How did she die?
A car accident. Her taxi hit a streetcar and overturned. She was in Toronto on her way to see her father. That was years ago. It was so long ago your mother wouldn't have been born.
Mason did not know what to say.
Do you know it should feel like another lifetime. He did not seem to be speaking to Mason anymore. That's what people say about it. But it doesn't. It's this thing that stays with you always and that's how you know it's real. And everything afterwards is just a kind of waiting.
Oh, he said.
Lear cleared his throat. It's like when you're waiting for something to come in the mail and you check the post each morning and it never comes. It's that feeling. Except you have it all the time.
Mason nodded uneasily.
You have it all the time and the postman is your own death. That is what it's like.
You miss her.
Not a day goes by that I don't.
All at once Mason felt assailed and he lowered his sharp chin in the half-light and glared stubbornly down at his shoes. So she's dead, he said. It was abrupt and hard and he did not know why he said it.
Lear looked at him. Mason, he said gently.
Mason said nothing.
Mason.
What?
Callie's not your mother.
He glanced up at the old man and he could feel something ugly in the room with them.
Your mother isn't dead, Lear murmured.
You don't believe that.
It doesn't matter what I believe. You hold on to a thing as long as you can. That's all there is to it.
She's not dead.
Good. Then we'll find her tomorrow.
But there was something wrong between them now and Mason felt it and did not like it.
Lear cleared his throat and twisted across the sofa to hook the photograph of his wife back in its place and when he turned back his face was dark. I'm sorry, he said. I'll be fine in a minute. I just need a minute.
Mason left him then and went out into the kitchen and stood for a moment feeling the house settle in the twilight. The floor under him seemed to shift and he felt as he did on the big ferries that crossed the strait to the mainland. His stomach lurching uneasily. He went out into the dim parlour and kicked his way through the books littering the hardwood and he could see the old man through the doorway, standing at the window, staring out into the darkening street. Then he noticed the door.
It stood closed beside the dead refrigerator that had started to smell and he tried the handle and found it unlocked. He peered back out towards the living room but heard no sound and then he picked up the flashlight from the kitchen table.
A kiltering stairwell led downward. The floorboards groaned under his weight and he paused and in the flashlight beam he saw tracked in the dust underfoot the scrape and slide of boot prints.
Hello? he called down.
He slipped softly to the landing and stopped every few feet listening but he did not hear any sound. He thought of the men he had seen out of the window that morning. He knew there were those who would use the destruction for their own ends. That evil was real and existed.
Halfway down he waited with a hand on the balustrade peering down into the darkness. He had left the cellar door standing open and the stairs shivered under him and the rubble clinked quietly but there was no sound from below. A faint grey dusk slanted in through the holes where the windows had been. The ghostly forms of rubble and broken things. Dust everywhere.
He could just make out the silhouette of a man seated behind the washing machine. He was bowed forward as if in repose and then Mason saw the rifle between the knees and the scoop in the back of the skull and he lifted his eyes and then too the dark slide of bone meal and blood and brain down the far wall. His heart was beating very fast.
Novica? he whispered. Novica?
The man did not move. Mason glanced quickly into the shadows then stepped closer.
He crouched beside the body and stared into the flat dead rooms of the eyes. The spatter on the wall bloomed outward to the left and he saw now that the gardener must have flinched in his last moments. Mason did not touch the face in that dust.
After a while he pulled the rifle from the dead man and the body came heavily forward then fell back with a thunk against the wall. Mason checked the chamber and he slipped two fingers into the gardener's pockets and withdrew the box of ammunition. He was careful not to touch the cold skin. Then he took the flashlight and went back up.
He left the rifle leaning against the couch and the box of ammunition tucked under the stock and when the old man came in to check on him it was the first thing he saw.
Where did you get that?
Out by the truck, he said. And blushed.
Why did I say that?
he thought.
What was it that made me say
that?
He wondered suddenly if it was in him now too whatever it was he had seen in the gardener. But he did not think so. The heaviness that was in him from before was still in him and he thought maybe it came from there.
The old man had picked up the rifle and was looking at it and he checked the chamber and then set it down again. It doesn't make any sense, he said.
Mason felt suddenly sick. He did not want to think about the gardener. He did not want to think about what he had found. When are we going in the morning? he asked.
Whenever you're ready.
I'll be ready early.
Okay.
I need to sleep now.
The old man gave him a strange look. Okay.
I just really need to sleep.
Okay. You have the flashlight?
Mason did not reply. He was noticing how filthy the old man's clothes were. He still wore his grey shirt from the day before and it was streaked with grime and torn and the shirttails hung long on his long frame and Mason thought,
There is something wrong in
him too and I know that it is there though I do not know what it is.
Mason? What is it?
Mason looked away. He said he saw my mom.
Who did?
Novica. He saw her.
He didn't see your mother. He's mistaken.
He said he did.
Listen to me, Mason. He didn't see her. Go to sleep.
He wanted to tell the old man what he had found but just lay there quiet and staring stubbornly down at his hands. Instead he asked, Do you think he's going to come back?
Novica? I don't know.
What do you think happened to him?
The old man wet his lips. I expect he just went on his way.
Without taking any food?
I guess so.
Or his truck? Or his gun?
Well. I guess he wasn't thinking straight.
I don't think he was either.
No.
Arthur?
Yes?
I didn't like him.
The old man got to his feet. You get some sleep, he said. If you need me I'll be right here. We'll fix your glasses in the morning, okay?
Okay.
The old man paused at the door and looked back at him. He was carrying the rifle.
I didn't like him either, he said.
