The End Of Snow WC:5,242

For nothing can be sole or whole That has not been rent.

WB Yeats. Crazy Jane Talks With The Bishop

If he’d had time, Jacob might have thought about how the setting sun

cast shadows that lay like prayer mats beneath the hay bales. He

might have noticed how the field ran in a tawny band beside the blue-

black ribbon of river and how those shadows and the patterned play of

gold and dark bemused him. Only Jacob would never have used the

word “bemused”.

It was so frickin’ pretty, he might have said, and I just took my eyes off

the road for a second.

He’d had no time to laugh, as surely he would have, at the sight of the

bulging eyes, rolling into white beneath brush-stiff lashes, and at the

nostrils, big as fists and dripping snot, widening in fear and filling his

vision, just the other side of the already shattering windshield.

For he was given, at the end, just one short syllable’s worth of breath

for spending on a whispered, suspended “Oh”.

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For a few moments he tried to reclaim his body, seeking a way back to

flesh and solid bone and all his glorious, hard-won muscle, because he

was young and full of beans, and visions of laughing summer girls were

spinning by him, and this was no good time to die.

And because of Eli.

But the moose was crushingly heavy, a dead weight, a dead silence, a

dead beat in a failed heart.

They pulled it out of the wreckage with a tractor, an ungainly sack of

brown hide and swampland memory. And, were there a bigger word

than “thump” for the sad, thick sound it made as it hit the shoulder in

a spray of gravel, then it ought to be used. And only then was Jacob

extracted by capable hands, scooped by his armpits from the tangle of

guts and metal and shattered glass, like a baby from its crib, and laid

with care upon the stretcher.

Sure’s a nice rack on that moose, the ambulance attendant sighed as

he watched his partner perform a redundant checking of Jacob’s vital

signs.

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Sure’s a nice rack, he repeated as they loaded Jacob’s body into the

back of the ambulance while Jacob hoped they might use the siren, just

for fun.

The antlers, miraculously intact, wound up on the side of a weary barn

that housed chickens and a few cannabis plants. The owner sold eggs

and, to select customers, nickel bags of shake, from a roadside stand.

After the accident he’d had to move the business a couple hundred

feet up the road, until the blood smear faded.

And as for what happened next, Jacob cannot say. He simply woke to

the sure knowledge of his metamorphosis. One shining eye found his

five-year-old self, standing, scowling, at the school bus stop. The driver

yelled at his mom as she listened, swaying side to side to soothe

newborn Eli.

If he won’t get on, he won’t get on, she said. No need to stop here

anymore. It’s only Kindergarten.

The school bus pulled away as Jacob winged his way to the ground.

Mom!

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Rawk!

His mother disappeared down the driveway.

The slam of the ambulance doors startled him and he rose in alarm,

wings akimbo, before settling into the cautious, unsteady flap and

glide that took him back into the town and to Eli.

Eight months later, Jacob flies easily, and finds he enjoys caching,

especially the moment when he cocks his eye and commits the

location to memory. Click, go his synapses, click, click. He plays at

spying on the others as they bury their treasures but he has not yet

dared a raid. The magpies are, like all corvids, a sociable clan but also

possessed of a certain feistiness. He does not relish a squabble.

He cannot see his own tail but takes pleasure in the shining, ebony fact

of it. He admires the extravagant length of others’ and the constant,

quivering, fanning, expressiveness they display. When he flies, he

feels, with gratification, a slight drag of majesty.

He is grateful he is not an eagle. He saw once, from the deck of house

he was helping to frame, a deck that hung out over the lake at an

angle that proclaimed more wealth than practicality, a deck so high it

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made him nervous just to peer over the edge, a pair of mating eagles.

They clung, talons entangled, with wings outstretched and beating,

and danced a plummeting, spinning air ballet that was also part

unhinged carnival ride. All that unnecessary drama just to get laid.

Yet, when he told Eli about it, Eli was more curious about the deck than

the eagles.

Did you spit? he asked.

What?!

Did you…could you spit into the lake from that deck?

You mean, like hork a loogie?

Yeah, that would be cool from way up there.

On the way to the river, Eli plays with his shadow. It ripples over the

crust of snow, a grey doppelganger, slipping along ahead of him,

reading the contours of the shoreline. Neither Jacob nor Eli know of

doppelgangers, nor what they may portend— so what is it that causes

Jacob such unease, that ruffles his feathers, as Eli flexes his arms and

puffs out his chest?

