What They Wanted (33 page)

“It’s not that bad.”

“Hell it’s not, it’s a fucking tinderbox. I can see covering for a friend,” I said, turning to Ben, “but not to this degree.”

“No. No, you don’t see,” said Ben stiffly. “You don’t and I can’t help you see it. Can’t talk to you about it—either of you.” He carried a stack of plates to the sink, fiddling with a pile of potato scraps, his back to me. I turned to Chris, who was noisily clustering a group of glass tumblers and casting resentful looks my way.

“What about you,” I demanded. “Is this where our father would have you? He’d choke himself if he saw this place—and you working here
to buy him a boat
,” I ended derisively.

“Let it go,” muttered Chris.

“I won’t, I won’t let it go. He wouldn’t have you here for ten trucks, for ten boats. You insult him if you think that. And your father too,” I assailed Ben. “They’d both choke at this place.”

Ben kept his back to me, fumbling with the plates. I turned to Chris. He lowered his eyes. My words had punctured him, but I couldn’t stop. I clung to the back of a chair to keep from shaking. My breathing was quick and ragged and I felt driven, like something caged, needing to get out, needing for him to get out, too.

“Shamed, he’d be shamed of us,” I drummed into my brother’s silence, “and you know it—Chris, you know it. He’d burn every dollar you sent him. He’d throw it back in your face. No worthy man would put himself here. None.”

Chris started away from me, the tumblers slipping from his hands and shattering at his feet. His face had been burnt by the sun but not yet darkened. It burned a deeper red now, spreading in splotches down his throat. Ben clattered a handful of forks and knives into the sink and crossed the cookhouse. “Your sister’s right,” he said to Chris, shoving chairs into the table with unnecessary force. “This place is getting bad. Me, I’m gonna be here for a while, gotta see some things through. But I’ll drive you both to town—after work, tomorrow.”

Chris let out a snort. “I’m not her youngster. Or yours either,” he flung at Ben. “You can both go—but I’m staying till fall, like I said.”

I stared at him anxiously. My hand stung from where I’d fallen and hot tears threatened to pour. I retreated into anger instead, and looking coolly at Chris, and then Ben, pointed to the door.

“Better still, the both of you go,” I said, jutting out my chin. “Go. Get the hell outta my kitchen—this is what
I
signed on for.”

We all three looked to the other. A tap on the cookhouse door jarred our attention, and Trapp stepped inside, an apprehensive look squinting his face as though it was a private home he was entering, not sure of his welcome.

“Gee, plumb out of nettle soup,” I said sharply, placing myself before him.

He nodded, avoiding my eyes. He bent sideways, trying to see around me to where Ben was squatting before a cupboard, digging out his whisky. Chris started scuffing together the broken glass with the toe of his boot. I held my spot before Trapp, my chin jutted so hard it ached. He forced himself to look at me, his greeny eyes lustreless in the dulled light from the one bare lightbulb.

“I was looking for the tonic,” he said, apologetically.

I stared at him without expression.

“For the burning,” he added, his tone becoming nasal. I was starting to recognize it as one he used when looking to tease, whether in torment or jauntiness. For the smidgen of a second a hint of humour softened that sharp, pointy face.

Relenting, I stood back, allowing him to enter. Ben threw a garbage bag at Trapp, and with the belligerent tone of an irate father, ordered him to help Chris with the broken glass.

I went to the sink, twisted on the taps, and squeezed detergent into the water. I started scrubbing pots first, not trusting my quick, anxious movements with the fragility of glass tumblers and plates. Chris murmured some banal comment to Trapp and I looked to him, trying to catch it. My brother’s face was pallid, and I felt deeply the slap of his rejection as he turned his back to me. I stared accusingly at Trapp, wanting to be angry with him for the terrible events of the night. But his awkwardness as he stood looking around with the garbage bag in one hand and holding on to the broom Chris had passed him drew a twinge of sympathy from me instead.

“Just sweep,” I said, taking the bag from him and directing his attention to the floor.

