Starlight Read online

  The air in the bedroom was ripe with farts and sweat and spat snuff. She took Cadotte’s fish basher from its hook on the door jamb and hefted it in her hand. It was heavy and thick and the knurled handle fit into her palm and she felt safer with it. He never used a bank. He always insisted on payment in cash for every small job he did and he carried it in the pocket of his pants in a roll, dispensing it as he thought it was needed for everything that never seemed to include her and the girl. Now he was passed out and she could see the bulge of the roll in the bib of his overalls. She took a deep breath and moved slowly toward the bed. Cadotte never moved. She stepped to the bedside and raised the fish basher high above her head and reached out with her other hand to his chest and held it inches above his overalls. Her fingers grazed the fabric and she felt herself shaking, willing herself to calm but filled with fear like an ache in her gut. Her vision clouded but she gulped and poked two fingers into his pocket and felt the roll of bills. She slid her thumb into the opening and spread her fingers slowly toward the edge of the roll, and when she found it she eased it slowly out of the pocket and lowered the cudgel and stepped back away from the bed.

  She tripped on a bottle and crashed back into the wall.

  Cadotte groaned and rolled to his side facing her and curled an arm over as though to cradle her and she inched upright against the wall. He opened his eyes.

  “Emmy,” he slurred. “What the fuck?”

  She saw Anderson’s hulk fill the doorway out of the corner of her eyes. “S’goin’ on, Jeff?” His big arms were raised with his fingers on the upper door jamb.

  Cadotte fumbled at his pockets. He swung his feet over the edge of the bed and glared at her. The moon glimmered off the baldness of his pate. He reached a hand up and rubbed at his jaw and stared at the money and the cudgel clutched in her hands. “You robbin’ me, bitch?”

  “I only aim to take what I need, Jeff,” she said, shaking.

  “What you need is to put that billy club down and hand over that roll.”

  “I need it.”

  “I already said what you need. Do it.”

  “No.”

  He laughed. “No? How you figure on gettin’ outta here with that cash when all’s ya got is that billy against me’n Jumbo there?”

  “I’ll fight.”

  “Ain’t no use, Emmy,” Anderson said. “All’s Jeff wants is his roll back.”

  “I’m leaving, Jeff. Me and Winnie. We’re gone.”

  “You don’t leave me, bitch. No one leaves me.”

  Anderson lowered his arms and stood blocking the door. “Emmy.” That’s all he said and the rumble of it filled the room and she could feel her insides quake.

  “It ain’t good, Jeff. It never was. I’m done bein’ beat. I’m done hiding from folk on accounta the bruises. I’m just done.”

  “You ain’t gettin’ out the door. You think you took a lickin’ before? Now you’re really takin’ one.”

  He started to rise and she swung the cudgel at his face as hard as she could and she heard the bone break in his nose and there was a warm swath of blood across her. Anderson began to move but then a bottle smashed behind him and he screamed and fell to his knees with his hands reaching for the back of his leg. Winnie stood in the doorway with a broken bottle in one hand. She broke another against the door jamb and stepped forward and thrust it into the back of Anderson’s other leg. Cadotte tried to get up but Emmy smashed him in the face again and he fell backwards onto the bed. She heard Anderson moan in a jumble of anger, rage, and suffering and the big man tried to get to his feet but she strode to him and raised the cudgel with both hands and brought it down on the base of his skull. Twice. Three times. He fell to the floor. When he tried to reach for her she kicked him as hard as she could right in the mouth, grateful for the steel toes in her work boots. She could feel his teeth give. There was a gout of blood on her shin. Cadotte was clawing at the sheets trying to get to her but she two-handed him again across the top of the head and he fell flailing to the floor. She kicked him too. Numerous times until she heard the girl call.

