Mercy (27 page)

“You shouldn’t have,” Franny wailed, “you shouldn’t have.”

“I never meant it!” Yellow-braids turned on her and shrieked. “It was her hair, her filthy hair blew back in my eyes!”

Mary rolled over onto her side, somehow found her feet and stood. Her nose was streaming. Franny screamed and ran for it, then Paula, with Yellow-braids bringing up the rear. “She asked for it!” Mary could hear her yelling after them. “She did it to herself!”

Mary didn’t let herself cry the whole way home. Not until Castor was washing her face with rain from the barrel.

“She got small bones, this girl?” he asked, dipping the cloth. “Pointy little face, quick on her feet?”

She nodded.

“Black hair?”

She shook her head. He seemed relieved, until she told him how bright the girl’s hair was, except for a dark line down the middle where the two halves came apart.

“Christ,” he said, “you mean to tell me she’s already bleachin’ the kid’s hair? It was black as pitch when she was born. And not the kind that falls out, either, the real thing.”

“When she was born?” Mary asked, sniffling. “Did you see it?”

He didn’t answer.

“Do you know her, Castor?”

He stroked her forehead where it was starting to turn blue. “You keep your distance from that one, Mary,” he said finally. “You keep to the bog.”

It should be easy to ignore somebody you can’t see, but Carl finds the opposite to be true. Every rustle, every creak Mary makes commands his attention. Her presence looms large, spawning questions in his darkened mind.

She coughs, small and dry like a cat, and he finds he can no longer hold his tongue. “This father of yours,” he says, “how did he feed you?”

“The world’s full of food, Reverend. Somebody chucks out a sack of potatoes because the eyes have sprouted, but that just means they’re ready to grow.”

He flashes on the black towers in his mother’s garden, each one six tires high, packed with swelling tubers and dirt. It was a trick she knew, a way to choke twenty pounds from a single plant. “You lived on potatoes,” he says, the words bitter in his mouth.

“Not only. Castor was a crackerjack slingshot. Squirrels and hares, platefuls of wood frogs in spring. Not to mention fool hens. The bog was still crawling with them back then, you could just stroll up to one with a stick in your hand and nail it between the eyes. He got stuff in town too, a soup bone from the butcher, a bag of soft apples. He had
the kind of face people gave to, ugly but soft, not too proud. Even pissed, he was harmless to everybody but himself.”

“Sounds like the ideal parent.”

Her silence is disconcerting, impossible to gauge. “You got kids?” she says finally.

He opens his mouth to find it empty. For a moment the girl’s face hangs before him, devoid of expression, framed in her mother’s fine hair.

“Well?”

“One. A—daughter.”

“Yeah? Well, I don’t see her. You keeping a close eye on her, Reverend?”

“She’s in good hands,” he says quickly. “She’s only three. I can hardly take her with me on business—”

“Business? You and Lavinia?” Mary clucks her tongue. “Wait, don’t tell me, your little girl’s at home with the wife. The two of them praying for you, counting the days till you’re home.”

A chill runs through his body, a ruthless current of control. “For your information, my wife is dead.”

“Oh.”

“Satisfied?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I bet.”

“I mean it, Reverend. I never knew my mother. Never even knew who she was.” She pauses. “Where is she?”

“My wife? What kind of a question—”

“Your daughter, I meant your daughter. Where is she?”

“I told you,” he says through his teeth, “she’s in very good hands.”

Deprived of a creative outlet, the charge rained, flash-flooding me until it welled in my useless hands. My eyes were ground-level windows stuck open in a storm. No choice but to hammer them closed. Three strikes left and three strikes right—I kept at them until they swelled, until there was nothing but endorphin green, pain like springtime in the blood.

You caught me at it, grabbed hold of my little fists. You must have recognized them, Preacher—surprisingly powerful, sized to the socket of a three-year-old eye. You’d carried them all your life, curled like code on a twisted gene. They were your gift at my conception, the glint in your paternal eye.

You could’ve comforted me with crayons. Instead, you taped your thick winter mitts over my hands and smuggled me out to the car.

You drove clear across town, from Winnipeg’s suburban south to its alien north end, far from the family doctor, in the hope that you wouldn’t be known. One hand on the wheel, the other barring me like a door, you careened into the hospital’s lot.

