we can reach him?”
“California. He got a scholarship to UCLA.”
“How about an Aaron West?”
“Natasha mentioned him?”
He reads from a red leather journal, tiny key suspended from a chain. “Aaron West is dreamier than Brando.”
“Natasha met him at a student art show. He came to see my painting.”
“And you know him how?”
I weigh the depth and width of the truth and give the top inch. “He was my teacher in grade eight. I had this, um, family thing and couldn’t keep my dog, so his parents took him for me. Mr. West is one of those Big Brother guys for my stepbrother, Mikey.”
“You’re Irwin’s kid, aren’t you?”
“My mum’s been with him a few years.”
“Mike’s his kid, no? What’s he needing a Big Brother for?”
Shadows, real and imagined, move on the flip side of the mirror. “He helps because Mikey’s mom’s messed up. Natasha only met Aaron the one time.”
“Sure about that? I’d say she had a major crush.”
“Pretty sure. Besides, he was in Kenya all summer.”
“And do you have a boyfriend?”
“Yes.”
“This Jasper?”
“Ah, no, Jake.”
“The fiddler?”
“Yes. How—?”
“Mentions him too.”
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