Mercy (25 page)

Down the bare board porch Mary rustles. Then a scraping, the feet of her chair pulling close. “Maybe my smoke’ll do us both, eh?”

The bugs back off and despite himself Carl feels thankful.

“You wondering what’s out here?” she asks. “Want me to tell you what I see?”

“If you like.”

“Well, behind us there’s the house, and it’s made out of bottles, all right, that part of the legend is true. It’s dark right now, but in the daylight it looks kind of like a hill covered over with flowers.” She pauses for a drag. “There’s a lamp hanging up over our heads, moths dancing around it, chucking themselves at the glass. A few of them at our feet here, too. Singed wings. One of them fluttering its last.”

He sits forward. Hears a powdery twitching, a delicate, dying thud.
Moths
. As a boy he collected their silver bodies, until his mother found a paper bag full of them at the back of his bottom drawer. It didn’t matter how he pleaded, she held the bag up high where he couldn’t reach it, stalked wordlessly down the stairs and dumped them in the crackling stove.

“We’re in a clearing,” Mary goes on. “Fairly dry, lots of hummocky moss. There’s a patch of Labrador tea dead ahead, moonshine lichen around some of the stems, glowing so you can see it from here. Over to your left there’s a big knot of tamarack roots I hauled back here for decoration. I guess I felt like putting my mark on the place after Castor died.”

“Castor?”

“Don’t tell me Her Worship hasn’t told you about Castor.”

“No.”

“He was my daddy. You know, the crazy bugger who built this place. Drank up all those bottles. That part’s true too.” She shifts on her chair, the old wood releasing a groan. “Just past the roots there’s what’s left of the old shack, and in behind that there’s the owl tree.”

“Owl tree?”

“Ravens built a nest up there a few years ago, abandoned it after a season. A couple of great greys came to check it out, but they didn’t like it enough to stay, so I shinned up there and did a little work—wove in some new twigs, bolstered up the base, left some vole fur lying around so they could see it was good hunting. It did the trick. There’s a pair and three chicks up there now.”

“Now?” He draws the blanket tighter. “Where, exactly? Where are they?”

Her smoky fingers take hold of his chin, manoeuvring it gently until he’s staring up into the dark mass of the nest—or would be, if only he could see.

Her hair twisted up in a red cone of towel, Lavinia limps naked into her bedroom, coming face to face with the closet’s mirrored door. She looks good. Better than good. Amazing, really, for a woman of—hell, for a woman of any age. She runs her hands up the flat of her belly, takes hold of her B-cup breasts. Still firm, still exactly where they ought to be. She smiles, picturing all those saggy-titted moms and grandmas down at the pool.

She bends forward and loosens the towel, shaking out her chin-length ash blonde hair. It’s a cut many women get but few can truly wear. Lavinia has the face for it—high cheekbones and Egyptian eyes, the kind of skin that holds a tan. Her contacts are a bold shade of green—again, something she pulls off where so many others fail.

Taking up the hand mirror from the vanity, she swivels to check herself out from behind. What are they thinking, those women who let themselves run to fat the minute the man coughs up a ring? She’s worked hard for this ass. It’s obvious how much Carl appreciates the effort, the way his hands seek it out in bed.

The idea of his touch makes her miss him. Surely he must have found Mary by now. Talk about letting yourself
go—that one still wears her hair like a black bramble down her back, only now it’s smudged all over with grey. It’s hard to tell what kind of shape she’s in under that pile of rags, but Lavinia can well imagine the mess. A lifetime of not bathing or wearing a bra, legs that have never seen a razor, let alone a professional wax.

It was Constable Chartrand who spotted Mary nailing up those pathetic scrolls. Lavinia hasn’t laid eyes on her in months, not since she drove down Leila Street and passed her shovelling snow. She idled at the stop sign for a full minute, staring. There was something so animal in the way that woman moved—something
Indian
, Mama would say.

Sunday best was torture—lace slitting my throat and wrists, tourniquet tights, a petticoat of spiralling wire. I should have been safe in the schoolroom, but you sounded off at me through the door. Lovesick, the teacher kept it ajar. Time and again her soul slipped out the crack, crawling up the aisle to take refuge in your gospelling mouth.

