The Sudden Weight of Snow (38 page)

Vera comes into the living room with peanut butter sandwiches already made and sealed in plastic. We’ll eat them on the road, she says. We have to get going. When we have gathered our things and hugged him goodbye, my father freezes in
the middle of the room and starts to cry. They are frightening, those huge, racking sobs. He doesn’t even sit down like most people do when they are crying. My father just stands in the middle of the room, shaking, covering his eyes with his hands. It is mid-morning; I remember the light. I stand in the hall and watch him, watch how the bright light shakes with his silhouette. None of us say anything, not even Vera. She reaches out and touches his arm and Nick and I stand side by side, uncertain, then we just turn and leave, closing the door gently behind us.

It had taken us three weeks to drive to paradise. We stopped often, Vera insisting that we look up and take in all the beauty around us whenever we did. Each time, I wondered, is this where we will live now; is this where we will start our new life? We kept driving. We sang and took turns telling jokes or we would make up stories together, each of us saying one sentence and then passing it on. We patched together narratives from Vera’s logical sentences, my flights of imagination, and my little brother’s nonsense. One night when we were falling asleep on the foam mattress in the back of the van, Nick and me on either side of her, my mother said, “We’ve had enough of this, haven’t we?” I didn’t know what to say but it didn’t matter. She continued, “We’ve had enough moving around. Won’t it be nice to stop?” I answered by shifting closer to my mother on the mattress, finding a place to rest my head against her arm, and falling asleep. When we got to Sawmill Creek, we stopped.

You believe that beauty is in the details. So you make a list of things beautiful: Peter’s knuckles, tensed over wood and blade; Anise’s slender fingers around the globe of a wineglass; the pale skin of Harper’s scalp appearing between the slide and catch of scissors.

You make a list of beautiful things while you start the truck and warm it up. It doesn’t take nearly as long for the engine to warm as it did even a month ago. New Year’s Eve, how long did the truck take to stall while you and Harper ran through the snow and into the forest? That is one of those things you can’t know, like a tree falling in the forest and how much noise it makes. You mark these two things down on your mental list: a truck stalling in the snow, a tree falling in the forest, the silence that follows. You decide that silence is another beautiful thing, though not a detail. Details can’t be quite so all-encompassing.

Now is the time in this story when you start to go. When the engine is warm and you leave in the truck. You think briefly of notions of leave-taking and quickly surmise that things can’t leave unless they have first arrived, can’t wither before they have come bursting through soil like the plants on a science film you once watched on your own, a sped-up version of
growth and decay. In that short reel, plants grew and bloomed, underwent the force of weather patterns, then wilted and died while a disembodied voice explained what was happening. This is how you see yourself going – like things unfurling, bursting open, and sloughing away: all as functions of the same force.

You always liked to drive. It was Anise who taught you. With Peter, tension would build with each word spoken, each instruction given, until the car was skidding sideways along back roads, your fingers going white around the bones from the force of your grip on the wheel, your feet mad with the uncertainty of gas pedal and brake. When Peter tried to give you lessons, things in the car seized up, both of you included. It was a dangerous situation for everyone, and neither of you wanted to endanger passersby. Anise employed the tactics of a true teacher. She brought along things that she knew would help, or at least hinder your propensity for speeding headlong into danger. She brought small pinches of pot as rewards for you to enjoy later, still oblivious to the fact that you skimmed off her supply all the time. She brought your sisters, lined them up in the back seat, their blond heads in the rear-view mirror the opposite of blind spots – you could always see them, reminding you to drive safely. Anise reassured you that you were doing just fine.

You had always liked to drive, liked the swift confidence in the execution of shifting the gears. There is something both calming and exhilarating about transferring smoothly from one gear to another, as though each transition lets you know that you are a master of your own fate, moving effectively on your course.

You shift into reverse, back the truck away from the shed. Shift into first, begin to move forward out of the yard. You stay in second on the road out. The thaw has begun urgently and awkwardly, as it does some years. The snow melts but frost still covers the ground at night. The sun yanks it off in the morning so the dirt roads are pocked with holes and even pavement heaves a bit, cracks. On the road, you shift into third, fourth, take on the corners like a personal challenge to your driving ability, pleased with your precision. You cross the centre line. Not because of a loss of control but because you can.

You want to climb and then come down. You are familiar with the jump in your groin that happens when you drive over a rise in the road quickly, descend just as quick. A little thrill there, like so many other shivers, shudders, and stabs of pleasure. You drive up switchbacks, wanting to take on an entire mountain. To come down from it in one extended leap of sensation. Like other things, you want the feeling to last.

You feel the back of the truck fan out behind you, the flick of a fish’s tail. You use this analogy to reel it back into your line of control. Control is what you want now. Exactitude. You turn around on one of the pullouts. A crescent of gravel drops into nothing, the valley below. Your mind clears as you calculate exactly how close you can get the tires to the brink without meeting air. If there were someone in the passenger seat, she would probably be screaming by now about how near you are to the edge. Your calculated turn is swift and certain. You gear up again as you move the truck back down the mountain. Second, third, fourth, then fifth. The space between, that slice of time when feet pass each other on the upward and downward
motions of clutch and gas, is expansive and crystalline, even in that briefest of moments. Or, perhaps, because the moment is so brief.

