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André Narbonne is a former chair of the BS Poetry Society (Halifax), and his poetry and prose have appeared in numerous North American publications including Segue, Queen's Quarterly, Rampike, Antigonish Review and Storyteller Magazine. His writing awards include first place in the Atlantic Writing Contest for "The Advancements," which is anthologized in Best Stories 06 (Oberon Press), and the David Adams Richards Prize for a collection of short stories. |
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Freak of Nature
In his time on the force, Detective Robert Jeremy has never met with such a clear-cut case of poetic justice. On the evidence it seems that Paul Gardner was standing by an open, second-story window, smothering his girlfriend's son with a pillow, when he was struck by lightning. That's how it will read in the report: without a cloud in sight, Paul Gardner was killed by a freak of nature. Case closed. But reports aside (and there's nothing like "reports" for masking the strangeness of things in bureaucratic words), the supreme irony of the incident is enough to challenge a detective's atheism.
Ceri Griffis, the would-be victim, is in hard shape. He sits on his bed, his face horribly scarred as though seared by the heat of the electrical charge into a cruel expression of contempt. Detective Jeremy has never seen anyone so disfigured as Ceri-no one who lived. Worse still, the kid's eyes are strange, his expression perplexing. Jeremy murmurs, "The eyes of Cain," perhaps too loudly, because the eyes turn on him, the boy's gaze so hideously empty that Jeremy recoils and, turning to the paramedic who stands beside him, finds his own shock confirmed in the eyes of that man who positively gapes at the freak on the bed.
Nothing can be done. Jeremy makes his way back into the living room where the mother sits serenely. Even though the case in clear, he shakes his head. It all seems wrong, wrong, wrong. How in the heavens could so cruel a trick have been played on this household?
Some people are born into money; the Griffis child has apparently been born into good taste. The penthouse looks newly minted in plush style. Everything is pristine. At the same time, Jeremy notes that all breakable objects, even pottery and cut-glass vases, are on high. Why? Ceri's no baby: he's fourteen.
In the living room, the mother sits in a posture of dignified grief. Mary Griffis is stunningly beautiful. Her long black hair falls over a porcelain face. She must be-what?- thirty-five. She has kept her youth, even as she has kept her composure in the midst of what must be a very painful and bewildering incident.
The detective is unclear about how to leave her. He doesn't know what to say to conclude his own role in all this. Jeremy finally offers, "I'm very sorry."
"Thank you," she replies without looking up.
"This is a terrible...tragedy."
"Do you think so?"
Did she really say that? "Are you all right?" he blurts out.
She says, "Completely," and meets his eyes. Her face is a mystery of perfection.
He tries again, "I'm sorry about your son as well. Maybe with plastic surgery...You don't know what doctors can do these days. Give them ten years of university and they can turn a..."
"My son," (her eyes are blue, blue, blue), "has always looked that way."
* * *
She calls the department the next day and asks for him specifically. There's something that needs to be said. "What?" he asks.
"A story," she replies. "I know you'll understand. You were kind yesterday. You are someone who can hear this story."
He has to go.
Back in her living room, she is all kindness and concern. It takes her forever to get on topic. She is interested in every facet of his life, but his life is quickly exhausted and he cuts her short at last.
"You wanted to say something to me. You wanted to tell a story?"
"I don't know if it's a story. It's just what happened to the others. Perhaps you can make something of all of this. God knows, I can't."
Before Paul there was Mark. He was the first: a mechanic full of compassion. He brought flowers and chocolates and promises not to leave no matter how bad Ceri's freakish temper got. Along with the pre-natal disfigurements, Ceri's veins were short wired; they ached and his mind often came unglued, Mary explains. That's why she often locks him up, to give herself a breather. But Mark had promised a new life away from the imprisonment of the penthouse that would include them both. One day, he took Ceri boating and Mark's leg got entangled in a rope tied to a heavy weight he'd brought (possibly to use as an anchor?) and he tipped out of the boat. When the boat finally returned that evening, bumping back against the rocky shore under the power of the tide, Ceri sat alone in the bow. He had a large gash on his forehead.
"Big fish," was all that he seemed to understand of what had happened.
Mark's body didn't surface for a month.
"I don't know what you're telling me," the detective interrupts. "In the first place, who is this story about?"
