The Retreat (21 page)

Or she was dead. His mother
was
dead. Though his father said she had written, Everett had never seen the letter and he imagined now that he might have been lying. To make him feel better. Harris said that she would come back. They had been sitting at the edge of the pond. Some mothers were like that, Harris said. They flew away with one kind of message clutched in their claws and returned with a different message. Not better, just different. But they always returned. Harris looked at Everett. “How old are you?” he asked.

According to his father, Harris was ineffectual, crippled physically and emotionally, and he was a cuckold. Everett remembered this when the man asked his age. There was little comfort in Harris’s words. And with Everett’s response, Harris nodded. He ducked his small chin and asked if he should read to Everett. In the last while, he had been reading
Gulliver’s Travels
to anyone who wanted to listen. Usually in the late afternoon, by the pond, when everyone was tired and stretched out on the sand, Harris would read and laugh and then cast his gaze about, seeming to expect others to laugh as well, and sometimes they did, but not as enthusiastically as Harris.

Everett said that he was going for a bike ride, and he picked up his towel and walked back to the camp. He wanted to go up to the cabin to visit Raymond’s brother Nelson again. He had already been at the cabin, Nelson had invited him, and when he got there they had played chess and then they’d driven to the dump where Nelson taught him how to shoot a gun. Later, they had shared a beer, and Nelson had asked if Everett wanted to smoke a joint. He didn’t. Nelson smoked
and talked and at one point he said that these were the confessions of a resolute sinner. He had not stopped talking, and Everett felt like they were equals, that Nelson saw him as someone worth sharing things with.

And so he set out now, down the highway and then onto the long road towards Bare Point, thick bush on either side and in the bush his mother’s body. She’d picked up a hitchhiker and been strangled and dumped in the bush. A bird called and it was his mother’s voice. He pedalled faster, panicked now, breathless, up the narrow road to Raymond and Nelson’s cabin, where he found Nelson before a small fire near the swing, roasting wieners. Nelson showed no surprise when Everett appeared. He said he was alone, Raymond was out on the lake with his boat. “Hungry?” Nelson said.

Everett laid his bike on the ground and stood beside Nelson and watched him eat and then took a wiener himself and roasted it and ate it plain, chewing slowly. He said that he’d been bored at the Retreat and he hoped Nelson didn’t mind him coming to visit. He said that his mother had left, and ever since then the Retreat seemed different. His father was different. He was always alone and it made Everett sad, and so he tried to stay away from him. Lizzy had changed too. “She’s quiet and keeps to herself,” he said. “And she thinks about your brother a lot.” He said that the only one who hadn’t changed was his smallest brother, Fish, at least as far as he could notice.

Nelson went inside and came back with a bottle of whisky and two glasses and poured the whisky into the glasses and handed one to Everett, who drank, a little fearful but curious
about something he’d never tasted before. He shuddered, hating it, but he drank again. The whisky sat in his throat and chest and then all sad thoughts gradually floated away and disappeared.

They sat by the fire on lawn chairs patched with bicycle tubes and Nelson told Everett how he had shot a skunk the night before, down by the well, shot him right through the head and buried the little thing out in the bush so the rotten smell wouldn’t drift up to the cabin. “Got him before he could spray.” He said that he used to shoot birds in Lesser, down by the river, him and Lawrence Neufeld. “We’d lie and wait and the idea was to take off the head without damaging the body. I was good. Larry called me a fucking potshot, which I was, and we’d laugh and shoot some more. Larry’s in Bible school somewhere. B.C., I think. For a time in my life, six months maybe, I was going to be a preacher. I got baptized. Had a girlfriend, Dorothy Stoez, who wanted to be a preacher’s wife. You know? In grade seven, Mr. Arndt took us to see a dead body, a young boy maybe nineteen or twenty who had fallen from a radio tower. Three hundred feet and all he had was a slight bruise on his forehead. We traipsed by the coffin and went up on tiptoes and looked in and then we went back to class. I don’t know what the point was, though I remember the assignment. Write a poem. About anything. So I wrote about Grandma Seymour. She’s still alive. Has a house on the reserve and lives with Reenie and company. She’ll live forever. Goddamn invincible. The poem was about her dying. Huh. Funny, that.”

