Sarah Court Read Free Page B

to a
flame.
    Water sprays. Parkhurst’s overbalanced with one
boot submerged in the creek. The stone he’s thrown
is sand-coloured, huge, and sharp. It could have
easily punctured the drum.
    “What to Christ were you thinking?”
    Parkhurst offers the docile smile of a moron. A
surge sweeps the drum over. I hightail it down steps
erected by the Ontario Tourism Board. The drum
floats near the basin’s shore. Lid popped off. Colin
crawling out like some zombie from its grave. Soaked
skivs hanging off his rawbone ass. Water-thinned
blood trickling out both nostrils. Smiling but that’s
no sign of anything.
    “Give me your hand.”
    He crawls out under his own steam. On the high
side of the basin a deer watches in a poplar stand.
Tiny red spider mites teem around each of its eyes,
so many as to give the impression it’s weeping blood.
Colin’s shivering. Nobody thought to bring a blanket.
    Back in the truck I get the heater pumping.
Parkhurst I banish to the bed.
    “I want you there.”
    “I’m retired.”
    “So un-retire, Daddio.”
    Heat’s
making
me
sluggish.
Flask’s
in
the
glovebox but it’s too early for that sort of a pick-meup in the company of my kid.
    “A hell of a thing to ask, sonnio.”
    He’s genuinely baffled. “All’s you got to do is fish
me out.”
    A reporter once asked: “When’s the last time you
saw your son scared?”
    I said that must have been at his circumcision. It
was taken as a joke.
    One time he had a baby tooth hanging by a
strip of sinew. He tied it to a length of dental floss,
attached the trailing end a doorknob, tore it out.
That night he locked himself in the bathroom and
tore out four more. Came out looking like a Gatineau
junior hockey league goon. He wrapped his teeth in
tinfoil for the fairy. My wife figured a fiver ought to
cover it.
    Another time on a Cub Scout camping trip. My
neighbour
Frank
Saberhagen
was
scoutmaster,
myself a chaperone. Nighttime round the fire. Boys
tossing pine cones on the flames to hear sap hiss.
    “The Nepalese army trained the most fearsome
warriors in the world,” Saberhagen went. “The
Gurkhas. Make the Marines look like a pack of
ninnies. They got this knife, the kherkis, so long and
wickedly sharp victims see their own neck spurting
blood as they die. What nobody knows is a planeload
of Gurkhas crashed on this site years ago.”
    For a man who’d sworn the Hippocratic oath,
Frank was unusually irresponsible.
    “Who knows if they’re still alive? What the
Gurkhas do is sneak into camp at night and feel your
boots. If they’re laced over-under-over, they identify
you as a friend. But if they’re laced straight across,
they pull out their big ole kherkis and”—drawing a
thumb across his throat—“you see your own bloody
neck stump as you die.”
    Afterwards I upbraided Saberhagen. He denied
any wrongdoing.
    “The Ghurkas are real, Wes. Go look it up.”
    The boys all re-laced their shoes over-under-over.
I assumed Colin had done likewise until I saw his
boots outside his tent the following morning. Laced
straight across.
    Somewhere inside myself I knew he’d been up
all night, Swiss Army knife clutched in one hand,
listening for the scrunch-scrunch of feet on dead
leaves.
    I’m in the truck with Colin’s biographer, Parkhurst.
Shorthills provincial park. Sulphur Springs road.
A weekly circuit. Fletcher Burger has been tagging
along since his troubles but he didn’t pick up when
I rang this morning. Parkhurst overheard and
asked to tag along. I’d prefer to share my truck with
Typhoid Mary.
    Colin’s crashing on my couch. Parkhurst curled
at his feet like an Irish setter. Colin’s working my
phone to drum up media. A “strong maybe” from
a cub reporter at the Globe and Mail . Wondrous
he’d consider committing to the two-hour drive to
witness my son heave himself off the face of the
earth. My involvement’s being hyped.
    “Yeah, yeah. Been at it