Pile of Bones (11 page)

“If silenoi were prowling the city of Regina, we’d hear about it.”

Carl walked through the doors. “What are you guys talking about?”

“Andrew thinks that there’s a pack of sasquatch on the loose.”

“What?”

Andrew stared furiously at the ground. “Forget about it.”

“Pack of sasquatch. That’s a great name for a band.” Carl reached into his pocket and withdrew a granola bar. “Here. Provisions for the journey.”

Andrew blinked, then unwrapped it. They kept walking in silence, while Carl texted and Andrew chewed. Shelby took the opportunity to study Carl. His thumbs moved rapidly, spinning narrative, as he avoided potholes and weird things on the ground. He’d packed an extra granola bar, knowing that Andrew had probably forgotten to eat. Whenever his blood sugar bottomed out, he had a more difficult time concentrating than usual. Carl’s gesture had a maternal trace to it, but without the pointedness of giving someone a juice box or a handful of vanilla wafers. It reminded her of the time she’d seen a ten-year-old boy flip over his handlebars in the park. His friends had gathered around him, gently probing his injuries while keeping their expressions neutral, like medical interns.

Carl was attractive, but not her type, as far as guys went. His beard did nothing for her, and she couldn’t understand why he wore hiking boots everywhere. They lived in a flat province, and he rarely left his apartment unless he was renting a movie or visiting campus. He spoke Spanish, but she’d only ever heard him yelling at his sister or pleading—at least it sounded like pleading—with his mother, who would call randomly to ask him about his girlfriend. A year ago, he’d made up a girlfriend named Tammy, and they were always on the verge of getting serious.

Ingrid was her type. Ingrid, whose gray eyes made her ache slightly, as if she had a low-grade fever. Andrew had actually spoken to her. Shelby had tried to flirt via texting, but after rereading all of her texts for the eighth time, she realized that they were awkward and pretentious, not flirty.
She’d kept using the word
interrogate
, as if she were a police officer instead of a graduate student. She’d admitted that
The Fountain
was her favorite movie to watch while high—especially during the scene when Hugh Jackman was eating tree bark—yet Ingrid had merely typed
hehe
in response. She was probably a mature, straight-edge academic with her shit fully in order, someone who wouldn’t drop everything to get stoned and watch a three-hour film about time travel and Mayan spirit possession.

They crossed over to Wascana Parkway. The sky was a painful blue, and without a scrap of shade to be found, they were all sweating. Andrew was the most sensibly dressed, in a House Stark T-shirt, broken-down jeans, and sneakers. He refused to wear a hat, though, on the grounds that he could never get it to sit perfectly on his head. Carl was sweating the most, but his clothes already looked dirty, so the overall effect was minimal. Shelby worried that her armpits now smelled like the opposite of sugar and spice.

The park bloomed on their right side, already full of couples jogging in tandem. Beyond the tree line, Wascana Lake boiled in light, its polluted striae hidden by patches of reflected sky. The sun made everything look natural. It was only by night that the contours of the true park grew visible, teased out by long-suffering lamps and the glowing eyes of ducks. All those blind corners and moonlit sutures that made you reach out your hand and push, even when you knew that it wasn’t the best idea. That was how you found yourself naked in a strange alley, wondering where the grass had gone.

“My students have a quiz today,” Carl said, breaking up her thoughts. “There’s a bonus question on the English longbow. If any of them get it, I’ll be fucking elated.”

Shelby turned to Andrew. “What’s the lecture on again?”

He actually managed to look hurt. “
The Wanderer.
The first stanza.”

“Ugh. Well, it’s in the reader. I’ll skim it before Laclos arrives.”

“You’re supposed to break it down line by line for the students in tutorial.”

“That’s why you’re going to explain it.”

“And if I refuse?”

“You’d never refuse the chance to describe that poem to me.”

“This feels like scholarly blackmail.”

“It’s not blackmail when you love explaining things.”

Carl laughed. “She’s got you over an Old English barrel.”

“I suppose she does.”

