The Disinherited (10 page)

When he got to the barn, the cow was lying down in her stall. Seeing him, she got to her feet. With each contraction she sank down again. Brian rubbed her neck and talked to her. In between contractions he got two pails: one full of hot water and one to use for milking the cow when the calf was born. She had stopped bawling and was just grunting now, circling restlessly in the stall. Periodically, in a mysterious manoeuvre, she would twitch her skin and shudder. As her skin moved the flies would draw back, and hover momentarily before settling again. The cow’s grunts elongated into moans, not loud but wavering and reedy. Some of the other cows, woken up by the activity and curious, began to push into the barn to see what was going on. Brian rolled a cigarette and, still half asleep, leaned against a post and waited. The cement floor, he noticed, was pocked and cracked. The government inspector hadn’t said anything on his last visit, but soon. The cows were all Holsteins, white with irregular black splotches. They were big-boned cows, with wide-flared hips and long skinny legs. The cow in the stall was having its first calf. Unsure of what was going on, she was still moving around, making her strange singing noises and scratching at the straw. Brian thought of going to wake Erik but decided against it — he would see enough calves being born when Richard Thomas left him the farm. One more stroke and he would be gone for sure, the doctor had said. Yesterday’s had almost killed him. They had stood beside him all afternoon, watching him through the oxygen tent. But in the evening he had been better, even eaten some supper and joked with them. Five thousand dollars in the will and half the cattle and machinery. Erik wouldn’t take the farm anyway, and wouldn’t dare sell it from under him. The cow grew more agitated. It lay down on its side. First the hooves emerged, bright yellow, and then the front legs. “Push,” Brian said, “push you little sucker.” The cow groaned and the head, purple-blue, came out. The calf’s eyes were closed tightly and it had tiny white eyelashes. Brian waved the other cows out of the barn and closed the door. When he turned back to the stall the calf was totally out. Its
colour had started to lighten already. While the cow struggled to her feet Brian inspected the calf: a heifer, good. He stepped into the stall with the hot water and washed down the calf. The cow kept getting in his way, wanting to lick her. When Brian left the stall the calf was wavering around on its feet, poking at the cow’s udder and then falling over. The cow was more concerned with cleaning the calf than feeding it, so every time the calf got near her teats she turned around, knocking it down. Brian came back with the other pail and drew some milk from the cow. Then he picked up the calf and carried it to the adjoining stall. He poured some of the milk, it was colourless and very viscous, into a baby bottle. He stuck the nipple into the calf’s mouth. The calf seemed puzzled, so Brian, cradling its head and neck in his arm, squirted the milk down its throat. The calf, startled, made its first noise: it sounded like a toy duck. The cow seemed to have already forgotten everything. Even though the afterbirth was still hanging out of her in a red triangle, she was munching at the straw in her stall and swishing flies away with her tail. Brian threw her some hay and went outside.

His first memories were not of Richard and Miranda but of Ann Cameron. The car door had opened, freckled arms with silver bracelets had reached out for him, hands wrapped around his arms, pulling him up into the air; and then the car was moving again, accelerating down the dirt road. She had him on her lap, her hand pressed over his mouth. Her breath was sweet and minty but her hand tasted sour. “There,” she said. She took her hand away and stroked his hair. She was much younger than Miranda. The man was young too; he looked like pictures in magazines with his wet combed hair and clean white shirt. Brian grabbed her hand and bit it as hard as he could. “Joe,” she screamed, “the little bugger bit me.” The hand flicked out from the wheel, knocking Brian off her lap and into the door. As Brian tried to get the door open the hand reached out again, grabbed him by the hair and forced his face down into the woman’s lap. He wanted to yell but the hand was wrapped tight in his hair: every time he opened his mouth it was pushed down, pressed tight against her thigh. Even biting was impossible because his
mouth was so wide open he couldn’t get a good grip; the woman was leaning over him, whispering in his ear. “Don’t be afraid,” she was saying, “I’m your real mother.” When they came to the highway, the man stopped the car.

