Five Legs Read online

  It wasn’t me Mister Scott, it wasn’t me, honest! I was listening to the hockey game, Leafs and Rangers, anyone can tell you it wasn’t me, it really wasn’t, I can. Lucan stopped by the stare and imperious hand, his sneering voice.

  It wasn’t me Mister Scott it wasn’t me, of course it wasn’t you! We know that. But you know who they are, don’t you! Shouting now, pressing close to my face and I can feel the spittle from his mouth. They’re in your dorm, aren’t they?

  An automatic and withdrawing no. No. I don’t know Mister Scott.

  Crackell. Patience in his voice. It’ll be easier on you, if you just. Tell us who they are. That’s all. Almost smiling he walks away with confidential voice. If it’s the other boys you’re worried about, well, well don’t. In the casement corner, a stain; yellow on the whitewashed walls, a head with its nose on the cut stone sill. Its weak chin broods from the ceiling as his voice persuades. We’ll let it get out that you didn’t say a thing. Okay?

  But I don’t know. His voice a dying whisper, for I must not tell. Sad face on the wall stares back at this sad boy. Winter.

  Now listen Crackell, we’re being very patient with you; very patient. The paddle’s punctuation to his left. But don’t be foolish. Listen. He stops walking and stares with his eyes into mine. We’ll make it easier. Just nod your head when I say their names, okay? And you can go. Nothing simpler, nod your head and you can go. His uncertain eyes, unmoving. In mine. Simpson? Lucan’s sickness weighs . . . floats; his serpent writhes. Desrocher? The names. Halter or Black? Lucan’s perspiration is bursting from him; it gathers behind his eyes, the serpent’s head investigates his throat. C’mon Crackell . . . we’re waiting. Was it Black?

  I don’t. Desperately forcing he tries again: I don’t know. Honest. Cannot, must not, I can not tell!

  And away in that studied world, beside the frozen lake, the pantomime fulfilled itself. They got up. The steins hung lop-sided from the wall. Their hands reached out to punish me, to draw me down from the wind; and so, through spirals of silence the journey began.

  The road with banks on either side, it drifts away and ahead in snowy wind and Lucan drives with his bowels. I should have gone. Before. This sullen pressure it keeps growing. Taking a moist hand from the steering wheel, he rubs it through his hair. A circular massage to the base of his skull. Relax the old tensions, stimulate the healthy circulation of the blood. Nothing like it. And I need it too. With the innocent sorrow of these girls and the tension of this goof, like cries in my car. Nothing like it. Job, I’m. When Rose. But I limped away and muttered in the back stair air. Between sheets, safe. She looks at. The review discarded beside her, she looks at the paper on the floor, uncomprehending. Or bending. Kneeling to tidy the mess from my foot. Oh God! Perhaps I’d feel better if I. A cautious shift to his left buttock and he relaxes his. Careful. Who knows what might happen, and what in hell could I say? Aaah. Aaah! There. Now I hope it isn’t too noticeable. He opens the no-draft just a bit, smells the cold air. It could have been any one of us. And I do feel better. On this road to the past, with whiteness in the senseless bloody wind. She just doesn’t know, that’s all. That the past comes on. Stark fields roll up to skeletal trees, to stands of evergreens with sweating trunks unmoving in the snow. Showing off she said, and it’s just a funeral. Lucan runs his finger inside his collar and against his neck, trying to stretch the cloth. As if she can know. In that room. Diffused in the light she kneels and tidies, muttering selfishly. The bitch! While my very stomach recognizes that farmhouse. Its ornate stone and dirty orange brick, its windows and ramshackle barns. Christ but I know this road in winter! The power grid is just ahead. And these farms, with accusing eyes. But I shouldn’t, after all she’s my. And it’s hard for her too. Another rub at the base of his skull and he sticks a cigarette between his lips; he lights it and the smoke drifts grey and blue in the hanging air.

