The Find

“Page throws hope into a mixed-up world where only fantasies and delusions dare to grow.” —
Globe and Mail

“A complex book, and splendidly written, Alphabet is an intensely compelling reading experience that speaks to the power of words and the significance of language in all its dangerous subtleties.” —
The Edmonton Journal

“One of the most complex characters I've ever met in a novel. His attempt to win redemption is totally engrossing.” —
Victoria Times Colonist

“It is a bracing study, emotionally nimble and intelligent, and forms a very fine novel.” —
Daily Telegraph

“It is a wonderful book, peculiar, intense, revealing, challenging and above all riveting…I kept saying to myself, how could she know this?” —
Erwin James, Guardian columnist and author of A Life Inside

“Sometimes novelists go too far — and sometimes they manage to demonstrate that too far is the place they needed to go.” —
Time Out

“Simon is real. Simon gets under your skin. You'll keep reading Alphabet because you'll want to understand how Simon got to Z from A.” — Times Colonist

“An elegantly compelling story of how a young girl's obsession forever changes the lives of those around her…a disciplined exploration of the complexity of human motivation and our need for redemption.” —
Vancouver Sun

“A compelling and unpredictable journey…beautifully written, rolls on at a rapid pace and delivers a satisfying punch at the end.” —
Globe and Mail

“Skillfully written and a most impressive achievement.” —
Sunday Telegraph

“One of the most compelling, unsettling novels I've read in ages, which should appeal to fans of classy thrillers and literary fiction alike.” —
Sarah Waters

“A moving, absorbing story…Kathy Page writes beautifully.” —
Helen Dunmore, (author of A Spell of Winter)

“Natalie's character is a triumph . . . It's rare to find a book that can not only move and thrill but also asks fundamental questions about religious belief and the nature of virtue and sin.” —
Good Books Guide

“[Page's] writing, mostly in the present tense, is lit with an immediate sense of period, summoning images which are by turns softly painterly, sharply filmic or as murky as those first television images of the moon landing.” —
Times Literary Supplement

Back in the First Person

The Unborn Dreams of Clara Riley

Island Paradise

Frankie Styne and the Silver Man

As in Music

The Story of My Face

Alphabet

THE FIND

KATHY PAGE

McArthur & Company

Toronto

First published in Canada in 2010 by

McArthur & Company

322 King Street West, Suite 402

Toronto, Ontario

M5V 1J2

www.mcarthur-co.com

Copyright © 2010 Kathy Page

All rights reserved.

The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise stored in a retrieval system, without the expressed written consent of the publisher, is an infringement of the copyright law.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Page, Kathy, 1958-

The find / Kathy Page.

ISBN 978-1-55278-837-0 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-55278-916-2 (electronic)

I. Title.

PR6066.A325F46 2010 —— 823'.914 —— C2010-900584-8

The publisher would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for our publishing activities. The publisher further wishes to acknowledge the financial support of the Ontario Arts Council and the OMDC for our publishing program.

Cover and design by Tania Craan

Typesetting by Mary Bowness

Cover images: landscape: Jayme Thornton/Getty Images; bird: Andreas Feininger/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

eBook development by Wild Element www.wildelement.ca

For Richard

—
♦ —

SCOTT WOKE JUST AFTER FOUR.
Rain lashed at the house. Rivers ran down windows; the blackness outside had a fierce, violet tinge. There was a steady drip, drip, that could only be from somewhere inside. In the bathroom, the floor was awash. Brownish drops oozed steadily from a bulge in the ceiling, just below the skylight. He climbed on the edge of the bath to pierce it with a skewer — realised as it collapsed, drenching him in a gritty gush, that they'd better get a tarp on the roof. They? Dream on. He pulled on jeans, sweater, waterproofs, threw open the door.

Outside: a wall of water, the deafening roar of a million tiny parts. The rain sang and drummed, raced downwards, pooled, spurted from guttering, burst in gurgling torrents from downspouts, bubbled from blocked drains.

He struggled from the workshop with the ladders, hammer, nails and tarp; water coursed down his neck and up his arms as he hooked the roof ladder on and climbed up, pulling the tarp behind him on a rope. He heaved it over the skylight and the ridge, battened it down, had to keep shifting the ladders. It took almost an hour to get it done. The darkness was just beginning to break up when, on the way down, he reached out his foot and the ladder, which was propped against the gutter, slipped away: he was stuck on the roof, held only by his hammer, face pressed into the decaying asphalt tile, with the rain beating on his back and his hands going numb.

He leaned south and gripped the guttering, which gave way and slapped him across the head as he fell. His right foot hit the capsized ladder; he landed on his left side, jarred his hip and crushed his arm. For a few moments, nothing hurt, and there was just the sound of the rain. Then came the beginnings of pain. He crawled back to the porch, and once inside fumbled, blue-fingered, on the shelf for Advil. All gone. Half-dry, shivering, he struggled into new clothes and in the kitchen watched TV images of meltwater and rain in a foaming brown torrent, full of rocks and grit.