Your sermon washed over me like all the others, streams of nonsense with nouns leaping out. Fishes and loaves, baskets and grass, swineherds and blood and bulls. At times a scrap of story made it ashore—the baby to be cut in two, the fig tree blasted by Christ’s forgiving hand.

The teacher’s fur coat hung limp by the door, no animal left except you, Preacher, who’d offered it as proof of your
wilderness ways. “Lynx,” you’d told her proudly. “Big cat for the Reverend’s little kitten.”

I stalked it, slunk for it where it hung. The moment I made contact, the petticoat had to go. I scratched myself, howled and stamped, the others drawing back, the teacher kneeling, one hand shielding her face.

“What is it, Clare, what’s wrong?” She asked with words, never once having heard me speak. “Are you hurt? Show me where.”

I hauled at the petticoat.

“It hurts? The petticoat? Is it too tight? Too—scratchy?”

I froze, quivering in my skin.

“Is it scratchy, Clare?”

She wanted a word, a nod, even a look, but I couldn’t—it would’ve been like picking up a power line to offer the answer she craved.

She took a chance. Her hands under my skirt, digging fingers, and the petticoat fell frothing to my feet. It was nowhere near enough. I clawed at my neck, tore frantically at my chubby legs. The teacher panicked, began fumbling with zippers and snaps, undoing me until I stood shaking in cotton panties and nothing else. After a moment I reached out and stroked the coat.

“You like it?” she asked.

I grabbed a handful, burying my face in its camouflage blur.

“You want to wear it, Clare?” She slipped it free—clash and tangle of hangers overhead. “Here. It’s okay. You can wear it.”

I gathered it jealously, fur-side-in to my tenderized skin. Then scurried to my corner, grasped a grey crayon
and began to draw. Bliss. The others whispered about me over cookies and juice. The teacher drifted back to her doorway and the strains of your voice.

I slipped out of the panties. I needed all of me touching, the guard hairs piercing me so the
Clare
could leak out and soak deep into the tufted fuzz. Then there would be no teacher, no children, no church. Nothing but field after field of fur.

That was how you found me, Preacher, your shadow falling across my back.

“What’s this? What’s she supposed to be, a caveman?” You lifted me out of the coat only to find I’d left something of myself behind. “Christ!” you yelled, and the teacher gasped—the smear, the stink, you dirtying the Lord’s name in your mouth. “Cathy!” You turned on her. “What were you thinking?!”

“I—she needed it,” the teacher cried. “She needed something soft.”

T
he teacher’s cat comes stretching into the room, his pupils diminishing to slits. He marks me for his own, then the teacher, then cuts a long-bodied path through our work to sit waiting beneath the clock.

“Yahoo.” The time-bird comes out fighting. “Yahoo, yahoo, yahoo—” It hurls a dozen fast insults, the cat hunching and cackling his desire.

“Easy, boy,” the teacher murmurs, distracted by the image she’s just cut free. She holds it at arm’s length for perspective. Tilts it, plumed and wounded, to the light.

I opened the bird—took scissors from the craft box and pushed them in, snipped up the belly and laid it wide. Gizzard and guts. I hunted for its love, the egg-tenderness, inner mirror to the feathers it would’ve closed over a brood. Then fanned out a wing, held flight in the palm of my hand. Made a perch of my finger so it could hang bloody-breasted from its claws.

I felt the others draw close, then wailing and tears. The teacher grabbed and shook me, terror rending her face.
Why hers and not the bird’s? So peaceful. Dead on its glinting breast.

“She cut it open, Carl. With scissors.”

“So?” Hearing yourself, you softened your tone. “Cathy, kids dissect stuff. I did it. My friends did it. It’s normal.”

“At three?”

You brushed the back of your hand down her breast.

“It’s
not
normal.” The teacher tore herself from your gaze, staring past you to a doll on the floor. “She won’t look me in the eye, won’t speak—”

“I told you before,” you said evenly, “she’s quiet.”

“It’s more than that, you know it is.” Her voice sped up. “She won’t listen either. No, not
won’t
. It’s like she can’t, like she’s deaf, but only sometimes—” The light came on. “Only to human speech!”

You took a step back, your hand falling away from her side.

“It’s not healthy, Carl,” she insisted. “I’ve never seen a child play the way she does.”