Eli wears only Jacob’s old clothing now, layers of work shirt and waffle

knit underwear. He belts the pants below the waistband and rolls the

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cuffs twice. He is untroubled by the disproportionate shape of his tiny

head on top of all this bulk. However, the haircut is an improvement.

He was ordered to AA as part of his probation, though he’d only ever

been drunk the one time, and so met Ray who cuts his hair for free.

Ray pays him to sweep the shop, an unnecessary kindness on Ray’s

part but one he takes pleasure in extending. Eli hardly speaks and

Ray’s job requires an inordinate amount of small talk. Sometimes a guy

just wants to be quiet, to be with another person without having to fill

the space between them with a lot of damn chatter.

It is a long way to the river beach for a low-flyer like Jacob but Eli has

been in a mood to dawdle, so there has been chance enough to rest

but not enough to eat. Jacob is hungry and querulous when he spies

the pile of old clothing that is, he thinks, left by one of the drugged-

out, hippy kids who hitchhike through the valley every summer, free-

camping along the river and leaving their crap behind.

Pigs.

Rawk.

Perhaps there will be larvae beneath the layers.

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But there is something…what is it...something too laid out and smooth

for his ease, in this pile of raggedy denim and dirty cotton. The river

would have wrapped it round a tree or spit it out onto the boulders in a

tangled mess. No hippie kid would have taken the time to bury his

garbage.

The pile, more a narrow shallow mound, is tucked, like the pastry on a

pie that’s overfull of fruit, into the grit-speckled, corn snow. Jacob

remembers those pies. His mother would make one if he and Eli could

fill a whole bucket with huckleberries. Hard to do that with

huckleberries. They had to get the jump on the bears in the high

country, and the townies in the low, and his and Eli’s own greed

everywhere.

Jacob wanders easily back to a time, that’s one good thing about being

bird-brained, wherein their mother talks to them as she measures flour

and lard, tells stories of her childhood back east and the farm where

she once was happy. She hums as she deftly cuts in the fat, tilting the

bowl to show them it is ready, the size of little peas she says. She

mixes the pastry with cold water and gives Eli a small ball of dough to

play with. By the time he is finished it is the colour of drier lint, though

she’d made him wash his hands.

She lays the top crust over the hill of berries, gracefully slipping it off

the rolling pin. She doesn’t pinch the pastry round the rim of the pie

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plate like most women do. She slips it under the fruit, all around the

edge, and pulls the lip of the bottom crust up and over, sealing it with

egg white. She says it helps keep the juice from bubbling out between

the seams and making a mess in her oven. And she bakes Eli’s dough

for him, never minding the colour, and gives him jam to sweeten it. He

offers Jacob half and Jacob accepts, ceremoniously holding out his

tongue to receive it, while Eli grins. Jacob secrets the crusty offering in

his cheek until he can escape to the bathroom to spit it out.

Just now Eli notices the grey fabric and the filthy jeans, the woven

pattern on the belt, barely visible through the grime, and the lace-up

leather boot, lying on its side, pigeon-toed, at the cuff-end of one long

leg of the jeans. If there is another boot, it is still tucked in, under the

dirty snow.

Jacob flaps to the ground, struts, preens, rises and settles, squawks

and shrieks.

Look at me, Eli! Look at me!

But Eli toes at the grey with his rubber boot. The fabric yields to his

tap, separates itself from the denim, shows Eli what is underneath.

Jesusgodholyhell.

He jitters from foot to foot and wipes his galoshes in the snow.

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Jesusgodholyhell.

Jitters and wipes. Walks away and walks back.

Jacob flaps and flaps around him, from tree to rock to ground, tree,

rock, ground, round and round he goes.

He vibrates with Eli’s fear and his own. The carrion calls. He feels the

tug. The flocks will gather as it thaws. There will be coyotes. And

eagles.

Eli takes himself away, stumbling round the curve of the beach and out

of sight of the thing in the snow. He crouches, hugs his knees to his

chest, rocks back and forth. Jacob. He misses Jacob. He whimpers.

Jacob would know what to do.

Jacob, near by, clucks and chucks cold comfort.

