The Extinction Club Page 3
She slept most of the time, drinking only occasionally—water, vegetable juice, orange juice—but never eating. I tried to interest her in some beef consommé, but she just sniffed at it, her mouth firmly closed. A new plan was needed, so I crumbled some bread into a glass of milk and woke her every two hours, forcing her to eat a spoonful or two.
When I changed her dressings or washed her or took away the bedpan, she lay stone-still, watching my face with her tiger eyes, frighteningly bright and anxious, eyes filled with viridescent depths, with exotic ancestral blood—ancient Macedonian perhaps, or some lost Indian tribe.
« As-tu mal? » I asked. I studied the empurpled patches of ecchymosis that racooned her eyes and tattooed her throat. « Est-ce que tu souffres? »
Less alive than dead, she shook her head, although “shook” is hardly the word to describe that painfully slow movement. It was our first real mental contact, save for those bloodied green eyes boring in on me. I’ve seen green eyes before, but nothing quite like this: these eyes were from another age, another world.
It snowed for the next two days. A thick fall burdened the branches of the trees, whitened and concealed the river. There was a brief let-up on the third day, with brilliant sun shooting through clouds, but the fourth day was worse: walls of silver dust driven by howling northern winds. The trees, groaning under the weight of the snow, shook and swayed until heavy branches cracked and fell, vanishing into the soft white vaults below.
Grey bone-cold days followed, with black starless nights and blizzards one after the other. There seemed to be no pattern in the way the winds were blowing; they came from all points of the compass and at ever-changing speeds. I had picked a record year for snowfall, I found out later, the most since ’71. I was not unnerved by these convulsions of nature; I found them bracing, a welcome distraction from my personal convulsions. Nor was I worried about starving or freezing to death—there was lots of food, and firewood everywhere you looked. What I was worried about was running out of medication. Her dressings had to be changed daily and she’d need more antiseptics, painkillers, anti-clotting agents. But how to get them? The van’s DieHard was dead, but even with a live battery the road was impassable. It was a chemin saisonnier, to make matters worse, which meant that it wasn’t plowed in winter.
One early morning, after a long dervish dance with insomnia, my regular nocturnal visitor, I returned to my neighbour’s to look for snowshoes. Sweeps of high-drifted snow covered the porch steps and pressed against the door. With a small blue shovel, one better suited for the sandbox, I carved out a path.
Inside, despite the creaking baseboard heaters, things were starting to freeze, so I fired up the wood-burning stove. And nailed a wool blanket over the broken window. While doing so I spotted something out front, half-coffined in snow. A Sno-Cat.
This could solve all our problems, I thought exclamatorily, even though I’d never driven one of these before and had no keys. I wouldn’t need any, as it turned out, for after unburying the Cat I saw that she was wounded, fatally, with snipped tubes and severed arteries and an instrument panel that looked to have been staved in with an axe. I say this because an axe was stuck in the glass. A decal on the chassis said RIDE SAFE, RIDE SOBER. I trudged back inside, and with little else to do as my patient slept and the snow piled, I began to root around.
Despite the deer head over the mantel, a trio of oil paintings of alpine grandeur, and a large calendar with a moose fending off wolves under a full moon, the place was more like a general store or survivalist refuge than a hunting cabin. A locked pantry, whose padlock I easily picked, contained a gas stove and canister, a survival blanket, Second Skin, bandages, compresses, a bivouac sack and liner, a GPS locator, a portable red flasher with cigarette-lighter adapter, and, best of all, a morphine shot. Inside a knapsack I found cashews, Jersey Milk chocolate, water, Advil, tea bags, and a hunk of mouldy cheese.
But the most intriguing item was a large metal trunk, like one of those road cases that rock bands haul their equipment in. It had a high-tech digital lock on its clasp that was impossible to pick so I unscrewed the hinges, which took over an hour. I counted slowly to three before lifting the lid.
