Boy in the blue hammock, p.1
Boy in the Blue Hammock, page 1
Boy in the Blue Hammock
Copyright © Darren Groth, 2022
1 2 3 4 5 — 26 25 24 23 22
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Cover design: TopShelf Creative
Typography: Carleton Wilson
Nightwood Editions acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council.
This book has been produced on 100% post-consumer recycled, ancient-forest-free paper, processed chlorine-free and printed with vegetable-based dyes.
Printed and bound in Canada.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Boy in the blue hammock / Darren Groth.
Names: Groth, Darren, 1969- author.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210396717 | Canadiana (ebook) 2021039675X | ISBN 9780889714267 (softcover) | ISBN 9780889714274 (EPUB)
Classification: LCC PS8613.R698 B69 2022 | DDC C813/.6—dc23
For W, for C, and especially for J. You made these words—I just wrote them down.
1
Third glass of red in hand, I turned on the TV and watched the fallout of the election.
A crowd in face masks, praying at a cemetery.
A lone teen on an unnamed street corner, throwing rocks at a Reparation Party banner.
A woman shouting into the camera, grasping it with both hands, crying.
Five minutes was enough to give me heartburn. I belched and scanned the program guide. So many voyeurs and their exclamation marks: “Decision Aftermath!” “The Bitter Road Ahead!” “A Nation Divided!” I switched to a sitcom I’d seen dozens of times. The laugh track was my cue to drink.
“Everyone asleep but us,” I said.
Tao, laying on the rug, stretched and wagged his tail.
“You’re settling in well. Except for almost killing yourself Wednesday. Didn’t know gum was poisonous, did you? And toothpaste? Me neither. We need to keep you safe and secure when we go out.”
He blinked as I pointed a finger.
“You’re not supposed to be here. You were meant to be in service. Helping someone…less fortunate.” I uncrossed my legs and leaned forward, elbows digging into my thighs, drink clasped in my interlocked hands. “But you weren’t up to it.”
Staring at the brown blanket lying in a heap on the floor, I raised my glass.
“Join the club, pup.”
First light finds the entrance to the townhouse. Small disturbances dot the scene: the Starry Night print askew on the wall, the welcome mat kicked sideways, the potted succulent knocked over on the shelf above the coat rack. Minor disorder. Modern life’s bumps and thumps.
The front door holds irrefutable evidence of home invasion: the door bulges in the middle, a belly of splintered cedar and chipped paint. The doorknob hangs limply from its socket.
* * *
Tao, lying at the foot of the stairs, begins to stir. The fug in his nostrils pushes back onto his tongue. In his throat, the cluster of smells separates.
Rubber. Diesel. Silicone. Cordite.
He doesn’t know the names but he senses their meaning, what they’ve brought to his home.
* * *
He is tied to the handrail at the foot of the stairs. The lead securing him—a tattered length of polyester, plain on one side, patterned bones and paw prints on the other—runs across his overturned water dish, loops back through a jackboot print on the floor then snakes over the carpeted step to attach at his collar.
Tao is not unfamiliar with constraint. Any time Family leaves the house, he is secured, harmful temptations out of reach.
Family hasn’t left the house—they are upstairs. He must get to them. He must be with them. Tao knows this better than he knows his own addled mind.
* * *
He lifts his head, dips it to the right. Stares at the red, coin-sized patch on his paw. His skin howls. The allergies that factored into his dismissal from the training program chew on him as if he were a new toy. Legs. Ears. Chest. Eyes. The pain reminds him of the stabs of a blackberry bush, but not just when you brush past it or step on it. The thorns are inside, under the hair, pressing on muscles, digging into bones.
Tao sniffs his paw, licks it once. The angry red coin settles for a few seconds, then surges back, vibrating and smug. He is tempted to put his paw between his teeth and bite down—fight fire with fire—but he knows that surrender means being lost for a time.
He won’t surrender, not when time is so precious.
He shifts onto his front elbows, gathering his legs under him to stand. Pain grips his lower body, knocking him back onto his haunches. For several seconds, he is dazed. Is this a punishment? He opens his mouth, allowing his tongue to loll, then looks back over his shoulder.
The hip and knee of his right hind leg are out of their usual alignment. The paw is at an unnatural angle, pointing toward the wall opposite the stairs. It carries a gnawing throb Tao can hear as well as feel. He considers the crooked limb for a moment. How did it happen? When? His last memory is of the hounds, breaking the door open, dragging him across the floor, tying him to the stairs, needling his neck. Then the memory fades to black.
* * *
Get to them.
Be with them.
* * *
Tao swallows, pants. Swallows again. Favouring his left side, he manages to stand. He looks back; the injured leg hovers just above the carpet, resisting gravity, bearing no weight. The pain is manageable, a scolding pulse rather than a volcanic scream. He turns back and considers the lead fixing him to the stairs.