Your dual focus on me was too much. The charge began coursing, forcing me to run circles up on my toes. It flowed into my hands, making me shake them, flap them hard to release a shower of sparks.

“See that?” The teacher pointed. “See what she’s doing? She’ll do that for an hour at a time.”

You gave her your shiniest, most settling smile. “She’s just being a bird, aren’t you, chicken? Just flapping her little wings.”

“Carl—”

“Come on, chicken.” Your hand looped out and tightened on my arm. “You come back down now. You know chickens can’t fly.”

Later, you nodded to where I hunched scribbling on the floor, my face close to the paper, as close as I could get it without colouring my nose. “See there? That’s a happy kid. She’d be happy doing that all day.”

The teacher stiffened in your arms. “But that’s what I mean, Carl. It’s not right to be happy with one thing for so long.”

“Oh, now.”

“See how she screams if you interrupt her. Go on.”

“She’s quiet, Cathy, that’s all. She’s a child of God.” You slipped the top button of her blouse from its hole.

“Carl!”

“We’re alone, sugar. Empty church.” Another button. The teacher cast me a glance. “Cathy,” you moaned, licking a finger and tucking it inside her bra. She melted, the spine sliding out of her to clatter on the floor. You pulled her after you into the storeroom, drawing shut the door.

Empty church.

Except for me, Preacher. Had you forgotten about me?

Back in Mary’s bed, Carl tries lying on his side, but finds the increase in pressure to his left eye unbearable. Besides, the mattress is too soft, with a definite central sag. He rolls onto his back and sighs.

“Ever seen a grey jay?” Mary asks.

“I wouldn’t know. Why?”

“He looks like a blue jay, only grey, and no crest on his head.” She pauses. “Used to have one, though.”

“One what?”

“Crest. He’s greedy, see. Steals scraps from the other birds, animals too, even humans, snatching them right off the plate. Then one day he eats so much he can’t move. That’s how he gets himself caught. This woman grabs him and lays him down on a stump while her man hoists up his axe. He’s not such a good aim, though, lops off grey jay’s crest instead of his head. Ever since then grey jay makes the softest nest, even uses the silk from old cocoons.”

It takes Carl a moment to realize she’s finished. “The softest nest? Is that supposed to be some kind of moral?”

“If you want.”

“I thought this was a story about greed.”

“Greed’s tricky. Some seem greedy when the truth is they just need a lot to keep going. You take shrews—if they’re awake, they’re eating, everything from ants to whatever they can manage to drag down. They’re like little furnaces. They’ve got the heat up so high it’s all they can do to get enough fuel. Weasel’s the same.”

Carl says nothing, a memory playing across the backs of his eyes. For years he rose early to gather the eggs, crawling up the ramp into the shadowy coop, sliding his hand under the sighing birds. He heard scuttling beneath the floorboards from time to time but said nothing, knowing Papa would make him go after whatever it was, down on his belly in the dark. He caught sight of the weasel only once, streaking away from the coop with a white feather in its fur.
Papa gave him a dozen of the best with the strap, one for every mangled bird.

“Why don’t you spill it, Reverend.”

“What?”

“You wanted to talk to me, right? I can’t see what else you’d be doing bumbling around out here.”

“Well, yes, actually. I thought we could discuss all this—fuss that’s been going on. See if maybe we couldn’t work something out.”

“Not if that something includes you levelling this bog.”

He holds up a hand. “Now look, I’m not sure where you got that idea—”

“From you. You know, a couple of weeks ago, you and Mayor Lavinia and the guy with all the equipment. ‘Pulp trees, horticulture grade peat.’ “She mimics the forestry consultant’s deadpan tone. “That guy.”

Carl gapes at her blindly, stunned. “You were there?”

“You never heard how the trees have ears? That’s some sweet deal you’ve got going, Reverend. The town tears out the bog and sells it off, then they turn around and invest in your little project. You get cheap land and the money to build with, Mercy gets hundreds of kids and their families passing through every summer, and Lavinia—well, she’s the real winner here, let’s face it—Lavinia gets shut of me and everything I remind her of, gets shut of this messy old bog,
and
gets to keep a certain preacher close at hand.”

He smiles tightly. “You’re mistaken, Mary. What you witnessed was simply an information-gathering exercise.”