Inukshuk (4 page)

“It's not so bad.” In the middle distance, a raven was hopping foot to foot, whacking its bill at something on the ground.
Tock-tock,
like some kind of demented, stuck clockwork.

“So?”

“So, yes, the fight, or whatever you want to call it. I go have my stern words and so on, break it up, and then I'm escorting them all back into Legere's office, including the kid whose face they bloodied nice and good—who happens, incidentally, to be my son, but never mind that, for the moment—”

“
Your
son? Oh my.”

“Yes. And I'm escorting them all back inside, when Jeremy decides to make a run for it. So I stopped him. Maybe a little too harshly. Apparently, yes, a little too forcefully, but he was trying to make a run for it, which . . . boy. . . . So.” Picturing it, he still didn't understand the force of what had overcome him, didn't know why the brakes wouldn't have engaged sooner; heard Malloy's back hit the wall and felt the toes of Malloy's boots striking his shins, kicking, the
pain in his shinbones somehow not signaling to him soon enough that he should stop, let up, instead fueling his rage and causing him to bear down harder, move his face closer, and yell. “It just pissed me off, highly. So I grabbed him.”

“No doubt.”

“Well, it might have gone on a little too long.”

“Not long enough, alas. He's alive still?” She punched him lightly. “Kidding.”

Best not to play along with that one. “Alive and very upset, presently bawling his eyes out in Legere's office. Or was when I left.”

“Sounds about right. He was picking on your son—what's his name—?”

“Thomas.”

“Well, he was picking on Thomas deliberately to get a rise out of you and test limits. That's what I'd say. That's his thing lately. And then he's always so surprised when the door actually slams on his poor face and people are furious with him. I can't tell you . . . for a bright kid, he can be such a royal dumb ass.”

And then he remembered: dumb ass . . . class. He was the dumb ass. Glanced at his watch. First bell in three minutes. “Moira. Shit. I can't be doing this at all right now.” He caught her by the wrists and spun her to face him. Her skin was surprisingly warm. “I've got a class in a few minutes.”

She gave a crooked smile and nodded. Shivered once and blinked. Was she forgiving him? Understanding her effect on him and forgiving him for that, too? She turned her hands over so they lay palms downward in his. In all their time together, he'd never touched her this openly or long. Their last walk together, the walk of his foolish forthrightness, he'd finished with his arms folded hard across his chest, whether to contain his hurt and embarrassment, to prevent himself from saying more, or to keep himself from touching her, he couldn't have said. Had it always been this easy, and the only thing hanging them up had been his own hesistancy—his own good manners and marriedness?

Part of him stood aside, wondering about this—if it meant
something, anything, nothing . . . a new permissiveness opening between them, yes, but because of the time apart or something else? And anyway, what did permissiveness signal? Mostly, he enjoyed the pressure of her hands in his, the unexpected weight and warmth.

“Promise?” she said.

“What's that?”

“Promise you won't become a stranger again, stranger?”

“Ha.” He laughed falsely. “Doubt there's a remote possibility there, honey. We'll, uh, what do they say in the movies. See you in court?”

“There won't be any court. My son fights his own battles, and he can't afford my husband's fees. His
father's
way of dealing with things would be a little more personal, shall we say. Primal?”

He blinked to bring her better into focus—see if she really meant this or if it was code for some other information. More coyness or flirtation? No. She was serious. You didn't get to look that self-contained and radiant fighting anyone else's battles: She was a one-wick woman, solo candle composed all of self and slowly burning itself out. Not unlike Jane in that way, really. He understood, too, that the person whose attention Jeremy must most want and whose limits he'd been testing (and would likely never find) was her. Of course. All of this made perfect sense for about a millisecond, until he considered his own feelings: how to sort out the distractions and distortions there—what did his desire stir in her or cause him to imagine; how could you ever sort any of it, one thing from the other? No saying. Absolutely no saying or knowing on any of it. A mirage like the illusion of distance on a snowy, sunny day.

