The Mercy Journals (19 page)

What are you reading?

Old love letters, he lied, not even bothering to disguise the lie, savouring his moment of dominance.

Bean and barley soup with a couple of goat bones, carrots and onion and thyme and sea salt. Good, but not quite enough to fill us. Leo held up a glass of goat’s milk to Parker. Lovely soup, my dear. Thank you.

The last of the onions and the first of this year’s carrots. I hope it’s enough.

Oh God, Leo continued with a surge of emotion, when I think of how much food there was. And the variety. Sushi, wasabi, soy sauce! All gone. Your generation, he gestured with his spoon at Griffin, you don’t know any different, but for me … So many pleasures—and now—homespun, bland, and nourishing, for the rest of my life. Oh for a California Cab Sauv or a crisp French Chablis Grand Cru—and not just once, but every night …

You’re not helping, said Griffin.

Oh,
helping.
Everything going in one direction. Subsistence just isn’t that engrossing for some of us older folk. Don’t get me wrong. I love working out there in the field with you two, covering every millimetre of skin to avoid burnage, expending the same number of calories to do the work as to grow more calories, ad infinitum.

Leo’s looking more like a mad man again these days. His hair is stiff with dirt and stands up at odd angles, and his beard looks like a squirrel has been tucking away food particles in there to last the winter. His eyes are a deeper blue than ever; the pupils always seem too small, and somehow he doesn’t

seem to see what he’s looking at. We had to ask him to bathe and wash his clothes last week because he stinks. He tried to get us to wash them, saying it was our need not his.

I’m bored. I’m depressed. I want my old life back—my family, my car and my house, my clothes, restaurants, trips, movies. Variety! Variety! Variety! Variety! he shrieked, his eyes popping open, hand pounding on the table. Griffin and Parker remained very still.

It could be different, you know, he continued. It doesn’t have to be like this. OneWorld Spartanism. They’re hoarding. There’s enough wealth. The one-child law has solved the problem; they’re just not admitting it. They’re fucking moralists without imagination. They’ve won, and they’re imposing their morality on the world and loving the power. There are some who see what they’re doing and are starting to organize. Getting ready. There are going to be changes. You should expect it.

He had my attention. What changes? I asked.

Leo looked at me, sizing me up, then an expression of contempt leaked over his face.

Oh change, change is inevitable, as the Buddha says.

I felt unbearably weary. More conflict. More striving. More history. More killing. I realized I had let myself believe that we were on the verge of a new order. A consensus after near extinction. Of course, there will be no end.

Leo spoke to Parker. At least you’re having a baby. That’s something new. Exciting. What is there for the rest of us?

What about your children? Parker asked, not looking at him.

Well, there’s Griffin here, looking like the end of a line, and not, with all respect and affection to Griffin, even my bloodline. Allen over there has lost track of his boys, so that genetic covalent is a question mark, and I have lost my daughters. I’d hoped we’d find at least one of our offspring here, and that that one might know something about the others. Allen acts like it doesn’t matter, but this could be the end of the Quincy line. All that’s left is a few more stops at Barley Soup—no offense—and a blind date with the worms.

You can all be family to this baby, Parker said in a small burst of hopeful connectivity. It’s not like it’s going to have any other. It would be lucky to have three uncles. My mother used to say if a baby has good grandmothers or aunties, its chance for survival goes way up.

Charmed, I’m sure, to be compared to a grandma, and yes, of course, happy to be an uncle to the little thing. But, again, no offence—blood matters to me.

That was a conversation assassination and we stayed silent. Thicker than water, trickier than water. Leo put his bowl in the sink and left. Then Parker leaned in. What happened to his daughters?

I left home when I was sixteen, Griffin said. Amanda was nine and Annie was eight. I feel guilty now. I didn’t know I was abandoning them. I didn’t know Leo would leave. He stared at the woodstove. I was hoping to find some trace of them here.

I passed the staircase later that night on my way to bed and heard Parker and Griffin whispering furiously.

Leo came out of his room and stood at the top of the stairs with an empty jug in hand.

You know what they say, he winked as he went past to the kitchen to fill the jug with water. Loose hips sink ships.