  “Ma,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  She looked at the two men on the floor and there was rage like a keening rising in her throat. She kicked savagely at Cadotte’s back and shoulders then moved toward the door and delivered three kicks to Anderson’s belly and ribs before the girl pulled at her hand. She gave one final crashing blow to Anderson’s head and stumbled across the cabin and lurched out the door onto the porch. The air cleared her head. She stood there gasping, the cudgel falling from her grip and spinning off the boards into the dirt. She heard them groaning in the bedroom. The roll of money was gone. She stared back into the cabin and the girl tugged at her. She had no fight left. They ran to the truck and when it started she pulled away in a wild, gravel-spitting turn, the headlights flooding the cabin, and then she stopped. She stared. Then she got out of the truck and walked back to the cabin. Cadotte and Anderson were stirring. She opened the grate of the woodstove and stirred the embers with the poker and threw in wood until it caught with a lick of flame, the orange light of it making shadows leap behind her. She added more wood until she stoked a good blaze, the snap and crackle of it sending embers jumping out the opened grate. She left it like that. She walked to the truck and got in and closed the door and sat studying the cabin in the mirror.

  “Ma?” Winnie said.

  “Better odds than he ever give me.” She said it quietly, in a murmur, and when she looked at the girl she was crying and she rubbed her cheek and put the truck into gear and headed out the driveway. Behind her the fire spit embers across the parched wooden floor.

  STARLIGHT SAT BACK ON HIS HEELS and watched them run. In the flush of moonlight they appeared as bursts of shadows between the trees. The lope and bend of them. When they hit the glade the leader dropped into a low prowl, the ears of him flat to the skull and his snout pressed close to the ground. The rest of the pack stayed in the clasp of the trees. The big one swayed his head around then raised his muzzle and sniffed at the air and for a moment fixed his gaze on the man on the rocks then dropped his head like a nod and padded out deeper into the open. The other wolves bled out of the shadow and stood around him. Waiting. In the luminescent blue of the moon Starlight could see the huffed clouds of their breathing. They sat back on their haunches, tongues lolling like dogs, and when they flexed their jaws he could hear the smack of their tongues on canines, sharp and feral, and the piercing whine and whimper of wolf talk. The alpha male sat like a stone, staring intently at the rocks. Starlight felt the hot muscles in his thighs but held his pose, staring back at the humped shadow of the wolf in the glade. He breathed through his mouth. The big wolf raised his head and swivelled it to catch the wind and when he was satisfied he stood, and Starlight was impressed at the size of him. The wolf walked slowly across the front of the rocks and the others trailed behind him, and when he broke to a trot they picked up the pace silently. Starlight waited until the last of them was gone and then slid out of the rocks and began to run behind them.

  He ran easily. Like a wolf. He bent closer to the ground and loped, the slide of his feet skimming through the low-lying brush without a sound, and when he found the pace of the pack he angled off through the trees and took a parallel tack to them, keeping them on his right and dodging the pine and spruce easily, his night eyes sharpened by use. He ran with them, the scuttling pace easy after the first three hundred yards.

  They broke up the side of a ridge and he could hear the push of their hind feet loosen the talus and he followed the tumble of it up the hard slant. It was a tough climb but he ran it. When he breached the top he saw them gathered in the trees. The big male looked back over his shoulder. Starlight could see the shimmer of his eyes and he felt pinned by the look. He stopped and stood against the open light of the drop. The empty sky behind him. The moonlight. There was nowhere to move so he stood there and breathed and waited and watched the wolf, who kept his eyes on him and opened his
mouth and let his tongue droop and huffed his breath so that for a moment it appeared to Starlight as though he laughed, and then he turned his head and studied the trees on the flat. The others sat patiently. None of them looked back. The leader rose slowly and arched and stretched and the others followed suit. Then they broke. In unison. He marvelled at that, the ability to communicate with thought, the language of them hung and shaped on the power of intention, and when they were twenty yards gone he broke into the lope again and followed.

  The landscape rolled easily through the coniferous jut and the running was uncompromised by brush. Instead, there were sprinkles of holly and swatches of mountain grass and here and there the plunked forms of fallen trees, decaying trunks he leapt in a single bound while he kept the relaxed prowling pace of the wolves.