She's petulant. Angry. She says, "You decide," but what he decides is that he's never seen a more beautiful woman. He wonders when she will lure him back, wonders how long he'll have to wait. What does she want?
* * *
A week later she has more to add. "It's about Ceri's father," she says. He suspected there would have to be a story about the father, but he still he wonders why she's telling him. He is nothing-emotional wreckage from having seen too much and a modestly middle class salary from having achieved too little.
He says, "What?"
They're in her penthouse again. Her eyes burn as she digests his aloofness. Ceri is locked up. A rhythmical banging, like the sound of war drums in a Kipling tale, forces the tempo of their speech.
"He was run over by a car," she offers. That, at least, is reasonable. A man can be run over without there being any questions about motives or purpose. She adds, "The police said he was teaching Ceri to drive when it happened."
"Oh."
"Otherwise, Ceri wouldn't have been in the driver's seat."
"He was driving?"
"It was just blind luck, or God's mercy, that Ceri drove into a tree instead of going over the cliff. It was by the shore, you know."
"How old was Ceri?"
She tosses back her head, is lost in the mechanics of her mind's reach as she tries to grab something out of her memory. "He was seven."
"Your husband tried to teach your son how to drive on a cliff when he was seven?"
She watches him closely as though weighing his reaction to what she's said. He thinks it over.
* * *
They've been lovers for two months and they've hardly touched. She says, "I don't dare keep Ceri in the room too long. He needs my presence."
During the two months she is all stories. Five men in total have died while alone with Ceri. Victims of poetic justice, they were all killed in the act of murdering the boy. Or so it would seem. "I still don't get why. Why would they want to kill him?"
"My father," she replies. "It's his fault. Silly bastard. He wanted a grandson so much. I gave him one, but he couldn't wait. He died before Ceri was born. And then it was too late. All my dad's money is in trust to Ceri until he turns eighteen." It's the first time he's seen her in true distress. The anguish ages her. "Such optimism. If he knew the hell he committed me to..."
Again, he marvels at the injustice. How in the heavens could so cruel a trick have been played on this woman? Detective Jeremy feels the need to fix things, to correct the injustice. A rage boils inside of him.
She knows that. She sees it. All the while she's been talking, she's been watching the detective closely.
* * *
When he meets her at the door on Sunday she is all smiles. She folds into his arms, murmurs into his ear, "I'm so ashamed. I thought, well, you're all generosity and I feel terrible and glad. I'm so grateful that you're allowing Ceri into your world." She sounds curiously insincere.
"I guess I'll do anything for you," he replies.
"You'll be careful in the woods?"
"You can count on me."
"Very careful?"
"I'm an expert shot."
She seems playful. "What do you think you'll kill? Not squirrel, I hope?"
"Squirrel?" He screws up his face, pretends she's insulted his honor. "If I wanted to kill squirrel I wouldn't bother to leave the city. I could teach Ceri to peg them off your balcony."
"Don't joke!" she laughs. "You can't imagine how happy I am that you've decided to do this. I thought I could never be with you. I thought you could never be the one, my knight." She is giddy. It's early morning. Is she drunk?
He'd known, of course what it would mean to be her knight. He'd known that from the start. "Don't worry. This will be the best day," he says because he thinks she might need reassurance.
"Of his life," she concludes, as though to reassure him.
* * *
The bridge sags. Its planks look rotten; they have a darkly bruised look. So few people cross this way that there's moss on the supports. Below, a river dwindles in what appears to be a permanent state of drought. Jeremy crosses the bridge and pulls up in the brush on the other side.
Ceri slumps in the passenger seat eyeing the forest with an expression of bewilderment. Has he left his penthouse so seldom he doesn't recognize the face of nature? How often is he locked up? A chipmunk yammers angrily, and the boy leaps in surprise and stares forcefully into the green.
"Come on," says Jeremy.
"Where going?"
"Hunting." He leans across Ceri and opens his door. "Get out."
The gun in the trunk is an automatic. Jeremy isn't taking chances. The gun is rigged to go off at the slightest provocation. For everything that happens in the next half hour, there has to be a plausible explanation. He puts on a dapper-looking pair of gloves before lifting the rifle from the trunk and handing it to Ceri. "You carry this," he says. Then he is tramping ahead, Ceri straining to follow.
