Living with the hawk (12 page)

We hurried back to the car. I could feel my shoulders shaking inside my jacket and hoped he wouldn't notice.

I was still shivering in the warm car.

“Sure as hell,” said Ivan, “they wouldn't have done it there.”

“They?” My body jerked against the seat.

“Whoever — I don't know.” He glowered at me. “Nobody's going to beat her up out there — where any car coming along would see them.” He gestured toward the farm yard. “Behind those trees, that'll be the place.”

He drove slowly along the narrow road, which was thick with weeds and grass, but not thick enough to prevent you from seeing that other cars had taken the same route. As we passed the caragana hedge, the car bounced beneath us.

“Ditch,” said Ivan. “Somebody dug it right across the road to keep people out. Kids must've filled it in years ago.”

Beyond the hedge the yard was full of swaying grass rising at least a metre above the snow, but here and there were tracks where cars had pulled off the road, patches where the grass was trampled down. High on the branch of a broken maple I thought I saw a shadow move. In one corner of the yard, a ring of snow-covered rocks marked an abandoned firepit. Near them, barely visible through the swaying grass, orange paint outlined an awkward circle.

Ivan swung his door open, got out of the car, swung the door shut again. I watched him step toward the circle. Wondered why I was just sitting here, watching him go. Finally, I dragged myself out of the car and followed him to the circle's edge. Here the grass was trampled, the crust of snow beaten down, but there was no sign of blood. From the edge of the circle, uneven footprints laid down a crooked trail through a break in the maples and out into the stubble field. The trail of someone staggering. Half a kilometre in the direction Anna had taken, smoke rose from the farmhouse she must have seen and tried to reach. Where the trail began, here in the heart of the circle, the snow was stained with urine.

S
IX

T
ires on gravel, motor hum were the only sounds as Ivan drove us back to the highway. Once he looked at me, and I shoved my Kleenex back into my pocket. It was already soaked anyway. Once, too, he spoke: “She was going in the right direction. Damn, if only she'd kept going.” After that we were both quiet. He had his thoughts, and I had mine.

I kept seeing that patch of yellow snow, kept thinking — I turned to Ivan. “Put on the radio, will you? This silence is driving me nuts.”

He gave me a funny look, but he punched a button on the dash and the car was filled with sound. Some country singer wailing on about his friends in low places.

“Maybe we shouldn't have gone out there,” Ivan said, “but I knew her, you know. Somehow it kind of seemed the thing to do. To see where it happened. As if I owed her that much.”

“Uh-huh. I knew her too.”

We bounced onto the highway and headed back to town. I noticed Ivan glance again at the dash.

“We're not going to have time to make it home for lunch,” he said. “Sorry. Maybe we better grab something at McDonald's.”

I was sorry too. “Okay, sure. Fine with me.”

That much piss, there must have been a bunch of them. Had the bastards tried to rape her and she'd fought back — was that what had happened?

“We'll try the drive-through,” said Ivan. “We can eat on the way back to school.”

“Yeah. Whatever.” I'd left my lunch on my locker shelf at school, hadn't even thought about it, just wanting to get away from the place, and then we'd gone to somewhere worse.

We clattered over the C.N. tracks on the edge of town, the tracks that seldom carried a train anymore, drove past the Canadian Tire Store, the A and W, turned in at McDonald's.

“You want a Big Mac?” Ivan asked.

“I guess so, sure.”

She had fallen in the snow and they had stood around her.

“Anything to drink?”

“No, that's okay.” I wasn't even sure that I could eat.

Ivan stopped at the speaker. A burst of static, a distant voice, and he was putting in our order.

All of them looking down at her, where she lay, crumpled in the snow, one of them suddenly hauling out his dick to piss, the others reluctant maybe, but one by one joining in. And I was sure I knew who they were.

“You can always tell when they like you,” Blake had said. “I'm gonna try again.”

The trouble was I didn't know what to do. I needed to talk to my brother, but he ignored me at football practice after school that day. They were working on a play where he lateralled to Vaughn Foster in the flat, then ran downfield himself so that Vaughn could pass the ball to him. A surprise play that might score a touchdown in a pinch. Yeah, and any kind of touchdown seemed like small potatoes now.

Football practice was no time for the kind of conversation I needed with my brother. I'd catch him at home.

When I went down for supper that night, there were only three places set at the table. My mother was busy at the counter, pouring soup into the frying pan.

“What's going on?” I asked.

She shot me a puzzled look before picking up a spatula and beginning to stir. “Just making Sloppy Joes is all.”

“No.” I pointed to the table. “Who isn't coming home for supper?”

She laughed. “Here, I thought I'd thrown you for a loop, putting soup in the fry pan. Your brother's sleeping over at Fosters'.”

“On a school night?”

“They've got that joint history project. Going to try to finish it tonight.”

“Oh,” I said. “Oh.” But I knew history wasn't what they'd be discussing. They were up to something.

