Mercy (33 page)

Mother Nature Protests
, said the headline, and beneath it a photo, curling birchbark nailed to a pole. There was writing on the silvery scroll, only the heading bold enough to be read.
Mercy
.

Skimming the article, she shrank down in her chair. You and your precious camp. Apparently the town’s mayor was behind you one hundred percent. She was a real
powerhouse, the reporter felt bound to note, athletic, with striking green eyes.

The teacher let out a small, sick breath. Let the newspaper slip to the floor, drew her knees up and hugged them, hard.

Mary had always known she’d have to return to Mercy sooner or later. In the last years before his death Castor had taught her the layout of the downtown, the basics of begging for money or a meal. “Don’t let ’em look down their noses,” he’d told her, “and don’t you never shrink down in their sight.”

Still, once he was dead and buried, she held out for as long as humanly possible, surviving on half-rations for over a month, exhausting even the emergency supplies.

When the day finally came, she took the same route she had as a girl. Only this time, instead of crawling into a hedge, she made her way straight to the southbound road. Faces came to windows, a few even ventured out front doors. By the time she reached the first shops, they were coming out of the cracks in the walls, lining up along Fourth Avenue as though she were some kind of one-woman parade.

It helped a little that she’d grown up hearing their darkest secrets. She had yet to put faces to names, but once she did, she’d know who among them had preyed upon friends and family, and who preferred to take things out on themselves.

A handful of them had been good to Castor, and those
were the ones she went looking for, though not with handouts in mind. A few odd jobs a month were all she needed to get by—cleaning out coops, digging weeds, washing storefronts, shovelling snow. Scrubbing the church steps turned out to be the best—just get one of them to go for it and the rest had to follow to save face. She’d be down on her knees in front of St. Andrew’s Anglican and old Mrs. Stitchen from St. Mary’s would come waddling by. “You come and see us when you’re done with this
place.”
Then one of the Uniteds would spot her over at St. Mary’s. By the end of the day she’d have one hell of a backache and a month’s worth of kerosene and flour.

The butcher turned out to be the kindest of the lot. That initial bewildering day, his shop was the first one she braved.

“Are you Castor’s girl?” he asked, and when she nodded, he knew better than to ask any more. There was no sign of a woman about the place, but the ring on his finger made Mary remember something Castor had seen.

“There’s Tommy Rose,” he’d muttered over a bottle one night. “Poor bugger. Big as he is, still keepin’ to his side of the bed.”

The butcher wrapped up four soup bones with more meat on them than Mary had seen in a week, and refused to hear of her working it off. “It’ll only go to the dogs,” he told her. “I’ve got more bones than I know what to do with. You take a few off my hands whenever you’re in town.”

Every page is divided now, the floor a sea of colour, the teacher and I adrift. Squatting, I clear an island of rug, tip forward and select the initial shape. The teacher watches, her heart in her mouth. After a moment I stand, pick my way through the paper like a long-legged bird, stoop and choose the second fragment—its top a half-diamond, its bottom a scalloping skirt. I rotate it slowly in my hands, return to centre, lay it flat where it fits precisely along the first.

The teacher gasps.

“You got any pets, Reverend?” Mary asks.

“Me? No.”

“How come?”

He shrugs. “I got my fill of animals growing up on a farm. If you’re not feeding them, you’re cleaning up their mess.”

“Junior’s cleaner than me.”

“I’m sure she is.”

“Cleaner than you too, smartass. They’re great preeners, they do themselves all over every day. Mates preen each other, too. It’s something to see, two big owls nibbling each other all over, sighing and grunting the whole time. Poor little Junior’s stuck with me.”

Carl frowns. “I beg your pardon?”

“You have to catch her in the right mood. It’s best when she’s kind of dopey, got her eyes half closed, face feathers pulled back. Then all you have to do is lower your head and nudge it at her beak.”

“And she—preens you?”

“Yeah, she kind of nibbles along your scalp and tugs on the hair. Not so it hurts—well, except for the odd yank. Hey, we should see if she’ll do you.”