“You're a hard one,” he said.

“Nowhere near hard enough, I'd say.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“You don't have time now, remember? Class?”

He groaned. “Here,” he said, sliding from his wallet one of the stash of slightly bent business cards he'd been given by the school when he came on board the previous year, and for which he'd never found much use—part of some senior's Print and Media final project, he suspected: cheap paper stock and monster Gothic print that
looked as if it might have been lifted from one of his boys' D&D books. “Cell number's there at the bottom. Call. . . .” He went loping back across the lot to the side entryway, past his bent cigarette in the snow, still barely half-smoked. The same stretch of ground crossed once and now hastily jogged back over in the opposite direction—emblematic of absolutely nothing, he knew, and yet in the time between the one trip and the other, everything in his life seemed to have shifted course. Glimpsing his reflection in the upper window of the doorway as he yanked it aside, he wondered, That man, high school teacher and aspiring poet, windblown, shirt collar open in the middle of winter, beaming, desire clanging in his heart like the final rhyming couplet of a sonnet—who was he?

 

 

SHE CAUGHT UP WITH HIM just past the turnoff from the main road onto their street. “Thomas Franklin, you could be subtler about being a stalker, you know, hanging around waiting for my bus.” She swung out a pace and spun to walk backward, facing him, hands on her hips, wisps of hair swirling around her face; such an abundance of freckles and in such contrast with the paleness of her skin, he had the feeling, as always, looking at her, that she was peering out from behind a puzzle mask or field of static, the red-blue port-wine stain shaped like King William Island creeping from just under her left ear to her jaw and neckline, accentuating this like a hole or tear in the mask. “Ohmygod! Thomas! What happened? Your
face
.”

“That. Oh.” He touched his jaw and cheek. “Just some dried blood. It's nothing. From a fight.” He shrugged. “We match now.”

“We what?”

“Just kidding.”

Her mouth fell open. “You are such a
jerk
! I can't believe you just said that to me. Did you really say that? You're
such
a jerk!”

“Come on.”

“You
are
.”

Why the pleasure in meanness, he wondered, and then the regret? Idiot. Why had he said that? Irresistible, like tearing at a hangnail. “I
was kidding. OK? It was like a joke. Lighten up. Anyway, it's no big thing. Just a bloody nose.”

She was beside him again. He watched her boots, black, with fur trim, tick in and out of sight at the corner of his eyes, and waited a little longer before continuing his story. Flat, hard, overcast light; bare tree limbs framing the Rockies in the distance. Every other day for as long as he'd lived here—going on two years since the family breakup, Dad's big real estate cash-in, and the grand exodus from Calgary down Highway 2 south and west all of an hour to nowheresville /Houndstitch—they'd been walking home together like this, he and Jill. He'd entertain her with his tales of high school woe, answer her questions about classes and principles of dating, social groups, clothes styles, et cetera, babbling on as if he were an authority on any of it, something like what Devon used to do for him in years past (though he doubted Devon ever fabricated half as much). And more recently, four or five times since the start of the present school year, maybe more, she'd invited him inside with her and they'd ended up on the floor of her basement family room, making out experimentally for hours (her word for it—and he had no idea where she got it—
canoodling
) beside the giant muted TV. So her question was a fair one. Had he been stalking? Waiting for the junior high bus in hopes that their paths would cross? Possibly. The prospect of being asked inside was certainly something he'd welcome, if he thought about it—on the floor, her hair tented over him, enclosing them, lips on hers, tongue floating against hers, sweet smells of her saliva and lip gloss and of their shared breath absorbing him, faces so close the shattered mask of her skin disappeared, turned to what it was truly, dots and slashes of pigmentation, nothing hidden, and the port-wine stain . . . exactly the same to touch as any other part of her, though it made her eyes wink shut and the pulse jump in her throat when he did that. Weird. Yes. But he hadn't been thinking about any of this, or of her, he was pretty sure. He'd hung around at the Jerky Shack a few extra minutes, longing for something to eat or drink, anything to take his mind off of whatever—the horrible day, the restrictions on his rations to make the experiment work, the experiment itself,
his missing mother, his stupid life—anything
good
that wouldn't just make him feel like barfing later or clawing his skin off; waited until the other bus stop kids had cleared out enough that he could make his way home, alone, without any hassle. Then back out into the wind . . . odd how you still braced yourself, expecting it to suck your breath away like a real frozen winter wind, and when it didn't, how you still couldn't relax.