“Do you promise to sit quiet?” He still had Brian by the hair but had pulled him up so that his face was just a few inches away. For years afterwards Brian saw the face in nightmares: pasty white, huge nose and eyes, the tip of the nose covered with tiny black hairs. Brian spat. The hand let go, flicked twice, and he was on the floor. Bodies leaning over, pulling him up onto the woman’s lap again, she was crying too, had her arms around him and was rocking back and forth. “Bitch,” the man said, “just like you.” His scalp and face were on fire; she rocked him and hummed as the car sped down the highway. He let her touch him, curled into her body. Her hands were constantly moving, stroking and consoling him. He opened his eyes. On the front of the car was an eagle, silver like the woman’s bracelets, slicing open the air so they could pass through.

They woke him up when they got to the house. “You’ll have your own room here,” the woman said. It had bright painted shelves filled with stuffed toys and children’s books. On his bed, folded neatly, were a pair of pyjamas, a housecoat, and slippers. “You have to brush your teeth before you go to sleep.”

The next day, after breakfast, she explained to him that she was going to work. She put a plate of sandwiches and some paper and crayons on the kitchen table. Then she and the man left, locking him in the house. When they came back he was in his bed crying.

“I thought you said you didn’t cry.”

“I want to go home.”

“This is your home.” She caressed his shoulder. He pushed her hand away.

“I want to go home.”

“You’ll like it here,” she said. “You’re my child. I carried you for nine months.” She brushed the hair back from his forehead and stroked his face. “Joe.” The man came running upstairs and into the room. She held out her hand. The toothmarks were visible.

“All right,” Joe said, “go downstairs and make supper.” He sat down on the bed beside Brian. “Why did you bite your mother?”

“She’s not my mother.”

“Yes she is.” Toe said. He pulled out his wallet and showed Brian a picture. A woman was holding a baby. “After you were born your mother had to go away,” Joe said. “Mr. and Mrs. Thomas said they would take care of you until she came back. But when she did they didn’t want you to go away so we had to come and get you. Children have to live with their parents.”

His scalp was still sore and the inside of his mouth was cut and swollen. “I want to go home,” he said.

“You are home.” Brian considered this. He didn’t like Joe being near him, his smell. He wanted to get away from him, to go downstairs, but knew that if he moved Joe would hit him. Joe put his hand on his shoulder. Brian sat perfectly still. “We can be friends,” Joe said. Brian forced himself to smile. Joe squeezed Brian’s shoulder.

“I want to go outside.”

“After supper. And in a few weeks we’ll go on a camping trip and live in a tent.” Joe took his hand away. “You’ve got to respect your mother,” he said. “She went to a lot of trouble to find you.”

The next day after they left, Brian played with his colouring crayons and paper. He drew pictures of everyone he knew, especially Erik, whom he missed. He drew him in different colours and with long winding tails and floppy hats. He drew pictures of himself too, with his head sticking out of car windows. He ate his sandwiches and searched through the house, exploring the contents of cupboards and drawers. He found some cigarettes and matches in Joe’s suit pockets: those he hid in the basement, in a special place he had discovered. He noticed that the kitchen window could be pushed open. He climbed out the window into the backyard. The woman next door was hanging up her clothes and, instinctively, he hid from her, running down the narrow alleyway between the two houses. He came out onto a wide street. All the houses looked the same except that they had different coloured doors. His own house had a red door and a
fire hydrant in front of it. At the end of the street was the park where Joe had taken him. He found a stone fountain and sat on the different wooden benches. When they got home they were pleased with him. They gave him more crayons and paper.

Every day after they left he drew pictures. Then he went outside. When someone talked to him, he pretended that he couldn’t hear and walked quickly ahead as if he knew where he was going. One day, when he had strayed further than usual, he came across a boy his own age. He was standing on a bridge, dropping pebbles onto the road below. Brian gathered a handful of stones and stood beside him. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing.” The boy was thinner than Brian and his clothes were torn and dirty. Brian looked down at himself. Every night Ann Cameron gave him a bath and every morning he put on fresh clean clothes. Brian waited until he saw a truck coming. Then he bounced a stone off of its roof as it went under the bridge. The boy threw a stone at the next car. Soon a car came by with its top down. It was full of people waving and laughing. They looked up and saw the two boys leaning over. Brian dumped all his pebbles on them and then ran. “Come on,” the boy said, “we’ve got to hide.” They ran down the street and into a house. “Upstairs,” the boy said.

