The Cure for Death by Lightning (39 page)

“Here?” said Mum. “When?”

“Sometime this morning.”

“Oh, Lord!” said Mum. “We’ve got so much to do! I hadn’t planned much of a Christmas dinner. Just for the two of us.”

“Granny’s bringing a porcupine,” said Nora. “She said we could say it’s chicken.”

My mother laughed at that.

“And my aunts are bringing things. Billy and Dennis are coming here to help with chores. There they are now.”

Nora pointed out the kitchen window. Billy and Dennis were walking down the road in the morning twilight in their field denims, jack shirts, hats, and gloves. They didn’t stop at the house, but went straight to the barn and started feeding. My mother and I dressed in our milk clothes and rushed out to help them.

It was important to feed the animals extra on Christmas Day, to make sure their bedding was dry, their water troughs were clean. It was as important as the Christmas stockings or the excess of Christmas dinner. With Dennis and Billy’s help, we finished chores quickly and set about making our contributions for Christmas dinner. Mum laid the scrapbook out on the kitchen table and searched out her special Christmas Day recipes. She decided on a Christmas stew of:

She chopped all the ingredients in small pieces and placed them in four quarts of water. The stew would simmer for five hours or more, and, an hour before serving, my mother would add a few peeled and sliced potatoes.

We swept and cleaned the kitchen, and Billy brought in boughs of pine and white cedar and then disappeared again. We decorated the kitchen with the boughs and put out candles, plates, cutlery, and cups. My mother threw a small handful of dried lavender into the kitchen stove for a fragrant fire.

By the time the arrival of birds signaled Bertha’s arrival, we had cleaned ourselves into excitement. My mother tucked her scrapbook away into the top shelf of the cupboard, and both she and I leapt for the door like schoolgirls.

Bertha brought the promised porcupine, still warm from her oven, and a kettle of soup made from dried turtle meat. After her came the daughter with webbed fingers, carrying bread, and after her, the one with the birthmark across her forehead, carrying a bowl that smelled of cinnamon and apples, and Nora’s mother, carrying a bowl of fluffed potatoes mixed with turnip. Each of them carried something: a bowl, a covered frypan or saucepan, a fryer, a parcel, a gift. Dennis and the Swede came in with them, and the Swede ate with his hat on, sitting on the bench by the door. His stocking feet moved around each other like two mating mink.

The food filled the table in the kitchen, left no room for sitting, and so we ate standing, leaning against the counter, squatting against the wall. The parlor was dark and cold without heat and, despite the crowd in the kitchen, no one went in there. The kitchen was the one warm room in the house. During the meal, the daughter with webbed
fingers pointed out the window at a figure slinking through the trees along the driveway.

“Coyote Jack,” she said.

My mother turned to the Swede. “He isn’t spending Christmas with you?”

“Never does,” said the Swede. “I try, you know. I go up to the cabin, try to talk to him. But he won’t talk. He locks the door or he runs off. Imagine! A son scared of his own father. This year I dropped off some flour and sugar and tried to talk to him, but he threatened me with a gun. I don’t know what possessed him.”

“No one should spend Christmas alone,” said Bertha.

My mother flushed red but said nothing.

The Swede shrugged.

“Beth, see if you can wave him in,” said my mother.

I did as she asked but went no farther than the porch. Coyote Jack stood by the side of the barn near the pile of rocks that marked the graves of his mother and young aunts and uncles. When I waved him to come in, he slunk farther into the shadows. Then he was gone.

I went on standing on the porch for a time. The air was a refreshment from the warm, crowded stuffiness of the house. Billy was walking across the field, carrying something, and I waited on him. Nora came outside and hugged me from behind.

“What’re you doing out here?” she said.

“Nothing.”

“You should come inside. You’re cold.”

