Living with the hawk (25 page)
“No,” he said, “no, you're the real asshole.”
I had to smile at that â as soon as I mentioned Anna he knew what I was going to say. I could have called him something else, but what was the point of exchanging insults with someone like Jordan Phelps? I shook my head in disgust, with myself as much as with him, took a couple of deep breaths, and walked down the stairs. Left him standing there like an actor who'd forgotten all his lines.
Going near him was a mistake. What I should have done was stay in my seat, forget about stupid teen-age fantasies and play it like an adult.
Well, the game was over now, I'd follow the crowd out of Mosaic Place, meet the guys back at the car, and hope I never saw Jordan Phelps again. Hope he wasn't going to occupy my thoughts for months this time around.
Lord knows, he'd already been there far too long.
And he's there now. The football game over hours ago, I'm back in Saskatoon, in a turmoil once again, thinking about that horrible October. My father struggling to ease my suffering in any way he could, relying, naturally, on what had meant so much to him, the wisdom of the Bible, trying to pass it on to me, a boy who didn't want to listen. No matter how many hours my father spent pouring over scripture, seeking passages that might speak to me, he wasn't getting through. He knew it, and he wouldn't quit. Somehow he needed to convince me that I mustn't blame myself for what had happened to my brother.
I turn and turn in bed, stare at the ceiling, the walls, the dim light seeping from the edges of the curtain. My brother dead and Jordan Phelps alive, free to go wherever he wants, attend football games, heap curses on anyone he chooses. If there are answers to be found, they dwell far beyond me, awake or asleep.
I think of my father then, and suddenly I'm smiling. “Shit happens,” he once told me, the words so unlike any I had heard him utter, before or since. It must have been a battle for him to get them out.
Someday I'll have to thank him for the effort.
No, not some day. Now. I pick up the phone and dial. “Hey, Dad, it's me.”
Thanks to Dave Oswald Mitchell who, when he was in high school, wrote the poem that eventually inspired this novel. Special thanks to the members of my prose group (Byrna Barclay, Pat Krause, Dave Margoshes, and Brenda Niskala) for their chapter-by-chapter feedback over a period of many months, and especially to Dave who later gave me detailed comments on the whole works. Thanks also to Geoffrey Ursell, Barbara Sapergia and T. F. Rigelhof for their readings of the manuscript. I owe debts of gratitude to R. P. MacIntyre both for recommending my manuscript to the publisher and for his many editorial insights, and, of course, to the good folks at Thistledown for turning the manuscript into a book. Additional thanks to Karon Selzer and the staff of the Moose Jaw Public Library for their assistance and support. And finally a tip of the hat to the Saskatchewan Writers Guild, whose staff and members have helped sustain me through many years of writing.
Robert Currie is a poet and fiction writer who lives in Moose Jaw where he taught for thirty years at Central Collegiate, winning the Joseph Duffy Memorial Award for excellence in teaching language arts. He also taught creative writing for four summers at the Saskatchewan School of the Arts in Fort San and for three summers at the Sage Hill Writing Experience in Lumsden. He is the author of ten books, including the short story collections,
Night Games
and
Things You Don't
Forget,
and the novel,
Teaching Mr Cutler.