Monkey Beach (27 page)

“You believe this stuff? Cheese said.

He shrugged. “My gran says—”

“Your gran says. You believe everything she says?” Cheese threw a book,
Voodoo for Beginners
, at me. “It’s just a game. Call it the power of negative thinking. Works for Pooch. If he didn’t have all this crap down here, his brothers would steal everything. But they think he’s a big freak, so they stay away.”

“Shut up!” Pooch said, shoving him.

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?”

Pooch grumbled and said something under his breath. Cheese asked him to go get us something to eat. Pooch glared at him. “Don’t touch anything.”

I tossed the doll on the floor. “This is stupid. What else do you guys do around here?”

Cheese grinned. “We’re famous for that, you know.”

“For what?”

“The Haisla. We were masters of the psych-out. When the Haida or the Tsimshians paddled down the channel, they knew they were coming into the territory of some of the greatest shamen who ever lived. That’s how we survived.”

“Oh, bullshit.”

“Think about it. Here we are, this little group stuck in the middle of all our mortal enemies. They didn’t cream us because they were spooked, man. It’s just like voodoo. You’ve got to put on a good show. That’s all witchcraft ever was.”

I hit him with a pillow, but later I flipped through the voodoo book. Some of the helpful chapters included “To Overcome Legal Problems”; “Proper Use and Care of Voodoo Dolls”; and, my favourite, “To Keep a Place Rented.” In the chapter “To Communicate with the Restless Dead,” I found a spell. I didn’t have any of the ingredients and thought I’d probably skip the recommended orgy. But the rest of it seemed easy enough, and it was worth a try.

The first time I tried it, nothing happened. I fell asleep. Jimmy woke me for breakfast. The second time I did it, I saw neon-coloured geometric patterns swirling and merging until I was so dizzy that I had to open my eyes or puke. The third time, I felt like the bed was on water and it was rocking in the waves. I drifted upward, floating, watching spinning lights
swirl in front of me, and then I didn’t feel my body. When I tried to open my eyes, I snapped awake. I sat up, yawning and stretching. It had been relaxing, I was thinking, until I heard the creaking. It was the little man. But this time his red hair was stringy red and he was hanging by his neck from a yellow rope, smiling at me as he swung back and forth.

I heard crows cawing and screeching. I went to the window and saw they were gathered in a circle. They lifted off the lawn, and I could see a dead crow with a missing wing. It lay at an odd angle. It was small and young, in the process of molting into its adult feathers when something had caught it and chewed it almost raw. Alexis crept out to it and sniffed the body. She was dive-bombed a few times before she ran off, meowing. Jimmy ran onto the back lawn and carefully cradled it against his arm. He stood in the predawn greyness and flung it upward. I watched the transformed baby crow soar upward, shrink to a tiny dot, then disappear behind the clouds. When I looked back down, the lawn was empty and the crows shifted silently on the back porch, waiting.

I stood at the window, trembling. Then I went into Jimmy’s room and saw him sprawled over his bed. I pinched myself to make sure I was awake. I understood I had just had a vision, but I was afraid to think about what it meant. I went downstairs and waited until Jimmy woke an hour later. I followed him onto the porch as he took a bag of stale bread out to feed the crows for good luck. The crows fluttered around his feet. He seemed puzzled that I was watching him do what he’d done for years. I asked him if he’d been up
earlier and he said no. I touched him, to make sure he was the real Jimmy, and he smacked my hand away, then asked if I was feeling okay.

“Are you?” I said. “Do you feel all right? Do you have a cold? Is anything sore?”

“I’m fine.”

“Have you had a checkup lately? We should make an appointment with the doctor—”

“What is wrong with you?”

I spent the morning in a state of anxiety. Something bad was going to happen to Jimmy. If I stayed with him, I might be able to stop it. I checked his breakfast cereal for anything he might choke on. I followed him up to his room, behind him, in case he slipped on the steps. I waited outside his room, ear pressed against the door, trying to hear if he was crying out for help.

“Stop it,” he said when I followed him to his swim practice. He drew the line at the change rooms. “Just stop it. This is embarrassing.”

I stood over him and shook my head. “I’m not leaving you.”

“Dad—”

“Humour her,” Dad said, grabbing my arm and towing me away to the bleachers. As we sat waiting for Jimmy to come out, I scanned the pool. There were so many ways he could be hurt.

