The Survival Game (22 page)

“Slut!” screamed Cal.

“Watch out!” said Burl. Cal staggered backwards right into a patch of new young flames as bright and bold as spring flowers. He swore and stamped at the fire with his stocking feet.

Burl by now had climbed out of the wreck of the table. His body hurt, felt broken somewhere, but he had to get to the fire. Already it was climbing up one of the rafters. He charged at Cal, who was dancing around in his smouldering socks. He caught him square in the small of the back, pushing him back until he fell on the mattress. As he fell, his arm swept Burl down with him.

“Let me go!” Burl screamed. Again he wrestled free. Grabbing a pillow, he began to beat on the flames creeping across the floor. Cal came at him again, but lost his footing. Burl turned in time to see him stumble. He pushed him for all he was worth, sending Cal hurtling backwards. Cal's feet were tied in knots of bedclothing. Rooted like a tree, he was felled. His big head hit the keyboard in a thundering chord. Then he crumpled to the floor.

Burl stood over him breathing hard, frightened and fascinated by Cal's stillness. Then he started coughing. His eyes were stinging. The pillow in his hand was on fire.

He hurled it away. He turned and saw that the sheets of the bed were also in flames. Burl had no shoes on; he searched for something else to smother the flames – there was nothing. He grabbed at the end of the bedclothes, yanked them off the mattress. He thought of throwing them on the floor to smother the fire there, but it was beyond smothering now. So he hauled the burning load across the floor, gathering up the pillow as he passed it. It was like dragging a dragon by the tail. It resisted him, tangling in desk legs and piano legs, around his father's legs.

Finally he pulled it free and raced for the door. He dragged the dragon outside onto the deck and down the slippery stairs until he had pulled the whole burning mess beyond the reach of the cabin, where he let it go. The wind soon whipped up the flames, and the sheets and blankets whirled in a freakish dance.

Moving out of the range of the smoke, Burl leaned against the deck, gasping for breath, his throat parched. He shoved a handful of wet snow into his face. Then he gathered as much snow as his arms could hold and ran back into the cabin.

His father had clambered back to his feet. He stood swaying, the can of kerosene in his hands. He was unscrewing the top. Before Burl's horrified gaze, he flung the contents of the can at the creeping orange carpet before him.

Drunk or stunned by his fall, Cal's reflexes were not sharp. He did not throw the can as well but let it dangle at his side. And the fire eagerly followed the trail of kerosene that led back to him. Before Cal could move, the fire was crawling up his pant leg.

Burl watched.

His father slapped and thrashed at the fire as if it were some annoying clinging child who would not leave him alone. He yelled at it and then he howled as it burned its way through his clothing to his skin.

Burl could not move. The snow, melting cold against his chest, seemed to stop his heart. He watched as his father fell to the floor, cursing and hollering, trying to unbuckle his belt, writhe out of this bright, new, scorching garment.

Then Burl's attention was diverted. The mattress under which he had hidden his pack was consumed in flames. He screamed and leaped towards it only to be hurled back by a wall of fire.

It all happened so fast. He didn't recall making a decision. Cal had rolled over and over, trying to smother the flames. He ended up under the piano, which is where Burl had to crawl to get him. He grabbed his arms and yanked. His father's pants were down around his knees, and Burl could see that the skin on the side of his thigh was melting. His father was unconscious, a dead weight.

Fire was falling now onto the shiny black top of the piano, burning holes in the lacquer, blistering it like the skin of some monster in a horror film.

Nothing could be saved. If Burl did not move quickly, not even he would be saved. For one horrible moment he didn't care. Then he stopped thinking and hooked his arms under his father's arms and dragged him towards the door. It slammed shut just as he reached it.

He panicked, couldn't move. In his mind he saw the Maestro frowning at him. “Now look what you've done!”

Then Cal moaned and the image evaporated, and Burl flung open the door and pulled the man to safety, his smoking feet thumping down the steps. He dragged him out across the snowy clearing to the beach. He left his father by the dead bonfire, leaning against the rock where he had been sitting so comfortably drunk and full only an hour before.