In the hour before dawn the old man awoke, and Mason heard him, and he rose from the couch and carried the flashlight in to him its light cupped in one hand. A sour odour curdled up out of the bedsheets, out of the old man's flesh. As Mason came in Lear turned his head and his dark eyes were glassy and wrong.
Arthur?
What.
You were shouting.
The old man swallowed. His eyes darkened, he peered at Mason. Picked up the clock beside him and rubbed at his unshaven face. Jesus, he said roughly. Mason. Go back to sleep.
My dad gave me an air rifle for my birthday. It was dark and thick-stocked
and the pellets were tiny and dangerous like real bullets. When
you put your nose to it the barrel smelled like hot chalk. Kat did not like
it but it was my rifle, I told her she better watch out. Kat said if I even
thought about it she would paint the rifle pink with nail polish. Mom
told me I could not take it out of the yard. Kat said tell him don't point
it at anything that moves. What about a tree? I said. Kat said a tree does
not move and I told her it does so in the wind it moves. Then don't point
it at a tree either Mom said. And don't point it at the house. That will
leave nothing to shoot at I said. That is fine with me she said.
I phoned my dad to thank him but he was not there. I left a short
message because you have to pay to talk long distance. Next day was a
Monday and I snuck the rifle to school down the leg of my pants. It was
hard to walk but if I took very little steps it did not look like I had an air
rifle down my pants. I was late for school. Mr Owens made me stay in
at recess. At lunch hour I showed it to Luke Mackey behind the sandpit,
he wanted to shoot it but I did not give him any pellets. He said it probably
could not hurt a fly. I said it could it is very dangerous. He said what
have you shot? I told him I had shot two crows and a squirrel. I thought
that sounded believable but he said Mason Clarke you're a goddamn
liar. Shut up I said. He said have you shot any Russian spies with it?
Shut up I said again.
After school Luke Mackey and me took the rifle down into the empty
lot where the high school kids smoke. No one was around. The sky was
grey and I said it is going to rain but Luke Mackey said give me the gun
let me try it. But I did not want him to try it yet. I loaded the rifle and
sighted along it and lifted it towards the sky and pulled the trigger. The
rifle bucked and punched back against my arm. I lifted my head and
looked at the sky like I had just shot a hole in it. I felt still inside, the way
you feel when you go into an empty classroom. Like you expect somebody
to be watching you.
Cool, Luke Mackey said quietly.
A crow started up when I fired but it came back to the litter of a
sandwich in the grass and I lifted my rifle and aimed at it. You can't hit
that Luke Mackey said. I aimed a little bit high so that I would just scare
it but when I fired there was an explosion of feathers and a horrible
screech then the bird was just lying in the grass very still. I was so surprised.
I stood there not believing it.
Holy shit, Luke Mackey said after a minute. Holy shit you killed it.
You cannot know if it is dead, I told him, maybe it is just stunned. Because
sometimes they are just stunned. You killed it, you killed a crow, Luke
Mackey said again. Shit. He was running over to it.
There was a wetness in its feathers that must have been blood. One
wing was outstretched, its feathers frayed and wild. Its beak looked very
sharp. I was still holding the gun. It was very interesting to see it though
I was a little sorry for the crow. It did not understand, it had not done
anything. I peered around to make sure nobody had heard us shooting.
When I looked at Luke Mackey he was crying.
Who is the liar now I thought.
They climbed down from the house after breakfast and crunched through the rubble to the gardener's truck where he had left it half drawn up onto the lawn. The street was cool with shadows from the ruined buildings. When Mason opened the passenger door his palm left its print in the white dust on the glass. He climbed up and in and Lear held the door open for him and then passed in to him an orange cloth satchel stuffed with sandwiches, bottles of water. He handed over the gardener's rifle last. Mason could see in the side mirror where Lear lifted the door of the canopy and tossed in the crowbar and blankets and then the gym bag they'd filled with two flashlights and batteries and a portable radio. The old man had changed his shirt and put on a pair of stiff jeans and he looked both calmer and more composed to the boy's eye.
Mason leaned across and wiped the inside of the windshield with one sleeve. The light burned coldly in the quiet street. When Lear banged the canopy shut the echo carried flatly between the buildings like the report of a rifle.
Lear came around and climbed in. He reached under the seat, coughed thickly.
Where are we going? Mason asked.
Lear turned the key, adjusted the rearview. They said they were taking her to the station at the Vic General, he said. I thought we'd start there.
You're not worried he'll come back?
Who?
Novica.
Lear gave him a long look. Are you worried about that, son?
What if somebody comes looking for his truck?
Who would come?
I don't know. He could come back.
Lear sat looking at him. You want me to leave him a note?
Mason said nothing.
Lear leaned forward, punched the truck into gear. I didn't think so, he said.
Their going was slow through the ravaged city. Lear stopped often so that he could climb out and shift rubble from their path. In the middle of some streets they saw mattresses thrown down, figures sprawled in sleep across them. No one woke or called to them or tried to stop them.
At the overpass they could not get down to the highway for the broken asphalt and Lear turned the engine off and climbed out and Mason climbed out after him. He sat on a traffic divider in the webbed blue shadow of a Douglas fir, hands between his knees. The concrete was cool under his thighs and he sat with his head lowered remembering the night before the earthquake and the lighted kitchen and the blackness of the yard. The apple tree's roots like a great dark secret flowing there. When he had poured the peelings into the compost he turned and saw his mother and sister talking at the table through the split-framed glass. His mother went to the sink and began to rinse the dishes and stack them to dry. He could see plates shining in the light. A stink of cut grass and rotted matter swirling up around him as he breathed. The slop bucket clicked and swung on its wire hinge. He had stood there without the words for it, feeling astonished, and grown-up, and somehow very sad.