They were in an attic, filled with bones and skulls. One of them had a horn sticking out of it. “That’s a rhinoceros,” the boy said. Some of the bones were partially reconstructed into skeletons. The rest of them were simply piled in heaps around the walls of the room. Skulls lined all the window sills. The floor was covered with fur and stray parts. The boy turned on a radio and cleared a space to sit in. “Where do you live?” Brian started to tell him about the farm and then stopped. He described the street that Joe and Ann lived on. “That’s close,” the boy said. “I can take you home after.”

They spent their afternoons in the attic. The boy had a book with pictures of animal skeletons and they were wiring and gluing the bones together into a mammoth elephant. “Sometimes they find them under the ground,” the boy said. “My father found one last summer.” Brian asked the boy why he wasn’t in school. “I have to stay home for a while,” the boy explained. “I
tried to set the school on fire.” He paused. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone, I just wanted to see if it would burn.”

She always wore her silver bracelets. He got used to the feel of them on his skin, trailing after her hands as she soaped him in the bath or held him on her lap and read him stories. While she bathed him she would lean over him and he would look down her dress. “What are you looking for?” she would say, and laugh, hugging him even when he was soaking wet. “My little baby,” she would say and laugh again. He was eight years old. The man was distant. He sat in his chair and read the newspaper. Sometimes they would walk to the park. After supper the man always helped with the dishes. One night he noticed the window in the kitchen, the marks on the sill.

“Look,” he said to Brian, pointing at the window, “where have you been going?”

“Nowhere.” The hand moved quickly, snapping out the dishtowel and knocking Brian against a chair. He crashed to the floor and then rolled under the table. He could see the man’s trousers, rising up from his leather shoes. The woman’s legs were thin and bony and her feet, bare, were covered with blue veins. She got down to the floor and slid under the table. The man left the room. “I want to go home,” Brian said.

The next morning the window was locked. He went down to the basement, there was another window there that could be pushed open, and climbed out. He took the cigarettes and matches with him. The elephant had been completed. It took up the whole centre of the room. When Brian got there the boy was sitting in front of the elephant, staring at it. They had put socks on its feet and covered it with fur rugs. Brian sat down beside the boy. “Today we have to hunt the elephant,” the boy said. “Are you scared?”

“No.”

“It’s dangerous. My father was killed hunting an elephant.”

“But —”

“It didn’t hurt though. He was brought to life again, like Jesus.”

“Lazarus woke from the dead. He went back home.”

“That was different,” the boy said. “He was all covered with
scabs and everything.” He stood up and went to the window. He selected a skull and handed it to Brian. “You throw first,” he said. The skull was large, with a depression in the top. Some of its teeth were broken off. He stuck his fingers in the eye sockets; the rims were sharp against his skin. “It’s a lion,” the boy said. Brian turned the skull and examined it.

“It’s a cow,” he said. He had found a skull like that with Richard, down near the creek. It had been half-buried in the moist earth and grass was growing out of it. They took it home and set it outside to dry. The next day it was gone. Brian took his fingers out of the eyes and hoisted the skull in his hand. He threw it at the elephant. It bounced off, onto the floor. Its lower jaw had broken and the top was caved in.

“That won’t work,” the boy said. He selected two long curved bones and gave one to Brian. They stalked the elephant. The elephant was not exactly as it had been pictured in the book. It rose uncertainly from the floor in the shape of a vague hemisphere, a sloppy fur-covered adobe or igloo. The socks located feet without defining them. The tusks were supported at one end by a chair and the tail resembled that of a raccoon. The trunk was a long snakeskin with a tennis ball squeezed into it. “It’s a boa constrictor,” the boy explained. “Elephant trunks don’t have bones.” He poked at the elephant with his club. One of the furs slid off, revealing two bones knotted together with string. “This is stupid,” the boy said. He sat down. Brian had brought some of his stolen cigarettes and matches. They tried to smoke the cigarettes but gave up, coughing. Then they attacked the elephant again, jumping on it and trampling it until it was broken into pieces and spread across the room. “I guess it’s dead,” the boy said. “Let’s go to your house.”