Forty Words for Sorrow

18

“IF YOU WANT THEM TO DIE slowly, shoot them in the stomach. Put one low down in the belly. Takes them hours to die that way. And they die in agony. They’ll put on a real show.”

Edie gripped the Luger the way he had showed her, one hand bracing the other, feet apart, poised in a slight crouch. I feel like a little kid playing cops and robbers. But when the gun goes off there’s nothing like it.

“Save your belly shot for special occasions, Edie. For now, just imagine he’s coming over that hill at you. He doesn’t want to talk, he doesn’t want to arrest you. He has only one objective: your death. Your job? Stop the bastard cold. It’s your right and duty to make the bastard dead.”

His hands showing me the way to squeeze the trigger. Long bones rippling under the skin.

“A head shot is always first choice, got that, Edie?”

“A head shot is always first choice.”

“You always try for a head shot, unless you’re more than twenty yards away. Then you go for the chest. Chest is second choice. Repeat.”

“The chest is second choice. Head is first choice. Second choice is chest.”

“Good. And you always empty the magazine. Don’t fire one off and hang around waiting to see how it turns out.

You empty your load. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!”

I jumped a mile when he did that. I cried out, but he didn’t hear, so intense he gets, when he’s teaching me things. His spiky hair seems to bristle on his head. His eyes go absolutely black.

“Edie girl, you give them everything you’ve got. Bulletproof vest? Doesn’t matter. Three of these will drop him flat—temporarily at least—giving you time to effect your escape.”

“My arms are killing me.” He ignores me. He’s a marine. He’s a taskmaster. He’s a born teacher. I’m his born student. I’m weak, but he makes me strong.

“Take a breath, Edie. You take a deep breath and hold it, just before you squeeze one off. On your own time.”

When Edie took too long, Eric said it again, “On your own time,” then added with irritation, “You’d be stone cold fucking dead by now.”

Edie squeezed the trigger and the bang was louder than she expected, it always was. “It’s got such a kick,” she said. “It’s making my arms tingle.”

“Don’t close your eyes, Edie. You’ll never hit anything that way.” Eric tromped away through the snow to examine the target. He came back wearing what Edie called his slab face, his stone face. “Beginner’s luck. One through the heart.”

“I killed him?”

“Purely by accident. He’d have shot your fucking head off an hour ago, you’re so slow. Take it again. Go for the chest. And for Christ’s bloody sake keep your eyes open.”

She took a while getting ready, and he repeated his earlier observation. “Of course, if you want them to die slowly, you shoot them in the stomach. You ever see a worm on a hook?”

“A long time ago. When I was little.”

“That’s how they squirm. Unhhhh!” Eric grabbed his stomach and fell to his knees, flopped onto his back and writhed horribly, making retching sounds. “That’s what they do,” he said from down on the snow. “Wriggle in pure agony for hours. Pure agony.”

“I’m sure you’ve seen it.”

“You don’t know what I’ve seen.” Eric’s voice had gone cold and dead. He got up, whacking snow from his jeans. “It’s none of your business what I’ve seen.”

Edie jerked the trigger, missing the target, missing the tree, and Eric immediately cheered up. He’d been in a good mood all morning; he always was when they had a guest. Having a guest set something free in him. He’d woken her up first thing this morning and proposed this jaunt in the woods, a shooting lesson, and she knew they would have a good day. He grabbed her from behind now, steadying her grip. “Never mind. If it was too easy, it wouldn’t be any fun.”

“Why don’t you show me? Let me watch you. That’ll help me get the hang of it.” The submissive act worked like a charm, it usually did.

“You want to watch the master at work? Okay, baby. Pay attention.”

Edie listened like a puppy with cocked head while Eric explained again the importance of the proper stance, demonstrating the grip, the crouch, the correct way to sight along the barrel. He was at his best when telling her things, lore he had picked up in Toronto or Kingston or Montreal. Except for a class trip to Toronto when she was in high school, Edie had never set foot outside Algonquin Bay. Twenty-seven years old, she had never lived on her own, and she had never met anyone like Eric. So totally self-sufficient. And so beautiful.