They arrived at the Innovation Centre and refilled their coffee cups. As promised, Andrew recited the first stanza of
The Wanderer
to her while eating a strawberry-sensation muffin. By the time he reached
hrimcealde sæ
, his dire-wolf was covered in icing sugar. They parted with Carl at the entrance to the lecture hall. A fair number of students were present, clustered in texting clouds near the back or sleeping near the front. When Professor Laclos arrived, about half of them looked up, while the rest kept staring at their phones. He talked about the nameless wanderer, whose heart was full of rime-cold secrets. He drew connections between the ancient poem and present-day political exile. When all else failed, he showed a picture of the Sutton Hoo helm and talked about warfare. Several of the male students perked up at this.

Shelby looked over to see Andrew silently mouthing syllables to himself, as if he were part of an ecstatic rite. He grinned as he bit fricatives and tongued plosives. He was tasting English origins, mulling over words ripped from bronze-smelling hoards. Words that had slept beneath centuries of dust and small rain, sharp and bright as scale mail. Poetry had never moved her quite so much as drama. She loved the shock of a colloquy, the beat and treble of words doing what they had to on stage. Andrew preferred the echo of poems buried alive.

After the lecture was done, they met with Professor Laclos to discuss the midterm. He was still referred to as a “recent hire,” which marked him as a newly minted PhD. He had the youthful energy to survive a thousand-year survey course, but Shelby couldn’t help but notice the deep lines
under his eyes or the fact that his collar was lopsided. His desk was covered in books, interoffice envelopes, and photocopied materials of every sort. Whenever he finished a sentence, he would take a sip of coffee, then begin in the middle of the next sentence. Andrew wrote down everything, while Shelby found herself nodding and smiling gently, as if she were listening to one of her younger cousins talk about Dora the Explorer.

When the meeting was over, they went to their respective tutorials. Shelby taught on the dreaded mezzanine floor, which had no coffee stand and could be accessed only via a hidden staircase in the academic quadrangle. Her classroom was next to something called the CLAW. lab, which must have dealt with the study of robotics, or zoology. She liked her Monday tutorial group. They were lively and asked questions. Nearly half of them did the reading, and the rest were more than happy to offer random contributions that kept the discussion afloat. Shelby had become adept at linking every tangent back to the assigned reading—
Jersey Shore
, Ryan Gosling, farm narratives, tales of personal growth, and invectives against homework. She compared 3D technology to illuminated manuscripts, and
Fifty Shades of Grey
to filthy Old English riddles (
no, that’s not a skullcap or a loaf of bread
).

She spent the last fifteen minutes of class fielding questions about the midterm, which resulted in a wildly entangled diagram on the board. They ran out of time just as she was drawing a weird arrow that led nowhere. The students filed out, while Shelby tried to minimize the chalk damage to her black T-shirt. Ultimately, chalk dust was better than marker fumes, which had once persuaded her to assign dioramas in a class that focused on the Marquis de Sade.

Andrew was waiting at their customary bench. He gave her a maple-dip doughnut, which she took greedily. Her pastry levels had already reached a dangerous low.

“How was it?”

She mainlined the doughnut. “Not bad. We took turns pronouncing the more difficult words. George—the guy
who loves
Dragon Age
—went on this tangent about falchions, but I pulled him right back.” She made a vague motion with her hands. “I’m miming the tractor beam of focus that I used on him.”

“Impressive.”

“What heroics did you resort to?”

“I spent about a half hour explaining what a thorn was, and why it’s different from a yogh. That was pretty much all they could handle. Then we did a midterm flowchart. I had to assure one student that there’d be no questions about computer science. I guess she’s been having nightmares about that particular test.”

“When’s Carl finished?”

“I believe his tutorial ends at twelve thirty.”

“You don’t believe. You have his schedule memorized.”

“Yours as well.”

“Right. I’m just saying—why equivocate?”

“I’m not.”

“Yeah, you are.”

He shrugged. “Most people are comforted by a bit of uncertainty. If you act like you know everything, they get suspicious.”

“I’m not those people. Neither is Carl.”

“Maybe I’d like to pretend that I don’t have arrays of data in my head. That I’m a normal person who actually forgets things.”

“You forget things all the time. That’s why your power always goes out.”

“I don’t mean paying bills. I mean words, songs, routines, memories. Most days, I feel like a flash drive that’s about to explode.”

