All the Broken Things (4 page)

The mute person and the leper were interesting, but once they were healed they were like everyone—a great sea of people all the same. He would like his father back, but surely a dead man’s soul would not like to be sucked back into his body. If Jesus could make Orange a normal four-year-old, she would not be Orange. All of these thoughts unsettled Bo and he would have liked to ask someone, but adults hated to be asked questions they could not answer, so he kept them to himself. Sometimes when he was running at track, the answers came to him as feelings, driving right up from the earth through his legs to his brain.

Orange bit him like a dog. He did not like to think of her as an animal, so he shook his head to rid himself of that thought. She bit often. Her mouth clenched hard until blood sprang from his hand, and he sat very still until she forgot to bite and let go. The blood congealed right away, a small dribble along the teeth crease on his hand.

She slumped down now with her head in his lap, and lay there looking into nowhere. It must be strange to never be able to properly close your eyes. He wondered about sleeping and whether Orange could dream. Maybe all her life was a dream or maybe none of it was. Bo traced a finger over her ear. He could tell by the weight of her body against him how she felt. She was really lovely if you gave her the chance.

When he walked back through the house, he saw his mother staring out the kitchen window. “I’ll see you after work,” she said, but did not look at him. He must not notice his mother crying.

“Okay.”

He looked at her through the glass once he was outside, wondered if she saw him, and made a face. No. She didn’t see him.

All afternoon, until track practice, Bo paid no attention. He drifted.

A
FTER TRACK
, Bo found a quarter jammed in between two sidewalk paving stones. He slipped the quarter into his pocket and felt Emily’s little folding nail scissors nestled in there.

He’d taken a different route home along Evelyn, which meandered in ways that did not seem to make sense given
the landscape, but he liked it, and felt strongly, once he found the coin, that it had been the correct path for him to take. There was a caribou embossed on one side. The antlers were especially impressive. Bo wanted to take the money to the store and buy a popsicle but the scissors reminded him of the promise he had made Emily, and then promises in general, and then Orange, who had been alone for fifteen minutes by now. His mum left for work at four. He shuffled faster toward home.

O
RANGE HAD COVERED HER FACE
with a piece of flannel Rose had trimmed from a diaper, and was asleep, her breath lifting and collapsing her rib cage in a calm rhythm. Bo said, “Hang on.” He spoke to himself.

He shimmied his jeans down as far as he could with his hands and then jogged his legs to get them lower so that he could use his feet and ankles to twist them off entirely. He scooped them up, found the scissors in the front pocket, and, holding the jeans by the tag, cut it off, then let the jeans fall to the ground in a heap.

He laughed, holding the red tag up in the air. He opened the little sheaf of cloth like a tiny book and turned it every which way.
Levi’s
, it said, in black thread. He kissed it, whispered the name “Emily,” and then shot a look at Orange in case she had woken up. She had not.

“Orange,” he said, as he tugged his jeans back on. “Stay.”

He wanted to bring Emily the tag and give her back her scissors. He told this to his sister’s bent and sleeping body. He tucked pillows on each side of her. He did not want her to fall out of bed and hurt herself, and he thought she might like the feel of being hugged. Emily, he knew, lived on St. Johns Road in a huge Victorian with peeling gingerbread. The house looked haunted. Ivy swept up the red brick, twining along the arched portico, and a wooden veranda seemed to dangle off the main building. It was said there was a swimming pool in the backyard, an idea that frightened him. He would not go near the backyard if he could avoid it. He would be there and back before his sister woke up. He ran.

B
O COULD HEAR A FLUTE
being played. When he knocked, the music stopped and Emily opened the door. He handed her back her scissors and the red tag, and she thanked him.

“Do you want to come in?” she said. Emily had green eyes and a face daubed with freckles.

He did want to. “No,” he said. “Was that you playing?”

“Yeah, my parents make me take lessons. They claim it’s edifying.” She thrust her hip out, and he didn’t really
know what he should do. Finally, she said, “So what part do you want?”

“Part?”

“Sir Orfeo? I’m trying out for Heurodis. All the girls are.” She struck a pose tearing her nails along her face. “Well?” she said.

“That’s pretty realistic,” Bo said.

“I looked up the Greek story in
Britannica
,” said Emily, meaning the encyclopedias at the school library. “It’s old, like Miss Lily said. Orpheus—that’s his name—has to promise not to turn around when they are leaving the underworld. He breaks his promise and in the end he loses her forever. I looked it up,” she said again, as if he hadn’t heard or believed her. Then, “Are you sure you don’t want to come in?”

Bo shook his head.