Edie’s diary, June 7, the previous year: I don’t know why he has anything to do with a hideous thing like me. Me with my horrible face and flat as a board. He has no idea how gorgeous he is. So lean, with ropy muscles, and the way he walks—that slight crouch—just makes me weak in the knees. She pictured his face with its fine bones, its clean lines, on a movie screen forty feet wide. You could sell tickets to anything he was in.

Like an artist, with those rings under his eyes, haunted by genius. I can see him on a cliff by the edge of the sea, with the wind blowing through his hair and a white scarf streaming out behind him.

He had come to her counter at Pharma-City with some aftershave and some Kleenex and he’d asked her for some Double-A batteries and a little bottle of PowerUp.

I’m doomed, she’d written in her diary that first day he’d shown up in the drugstore. I’ve met the most powerful man in the universe. His name is Eric Fraser and he works at Troy Music Centre and he has a face that looks like God to me. What eyes! She reread her diary from time to time, to remind herself of how empty her life had been, and then how full it had become since the arrival of Eric Fraser. Even his name is beautiful.

“Ever try this stuff?” he’d said to her. The cash register acted up and they were staring at each other while the manager fiddled with it.

“It’s like No-Doz, isn’t it? Caffeine pills?”

“Oh, they may say it’s just caffeine. They can say whatever they want, but take my word for it, you can do amazing things with PowerUp.”

“Stay awake all night, huh?”

But he’d given her a sly smile and shaken his head in pity. “Amazing things can be done.”

She could never have guessed how amazing.

He had been dressed all in black and was skinny as a knife, and when he put his dark glasses on, you could have sworn he was in some underground rock and roll band. It still amazed her that someone as handsome and smart and worldly-wise as Eric Fraser could be interested in her—a nothing, a no one, a loser like Edie Soames. Just three days before the first entry in her diary that mentioned Eric Fraser she had written: I am nothing, my life is nothing, I amount to a big fat zero.

Eric went to look at the target, his breath trailing behind him in feathery clouds. He made an incongruous figure all in black against the snow, with his spiky hair and his sunglasses. He came back clutching the paper target, holding it up like a trophy. “Excellent work. You’re beginning to show some consistency. It’s not just luck any more.”

They shoved the target in the back of Edie’s rusted Pinto and drove downhill to the highway, Eric slouched back in the seat like royalty. He had his own vehicle, a blue Windstar at least ten years old that he kept in perfect running condition, but Eric Fraser never drove unless he had to.

Edie made a left by the old drive-in theatre and drove the short distance to Trout Lake. She parked at the marina, under a sign that said, Parking for marina customers only. The lake was perfectly smooth, blinding white in the sunlight, except for the ice-fishing huts. Children were skating at the public beach, where a square of the lake had been cleared for a rink.

They dodged traffic on the highway and went tramping up the hill. Now and then a toboggan loaded with children shot past them. He loved his walks, Eric, loved the outdoors. Sometimes he walked for three or four hours, out to Four Mile Bay and back, or out past the airport. She would never have guessed this about him, he looked so, well, urban. But the long walks, the hills and snow and quiet, seemed to calm a restlessness in him. It was an honour to share these times with him.

They stepped over a chain-link fence that was bent practically to the ground and continued up the hill past the new pumphouse. Edie was huffing and puffing long before they got to the top and stood beside the frozen circle of the reservoir. A small plane with skis where its wheels should have been buzzed overhead and wafted down toward Trout Lake. They stood gripping the protective fence with its warnings against swimming in or skating on the reservoir. Edie could see the spot, two hundred yards downhill, where they had buried Billy LaBelle. She knew better than to mention it, though, unless Eric did.

“You know how to be quiet. I like that,” Eric had said to her once. He’d been in a sulk the whole day, and Edie had been terrified he was going to tell her he was tired of her, that he was finished with her and her fish face, but instead he had praised her. It was the first time anyone had praised her for anything, and she treasured his words like rubies. Now she could go for hours not saying anything. When sad thoughts came, or the bitter ache of hating her own face, she just put them aside and remembered his sweet words. Utterly silent, Edie could stand beside him staring at a circle of frozen water, and Eric seemed to like it just fine.

“I’m hungry,” he said eventually. “Maybe I’ll get something to eat before I drop over.”

“Do you want to come for supper?”

“I’ll get my own supper.” He didn’t like her to see him eating. It was one of his peculiarities.

