Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse(23)

—I already got it. He came while you were in the bathroom.

—You saw him?

—Well no, I didn’t see him.

—Then how do you know?

—I heard it hit the door. And here it is. Now why don’t you come in. I’ve made eggs.

But I wasn’t listening. I was striding, most definitely striding, I could feel it through the soles of my slippers, I was striding through the door and down the steps, striding toward where the hedge broke at the end of the walkway, toward the road that still smelled like dirt except on rainy days when it smelled like what it was – crumbling blacktop – and my hands were swinging at my side, swinging like a man of 40, a man who had things to do, a man who didn’t wear slippers all day and sometimes a bathrobe, a man who knew people and was known, a man who knew how to get things done, a man who, when I got to the road, would most definitely not be nice, not be a dear, I’d be a man who knew, who knew, I’d be a man who?

But before I broke past the hedge and confronted the road, confronted the very likely empty road with my anger and my venom, before I blasted the road for being empty, before I let that goddamn road have it good and square, before any of that I saw the body lying at the edge of the lawn. It was partway concealed by the hedge as if, before it was a body, it’d tried to crawl under it, maybe to get out of the heat or to hide or maybe for no reason at all. Now though, with all that trying to get cool and trying to get out of sight and trying to do god-knows-what-else out of the way, it lay there, one leg and one hand resting beneath the hedge, being quite definitely a body. It was the smell that gave it away, that told me immediately that it was a body and not, say, a drunk passed out which would have made sense too since there were a lot of drunks these days (I’d read in the newspaper alarming statistics, alarming, and that was just the other morning while I was waiting for my breakfast on a day not unlike this). And being drunks they frequently passed out somewhere so why not in our yard, which was out of sight of the rest of town and might as well have been alone on the planet for all the visitors who made their way to the end of the lane, the asphalt pitted and bits of it strewn in the ditches so that it wasn’t any better than the gravel it had replaced. No, I couldn’t think of a better place for a drunk to pass out, except that it wasn’t a drunk, it was a body, and one that was old, maybe three or four days if the way it smelled was any clue. The smell, or rather the stench – a clinging, cloying, sticking-to-the-hairs-in-my-nose stink – stopped me at five paces from it, all pretence of blasting the road spent in the odour that even now (has it been five days? six? I couldn’t say) lingers, making me wipe and rub and dig about the inside of my nose with a pinkie hoping, somehow, to dislodge it so I could forget, even though now (seven days later? eight?) I’m way beyond forgetting and would be happy with just being able to smell the way I used to.

Not knowing what to do, I looked back at the house hoping she’d still be there, standing at the door, a reservoir of good advice, just waiting to splash a little my way, but the door was closed; closed against the bugs and the heat and (let’s be honest, I told myself) the scene I was about to make had the body not intervened, had the body not brought me to my senses, had the body, the body, had the body?

—There’s a body out there.

—Out where?

Standing in the kitchen now, facing her back, bent over the wood stove, making breakfast even though it was far too early to be eating, the question threw me, made me pause to consider, made me, all of a sudden, wonder if things were really as bad as all that.

Out where?

What kind of a question was that? Did it strike at the core? I thought not but then maybe it did, maybe I was wrong, maybe bodies had a habit of turning up frequently enough, with enough regularity, that their location was the most important thing, trumped all other questions, questions like, like?

—Didn’t you hear what I said? There’s a goddamn body out there.

—No need to scream.

—There’s a body?

—I heard you the first two times. Now sit down, your eggs are ready.

—But what about the body?

—I’m sure it will be fine.

—Fine, how can it be? I mean, it’s?

—Yes, dear?

—It’s a goddamn body and?

—Please keep your voice down.

—And it’s on our front yard.

—So you said.

—Well, don’t take my word for it. You can see for your goddamn self.

Setting my plate of eggs next to a large glass of water to wash them down since we were out of the other stuff – the pretend coffee – she touched my arm and smiled. I knew what that smile meant, and for a moment I felt foolish, like a child who wouldn’t take no for an answer and ended up in his room because of it. But then the anger was back and I wouldn’t sit down, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t damn well?

—What are you doing?

—I’m calling the police. What am I doing?

The phone was in my hand and my fingers were pounding on the keys. After three pounds the phone was at my ear and I was listening between rings, to the dead air between the rings, listening between the rings?

—Something wrong, dear?

—The phone’s dead.

—Probably a tree down on the line.

A tree down, sure, it all made sense. But still I stood with the phone to my ear, listening between the rings, waiting and listening, listening and waiting?