Inukshuk (26 page)

He folded the letter in half again. Tucked it into his shirt pocket. Went to the thermostat and hesitated a moment before thumbing the digital dial downward—
twenty-eight! That was like . . . eighty degrees real temperature. What was Thomas thinking!
—past 25 to 21, until he heard the furnace blower disengage and in another few moments all the vents in the house go silent. His fingers smelled of breaded fries and steak grease with chipotle mayonnaise, and in the back of his throat was a lingering beer tang. A smoky smell of charred meat wafted up from inside his shirt collar, and for a moment all his hopefulness and exhilaration from meeting with Moira seemed cheap and foolish. He was exhausted. Nothing would work out right. He went back over their last few moments—the sodium lights on the
snow, her face next to his, the longing, his mouth open on her neck. No, it
could
be good for them. Meanwhile, best plan was to get on with the remainder of the evening. He would need to fix something for Thomas, poor wayfaring Thomas, or at least oversee food preparations and cleanup. Stand with him awhile and try to find things to talk about. Draw him out.

But maybe the thing with Thomas was to take a more hands-off approach, à la Moira. Resist always meddling and involving himself, fussing over heat bills and wasted water and toilet paper, lights left on, drawers hanging out, dishes unwashed, dirty socks, bad diet. Just let him be. Let him drift to wherever it was he seemed so intent on going—have his troubles all on his own. Be as compassionate only as the occasion warranted, no more. Sure. He could take a cue from Moira on this tonight and stand back. Fix himself a nice iceberg and spinach salad with fresh raspberry vinaigrette to counteract the steak and fries; Swiss cheese and cubed ham for Thomas on the side—good, quick and easy. Call up to him when it was ready,
Dinner! Letter from your ma for you!
and if he got no reply, bag it back into Ziplocs for him for later. Done.

Reflexively, he traced Thomas's footsteps all the same—best to see where he was, what he was up to anyway. Light left on in the hallway, washroom light, light on in the stairwell; no light shining from his own study doorway down the hall. “Thomas,” he called, to be sure. “T?” No answer. Went to the washroom to turn off the light, glimpsing himself in the lavatory mirror as he did—blue button-collar shirt, face flushed from cold or heat or possibly the beer, the haggard planar angularity of his cheeks more and more like his father's every day, though maybe not unhandsomely, he told himself. He bent to pick up a T-shirt of Thomas's left on the bath mat. Hit the lights. Continued upstairs. Knocked once on Thomas's door and entered.

As always, the smell: sweaty, fungal, like the inside of a dirty lunch pail or school locker; like an old sneaker full of orange rinds. Really, there was nothing to compare it with, though all too likely the smell would have an actual single physical source somewhere in the room—pile of ancient unwashed clothes, or plate of molding
meat loaf hidden somewhere, cup of sour milk forgotten for months on a shelf. No lights on. In the light thrown from the hallway, he saw him there, naked from the waist up, asleep. “Thomas,” he said. Then louder: “Hey, T! Wake up!”

“What's going on?”

He drew nearer. Set the T-shirt on the bed beside Thomas. “Dinner. Put some clothes on. Come on down.”

No reply.

“Thomas!”

“What?”

“
Dinner
time.” He breathed once in and out. Crossed arms over his chest and stood with his feet spread. “You
feeling
all right there, kiddo?”

“Arrraa . . . no.”

“Flu or something?”

Again, no response.

“Thomas! What are the symptoms? You say you aren't feeling well?”

“
Sí, sí . . .
”

“Spanish?” No response. “Hey! Come on.” He felt oddly alone and self-conscious—an arm's length from the boy, not much more, and given almost direct sight lines into his psyche and dream life, yet completely unable to access any part of it that might actually help him understand. Amusing, the absurdity (absurdism?) of it and their estrangement from each other. “Hey,” he said again. “Thomas!”

“Yes? What is it? ”

“You fell back to sleep.” And after another silence: “Thomas!”

“OK. I'm up now.” He rolled upright, blinking, nodding.

“I'm throwing together some dinner. OK? Nothing much. Just, like, a salad. Ten minutes. You want to eat, come downstairs. Otherwise . . . galley's closing.”

“Fair enough.” He fell back again and rolled solidly onto his side, tucking back into his pillow. “Galley's closing.”

“Also . . . Thomas? There's a letter for you. From your mom.”

“Sure.” His voice went higher and singsongy. “Be right down.”