“What if our guest wakes up?” Eric had taught her never to call the guest by name.

“After what you gave him? I don’t think so.”

Edie turned away from the reservoir and looked out over the hills, the subdivisions around Trout Lake. Smells of pine and woodsmoke hung in the air.

“I wish we didn’t have to earn a living,” she said. “I wish we could just spend all our time together. Walking places. Learning things.”

“Waste of time, most jobs are. And the people. Jesus, I hate them. I hate the bastards.”

“Alan, you mean.” Alan was his boss, always on Eric’s back about something, telling him to do things he’d already done, explaining things he already knew.

“Not just Alan. Carl, too. Fucking faggot. I hate them all. They think they’re so fucking perfect. And what they pay me—I’m forced to live in that pigsty.”

Edie was getting really cold standing there, but she didn’t say anything. When he started talking about people he hated, she knew what was coming. There would be a party—that was Eric’s word for it. They already had their guest of honour in safekeeping. A flutter started up in Edie’s chest, and suddenly she badly needed a bathroom. She pressed her lips together, holding her breath.

“I think we should move the schedule up a bit,” Eric said casually. “Have the party a little earlier than we’d planned. Don’t want our guest to get bored, do we.”

Edie soundlessly released her breath. Liquid spots swam in the corners of her vision. From far below on the toboggan run, the happy screams of children rose high into the air and echoed off the cold white hills.

Bump, bump, bump. It made Edie want to scream. They’d just finished dinner half an hour ago; what could she want now? Bump, bump, bump. Like she’s rapping that cane on my skull. Never any peace. Work all day at a nothing job, in a nothing store, in a nothing town, and then come home to what? Bump, bump, bump.

“Edith! Edith, where are you? I need you!”

Edie turned from the sink with a wet plate in her hand and yelled toward the stairs, “I’m coming!” Then, in a normal voice, “You old bitch.”

The tree in the backyard swayed, scraping an icy finger on the window. How green and benign that same tree had looked just months ago. Eric had come into her life, and everything had turned into the greenest summer Edie had ever seen.

Bump, bump, bump. She ignored the thump of Gram’s cane on the ceiling, willing the icy branch to turn green once more. The whole summer had been rich with colour, saturated with a million different shades of green and blue, drenched with the rapture of getting to know Eric. From boredom and nothingness, Eric had created passion. From emptiness, excitement. From misery, thrills.

I am a conquered country, she had written in her diary. I am Eric’s to rule as he sees fit. He has taken me by storm. The words put her in mind of another storm, a stupendous blast of wind and rain that had come whipping across the iron grey of Lake Nipissing last September.

They’d killed the Indian kid. Well, Eric had killed her, technically speaking, but she’d been in on it, she’d helped him pick her up, she’d kept the kid in her house, she’d watched him do it.

“Do you see that look in her eyes?” he’d said. “There’s nothing like the look of fear. It’s the one look you can trust.”

The girl was tied to the brass bedstead, gagged with her own underpants and then a scarf tied round on top of that. All you could see was the tiny little nose, the brown, almost black eyes widened to their limit. Deep pools of terror from which you could drink deep and long.

“You can do it just like that,” Eric had said a few nights earlier. They had been talking by candlelight in the living room, Gram fast asleep upstairs. Eric liked to come over at night and sit with her in candlelight—not eating, not drinking—just talking, or sharing long silences. He had been telling her his ideas for weeks, giving her books to read. He had leaned forward toward the coffee table, the candlelight deepening his sharp features, and snuffed the flame with thumb and forefinger.

And he did it just like that: with a little pinch of the nostrils. Snuffed her little life out with a delicate pinch of thumb and forefinger. It wasn’t in the least violent, except for how the girl struggled.

Edie’s knees had wobbled and her stomach had turned over, but Eric had held her, and made her a cup of tea, and explained that it took a little getting used to, but that eventually there was nothing like it.

He was right about that. Virtue was just an invention like the speed limit: a convention you could obey or not, as you saw fit. Eric had made her understand that you didn’t have to be good, there was nothing forcing you to be good. A realization like that was pure jet fuel in your bloodstream.

That day had been weirdly hot for September, and when the girl was dead, the room seemed suddenly full of birds, singing with delicious sweetness. Sunlight spilled through the window like gold.