“These guys tried to steal my lunch. Kids do that, you know, in high school. No one's there to stop them. Some people say it should be like an open campus at lunch, like what they do at some of the bigger schools in Calgary, you know, where you can sign yourself out? Do whatever you want? But I don't know.”

Still she said nothing, but he sensed a slowing in her gait, then a quickening to keep up.

“So it turned into, like, an altercation. And everyone got hurt pretty bad.”

“Everyone like
who
?”

“Just some guys. The Hazard twins and a couple others. You wouldn't know. Bunch of hockey-jock jerks.”

“I should clean you up. We've got just the thing.”

“No!” He laughed. “I mean . . . I don't mean
no
. I mean, it's funny. Everyone's trying to help me now, since this fight thing. Even the bus driver decided it'd be cool to drop snow down my back.”

“He
what
?”

“It's like an ancient Inuit shaman treatment. I don't know. Worked, though. Stopped the bleeding.” He nodded, sniffed.

“I thought it was lunchtime?”

“What?”

“The fight. I thought you said it was at lunchtime?”

“This was after. My nose started bleeding again. Who knows why. On the bus home. I was bleeding all over. Gushing.”

They walked a ways farther, not talking, Thomas drawing mouth breaths while things he might say (one of which, stupid or lame or not, he'd eventually have to come out with—he knew himself well enough to expect this) and various ways of arranging the words,
pacing his breaths around them for a pause or emphasis, knocked at his skull and throat.
So what was your trick to clean me up? Soap and a good canoodle?
No. Too much like begging.
So what was your idea to clean me up—bum some money off your mom and go back into town for a cheeseburger? Sorry about that, what I said about your face. . . . It wasn't very nice.
He should start there. Yes. Some form of extra apology.
Sorry about that, what I said about your face. About your face, sorry about that. I was just trying to be funny, you know. About your face . . . I like you, but you're, like, in eighth grade—we can't get too serious or anything. . . .
No, that was another insult masquerading as an apology.
Sorry about that, what I said. I like you a lot, you know that, but whatever, you're just way younger than me and. . . .
But then he was thinking about kissing her again and there was no way into it. He had to remember to steal some of her lip balm next time anyway, check the ingredients for trace amounts of C. . . .

“I
hate
the stupid Chinooks,” she announced.

“Yes. You've said that.” The few other times, since they'd known each other, when the rain shadow had done its trick and the weird hot snow-eater winds blew down from the Rockies, she'd said it: The Chinooks were a fraud and a tease. Made a wind-burned mess of everything and drew you outside, thinking winter might be over, when it certainly was not.
Be real; stay cold
, she'd say in another second.
Don't tease me
. But he didn't entirely believe her. The hungry way she walked, her jacket draped over one arm, the extra movement in her arms—she was enjoying it.

“Don't you?”

“No. I mean, I don't care. It's all the same. Tomorrow will be winter again, soon enough, so whatever.”

“What if it's like this all week?”

“It won't be.”

“There wouldn't be any snow left.”

“Hardly any now.” He shrugged. “Global warming.”

“You believe in that?”

“Duh.”

“Al Gore–aphobia. That's what my dad calls it. Like the tooth fairy.”

“Your dad's an even bigger idiot than mine.”

“Probably. I say, stay real; stay cold.”