Green plastic garbage bags, each of them knotted, enclosed other green plastic bags, in the manner of a Russian doll. The third and final one held a Christmas cache of treasures: a fleece pullover, thick wool socks, camouflage jacket, Gore-Tex snowboots, Frontiersman Bear Spray. I would have left it at that, but noticed that the floor of the box was a tad high, and not metal but wood. A double-bottomed box? I prised out the sheet of plywood and discovered a large black parka underneath, unwrapped. On its breast pocket was a blue and yellow crest: a rainbow trout and Canada goose in the middle, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR along the bottom, FISH & WILDLIFE along the top. From the parka’s bulging side pockets I pulled out a stun gun and service revolver. Inside the zipped-up coat was a Kevlar vest and a scabbard case, and inside the scabbard case was a .300 Winchester Magnum.
III
That was the kind of roll I was on. I’d broken into the home of a law enforcer. But why was he living here, and why American, and where was he now? Where was his car or truck or whatever forest rangers drive? I’d heard about cars caught in whiteouts and not found until spring, when the coffin of snow had thawed. I’d heard about wardens shot by poachers and reported as hunting accidents or left in the forest to rot. Should I report this? How?
I was debating these questions while clearing my driveway with my plastic shovel. It was backbreaking and rewardless work, like rolling snowballs up a mountain. I was about to call it a day when I heard a faint creaking, scraping sound, which got louder and louder. An airplane? An airplane with engine trouble?
Some hundred yards away an odd-looking machine appeared on the horizon like a mirage. It rounded the bend, slowed on the downhill stretch, and passed in front of me, creating a higher bank of snow at the end of my drive than the one I’d just removed. It was a snowplow, either customized or from another era. It had a Plexiglas dome out front, attached to the cab window like a gunner’s turret.
I raised my toy blue shovel at the driver. He stopped and shut off his engine. Then gawked, mouth ajar, tongue protruding.
« Didn’t expect to see you out here! » I shouted in French.
He didn’t roll down his window because both were already down. Frost clung to his eyelids and nostrils and his black beard was crawling with white snakes. He looked me over carefully before speaking. « Chief said there’s a new uniform out here. Animal cop or warden or shit. That you? »
He spoke in a hayseed Québécois that took some effort to crack. « No, » I replied.
« What you doin’ out here if you don’t mind me askin’? Huntin’? Trappin’? » The words shot out of his mouth like bullets, leaving puffs of smoke.
« Something like that. »
He spun in his seat, climbed out of the cab. He was a pylonic man, two and a half yards high, but with a fleshy middle: an ectomorph with a paunch. Clad in an army-green parka, camouflage snowmobile pants and Montreal Canadiens tuque—all strained, all undersized. On his feet were furry snowboots that looked like two raccoons.
« You with that lumber outfit out by Hawkshead? » He wiped his beard and nose with a grease-covered snowmobile glove. A nose made for the nasalities of joual, sticking out of his face like a cork.
I was about to flap my hand at the stench in the air, the smell of clothes worn two weeks or more, but thought better of it. I shook my head.
« That your shootin’ shack? » He nodded toward the cabin while grinning with an array of cement-coloured teeth. « A bit o’ pump action on the side? »
Seconds passed before I realized what the man was asking, realized that this was not hunting jargon. « You mean am I cheating on my wife? »
He continued to grin.
« No, I’m … just, you know, a hermit. On vacation. »
The snowplower stared at me through watery pale blue eyes that sug
gested ill health or imbecility or both. His arms hung with the palms facing backward, cavemanishly. « Alone? »
Hermits are generally alone, yes. I nodded.
« You don’t get lonesome livin’ way out here? Way off in hell-and-gone? »
It makes up for years of pointless companionship. « Not really, no. »
« Just enjoyin’ the rare beauties of our woodlands, that it? »
Was that what I was doing? What did the rare beauties of woodlands mean to me? The absence of people. A system that ran perfectly well without humans. « You might say that. »
« You one of them? Tree-hugger? Leaf-eater? Bambi-lover? » Eyes fully open, mouth half open, he seemed to be waiting for the joke to be confirmed so he could erupt.
« Not exactly, no. Listen, I need to get to a hospital. My shoulder, I think I dislocated it while shovelling snow— »
« I got my rounds, eh? »
« I’m not asking for a lift, I’m asking for a boost. My battery’s dead and I … » I took out my wallet. « I’ll pay you for your time. »
« Everything’s out, eh? Wires down every which way. Hospital’s on emergency power. Surprised you still got juice out here … » He paused to examine footprints in the snow leading to and from my neighbour’s. Then took off his tuque and scratched his head. Bald as a stone. Ears twisted and rubbery, as if they’d been boiled. He squinted up at the cabin, shifting his head one way, then the other.