I didn’t say anything to that. I stayed where I was and she let go of me and stood beside me with her hands in her coat pockets, watching with me as Billy walked across the yard. He was all cleaned up. His suit was brushed down, and he wasn’t wearing his rattlesnake hat. His hair was slicked back with bear grease and he was freshly shaved. When he stepped up onto the porch, his strange blue-brown eyes sparkled, and he smelled of something sweet, something too sweet, something familiar. It took me a moment to remember the smell: it was my old bottle of violet perfume. He must have found it in the stump and worn it as after-shave. It made me smile.

Billy grinned at me and handed me the bundle he carried.

“What’s this?” I said.

“Merry Christmas!” he said. “(Fuck) Excuse me!”

The burlap bundle was tied at the top with string. The bottom was wet. I pulled the string, and the burlap fell away, and I found myself holding the whole plant, dirt, roots, and all, of a buttercup. The wonder of it was that the plant was flowering delicate yellow petals. It was a beautiful thing, and surrounded by all that snow it was magical.

“Where did you find this?” I said.

Billy shrugged and grinned. “(Shit) In the snow,” he said. “I found it (fuck) a week ago, and I said that’s what I’m giving Beth for Christmas (shit) because that’s how (shit) she makes me feel. She’s the bright spot in the snow. (Fuck) That’s Beth, I said.”

“Billy!” I said. “It’s beautiful!”

I gave him a peck on the cheek. Nora went off by herself and leaned against the wall at the far end of the porch, but I ignored her sulking and took Billy and the plant inside.

“Look what Billy found!” I said, and placed the flowering buttercup on a plate in the center of the table.

All the presents came out then. My mother and I cleared the mess off the table and onto the counter and everyone exchanged and unwrapped their presents at once around the table. The presents were wrapped in bits of cloth, sugar and flour bags, the pages of magazines, and tied with wool and strips of fabric. My mother gave me a bar of sweet-smelling soap. Bertha gave me a little pouch made of that precious red velvet. Dennis gave me a wink and a package of nylons that embarrassed me. I squirreled them away in my room before my mother or anyone else could see them.

Dennis and the Swede started outdoing each other in stories and off-color jokes that made my mother laugh despite herself. Conversations filled the house and finally spread into the parlor, warming it. One of the women put on a record and others took turns cranking the gramophone. Enrico Caruso filled my father’s empty chair and made it seem as if he was with us. My mother pulled out the dusty board games and cards she’d brought with her from the old country, from under her marriage bed, and the Swede and Dennis played chess while the women played tiddlywinks, checkers, snap, and old maid. The women giggled, chatted, drank coffee, and ate cake so long that the flock of crows gave up waiting and lifted off the roof in a great black cloud
that darkened the sky for a moment before disappearing over the benchland.

Nora never came back inside. When the crows lifted off the roof, I poured coffee for her and took it outside, but she was no longer on the porch. I stepped out onto the yard and called her, but she didn’t answer. Billy came outside then and sat with me on the porch steps as I had often sat with my brother. We shared Nora’s coffee to keep warm. Coyote Jack slid up to the edge of the bush behind the barn, and Billy pointed him out to me. As soon as he did, Coyote Jack disappeared.

“He keeps turning up,” I said. “I don’t know what he wants. Scares me half to death sometimes.”

“He’s (shit) sweet on you,” said Billy.

“Oh no, not him!” I said.

“Sure,” he said. “Dennis (shit) wants you for his girlfriend too, and Nora (fuck). Others, I bet.”

He didn’t look at me, and I didn’t look at him, but our hands found each other and that was enough to hold on to for a time. Neither of us said anything more until the door started creaking open and both of us pulled our hands back into our laps. Dennis and the Swede came outside laughing at something the Swede had said. I dusted off my skirt, went inside to join the women, and left the men alone to smoke their Christmas cigarettes.