Looking back, Burl saw fire shoot through the roof, fireworks. As he watched, one whole side of the cabin sagged inward. He walked towards the blaze until he heard a huge piano chord boom out above the crackling of the blazing building. The sound echoed out and up into the sky and spiralled up to the stars. There followed a sound like a long train of firecrackers. The flames had found the box of cartridges, safely stored in his backpack.

It seemed odd – indecent – that Burl would actually light a fire. But as the night closed in, a controlled fire became a necessity. It was too dangerous to stay near the burning cabin. The heat was too intense; the destruction unpredictable. And yet how absurd it would be to freeze to death a stone's throw from a burning building. So when his muscles had recovered sufficiently, and the ache in his side turned out not to be anything broken, Burl hauled himself up and with a long stick managed to drag a mat-sized chunk of the deck across the clearing and into the ring of stones he had placed on the beach in such a careful circle one fine summer's eve. The kind of firepit his father had taught him to build. The wood was like a burning raft, sizzling along its prow as it ploughed through the snow.

He went back for more wood, and the path along which he dragged his burning supplies melted the snow and turned the frozen earth to mud, which oozed coldly between his toes. Cal, when he had come back into the cabin stupid drunk, had forgotten his coat by the bonfire. Burl draped it over him. He was still unconscious. By firelight, Burl heaped snow on his father's burned leg to stop the flesh from melting away completely. He felt like a small boy playing sandcastles. But the snow on Cal's legs melted again and again as it drew out the heat that seemed to have travelled bone deep.

As his bonfire grew, Burl also discovered the axe he had brought, which his father had taken and left by the fire. His guns, of course, he had not left outside. Even in a stupor, Cal the hunter would never think to leave a firearm out in inclement weather.

Kicking at the black remnants of the bedclothes, Burl found that a fair-sized section of his sleeping bag had survived, although it was charred and soaked in places from lying in the snow. He stretched it out on a boulder to dry by the campfire. Then he wrapped it around his father's shoulders. He had made one last trip back to the cabin while the entranceway was still an entranceway. The Maestro had left a coat hanging on the door. It was smoky but otherwise unharmed.

He found the small pack his father had carried in from the track. In it he found a plastic bag, and in the bag were the shrinkwrap and Styrofoam packaging off a chicken bought at the Safeway in Presqueville. That explained what the mighty hunter had been cooking over the fire.

Burl curled himself up near the campfire, looking back at the cabin from time to time as some loud noise indicated the collapse of another rafter, another section of roof.

At one point the piano thundered again. He imagined its legs had burned clear through and the great shapely torso had fallen to the floor. He recalled a trip to an abattoir with his father to see about getting a moose butchered. He had watched a cattle beast being slaughtered: first stunned by a hammer blow to the skull, collapsing on its knees. It was like that. The sweet black angel that had crossed his path down by the Skat looking like an air-lifted cow was now knackered. Destroyed.

At some point he noticed that his father was snoring – no longer comatose, but sleeping fitfully in his down-filled jacket. Burl wanted to throttle Cal awake, smash his big ugly head against the rock. He wanted to drag him back along the muddy path to the burning building and throw him on it. Give him a taste of hell. Get him used to the idea.

Granny Robichaud was a firm believer in hell. Burl didn't used to think much of it, but suddenly he felt quite certain that hell was what you made of things. He imagined Cal being let into heaven, no questions asked, all his sins left behind. How long would it take him to turn the place on its ear? How long would it be before he was plucking feathers from angels' wings just for the hell of it?

Well into the fullness of the night, somewhere around the time when the wolves own the woods, Burl fell into a dismal sleep. He gave up the dark pleasure of hating his father. He had no energy left for it.

The sun woke him. The sky was clear, the air soft. He breathed deeply, only to fill his lungs with rancid smoke. Both fires were out: the one before him, cold; the cabin still sizzling and smoking. A grey pall hung over it in the unmoving air.

His father was eyeing him coldly. Burl looked down at Cal's leg. It looked like an overdone Christmas turkey. His father followed his glance, grimaced at the sight of his useless limb. He tried to move, grunted in pain.

“You're gonna leave me here,” he said.