Last spring, just months before the accident changed him, Jacob had

found him this very spot, this little crescent of gravel and sand and the

rock outcropping that caught the afternoon sun just right.

He had grinned at Eli as they crouched down for a closer look. His eyes

were all scrunchy, the way they went when he was pleased about

something. Usually that something was himself.

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I bet these come along real early, Jacob had said, even earlier than the

ones ‘long side of Murtagh’s wall.

And he was right, Jacob was.

And if Eli hadn’t met that Nick guy when he was picking up his cheque

at the ministry office and if he hadn’t gone to the hotel with him and

let him order drink after drink until he, Eli, was wild and loud and

happy, until he was raging and weeping for the missing of his mother,

and if the Nick guy hadn’t laughed at him, and if Eli could have walked

away like he always did, only this time he didn’t, but instead picked up

a bar stool and flung it at the Nick guy and split his head so wide open

that Eli thought he’d killed him and when the cops came he took a

swing at one of them, so frantic he was.

If all of that hadn’t happened, then he wouldn’t have been in jail even

though Jacob tried to get him out but no luck because the Nick guy was

in the hospital and because of the bad idea of taking a swing at the

cop.

If all of that hadn’t happened, just as they were about to bloom at his

and Jacob’s spot, then he would have been the first person into The

Gazette office with the very first buttercups of the spring instead of

that kid who found them first, growing along side Murtagh’s wall.

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Eli goes, when he finally goes, not to the police station but to the desk

lady at the Gazette. Her name is Lee. Pinky Lee, Jacob nicknamed her

years ago. The “Lee” he knew from the little leather nameplate and

“Pinky” because, well, that is obvious. Jacob imagines that sometime,

somewhere, some man told her the colour suited her and, truth be

told, it does, her pale skin and blue eyes, the blonde hair piled into an

exuberant mound of curls on top of her head. All she needs is a

feather plume and, in Jacob’s mind, she would be a perfect circus-

pony-person. She’s always had a soft spot for Eli.

She makes the call to the police station, coos reassurance, tells Eli he

did the right thing, tells him it will be okay and, while they wait for the

Mounties, she distracts him with the story of the first time they met.

She remembers that Eli never said a word. She remembers big eyes

and bowl-cut, fine, dark hair, electric from his toque. She remembers a

small boy smile, the sweetness of it, and how hard she worked to win

it.

Eli remembers Jacob pushing him through the door, swearing at him

when he balked, and promising fries and gravy when it was over.

Go on in, buddy, I’ll be right here. Imagine Mom’s face when she sees

you on the front page. Imagine that!

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Eli remembers fuzzy pink on the top of her, and white on the bottom

of her. He remembers her feet through a hole in the desk and her

shoes showing all her shiny, pink toenails.

What can I do for you, young man? she asked.

One, two, three steps to the desk and he plunked the paper bag down.

She jumped back a little though he hadn’t meant to scare her.

They laugh when she tells this part.

She poked at the bag with one finger. Pink fingernail! Like the toes!

She pretended to be scared.

Is there something in here that might bite me?

He shook his head, no. Eli remembers her eyes grew tall, like Sylvester

the Cat’s.

Nothing dead and creepy?

He opened the bag to show her and she peeped inside.

Ooh, she said. How lovely. Buttercups! You’re the first for sure.

And she got out the camera.

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He remembers that when he left the Gazette office that day, Jacob

patted him on the shoulder and took him to the café.

Jacob feels the exertion of keeping up with his little brother. So do the

three RCMP officers accompanying them. It is tight where Jacob

imagines his wishbone would be. Eli looks deceptively puny but he

walks everywhere. One of the cops points to the spot up on the bench

where a muddy track shows plainly through the snow.

We could have driven right here! he bitches.

How would he know that? Jacob scolds.

Rawk. Rawk.

The story breaks with all its small town brouhaha. The young man from

all those posters, his body found, identified, foul play suspected. Pinky

Lee’s boss wants her to take Eli’s picture to accompany his write-up

but Eli refuses to pose and she will not make him.

They stop him, everywhere, strangers, or people who claim

acquaintance but who have never tossed even a “hi ya” his way. They

pump him for information, seeking details.

Fucking ghouls, thinks Jacob.