He paused, lit a cigarette. He said that when he came back here, to Kenora, he saw that his grandmother hadn’t changed
at all. She was still his grandma, though not the same with him. Like he’d gone away and been someone else for ten years and then he’d reappeared but she didn’t know him any more. You know?

He said that at Everett’s age he had been a pretty good viola player, was in the community orchestra out in Steinbach and played in church Sunday mornings and all the women swooned, especially Mrs. Pauls, who always wore something different with her dangly earrings and high heels. “I loved imagining what she’d wear next. Then, I went to a music competition in Winnipeg and I was smoked. Little fish arrives in big pond. I didn’t play much after that.”

Everett could feel the warmth of the whisky in his head and chest. Nelson’s voice was soft, his eyes were dark. His life seemed so much larger than his own, and everything seemed to come easily to him.

Nelson leaned forward and said in a confidential tone, “In school, I took German for five years. Mr. Goertzen beating me about the ears, trying to augment my vocabulary as I struggled with insane passages.
Ich.
Weird. Me speaking German.
Na, sie sieht immer noch ein bisschen blass aus.
‘My, she’s still looking a little pale.’ ” He paused, then said, “Looking pale.
I
was very pale. So pale, I didn’t know who I was. This is what I learned.”

He sat back. “By the way, your sister left a dress here some time ago. Red.”

Everett said that that might be his mother’s dress.

Nelson motioned inside. “Go ahead. You’ll probably want to take it back when you leave.”

Everett stood and stumbled slightly. Nelson chuckled. Everett moved into the house and found the dress in a plastic bag beside the mattress. He picked it up and smelled it. Cigarette smoke and a hint of Lizzy, but mostly his mother. He breathed in deeply, then put the dress back in the bag and carried it outside. Nelson was standing, urinating in the bush. He looked over his shoulder and called out, “Find it then?”

He zipped up and turned, saying that he’d come across it the day before. “It’s a beauty.” He said that he used to go shopping with his stepsister Emily, for her clothes. “Girls are lucky, don’t you think, all that choice.” He said that he once tried on one of Emily’s dresses, just for fun.

A cool wind came up the hill. “Wanna go in?” Nelson asked, and not waiting for an answer he walked into the cabin and sat and poured himself another shot. He did the same for Everett and said, “Drink up.”

Everett looked at the whisky in his glass and then took a sip. Bull passed by and rubbed against his legs. Everett reached down and scratched her head. “Where’d the cat come from? Is it yours?”

“I found her wandering around the dump, scavenging for food, and I thought that’s no life for a lady and I brought her home.” He sat back and smiled at Everett, who smiled back. A hazy glow. Wind in the trees.

“When you have to go, I’ll drive you,” Nelson said. “I have Reenie’s car. Throw the bike in the trunk. Easy. Very easy. Like speaking German.
Ich.
Go ahead, say it.
Ich.
”

“Ich,”
Everett said.

“Attaboy.”

“My father likes to mix up languages,” Everett said. “Throws in a bunch of French words and makes my mother laugh.”

“Sure it does.” Nelson studied Everett and then said, “She’ll come back.”

“You think so?”

“I’m certain.”

Everett smiled. “Am I drunk?” he said. “I think I am.” Something had been set loose inside of him.

“First time?”

Everett nodded.

“Oh, boy.”

“Ich,” Everett said. He laughed.

Nelson said, “Go. Why don’t you try on the dress.”

Everett looked at the bag in his hand, at Nelson, then back at the bag. He took out the dress and held it up. “This?”

“Yeah. Put it on. It’ll be fun.”

“I’d look stupid in my mother’s dress.”

“Why don’t you just try and see.”

Everett stood, stumbled, and moved to the bedroom. In the dim light of the room he laid the dress on the floor. He stooped to untie his runners and fell over onto the mattress. He could feel the beating of his heart. Then Nelson called out. Everett lifted himself and said, “Almost done.” Seated on the mattress, he removed his shoes and socks. Pulling his T-shirt over his head, he lost his balance and fell backwards again, then managed to remove it. He stood and unbuckled his jeans and dropped them. Kicked them away and stood in his underwear. He thought for a long time about his underwear. He
had the beginning of an erection and he looked down at himself. He took off his underwear and picked up the dress and undid the zipper. He pulled the dress on, as he had watched his mother do so many times. It slid easily over his shoulders and hips, the arms went in, and there he was, clothed. His hard-on was real now. He reached behind his waist for the zipper and then called out that he needed help.

