The Beggar's Garden (29 page)

“I think I might have got the taste for sleeping indoors again,” he said, sitting back down. “And my hips feel a hell of a lot more spry not parked on the pavement all day.”

“You know, I don't mind having you around, really,” said Sam. “You could stay a while, keep up the garden, just until you find something else.”

Isaac drew a slow breath. “Sam, what's my balance running?” he asked.

Sam crinkled his nose, then extracted his pocket notebook and descended the column of his neat script with a finger. “With this month's interest, it looks like twenty-two hundred and some change.”

“I been thinking I may go out to that crazy institution and try to drum up my brother. I never found nothing but trouble in this city besides, and with that much cash in my hand it might help if I had someone else to take care of. I never done so well fending on my own.”

Sam drove to a twenty-four-hour teller. He had to call some tech guys at the bank to lift his thousand-dollar withdrawal limit so he could empty Isaac's account. Before he left, Sam slipped a thousand from his own account into the wad.

“Sometimes I didn't even believe you'd actually give it to me,” Isaac said when Sam returned, clacking the edges of the bills on the garden table like a deck of cards.

That night, Sam woke to a figure standing over his bed holding a garden spade.

“Someone's trying to get in,” Isaac said.

Sam stopped his breath and strained his ears. He heard only Isaac's wheezy inhalations. “In here?” Sam said, sleepily. “Why?”
He rose to follow Isaac to the door, who slid the bolt lock back and nudged it open with the tip of the spade.

Outside they discovered a group of raccoons rummaging a torn-open orange bag of yard clippings. They'd surprised them, and the largest one reared and bared its teeth but made no sound. Sam stood with the cool air licking him between the buttons of his pyjamas.

Isaac drew the shovel over his shoulder like an axe. “Say the word,” he said.

Sam raised his fist in a halting gesture he'd seen in Vietnam movies and took a step toward the hackled raccoon. Tiny stones bit into his naked heels. When Cricket was four she didn't speak to him for nearly three weeks after he refused to let her try to pet some raccoons they saw in Stanley Park. It was common knowledge that raccoons were dangerous things, especially vicious when cornered or defending their young. In minutes they could cut a man to ribbons with their sharp furtive claws. But looking down into the face of this particular beast, Sam wasn't so sure. It seemed to him more like a gentle, nomadic creature. A lonely thing. Something that would rather live at night off table scraps and garbage than face the roaring bustle and endless conflict of the day. And this was its little family, he supposed, judging by the way the smaller ones skulked at its haunches. Really, it looked more weary than anything as it completed its appraisal of them and settled back on all fours. Then it swung its white snout toward the garage of Sam's neighbour, mustering a final glance over its shoulder, holding Sam and Isaac in the hollows of its eyes before ushering its family beneath a camper van.

“Whew,” Isaac said when they were back in bed, and Sam heard the slosh of his jam jar.

In the morning Sam woke and Isaac was gone, just a gamey smell on the bedroll that he'd folded up and tied neatly with a shoestring. Sam sat out in the garden awhile. A few frigates of white cloud inched west toward the ocean. Fragrant wafts tore through the lanes between the houses and rustled the leaves of his garden with a pleasing hush that reminded Sam of rough hands passing over soft skin. After some time, he stood and clicked open the side gate and walked around to the front of his house. He climbed the three steps, took a little jump, and drove his brown loafer into the centre of his front door.

Thanks to:

Linda Svendsen, Rhea Tregebov, Maureen Medved, Jen Farrell, Conan Tobias, Bryce Firman, Arnie Bell, Jackie Bowers, Leslie Remund, Sheryda Warrener, Claire Tacon, Michael John Wheeler, Sheila Wilkes, Dennis LeDoux, Lee Henderson, Iris Tupholme, Jennifer Lambert, Stephanie Fysh, and my agent, Anne McDermid, for their invaluable contributions;

Alex Schultz for his incisive editorial ministrations;

Benji Wagner, Dylan Doubt, and Rick McCrank for their friendship;

my brother, Jason Christie, for his expertise and encouragement, and my father, David Christie, for his love, support, and the unlimited use of his library;

my dearest, Cedar and August.

The Beggar's Garden

Copyright © 2011 by Michael Christie.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

EPub Edition © DECEMBER 2010 ISBN: 978-1-443-40543-0

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

FIRST EDITION

The following stories have been previously published in slightly different form: “Goodbye Porkpie Hat,” in
subTerrain Magazine
and
The Journey Prize Stories
(vol. 20); “The Quiet,” in
Taddle Creek;
and “The Extra,” in
Vancouver Review.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
2 Bloor Street East, 20th Floor
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M4W 1A8

www.harpercollins.ca

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication information is available upon request

ISBN 978-1-55468-829-6

HC 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1