In the lower valley, towards the old port, water rippled across the surrounding fields. Homes were waist-high in water. The bridge was gone. Residents, the announcer said, had been told to dress warmly, go to the community centre taking with them nothing more than a day pack and a sleeping bag.

The smell in his father's room, animal and chemical combined, hit the back of Scott's throat. The pain made him sick too.

He clicked on the light: saw grey stubble, the burst-looking nose, the eyes clenched shut. Mac rubbed his face, turned away. Scott shook, then slapped.

‘Wake up, Mac! I'm hurt. You might have to drive.'

‘Drive?'

Back in his room, Scott packed his computer into the original boxes. It was a new system, bought on sale not long ago. Half-price but still three thousand dollars that he would be paying off forever at eighteen percent, so, he thought, the Door to the Universe had better be okay. He heaved the chest of drawers on top of the desk and put the boxes on top of them both. He took his tin out of the desk drawer, sat with his leg on the bed and rolled four joints to take with him. His ankle was enormous, twice the size of the other one.

He staggered outside, back into the rain. Mac sat in the Ford with the engine on, frowned at the wheel.

‘Scotty,' he said. ‘I think I might have forgotten something.' They both knew what he meant: there was no drink in the house for him to bring, could they somehow get some, or what the hell would he do?

‘Just go, Dad—' Scott told him and the car jerked forwards. He felt as if someone was sawing off his foot. At the dip by the first junction, the pooled water, pocked with constantly falling drops, covered twenty or thirty metres of road. A great wake spread after each vehicle that crossed.

When they reached the community centre, Mary Divers strapped up his ankle and handed over four Tylenol 4 to last all day, along with her umbrella to use as a walking stick. The ankle could be broken, she said; keep it up and rested for now.

In the main hall, families marked out territory with chairs, unrolled sleeping bags and piled up their sweaters and coats. The heat was full on, the windows flung wide to combat the damp rising from clothes and hair, the water people breathed out, their sweat. Women bustled in the kitchen. Any minute, Scott knew, Mac would start to get the jitters and he couldn't bear it. He took all of his pills at once and went outside, pressed his back against the wall under the roof overhang and tried over and over to light one of his joints: the sodden air extinguished the spark before it even existed.

Hell
, he thought.
What was this? What was he doing? Why was he still there? There had to be something else.
But Dr Hoffman had said, when Scott asked her what would happen if he did leave, that Mac would drink himself dead in six months. He hated the bastard, but he loved him too — couldn't do it... If only, he thought, I could light the fucking joint I could stop thinking about this stuff.

An orange helicopter appeared — like some kind of hallucination hanging over the playing field, it hovered above them and then sank down to land. Three figures emerged, ran, laden with luminous plastic-wrapped luggage, towards where he stood. Water streamed over their yellow waterproofs.

‘Press—' the tallest one barked. ‘Can you find me sockets for these lights, okay?' Limping, Scott dragged wires across the hall while they corralled people into a group. It was something to do and at the end of it, when he pointed at his leg and said he needed to get out, the journalist said Okay, they could take one more. Mac grabbed Scott's arm and begged to come too.

‘No,' Scott told him, stuffing his things into the backpack. ‘There's no room. Hang in here.'

The machine rose straight up into the rain. And by then the painkillers had started their work. A slow grin spread across Scott's face and he turned to share it with the reporter next to him.

Later, in the hospital in Vancouver, he watched the news: saw himself and Mac beside him, an arm thrown over his shoulder. Different eyes, different hair, different skin tone — one pure Celt, one part Native, but the same grin, the same stubborn jaw. They were father and son, no way out of it. It was, the reporter's voice said, the story of a Tough Little Community struck by one of the Last Forces Beyond Human Control. The camera panned around the hall, showing huddles of small-town people in layered clothes, the women bravely smiling, the men unwashed and stubbly, drinking soup out of paper cups.

Please, Scott thought, zapping the TV and closing his eyes. Just wash it all away: the whole damn place, everyone in it and everything that's happened in the last ten years. I'll stay here, find a room, work, and start over. But in less than a week Andrea Price from the Baptist's had tracked Scott down, and he returned home to take care of Mac, and then felt even worse than before. And in September, six months after the flood, when Anna Silowski first visited Big Crow, Scott still had his limp. By then, he was taking Prozac and working nights at the Mountain View Hotel. That day he was late again, so Lauren, the owner, checked the party in: Dr Anna Silowski, Prof. Colin Gordon and Prof. Michael Swenson. Archaeologists, something like that. Not at all their usual kind of guest.