The Cure for Death by Lightning (37 page)

T
HE DAY
of the Christmas pageant at the school, an event my mother had no intention of going to, she and I rigged up Cherry to the cutter and took a run into town with the cream to do our Christmas shopping. In past years we had driven down to the school at night to endure an evening of nervous children reciting poems they didn’t understand and getting words hopelessly confused on the songs they sang. In the end Santa always turned up and handed out gifts of oranges, hard candy, dolls, trains, slippers, and cheap perfume. Though these gifts were rare things indeed, it was the anticipation of the evening itself I craved: the spectacle of a frosty night — gas lamps shining through the schoolhouse windows onto the snow-covered playgrounds and winking off the icy sled runs; the nervous waiting, first to see who would make the mistakes that embarrassed us all, second for the costumed man (usually Morley Boulee) who handed out glory and excess to children who had had neither all year; and lastly that ride home down Blood Road, the bells on the harnesses of the horses, the rise and dip in the road that made our stomachs sink and our spirits soar just to go over it.

My mother and I wouldn’t make that journey tonight, not this year, not with all the talk going on, so we cut down Blood Road during the day instead. We were accompanied by a heaviness where my father usually sat and wasn’t sitting, and a heaviness in the back where Dan wasn’t that made this trip into town weigh on us, take longer, wear
colder. But there was that other thing too: a lightness jingling with the bells on the harnesses, a spring in the step of Cherry that bounced through bone and flesh and into our hearts, making them thump a little faster. Christmas. I loved it and my mother loved it and we would celebrate it despite Dan’s absence, my father’s crimes, and the town’s gossip.

People were in town. The pageant that night was putting a light into everyone’s step, making them hungry for plum pudding, Christmas cake, and eggnog. Folks leapt across the muddy road onto the snow banks that were our sidewalks. Candles lit up the shop windows and the tables in the Promise Cafe. Someone had decorated the two trees growing on either side of the church steps. Goat was back too, sitting on the steps in front of Blundell’s Motel, just sitting, though, just sitting.

While I fingered red velvet and lusted after the jars of hard candy in Bouchard and Belcham’s, my mother went straight to the back of the store to the post office wicket, her heart set on news of Dan and fearing news of my father. She left the wicket with my aunt Lou’s annual Christmas box under her arm and a letter from Dan.

“He’s just finished training in Vernon,” said Mum. “He won’t be home for Christmas. He’ll write when he knows more.”

My mother turned the page over to see if there was anything on the other side, but there wasn’t.

“That’s all?” I said.

“He says he loves you and me. He doesn’t say anything about your father. He said it was hard in the training camp and that he’s sorry it took so long for him to write. He says they kept him busy.”

I took the letter from my mother and read it for myself. It was written in my brother’s big, looped childish hand. I had always teased him for his messy handwriting and had often written his letters for him. The thought of him made me cry.

My mother put an arm around me and patted my shoulder. “He’ll be just fine,” she said. “We should be proud of him. A soldier! Think of it! Our Danny, in uniform!”

That only made me cry harder. My mother looked around the store, at the old men sitting at the stove chewing snuff and trying not to stare at us, at the customers at the front counter.

“There, there,” she said. “Enough of this. Not here.”

I turned my back on the rest of the store and blew my nose into the hanky my mother offered.

“Look!” she said. “We’ve got Auntie Lou’s package!”

Aunt Lou’s packages were the same each year: chocolates, cookies, and handiwork. They held few surprises but never failed to delight us. My mother gave me the package, and I tucked it under my arm and blew my nose again just as Goat’s father, Dr. Poulin, came up to us. He was a tall man with red ears that stuck out and he was so skinny that his face was that of a monkey. The handsomely tailored suit he wore couldn’t hide his homeliness. Nevertheless he was well liked in the town. He would still work for a side of beef or a freshly butchered lamb.

My mother said, “I see Arthur’s home.”

“For the holidays, yes.”

“That’s good for him.”

“I stopped in on John when I picked up Arthur,” he said.

“Please,” said my mother, glancing at the old men. “Not here.”

Dr. Poulin lowered his voice to a whisper. The old men leaned forward in their seats but didn’t look at us.

“He says you haven’t come to see him,” the doctor whispered. “He wants to see you.”

“I can’t,” said my mother.

“Surely at Christmas.”