This morning I got up early and made tea and porridge. Leo came down and we ate companionably enough. He tossed his spoon into the empty bowl, pushed back his chair, sucked air in through his teeth, and said, Gotta see a man about a logging operation.

He headed to the outhouse and I went up to his room and looked for the pistol. I looked under his pillow and his mattress, under the bed, in the drawers, in the wardrobe. I felt undignified skulking around and resented Leo for putting me in this position. I felt behind the books on the bookshelf. I checked the pockets of his clothes. I eliminated every possible place to hide a gun in that room. I thought about the papers he’d been reading and had lied to me about. There was a gap between the hardcover and the pages of one of the books in the bookcase,
For Whom the Bell Tolls,
by Ernest Hemingway. The papers were inside.

I took them out to the hallway where a narrow window looks onto the outhouse. Two copies of our parents’ will. Everything looked standard, everything going to Leo and me fifty-fifty. The door to the outhouse slammed shut. There was a letter paper-clipped to the front of the second copy.

May 28, 2018

My Dear Sons,

I love you both so much. The times ahead are looking like they will be very tough and I want you both to know that your father and I have always hoped Nirvana could be a refuge for you and your families. You can always make do living here together, with the well and enough deer, waterfowl, shellfish, and firewood to last ten-thousand lifetimes. Your dad would be very happy at the thought.

Love

Mom

Leo clomped up the stairs. That stupid gun weighed down his coat pocket. I felt like smacking him just for taking the gun with him.

Why did you hide these from me?

You were in my room?

You were reading them last night.

I raised the hand with the papers. You should have shown them to me right away. We should have read them together. They’re
our
parents.

There aren’t any rules anymore. And stay the fuck out of my room.

I felt like strangling him. And where are Mom’s ashes? I didn’t see a container anywhere.

What do you think, I hucked them all over the place when the world was collapsing around me? A little backpack
for Mom’s remains, through thick and thin, carrying them with me, the good little son, through rain and shine, hurricane and drought, to sprinkle them on the ground here? I emptied them out at Fisherman’s Terminal where the mini-ferries used to run. They floated out, like your fish food, and finally sank after half an hour. I can still smell the creosote.

I turned to leave, taking the will and the letter with me, the image of Mom’s ashes in the filthy water shattering my heart.

Our
parents.
Our
parents, he said bitterly to my back. You were right about one thing. Those papers don’t make any difference.

I went into the old bathroom, which was the only room with a lock on the door, sat on the old flush toilet, and finished reading the will. It was all predictable except for the end. In the event of irreconcilable conflict between Leo and myself, the will stipulated that Nirvana, the land and the buildings, should go to me, while all remaining possessions should go to Leo. The reason given was that Leo’s material resources far outweighed mine and therefore he had less need. I could just imagine how he’d loved reading that.

I missed Ruby intensely at that moment. I wanted to pack up and paddle back to the city. I wanted to be in her arms and hold her in mine and stare into her eyes and hear the throaty growl in her voice when she laughed. I stood up from the toilet and looked at myself in the mirror. The claw mark on my cheek, the patch of white folded skin
and missing lip in the corner of my mouth, the raised pink scar near the hairline, the patchy hair—my face was a true testament to nurture over nature, though it looked more like nature than nurture. I don’t recognize myself in it anymore.

I am deeply unsettled. I don’t know what to do about Leo.

The next day Leo left early. He didn’t tell me where he was going. All day the tension coming off Griffin was intense. Leo returned as we were sitting down for dinner.

So,
Dad,
Griffin spoke with a sarcasm lit by rage, were you ever going to tell me my sister was dead?

Leo looked at him through his hair. He took another bite.

I touched Griffin’s arm. What?

Griffin stared at Leo, but addressed me. Parker knew my sister Anne from summer camp. She saw her in Victoria just before she came up here. Anne was looking for our mother, who disappeared a year after our sister died. Amanda died in Seattle in ‘42. Anne told Parker that that was the last time she saw her father. At the burial. Griffin enunciated each of the following words clearly: Piece of shit.