I turned to see what he was looking at. In the front window a shadow, then the dark curtain falling back into place.
« I thought you said … » The snowplower winked. « Put your goddamn wallet away. You got cables? Okay, gimme three of them twenties. Where’s your car at anyway? Can’t see duck turds on a plate out here. »
I padlocked the storm shutters, pulled the curtains shut. On my sleeping patient’s bed table, as a hedge against dangerous times, I placed my neighbour’s canister of bear repellent, stun gun and Sig Sauer handgun, hoping she had the knowledge and strength to use at least one of them. Left a bilingual note, grabbed a hefty wad of bills, double bolted the door.
In the recharged van I spun out of the driveway, which the snowplower had more or less cleared, and headed back toward the church in the wake of his plow. The road was like a tunnel, with overarching branches and lofty white banks on either side. I approached the old bridge carefully, lining up the truck’s wheels on the twin wooden planks. Didn’t get out of first gear until hitting the highway. The snowplower went one way, I the other.
This time I was able to get up the hill, which had been salted with cinnamon-coloured dirt, and soon reached a green sign declaring the town limits:
BIENVENUE À SAINTE-MADELEINE
POP. 4 200, ÉLÉV. 810 m
(JUMELÉE À GEEL, BELGIQUE)
It bore what appeared to be bullet holes through all the zeros.
The snowplower was right about the storm. Broken tree branches and power lines had fallen onto the road, and all the buildings on the north side were dark. I passed a great structure of granite four storeys high, surrounded by a wall of masonry twenty feet high: the hospital, I assumed. There was no traffic so I paused in front, watching a tall crane move spasmodically behind one of the buildings like a prehistoric forager. I looked around for the name of the place and found it in on a gate between two stone pillars with ball crowns:
L’INSTITUT PSYCHOGÉRIATRIQUE DE STE-MADELEINE
POUR LES CRIMINELS ALIÉNÉS
ST. MADELEINE PSYCHOGERIATRIC INSTITUTE
FOR THE CRIMINALLY INSANE
I continued on, down a commercial strip with Christmas decorations hanging off lampposts, through a snag of car dealerships, fast-food shacks, motels with snow-filled swimming pools, to a spanking new Walmart. Its parking lot was being plowed and salted as I entered.
Two competing banners were strung between old-growth fir trees, as tall as the Christmas trees in the Vatican or Trafalgar Square I saw as a child. One demanded unionization, the other proclaimed:
OUI NOUS AVONS DU COURANT! DES DINDES AUSSI!
WE GOT POWER! TURKEY TOO!
All bilingual signs in this province, I was beginning to notice, contained French three times the size of the English, as if all francophones were near-sighted.
The rock salt crackled under my feet as I walked toward the entrance, reminding me of the gravel path I had taken in the fall, following my father’s body in the funeral procession. And with the sound came flashes—of the coffin swaying on canvas belts, being lowered over chromed rollers onto green felt, shovelfuls of earth falling with thuds …
Music intruded from outdoor speakers. Christmas music. I’d been so deep in my thoughts that I’d forgotten where I was and when.
Later on we’ll conspire
As we dream by the fire
To face unafraid
The plans that we’ve made
Walking in a winter wonderland …
Inside, an old gaillard with a Santa Claus beard, real I think, greeted me jovially while pulling out a red cart. It had a wonky wheel but I pushed it anyway toward the Comptoir Santé. From the first-aid shelves I grabbed tape, gauze, swabs, ointment, forceps and a thermometer. I asked the pharmacist—Emad Azouz, according to his nametag—where I could find a bedpan. Aisle 7. And a bed tray table, you know the kind with little legs? Aisle 13. I then requisitioned sleeping pills, acetaminophen with codeine, syringes and a quart of Betadine, each of which he smilingly retrieved from behind the counter. But frowned when I asked for other things, like cloxacillin and morphine and lidocaine. And Cymbalta, antidepressants that I had left behind, stupidly, in my father’s car. Along with my Risperdal (for hallucinosis), Antabuse and Baclofen (wagon straps), each of which my father had prescribed. Generation Rx: I was part of it, its poster boy.