“Don’t run!” I screamed at him when he finally jogged out of the change room. His jerked to a stop, glowered at me and was elbowed by his teammates.

When he went into the water, I had never felt so helpless. If he drowned, I couldn’t save him. I could
barely dog-paddle. Dad put an arm around my shoulder and I jumped.

“Easy,” he said. “He’s okay.” The butterfly stroke, Dad explained, is the last to be learned, because it requires a high degree of mobility, strength and coordination. “See how he does it? He’s a natural,” Dad said with quiet pride. Although the reaction of the arms and legs produces some undulations, the general line of the body is horizontal. The legs move upward and downward, simultaneously and continuously. The propulsive pathway of the arms resembles that of the front crawl, with a recovery requiring a sideways and forward “fling” over the water surface. Usually, there are two beats of the legs to one complete cycle of the arms. “The first time he tried it, he just flew. His coach said he never saw anything like it.”

All I saw was Jimmy putting his face in and out of the water.

He managed to elude me at school. I had to go to my classes, but I was so spacey, the teacher asked if I wanted to see the school nurse. At recess, I ran around and around the schoolyard looking, but I couldn’t find him. I sat down on the front steps and burst into tears.

Frank, Pooch and Cheese came up to me.

“What’s wrong?” Frank said, sitting beside me. I couldn’t stop crying. “Is it Big Lou? Is it Erica?”

I shook my head.

“Did someone beat you up?”

“J-J-J-Jimmy …”

“Jimmy beat you up?”

“No. No.” I tried to catch my breath to speak. “He’s. Going. To. Die. Jimmy.” They watched me uneasily.

Frank touched my shoulder. “Does he have cancer or something?”

I started giggling. It was weird stupid giggling, and the more I tried to stop, the louder and weirder it became. Pooch lit a cigarette and handed it to me. I nodded thanks and went through three before I stopped shaking. “You’re not going to believe me. No one’s going to believe me.”

“Try us,” Frank said.

I gulped, sucking in deep breaths. “I have these dreams. This man comes. He’s a little man. Bad things happen. After he comes. I saw him. Before Uncle Mick died. He came to me. I didn’t listen. I should have gone. To check the net. I should have been there. I could have stopped. It. I. Wasn’t. There.” I looked up, and they were listening, but didn’t seem to think I was crazy yet. “I saw the man. This morning. I saw Jimmy. In my dream. He thinks. I’m nuts. I don’t know what to do.”

After a lengthy silence, Frank said, “Well, he’s got three more bodyguards now.”

Frank caught Jimmy at lunch. He cornered him in one of the undercover areas and kept him there until we found him. Jimmy was trying to push Frank away, but he had a solid hold on my brother’s arm.

“Get lost,” I said to some boys Jimmy had been playing with.

“We’re telling,” one of them said.

“You do and tomorrow you won’t have any front teeth,” Pooch said, coming up behind me.

“I think you’d look real pretty without teeth,” Frank added, flashing a nasty smile.

“Lisa,” Jimmy said as his friends slunk away. “What are you doing?”

“Think of it as baby-sitting,” Pooch said.

“I don’t have any money, if that’s what you want,” Jimmy said uneasily. “I didn’t do anything to you. Did I? Just tell me what I did.”

“You hungry? Let’s eat,” Frank said.

Cheese joined us as we sat in a circle around Jimmy at the front steps.

After school, Jimmy was supposed to go to his friend’s house to study, but I said he’d have to cancel.

“But Dad’s picking me up,” he said.

I made him call Dad and tell him he had a ride home. Pooch thought we should hang out at the arcade until the late bus came. Nothing, he said, could happen to us there. I nixed that, imagining fights. We ended up catching the bus home and dragging Jimmy with us to the pumphouse by the river. We sat at a picnic table. He took out his homework. Pooch brought out some smokes and handed me one. Jimmy gave me a look, but didn’t say anything. He bent his head down and stared firmly at his papers. I hadn’t spent this much time with him since we were little. I knew as soon as we got home, he would complain to Mom and Dad.

“How long are we supposed to watch him?” Frank said.

I sighed. “I don’t know.”

Pooch and Cheese got into an armpit-farting contest. Pooch’s were louder, but Cheese could make his last longer and do tunes. We threw pine cones at him when he started playing Van Halen.

“Hey, Frankie!” a girl yelled.