  Lower my pyjamas and. The chair’s back hard against my ribs. Lucan staring now and hurtling snowbanks fill the corners of his eyes. His knuckles are pale on the wheel. Clutching the best I could, my trousers and dressing-gown. Bundled above my hips. I waited. And I didn’t tell! Again he asked me but I did not tell! Their voices behind me and I closed my eyes. Waiting for their expanding voices, their running feet, waiting for them to leap upon me, wrestle me unresisting to the ground, to club me with their fists and wooden paddles, to beat my kidneys, my spine, to batter with short sharp cries my exposed and quivering private parts.

  Rising, the road, it curves to the crest of a hill and in silent fields, the valley falls away. Snow twists in the wind, obscuring trees and passive farms. It drifts on the burning land. With snow whipping about its legs, the flaking sign: mute in the wind’s full force it warns.

  REPENT or be DAMNED

  for HE is an ANGRY GOD

  and HELL AWAITS YOU!

  !!!

  Descending, Lucan drives with care on the hard-packed road that curves to the bridge. Rough gusts drive blindly about the car; they disappear, with melting crystals on his knees. He pushes the no-draft shut, the pressure increases inside his ears, he forces a yawn. Like roots, the naked trees reach up; the crouching cedars are like animals. Squat and threatening in the half light.

  Even when they beat me, I didn’t tell. My slippers back along the darkened hall with listening boys in every room and the air was full of their breathing. Silent whispers followed me into bed. Even when they beat me. Lying on my belly I heard them ask. Did you tell Lucan? Crackell, did you tell? I waited through that night for their praise. And in the morning Black and Halter were called before the Head. And caned.

  The small bridge rises and falls over the river’s drifted bed. Under a bridge. Or was it the night before? The earth was hard and sharp with nettles, the leaves were close against my face. I could see what pulsed in their white veins. At one point, between explosions, between the tortured clouds that mushroomed into the sky, I ran heavily on the road, heavily. And as the next explosion seared the place I threw myself back into the ditch, covering my face like the army taught, but I must have hit a stone, a protruding root for I cracked my ribs and the pain. The pain. I struggled because, because I thought there was safety by the sea. In the growing dark. Expanding with a terrible light. More clouds and their ashes fell like snow. The leaves were dead against my face, broken open, and their liquid had seeped away. Nauseous, their perfume sickened me and they rattled as I crawled. I had to get somewhere! Then I think I was crying and I know my side was agonizing and it went on and on. Voices too, from that no-man’s land, there were voices screaming out in private noise. Jesus! Terrible. Terrible . . . That’s all. Don’t be silly, lots of people have them. Yet just as I woke. I realized. I knew with every little bit of me that there wasn’t. Anywhere. There wasn’t anywhere to go. It didn’t matter.

  A sloping narrow hall, badly lit with open doors on either side. No sound and the shadows moved like branches in a searching wind. Compelled step by step, avoiding the doors by clinging to the other wall, crossing and re-crossing as I went, for I knew they could not reach across and get me. Could feel them there, oh yes! Could feel them there, brushing together in the darkness as I passed each door. And then abruptly. And it always was the same. The wall against me opened darkly, and their arms came out to drag me in. Lucan, wakened by rough hands, by the night’s terror and these figures that press him back into his bed, smothering the cry that vomits from his throat. Twisting bedcovers and his body’s protestations. Violent, their breath is eager in the dark. This is what we do to sucks, Crackell. Exploding fear, a futile struggle and he momentarily frees a leg and kicking, kicking desperately, feeling the shock of contact in the knee. Hurry up for chrissakes, get him, get him, hurry! The cubicle is full of moving forms and they force him down. Immobile on his back. His rolling eyes and the hand upon his flattened lips, his stifled cry. Another hand comes down and he can not see, it stretches the forehead’s skin and presses c
ruelly on his nose. What do we do to sucks. Quivering. His life is focused on the pen, on the letters they trench above his eyes. No more body under theirs. Only the digging on his skull that rolls the flesh ahead in waves. Laboriously a curving stroke, a gouging line and they whisper impatiently like bees. The pen and its force, the head that is held by a terror of hands, all joined by the word. Then they’re gone. He’s left. In silence. He doesn’t move. Quietly at first, one whisper; then others in growing curiosity. Each cubicle sends an eager frightened voice, an awed. Lucan. Luke. Are you alright? Shall I get Mister? Boys in pale nightclothes clustering at his door. What did they. Do? Pushing through, unseeing Lucan, running with hands on his head, running to the washroom and leaning over the basin, staring at his shape in the darkened room. Following behind and someone flicks the switch. In blinding light, from hairline to eyebrows, he sees it:

  SUCK

  Bastards! From time to time he sees them in Toronto, buying liquor at the Yonge Street store. On financial streets, efficient wearing their pasts like uniforms. They can! Lucan driving quickly in the blowing snow, behind the tail lights of a diesel truck. A looming shape that tunnels on ahead. For boys of promise and ability. Jeez! And he hadn’t told, that was the irony: he hadn’t told! God I’ve got to do something for it isn’t simply wind. I’ve got to. Get to the john, but how? I can’t just stop at some gas station, in front of these girls, and. Leaping, they’re upon you without warning! Humiliation. And instinctive carelessness, dear heaven! Cruelty, it’s their cruelty without design. In this wind and these . . .

  Was the drink alright as my body protests, too much and no doubt. But I knew. Even there in the theatre’s rooms, I could tell. Smiling, presiding. Hair immaculate and painted nails in those long mirrors. Rye. So I drank. Downed some quick ones before moving on to beer. Burning my throat and eyes and she, Rose, drifting away in the darkening crowd . . .

  The nerve, for chrissakes, to argue and make smart remarks! Staring and Lucan trying to, perhaps a belch. A careful release through the upper half, will. Ease this pressure, it grimly toys. Drifting selfish in the wind, and he’s so lacking, so absolutely lacking. Arrogant eyes and body, behind me. There. And his hair’s too long. Grubby, a rat’s nest for heaven’s sake you’d think he’d. Once a year, at least. So absolutely lacking, even in common courtesy! Not a bad suit, expensive looking, but you can. Tell a man by his feet, his fingernails. And hair all long and curling at the collar. Jeez! Small eruption in his throat. Watch it! Right of course, right all along. Nothing concrete to suggest, is negative alone. Instinctive carelessness.

  Goddamitall! Should have. Oh sweet God, goddamn. Learned by now. That she won’t be. Wasn’t that drunk, for. Notatallnotatall! Coffee and bits of food, certainly wasn’t that. Can’t. Looks so good, dear God. In black. White thighs and flashing flesh she changed and watching, there I was, Rose undressing beneath the nightgown. What’s happened, why? At this time above all else as you should know, so much. And it seems so long, so often now. Enveloping, I need your body’s. Hardness. Softly I need. Yes. My hand, hopefully, but your body. Retreats. Following, I know it’s, I follow: no use, I know that silence and the shrug, it can’t. Go on and on like this, it’s getting worse . . . And impersonal! Outwards from the core, I’m going to be sick, she makes me sick. But then at least. Foolish as it was. Rampaging down this hill. But still, then; at least. Laughter exploding. We, I was a dancer; and every time a reoccurring freshness, Vera that truck is closer now, a transport and the hulking wheels drive snow on either side. Didn’t complete my thesis, two frigging years and even my courses. A waste of bloody time that drove me to. Course work only adequate, Jesus. Lucan, halfway Doctor Crackell, lecturer; drunk on this, this very road, for chrissakes, and the selfsame.

  Wind and these driving clouds, Susanna Moodie longed for the formal world, for. London’s parlour light as desperately, foreign in a forest land, they cleared for sun. From the north, where the wild fish blow, and it tempted Louis Riel, it whispered to D’Arcy McGee. Strong and free. Gusting now against my car as I drive through layers of time to Stratford. Trying to overtake that bloody truck. But it does no good. It does no good, for in Baffin’s Bay

  . . . where the wild fish blow,

  The fate of Franklin no man may know;

  The fate of Franklin no man can tell;

  Lord Franklin and all of his sailors do dwell.

  Inappropriate that’s all and where would I be? What kind of a life, if I’d gone, chucked everything up and gone with her? Lucan straining to see in the wake of the charging truck, pulling out for a view of the road that descends in a curve ahead. Lost in the wind. By God! Where the eskimo in his skin canoe, is the only one who. What kind of. “Will they Mister Crackell?”

  “What. Pardon?” In hell is she, I wasn’t.