Leo continued to eat. Griffin reached across the table and grabbed Leo’s forearm to stop the motion of fork to mouth.
I’ve lost my daughters? Blood matters?
Nothing matters to you.

You,
Leo answered finally with contempt, don’t know anything about me.

She was my sister! Griffin screamed at him. My sister! Griffin stood, pushing the table into Leo and me.

Leo looked at his fork, like he didn’t know what to do with it, then threw it at the sink and stood.

She was my daughter! My daughter! You call me a piece of shit? You little fucker?

Griffin glared at Leo, but then sadness seemed to fill him and he left the room, followed by Parker. Leo got another fork and finished his food, then went to his room.

Today we worked on creating a primitive irrigation system for the field. There are only about three weeks during the summer when irrigation will be necessary, but they’re important in the growing cycle. Some of our plants are turning brown. I feel weak and hot this morning and I have the beginnings of a mother of a headache. Leo and Griffin aren’t speaking. Leo is monosyllabic with me.

Seeing Parker and Griffin together irritates me. They’re discreet but it feels like they’re making a show, even of their discretion. I almost understand why Leo keeps making a play. I yearn for Ruby and my alchemy with her. I don’t want to die without making love with her again. I’m going to get this situation sorted and I’m going to paddle back after the baby is born and find her. I’ll take Leo with me and we’ll leave Griffin and Parker the harvest.

Griffin came to relieve me of shepherd duty and sat down beside me, saying that Leo had headed out with a daypack.

What makes Leo such a dick and you not?

Good question.

I mean, you come from the same family.

I looked across the field at the goats chewing grass. Actually, we didn’t. I grew up in a family with parents who loved me. I’m not sure Leo did.

Because he was a dick.

I laughed and looked up at dark clouds scudding across the sky. Chicken and egg, I said.

An eagle turned, coming by for another look at the goats.

What was Leo like? As a stepdad.

I was always glad he wasn’t my real father. Griffin picked up a conifer cone and started to pull off the scales. He said all those stupid things like, “While I’m still paying for the roof over your head.” I didn’t give a shit, but Mom did. I guess he was paying for the roof over her head too. I used to provoke him. He was an easy target. Griffin made a neat pile of cone scales at his feet. I moved out to spare Mom more grief. He was making her choose between him and me.

We looked at the goats. The new kid, whose birth we celebrated a week ago just after the other one was killed, butted its mother’s udder, then tugged hard on a teat.

Griffin took a big breath in, covered his eyes, and pinched his temples. I really hoped they’d be here, he said. This is the only place we all knew. He tossed the shredded cone into the field. Do you think he knows anything about my mother?

I thought about all of the deaths—they were like mushrooms in the forest. I didn’t answer. Eventually I said, Amanda is lucky to be remembered by you.

Do you think Leo’s dangerous? he asked.

Aren’t we all, I thought. I answered, I don’t know. I should get back though.

I entered the house through the basement door instead of the back porch where I usually come in. I heard a creak and a scuffle from above, as though someone were dragging a dog a short distance or they were losing their balance and regaining it with a quick movement of the feet. I closed the door carefully and listened. The floorboard creaked again.

I crept upstairs, bringing my fake foot down slowly, quietly. I emerged into the kitchen, smelled a soup cooking. I looked around the corner down into the hallway.

I could see my brother from the back, his pants at his ankles, one hand squeezing her breast, the other tugging her track pants down, and Parker’s face turned sideways, eyes shut, arms protectively around her belly.

My brother heard me and turned, his erection sticking out sideways like an absurd thing, like Pinocchio’s nose, the blue of his eyes dark with blood, a beast interrupted in the midst of a kill. He yanked his pants up, enraged by the indignity, and went up the stairs clutching them. Parker turned into the wall and pressed against it. I went up after my brother and threw open his door. He was doing up his belt. I lunged at him and threw him down, grabbed his hair, and smashed his head on the floor several times. He didn’t resist. His eyes rolled in his head. I stopped. How do you think this can end? I screamed. His eyes gradually came back to focus, looking at me. There is no good way for this to end, I cried. We have to leave. We’re leaving tomorrow.