He leans back. The collar settles into the fleshy base of his ears. He plants his left rear paw, nails digging for extra purchase. Summoning every working muscle, Tao braces, then extends, throwing his ninety-pound frame back and down. The leash strains and the collar chokes. A squall of white noise rages in his skull. Amidst the storm, he waits for reward: an inch of give, then the release. It doesn’t come. The jaws of the restraint hold firm. After seven seconds, with small grey blotches staining his vision, Tao stops pulling and eases himself down.
He tries twice more, the efforts producing nothing beyond heat and weight and tiny whimpers and drops of urine.
Readying for a fourth attempt, he hears the only sound that could distract him from his purpose.
Faint, faraway. But budding, growing.
A siren.
The hounds. Coming again. To break more bones, darken more memories.
Tao understands he won’t survive a second attack. So be it—he has nothing left now but sorrow and pain and appetite. And a final duty. As soon as it is fulfilled, he is ready to die.
* * *
Get to them.
Be with them.
* * *
He closes his eyes, letting his mind break free as it does when he is dreaming. A thread, grey in colour, floats down from the ceiling. It lands on his back, attaching itself to his golden coat. One thread becomes two, then four, then eight. Strands stitch and intersect. Cloth clings and spreads. Soon, Tao is covered from shoulders to rump.
Stone-grey body. Royal blue trim. Stamp of the program.
The training jacket.
At first glance, it is the uniform he failed, the destiny he fumbled. This presence is something else though. Something deep. Something found. A potential somewhere between reality and fantasy. His muscles respond, lengthening. Fibres twitch and fizz. Striations tremor like live wires. The noises camped in his head—the hiss of inflamed skin, the growl of a broken leg—shrink down to mere specks. He is twice his normal size now, a hulking beast for whom restraint is nothing more than pesky annoyance, like fleas in the fur.
The siren continues to wail, looming large, closing in. It is fuel—no longer a clarion of fear. Tao coils and crouches. The world is consumed by the voice of Trainer:
Come
Follow
Hup-up
Tao flings himself backwards. The room shakes. Walls fracture. The floor is a bed of burning coals. For a moment, he is a tug-of-war, his giant frame tearing at the seams. Then the collar on his neck explodes. He flies, just long enough to understand that glorious freedom comes with a steep price. A seismic whump rocks the air as the dog crashes into the wall behind.
Tao’s whirling senses wane and settle at the foot of his mind. He pants for a moment, then sniffs at a sweater dislodged from the coat rack and half-draped over his prostrate haunches. It smells of hand soap. It belongs to Boy. He noses it aside as the gavel of his broken leg returns, banging in his ears. He stares at the rail. The leash lies bundled on the floor like an abandoned snake skin.
The jacket has vanished.
The siren is retreating.
Tao’s jowls draw back, exposing his teeth and releasing his tongue. He will get to them. He will be with them. He gathers, stands on three good legs and limps toward the upstairs bedrooms.
2
“You weren’t around for the diagnosis,” I said. “How do you think I handled it?”
&nb
“You’re right, pup. Not great.”
It didn’t matter that I’d known something was…different…for a while. God, more than a while—I’d known from the first few months. The diagnosis though, the actual words on paper…It was like gravity gave out and I was floating away. I didn’t know what it meant, I didn’t know what to do. I was scared.
I flicked through pages of the old photo album.
Hospital gowns.
Incubator.
Milk.
Baths.
Sleeping together.
Sleeping apart.
Birthday cake.
Toys.
Playgrounds.
Piggybacks.
Smiles. Always smiles.
Jay immediately went into fix-it mode. Told me everything would turn out okay. Things could be a lot worse. Thirty years ago, they knew nothing. Less than nothing. They thought the parents were to blame, especially the mother. These days, people understood more. There was help, money. Medicine. The future was bright for kids like Kasper. Who knew? Maybe there’d be a breakthrough in our lifetime?
I abruptly shut the album. The clap made Tao jump.
Jay had said we were lucky to have our boy. And the world of tomorrow was only going to get better.
I pressed the album to my chest and looked out of the back door. The Benitez house to the right of the big cherry tree was dark and empty, as it had been since the start of the nightly patrols.
At the top of the stairs is a small wooden stand with two shelves. The lower shelf, crammed with boxes of beads and thread and tracing paper, has never held any interest for Tao. Not so the upper shelf; it has, at different times, housed tufts of rabbit fur, sheets of deer hide, nests of eagle feathers. A smorgasbord calling.
He answered only once. The temptation: a moccasin, one of a handmade pair. He found it one morning on the floor, fallen from the shelf. A gift from the gods. He was reluctant to eat it—he understood that it belonged to Woman, that it meant something to her. He could smell her in the hide, lingering scents her hands had left behind. But Woman’s imprint was no match for genetic weakness emboldened by primeval instinct. When he was done, he was satisfied to find the centrepiece—an intricate wattle tree months in the making, fashioned from tiny beads of green and gold—had been left untouched.
Today the upper shelf houses, as it has for the past month, large swaths of moose hide. Tao limps past. No pause, no turn of the head, no sniff of the stand. He rounds the corner and is confronted with the door to Woman and Man’s bedroom. It is ajar. He noses it open. The door arcs away, striking the dresser, then settling at a forty-five-degree angle with the threshold.
