All the Broken Things

Way Up

The Nettle Spinner

Perfecting

The strangest of the truths in this novel are the facts of a bear wrestling circuit in Ontario, the production of Agent Orange in the small town of Elmira, Ontario, and freak shows at the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE).

Ontario outlawed bear wrestling when a bear mauled the trainer’s fiancée to death in 1976. Freak shows were a huge attraction at the CNE, with many freaks making their international debuts in Canada, and only ended in 1979. Agent Orange was produced by Uniroyal (now Chemtura) in Elmira under contract for the U.S. military for the purpose of defoliating the jungles of Vietnam during the war.

Chemical manufacturers knew that the dioxin in Agent Orange was both carcinogenic and mutagenic. Some 83 million litres of the poison was dropped onto South Vietnam from 1961 to 1971. The victims of Agent Orange have not been properly acknowledged and the legacy of Agent Orange continues, as the chemical works its way through a third generation of exposed Vietnamese citizens. Canada has never admitted any responsibility for this.

I have played a little with time because I felt the story needed a carnival.

L
OOK AT THE BEAR
licking Bo’s toes up through the metal slats on the back porch. Bo is fourteen years old, and the bear not a year. The bear is named Bear. When the boy spreads his toes as wide as he can, Bear’s mottled tongue nudges in between them and this tickles. Bear craves the vanilla soft ice cream that drips down Bo’s cone and onto his feet. Bo imagines it must be glorious for Bear to huddle under the porch—her favourite spot—and lap and lick up the sweet cold treat. He imagines himself tucked in down there pretending to be a bear, and how wonderful it might be, after a day alone, to have someone drip sweet vanilla ice cream right into his mouth.

Bo crouches, peeps down between the corroded slats, holds the cone over his feet, and waits as the ice cream melts and then slides through his toes. The first drips shock, but then his body warms the liquid up, and it is a velvety feeling, the ice cream streaming everywhere, making a mess—of himself, the porch steps, and Bear’s fur. Squatting, Bo waits with his free hand for the long piebald tongue. Bear curls back her lips to smiling and presses her fangs up against the bottom of the porch, and there it is.

Bo grabs the animal’s tongue and feels it slip wet from between his fingers. “I got you!” Bear shakes her head, banging it against the porch, and huffs at Bo. She knows this game.

Still, determined to taste the ice cream and salty boy-skin, she shoots her tongue out again anyway. Bo bides his time until the tongue is so busy probing between his toes and up along his foot that he is sure Bear has forgotten about the game, and then, Bo nabs the tongue at the base and hangs on, laughing. Bear tries to swing left and right but she is caught. And then a great paw comes up, sliding along the porch slats, and Bear begins to moan so plaintively that Bo lets go.

“Oh, Bear,” he says. “Oh, Bear.”

Bo loves the tongue sweeping coarsely against his skin, he loves talking to Bear and being sure that he is understood and also that he is understanding her. He loves
Bear’s stink, her thick coat and the way her body lumbers around the backyard and through the house when he lets her in. He loves the expressions on the faces of people when they first see her, and he loves when Bear swats him so hard he falls over, and that it is play. He makes a couple more attempts at grabbing Bear, more to feel the soft tip of her tongue than to win the game.

When most of the ice cream is gone, Bo sits down on the edge of the porch with his legs dangling and lets Bear clean his ankles and up his calves and thighs. She’s come out from under the porch. Bo coos and pets her head and behind her ears and down her muzzle to where the skin hangs along her throat. He marvels at the way the fur swirls over her eyes, parting in the middle, and how elegant that is. The animal loves to be touched—she moans with pleasure.

Bo holds out the cone, tells her, “Gentle, soft,” and gives it to her when her teeth get too close. Bear places the cone on the ground and licks all the ice cream from it, then eats the sweet cone, along with the sticky napkin with which Bo held it.

Bear is three times as big as she was when Bo first got her. Soon she won’t fit under the porch and Bo will have to construct a shed for her. Besides, the weather will eventually turn and she’ll want to hibernate. But now it is May and they are enjoying the first ice cream of spring.

Bo cups Bear’s face and draws her sleepy eyes up to meet his. “You’re mine,” he says. “Do you understand?”

The bear tosses her great head—she does not like to be held still for long—and then she gently mouths the hem of Bo’s T-shirt, sucking at it like a nipple. Bo jumps down from the porch. “Okay, come on,” he chides. “Well, come on, you.”

He dances around Bear and she sits back and watches him, her front paws begging. Bo steps in close and lunges out a palm and swipes at her ears, but Bear just ducks and shifts position, shakes him off. The boy gets cocky and comes in closer.

Bear presses up onto her hind legs and roars and wraps her arms around Bo and shifts from one foot to the other—a shuffling dance-step. If Bo’s mother happened to be looking out the back door, she wouldn’t be able to see her son. She might see the flap of white that is his cotton T-shirt and she might see the stripes that are his shorts, but Bear has grown so large that she more or less covers Bo. She lifts him up and thumps him down. It is a pro wrestling manoeuvre and Bo is impressed. Bear pins him and straddles him in no time. She licks his face, places where the boy had been untidy with the ice cream.

Bo hears the screen door squeal before he hears his mother’s “No!” She stands on the porch and shakes a mop. She does not need protection, but she always brings it. “Shoo,” she calls. “Shoo.” She pokes the dried-out mop toward them as if it is a lance. “Go away. Go away.” She could have tried to scare the animal away in her native
Vietnamese but she is convinced Bear is exclusively English-speaking.

“Cut that out, Mum,” says Bo. But Bear knows not to defy Bo’s mother. She gives Bo one last long lick and huddles under the porch. “Mum,” Bo says. “Why did you do that? We’re playing.” He grabs the mop from her, glares at it, then her, and hands it back.

“It’s dinnertime,” she says. “We have company.”

Max Jennings is sitting at the kitchen table, again.

B
O LAY IN HIS BED
and stared at the ceiling, at the wallpaper, at the drawings he had made there. How should he begin? Once upon a time, he thought. Yes. Once there was a war that went on for years and years, and no one went unscathed, neither the side that lost nor the side that won. It went on and on, and some say still lingered in smaller ugly ways, passing from generation to generation.

In the country where this war took place, there lived a boy and his mother and father, and because of their ingenuity, and their luck, when the war ended, they were able to escape. They fled on a small wooden fishing boat, and were lost at sea, with some hundred or more other people.

The father soon fell ill, and even though he had survived treacherous battles, he was only human. One calm day, only three days into the voyage, he died. The people on the boat slid his body into the sea and tried to console the mother, who wailed and keened and reached her hand toward the ocean surface to try to grab at his shirt as he sank. Below deck, the boy pulsed his angry little body against a stranger who clung to him to keep him from seeing his father disposed of in this way.