Eric packed the body into a duffle bag that he could sling over his shoulder, and they set off in his Windstar for Shepard’s Bay, where he had rented a small boat. He’d even rented fishing rods, thoroughness and foresight being just two of the qualities Edie admired in him. Eric barely crossed the street without first writing out a detailed plan of action.

The boat was a twelve-foot aluminum thing with a thirty-horsepower Evinrude clamped on the stern. Once he had started the motor, Eric was content to let Edie steer. He sat in the prow by the duffle bag, the wind ruffling the soft spikes of his hair.

The wind seemed to tear right through Edie’s thin nylon jacket. And it was suddenly colder when she steered out of the bay into the grey expanse of Lake Nipissing. The clouds fused into a sombre landscape, and before long it became dark as evening. Edie stayed near the shore, and soon they were passing Algonquin Bay, the limestone cathedral white against the charcoal sky. The city seemed tiny from out on the lake, hardly more than a village, but Edie was suddenly afraid that someone on the shore would sense something wrong about the boat—sense something odd in the couple heading into the teeth of a storm. Then a boat would approach, and police would demand that they open the duffle bag. Edie twisted the throttle, and the waves smacked louder at the hull.

Eric pointed west, and Edie turned the motor so that the town hove round behind them. Across the whole vaporous landscape there wasn’t another boat in sight. Eric grinned and gave her the thumbs-up sign, as if she was his co-pilot on a bombing run.

Soon the island took shape on the horizon, the shaft head rising into the sky like a sea monster. Edie steered toward it and lowered the throttle. Eric made a circling gesture, and Edie took them slowly round the tiny island. There was nothing else besides the mine shaft; there wasn’t room. They scanned the lake for other boats, but there were none in sight.

Edie steered around a rocky point and nosed the boat in. Waves rocked them wildly, and when Eric stood up, he had to clutch the gunwale, nearly pitching over the side. He jumped onto a flat rock with the rope. He pulled the boat the rest of the way onto the pebbly beach, the stones screeching against the hull.

“I don’t like the look of those clouds,” he said. “Let’s get it done fast.”

The duffle bag weighed a ton.

“God, old Katie’s a dead weight, isn’t she.”

“Very funny,” Edie said.

“You can let go now. I’ve got it.”

“You don’t want me to help you up that slope?”

“Stay in the boat. I won’t be long.”

Edie watched Eric stagger up the slope with the duffle bag. Good thing no one had seen them with it: from this distance it was obvious the bag contained a body. The girl’s spine was a vivid curve inside the canvas, the bumps of her vertebrae clearly outlined. There were twin bumps where her heels strained against the fabric. There was a hard, straight line where Eric had slipped in the crowbar he would need to break the shaft head lock.

The first heavy raindrops falling into the boat sounded like gravel hitting a bucket. Edie huddled in her nylon jacket. Clouds flew overhead at incredible speed. The waves were frothing into whitecaps.

Eric had been gone about ten minutes when there was a loud throbbing and a small outboard appeared at the end of the point. A boy stood up and waved at Edie. She waved back, gritting her teeth. Go away, damn you. Go away.

But the boat came purring closer. The boy clutched his windshield and shouted, “Are you all right?”

“Yes, just had a little engine trouble.” The worst possible thing to say, and Edie immediately regretted it.

The boy brought his boat in closer, dead slow among the rocks. “Let me take a look for you.”

“No, it’s nothing. I just flooded it, that’s all. And now I’m waiting for it to clear. It’ll be fine. It’s just flooded.”

“I’ll stick around, just in case.”

“No, don’t. You’ll get soaked.”

“That’s all right. I’m already wet.”

What if Eric came back out of the trees with the duffle bag still slung over his shoulder?

“How long ago did you try to start her up?”

“I don’t know,” Edie answered miserably. “Ten minutes maybe. Fifteen. It’s all right. Really.”

“Let me give her a pull for you.” He drew alongside and gripped the aluminum gunwales, grinning. “Can’t leave a damsel in distress.”

“No, please. I want to give it a bit longer. It floods easily, this motor.”

From beyond the boy’s shoulder, Eric appeared. Seeing their visitor, he drew back among the trees.

