Media from southern Quebec and even Ontario had shown up in Le Pin. They loved the angle: twins. Reporters appeared on the playground at the school and tried to interview Ferd, who remained mute in front of the camera. He looked confused, they thought, at the suggestion that his brother was dead.
A day after the accident, Algoma turned off the television, unplugged it, and faced it toward the wall where its single, glassy eye could not stare at her anymore. Yet, from morning until night she scoured the newspapers for articles about the incident, hoping to find new details, something she’d missed, or had not been told. If she could find a discrepancy, there was hope. Body not recovered became her mantra.
“He’s gone,” Gaetan said, slumped on the couch, knees up to his chin. “You have to understand that. He’s gone.”
“There’s no body,” Algoma said.
“Ferd saw him go through the ice.”
“It was dark and he was far away. He’s young. He couldn’t have known what he was seeing.”
“Leo’s gone.”
“There’s no body. There was no body.”
For weeks, she received phone calls from strangers who said they’d seen Leo playing on the north side of town, or playing with other children at the hill, or even skating on the edge of the river. Each phone call sparked hope in Algoma, but in each instance, she would later discover that it had only been Ferd going about as the living do. After that, the phone was unplugged, too.
In the beginning, Algoma’s sisters had come over every day. The house was filled with the voices of women and the smell of sautéed onions, great pots of soup bubbling on the elements. They’d tried to fill the empty space with food and company; however, Algoma shrank from their efforts and would not eat their offerings. Her body grew thin and frail until she did little more than sit in the living room and stare out the window. Her sisters’ visits were eventually replaced with concerned phone calls and messages, which she mostly ignored, and then nothing at all.
Gaetan began to request extra shifts at the Club and stayed later than he was scheduled. In the early hours, he sometimes found himself on the other side of the bar, his hands cupped around a glass of golden liquid as the cleaner passed through with a wet mop the colour of an overcast sky. Ferd found his way to the dinner tables of other families who felt it was their duty to care for him during the Beaudoins’ time of need. The mothers conferred with one another about his visits.
“He seemed quiet.”
“Wouldn’t you be? His mother losing her mind?”
“You would, too. He’ll… they’ll all be fine.”
“I’m just saying keep him away from the river.”
“Keep her away from the river.”
“Don’t even—”
“Rudy said he saw him at the river, just talking to the ice like it was nothing. Nothing at all.”
“The poor mother.”
The women began to pack extra treats in their children’s lunch bags.
Ferd emerged from the woods to find morning recess in full swing. From a safe distance, he watched a pack of students rampage across the paved yard, wholly engrossed in a game of their own making. Two teachers, bundled in sober winter coats and thick knit scarves, patrolled the grounds.
To Ferd, humans were no different from animals. Here, two adult females watched over the juveniles in an organized attempt to keep them safe. The children were careless and curious, unable to understand the potential for disaster that existed beyond the perimeter of the schoolyard or even within it.
Using language he remembered from one of his nature guides, Ferd narrated the scene. “The two adult females do everything they can to ensure the children make it to adulthood, but not all will. At least several will succumb to illness or accident within the first ten years of their lives; however, as a result of the reduced numbers, the remaining children will receive more food and attention, thus increasing their chance of survival and reproduction.”
Abruptly, the wind changed, and along with it several students lifted their heads, sniffed the air. Ferd lifted his. Smoke. The teachers followed suit and stared into the wind. Without thinking, Ferd walked off school property and toward the smell. The longer he walked, the stronger it became. Impatient, he ran the rest of the way until finally, breathlessly, he reached the source of the smoke. His heart was beating fast and furiously. He was already thinking about who he’d tell first and how he would tell it. It was like finding a pot of gold until he realized it was his mother’s store. He froze and noticed the cold for the first time that day.
A dozen people were clustered behind the sagging yellow caution tape, as if waiting for a second fire to start, or for someone to emerge from the ashes. A single manifestation of everything lost. Those who had lost something, like Josie, stayed away. There was nothing to salvage or to gain from staring at the remains. She was probably already out collecting what she thought she’d need next.
Ferd weaved through the small crowd until he reached the front. He tugged on the coat sleeve of an elderly woman with a Dowager’s hump who stood there holding a dog leash, her ratty mutt seated beside her feet.
