come back.”
“Will you live back here?” Wayne liked Thomasina’s house.
“I’ll think about that then. I’ll send you postcards with pictures of interesting things in all the countries I go to.”
“China?”
“Maybe not that far.”
“You could see the magpie bridge.”
“That bridge is in the sky, Annabel. It’s not real. There’s no photograph of it.”
“I forget my address.”
“Your address is Box 43.”
“You better call me Wayne on the postcards.”
“Yes, that way the post office will know for sure they are for you.”
“I told Dad you were calling me Amble and he said he didn’t like it.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll only call you Annabel when there’s no one else around.”
When Thomasina had gone, Wayne made snowshoe twine and knife bindings with his father and ate meat cakes at the table of his parents, the fisheries report and the weather blaring continually out of both the radio and the television on the kitchen counter. Fly-catching tape hung from the ceiling with bluebottles on it, moving their legs but not their wings. A strange tension persisted when Wayne and his mother and father were together, Treadway asking questions like, “So, Wayne, have you gone down in the basement lately to check how our catgut is drying?”
The child knew that a grim, matter-of-fact attitude was required of him by his father, and he learned how to exhibit such an attitude, and he did not mind it because it was the way things were, but it was not his authentic self.
His authentic self loved to fold paper in half and cut out elaborate bilaterally symmetrical shapes: curlicues, geometrics, architectural planes that bore elaborate sills at the bottom and came to luxurious apexes. Some of the shapes had thin parts any five-year-old might snip off by accident, but Wayne was coordinated and meticulous. He cut slowly and carefully, and his mother saved his work in a binder and bought him safety scissors that she allowed him to keep in his room, where he cut at night for fifteen minutes after he had brushed his teeth, before Treadway shouted, “Get those lights off.”
For Wayne, Croydon Harbour and all that was in it had a curious division between haven and exposure. The roads were dirt and there was dust, and this felt raw. The birches, in comparison, felt incredibly soft, their shadows a cool, sizzling green that quenched the parched burning of the roads. Loud engines of trucks and Ski-Doos played against the tinkling of the juncos that made their nests in the ground. A swoop and whisper of wings, then the gun crack. The love he felt for his father, then the cold precision with which Treadway taught him how to perform tasks like scraping rust off traps with the point of a blade. Golden tea under a swirl of steam on the trapline, then walking for miles with no rest until blisters formed on his ankles. When they arrived at the hunting tilt, his father treated them with a mixture of tallow from the haunch of a caribou and black spruce turpentine, which Treadway had collected on the end of his hunting knife after cutting a blister in the trunk of a tree. Treadway administered the ointment silently. He did not say, “You should have told me it hurt before now.”
When they got home and Jacinta saw the wounds, Wayne heard her hiss, “Were you trying to wait until his skin was shredded to the bone? And did he eat? Look at his little breastbone and shoulder blades. They have a mind to poke through his skin. And he has a cough.”
It was true. Treadway could walk for twenty miles through minus-twenty-degree weather and not mind it. He wore wool next to his skin and his body was compact and dense, his core curled into itself. There were nights when he slept in the open, wrapped in a sleeping bag lined with caribou hide, and in the morning he awoke invigorated by the wild, cold air and starlight. He had not made Wayne sleep out in the open, but there were nights when he did not bother to stoke the stove
“Will you live back here?” Wayne liked Thomasina’s house.
“I’ll think about that then. I’ll send you postcards with pictures of interesting things in all the countries I go to.”
“China?”
“Maybe not that far.”
“You could see the magpie bridge.”
“That bridge is in the sky, Annabel. It’s not real. There’s no photograph of it.”
“I forget my address.”
“Your address is Box 43.”
“You better call me Wayne on the postcards.”
“Yes, that way the post office will know for sure they are for you.”
“I told Dad you were calling me Amble and he said he didn’t like it.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll only call you Annabel when there’s no one else around.”
When Thomasina had gone, Wayne made snowshoe twine and knife bindings with his father and ate meat cakes at the table of his parents, the fisheries report and the weather blaring continually out of both the radio and the television on the kitchen counter. Fly-catching tape hung from the ceiling with bluebottles on it, moving their legs but not their wings. A strange tension persisted when Wayne and his mother and father were together, Treadway asking questions like, “So, Wayne, have you gone down in the basement lately to check how our catgut is drying?”
The child knew that a grim, matter-of-fact attitude was required of him by his father, and he learned how to exhibit such an attitude, and he did not mind it because it was the way things were, but it was not his authentic self.
His authentic self loved to fold paper in half and cut out elaborate bilaterally symmetrical shapes: curlicues, geometrics, architectural planes that bore elaborate sills at the bottom and came to luxurious apexes. Some of the shapes had thin parts any five-year-old might snip off by accident, but Wayne was coordinated and meticulous. He cut slowly and carefully, and his mother saved his work in a binder and bought him safety scissors that she allowed him to keep in his room, where he cut at night for fifteen minutes after he had brushed his teeth, before Treadway shouted, “Get those lights off.”
For Wayne, Croydon Harbour and all that was in it had a curious division between haven and exposure. The roads were dirt and there was dust, and this felt raw. The birches, in comparison, felt incredibly soft, their shadows a cool, sizzling green that quenched the parched burning of the roads. Loud engines of trucks and Ski-Doos played against the tinkling of the juncos that made their nests in the ground. A swoop and whisper of wings, then the gun crack. The love he felt for his father, then the cold precision with which Treadway taught him how to perform tasks like scraping rust off traps with the point of a blade. Golden tea under a swirl of steam on the trapline, then walking for miles with no rest until blisters formed on his ankles. When they arrived at the hunting tilt, his father treated them with a mixture of tallow from the haunch of a caribou and black spruce turpentine, which Treadway had collected on the end of his hunting knife after cutting a blister in the trunk of a tree. Treadway administered the ointment silently. He did not say, “You should have told me it hurt before now.”
When they got home and Jacinta saw the wounds, Wayne heard her hiss, “Were you trying to wait until his skin was shredded to the bone? And did he eat? Look at his little breastbone and shoulder blades. They have a mind to poke through his skin. And he has a cough.”
It was true. Treadway could walk for twenty miles through minus-twenty-degree weather and not mind it. He wore wool next to his skin and his body was compact and dense, his core curled into itself. There were nights when he slept in the open, wrapped in a sleeping bag lined with caribou hide, and in the morning he awoke invigorated by the wild, cold air and starlight. He had not made Wayne sleep out in the open, but there were nights when he did not bother to stoke the stove
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