It is a rare clear day in the valley. Most days, clouds lie like soup, obliterating even the notion that sky might exist above them. On this day, though, even the people in the valley below will be able to see straight up. Will be able to glimpse the top of the mountain that you drive the truck down. The road you navigate is not quite a ribbon or a snake from below, the corners too sharp for things that smooth. It is more like a zigzag. A child’s drawing of a zipper. Yet from where you are, even the sharpest corners have some degree of roundness. You trace the road with your eyes like you might the image of a woman. Your sight becomes more than one sense. Becomes something that can taste and feel things. You take in the curve of the sides, the conviction of the centre line, the solidity of asphalt.

Just when you think you can taste it, when it is about to fill your mouth and become something you can swallow, you leave the road. You leave the road, taking the truck with you. You leave the road at such a speed that you are able to experience what nothing but air under tires feels like. You are able to experience what falling feels like. Able to experience certainty so clear and absolute, it is blinding.

T
he moment I find out, something divides in me. It’s as though, in discovering that I never really knew you, I realize that I can never know myself. And so part of me splits off, becomes a stranger. With the other part I try to keep myself together, try to stitch things into place, as though I can create some kind of fabric, a context.

It was Thomas who told me. Near the end of French class, the school counsellor, Mr. Robinson, knocked on the door and spoke in a low voice to my teacher, then called me out. I couldn’t figure out what Thomas was doing in the hall, looking from me to his fingernails, then down the row of lockers. I noticed small things then, tiny things – a rogue piece of Thomas’s hair twisting up, the tip pricked with fluorescent light, Mr. Robinson’s gaping pores.

“What’s going on?” I asked, looking from one to the other.

Mr. Robinson drew in his breath, then said, “Mr. Steele has something to talk to you about.” He exhaled, then reached out his hand as though he were going to place it on my shoulder. It seemed to come at me very slowly and I was able to see the coarse hair that pushed out of his knuckles. I looked away and winced at his touch. He let his arm drop and said, “I’ll let your teachers know that you’ve had to leave early today.”

I looked to Thomas but he only offered me a slow nod. “Thomas, what’s going on? Tell me,” I implored.

He looked from me to Mr. Robinson, uncertain, then said, “Harper, let’s get your coat. This isn’t the right place.” I kept my eyes on Thomas and this time when Mr. Robinson reached out to touch me, I wasn’t fast enough to move away. He squeezed my shoulder, then left Thomas and me in the hall.

As we walked to my locker, Thomas pulled at his jacket as though he were hot, or his clothes were constricting, and repeatedly cleared his throat. I looked straight ahead and said nothing. Heat rose from my chest, along my neck, to the top of my head until my scalp seemed barbed with it. I swallowed and tried to breathe deeply but my mouth could take in only short gasps. My hands shook as I dialled my lock combination and it banged against the door. While Thomas waited, I pulled out textbooks and looked at them, trying to figure out if they’d be any use. I felt as though I was about to be taken somewhere I’d never been before, and I had no idea what to bring.

As if reading my thoughts, Thomas said sharply, “You won’t need those today. Just get your coat and let’s go.” His words were like a slap.

I fumbled with my coat then yanked it off the hook, turned to him and said, “Thomas, please, just tell me what’s going on. I know it’s something about Gabe. It’s something about Gabe, isn’t it?”

Instead of answering, Thomas took the coat out of my hands and held it out to me. I looked at him for a moment, wanting to say something, but I saw his red-rimmed eyes, the way the corner of his mouth was twitching slightly, and I took the coat from him, walked towards the door.

Thomas drove to a place where there was a small park propped up on a bank rising from the Salmon River. In the late summer, you could launch the green spiked armour of horse chestnuts from the bench there, watch them bob once on the current and go under.

We got out of the truck, walked to the edge, looked down at the river. “Harper,” Thomas started, stopped, then started again. “Harper, Gabe was found … His truck went off the road. He went off the road on the way down from the mountain.”

I stopped walking and asked, calmly, “Which road?” Then stared down at the water. Dizzy, I put one arm out to a tree, felt the bark rough under my palm. The river was completely thawed, but the snow pack hadn’t melted off the mountains so the current wasn’t strong yet. When Thomas didn’t say anything, I said again, evenly, “Which road, Thomas?” pausing after each word, then, “Which road, damn it! Where is he, Thomas?”

“Harper, he’s –” Thomas started, then turned me to face him and took my hand.

“Please don’t touch me!” I shouted and wrenched my hand away, as if raising my voice could stop me from crying but the
tears came anyway. “He’s gone, isn’t he? He’s gone and this is what you’ve come to tell me.” I started to kick at the exposed roots near the top of the cut bank.

“He went off one of the switchbacks,” Thomas said. “He must’ve been going too fast, miscalculated the turn.”

I looked up at Thomas through a blur of tears. “He was a good driver, Thomas,” I choked out. “He just wasn’t used to these roads.”

Thomas took both of my hands in his. “I know, Harper. He was. I know.”