“Where’s my mom?” He asked, his lips trembling.
The woman shook her head slowly, her paper-thin eyelids fluttering.
He spotted a police officer and ran to him. “Have you seen my mom?” He was shouting now. “My mom.”
The police officer, a short man with tired but understanding eyes, rubbed the back of his neck. “Listen, I’m sure she’s fine. Why don’t you calm down a minute?”
“But she works there,” Ferd said. He pointed at the collapsed building. “She worked today.”
“And no one was hurt,” the officer said. “No one was there when it happened. Why aren’t you at school?”
“My mom.”
The officer pushed his hat up high on his wide forehead and sighed. “Let’s take you home.” He guided Ferd to his cruiser. “I’m sure we can fix this. Where do you live?”
Through the living-room window, Algoma watched the police cruiser pull up in front of her house. She stood up from her chair and watched as the driver took his time to perfect his parking job. The cruiser moved back and forth several times before coming to a complete and perfect stop inches away from the curb. Algoma chewed her nails viciously. There was no place she could hide—no ditch deep enough, no culvert long enough to hold all she held close to her from the coming winds.
The red and white emergency lights turned off and the driver’s door opened. An officer emerged and took off his hat and adjusted his duty belt. When he looked directly at the house, Algoma collapsed to the living room floor.
“Ma’am?” The police officer held the back of Algoma’s head with one hand, her chin with the other. He gently shook her face. “Mrs. Beaudoin. Algoma Beaudoin. Wake up. Come on now. Time to get up.” He patted her cheeks and her eyes winked open.
“Ferd. What happened to Ferd? How did it happen?” she asked, her face ashen.
“He’s right here,” the officer said. “He’s sitting in the kitchen. See?”
Algoma, still lying on the floor, propped herself up and looked more closely at the officer, her eyes tiny, suspicious slits. “In the kitchen?”
“Yep, right there,” the officer pointed. “Look for yourself.”
Algoma looked over and Ferd waved. He was sitting at the kitchen table, his legs swinging back and forth. He was eating from a bag of chips, his T-shirt littered with crumbs. “Look Mom, new flavour.” He held up the bag.
Before she could ask any more questions, the officer threaded one of his arms through hers and lifted her up. “I think you hit your head on the coffee table. You should get it looked at.”
Algoma touched her head and felt a sticky liquid matting the back of her hair. She pulled her hand back and looked at her bloody fingers. The room shimmered like heat waves over hot summer asphalt. “Maybe I should sit down.” She watched the police officer’s mouth move but she could no longer hear the words.
“Do you wanna try a chip, Mom?” Ferd asked.
“I should drive you to the hospital, Ma’am. Do you remember what happened?” The officer reached for his radio to call it in.
Algoma’s vision flickered like a neon light about to burn out. “I can’t see.” She slapped her face, her hands like moths to a porch light.
Three nurses sat behind the Plexiglas barricade of the triage like stone-faced poker players who gave away nothing to the patients who sat slumped before them. Health cards and driver’s licenses were laid face up on the table. Histories and allergies exchanged. Next of kin noted. “Just a formality.”
The endless carousel of ragged patients, nurses, doctors, and paramedics was dizzying, all set to a soundtrack of sputtering coughs, beeping machines and the automatic doors whooshing open and closed every minute. Gusts of cold air filled the room. Flu-fuelled bodies, like small furnaces, trying to stabilize the temperature, their cheeks and foreheads bright red coals.
Seated on a gurney, Algoma buttoned up her shirt and gathered her purse. Her vision had come back hours ago, only minutes after she’d arrived in the emergency room, but the hospital staff had still asked her to stay. The gash, they’d pointed out.
“I’m fine now,” she’d argued, but they’d ignored her and carried on with their poking and prodding.
She disliked the stitches the most, the idea of being held together by thread. For most of the hospital visit, Ferd remained in the care of an elderly volunteer who told him the history of the hospital. She showed him what wing she’d had hip surgery and the room in which her husband had died.
“It’s a short walk from birth to the good Lord. Mine’s just taking a little longer than Matthew’s,” she said while fingering the ancient wedding ring looped through her silver necklace. When Algoma tried to offer the woman a few dollars for watching Ferd, the woman waved her away with thick, arthritic hands. “Nice to be of use.”