“Suit yourself,” she said, and laughed. And when he didn’t leave, she added, “By the way, I am going to close the door now.”

“Okay,” Bo said. He stood there until the door was fully shut and even after Emily pushed her fingers through the mail slot and waved goodbye, giggling. Even when she said, “Really goodbye, this time, Bo,” with a tone.

Only when the mail-slot cover clanged shut did he bolt down the stairs and over to the corner store. He had enough for Pop Rocks, and ripped the pouch open as he left the store. He licked his index finger and shoved it
into the candy crystals and then into his mouth. It was wild the way they sparked along his tongue and up to the roof of his mouth. He decided to save some for Orange, and folded the pouch shut.

At home, Bo licked his finger and stuck it in the packet, placed the red and blue sugar on his tongue. He lay alongside Orange on the mattress and took the covering off her face. The little crystals took off pinging inside the dark space of his mouth. He wondered: was she awake or was she still sleeping? Either way she would watch this beautiful thing and it would be real or it would be a dream.

Over and over he dipped his finger and placed the candy onto his tongue until the surface of his tongue went first blue and red and then so blue it darkened to black. Finally, Orange made a gesture toward the packet, then toward her own mouth. And so he dabbed his finger into the candy, and onto her tongue, and watched her jolt about until she got used to it. Then she opened her mouth again, and he fed her more of the miracle of Pop Rocks.

What would he audition for when the time came? Certainly not Orfeo. That was a part for one of the other boys. He would offer to pull the curtain cords. He had touched them once before and remembered the way the silk rope slid through his hands, and how good it felt to pull and have the curtain respond. He could watch the action from the side, from the arch the curtains made over everything.

A
T EIGHT, AFTER TRYING
to get her to sleep for half an hour, Bo left Orange skidding across the bedroom, back and forth on her bottom. He set a doll and a stuffed donkey down for her to play with, but when he shut the door on her, she thumped against it.

“I have to go, Orange,” he said. “Please!”

She thumped and banged as he left the house.

Now he waited at the corner of Maria and Gilmour, his fists stuffed in his pockets. He looked up and down the street.

“He’s going to really give it to you this time.” Peter had come up behind him, tall and gangly. “Maybe you should have stayed at home,” he said.

“Why?”

“Ernie means it this time.”

“Means what?” Bo said. Ernie never meant anything except the contact of his body on Bo’s and the way that pain ricocheted back and forth between them.

Peter faked a left hook; his messy hair bounced a bit. Then he said, “Oof,” and doubled over as if he had punched himself. “What if he kills you?” he said when he’d recovered.

Then I’m dead, thought Bo, and they’ll have to deal with that. But Ernie couldn’t kill him. He knew. He would let Ernie win before anything like that could happen. He’d seem to go wild and it would fool everyone.

Well, it would fool everyone except Ernie. You can’t fool the guy you are fighting—the guy you are fighting can feel the fake. That guy, Bo knew, was the only one who really truly knew your capacity, or if not your capacity, he would know if you weren’t full-on. Bo was never ever at capacity, and Ernie never let on.

Bo and Ernie had fought regularly since Ernie moved to the neighbourhood four years earlier. It occurred to Bo once when he was shadow boxing in his room that in some way, Ernie was his best friend, the human closest to him in the whole world. Bo and Ernie were addicted to one another.

Bo barely ever said a word to Ernie as they sparred and scratched and belted one another, but Ernie was a talker. They knew each other’s moves, each other’s bodies, their various smells. If they stopped, Bo would miss the fights. In fact he loved them, and by extension he loved the immense hatred Ernie had for him.

“Well, well, well,” called out Ernie, “here you are.” An entourage of children trailed behind him—some of them mimicking his walk and his particular snarl. What he said made no sense. Bo always showed up.

“Fight,” one of the bystanders murmured, and then louder: “Fight!” The children herded them in, encircled them. “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

Bo shifted from foot to foot, not letting Ernie see which way he intended to swing or which way he might
deke. Meanwhile he watched everything about Ernie, especially his eyes. The eyes always looked in the direction the brain planned to move the body, and they were fast—you had to pay close attention.

“You move like a faggot,” said Ernie, and this brought snickers.

I move like a butterfly, thought Bo, thinking of Ali, though he knew not to say anything out loud. He reached out, cuffed Ernie on the neck, and then held on. This brought their chests together in a clutch. Bo had him tight and out of the corner of his eye saw that Ernie’s face was growing red. He was trying to buck Bo backwards, but Bo had planted his feet and bent his knees, and he thrust into Ernie using his leverage and momentum.