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Issue # 125
| Tony
Fabijancic
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| Stuck
to His Blood |
"You're getting to be a man. You got to learn.
You got to learn to stick to your own blood or you ain't going to have
any blood to stick to."
- "Barn Burning," William Faulkner
The dead elm stood in Bill Fesan's grazing pasture outside Antigonish
where railway tracks snake in curves between the folds of the hills. Encroaching
on the tree was a still living pasture, Billy Fesan's place, where he
came to get out of the trailer and away from the old man. Summers he used
to go there everyday, swimming in the pool by the abandoned generating
station or shooting Moosehead cans off the posts of the barbed-wire fence
with his Jesse James. The pasture was his sanctuary.
The sky that afternoon was knotted by rain clouds. The leaves had turned
and the hills were a riot of red and orange and yellow. Billy Fesan left
the white trailer on their slash of property in the woods and trotted
down the rust-coloured mud road through the cow gate to the pasture. He
was a small kid, twelve years-old, had fine nearly white blonde hair and
anaemic sky-coloured eyes that always seemed on the verge of tears. He
wore a red and black checkered lumberjack shirt, soiled GWGs, black rubbers
and a Canadiens cap with a #10 stitched on the side.
Looking east in the direction of St. George's Bay, he could see Van Heningen's
holsteins dotting a clearing on the face of the hill. Billy traced the
mud trail which disappeared behind a line of evergreens and reappeared
below at the creek. Bill Fesan drove the GMC across that creek and up
that trail, once a day each summer and part of the fall, herded the lethargic
clotting of cows back down, usually getting out swearing and slapping
them punishingly with a cut-off Sher-Wood. Or else he'd dump bails of
last summer's hay or fill rust-blasted troughs with water transported
up in red plastic barrels once used for insecticide, troughs he'd welded
himself for Van Heningen seven years ago. While the work was all Fesan's,
the land, the livestock, the conversion of his work into milk products
which lined every store shelf in town, and ultimately the real profit
were all Van Heningen's.
Fesan handled this situation with badly hidden resentment, face clenched
like a fist every time he set out on a job, wrestled with some machine
or other, deposited a meagre cheque in the Main Street Credit Union, or
visited Van Heningen's three-story porticoed mansion every summer Sunday
to discuss the week's work. White, tidily pristine and fancy, the house
affronted him like a mockery of his own place. This trailer was where
the Fesans had ended up, arriving in Antigonish some time in the 50s from
somewhere forgotten, obliterated, burned tabula rasa clear by the acid
in his brain. The past was a write-off, like a bad investment.
He'd stood in Van Heningen's foyer once after driving in from the fields,
his spindleshanks spread in conquest, treads on his boots shit-heavy,
one just off the mat and on the white shag. He'd walked through manure
on the way up and now he didn't bother to look down. As he talked his
eyes shifted in their narrow sites across the parlour, contemptuously
noting the pink and white ceramic doilies. Next week's carpet-cleaning
bill showed up in his mailbox paper-clipped to a note in her immaculate
printing which he tore up and flung into the air, into a gale that had
sprung up that morning and swept across the valley and smelled like the
sea.
His other rebellion, if that's what it was, took the unsatisfying form
of an eccentricity - a long-standing rejection of milk in any form, whether
Van Heningen's or not. He was ruthless. His bones turned brittle like
dead wood. More than eccentricity, though, a more serious outrage was
shut inside his body, released at intervals like mines touched off by
someone's wrong steps.
His wife knew about this, bright blue eyes carefully following him wherever
he went now. Her face was prettily doll-like, cold-blooded, skin winter-pink
and delicate as stretched cotton candy. Of German extraction she looked
like a blonde aryan princess misplaced in the new world's wilderness,
waiting for salvation by some act of grace. In the meantime she waited
it out, watching after her son and the flowers in the plastic-sheeted
atrium she'd built behind the trailer. Sometimes she prayed to a plaster
figurine of Christ in a tiny altar under pictures of her dead parents,
oval black-and-whites stamped on the back by the Hamburg atelier, 1937.
After Fesan left the trailer that October day, she settled back on the
couch and gazed daydreamingly out the window. Rain hadn't fallen yet but
the clouds hung low and heavy over the trees. She went to their tiny room,
lifted out a bottle of peach brandy from under the bed and filled a Nova
Scotia liquor commission glass that had been sitting on her night table.
So it's afternoon so what, do something for this headache.
***
He pulled a burlap sack from the yellow grass and dumped out a dozen
pock-marked cans. After lining them up, he sat on a knoll cradling his
air gun. He shot from the waist and scattered the first can then the second.
"That's no way ta shoot," a voice said behind him.
He froze. He fumbled with the pellet tin and stared down at the cans.
"Let's see how yer suppose ta," the voice said.
He inserted two mushroom-shaped pieces of lead into the slots. He stood
up without looking back and stepped forward to give himself more room.