The intern was wary, he’d seen black-eyed children before. To save you from suspicion, I socked myself as hard as the mitt would allow. A shadow came down over his face. A beaten child was one thing—the diagnosis simple, if sad. Another can of worms altogether, the child who beat on herself. He excused himself, a white beard returning in his place.

“What have we here?” the new doctor asked. “Hello there.”

My eyes were overripe plums weeping through slits in their skins. He peered into them and watched the pupils roll away.

He took a step back, waved and watched my padded hands lie limp, pulled faces to my waxy smile. His hand crawled along my arm, feeling me shrink. Finally, he feigned stubbing his toe, yelped aloud and looked up to find me unconcerned. When he turned to you, his face was impenetrable. “Does she speak?”

“She’s pretty quiet.”

“Does she say any words?”

“She—used to. A little.”

“When?”

“When? I’m not certain. When she was a baby. One, maybe one and a half.”

“And she stopped?”

“She’s quiet, yes.”

“You’ve said that already, Mr. Mann.”

“Yes,” you admitted finally. “I suppose she did at some point. Stop.”

I pawed at my forehead. The doctor watched me out the corner of his eye. “Does she like routine? Get upset over change?”

“Don’t all children?”

“Some more than others. How does she play?”

“Pardon me?”

“Does she play well with other kids?”

“Well, she’s—”

“I know, she’s quiet.” He paused. “Does she play with one toy for a long time? Do the same thing over and over?”

“I—I don’t know, really. She draws.”

A light came on in the doctor’s wire-rimmed eyes. “Any good?” Faced with the idiot, he hoped for the elusive savant.

“How do you mean?” you asked, stalling.

“Does she draw well? Unusually for her age?”

“Oh. I don’t think so.”
Liar
. “Not that I’ve noticed, anyway.”
Liar, liar
.

The doctor fished in the white pocket of his coat, drawing out a thin red pen. I reached for it, but by the time he’d found paper, you’d already snatched it away.

“It makes her nervous,” you explained, eyes on the door.

“Drawing?”

I croaked, and when the pen didn’t come, I rained blows on my temples and wailed.

“See?” you said. “I don’t know why, but sometimes it gets her all riled up.”

“Okay.” He took the pen from your fingers, hesitated, then slipped it away. “What about rocking? Flapping her hands? Ever seen her do this?” He stretched up on tiptoe, fluttered his hands and began stepping gingerly about. Your jaw dropped, followed by your gaze.

“Well?” He stopped short, letting his hands fall.

You couldn’t look up. “Yes. Something like that. Now and then.”

“Uh-huh.” He leaned in close to my ear. “Clare? Can you hear me? Would you like a treat, Clare? Would you like some candy?”

I was humming, swaying on the steel table, slapping the hard shell of my skull. Calling the hand to home base reaffirmed the skeleton’s ties. Otherwise the neck bone
connected to the thigh bone or, even worse, to nothing at all.

Tinkling. Tweezers in a test tube. I froze, then leaned forward into their crystalline tone.

“Mr. Mann,” the doctor said gently, “I think you’d better sit down.”

Autism
. He said the word—said it was possible, probable even, but not certain. Further testing required, and even then no hard proof, only diagnostic criteria based on the behaviour of the child. Bewildered, you asked how it could have happened, assured him you were a healthy, God-fearing man.

“Better God-loving, Mr. Mann,” he answered quietly, “if you want to come through this in one piece.” With that, he handed you a slip of paper, the specialist’s number and name.

You took the road out of town rather than home, unwilling to return to our lives. Cowed by the everlasting Trans-Canada, you kept to the Perimeter, four blacktop lines that box the city in, a detour for those who would rather pass it by.

“George, George, George of the jun-gle,” you sang suddenly, “strong as he can be!” You glanced at me. “Remember, chicken, you used to laugh when Daddy sang that song.”

Your hands were shaking so violently, you began to mistrust your ability to steer. You pulled onto the shoulder beside a furrowed field. Slowed to a standstill and stared.

