by J. J. Martin
My blood went hot. “You’re full of shit.”
He laughed. “You don’t get it, kid. It’s okay, I’m here to show you but good.”
Squirm reached into the bag and pulled out by the tail, with his bare hands, a dead animal covered in mud.
“Got a bear cub here,” he said. “Once the mama bear smells the cub on you, well, you know what she’ll do to you. Unless you get down on your knees and kiss my boots. And call me master.”
My brother sniffled and I could see his eyes filling up. Dead things made him nauseous.
“You guys are just brutal,” Jamie whispered.
“Squirm,” I said, in a calm tone. “You touching that thing with your bare hands is pretty stupid.”
He laughed and blinked at me. “Chicken?”
“Course not. It’s only a dead raccoon.”
“No, bonehead. It’s a bear cub.”
“Bears haven’t got tails.”
Squirm looked down at the tail in his hand.
“You know what roundworm is?” I asked.
“Shut up, you faggot!”
“Better go to the clinic for your shots. Probably you both have roundworm now. They’ll eat up your brain. You especially, Squirm. You’re not playing with a full deck.”
Squirm dropped the raccoon.
“Just being helpful, guys,” I said. “Never touch a dead raccoon.”
Their faces shifted with worry. “I barely touched it. It was mostly Squirm!”
I felt the first drops of rain hit my forehead and cheek.
“Aw, shit,” Rob said. “We’re gonna get soaked.”
“I want to go see the doctor. Like, right now,” said Squirm.
They turned and ran off, quick and demented.
“Simple as that,” I said to Jamie, who was wiping snot on his sleeve.
New raindrops dappled the mud on the raccoon. It looked pitiful. I wanted to apologize to this unfortunate, dignified animal dragged into our stupid middle-school drama.
My brother grabbed my elbow and I felt him shaking. We stood like that for a bit so they could get ahead of us and home, over by the rundown old houses near the original public school on the East side of Blackburn.
I used a thick branch to move the raccoon carcass off the trail, so it could rot in peace. Jamie’s face was pale.
“Hey. Listen to the rain falling on the leaves,” I said quietly to him, touching his back. “There’s nothing like that sound.”
“I really thought they’d kick the crap out of us.”
“Nah. They’re just giving us the gears. They’re goons. Retards. They figure they own the bush. Nobody owns the bush. The Queen, maybe.”
“Is that true what you said about roundworm?”
I looked at him. “I said what I said to keep us safe. It was the right thing at the time.”
My brother gazed sourly at the carcass.
“But never touch a dead animal with your bare hand,” I said. “I didn’t lie. Not really. A white lie, maybe.”
The clouds stopped hesitating and let us have it in sheets.
When we got home, drenched and dank, we heard Mum sigh from her bedroom. We kicked off our shoes, I sucked air through my teeth and we crept toward her, lying in the dim like a vampire.
“I assume you beggars want dinner,” she said, massaging her eyebrows. “You boys will be the death of me.”
The hall light cast a beam across her face. She looked ghastly, with the dry, pancake-batter bags under her eyes so dark they looked green. Half her head was in rollers, and the other half bed-mussed. She’d been trying to sleep off the migraine.
I tried blocking her exit at the hallway door. “Mum, don’t worry. We’ll eat Shreddies or open a can of soup.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she replied, reaching for the wall blindly.
“We’re sorry, Mum. We gave you a headache,” said Jamie.
She stood swaying in the half-light before leaving her room.
“I’ll offer my suffering to the souls in purgatory,” she said in a faraway voice. “Lordy, use my sacrifice for something.”
She went to the kitchen and burned two chicken breasts in the pan and singed her thumb. After she collapsed on her bed, we had Shreddies in front of the TV. Dad came home and we listened to him growl at her while he ate the burnt chicken.
My brother tried to pay me five dollars to close off our bet, but I told him to forget it and just put his faith in me, next time.