He eyed the can he wanted to hit, the rack squarely facing him. I'll
hit it now, I will. But the can still sat defiantly on the
post after he'd shot.
"Here, b'y. Ya got that wrong." Bill Fesan came forward. Middle-aged,
small-boned, lantern-jawed, he was dressed in a red and black checkered
lumberjack shirt, a pair of navy overalls and orange rubbers. A greasy
Leafs ball cap slanted over his eyes. He seemed two-dimensional, depthless,
unable to throw shadow. He reached for the gun. Billy hesitated then held
it up and Fesan lifted it to his shoulder.
"Gotta hold it straight and steady like this." He stood in
a shooting posture then handed the gun back. "Let's see ya do it,"
he said.
When Billy lifted the butt to his shoulder, Fesan said: "Hold it
steady. Yer never gonna hit nothin shakin like that."
He took a deep breath and shifted his feet, shot and missed, shot and
missed again. Fesan put a hand on his shoulder, turned him around so they
stood toe to toe.
"Bin out here every day?"
"Uh huh."
"Yes b'y, so tell me. Whatcha bin doin all that time?"
"Been practising," Billy whispered, looking at his feet.
"Yeah, I see that," pulling the gun roughly out of Billy's
hands.
"Well, I'm gonna show ya again cause ya obviously weren't listenin
the first time. I seen it the right way and I'm gonna show ya." He
lifted the gun to his shoulder. "Don't let it sit on top. Don't letter
sit on yer shoulder." He showed him the right way to do it.
"Hold the left hand ferder down, see." He showed him. "Get
it right on the front part of the shoulder. Relax, cause ya can't hit
them shakin like that. Don't put yer face right in there 'cause ya can't
see. Do it like that and you'll hit them cans." Fesan moved his finger
forward and pulled the imaginary trigger.
"Here, aren't you going to shoot," Billy asked, holding up
the can of pellets.
"No, you do it." He handed over the gun. He took off his cap
and slicked back a few black strands of hair.
Billy took the gun and without looking at Fesan shot twice more, wildly,
as if the gun had a life of its own or were hot in his hands. Fesan laughed.
"I see you bin listenin again."
Billy said nothing.
"So tell me, b'y. Were ya listenin or what?" No answer. "Can
ya talk?"
"Yeah, I can talk. I've been practising every day and hitting those
cans. Only when you come I can't hit anything. Just wait and see."
"Right. I'll see."
"I'll show you."
"I know you will. Keep at it."
Billy smiled and lifted up the gun. Fesan looked down then turned and
spat and walked towards the gate. "I'm comin back. Got work ta do
here." He trudged to the gate and up the road.
***
She watched him drag a red cannister from the garage and load it in the
truck. He threw in a saw and axe. Used to be him working for us drove
something through me in my heart and made me sing. That's all gone now
the place we were like sunshine across summer meadows here. All gone now
so it only seems like a dream and all I'm left with are old pictures.
He slammed the truck door and reversed. Gravel kicked up as he started
down onto the mud trail that curled into the pasture. When he goes
his weight comes off a while and I can breathe and be free like they are
the eagles in Billy's tree. But they can always fly and I never fly do
I never get out of this place. Don't even know how to drive. Where would
I go anyway not to uncle Karl who'd shut the door in my face. There's
no one else anymore except some relatives over there I suppose but what
would they do with me, and would they take us cause there's Billy I gotta
think about, could never leave him here God no. Maybe I could work, sure
I could work find a job and save some money and one day go, wouldn't that
shock him -- here one day gone the next like a ghost and no address just
a note. I'd put a note somewhere he wouldn't find it right off, make him
wait for supper and have to make it himself. Ha, what a laugh him frying
bacon and eggs for supper cause that's all he really knows, and he'd cook
the same meal for a month if he had to and not try something different.
But I wouldn't see him. I'd be away somewhere then I'd be okay.
Such a different life with only us two for a while. But that would
change too and he would take care of us and me and have a big enough heart
to accept Billy. If he wants me he has to want Billy 'cause we're a two
for one package. He would be fine with it I bet, I can tell about him,
I'd feel it anyway. Billy would get used to it too sooner or later even
if he didn't like the idea at first, though I don't know why he wouldn't,
with Bill always cruel to him, like his dad was with him. But the boy's
always trying, loyal as can be, can't imagine where it comes from loyalty
like that. But Billy'd get used to our new life. It would be okay and
we'd all be happy together and we'd both work and I'd cook too 'cause
it'd make me happy. And there'd be the nights, under the blankets and
his hands touching me. It's not so impossible a dream this dream, is it?
Why can't it happen to me why?
She filled the glass to the white letters. Make me sleep for once
ha ha.
***
He sat down and rested the gun in his lap. The mute grey sky pressed
down on the land and a few low clouds, wisped and torn, drifted lazily
past. He looked up at the elm tree. This was the tree Fesan's father planted
after the war. It clawed at the sky, stiff brittle branches splayed and
naked and white. But it was tall and made everything give it space. Not
small like me. Big enough so nothing's gonna touch it or knock
it around. Not big winter storms or wind or rain. Stays the same the same
the same.