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They want anecdotes exchangeable for a beer or two in the bars,

everyone anxious for the bragging rights, the story straight from the

horse’s mouth. They ask him about a reward and offer help but even

the most persistent give up in the face of Eli’s confusion of responses.

So many there are that Eli hides out in the trailer for two weeks, living

on tins of fruit and porridge oats while Jacob keeps vigil from his perch

on the third branch from the bottom of the big ponderosa pine, and the

news grows old.

They both watch with worried eyes as the weather slowly warms. The

snow slips from the roof of the trailer one night in a freight train

rumble that startles Eli awake and leaves him shaking and restless,

anxious for the dawn. Jacob twice makes the long flight back to the

beach to reassure himself they have not yet bloomed.

It is a full month before they finally do, in the shelter of the warm rock

crèche, bright leaves spreading against the grey grit and yellow heads

nodding tremulously on newborn stems. Eli is ready. He skirts the part

of the beach where he found the body and slides down the bank,

landing gingerly to avoid crushing the flowers. He digs a clump and

wraps it in a plastic bag, carries it cradled in his arms, back to town. On

the way, the sun through the makeshift greenhouse coaxes the buds

open.

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Jacob settles on a spot, the domed lid of the garbage bin outside the

window, while inside Pinky Lee claps her hands and fusses over Eli,

moving him into the light that filters through the grimy glass, showing

him how to hold the buttercups. She has removed his cap and

smoothed the static from his hair, and once again charmed a smile out

of him.

Jacob knows who it is the moment he sees them getting out of the car,

a red Jeep parked in a line of battered pick-ups and rust-spotted

sedans. It isn’t just their city car or their city clothes. It is told in her

eyes, washed colourless, and in his face of stone. They walk side by

side, not touching, toward the newspaper office. Jacob wonders how

they are able to move beneath the burden of regret and sorrow they

carry.

Breathing doesn’t make you alive anymore than dying makes you

dead. And no one comprehends the consequential damage of

unheralded collisions better than Jacob and he cannot stop this.

What the fuck, he scolds. Why are you here?!

Rawk.

He lifts from his perch and lands on the sidewalk in front of them. He

hopes his belligerent parading will pull their gazes from the scene

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playing out behind the winter-smeared window of the newspaper

office.

Jacob was not there, inside the building, for their first meeting but he

knows that when Eli walked out of the RCMP offices, that day, that time

when they came to identify their son and insisted on speaking to Eli,

though the sergeant in charge had advised against it, Eli had been so

frightened that he’d puked. Pinky Lee, who had accompanied him

because he’d begged her to, had done what she could to wipe the

vomit from his pants and shoes but Jacob could smell it on him and he

was 30 feet away. He was not there but he could imagine how it was,

Eli turned mute and sick by his shyness and fear of the police — by his

imagining of another night in the cells like the tortuous ones following

his arrest in the hotel bar— by the enormity of the parents’ grief and

the frustration-turning-to-anger of all of his inquisitors.

Lee looks out just as the man looks in. He freezes. Lee’s face betrays

her dismay. The man and the woman stare at Eli. Eli is the last to

understand. The woman brings her hands to her mouth while the man

turns without a word. He leaves the woman there, alone, and staring

though the window. Eli glances at Lee, wide-eyed and panicked. When

he flees, Lee clutches at the empty space where Eli stood just seconds

before, smiling and holding buttercups up to the camera.

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Fly or hop? Jacob settles on a little of both, catching up to Eli just as he

nears the man in the parked, red Jeep. The man starts as Eli flings

open the passenger door and thrusts the clump of buttercups toward

him. He takes them into his own hands, watches with his face of stone

until Eli disappears around the corner, then readies his arm to heave

them.

He opens the door and stops, his momentum arrested by the presence

of a large black and white bird on the sidewalk. The magpie tilts its

head and fixes one glossy-bead eye on the man and on the small

bouquet in his hand. The bird stretches its neck exposing large patches

of pristine white, while the gleaming beak gawps, while the tail

feathers fan and catch the sunlight and, oh, if only Jacob could have

seen the glorious iridescence thus displayed. And if only he could tell,

Jacob would say they stayed like that for an age, caught in a bizarre

contest, no, not the right word, a bizarre communion of will and rage

and grief and how, in the end, the man withdrew and the door closed,

hiding both his face of stone and Eli’s buttercups from the bird’s

insistent gaze.