Burl didn't answer.

The man stared steadily at him, and Burl saw through the pain of his injury something weird, a kind of triumphant look hidden in the back of his eyes. If Burl deserted him, his father would have won some stupid game. He would have proven once and for all Burl's worthlessness.

Burl tore his gaze away from the man, started poking at the dead fire. A few red embers got turned up in the exploration.

“Why would I want to leave you here?” he said. “The CPR people saw us get off together – well, at the same stop, anyway. Once somebody finds your dead and rotting body, I'll get blamed for it. No thanks.”

Cal laughed, but the effort disturbed his leg, and his face contorted in pain. He swore. Gingerly he tried to move into a more comfortable position.

Burl heaved himself up. Every joint in his body hurt. One of his legs had gone to sleep; his bare feet were black with ash. He would have to figure out some kind of footwear if he was going to get out to the train, with or without his father.

He walked along the muddy path, now hardened again. Came back with a few sticks of lumber that he tossed on the campfire.

“What makes the most sense is to go out and get the train people to radio for Search and Rescue.”

His father looked up at him, haggard but with that crazy glint in his eye.

“Like I said, you're gonna leave me here.”

“Maybe,” said Burl. “And if I do you won't know for sure if I told anyone once I get out.”

He left Cal with that thought.

“I won't be lying here!” Cal yelled after him. “Don't think I'll be lying here.” It was meant to be a threat, but Burl was beyond threatening by this point. He had things to do.

His first thought was to see what there was around that he might be able to use. Shoes, for instance.

He was already shaking like a leaf by the time he made it to the shed. His feet stung with the cold, and he began to worry about frostbite. It took all his concentration to open the lock, slide open the door. But his memory had served him well, and he sat immediately on a pail and began to work. There was string, and scraps of the tough black plastic material that had been used as a moisture barrier in the construction of the cabin. There was rigid blue insulation stuffed in around the generator, and Burl broke off a couple of pieces that he fashioned into soles with his pocket knife. He strapped his foot and the ragged blue sole together in plastic and then tied the string around and around. He stood up. They weren't much for flexibility, and he doubted they would be particularly warm, but they were shoes.

He thought about making a space for his father in the generator shed. He could drag him up there, then at least he'd have some shelter. Then he looked at the path up the hill which led to the miner's cabin. He saw nothing but trees decked out in Christmas-card snow. It would be a long haul up to the ridge with Cal fighting him the whole way.

Take Cal to the miner's cabin? What was he thinking! Somehow Cal would find a way to destroy the neat-as-a-pin cabin. It had to remain a secret. Burl had to have somewhere that was not his father's. It didn't matter how small a place it was.

He made his way back down towards his father, his new shoes squeaking with every step. The blue jays and chickadees were chattering, the sun was rising. Snow was already melting from the evergreens. Out towards the centre of the lake he could see a stretch of open water, black as ink.

“Hey,” called Cal, when he saw Burl emerge from the bush. “Give me a hand here.”

“In a bit,” said Burl.

“I gotta piss,” said Cal.

“Go ahead.”

Burl looked again at the black junkheap smoking in the cool sunlight. There was no door you could knock on now – not three times, not even once.

Carefully Burl made his way into the smoking ruin. His makeshift boots proved slippery, but the floor – what there was left of it – was too hot in places for bare feet. So he tore up strips of old blanket sufficiently wet from snow and bound his feet in them. There was shattered glass everywhere. He stepped carefully, testing each step for unsound wood. There was more of it than sound. And more smoke. He pulled his T-shirt up over his nose.

He made several trips into the wreck, using a pine branch to prod and sweep through the ashes. He found the second can of Irish stew, the tin blackened and too hot to handle. He scooped it out of the cabin with a broken stick.

He could see leftover construction material in the crawl space below the cabin. There was something else down there, too – the grotesque corpse of the piano. The crash he had heard the night before had carried the huge instrument clear through the floor. Now only the iron frame remained in a tangle of coiled-up wires. One of the crosspieces had snapped. In the mud lay a heap of keys, so charred, it was hard to distinguish the white ones from the black.