He was not waking up. Had probably never woken up at any point in the exchange. This was familiar—typical more of Devon than Thomas, though Franklin felt pretty sure he'd seen it once or twice with Thomas, as well—not sleepwalking, just plain refusing to waken. In all likelihood, Thomas was, in fact, on the verge of a flu or other sickness and he would do just as well letting him sleep it off as long as possible. He remembered the heat turned up, the shirt stripped off and left in the washroom—so maybe T had had a fever and broken it . . . possibly taken Advil to cause that. He drew nearer, breathing Thomas's scent, surprisingly not as rank up close—sweet, like dried grass with a tinge of sweat and something else earthy he couldn't place—so evidently there was no direct correlation between the aggregate smells of the room and Thomas's body. Another mystery. He touched two fingers, then a wrist to Thomas's forehead: no heat, cool and dry. Smoothed aside hair and tucked it behind his ear. Delicate ear, outward-leaning like Jane's, tissues thin enough through the middle to glow pinkly translucent in most light—
the ear's pearly flowering,
he'd written her once in a poem, early on, maybe the first he'd ever written for her.
An ear fetishist?
she'd asked then, and he'd assumed this would not be a good thing to admit to, so he'd assured her no. A beautiful ear was a good thing to behold—chalicelike; maybe reflective of an innate intelligence or sensitivity. He wanted to believe so anyway. Sludgy, doughy ears, pancake ears, ears with overgrown flaps, these were unfortunate, sure, but nothing to put you off an attraction.
But is it the first thing you notice?
she'd asked. And he'd told her it was.
Of course
.
And asses
.
Bosoms
. His own ears, he supposed, seizing a lobe now, were too furred and square-topped, but otherwise of no interest.

Forget her, he told himself.
Never
.

He stooped and lifted a blanket from the floor. Shook and tossed it over Thomas, causing whatever had been caught in the folds—pens, pencils, a notebook, eraser—to ping and scatter around the room. It was hopeless, really, the boy's room—such chaos. Where would you even begin? He backed out, closing the door softly behind him, and went downstairs.

Moira's hat still rested on the coffee table beside the unopened mail like some alien creature, too plush and white. Why would anyone buy a hat like that anyway, let alone wear it? What was she thinking? Who was she? Yet, on her it had seemed right and of a piece. Glamorous even. He scooped it up and watched his fingers stroke and flatten the fur—Mink? Fox? He couldn't tell—almost disappearing through it, before drawing its brim to his nose and burying his face there to breathe her smell. Withdrew his face and looked around the room, knowing there was much to do here before she showed up. If she showed up. Cleaning, straightening, organizing. A lot to get ready. “Yes,” he said, and went upstairs to put the hat somewhere out of sight and change from his work clothes into sweats. Figured he'd clean awhile and then do a half hour on that clunker rowing machine to release. Crank up some music in the headphones and lose himself in a good aerobic purge. Calm the nerves, sweat it out, and ease his passage into whatever was next.

But an hour later, fed up with sorting through the piles of papers and magazines, junk mail, flyers, books left open and facedown, DVD and CD cases missing their discs, he crouched on the sliding padded seat of the rowing machine, arms pumping out and back, legs pushing against an imaginary current, and couldn't focus. Couldn't find a groove. For one thing, the right arm piston seemed to have lost its seal somewhat, so it pulled unevenly and out of sync with the left; also, the rubberized grip material on both sides, from age or disuse, kept shredding in his palms, so the more he rowed, the more he had to stop and regrip, dust his hands together. Resume. It had been much too long, and there was no music he felt inspired by—all of it too old, too familiar to get lost in: Police, Herbie Hancock, Neil Young, Grand Funk. He flung off the headphones and tried to find his own rhythm, out-back, one-two, push-glide, and for a while it was better that way, though boring, and he couldn't shake the persistent feeling that something or someone had entered the house. Kept checking over his shoulder and getting back into it. Someone was watching him. Again he checked over a shoulder. Nothing. Paranoia. Anxiousness about Moira, maybe.

Finally after twenty-two minutes of this stop and start, he quit. Went back to the kitchen on rubbery legs for water, and though he wouldn't admit to himself what he was doing, he knew absolutely: the utility drawer by the side porch door—all the way at the back, the cache of ancient Marlboros in the box of kitchen matches. He was pretty sure, last he'd looked, two or three remained. Well, he'd just check to be sure.... Old and stale and nothing to really satisfy the craving, but.... Out he went to stand, steaming, in the porch light, smoking, mostly numb to the cold, though he worried his wet shirt might soon freeze to his skin. No Northern Lights visible from this side of the house, only the moon high and small, ringed by a frosty corona. A song he couldn't place played in his head—something from one of the boys, he was pretty sure—the melody or part of a chorus, pieces only.
I don't want to be your ghost
.... He flipped away the butt and went back inside, knowing suddenly, as he came up the steps and into the kitchen, what the line was—the key into the poem he'd thought he was hearing the other day at school, weird warm Chinook wind day, before all the business with Thomas and Jeremy Malloy, Moira resurfacing. He went down the hall as if in a trance, snapping his fingers, tearing aside his wet T-shirt and tossing it up the stairs. Stepped through half-unpacked boxes to grab a throw blanket from the couch, tugging it from beneath piles of notebooks and magazines on the cushions and draping it around his shoulders. The word wasn't
sun
after all. Of course. Another trick of the ear: right sound, wrong word.
Son
. Tonight, he swore it, he'd start on their death scene and the final poem of the book—final wave carrying the seal-man and his son into the gunner's sites, one on his back, the other facing forward . . . the puff of smoke, rifle report, seals dropping, diving through the wave too late. . . .