Now Jacob waits for the woman to return. At her approach, hesitant

steps guided by Pinky Lee’s arm at her elbow, the man opens the door

and places the clump of buttercups on the ground beside the front tire.

The woman gets in on the other side. Doors slam in unison. Not a word

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is exchanged. Lee stands and watches the car pull away. If she notices

the buttercups at the gutter’s edge, wheel-crushed and broken, she

does not let on. Nor does she seem aware of Jacob, a wingspan away

and at shoulder height, perched statue-still on a mailbox and staring in

the direction of the disappearing car. Lee wraps the pink wool of her

coat close around herself, tucks her chin against the rising chill and

wanders back down the street, her high heeled boots slipping on the

damp-turning-to-ice of the sidewalk. At the newspaper office a young

mother i waits her return. She has with her a sweet-faced, placid

toddler.

Show the lady what we found today! she gushes, pushing the child, a

little girl, forward.

You’re too late, Lee says.

She disappears into the back room and does not re-emerge until

mother and child have left.

When no picture of the spring’s first buttercups graces the front page

of the following week’s paper, the young mother writes a scathing

letter to the editor, tearfully …if one can write tearfully… describing

her child’s disappointment and denouncing the rudeness of the

Gazette receptionist. Lee, on orders of her boss, finds herself driving

through the bewildering sameness of the new subdivision while

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rehearsing an apology that comes close to choking her. She takes

photo after photo of the child and, yes, the fucking buttercups. The

mother, who wears her reluctant acceptance of the apology like an

overtight girdle, though she is far too young and too obsessed with the

gym to have any notion of girdles, asks for and is promised an 8 by 10

print of her choice, as well as the place of prominence on the front

page of the next issue of The Gazette.

Lee drives away and pretends she does not see the child—really a

charming kid but dear God, that mother — holding buttercups and

enthusiastically waving goodbye. When the picture appears it is a

stunner, a full-page black and white, revealing only the top of the

child’s bent head and her small hands cradling the buttercups. Lee has

persuaded her editor to have a single colour added and so the tiny

petals glow softly yellow among the shades of grey. So unusual, so

tender is the image that even the mother of the child is unable to

protest the concealing of her daughter’s face. A banner headline reads

THE END OF SNOW.

But at this moment, she simply needs to find Eli. He is not at the

barbershop though Ray says he will help her look as soon as he

finishes with a customer. Jacob meanwhile has settled higher than he

has ever been, almost at the top of the tallest pine in the valley, a

landmark that towers over the three ornate, stories of the old City Hall.

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He fights a creeping lightness of being, a dizzy-making sense of

vulnerability and displacement, compounded by worry.

Eli is not hunched in his corner of the library reading room, nor slurping

sweet tea in either cafe. Lee knows some of his habits but not them

all.

I have a life of my own, she tells Ray when they meet outside his shop.

She shakes her head and half-laughs, almost weeps. How did I wind up

part of all of this?

I like the kid, always have had a soft spot for him, Ray says. Not much

of a life but a real sweet kid. Sad about that whole family.

I know what you mean, she says.

At just this moment, the sky fades into purple in the east and the air

grows cold, Streaks of pink find the cloud wisps hanging on the

western hills and Jacob spots a familiar shape heading toward the old

black train bridge.

There you are, you little pinhead!

Rawk.

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He wings clumsily down from branch to branch until he is at a height

more suited to his comfort and then launches himself in a straight line,

toward the bridge.

Eli places one rubber boot on the bottom railing and leans over as far

as he can.

A red Jeep passes the town end of the bridge, slows but does not stop.

The woman in the passenger seat catches her breath.

Isn’t that...?

No, the driver says and accelerates along the curve of the road,

following the river.

When Eli places a second foot on the bottom rail and clutches the top

with his hands, Jacob screams.

Don’t you dare, Eli! Don’t you fucking dare!

He is instantly out of his mind with rage, a screeching banshee, all

noise and wing and ferocious intent.

Eli focuses on the river as it churns and froths over the boulders below.

He plans the next step, chooses just where his landing should be, and

shuffles his feet sideways a couple of inches to line himself up with the

deepest hole in the swirl of water beneath him.

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The sky behind him blooms with colour. Lee and Ray stop briefly to

enjoy the moment, the spreading glory of gilded pinks and gold. They

are just a block away and heading in the right direction. The red Jeep

passes them but they are looking at the sky.