To think I’d been the kind of baby you could leave waiting forever. Once, in my car seat, I watched you through the windshield—the waitress leaning close to pour your
coffee, you squeezing the Styrofoam, breathing her fragrant steam. Your sunglasses glinted on the seat beside me. I reached for them, slid their golden arms down the sides of my fragile skull. They were on the floor when you got back. It frightened me, Preacher, looking out through your dark.

T
he heart of this page startles me, it’s so real.

Isolated, under no influence, I’m the naive impulse, the unadulterated eye.
Draw what you see, not what you know
. This is how most learn a nose is not a nose but a collection of darkness and light. But what if there were never any breach, never any knowing beyond what is perceived? We’d all be gifted if we took the world on faith.
Art?
Like the carvers of totems, we’d have no need of the word.

“Too-true,” says the time-bird, and nothing more. The teacher yawns. I close my scissors boldly, capturing the central image entire.

You dreamt me a leech, Preacher, anchored to your neck, sucking what little you had left over from your ladies and the Lord. I’d latched on hard, my mouth bloodied and round, a hundred tiny teeth taking hold.
Demon
. A single word as you woke shaking, fingering the dream hole in your throat.

“Demon.” You spoke it aloud.

Pale and wakeful in the room down the hallway from yours, I ran a mitt over my quilt, touching the moon where it lit upon the pattern of dancing bears.

You rolled heavily from your covers and dropped to your knees. “Lord—” You wrung your hands. “Lord?”

No answer.

“Help me,” you pleaded. “Speak to me, Lord.”

Nothing.

“Jesus,” you whimpered, “give me a sign.”

Your hands delved beneath the pillow to find the Good Book where it lay. You raised your eyes to the bed-head Cross, let the pages fall open, and pointed. Your fingertip stuck lightly to the passage it found.
Anyone who prefers son or daughter to me is not worthy of me
.

God wished you to place Him before me. It was a good start, but you needed more. A path. A runway, even, cleared for speed.

Ask and ye shall receive. The scene unrolled like a canvas in your mind—top-heavy evergreens, a patchwork of flowers and moss. In the midst of it all stood your dead wife, Jenny, lovely in a long green gown. She bowed her flaxen head, and with that small movement the movement all around her began. Children took shape gradually, almost magically, among the trees. As they gathered about her, Jenny raised and opened her arms. She was a queen to them—no, you realized with a jolt,
a Christ
. In that instant your mission became clear.

“What do you know about this bog, anyway?” Mary asks, her voice dispersing the murky first scenes of a dream.

“Hmm?” Carl shakes off his drowsiness, answering before he has time to think. “The bog? Nothing.”

“Ever heard of a kettle lake?”

“No.”

“This one started when a meteor hit and left a big smoking hole to fill up little by little with rain.”

“I see. And you know this how?”

She goes on as though he hasn’t spoken. “No rivers in or out means not much flow, so the lake just lies there, turning all vinegary and sour. Only the tough trees can handle it, so they’re the ones to take hold in the banks—around here it’s black spruce mostly, some tamarack. After a while the banks get crowded, so those nearest the edge start dipping their roots and easing in. Moss creeps out along the roots, and one day there’s enough of a mat for some leatherleaf or crowberry to take hold. It takes forever, but in the end you get a forest, with everything woven so tight sometimes the trees can’t even fall when they die.”

“But—” He hesitates. “What about the lake?”

“What about it?”

“What happened to it?”

“That’s the beauty part, Reverend. It’s still there.”

“Where?”

“Here. Underneath us, underneath the whole bog. You can feel it in some places, like walking on somebody’s gut. Some spots, the trees wobble when you jump.”

“What? Come on.”

“It’s true, Reverend, this forest is floating.”

“Okay.” He swings his feet out from beneath the covers, planting them on the floor. “Whatever you say.”

“Going somewhere?”

“I need a bathroom.”

“What for?”

“What do you mean, what for?”

She laughs. “I mean, will you be standing or sitting down?”

“Oh. Standing.”

“In that case, just go off the porch.”

“What?”

“I’ll get you into position.”

He feels a wash of shame, recalling how his mother looked over his shoulder the first dozen times he tried it standing up. She said nothing to guide him, only clucked her tongue in disgust, swiping the rim with her cloth whenever he spilled so much as a drop. “I don’t think so,” he mutters.