PASSAGE/TALLURUTIK

A
S HE'D DONE WHEN HE WAS A CHILD, Thomas hid in the beam of light thrown from the TV screen and believed himself safe from all harm as long as he stuck in the little circle of blue-green illumination and didn't look outside it—as long as he huddled on the itchy basement carpet remnants and kept his attention on the screen. He started with
Night of the Living Dead
because if zombie sailors were, in fact, wandering around the house—if his imagination had caused some distortion in the space-time continuum, drawing them here to seek him again in Houndstitch, Alberta—then what better way to inoculate himself against their influence and against his own fears than with the mother of all modern zombie flicks? As always, watching, a part of him thrilled with anticipation, seeing the credits roll and the car winding its way through rural central Pennsylvania (so much like southern Alberta in black and white)—zooming toward the camera and careening past it; again, approaching and again zooming by—the creepy music, the turns in the road, entrance sign to the cemetery, all of it just perfect. Unsettling you and preparing you for zombie horror, with nothing but lighting and music to achieve the effect. It sped his heart and sent shock waves to make his fingers twitch and his kneecaps jump; yet, as always, through it all, another part of him stood aside, paying attention to the movie-making trickery—camera work, editing, and perspective. He mumbled along with the dialogue and kept his eyes on the screen, smack in the square, remote control in hand, ready to pause or skip backward or ahead as necessary, fast-forward through the slower scenes, get right to the flames and tire irons through skulls.

Even so, as he watched, he became increasingly aware of shadows gathering in his peripheral vision—deepening and shifting. He couldn't be sure. Didn't want to be sure. Also a naggingly insistent need to urinate. The shadows would most likely have to do with the pills and some way they were still causing light and dark to distort
and move unevenly across his field of vision. Also, he'd forgotten about the sore on his neck until something in one of the zombie's makeup work reminded him, and now he badly wanted to see it again. Wanted to stand in the washroom alone with the light on, up close, and give it a thorough inspection—study it and be sure there weren't any others. The tooth that had felt loose to him earlier was still sore and definitely more pliable than any of its neighbors, but that could be anything. Didn't have to be scurvy.

“This is silly,” he said aloud, and stood. Paused the movie. Still keeping his eyes from the corners of the room, he looked up and across to the doorway. Nothing. No one but himself. “Silly,” he said again, and headed up the basement stairs for the washroom, turning on all lights as he went. Not that zombies cared about light. In fact, in some circumstances, light was a hazard, a dinner bell, alerting them to the presence of human life. Fire was good protection, generally. And always, any kind of direct blow to the head was how to take them out. In his mind, he rehearsed some of the ways to pull that off: avoid a full-body embrace; sidestep and use the zombie's own forward momentum to get him off balance, keep him from grabbing onto you; throw him down, and go directly for the head. Stomp on the head. Hit or kick or stab the head. He supposed the scariest thing, generally, was their persistence . . . slow and indefatigable, shuffling after you wherever you went, enduring all body blows and just never giving up. They were as persistent as fear itself—the very embodiment of fear's nightmarish hold on the imagination. “Grow up, go away. Come on. There's no such thing,” he said, and flushed, and moved to the mirror to see. Leaned in to examine the teeth first, breath from his nostrils instantly clouding the glass, and tilted his head to the side. It was as he'd remembered, the right upper incisor surging just out of line with its mates. He lifted his lip and probed the gums there with his fingertips to be sure, wincing at the pain. Pressed again and stood back. Yes, redder than pink, sore and swollen. That was new. So he'd done it. Probably. Given himself scurvy.
He lowered his face to the faucet, turned the spigot, and drank. Again stood and leaned to the mirror to see his teeth, and again bent to drink. He focused on the differences in sensation and sensitivity in the various parts of his mouth as he swallowed and, leaving his mouth half-full of water, extracted the last of Griffin's pills from the vial in his pocket. A rectangular orange-pink thing with the letter
M
on one side and a line down the middle—different from the others. Swallowed. Dropped the empty vial in the trash.
Why not?
he thought.
You gotta live life
.