She kissed his cheek. “Don’t worry. If you explode, we’ll rebuild you. But only if you promise not to enslave us immediately after.”

“I fail to see the humor in that.”

“Sorry. Don’t enslave us. Hashtag sarcasm.”

Before he could reply, she stood up. “I’m going to see my mother.”

“Will you need anything afterward? Drugs? Sour candies?
Archie
comics?”

“I should be fine.”

“I’ll bring all of them just in case.”

“Thanks. Also, text me in twenty minutes, then again five minutes later. I want her to think that I have a raging social life.”

“On it.”

She walked past the residence towers and across campus, back to Wascana Parkway. There was a wrought-iron buffalo mural in the green patch across the street, which gradually gave way to the marshy lake edge. She skirted the lake, crossing what felt like an acre of flattened grass, until she found herself at the entrance to First Peoples University. Light gripped the edifice, making it burn in place. The walls were smooth and transparent. She walked in and took the stairs to the second floor, where her mother’s office was. Mel Kingsley was the head of Cree Languages. Her office seemed to glow. A south-facing window captured the endless sky, while plants thrived in every corner. She sat at her desk, listening to a pair of noise-canceling headphones. Above the desk hung a clock in Cree that read fifteen minutes to
peyakosap
.

Shelby moved a pile of books and sat down across from her. Mel was oblivious, eyes still closed, mouthing something. Shelby was struck by how beautiful her mother was. Her hair, now patterned with gray, hung across her shoulder in a long braid. She wore turquoise earrings in the shape of parrots and a sleeveless blouse. Shelby’s skin was light and freckled, but her mother’s was olive. She smelled of aloe, with the slightest hint of nicotine. When Shelby was little, she’d deployed tactics of shame designed to force her mother to quit smoking. She would hide her cigarettes, complain about her breath, and cough whenever she entered the room.
I just want you to live, Mama,
she used to plead. Over the years, Mel had cut back, and now Shelby let it slide. Although she’d never admit it, the whisper of smoke that clung to her mother’s skin had become familiar, even comforting.

She finally noticed Shelby. Smiling, she put down the headphones. “Hello, dear. Were you teaching today?”

“Yeah. I just finished a tutorial on Old English poetry.”

“You know, we really need teaching assistants for Introduction to First Nations Studies. We’re in the middle of a crisis.”

“I know, Mom.”

“What’s your schedule like next semester?”

“My supervisor’s teaching a course on Restoration playwrights. It’s upper division, so I’d actually be able to give a lecture.”

She made a face. “You know so much about that genre. Wouldn’t it be interesting to learn something new? I can lend you—”

“I’ve already got stacks of reading.”

“Just one book. I know it’s here somewhere—the new Qwo-Li Driskill. I think it’s going to be pretty controversial.”

“That isn’t on my reading list.”

“It should be.”

Shelby closed her eyes. “And we’re back here already. I’ve barely sat down, so that’s got to be some kind of record.”

Mel gave her a long look. “You’re an adult. I understand that. You can study whatever you want.”

“I’d like to record you saying that.”

“Sweetheart. I respect that you want to be different. I think that—what’s her name—Margerie Cacklefish—”

“
Margaret Cavendish.
She was a freaking duchess, Mom.”

“Whatever. Her work has a certain appeal—if you enjoy listening to an aristocrat complaining for hundreds of pages. I’m just saying that there’s other literature out there, writing that’s a bit closer to home.”

“You mean native writing.”

“Obviously.”

“Mom, I love native writing. I read it all the time. But it’s not what I study.”

“I just don’t understand—”

Shelby raised her hands. “You don’t understand because you want me to be like you. I’m not like you. I can’t learn
six different dialects and give papers on Swampy Cree folklore. Maybe that makes me a traitor, but I don’t know what else to say. I like reading about sex in carriages, notes at the opera, suitors who carry around their own ladders. None of it’s close to me—none of it ever happened to me—but I wish it had. Do you get that?”

Mel folded her hands. “Not really. I love you, though.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Will you at least take this? It’s a cutting-edge an-thology—”

“Mom, for the love of—”

Mel placed the volume in Shelby’s hand. “You don’t have to read it. I’ll feel better just knowing that it’s in your possession. That you might accidentally open it up one day.”