The Devil's Dust Read Free Page B

itself shifting inward, smothering, growing smaller by the hour. It plays tricks with a man’s head.
    He unties and kicks off his boots then goes and takes a long piss. The flow is uneven, and at one point he clenches his eyes to the effort. The low-watt bulb makes the stained porcelain sink, toilet, and tub appear older than they are, chipped and badly used, like his reflection in the square of mirror. Fifty-nine or a hundred and six, it’s a coin toss. He splashes water on his face and sees that he needs a shave and a haircut. Nothing that can’t wait another day, another week. There is no one to impress.
    He pulls off his clothes and showers in the lukewarm water to wash away the sweat and smells from the Greyhound. Long hours of highway from Toronto, then pushing back up across the border to the Sault, the whole time sitting next to a great-grandmother who smelled of sharp cheese and eye-watering lavender. And she had wanted to talk to him about everything that was going on with her and her children, the demise of the modern family, the shame of the country as a whole, his lost generation. Pretending to sleep, eyes closed to keep the old woman at bay, his mind had fluttered with dark thoughts, the tangled briar patch of fear or anxiety that seemed to be part of coming home after a long time gone. Or it was the illness, his being sick, and the game of pretending it was not the truth.
    In boxer shorts and sports socks he stands at the sink and rummages through his shaving kit for the pain pills. What are they for again? A gunshot wound or a strained oblique muscle, a broken heart, a hang nail — it hardly matters anymore. He has long since passed the destination where pain is possible to pin down with any accuracy or honesty; it is now as much a part of his biological chemistry as carbon, oxygen. He gobbles three capsules and washes them down with a mouthful of tap water. The water tastes of sulphur and smells of moist, fecund earth. The taste of Ste. Bernadette; the taste of home.
    And so Charlie McKelvey crawls beneath the sheets, pulls the quilt up to his chest, and waits there in the darkness for sleep to show him a little mercy.

Three

    T he oblong capsules wrap the occupant of Room 27 in a cocoon of gauzy, tongue-thick sleep until just after ten the next morning. Eventually and inevitably, the aches and pains located indecipherably throughout McKelvey’s body begin to stir, shaking off chemical slumber. First the hip, then the knees, the back, the shoulders. The wind chill and the dampness in their air up here give a cruel twist to the first signs of arthritis that sit like rust in the cracks of old broken bones, abused joints. He swings his feet to the floor, teeth already clenched to start the day. Groggy from the pills, head stuffed with cotton, he licks his lips and rubs his puffy eyes with the heels of his palms. Yawns and stretches and looks around the room, wondering yet again what in the hell he thought he was doing by coming back here, what sort of loop he was looking to close. Maybe there was no loop after all. Life, in all of its purported mystery, wasn’t so mysterious after all. Things as they are and always will be.
    He moves to the duffle bag that sits on the floor and digs through the jumble of clothes for a clean pair of underwear and socks. His hand finds the cellular phone he so loathes and he sets this on the bed. It is not the implement or even the strange cordless technology he despises — though there must be witchcraft involved in a telephone that has no cord leading anywhere — it is the fact they are making them so small, his thick fingers struggle to enter correct numbers. There is also the matter of how tiny the digital display is, and he has not and will never admit to needing glasses.
    He fishes a hand in the bag again and this time pulls out a stack of pamphlets. An array of informational pieces graphically designed in soothing colours, featuring