“Me?” He shakes his head. “No thanks.”

“Come on, Reverend, you’ll like it. It feels good.”

“I’ll take your word on it.”

“They mate for life, you know.” Her voice startles him, suddenly close.

“Oh?”

“Uh-huh. It’s quite the courtship. Mid-winter the male spots the female he wants, and what’s the first thing he does? Brings her a gift. A vole maybe. Dives into the snow for it, flies up with it hanging from his beak. He lands right in front of her and starts tilting his head side to side, showing it off. If she likes him, she makes herself little—starts bobbing her head, shifting on her claws, mewing at him—just like a chick. Then she tilts her head, too. Their faces are so flat it’s like two halves of a single head when they meet. Once she takes food from him, that’s it. That first offering makes the bond.”

Carl’s breath catches in his throat. He was standing at his office window the first time he laid eyes on Jenny. The rush was unprecedented, located for the first time ever in his chest rather than his groin. Banks of Morden Blush roses crowded the church doors. He tore his hand badly ripping several blooms free, his legs carrying him across
the grounds to the bench where she sat waiting for her bus. She was twenty then, less than half his age. And yet she smiled at him, extended her delicate hand.

“He keeps it up, too,” Mary adds. “Feeds her all through winter, all the time she’s brooding. Once they’re hatched, he brings food for the babies too. That one out there now’s a hell of a hunter. You’ll see. He’ll be off at the crack of dawn.”

Lavinia’s bedclothes are downstairs in the washing machine now, twisted in a sodden ring. She lies spread-eagled on the naked duvet, having traded in the
apricot glow
for a white, knee-length number the catalogue called a spa wrap, though any idiot can see it’s just a bathrobe.

How long could she lie like this before somebody came to cover her up? A few days? A week?

Mama was always kicking her covers off, sedated or no. Lavinia learned to check on her three, even four times a night. No matter how cold it was, the quilt would be back on the floor. It took vigilance, being the one in charge. That and hard work and a lot of planning—things like making shopping lists during recess, stopping off at Conklin’s or Rose’s on her way home from school.

Rose’s Fine Meats. Lavinia can still picture the old hand-painted sign with its lacklustre, peeling rose.

Two nice pork chops, please
.

She said it in her best grown-up voice, but Mr. Rose just stood there, looking past her with troubled eyes. She heard
the bell jangle, turned in time to see a man in ragged clothing stumble through the door.

“Castor,” said the butcher.

“Tommy,” said the man.

Lavinia would have known who he was even if she hadn’t seen him arguing with Mama on that terrible night. She’d have known because he had Daddy’s hair. And Daddy’s cheekbones. And Daddy’s eyes.

“Tommy,” he said again, “I seen this girl through your window, and I come in here to pay my respects.”

“That’s fine, Castor.”

The man swayed a little on the spot. Lavinia could smell something like medicine coming off him in waves.

“Lavinia,” Mr. Rose said gently, “this man is your uncle.”

It had been two long, hard months, but Lavinia remembered well what she’d witnessed—Mama’s dark, screaming mouth, the man crying like a baby as she backed him away from their house.

“Lavinia?” Mr. Rose tried again. “Honey, I know it’s hard to lose somebody, but—”

She turned back to the counter. “Two nice pork chops,” she said again. “You can put it on my mother’s account.” The butcher’s face fell. Behind her she heard a sad shuffling, followed by the brassy tinkle of the door.

Lavinia feels a tear snake down her temple. He was a good man, that butcher. Far too good to go the way he did.

He could get away with feeding the dogs when it was only now and then, but the town got wise to him once he started tossing scraps out every night. Something else they picked up on—in less than a year the pack of strays had
doubled in size, and they were cockier, too. No more slinking through the shadows, now they came marching down Train Street bold as brass.

Angry letters appeared in the
Mercy Herald
. Complaints were lodged with the RCMP, with the town council, but none of it made him stop. Then people started buying their meat at the new supermarket out on the highway. It wasn’t long before the butcher pulled down the blinds, not much longer before he let the dogs in to clean the place out. He was getting on in years by then. People figured maybe his hip gave out, or else one of the big ones knocked him down.