“No,” said my mother. “I can’t.”

She pushed past Dr. Poulin and began collecting items from her shopping list. Dr. Poulin followed and leaned over her, talking quietly. Now that their backs were to them, the old men watched my mother and the doctor.

My mother said, “Please, leave me alone!” and the doctor backed away from her. She glanced briefly at the old men. She was on the verge of crying. The old men looked at their boots or spit into the spittoon. The doctor left her then and went over to the post office wicket to do his business.

I went outside and leaned against the wall of the store, under the porch, holding on to the panic in my stomach. Across the street, Goat still sat on the steps of the room where Ginger Rogers had slept. He
was only sitting, not fidgeting or being rude, so still I thought he might be sleeping. A light dusting of snow was over his shoulders. I left the porch and walked over to him. In front of him the body of the dirty white crow lay in the muddy snow, its gnarled feet clawing out at the air. Goat stared at the crow, not moving, not fidgeting, just shivering. The snow went on collecting on his shoulders and the knitted toque he wore.

I said, “Goat?” but he didn’t answer or look up. I touched his shoulder and when he didn’t respond, I gave him a nudge. He breathed in deeply, quickly, like a sleeper disturbed, but he didn’t look up.

“Goat,” I said again, and put my hand under his chin so he would look at me. “You see my father in that place? You see John Weeks?”

He looked up at me, but his eyes were as dead as those of the crow. His face was cold. He shivered a little.

“Oh, Goat,” I said. “Come on now.”

I took him by the arm and pulled him off the stoop. He stood up heavily and shuffled after me, kicking the body of the crow deeper into the mud and snow. I pulled him by the arm across the street and over to Bouchard and Belcham’s. At the steps before the store Goat stopped with his toes against the wooden sidewalk, and I had to urge him onto it and onto every step. Once inside the door, some small light came back on within him; he looked around as if he’d never been there. He went on gazing like a surprised child as I pulled him over to the stove where the old men who had dug their own graves sat around, waiting. Goat’s father looked over at us once as we came in, to see that everything was all right, and went on with his business at the post office wicket.

“What you got there?” said Mr. Aitken, one of the old men at the store.

“He was near frozen,” I said. “Sitting in front of Blundell’s.”

“Waiting on Ginger, I suspect,” said one of the other old men.

They all laughed.

“Doc should have kept him in that hospital,” said Mr. Aitken, in a low voice.

One of the other old men nudged him and nodded once at me. Mr. Aitken said, “What?” and then, “Oh.”

I left Goat to thaw out with the old men and went back outside to
wait for my mother in the buggy, though my feet were going so cold I could barely feel them. I pulled the old buggy quilt over my lap and sought out the tin of coals with my feet. It was still warm and after a time my feet began to tingle and ache with the heat. Under the blanket I put my hands between my thighs, as I knew I shouldn’t, to warm them. My mother took her sweet time choosing a few items that would ward off the loneliness of Christmas. In past years on Christmas Eve, my father had cooked barley sugar, the only recipe in the scrapbook that came from him, but only if the weather was clear. Barley sugar candy was nothing but brown sugar, water, lemon juice, and luck, because it was a lucky thing to have a clear day in late December in Turtle Valley. If the day was cloudy, the candy went cloudy. If the day was clear and sunny, free of moisture, then the candy turned out clear and golden, as lovely as amber. But there would be no barley sugar this Christmas. The sky was cloudy, threatening snow, and my father was hidden away in a place so terrible and shameful my mother wouldn’t talk of it. Dan was gone and his letter said he wouldn’t be home for Christmas. There was little worth celebrating. Nevertheless, my mother left Bouchard and Belcham’s with both arms full and that sweet smile of apology on her face. When she handed me the packages and sat in the cutter beside me, she smelled of the warm pipe smoke of the old men.

“Goat’s quieted right down,” said my mother. “He’s nothing like he was before.”

“He killed that white crow,” I said.

“Killed it? Are you sure?”

“It was dead. He had it and it was dead.”

“Maybe he just found it. It’s been so cold.”

“Maybe,” I said.