T
HE HOUSE
was still full of Bertha’s progeny when I tucked Dennis’s gift under my sweater and slipped out to find Nora, under the pretense of checking traps. Dennis gave me a long look as I closed the door, but he didn’t follow. Billy was winning a game of chess over the Swede. I ran to the winter house but didn’t find Nora there. I dropped the nylons Dennis had cursed me with down the hole of the winter house and listened until I heard bells. I followed them until I found Nora sitting on a log in the center of a clearing. She had cut herself again. A rivulet of blood dripped from her arm onto the snow. She didn’t look up.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” she said.

“Stop that!” I cried. “There’s nothing pretty about it.”

“It’s so red.” She sucked the blood from the cut on her arm. “So salty. You’d think you were drinking the ocean.”

“Stop,” I said. “You’re making me sick.”

Nora looked up at me. She’d been crying. Her lips were smeared with the blood from her arm. She licked them clean.

“How’s the party?”

“Still going. Why’d you leave?”

Nora shrugged and wiped the blood from her hands with some snow. She rolled her shirtsleeve back down and warmed her hands between her thighs.

“Bertha gave me a little bag made of that red velvet,” I said.

“I saw her making it,” said Nora. “I’ve got something for you too.”

She stood up and dug into her front jean pocket and pulled out a string of bells just long enough for a bracelet. She dropped it in my hands.

“You like it?” she said.

“I love it!”

“You like it better than Billy’s present?”

“It’s beautiful,” I said. “I’ll wear it always.”

Nora tied the bracelet around the wrist on my lightning arm, and I shook it. The tinkling notes bounced off the trees and filled the patch of woods. A few birds twittered back.

“You’ll hear me coming and going,” I said.

“I’ll keep track of you,” said Nora.

“Look, I’ve got to get back,” I said. “Mum’s keeping her eye on me pretty good these days.”

“Dennis is still there, isn’t he? In the kitchen with her?”

“I don’t think it’s Dennis she’s worried about,” I said.

“What then?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you come back?”

“Nah,” said Nora. “Too crowded.”

Nora watched her feet stamp out a circle in the snow. I touched her face and tried kissing her, but she pulled back. I turned to go, and she said, “Wait.”

She pushed me up against a young poplar so the tree waved our location to the whole valley. She kissed me with all of her body and went on kissing me even when I tried to pull away, kissed me until I didn’t want to go anymore. Then she stopped, leaving me pumped with desire, sweating in it.

“See you later,” she said gruffly, and walked off through the snow, not once looking back, not once waving. I watched her going through my own hot breath.

As I headed back home, following one of the coyote trails on which I had set my snares, Coyote Jack was suddenly there, crouched down at the edge of the bush, watching me.

I raised my hand to wave at him, but thought better of it. He knew I was there. I turned and fled the way I’d come, and after a time something caught up to me and ran parallel in the bush. I didn’t think. I ran
with my heart in my throat. Then he was there again in the path in front of me. His hair was plastered to his head, a line of spittle ran down his chin, and his shirt was wet with perspiration. He looked laughable, a clown. I turned once again towards home and his footsteps crunched behind me. He threw me down in the snow and fumbled with his clothes.

Suddenly he got up. He twisted, batted the air, and screamed, and the scream became a howl. His body flitted back and forth between man and coyote, then the coyote dropped on all fours and cowered away from me. He bristled and growled. I stood slowly and clapped my hands, as I would to scare off any wild animal. The coyote turned and trotted off and disappeared into the bush. I slumped back into the snow, exhausted by fear, staring at Coyote Jack’s clothes sitting in a heap in front of me. A movement made me look up, and there was Jack standing at the edge of the path, covering his puckered genitals with one hand. He gestured for me to go. I stood, backed away, and ran.

When I reached home, the house was empty. Off in the distance near the benchland, Mum was calling to the cows. I went to my room and closed the door behind me. Standing with my back against the door in the warmth of my room, I could almost believe I hadn’t seen the thing. The coyotes on the walls smelled. I stared at them. After a time Nora came to the window. She opened it but didn’t come in.