Black Feathers (10 page)

“I know,” she said wearily. “Work.”

“Yeah.”

She tilted her head to the left, toward the stairs. “I’m going to read for a little bit.”

“I’ll be quiet when I come to bed,” he said, knowing from years of experience that once she was asleep only the sound of
a bomb going off, or one of the kids crying, would wake her.

After that, it was just a matter of waiting. He went down to his office in the basement, spread some papers across his desk, then powered up his computer. The locked file of photos didn’t satisfy the hunger, but he had known they wouldn’t. It was more a matter of whetting his appetite.

An hour later, he went upstairs. Both the kids were asleep, and Alice had drifted off in her book, the way she did most nights. He marked her place with her bookmark and set the novel on the night table before turning off the light.

In the kitchen, he loaded the dishwasher, but he didn’t start it. Instead, he took a knife out of the utensil drawer and set it carefully on the counter, lining it up parallel to the stainless steel edge of the sink.

He took some grocery bags from the basket under the sink and set them next to the knife.

He opened the fridge and took a slow look at the shelves, finally picking up the small container of cream and shaking it. Less than half-full—that would do.

He poured the remaining cream down the drain and ran the cold water over it for several seconds, tossing the container under the sink.

He had his line all worked out: “I went to have a cup of tea, but there was no cream left, so I popped out to the store …”

No cream left? Was “but the cream had gone off” better? It didn’t matter: he could go either way.

And it wasn’t like Alice was going to wake up and wonder where he had driven off to.

Still,
he thought, picking up the knife and the plastic bags and heading out to the garage,
it was always good to be prepared.

Like a Boy Scout.

Cassie wasn’t watching the boys, but she was always aware of where they were.

As she and Skylark ate, she knew that the dreadlocked kid and his two friends were sitting at the far side of the breezeway in a tightly closed knot of crossed legs and raised voices. As people drifted around after dinner, she tracked their movement through the space, out to the square and back.

When the circle formed, they sat down almost directly across from her, laughing and guffawing. She glanced at them as she and Skylark sat down, and the dreadlocked kid met her eye and gave her a tiny, mocking wave, wiggling his fingertips at her across the concrete.

The boys shouldered one another as Brother Paul started the evening, and shifted scornfully as people began to introduce themselves.

When it got to their turn, Cassie leaned forward slightly.

“I’m Bob,” the dreadlocked kid said in a tone of mock solemnity. His friends laughed quietly. “I’m here because my dad liked to diddle me.”

A quiet murmur rolled through the circle. Cassie and Skylark remained silent.

“But that’s all right,” Bob said, affecting a slow drawl. “As soon as I got big enough, I put a stop to that. Put him in the hospital right good, and when he got out”—his two friends were laughing openly now, and Brother Paul studied them in silence—“I told him, ‘Old man, you keep your hands to yourself or I’ll put you right back in there.’” He punched his fist into his palm for effect. “I got outta there as quickly as I could. And that’s how I got here.”

He leaned back, smirking, and looked across the circle at Cassie with a challenging stare.

She didn’t believe any of it.

Neither, clearly, did Brother Paul, who began to pace slowly within the circle, never taking his eyes off the three boys.

Cassie didn’t really pay attention to the other two boys and their stories, except to hear that their names were Frank and Joe.

“Don’t they look like the Hardy Boys to you?” Skylark whispered.

Cassie was waiting to hear from Sarah from Edmonton, wondering what the woman would say, thinking back to their earlier conversation by the courthouse.

But she didn’t say much of anything. Huddled deep in her grey overcoat, scarf wrapped around most of her face, she only mumbled her name and where she was from, staring unflinchingly at the concrete in front of her, worrying the end of her scarf between her fingers.

After the introductions, Brother Paul gave a shortened version of the welcoming speech that Cassie had heard the night before. His voice was tight and clipped, and he kept his side to Bob and his friends all the while, never turning his back on them, never letting them entirely out of his sight.

He saw every eye-roll, every nudge, every barely suppressed laugh.

“Friends, I don’t know if you saw the newspaper this morning.” Another murmur passed through the circle; clearly almost everyone had.

He nodded. “Good. I’m glad.” Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a piece of the newspaper, folded into a long rectangle. “This is what happens,” he said, as he unfolded it and
held it up for display. “This is what happens when we confront people’s most deeply held beliefs. There are more than twenty of us here. Every shelter bed is full. And the business owners are worried that their Christmas sales are going to suffer! The mayor says that there’s a homelessness problem, but that this isn’t the answer. Then what is? What solution is the mayor offering to this ‘problem’? More shelter beds, but only when the temperature drops?”

He took a deep breath.

“I have seen this before. If you read the article, you know that my name used to be Paul Corbett. That I was a hippie”—a few people in the circle laughed quietly—“and a protester. All of this is true. They try to paint me as some sort of rebel—let them. Even before I joined the church, I lived a life of values and principles. I believed in people. I believed in this earth. Everything I have done has been guided by these beliefs.

“But people do not like being confronted with principles and beliefs. They don’t want to see us here because homelessness is something they can’t bear to be confronted with. ‘Oh,’” he said, putting on a distressed voice, “‘those poor people. Oh, heavens, turn the channel!’ Well, I’m sorry. There are hundreds of people living on the street in this city. I’m sorry if our community upsets you. I’m sorry if your having to see us disturbs your vision of the world.”