  He carried nothing but a small pack on his back. He wore no gloves despite the chill and his clothing was loose and warm. His shoes were stitched together out of moose hide and laced tightly. The soles of them were thick pads of felt and he could feel every poke and thrust of the territory he crossed and the tracks he left were mere outlines. The shoes functioned as wrapping for his feet so that the feeling was of being barefoot but protected. They enabled him to run quietly. His hair was short and cropped close to his head, severe like a military cut. There was nothing to catch or snag, even his trouser legs tucked neatly into the tops of his shoes and the sleeves buttoned tight to his wrists. He ran parallel to the wolves and he made no sound.

  They angled sharply suddenly and propelled themselves in a hard zigzag up a cut of ridge. It was lightly treed and there were hamper-size rocks and boulders strewn about and he found himself having to clutch and grab at saplings to pull himself upward while he ran. He followed their path. His lungs ached and the muscles at his calves protested and his thighs and buttocks burned at the push but he pressed on. The hardscrabble face of the cut was inches from his face and he could smell the lichen on the rocks. Dry. Dusty. Metallic almost. He angled his feet to grab more of the face and strained harder against the gravity he felt upon him like a weight. The wolves crested the ridge and disappeared. He took deeper breaths and forced his muscles to work and he could feel the tension in his neck and shoulders. When he finally stepped quivering onto the lip of the ridge he was spent and leaned forward with his hands on the top of his knees and breathed through his mouth and peered through the top of his eyes to locate the wolves.

  They lay on a sloping boulder that poked out over the far edge. The moon behind them like a giant shining eye. The alpha male was the only one sitting and he faced the shimmering orb of the moon with his head slightly raised, like a child wrapped in wonder. Starlight caught his breath quickly and stood to his full height. The wolf turned his head. They regarded each other and the man felt plumbed, known, seen in his entirety, and there was no fear in him, only calm like the unwavering gaze of the wolf leader. The wolf stood. He swept his gaze back and forth across the star-dappled blanket of the heavens and Starlight followed the look. The universe, deep and eternal, hung above them: solemn and frank as a prayer.

  The wolf sat again and appeared to study the panorama. Then he raised his snout and yapped a wailing howl at the face of the moon and the stars thrust out around it. It was high and piercing, and it brought the others to their haunches and they all stared at the great silvered orb. Starlight slumped the pack from his back and took out a camera body and a long lens and screwed them together quickly. He sidestepped so that he could see the wolves in profile. They never moved. The dozen of them like acolytes at a shrine. He knelt and focused on the leader and breathed with his finger on the shutter. In the frame he held the pocked face of the moon and the head of the alpha wolf. When the leader raised his muzzle Starlight pulled the focus tight, and when he opened his muzzle to howl he let him yap the first syllables and then pressed the shutter on a rare and personal moment. The wolves turned at the whir of it. They studied him. He caught them in the viewfinder with the full moon behind them and snapped another. They watched him. Then they turned their attention back to the heavens and began to howl. He felt it in his spine. He felt in his belly. He disassembled the unit and tucked it back into the pack and slung the bag on his back then turned and walked to the lip of the ridge again and stepped down without looking back. The howl of them, ancient, powerful. They followed him back down into the night.

  THE TRUCK WAS OLD AND BEATEN DOWN by misuse. Still, Emmy drove through the night, grateful that Cadotte had been paid and stayed sober long enough to fill the tank. The girl fell asleep quickly and she sat braced against the door with her legs kicked out along the seat, her chin hung over her clavicle so that she appeared as hollow and destitute as a child of war, which Emmy thought that she was. Life with Cadotte had been brutal. A war of attrition. She pinched her lips together to hold back tears and drove steadily with both hands on top of the wheel, staring at the waving and undulant line of the highway. She had no direction. She had no plan beyond getting them out. Now that she had, it almost seemed that the air was crisper, cleaner than she recalled, and she drank long draughts of it in through the slightly open window. The acts of violence had left her shattered. The face of the old rage she had carried for so long haunted her, the feel of it quaking in her hands and feet frightening her, and she wondered at her ability to escape it, outrun it maybe, like she would have to do if Cadotte survived the fire. His vindictiveness was a scar upon his whole being. If he lived he would search for her, she was sure of that. It would take more than a single tank of gas to put sufficient distance between her and that ruin of a cabin to allow her to feel safe, for herself, for the girl. The only thing she knew for certain was that the rage was her only defence and that she would nurture it, carry it like a sacred ember, fan it, stoke it, keep it hot and ready for the next time, if Cadotte were alive. If he was not, it would still serve her. There were men everywhere in the world.