When we reached home there was a little time yet before milking and chores, so I stole out for a walk, hoping to see Nora, with the excuse of checking traps. I took my usual route up to the trapline, across the field, and to the benchland so I wouldn’t raise my mother’s suspicions. Just before the benchland a red trail appeared in the snow. I noticed it suddenly, the trail of blood weaving a pretty pattern, a dance and splatter of red on white. I followed it, stunned, slowly at first, and then at a trot that was the best I could do through the snow. The trail of
blood led over the field and into the bush, then into a clearing, where Filthy Billy stood with his back to me and his head down.

“Billy!” I shouted. “Billy! You okay?”

Filthy Billy turned and, as he did, the trail of blood disappeared, becoming a mere shadow in the snow.

“Yeah,” he said. “(Shit) Fine. Excuse me. Why? (Fuck) What’s up?”

“I thought I saw blood,” I said, coming up to him.

“Blood?”

“I thought I did. I followed it here, to you, but it’s gone. I don’t know what I saw.”

“You (shit) saw blood all right,” said Billy. “That was (shit) my father’s blood, the trail Johansson (shit) followed when he found him dead. This (fuck) is where my father died. (Shit) This here spot.”

He pointed down at a boulder sticking up from the snow. The area around it was littered with bits of paper, wooden matchsticks, unlit and wet cigarettes, foil gum wrappers, sequins and beads, things small and shiny that would attract hoarding magpies for miles around.

“This is where my father (fuck) fought Coyote and took him back to the spirit world. (Shit) This is where my father died to (shit) save us.”

“There you go again,” I said. “Talking crazy.”

“No. That thing you (shit) got following you — that follows me. (Fuck) You don’t have to name it Coyote. (Shit) You call it demon or ghost, but it’s the same thing. Coyote (shit) won’t kill me. I’m his house. (Fuck) But he’ll kill you. He kills (shit) all his wives. He’ll take over (shit) somebody’s body and kill like he’s killed Sarah Kemp. He doesn’t use me that way. (Fuck) I’m his house. I’m his safe place. But sometimes (shit), like now, he takes off. Those are good times. But those times (fuck) scare me too because he puts on some other body, like (shit) putting on a coat, like he did to that Parker kid, or Coyote Jack, or your father. While he’s in there, there’s no telling (shit) what he’ll do. I chase him down, find out (fuck) who he’s in, and try to stop whatever he’s up to. But (shit) I’m tiring out. I can’t keep up.”

“This is nuts,” I said.

“No,” he said. “You know it’s not. (Shit) He wants you for his wife.”

“If you think Coyote Jack killed Sarah Kemp, why didn’t you tell the police? Why didn’t you say something before?”

Billy laughed and shook his head. “Who’d believe me? (Shit) Everybody
thinks I’m a crazy man. (Fuck) Maybe I am. But I didn’t (shit) want you to think that.” He kicked the snow near the boulder that marked his father’s death. “Police wouldn’t do nothing anyhow. What could they (fuck) do? My father took Coyote with him when (shit) he killed himself. (Fuck) That’s the only way, and even then Coyote comes back. Granny says he comes (fuck) back riding a newborn soul.”

“You’re not thinking of that.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t (shit) know no other way.”

“Billy, no!”

“I don’t want (shit) any of this. Half the time I don’t (fuck) believe it. But he’s already killing. I’m not brave like (shit) my father, if that’s what it was. Maybe he was just an old drunk. (Fuck) Maybe Granny’s wrong.”

Billy dug into his pocket and threw several cigarette butts on the rock that marked his father’s death.

“What’re you doing?” I said.

“Granny (shit) says he smoked,” said Billy.

I laughed. “You see Nora around?”

“When I left (shit) Granny’s this morning, she was heading to Granny’s old (fuck) winter house.”

“I’ll see you then,” I said.

“Wait.” He dug deeper into his pocket and pulled out a bell. He rang it and put it in my hand.

“I (fuck) seen you like these things,” he said.

I rang the bell, grinned at him, and turned to walk back across the field. I felt him watching me, but when I turned and waved, he was gone.

I headed down Blood Road to the winter house. Nora was there, outside, collecting dead sticks off the trees for kindling. We climbed inside the winter house and Nora started a fire. We took off our wet clothes, hung them on sticks pounded into the dirt walls, and wrapped ourselves in the big quilt we’d left there. Our skin was gooseflesh.

“Beth, you got no blood in you,” said Nora.

I was as white as the snow outside. Nora was brown, though not as brown as she got come summer. Her black hair shone red in the firelight.