The boy was smiling at Edie. He was a gawky adolescent, all pimples and Adam’s apple. “You from in town?”

Edie nodded. “Maybe I’ll try it now,” she said, lurching around. She yanked at the cord, and the motor coughed blue smoke.

In the corner of her eye she could see Eric threading his way through the trees and down to the point. Another minute and he would be directly behind the boy. Something long and black gleamed in his hand. The crowbar, slick with rain.

“Is the pressure good? Better pump up the tank there.”

“What?” Edie yanked the cord. And again.

“The rod on top of the gas tank. You probably have to pump it up. Want me to do it?”

Edie grasped the pump and worked it up and down. She felt the resistance stiffen, and it began to hurt her thumb. She pulled the cord again, and this time the motor caught with a roar. She gave the boy a big grin. Eric was maybe twenty yards behind him, half hidden among the pines. He raised the crowbar over his shoulder.

“If you want, I can ride alongside, make sure you get home okay.”

“No, thanks. I’d rather do it alone.”

The boy revved his own engine a couple of times. “Don’t hang around too long. Storm could get a lot worse.” There was a clunk as he slipped into reverse, the waves exploding into spray over the stern. When he was pointed away from the island, he gave her a solemn wave and went throbbing off into the storm.

Edie looked over at Eric, standing like a woodsman among the trees with his crowbar on his shoulder. “Jesus Christ,” she said. “I thought he’d never get out of here.”

Eric waited until the boy was a white speck in the distance before jumping into the boat.

“Jesus Christ,” Edie said again. “I thought I’d wet my pants.”

“Would have been simple enough to bust his head open.” Eric dropped the crowbar and it hit the floor of the boat with a bang. “Lucky for him I didn’t happen to be in the mood.”

Thunder cracked, and spears of lightning flung themselves at the horizon.

Bump, bump, bump.

“All right, for God’s sake!”

She went upstairs.

The old woman lay festering among the pillows. The air in the room was stale and hot. The television was on, but there was no picture.

“What do you want?”

“The thingamajig’s gone. It’s nothing but snow.”

“You called me up just for that? You know it’s always in your bed.”

“It isn’t in the bed. I’ve looked all over.”

Edie flounced into the room and plucked the errant remote from the floor. She aimed it at the television and pushed the button till there was a picture.

Gram snatched the remote from her. “That’s French! I don’t want French!”

“What do you care? You don’t have the sound on anyway.”

“What?”

“I said, you don’t have the sound on anyway!”

“I want company, that’s all. People I could talk to if I met them.” As if Alex Trebek’s going to stop in for tea on his way to the studio.

Edie opened the window. She refilled the water glass, plumped the pillows, brought up a Woman’s Day and a Chatelaine she’d swiped from the drugstore. Oh, Eric, save me from this.

“Edie, honey?” The wheedling tone was nauseating.

“I don’t have time. Eric’s coming over.”

“Please, sweetie-peetie-pie? For your old Gram-Gram?”

“We just did your hair three days ago. I can’t be dropping everything just to do your hair. It’s not like you’re going out dancing.”

“What? What’s that?”

“I said, it’s not as if you ever go anywhere!”

“Please, honey. Everyone wants to look nice.”

“For God’s sake.”

“Come on, honey. We’ll watch Jeopardy together.” She fiddled with the remote until the sound from the TV was earsplitting. A newscaster was going on about Todd Curry, promising an in-depth report at six. Yesterday’s Lode had carried a high school picture of him, looking a hell of a lot more innocent than he really was. Was it a drug deal gone bad or is there a serial killer at large? Pulse News at Six.

Edie fetched the basin and washed Gram’s hair. It was so thin it only took a few minutes, but she hated the soaked-dog smell. She put the rollers in while Gram shouted wrong answers at the television.

Edie emptied the basin of dirty water, and when she was on the landing, the doorbell rang, making her jump so hard she dropped the basin. She was sure it would be the police. But when she peered through the curtain, her blood leaped. Whenever Eric appears at my door, the chasm I dwell in seems suddenly a shallow, bearable place and not the black pit I imagine when he’s gone. All the darkness seems a figment of my imagination. Then there is air, and hope once again. Suddenly, it becomes a livable place, my bottomless pit. What light breaks over the rim!