  She’d never had trouble attracting them. She couldn’t remember a time in her life when men did not want to touch her, hold her, caress her, and for a time she’d allowed it because it filled the void of loneliness she carried as an orphan and a foster child. Allowed it until it began to hurt. She would not think of those times. She slammed the door firmly shut on that particular quality of darkness. There were monsters there, lurking, skulking, waiting, biding their time before they reached up and took hold of her with cold bones and feral snapping jaws. She’d felt their presence all her life. There’d never been sufficient light to chase them off or if there had been it had only glittered briefly before becoming the shadow she had known and grown used to for a long, long time. It was only the ruthless cruelty of Cadotte that brought the old simmering rage rushing to the surface. It had overwhelmed her. It had cascaded over her like a rogue wave of fear, neglect, abandonment, yearning, emptiness, hunger and want and hate; pure purple, seeping, livid hate for men, for living, for herself, for allowing what she had allowed to happen to herself.

  She had chosen Cadotte. That night in the bar in the town she’d only intended to pass through, she’d actually chosen him. The girl had been content being left in the motel with television and a pizza. She was six then. She’d been born in another time when Emmy thought that the tumblers of fate had clicked into a position of permanence. But that man had left as they all had. She looked over at her. She marvelled at the innocence children sink into when they sleep. She wished it would remain in daylight hours but Winnie had never felt peace or anchoring or anything home was supposed to reflect in anything she’d read. At least she wasn’t an orphan. Not yet anyway. The irony was that she knew she would die to prevent that from happening. She shook her head at the thought and focused more intently on the road. Cadotte. He was big, strong, agile, charming in a gruff, raffish way, and straightforward with his body, his needs, his wants, his hungers and intentions. She’d let herself flow with that, believing somehow that a man with no secrets around what he was looking for was better than the wheedling, mushy, emotive kind. She’d thought th
ere was honesty in that. She’d been wrong. Almost deathly wrong.

  His world was limned by booze. He drank constantly. But she had her own covenant with liquor that seemed to fit with his. The booze allowed the monsters and the darkness to slide away. It allowed her to approach the feel of merriment almost, freedom, and she allowed it into her world as often as the opportunity arose. With Cadotte it rose every day. She was drunk for six weeks. She emerged, pale and shaking, with the girl and Cadotte and an ignoble mess in that calamity of a cabin. It had been a grey day, dismal with sheets of rain and cold so that she shivered as much from that as the drying-out. The girl had stared at her timidly from the corner of the couch and Emmy had held out her arms to her for minutes before she stirred and walked to her and laid her head on her shoulder. She could feel the hot press of a single tear slide down her bare back. Her intention then was to stay until she could find a job and save enough to leave. That had never happened. Cadotte closed every avenue of escape. He imprisoned them by lack. She had been simply too broke to leave.

  He took her whenever he wanted, however he wanted. He allowed Anderson and the others to have her at the debauches that happened all too frequently. He beat her. He threatened to beat the girl, to take her too. That was the reason she allowed it—to keep Winnie safe. In the end that was also the reason she fought so grimly to escape. It had been three years.

  When she looked over again the girl was awake and staring at her.

  “Where are we, Mama?”

  “I don’t know. Somewhere near 100 Mile House.”

  “How many miles is there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Have that apple.”