That’s a helluva sunset, says Ray. Nothin’ beats a late winter sunset.

It is, Lee agrees. I will enjoy it a lot more when we find Eli. We’ll find

him, won’t we?

‘Course, he says. I bet he’s at home watching …Shit!

They round the curve and the train bridge comes into full view.

Ray breaks into a run. Lee, because of the high-heeled boots, can only

manage a mincing trot after him.

Eli, a small hunched silhouette against the glory of the evening sky,

leans over the edge, pushes his belly into the railing, and then leans

further.

Jacob’s screeching has attracted the others. Magpies gather, a fuss of

feather and agitation, the big males scanning the scene for raptors, the

others chattering anxiously among themselves, all of them heading in

ragged array to where Jacob’s unintended summons leads.

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When it is over, as Jacob perches silent on the top railing of the bridge,

as Ray shakes his head, as Lee weeps into the white angora of her

gloves, as the river swallows exactly what and where Eli intended, and

as the birds retreat in confusion and complaint, Eli himself stands

straight, and steps off the railing.

I wish you coulda seen it, Jacob, he says. Biggest loogie I ever horked.

Bigger than you ever horked, that’s for sure. Maybe the biggest loogie

of all time.

Hey, buddy, Ray says as he approaches. How are ya’ doin’?

Okay. Eli shrugs. Is that Lee?

Yup.

Oh.

Eli wonders if he can tell Ray about the loogie and thinks better of it.

So, the picture in the paper, he says to Ray. Tell her, Eli tilts his head

in Lee’s direction, tell her I don’t care.

See ya, Ray.

Bye, buddy. Come by the shop tomorrow, okay?

Yup.

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Ray stops Lee from following him.

He’s good, Ray says. Just lookin’ at the river. He says he doesn’t care

about the picture in the paper? That means something to you?

She nods her head.

Let’s find you and those fancy boots somewhere to sit down. Your

feet must be killin’ ya.

They are, she says with a giggle born of nerves and exhaustion and a

little shiver of attraction, not made for running.

She gratefully takes his proffered arm and they walk away from the

bridge.

Before Jacob can follow Eli home, he has something to do.

He grips the top railing exactly where Eli stood and lifts that

flamboyant tail over the water.

He has become one of an opportunistic species and takes full

advantage of the fear-churned contents of his gut.

Jacob cannot see but he knows. He knows that the stream of grey and

white liquid is a transcendent molten ribbon; he feels its gleam — pearl

and jet with a hint of mercury. Unbroken, elegant, elemental.

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He calls to mind a line of poetry from high school, one that made them

all guffaw with glee and render their young teacher scarlet with

embarrassment. Probably the only line of poetry he ever remembered.

Some Irish guy.

“Love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement.”

Hey, Eli! he thinks to himself. My ex-cre-ment beats your loogie any

day! Ha! Ha! Ha!

Rawk!

He is still chuckling when the red Jeep returns. It crawls past the bridge

in the deepening gloom and rests on the gravel shoulder of the road.

The sole occupant eases himself out from behind the steering wheel

and walks as far as the first railway tie, leaving his door open.

Jacob, silent now, rests on a low branch of a ponderosa. His heart still

thrums with the memory of his relief.

The man stands in the circle of light from the street lamp, a tall bent

figure caught in amber. He stares at the flow of water between the

wooden supports of the bridge. He mumbles into the darkness and he

weeps.

Jacob is invisible, tucked close to the thick, puzzle-piece bark of the

trunk, a dark shadow among dark shadows. The tree sighs. Jacob feels

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it — a fierce and swelling love. It finds home in his every molecule, in

the air around him. His eyes shine with the enormity of it. He will wait

and watch. He is used to waiting.

26

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One month later it arrives at the Gazette office, with a note attached.

To the young man who found our son,

Thank you for your gift.

Eli posts the photograph and note on his refrigerator door, holds them

in place with extra-strong magnets, given to him by Pinky Lee. Jacob,

if he sits on the third branch from the bottom of the big ponderosa

pine, can see the picture through the kitchen window, a close-up of a

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woman’s cupped hands, holding buttercups. By some trick of the

photographer’s art, the petals bloom softly yellow, the only colour in a

palette of black and grey.

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