Standing in the hallway outside my father's den, I could see his left elbow on his desk and beside it the stack of books that he always kept at hand:
Cruden's Complete Concordance, The Concise Concordance, The New Compact Bible Dictionary
(the only paperback in the pile),
The New Oxford Annotated Bible, The Book of Alternative Services
(the B.A.S. he always called it). In front of them was a pile of loose papers weighted down with an Indian hammerhead he'd found years ago in the Coteau hills west of town. Beyond the papers and the books, I could see the dull glow of his powerbook. Until six months ago, a huge old computer had stood like a stone monument at the centre of his desk, but then he'd bought a laptop that he could cart back and forth to church. The best thing he'd ever done, he claimed, grinning as if he'd just won the lottery. It didn't take much to make him happy.

I knew he must be working on his sermon, but I needed to talk.

When I stepped into the den, I could hear his fingers tapping the keys, but barely, for his touch was light and quick.

“You got a minute?”

Half a dozen words marched across the screen, followed by a period. He turned in his swivel chair. “Sure. Have a seat.” He smiled at me, that warm smile that said he didn't mind the interruption, and I thought, he's a good person, he can help if anybody can.

He motioned to the straight chair beside his desk. “Just set the minutes on the floor.”

I moved the binder of vestry minutes from the chair to the floor and sat down. A couple of pages must have been loose in the binder; they had partially slid onto the floor, white paper stark against the dark hardwood of the den. Like snow on rock, I thought.

“Well?”

You'd think I would have figured out what I was going to say. I'd tried, running things over in my mind, looking for ways of coming at the problem indirectly, of getting my father's advice without his ever knowing what it was I had to ask him about, but nothing seemed to make any sense. I was going to have to launch into something and see where it took us.

“There's this kid at school,” I said.

He was leaning forward in his chair, his hands on his knees. “Yes?”

“He's got this problem, and he doesn't know what to do.”

My father sat back in his chair, his expression thoughtful. “But he's got a problem and he wants you to help him with it?”

“Uh-huh, he came to me.” What could I say that wasn't going to sound stupid? “I guess he knew I was a preacher's kid. Thought I might be the one to tell him what to do.”

“Well, son, you might suggest he get down on his knees and try a prayer.” Sheesh! That was going to be a big help. For just an instant though I thought I saw a flash of merriment in his eyes, but I must have been mistaken, for he had more to say. “When I'm in a quandary about something, whenever I feel lost and don't know what to do, when there's a problem I just can't get a handle on, well, that's the time I go into a quiet room and take it to the Lord. It doesn't always help, you know, but sometimes it does.”

I grabbed
The Book of Alternative Services
from the stack on his desk, its cover a rich, dark green, the feel like leather. I ruffled its pages with my thumb. “The thing is, this kid, I don't think he's religious.”

“I see.” My father studied me, his right hand rising to his ear, his index finger stretching out to touch it. He had a habit of tracing the outline of his ear with his finger whenever he was lost in thought, and I knew he was thinking now. “There was that girl from your school whose body they found.” He almost caught me with that, but I was sure I hadn't flinched. “The native girl we talked about. Would this have anything to do with her?”

“No, of course not.” Was I protesting too much? “At least, I don't think so.”

He was still fingering his ear. “Did this kid say what his problem was?”

“Not exactly.” I knew I was floundering.

“Yet he expects you to help him solve it?”

“I guess so. Yeah.”

My father leaned forward in his chair, the swivel creaking beneath him. He reached out and patted my knee. “He makes it difficult, not giving us anything to work with. What exactly did he say?”

I never pray at bedtime anymore, but I prayed then. Oh, Lord, please, find some way to get me through this conversation.

“He said he had a friend, and this friend had done something pretty stupid, something they both knew was wrong. Only his friend didn't know he knew. But he knew all right — the first kid — and he had to decide what to do. Whether to tell him — or turn him in.” I sucked in a breath of air. “He couldn't very well just keep quiet. It wouldn't be right.”

“No, I guess it wouldn't.”

My father stared at me, and I stared back at him. Way down in the basement I heard the furnace come on, felt the pipes vibrate, the air begin to stir around us.

“Look, Blair,” my father said, “this kid must have told you something more. Something specific. What exactly did he say?”

“Nothing, really. He just seemed . . . well, troubled.”

“Come on, son. You've got to talk to me. What's going on here?”

“That's it. That's all I know.”

“Uh-huh.” Two syllables, and I knew he was angry. I had to say something.

“The thing is . . . he thought that you — that I — might tell him what to do.”

“Well, Blair,” he said, his voice calmer now, “I suppose he could try talking to his friend. Maybe they can work things out between them.” For a second he looked as if he might swing around in his chair, go back to work on his computer, but he was only shifting in his seat. “From the little bit you've told me, I'd have to say this kid at school has a pretty good idea of right and wrong. I think he already knows what to do. Maybe he just needs somebody to tell him to go ahead and do it.”

“I guess so, yeah, you're probably right.” I stood up, took a step towards the door, remembered the vestry minutes on the floor, scooped them up and set them back on the chair. When I was almost out the door, my father spoke again.

“Be strong,” he said, “and let your heart take courage.”

“What's that?” I hesitated, but I didn't turn around.