Lavinia was part of the crowd when they carried him out. There was nothing to see, really, just a lump covered over with a sheet. It was the din that made it awful, the relentless baying that arose from inside the shop. She cringes, recalling how she added her voice to that of the mob.
Of course they have to be killed! What are we going to do, wait until they take a child
? She cheered along with the rest of them when the men shouldered their guns and went in.

Little pools well up in her ears. Can she really be crying for a pack of feral dogs, for the sad old man who invited them in? At least Mr. Rose went quickly. At least he didn’t deteriorate year by year, hanging on for decades, spoon-fed and slobbering at the Mercy Retirement Lodge.

Lavinia sits up suddenly, as though responding to an alarm. How long has it been since she visited? Not since Carl showed up. Maybe even a couple of weeks before that. What if they’re not treating her well? Oh God, what if she’s
dying?

She leaps to her feet, scarcely noticing the heel. Dropping the robe, she shoves the closet door away on its rail. So what
if Mama won’t know her—she can still sit beside the bed, still hold the poor woman’s hand. Besides, who better to visit on your birthday than the woman who gave you life?

Lavinia pokes her head through the neck of a sweatshirt and shoots a glance at the clock. A quarter to five. Not visiting hours, certainly, but just let them try and stop her. She’s the
mayor
, for Christ’s sake. That’s got to be good for something.

The Reverend is showing signs of recovery. The swelling around his eyes has gone down considerably, but it’s more than that—his colour is good, and there’s a gentleness about his mouth and jaw. Mary plays with the idea of trusting him, of telling him what she’s never breathed to a living soul.

She could start with how she knew about him and Lavinia, how she managed to witness their little excursion, the pair of them dogging their hired expert, plotting to take down the bog. Or she could go further back, to how she learned the bog’s history—its evolution flashing before her eyes, compressed like the life story of something about to die. No, she’d have to go further still. How could he begin to believe her—to understand what she was saying, even—without knowing how it all began?

It was spring, perhaps a month before she would turn twenty. One step the moss was solid and the next she was sinking, up to her waist in a hole. She should’ve hauled herself out immediately—she knew how fast the bog could
suck a body down—but for some reason she held perfectly still, letting the water creep coldly up her legs.

Castor had spoken of the bog water often, telling her how it preserved things like pickles while it tanned them like hides. “That’s history down there, Mary. Whole moose and marten and lynx, animals we got no names for, ones we never even seen.”

She didn’t plan it, just cupped her hands and dipped them and drank. It was unlike any water she’d known, brown and gritty, with long slimy strings, and so acid it burned her tongue. In an instant her bearings were gone. A dark wave came crashing, forcing her to shut her eyes.

It was a simple vision, brief and still. The woman was curled on her side as though sleeping. She’d bloated up badly, turned all coppery from the tannin—her skin, her dress, her hair. Her eyes were closed, her mouth wedged open with peat. Even her teeth were red.

Mary had never owned a mirror, but she’d caught sight of herself in enough shop windows and little pools to know. She wasn’t frightened. It was a comfort to be shown where she would one day rest.

Dragging herself out of the sinkhole took every ounce of strength she had. She had to lie face down on the moss for ages before she could manage the short walk home. Stepping into the empty house, she felt a flood of sadness, followed by an eddying sense of relief. She was glad not to have to tell Castor. It would have grieved him to learn he’d passed the gift along.

The teacher can see now how the frames deceive, how an arm sprouts in one panel and grows under the black border to the next. Mere roads across country, these lines, the land carrying on beneath.

It’s impossible, she knows, for anyone to have done this, let alone a disturbed child of three. Each segment its own conception, drawn separately, yet somehow designed to be cut free and mated to make sense on all sides.
Savant
, she thinks. Human calculators, mnemonic miracles, a blind slave boy at the piano, separate songs in his cotton-flayed hands.