Algoma had her hand on the door, ready to leave, when she saw the officer seated in the waiting room. He was flipping through a copy of Châtelaine. She walked over to him. “Did you call my husband?”
Startled, he coughed nervously, folded the magazine shut, and tucked it under the side of his left thigh. “I, well, I called the bar. They said he was out, so I left a message.” He looked apologetic, “out” meaning so many things.
“Oh,” Algoma said. She looked at the floor and started to chew on an already ragged nail.
Ferd ran up to them and began to recite from the book he’d brought with him, The Field Guide to Eastern Region Trees: “Bear oak. Much-branched shrub or sometimes small tree with rounded crown.” He looked at his mother and then the officer. Neither said anything.
The officer stood up and stretched uncomfortably under Algoma’s stare. “Well, I guess I’ll let you two be if everything is okay.”
“Everything is okay,” she lied. Her head throbbed.
The officer nodded and tucked in the back of his uniform shirt as he walked away. He stopped at the door and turned his head. “Yeah, I bet he’s on his way. Don’t worry. You’ve got that one to take care of you,” he said, pointing at Ferd.
Algoma looked at Ferd. “I should be taking care of him.”
The officer smiled tightly, nodded and walked out the door. Algoma took a final look around the waiting room. Maybe she hadn’t noticed Gaetan. Maybe he was waiting for her, worried. The waiting room smelled like a mixture of hand sanitizer and rubber. Some of the illnesses and injuries were obvious—a poorly wrapped gash on a teenager’s forearm or a woman with road rash across her cheek, bits of pebbles still embedded in her torn flesh—while others were hidden in the body. An elderly woman fast asleep, her thin face pressed up against the wall, a curl of grey hair tucked into her half-open mouth.
Algoma watched as a paramedic tried to skirt past a gurney being wheeled in from an ambulance outside. The patient on the gurney was large and drunk, her cheeks flushed, lips covered in dried spittle. She flailed about, the gurney threatening to collapse beneath her, as the hospital staff tried to take her vitals. She let out a blood-curdling howl. “You’re killing me! I hate you!”
She looked around a final time. Every seat was filled, but no Gaetan.
Algoma turned to Ferd who was staring wide-eyed at the woman. “How did we get here?” she asked.
“Cop car,” he stuttered.
The drunk woman kicked a paramedic in the face. Algoma winced.
“Oh. Well, I guess we should—”
“Take a cab? There’s one outside, let’s go.”
Maybe he will take care of things, she thought.
A wheezing pregnant woman got out of the cab. While she paid the driver, Algoma and Ferd climbed into the back seat. There were only a few cabs in town. They were lucky to have seen one of them.
“Home. We need to go home now,” she said, and placed her hands on the driver’s shoulder like he was family.
Ferd was in the middle of explaining the difference between a black spruce and a red spruce when the cab pulled up in front of the house.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said the cab driver as he leaned back to accept a ten-dollar bill from Algoma.
“Please keep the change.”
He nodded appreciatively and smiled to reveal a set of bright white teeth, too many, she thought, to be in one mouth. Like a shark.
The elderly woman woke up with a start and pulled the strand of hair out of her mouth.
She didn’t know where she was until she saw the bank of nurses, parked gurneys. The hospital. She exhaled and her shoulders slackened. She touched her knee. It still hurt from where she’d spilled a pot of hot soup on it at lunch. It all came back to her.
She licked her chapped lips. Her mouth was unbearably dry, a complication of one of her medications, maybe all of them. She got out of her seat and set out to find a water fountain and immediately spotted one at the end of the hallway that connected the emergency room to the diabetes care clinic.
The fountain was not one of the flimsy metal ones the hospital had installed a few years back that always had “Out of Order” signs taped to front with strips of surgical tape. This one was white porcelain, the same kind they’d had years ago. She turned the silver knob and a stream of cold water arced from the spout. It was only when she leaned down to drink that she noticed the folded note—white paper on white porcelain—blocking the drain, water pooling over it. She picked it up. Att: Leo, it read on the outside in a child’s handwriting.