  “They won’t leave it open, will they?” Blankly Lucan stares at this girl beside him, and then looks back at the road. “The coffin I mean. Felix says they’ll leave it open in the church and everything.” Christ. I hope not. Lying there with his hair freshly cut and his fingernails buffed clean, but. They might.

  “Don’t know, Miss Haden. I expect they might, although it’s hard to tell, isn’t it. People do, of course. So friends and relatives. Of the deceased, can ah. Can pay their respects.” Immortality. Lucan. Faces in shadow, setting grimly unaccustomed tasks, and the flood of light on that springing hill. Chilly in the air and it is by God, it is; glistening white in that day’s half light. There is no. But. Just the man, you’re just the man he said. The man that through these tasks, we want to grow. Develop with this university. Don’t you see, Lucan? Don’t you? A man to be. Reckoned. “It originated in the belief that, well. Long before coffins you know, when death was more immediate more natural.” Lying calmly in an open bier, Lawrence’s dead at Cerveteri, sleeping as if in life; like a phoenix, the sailor king, consumed with flames from the too real world. Seems. So hard to see but it does seem clear: accelerating up and into the diesel’s burning wake with wipers’ desperate strokes and the sound of great wheels pounding in the car. Lucan expectantly, staring in terrible noise; he peers to see the driving spume, he waits the darkness of another shape: sure it was clear, I’m sure. Straining against the jumping wheel, bracing his forearms’ weight when suddenly, dark form another car and somewhere Nancy’s shrillest voice: “A car, lookoutacar!” Car and . . . Skidding acceleration as the windshields clear, and the back end slides: Lucan spinning to correct the skid; chunk, the implacable wipers. Chunk chunk. Wan faces stare in passing and we had . . . we had lots of time. False alarm, there was lots of time, nevertheless. Strong weakness in my knees and it bloodywell didn’t do this stomach of mine any good. None at all. Breathing again. Could hardly see and we couldn’t have. Lucan in accusing silence; wiping one after another, his hands. Say something, to fill this, say. Something. Couldn’t poke along behind it all the way, couldn’t. What can. “Well. That’s a relief.” Heartfelt and there was lots of time, I don’t know why they. “Get behind one of those transports on a day like this and. Very difficult. To pass them. I remember once.” Don’t, don’t for heaven’s sake wander. Terrible there, frustration and the drink’s remorse on this. Don’t wander in your past, Lucan Crackell, don’t! Selfsame funeral road.

  “They’re just the kind who would! They’re just the kind of frigging people who’ll make us file past him and.”

  “Oh I hope not. I think it’s terrible.”

  “And they’ll want tears, pious words, they’ll search in my goddamn eyes for, for. You know what Susan said when she phoned?” Petulant voice, a voice that cries for its own lost cause. He’s almost a bloody beatnik with his grubby hair and beard. “There’s something I think you should know. Get that! At six he dies, and at seven in the frigging morning she phones, there’s something I think you should know she says, Martin’s been killed. Ha! You know what I said? I said. You’re kidding! Ha.” Uncertain laughter as he pauses behind me.
“What in hell else could I say? I was so.” Don’t want ­confessions in my car, don’t want to hear. Arrogant vulnerability and his selfishness.

  “Well, you know Oswald that death is a terrible thing. For the loved ones. They can’t be responsible for how they act, in the state of. Immediate shock. Death’s hand is clutching cold, of shocking angularity. As the poet said. Susan, Miss Morton, probably had to do something. Probably had to feel there was something useful to do. So she phoned.” Poor girl you searched, searched in the lonely land. Falling in the drifting wind and its leaves, the silence settles like an insect’s death. “You can hardly blame her under the circumstances.” But think of it! This nihilistic goon’s assaults at a time! Nice girl like Susan. Man has a responsibility, can’t just. “Think you’re being too hard on her altogether Oswald.” Sudden image of that violence in my hall. Hope he doesn’t. No sense of responsibility, respect even. Don’t want a scene, good grief, a nasty scene! Better soothe. “But it’s a difficult time, a shocking time for everyone who knew poor Baillie.” Relaxing, that should do it. A bit of grease to oil the wheels, that’s all it needs, and there is no doubt that I have the gift.