3
I hated going back to school; I wished summer would go on forever. I found the school year a tough slog and was not looking forward to the return, only a few short weeks away. Every day during the school year, Jamie and I walked to the local English Catholic school.
The schoolyard was always raucous with swearing. It was weird: we were punished for swearing in English, but there wasn’t a problem if we swore in French. Maybe speaking French was a sign that we were absorbing our education, so we could curse with abandon in the other language because it didn’t count. Teachers knew what we said was vile, but took no action. Of course, we did not learn those words in French class, but from joual, the sloppy, blasphemous street French of teenaged neighbours and drunk uncles. Ours was a Catholic school, so it was made all the more bizarre that the swears we used out loud were sacrilegious. Whereas English cursing is based on filth and sex, French insults the Catholic Church, God, and the dignities of our rite.
And for all the Christly decency and love the school advertised, to the kids and given the way we all treated each other it remained — mostly — l’enfer tout décâlicé. Ostie. Fucking hell. Goddamnit. Jamie certainly understood this.
Jamie was born one year after me. He has epilepsy. From time to time he suffered a “flash” (his word). A grand mal seizure. I had grown up witnessing them and found them no more than an unwelcome intrusion, but my parents were enormously embarrassed by these episodes. Afterward, he always needed a nap, and my parents harassed him for laziness because they believed he was malingering or being weak. They had difficulty accepting that the epilepsy wasn’t just a ploy to stay home from school. As he grew older, seizures were happening more often.
Finally, when Jamie began grade three, they took him to the doctor and he was formally diagnosed.
This was a really heavy blow to our parents. The label. After hearing the diagnosis, my mother went completely silent, waited until home, then dropped to her knees and hugged Jamie while bawling into his neck. She sobbed so loudly I was certain that there was more to it. My father stood nearby, fists clenched. They said no words. Over Mum’s shoulder, Jamie looked at me with wide, confused eyes. What in hell was happening? I shrugged at him. There was nothing to say. I didn’t see what had changed, except that now Jamie had medicine to take each day, and it would reduce the seizures. It all seemed like good news. To me, anyway.
The next day, for some reason, my mother marched into the principal’s office to tell him about my brother’s diagnosis and to say that teachers should not expect much from him.
Of course, by afternoon recess, the whole school knew. My little brother became a great subject of ridicule in the schoolyard.
I found Jamie being passed around like a toy by a group of laughing kids who were calling him “spaz” while they tried picking him up. I saw his face try to be game with the teasing.
“Come on, guys,” he said. No one acknowledged him. He had become an object. A doll.
He clammed up and lowered his eyes in defeat, in a way that made my heart hurt.
And that was it. Rage blasted out of me, like fire from a coal furnace.
I selected the biggest kid in the group — an arrogant boy named Sacha Tusk — and charged at him like a ram. I could not talk or shout if I wanted to, my throat was choked off. Before I knew it, I had landed a strong, hard punch into his right eye and he staggered backward, falling onto his ass, holding his face. All laughing stopped. I took a moment to wipe away my tears. Then I straddled Sacha, clobbering him wh
ile he cried and covered his head and the group of kids grew huge around us, chanting.
It was the first time I ever punched anyone.
When Mr. Plante arrived and broke up the mob, no one would admit what had happened, including me. When I got in trouble that night at home, neither I nor Jamie told our parents anything. We were put to bed without supper.
But I felt great.
After brushing my teeth, I stood at the door of Jamie’s room and smiled at him with great satisfaction. He looked up from his Fantastic Four and smiled back.
4
All I looked forward to, with the end of summer drawing near, was going back to Scouts. A new leader joined the troop over a year ago.
It was last spring, when we were given our special badges in celebration of seventy years of Scouting in Canada. Right after the flag-raising ceremony, a big, dark-haired man wearing a lumber jacket hovered near the exit, keeping one hand wrapped on the push bar.
Our Scout leader, whom we called “Blanter,” waved this guest to his side, then introduced him.