Mom says he remembers granpa every time he looks at the tree, always
trying to make things right. But she said granpa was already heart-dead
long before they buried him. Dad likes to do things with his hands that
make the ghost of granpa go away. And trees and things are part of that.
He looked over his shoulder. The black GMC drove around the bend and
through the gate into the pasture. Fesan got out. He pulled an axe and
a saw from the hold and walked towards the tree. He walked past Billy
into the little gully where the tree was rooted among some weeds and thorns.
He dropped the axe and saw, stood with his feet wide and hands on his
hips, eyeing the tree up and down -- the dry branches, the half-hollow
trunk. He picked up his axe, and setting his feet further apart lifted
it over his head and chopped at the trunk. He wrenched the axe free and
powered it in again.
He went on with this calm repetition of slicing into the wood and pulling
the axe free, then began to speed up as if sensing the tree's weakening
resistence. But it was steady, upright, almost indifferent to his work.
He grew less controlled and swung more wildly, then flung the axe aside
and tried the saw. He stuck it into one of the deep axe marks, drew it
back and forth, slowly at first until the saw cut its own groove, then
faster. It caught a knot or a nail that had once tied a fence. He straightened
the saw but it doubled again. He tried to pry it loose but only a ferocious
tug forced it out. He picked up the axe again. Next time he'd fix the
old chainsaw.
The moment he had the axe poised above his shoulder and was about to
pivot and drive it down, something bit his left shoulder, tore it, burned,
a wasp bite stronger than he'd ever felt. Then something flew over his
head. He turned and saw whirling in a slow revolution, landing, dancing,
clattering across the ground, Billy's Jesse James. Then he saw
the boy running away, stumbling down the embankment and through the knee-deep
Brierly Brook, clambering up the far bank and heading for open space.
Fesan turned back to the tree and chopped angrily at it until it finally
tilted to one side and came down with a few cracks. He hacked away at
the last sinews of twisted wood still attached to the trunk. He put the
axe down and looked at his work, breathing heavily, sweating. He walked
to the truck, lifted out the cannister and poured gas on the tree. He
stood back as the tree exploded into flames.
Rain made smoke rise black against the grey sky. He poured more gas on
the fire and the cannister was suddenly alight, flames licking his hands.
He shouted and threw it to the side where it continued burning. He stepped
back, crossed his arms and watched the smoke rise over the valley.
***
The door was open as she stood on the steps watching a black plume of
smoke spiral above the trees, empty beer glass held absently in her left
hand. Rains all the time in Antigonish this time of year but now it
smells lovely. Rain smell makes me happy. Happy happy happy. I'll be fine
just a matter of keeping my spirits up just gotta keep them up. It's really
not so bad the country all around and the quiet if you're in the mood
for it. Starting to rain, feeling drops sticking my tongue out the way
I do with snow.
She looked up at the sky as rain fell. Closing the door behind her she
set the glass on the TV and went to the shelf. She picked up the slim
white Christ figurine and worried it with her hands, brushing dust from
the porcelain seams of its robe. I can feel you watching me now even
though I sometimes wonder about you, where you've been for me. Lord there's
others I know but now you're here with me, feel your touch your strong
hands taking away my pain. You won't leave me now, stay a while till they
come back, sure. She held the figurine in both hands, gently touched
the fingers and stroked the head.
***
He bled out as the chainsaw still snarled on the ground. The chain had
broken on a nail and whipped across his neck. He lay on his back, hands
trying to stop the bleeding. Said ya cum from nowhere where yer goin
to now. She'd seen him fall, watched him until his head turned towards
the kitchen window, causing her to flinch and step back. Billy'll be
home soon, gotta call them in.
Then winter hit and they used a drill on the defiant December earth.
A yellow bruise flowered under her right eye, turning fantastic shades
for three weeks like some perverse legacy. The first storm kept her inside
anyway, then two more followed, locking them in a cold white cage until
the fitful moods of March. She slept worse - nights like deserted snowswept
roads she had to negotiate in a bloodied truck she couldn't drive. She
dreamed of escaping.
Billy wore the same overalls all April, got on the school bus every morning
as usual, brought a lunch every day, eventually no more than a raw hotdog
and some crackers. People watched him walk the gravel border of the highway,
carrying grocery bags home. He seemed to have taken the news about his
father well but when he collapsed in a school hall, and no one answered
at the trailer, an RCMP officer took a ride out. The sight nearly felled
him. She was lying on the living room floor, her face hidden by two sheets
of note paper, a mostly full Dalmane container on the night table. The
extra money in her purse let him eke out a month's living, terrified of
leaving her, of losing his mother, being sent to a home. The days were
more manageable but the nights alone with her cold unmoving body in the
water-rotted trailer were frightening, desperate. He stuck to his blood.
It was spring then, trees budding, lilacs breeding out of the cold land.
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