He started sweeping, bumping into Ben, who was pouring a round of drinks. Then he stepped back, near tripping over Chris, who was crouched behind him, picking up pieces of broken glass. He started sweeping again, clicking his tongue in frustration as Ben, putting a drink on the counter beside me, trod through his swept pile of dirt. I wondered how he’d fared growing up amongst the Trapp kin, counting eight or ten to a household, plus cats and dogs. He kept looking towards me, towards Chris, towards his little pile of dirt on the floor. Ben taunted his sloppy sweeping and he gave a forced, uncomfortable laugh that showed him to be outside the moment, studying it, gauging it, as though lacking faith in the sincerity of the moment, and was courting it with suspicion.

Chris sat at the table, fidgeting in his seat as Ben dug out the cards. He gave the first game to Ben and Trapp and leaned back, watching their play, smiling but saying little to Ben’s attempts at banter throughout the strained evening. A few times he stole a quick glance at me with the petulant look of a youngster wanting to crawl off from a family dinner.

Working a round of ham out of the deep freeze, I laid it on the sink and cursed when it slipped onto the floor. Chris grabbed it, putting it carefully back. With that he gave an exaggerated yawn, and waving aside Ben’s urging to wait, hold on, take on the winner, he bade good night to the room and headed for the door.

Ben’s brow creased with growing irritation. He opened his mouth to call after Chris, but was checked by Trapp’s wispy laugh as he pegged a run on Ben’s last play. Ben played the next card, his forehead popping with sweat as Trapp snared another run. He looked expectantly to me, as though I might put an end to his moment of twisted loyalties. But I was already heading into my room.

I slid open the window and pressed my face against the coolness of the wire mesh, staring out into the dark. The muted sounds of Ben and Trapp’s voices grew intense. I knew if I strained hard enough I might hear their words, but there was no room inside of me right then for their mystery. I looked with distrust to where Push’s trailer was burrowed into the dark. I looked to his rig. I couldn’t see it from where I stood, but in my mind’s eye, I saw it lit up a ghastly yellow by flood lamps that scorched through the dark like fallen suns.

The sky opened to a sudden downpour that stung coldly through the mesh onto my face. I slept fitfully that night to quick squalls on my window and the distant screaming of the jimmies. Come morning I awoke with the same foul mood clinging to me like a bad smell.

TEN

A
S PROMISED
, right after work the next evening Ben ushered me and Chris out of the cookhouse, assuring Cook we’d be back for the cleanup. With bread, cheese, smoked salmon, and a half dozen beer tucked behind the seat, we climbed aboard the truck and set off. Chris sat staring out his side window and Ben was wearing his graven image, whipping the truck irritably between gears. Neither had appeared for breakfast that morning, much less their early-morning cuppa tea and toast. Yet there was nothing of last night’s anger among us, simply the hangover of weighted thoughts and downcast eyes forbidding entry into territories too tender yet for scrutiny.

Fifteen minutes of hard driving and Ben parked before a tall hedging of jack pine, fringed beneath with grasses and golden swaths of dandelions. I climbed out of the truck, dizzy with relief in the absolute quiet, and drank back the sun-yellowed air, tarty sweet from the balsam firs crowding behind the pine.

Ben pulled his knapsack and six-pack from behind the seat, nudging me towards an opening through the woods. “Get the other bag, I leads your sister through the wilderness,” he called out to Chris. “Come on, let’s go meet Billy.”

“Billy?”

“Head honcho around here.” I followed him, stepping in the wide tracks of his boots through a swampy patch of ground. A slight incline and the path became drier, the overhang less dense. The woods opened onto a meadow, as softly padded as anything matting the shores of Cooney Arm, and my camp-dreary eyes feasted on the purply blue sepals of the wild crocus springing up in clusters all about. I looked back. Chris was coming through the evergreens, shoulders more hunched beneath his knapsack than that great Titan’s holding the weight of the heavens.

I turned dispiritedly back to the trail.