“I want you kids to treat this fellow with respect, you hear me?” said Blanter. “I don’t want any laughing or name calling. You’re here to learn from this, uh, this gentleman. So keep quiet. Right?”
Blanter stood with a raised finger while our guest stood silently and blankly at his side. “Right? Okay then. Let’s give a warm Scouts welcome to Mike Racine, a real, live Algonquin Indian who drove in from Maniwaki to visit us.”
Mike Racine kept his head bowed and said nothing. We clapped, politely.
After a pause, Mike opened his mouth to speak. “Anyways. Let’s go outside.” His voice was quiet, reedy and gentle.
Mike came to teach campfire hygiene, but he also led us on a springtime walk in the woods by the Legion hall. As we went along, he pointed out trees and birds, naming them in a low voice that drew us close to hear it better.
“Sometimes if I get lazy I’ll think of the cardinal as only a red blue jay, but they are very different. There is a deep lesson there, if you pay attention. Let’s listen, if we can hear. The cardinal has a beautiful, complex song. The blue jay screeches,” said Mike. “They have completely different batting styles, too.”
Amid the troop laughter, I’m sure I saw Blanter sulk.
We found a bare patch of earth and Mike showed us how to build a sandwich of logs to store a fire overnight.
“Watch,” he said. Mike took his hands out of his pockets and we saw that he had no tools, no equipment other than a folding knife. He built a few hip-high posts using sticks and cracked logs out of deadwood with his boot, loading them into the posts with moss sandwiched in between. “Got it?”
It made sense. It was logical. All his lessons, taught with barely three words, got into us fast. The words would be useless. He took out a Bic lighter and touched off a blaze at the cardinal points of the structure that he had built. It was beautiful and simple.
He showed us how to store fire and move fire, alternating smoke levels.
Blanter seemed so average by comparison.
While demonstrating how to clear embers, Mike described a forest fire he and his local band fought off using only controlled burns and shovels. Not a single house was lost, though it burned all around his town. We were slack-jawed.
Here was a big, silent country man who hunted and knew the land in a way we could only dream of. Unlike Blanter, who was okay overall, but always seemed keen to sell us on something he read in the Scout book, Mike didn’t have to get his knowledge from a book. He was a guy who saw things as they were and operated with confidence.
“This guy’s my hero,” I whispered to Jamie.
5
It was our final Scout meeting before the summer. Blanter had lost his voice but for a hoarse whisper, and he could not command the troop. Mike Racine stepped in as temporary Troop Leader.
He seemed to get along easily with all the Scout Leaders, bantering with them and telling them quiet jokes, and we loved Mike’s approach, leaving the Legion hall and going straight into the woods to talk about Scoutcraft until sundown.
“The earth is your mother,” said Mike. “You know what mothers are like. You love them. You help them. They are wise. And they love you and feed you.” His eyes twinkled conspiratorially. “But you misbehave, and they smack your ass, like real hard.”
While the Scouts laughed, the other troop leaders there growled at us, “Boys, boys.”
“You might think Nature is yours. It’s not. You belong to Nature. It’s not yours to use. The earth has let you be here.”
By the time his session with us ended and we marched back to the Legion hall, the entire troop had slowed, trying to copy his quiet manner.
On the walk, I plucked a long grass and chewed the stem.
“Sweetgrass, eh? Good for you,” he said.
“Yah?” I said.
“You angry?” he asked. “Stressed?”
“Why do you ask that?”
“When you’re angry, chew some. Or throw a bit on the fire and let the smoke touch you. It’s a medicine.”
At that he walked on ahead, but somehow left me feeling ten feet tall.
“Good tip,” I said. “Thanks, Mike.”
Cautiously, Jamie asked Mike why he was here visiting our troop.
“Doing my part,” Mike said. “You doing your part?”
Two Patrol Leaders approached Blanter to ask if Mike could return.