When it snows, ain’t it thrilling
Though your nose gets a chilling
We’ll frolic and play
The Eskimo way
Walking in a winter wonderland …
Onward, to the food section, where I began stuffing my cart with instant junk: violently processed microwave dinners, violently sugared cereal, violently salted snacks … all the things little Brooklyn used to love. For myself, I grabbed six middling merlots (from the French for “blackbird”) and arranged them gently in the cart. With shaking hands I then put two bottles back, rolled my cart a few feet, then put back the other four.
I left the cart where it was and went to get another. Pushed it to the children’s clothes department and tossed in flannel pyjamas, little wool socks (doll socks!), cotton underwear, cotton T-shirts with reinforced necks, three for $10, made in Bangladesh. I knew all the sizes because my little-girl-lost was only a hair taller than Brooklyn. Albeit more than a hair broader. On my way back to the pharmacy I impulsively threw in items: a 17-inch flat screen and shocking-pink DVD player of Chinese manufacture, a half-dozen DVDs, a half-dozen CDs, including Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible and The Stills’ Ocean Will Rise, a stuffed bear that I changed my mind about, and a thousand-piece jigsaw of a snowy owl in a snowstorm for which only a convalescent would have the patience.
Back toward my other cart, then a U-turn to sporting goods to see if I could find a two-way hand-held radio. Known in the vernacular as a walkie-talkie. Known in French as a talkie-walkie. A middle-aged clerk with a Beatle cut, distracting me with the thickest glasses I have ever seen, led me to one. A good one, he assured me, static-free, on sale. With a distress button. Range: 8 to 10 miles.
« How about a cellphone? » I suggested. « That’d probably be better, right? More practical? »
He looked at me over the top of his heavy black plastic glasses, like the ones American soldiers get for free. « In the mountains? More practical? With all the dead spots around here, smoke signals might be more practical. »
Back toward the pharmacy with my talkie-walkie, mouthing the words of a carol, then to the hardware department for one last item. Propane.
… though the frost was
cruel,
When a poor man came in sight,
Gathering winter fuel …
« Ça va bien? » the cashier asked when I arrived with my two-cart convoy. She had pigtails and looked almost as young as my patient. Perhaps a classmate.
« As good as can be expected under the circumstances, » I replied in French, « which could be better and could be worse. » Answering idle questions, making small talk, has always been beyond me. I don’t think she heard me, in any case, because the jigsaw’s barcode wouldn’t beep. This flustered her to no end. Red-faced, she looked around for help before entering the numbers manually.
« Those things would fit you, right? » I pointed to the stack of clothes she was now scanning. She went a deeper red, and I wondered why. Did she think I was offering them to her?
« Je … je pense que oui. »
I paid from a sheaf of American twenties bigger than a wad of socks and she didn’t bat an eye. « Bonne fin de journée, » she said, handing me some Canadian bills, purple and green and blue, along with a handful of colourful coins.
« Pareillement, » I replied while examining the bronze birds, nickel beavers, silver mooseheads. « Et joyeux Noël. » I handed her a mint American twenty, which she scrutinized as if it were fake. Which, in a way, it was.
On my way out, the old man who looked like Santa asked me if I’d bought a turkey. Before I could answer he said that when he was young he could kill, pluck, cook and eat a turkey in twenty-two minutes. Which was a record in these parts.
I loaded my cargo into the van, rolled back the two carts and looked around for a payphone. There was one inside the adjoining McDonalds. (Mikes, Moores, Wendys, Tim Hortons—were apostrophes banned in this province?) The dangling directory, in a black vinyl case, had chunks of yellow pages ripped out, but not the V’s. Véhicules, Vêtements … Vétérinaires. I inserted two quarters and punched in the number of the Hôpital vétérinaire de l’Avant-Mont. As it rang I watched a startlingly fat woman in the parking lot hit a golden retriever, once, twice, three times, with a snowbrush. What is wrong with this world?