“Pardon me,” said Chris, marching up from behind. He nudged me aside with a strong arm, walking past with the urgency of a ticket holder late for the first act. He broke into a run and I laughed, running after him. He skidded to a halt at the bottom of a slight dip, then cursed as I plowed into his back, the both of us sinking ankle deep into a muddied trough. Holding on to each other’s arms, we levered ourselves onto drier ground, yelling out warnings to Ben, who was trailing behind. Then we scraped our boots across the gnarled root of an ancient pine and carried on walking, the leafy arches of the cottonwood giving way to a cobalt sky. Stretching out before us was a pond, still as glass.

“You could see a duck’s balls on that,” said Ben, coming upon us. “There’s Bill.”He pointed to a small brown head bobbing in the water near the shore and the greyish wooden clump of a beaver dam to the far side. “Best engineers around. Second only to women in changing things to their liking. And works only with their teeth—no claws, no bullying.” He tossed me a wink but the heaviness of his tone belied any frivolities, and, as though knowing it, he clumped ahead through the grass. I followed him up to the top of a small hillock, fairly dry beneath the bared sun. “Catch a breeze up here, chase off flies,” said Ben, and he threw down his knapsack, sitting with a loud
ahhhh!

I looked back at Chris standing by the pond, shading his eyes towards the sky as might Father in his boat, searching for signs of weather. He kept standing there, gazing.

“He’s feeling a bit twisted,” said Ben.

“Thanks to me,” I said.

“You spoke the truth.”

Popping a can of beer, he took it to Chris, who was dropping his knapsack on top of a large, flat rock. A few words with Chris and Ben strolled back, leaving Chris sipping his beer and looking at the lake, rippling now from Billy’s nose as he swam towards his lodge.

Shaking my head to Ben’s offer of a beer, I found a place to myself by the side of the knoll and stretched out, using my coat for a pillow. The grass felt softer than Gran’s pillow beneath my head, the scent of pine a laudanum for sleep. I gazed down past my feet, watching Chris sitting motionless, gazing at the pond. I thought to go to him, but a breeze wafted over me with the softness of duck down, stroking my cheek with a blade of grass. I closed my eyes to the rustle of the cottonwoods, the
tweedle eedee
of a robin, the chattering of a warbler. I drifted with a puff of cloud across the sky. I swam through the greens and pinks spiralling through the reddish dome beneath my closed eyelids. If not for the mosquito brrrr-ing in my ear, I would’ve slept—or perhaps I had, for when I opened my eyes Chris was no longer looking at the pond but hunched over a sketch pad, his knapsack in disarray around him.

With a languorous stretch, I left behind the comfy nest of grass and sat cross-legged beside him. His mouth was curled studiously, the fine hair on the back of his hand catching the sun as he sketched and shaded a meadow. He seemed oblivious to my presence, but tilted his drawing slightly as though hiding it from scrutiny.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “You were right, I shouldn’t have come.”

He grunted.

“Chris, I’m truly sorry—about last night, too.”

“Freaking out over nothing,” he muttered.

“Yup. Damn knife fights—gets me squeamish every time.”

“That’s what you call a knife fight?”

I gave him a sideways look. “What do you know about knife fights?”

“Knife fights, fist fights—seen a few brawls in the backwoods back home.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Jeezes, you’re worse than the freakin’ townies, thinking all we does in the outports is fish.”

“All right, so I missed a few things. Don’t remember you being so brave,” I said, trying for humour, “all them times you bawled your head off wanting to go to Cooney Arm with me and Gran and yet clinging to Mother’s skirts, too scared to leave.”

He tossed his head with a snort. “Cuz Mother was pinching me shoulders, you nit, and pulling me back so’s to stay with her.”

“Yeah, right. Couldn’t have gotten you in that boat with a bucket of candy.”

“You only wanted me to come cuz you were scared of ghosts.”

“Hey!”

“Hey, what! Remembers you now, huddling behind the house, frightened of your own shadow.”

“And who was huddling behind me?” I asked, grateful for the grin chewing the corners of his mouth.

“Cripes, you had me freaked out—playing dead atop of graves all the freaking time. Half the reason I never left home sooner, scared I’d end up living with you.”