“Come here,” Nelson said.

Everett backed out of the bedroom and stood waiting. His erection embarrassed him and he didn’t want Nelson to notice. The light was weak. Nelson came up behind him and took the tongue of the zipper and pulled it upwards. A soft insectlike sound. Nelson’s hand against his back.

“There,” Nelson said. “Let me see.”

Everett swivelled, his hands in front of his crotch.

“Well. That’s good. Very nice. Whaddya think?” He motioned at the chair and said, “Sit.”

Everett sat. Crossed his legs so that his right foot extended towards Nelson who reached out and touched a toenail and said, “Next time you can bring up some nail polish and we’ll paint your toes. Red. Or something groovy and bright.” He laughed.

Everett was shaking. He wasn’t cold, but he was shaking, and it came from deep inside.

“Hey, don’t worry,” Nelson said. “We’re just fooling around. Nothing to worry about. It doesn’t mean we’re perverts or anything, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Everett was conscious of Nelson’s mouth and of his hands flitting through the air. Nelson said that a friend of his, a
good man, had once said that the happiest man was the one surprised at nothing.

A draft of air came in through the open door and passed over Everett’s neck. He looked down at his bare legs and saw the hem of the dress. He heard the wave of Nelson’s voice, and he saw the way Nelson was watching him, and he was surprised. He didn’t want to be surprised but he was, by the erection he’d had, by Nelson’s easy manner, by the hollowness inside him that felt like when he was hungry, and yet it wasn’t exactly hunger. He was surprised by all these things and so he knew that he couldn’t be happy. Perhaps Nelson had tricked him, or he had tricked himself. He stood and reached for the zipper. “Please,” he said, and he turned and asked Nelson to unzip him. He wanted to change and go back home.

They drove down towards the main road, sliding through dusk. On Everett’s lap was the plastic bag holding the dress. They drove in a silence that confused Everett. He wondered if he had done something wrong, if Nelson still liked him. At the Retreat, Everett climbed from the car and Nelson took the bike out of the trunk. He leaned it towards Everett and said that they never had their game of chess. “You come back any time and we’ll play,” he said.

Everett stood and watched Nelson disappear, then he looked up at the sky, which was clear and full of stars, and it felt as if he was standing at the bottom of a deep well.

N
ews of the native protest at Anicinabe Park arrived at the Retreat via radio and newspaper. Early on, the protestors had threatened to blow up both the hydro dam and the pulp-and-paper mill. The town might also go up in flames. One of the leaders of the occupation asked, “What are a few houses when every Friday and Saturday night blood can be seen running down the sidewalks because of vigilante actions against native people?” At breakfast one morning, the Doctor unfolded the newspaper and read aloud from an interview given by Gary Cameron, the leader of the occupation. Cameron said that one of their goals was to take back the park that had been sold out from under them years earlier, another was to draw attention to their people, who suffered at the hands of the government, the courts, and the police. He said that natives were tired of being beaten up and handcuffed and thrown into jail and paraded up and down the main street of Kenora in police cars. Houses on the reserves were death traps. There were no social services. He had a list. The people were tired and fed up and now they were taking action.

The Doctor laid the paper down. Lizzy noticed that he had voiced no opinion about the protest, for or against, though
when it came to social justice, she knew that he favoured the underdog and liked to quote from Christ’s beatitudes.

That evening, she rode the bicycle up to the cabin where she found Nelson sitting on the swing, Bull in his lap. She approached him and straddled her bike and asked if Raymond was home. He wasn’t. Lizzy looked at the open doorway and then asked when Raymond was coming back.

Nelson said that he didn’t know. “He’s a political protestor now, up at the park. Sometimes he comes back for the night, sometimes he doesn’t.” He shrugged. Lizzy looked at Nelson and shifted her weight onto one leg, her hip pushed out. She was wearing jean shorts and flip-flops and a T-shirt and aware of how Nelson leaned forward as if to inspect her. He said that Raymond might be back at any moment. Or he might be back in a week. He said that his brother was naive. He had discovered justice and protests and guns.