* * *
Clothes and books are strewn about the floor. The lamp from Woman’s bedside table is lying by the wardrobe, surrounded by glass from a broken light bulb. The window nearest the closet is cracked, the fissure like a lightning bolt captured and preserved. A black and white photo of Family has fallen from the wall and is wedged in behind the headboard of the bed.
Tao notes the two large suitcases in the room. The one on Man’s side of the bed is laid flat, open, empty; the other is in the corner, listing against the wall, half-unzipped, clothes spilling out as if disgorged. The dog makes his way around to Woman’s side of the bed. He sits, careful to lean away from his injured leg, and digs at his itchy inflamed ear. He surveys the length of Woman’s body. She is lying on her back, concealed from the waist down. At the bottom of the blanket, one of her feet is exposed, the turquoise-painted nails like a string of tiny planets set in the deep space of the jet-black footboard. Tao waits a few moments, then pushes off from his healthy paw, lifting his upper body onto the bed.
A pillow is covering Woman’s face. He nudges it with his nose. The smell is familiar, but flecked with the sour trace of a stranger’s hand. Tao takes the corner of the pillowcase in his teeth and eases the pillow aside. He waits again before stretching forward and licking Woman’s ear. No shying away. No wiping the slobber. No thank you for the kisses. Tao pushes his pink nose into her cheek; the skin is cold and dry, bereft of the softness he’s known for five years. He whines—a small, jagged nmph—as he pivots off the bed and makes his way back to the open side.
Man’s long, lean arm has escaped the blanket and hangs over the edge of the mattress, the hand closed in a weak fist. Two fingers and the thumb are caked with dried blood. Ignoring the gurgles and moans of his stomach, Tao nuzzles Man’s hand. Its rigidity reminds him of the plastic dolls Girl would throw into the yard and get him to fetch.
He lays down, sits his jowly chin between his paws and closes his eyes. He wills the jacket to return, to give him strength. He waits, ears primed, tail ticking side to side. No response, bar a breath of wind nudging the curtain and rattling the warped screen in the window.
Tao stands. He nuzzles the stiff hand of Man a second time then steps back through the clothing and the books, heading for Girl’s room.
* * *
The evidence of violence is subtle: a mirror chipped, a hinge bent. A ballerina music box pulled apart and dumped on the dresser. A toy bear with all its limbs removed. Tao is sure about these small devastations. The big one, he initially questions.
Girl is lying in a familiar pose: on her stomach, head turned toward the door. Her large brown eyes are open, blue-streaked hair tucked behind her ear. The pillow is under her cheek. She’s smiling. As Tao edges closer, he anticipates her voice. A sweet hello or maybe a bark of rebuke, in case he has designs on stealing a crayon or a stray sock or, his favourite, a used tissue. He loves her voice. He loves her. He has loved her since the first night he came to stay, when she snuck him carrots under the dinner table and lay with him on the floor whispering secrets in his ear.
He arrives bedside. The smile is a lie. Girl’s stretched mouth and parted lips are a mask, moulded in the jump-cut between shock and terror. He whimpers, then looks around the room. A source of their occasional wrestling matches—a duck minus its beak, squeaker and most of its stuffing—is half buried beneath a teetering pile of old sketch pads. He takes the duck in his mouth, then gives it to Girl, nestling it in the crook of her bent elbow.
Back out in the hallway, Tao drops his head and vomits on the carpet. Emptying the meagre contents of his stomach brings some clarity, if not relief. The first part of his vow—get to them—is complete. And with the awful truth confirmed, he can now fulfill his promise in its entirety. He will go back into Woman and Man’s room and, ignoring the cold foot and the stiff hand, he will curl up on his corner bed for a day, a week, a year, however long it takes for the sirens to fill the air and the hounds to bring their eternal darkness.
Tao steps toward what he expects will be his final resting place, then stops. He feels an itch. Not the usual sting of sensitive skin; this is a deeper irritation, one that gnaws on his bones. It won’t be soothed with a scratch or a bite or a vigorous shake of the head.
He turns to face the third bedroom.
Boy.
Tao stares at the door.
He can’t see the sky-blue paint, can’t recognize the absence of a lock, can’t read the wooden block letters carefully arranged and pinned with tacks:
K-A-S-P-E-R
I-S
I-N
Tao knows this door is different, though. So, too, what’s beyond the door. The bed, the furniture. The books and the toys. The smells.
And Boy.
Boy is different.
Tao knew this from their first contact. Tao was a visitor then, a guest in Family’s house at nights and on weekends. Woman introduced them, cautioning Boy to be gentle. Boy’s frame was much smaller than today, but still thin. Skin had fewer freckles. Approaching Tao, Boy had made a noise—a low hum that started in the belly—and touched Tao’s ear with the tip of an index finger. Then leapt back, looking at the finger through half-closed eyes and laughing. It was their only physical contact in the first week of the billet.