All around the circle, people were nodding enthusiastically. A few of them cried out, “Yes!” as Brother Paul made each of his points.

Even Cassie felt herself getting caught up in it, nodding along, unable to take her eyes off him.

“I have said, all along, that if we treated this place and these
people with respect, we could expect respect in return.” He slumped. “I was wrong.”

A ripple of disbelief ran through the circle.

“Look at this picture.” He held up the newspaper, turning in a slow, full circle so that everyone would see the photograph of the garbage-strewn breezeway. “Look at this.” He shook the paper. “This is a lie. This is a lie they tell to tear us apart.” He dropped the hand holding the newspaper to his side. “Every morning, I am the last to leave this place. I know what it looks like when we go. We leave only footprints; we don’t leave this.” He shook the newspaper again. “So where did the garbage come from?” He paused, turned slowly around the circle again. “Where did this ‘mess’ come from that they’re blaming on us?”

Another dramatic pause.

“Why don’t we ask the mayor?” A few people in the circle cheered. “Why don’t we ask those business owners who are so worried about their Christmas sales?” Bob, the dreadlocked boy, whooped. “Why don’t we ask those people who are fine with hundreds of people sleeping on their streets, so long as they can ignore us?”

More cheering now, and Brother Paul let it build for a moment before starting again, his voice quieter, stronger. “We have played by their rules. We have behaved. We have slunk out of here at dawn every morning, gathered by night, all so we wouldn’t … so they wouldn’t be forced to confront their own failings, their own hypocrisies. My father used to have a saying. He used to say, ‘Son, you don’t rock the boat, especially when you’re sitting in it.’” He took a long moment, seeming to think about the words.

“My father was wrong. Sometimes you have to rock the boat.”

He drove slowly out of the cul-de-sac, came to a full stop at the corner, signalled his turn. The deliberate care was a combination of not wanting to draw attention to himself and wanting to build the anticipation.

The rumbling in his belly had turned into a burning now, a surging breathlessness that he could feel in his jaw, in his fingers, in his toes. It felt like he was growing too big for his skin, like he was going to burst out of his body, explode in a ball of hot, white light.

Soon. So soon.

He pushed the ZZ Top cassette into the tape player, and sang along.

He drove carefully, attentively, out of Gordon Head, toward downtown. He never broke the speed limit, obeyed every traffic signal, even slowed to let jaywalkers scurry across Shelbourne in the yellow cone of his headlights.

He turned right onto Bay, headed toward Rock Bay.

There were still hookers working the Government Street strip downtown, but more of the girls were around Rock Bay now.

It was almost a hierarchy. The girls downtown were more experienced, higher end, catering to a more genteel crowd of casual gawkers and men who, on a whim, decided to try something new.

The girls who worked Rock Bay generally had no other choice. Maybe it was a drug habit or a criminal record, but there was always a reason to offer themselves in this area of rundown rentals, silent factories, gas stations and dark-cornered, narrow streets.

This was where the real girls hung out, the young ones. Downtown, the police would have picked them up in a second, comparing them to photos in their database of missing kids and runaways. Downtown, there was nowhere for them to hide; up in Rock Bay, they could disappear into the shadows, the stinking alleys, the moment they saw a police car in the distance.

It was ironic, he thought as he turned off Bay. They came up here because they had something to hide, and then they did everything they could to put themselves on display.

He took his first drive down the strip at a regular speed, checking out the situation, but not looking too hard. There were only a few girls out, but he had expected that. With all the news coverage, they were bound to be skittish.

But that would only last until their desperation took hold.

There was no point in rushing; good things come to those who wait.

He drove to a nearby coffee shop and stood in line. There was a sign taped to the front of the counter:
Ladies, be careful. Check your client. Know whose car you’re getting into. Keep an eye out for each other. Trust your instincts. Don’t take chances. Report any questionable activity.

What would pass for
questionable activity
in this neighbourhood?

He bought himself a coffee and drank it in the van, leaning back in his seat with his eyes closed, letting the music wash over him.

Pickings were still slim on his next pass down the strip. There were more girls out now, but none that appealed to him. As he drove past, he evaluated each one: Too old. Too strung out. Too hard. Too blond.

It wasn’t completely conscious, but he was looking for something, something in particular. He didn’t know exactly what, but he knew he would recognize it when he saw it.

He found her on his third trip along the stroll. She was standing back from the edge of the street, almost in the shadows, a tiny redhead in a short black miniskirt with black leather boots to match the black leather jacket she wore open over a silky white top. Was it a camisole?

She couldn’t have been more than fifteen, her eyes wide and guileless as they tracked the minivan along the street.

She radiated uncertainty and hesitation. Doing her best to blend into the darkness, she wouldn’t have drawn most eyes, but for him, she seemed to glow, a soft white light that he couldn’t take his eyes away from.

He pulled up to the curb in front of her on his next trip around the block. He couldn’t breathe as he watched her approach him: tentatively, rocking a bit on her boot heels. There was something long and awkward about her, vaguely deer-like, as he unrolled the window.