A bunch of small, bundled children were gathering near the swing sets. Kansas gave up on the slide, and Jamie watched her orange snowsuit plod toward the circle. Alisha was dating someone from her building named Carl now, and Brock liked to call him Hot Carl when Jamie wasn't around. Brock had dentures these days and enjoyed scaring children with them at the grocery store or standing in line at the movies. He had refused to cooperate with police, but now went to the dentist once a month for follow-up examinations. Karina's parents had let him move upstairs, but the two could not share a bed. Her parents would be able to smell the formaldehyde clinging to his skin whenever they touched. Jamie only lent out his apartment once before realizing it was impossible to get that smell out of the sheets. Brock took to renting out motel rooms down by the highway for special occasions.
Alisha didn't talk about Hot Carl much when she dropped off Kansas on Friday nights. Neither of them talked about her mother, or Jamie's parents, or the night Renee fell down the stairs for the third time while Scott was out at work. It was art projects and Triceratops and the best way to introduce Kansas to the wonderful world of the Hardy Boys. She had already finished most of the Nancy Drew at the library, but wasn't ready for Judy Blume yet.
Kansas spent every Saturday with her dad, but his apartment was small and it always smelled like leftovers. Grandma had taken her to the bingo hall once to change up the scenery, but Alisha could smell the smoke in her daughter's hair for three days afterward. Green dabber ink didn't come out of Kansas's skin very quickly either, and so that was the end of bingo night.
It was Saturday, and the sun dangled above the park. Jamie kept his orange girl in sight while he read about Moses's refusal to take the stand and a lack of fingerprints on the trigger of the gun. Astor Crane was a footnote near the bottom of the page, his name referenced in regards to three disappearances and one kidnapping charge involving baseball bats and a toolbox. No family had stepped forward in his case.
Photographs of Moses Moon's tattoos appeared in the nation's tabloids, blurry and subtitled for the farsighted. Apparitions of the White Eagle Army manifested in Halifax and Nelson, according to various letters to the editor. Most were the ghosts of mohawked kids and angry neighbors spraying
GOOK
onto corner stores.
Jamie tried to hold the paper still, but the wind snatched it from his hands. He watched the pages flutter away into the branches, joining plastic bags and lost birthday balloons. Half buried at the base of a strangled maple, a sign for Connor Condon leaked purple ink into the wet snow. The words were faded and hand-drawn; they barely fit across the cardboard placard.
It had been months since the discovery of the body, but there were no leads to follow. Connor's mother still wandered the halls of the courthouse, but she had run out of things to say. Usually she just lay her temple against a fake marble pillar before guards asked her to leave.
Petitions wilted on the walls of churches and community centers. The names that remained on those petitions were never called upon to testify in the park again. The weather had grown too cold, the wind too strong. Only the lost man in his motorized wheelchair returned with a sign. He was picketing the lack of ramps in local libraries and his own petition had swelled to five thousand signatures since the first protest back in December. Jamie had signed it the week before while Kansas chucked snowballs at chickadees. Each little ball fell apart in the air before it hit the ground. The birds didn't notice.
A red coat fluttered up from the middle of the circle. Jamie abandoned Moses on the bench and walked across the frozen gravel. His right ankle clicked with each step. Three pins and a number of surgical staples still held the foot together. The nurse in the emergency room hadn't questioned Jamie when he blamed it on a tractor. Out in the snow, the children were quiet and no one was laughing. Jamie could see a boy attempting to take off his jacket, stumbling around in a tiny circle. He had the heavy coat halfway over his head but couldn't get it around the tip of his chin. Kansas joined the circle, watching the boy try to remove his coat.
Jamie Garrison glanced back toward his bench and the fluttering pages condemning Moses Moon to twenty-five to life without parole. He was being tried as an adult for three murders, one of which was considered a premeditated act for which he exhibited no palpable remorse. The prosecution remained firm in these assertions after the verdict was read aloud to cheers and the sobbing of Mrs. Singh's son in the front row of the balcony.
It had been three months and there was still no mention of a lion. No reports of a taxidermied head discarded on the streets or found in someone's garbage can. Jamie waited for a jogger to spot the bloated cat's body floating in the lake beneath the ice. He checked each page every morning for a glimpse of the beast, but he found only Mosesâ Moses Moon smiling from a high school photograph. Another gust of wind blew through the park and tossed all the pages into the air.
With his back to the children, Jamie stumbled after his fleeing newspaper. The boy continued to fight with his jacket. He was running out of breath. It was hot inside that coat.
The neon snowsuit circle stood around and watched him struggle.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Miriam Toews for all her guidance while I bashed my way through the first draft and somewhere into the second.
Thanks to Jeff Parker for the constant support and for reading the early draft while riding the subway in Russia. I plan on rewatching
Splice
soon.
Thanks to Rosemary Sullivan for her support and guidance at the University of Toronto.
Thanks to my editor Guy Intoci for the edits and advice through the whole process of turning this into a book. Thanks to everyone at Dzanc, including Steve, Dan, Michelle, and Meaghan. You made it easier to be a Canadian in America.
Thanks to Chris Bucci for embracing ZZ Top when many others declined and for continuing to support my work.
Thanks to early readers and advisers like George Pakozdi, Brendan Bowles, Jennifer Birse, Karen Principato, Daniel Mittag, and James Rathbone. Thanks to all my friends who have supported my work along the way, from workshops to readings and finally to these pages. Thanks to Victoria Hetherington for all the support during the editing process and Naben Ruthnum for the day-to-day advice.
Major thanks to all my family, especially my parents Ed and Shelley, for their unending support and encouragement. A lot of this started with the Hardy Boys.
I also want to thank the Oshawa Public Libraries, specifically the Legends and McLaughlin branches, where the majority of this novel was researched and written. Thank you for keeping your bathrooms clean and your water fountains running.