It would be best to hate him, Jeremy decides, but he cannot. This is a work of mercy, not retribution-perhaps, an act of love. He stops abruptly and Ceri stops with him, his arms frozen in a pantomime of caution.
"What day is this?" the detective asks.
"Day?"
"Yes. What day of the week: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday? Which one?"
Ceri's expression is endlessly blank. He offers no answer.
The detective engages him with a leaf he scoops out of the mud. He waves it an inch from Ceri's face, asks, "What color is this?"
Ceri shrugs.
"Is it green?" There's a madness to his tone.
Still no reply.
"Give me that!" He snatches the gun from Ceri's hands and pushes in the clip. But for all his rigging, it is hard to shoot. He has seen too much, spent too long imagining villains to become one easily. The core of his being quakes at the idea of...
* * *
He thinks it strange how his focus changes when he looks through the scope. The sights label the world differently. He sees through the gun with a mind for vengeance. He thinks of the violence Ceri brings to Mary regularly. He is the murderer of her youth-or will be if his reign continues. How could she have given birth to this vessel of contempt? Liberating her is the cost of her love. The husband, the four dead boyfriends: all dead in the line of dreadful duty.
They were stupid; he is smart.
He pans the forest through the scope, his mind growing livid with fear and anger. Both assault him. He completes a wide arc, brings Ceri into view. The freak stands on a rock. He has climbed up in his boredom and is gazing fixedly at something in the woods.
"I will. I will," Jeremy whispers. For his part, Ceri raises his hand slowly. He appears to be pointing. For the first time, Jeremy sees a smile on Ceri's face. The expression unnerves him. He has not imagined Ceri to be capable of smiling. It occurs to the detective that this is not the face of the devil, but the face of pure neutrality.
The detective's eyes follow Ceri's arm to a brown patch on the edge of a bank of trees. A deer peers back and bows tentatively. In the midst of the detective's turmoil, it is a figure of calm innocence.
The gun roars and Ceri falls off the rock.
* * *
They are running hard, plunging deep into the forest in pursuit. The detective holds Ceri's arm, keeps yanking him when he slows.
"Why? Why? Why?"
"I shot it. I didn't mean to." He is crying. "I didn't mean to shoot it but I did, and now we have to kill it. We can't leave it wounded."
"Why? Why?"
"Because it's suffering. When an animal is suffering you have to kill it. It is wrong to let it live."
They penetrate deeper into the underbrush.
"You could never understand this, but when a thing-or person-is in pain, when that's all it knows, you MUST kill it." He looks at Ceri sharply, and the boy nods as though perhaps he understands. "See the blood? It passed this way."
He is gesturing ahead and looking behind at the boy. His divided concentration costs him his balance. His foot catches in an exposed root and the detective falls forward, his arms flailing blindly. The gun slips from his grip, hits the trunk of a tree, and fires, the sound loud-too loud-in Jeremy's ear.
For twenty minutes his world ceases.
* * *
The darkness is smooth. It is rounded. Jeremy rubs the smoothness until it becomes sharp. Then the dark becomes dirt in his hand.
He's been shot. He understands that. He's shot himself in the head. But he knows that, and that's a start. It means he's conscious. He thinks, therefore he lives. Perhaps he'll survive. His eyes clear and he is able to bring his hand into focus, watches it clutch earth and thistles. A thought occurs to him. When he was a child he'd read about the time the Red Baron was shot in the head and survived. Hell, he'd even landed his plane. Von Manfred had written in his diary that he must have a very hard head. Maybe, Jeremy thinks, I have a thick skull, too.
Yes, he will live, he encourages himself. He'll be looked for. He's given the general directions to Mary. She'll send help-she always does...
A nearby noise disturbs those thoughts. Two shoes trudge into view. Jeremy observes with some detachment that the shoes are on the wrong feet. At least the laces are tied; albeit, in double grannies that leave the long ends dragging underfoot.
"Ceri," he tries to say, but he doesn't know whether his lips produce sound. His head is pounding. He utters a low moan. He's been heard. Ceri bends over to reach for something on the ground. He tries to speak again. "Ceri, I'm shot. Go to the bridge and..."
It is precisely at this moment that Jeremy realizes his error. His eyes fill with knowledge, his mind races with terror at the poetic justice he knows he's about to receive, as Ceri picks up the gun.
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