“Why not? The price is right,” whispered Blanter, holding his throat. “He looks like Jesse from Beachcombers, eh?”
I rolled my eyes and wished Mike was our Scout Leader.
6
When Scouts was over for the season, Jamie and I started spending more time in the bush. Still a week or so of school to go. The excitement for the summer was building for both of us. He rode ahead of me. Racing on his bicycle, leaning to the speed.
As soon as we entered the greenbelt’s leafy shade, we relaxed and took deep breaths of the cool, woody air.
“Everything makes sense in a forest,” I said to Jamie. “It’s simple, you know?”
We kept riding and soon came to our tree fort. It was immediately obvious that someone else had been there. Rob and Squirm, probably. It sickened me to think of them invading our tree fort. I was glad they hadn’t destroyed it, at least. They’d carved their names in the trunk along with a few others, but that was all. Somehow, it had become a little community centre and escaped destruction. Someone had left a soggy Playboy there, which we flipped through and laughed at and then got boners from all the pictures of the plump boobies and long, shining legs. Mostly we just lay on our backs and talked, manning an outpost away from the adults.
“Today, Miss Cross got sick,” Jamie said, as we lay on our backs in the treehouse. “They had no time to get a supply teacher. After recess, she was gone and Mrs. Byle was there instead.”
“The librarian?”
“She brought a projector and showed us two movies. The first was, like, don’t let strangers give you candy. This fat guy in an ugly green car gives this girl a peppermint and then grabs her. Why?”
“I don’t know. Kill her, I guess.”
“Yah, but what for?” My brother opened his arms toward the sky. “Maybe he just wanted to give her more candy.”
“Come off it. At Halloween those mental cases put razor blades in the apples or poison the toffee.”
“So, why would someone do that?”
“You really don’t get it,” I said. “You’re too young to see how the world works.”
I said this often to Jamie, taking advantage of my additional months of life.
“What do you mean?”
“Does anything adults do make sense to you?”
He was thoughtful for a few moments.
“Next, Mrs. Byle shows us this cartoon,” he said, ignoring the slight and continuing on. “An old guy keeps turning away people who come to his door looking for help. There’s, like, a beggar, and a leper, and
a kid. The old guy slams the door. Right? Then he’s sick, and he’s dying. Now the beggar, the leper, and the kid reappear to him, but now it turns out they’re Jesus, like, they magically transform into Jesus — and Jesus asks why he slammed the door on him three times. So this old guy cries and Jesus forgives him and he goes to heaven.”
Since we attended the Catholic school, we had to suffer through a lot of movies like this. We were always watching films that were supposed to teach us moral lessons, or warn us about something dark that surrounded us.
I waited for Jamie to say more, but nothing came. “So what?” I asked. “What are you getting at?”
“Which is it? Do you help strangers or do you run? Right? Why did she show us these movies?”
“Oh, who knows?” I took a breath. “Better just steer clear of the whole mess. Just say nothing. It’s not like there’s anything you can do about it,” I said. “Sometimes you can tell when adults are getting themselves … into trouble, sort of.”
I told Jamie about the only time we had sex education in school.
One day, my grade six teacher, Mrs. Cattleford, tried to teach a lesson she nervously called “health class.” It was about babies — before they’re born — how they grow inside a mother. It wasn’t about sex or having a baby. Just about how a little baby grows inside a mother. She never explained how it got there. She stammered and fumbled her way through it, showing us cartoons on an overhead projector.
Brian Birk, who was the class clown, kept interrupting. “How did the baby get there?”
She just stared at him and didn’t say anything. Then, finally, she said, “We’ll learn that later.”
“Yah, but just tell us. I don’t get it,” he said.
She sort of chuckled, without smiling. “When you’re older, Brian.”
He was so good at playing innocent and dumb.
“It involves something … biological,” she said.
“Oh. Like a disease?”
“Of course not, Brian. It requires … an exchange of … material.”