We all turned to see Frank’s cousins Adelaine and Ronny strolling toward us. Adelaine waved, swinging her waist-length hair behind her. Since the first time I’d seen her at the docks, I’d wished my hair would grow like hers, smooth and shiny and black. Erica still glowered whenever Adelaine walked by, and I wished she went to the same school as us, but even though she had switched schools as many times as Frank, she never came to ours. Ronny followed her wherever she went and usually wore the same clothes. Everyone called them Double Trouble. Today, they both had on ripped sweatshirts over miniskirts, and leggings, frilled socks and Peter Pan boots. Adelaine made it look sexy, and I had a moment of height-envy. Ronny, on the other hand, looked like she’d just graduated from kindergarten.

“My name is Frank, and don’t you forget it, Adelaine!”

“I’m shaking,” Adelaine said. The style these days was spiral perms and big hair, but I couldn’t imagine her in it. Ronny snapped her Hubba Bubba, then chewed it furiously as she asked, “Hey, Frankie, you got any stuff?”

Frank pulled himself straight. “You got me mixed up with Bib.”

“Sor-ry. Doesn’t he give you free stuff?”

“If he did, I wouldn’t give it to you.”

“Ex-cuse me for living.”

“Knock it off,” Adelaine said. She hopped up on the picnic table beside Jimmy, who’d put his homework away when I wasn’t watching. Adelaine looked him over. “You’re that swimming guy.”

“Yowtz,” he said, deepening his voice.

She tilted her head. “What’s your name, Mr. Fish?”

“Jim.”

“So?” Ronny said. “Are we going to find Bib or what?”

Adelaine grinned at Frank. “Does he rise before the sun sets?”

They laughed. She turned to Frank. “I read somewhere that holding your farts in is dangerous. They did this, like, study, and rectal cancer rates were higher in office workers because they always hold them in.”

We all stared at her, then everybody howled except Jimmy. He watched her with so much awe, you’d think she was announcing the second coming of Christ.

“Where the hell did you read that?” Frank said.

“It’s true,” Adelaine insisted.

“It’s the toxic waste products from digestion,” Jimmy said. “They probably cause cell mutations.”

“Hey, Cheese,” I said. “You won’t have to worry about that, will you?”

“Eat shit and die,” he said.

“Don’t fart and mutate,” I said.

We hung out until the streetlights flickered on, then Adelaine and Ronny left. Frank escorted me and Jimmy home while Pooch and Cheese headed up to the rec centre to see if anything was happening.

“You okay now?” Frank said.

“I think so,” I said. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” He slugged Jimmy in the shoulder and told him to do everything I said. Jimmy and I stood in the driveway and watched him leave.

“You’re acting really weird,” he said. “Even for you. Did I do something wrong?”

“No,” I said.

“What the hell is going on then?”

I gave him a quick, awkward hug and said we should go inside.

He didn’t say anything to Mom and Dad. He finished his homework and went to bed. I couldn’t sleep, so I snuck over to his room to see if he was smothering to death or something. He lay on his side, frowning, curled around a pillow. When I was sure he was still breathing, I tiptoed away.

By the end of three days, Jimmy was reduced to throwing foot-stomping temper tantrums to get me to leave him alone. The next week I learned that the friend he was supposed to study with had come down with the mumps. His little sister had brought home a friend and she’d given it to half the swim team. The sick swimmers had to miss a meet, and there Jimmy caught the eye of a coach from Vancouver who said he’d be glad to have Jimmy train with him at a summer camp. But I was disgusted. All that fuss and I’d saved my brother from the mumps. The little man, I thought, was losing his touch.

I was watching TV with Dad when a sense of wrongness struck me. Something was missing. I checked around the couch, but couldn’t put my finger on the source of my unease. Dad handed me the remote and said that if I was bored of “Wild America,” I could change the channel. It hit me then.

“Have you seen Alexis?” I said.

He paused. “Come to think of it, no. Not for a while.”

She didn’t come home that night or the next. I made posters and put them up all over the village. Dad and I checked the pound. I offered a reward in the newspaper. I walked around the village every night calling her name. As a last resort, Pooch brought his Ouija board over to Cheese’s house and we all sat on the rug near his bed. I felt kind of silly as we sat across from each other and put our fingers lightly on the heart-shaped pointer. One person would ask a question. A spirit would work to answer your questions by moving the pointer to the letters or to the numbers or to the “yes” or the “no” which were printed on the Ouija board. Cheese said we were wasting our time. Frank took a drag from his cigarette then told him to shut up.