Debris Read Free Page A

had gone pale and stared at the little shut eyelids and the soft skin of his discoloured arms. Blood and mucous on her gown and at her inner thighs. Constable Hoye could barely stand and he waited cold by the hospital bed. It took four minutes for the baby to breathe and when he did he spoke in a wail and reached out with his tiny arms, cycled his feet in the air.
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    The constable watched his wife and son through the night and spoke to the attending doctors. The boy had no ill effects from the tangled cord and he’d been born heavy for a premature baby, had a strong heart and lungs to cry with. Hoye left in the morning and he hadn’t slept at all. He went to the house with a list and gathered things for his wife. He stood over the patch of kitchen floor where Jenny had been when her water broke. He didn’t know whether to clean it or not. After passing it by a few times on his rounds Hoye filled a bucket with soapy water and bleach and started mopping the tile.
    Jenny stayed with the baby in the maternal and newborn unit of the hospital for the better part of two weeks. Constable Hoye came every day between shifts or he had another constable cover while he left his watch for an hour or two. He spoke to his son in whispers while Jenny slept.
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    The Marchuk trial had been set for a neutral, closed court in Calgary. It started on a Tuesday morning and did not look like it would last a week, so shoddy was the defense. Hoye gave testimony on the third day of the trial and when he came home he found his mailbox rent apart, pebbles of buckshot rattling around inside the deformed container when he pried it clear from the post. He flung it into the garage and drove to the hardware store in town.
    The clerk limped slightly as he took Hoye down the shelf rows. A tall man of nearly seventy with a white moustache and short-cropped hair. He had no glasses but seemed to need some more than a little. He showed Hoye toward the mailboxes, most of them antiquated and covered in light dust. Hoye picked out the plainest one and followed the old man toward the buckets of screws and fasteners.
    â€œHeard you had a boy,” the man said.
    â€œWe did.”
    The clerk offered his hand. Hoye took it. Hoye was of the same height and wider by a foot but the old man’s hand outsized his by far.
    â€œYou gonna raise him here?”
    â€œLikely not,” Hoye said.
    The clerk smiled a little and stood with his knuckles to his hips, picked a stray bolt from a bin and put it back where it belonged. They started back toward the register. Hoye held up.
    â€œHang on a minute,” he said.
    Hoye went back to where he’d been shown the mailboxes and he came back to the counter with a second. The clerk had set the first on the woodtop beside the till. Hoye handed him the other and the man nodded and started to tally it all. He found a cardboard box behind the counter and filled it with the goods. Hoye paid him in cash.
    â€œI suppose I don’t have to tell you to be careful out there,” the clerk said.
    â€œNo. But I appreciate it.”
    â€œIt’s not the whole town that’s sided against you, young man, or even the half of it. But those that have are awful loud. If you know what I mean.”
    Hoye nodded and shook the clerk’s hand again.
    â€œIf you run through those two just come back and I’ll get you another, on the house.”
    Hoye laughed. Waved at the clerk as he went out the door. Wind chimes jangled where they hung from the lintel.
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    On a dry and sun-bleached afternoon Constable Hoye pulled up to his homestead with his wife and newborn son. He’d been given a week’s worth of leave. A cruiser waited at the roadside near the house. Hoye stopped to say hello and the constable in the other cruiser made faces at the baby in the back seat, the little boy in a safety chair beside his mother. The other constable shook Hoye’s hand.
    â€œHow’re