In the Quiet After Slaughter

excerpt

Larry pestered his parents to let us go off on our own. They wanted
us to take Lenore.
The youngest Cameron was a timid 10-year-old with a mouthful of
braces. She wore glasses held together with electrician’s tape. In all the
years we’d lived on the same street, I’d never once seen Lenore smile.
– Maybe next time, Larry said. Sorry, sis.
After the three of them had left, Larry and me doffed our shirts
and sprawled on a bench facing the sea. Lifeguards were perched in
elevated lookouts, walkie-talkies crackling, binoculars trained on
the overcooked swarms frolicking at water’s edge.
A pair of giggling girls passes in a gust of perfume.
Females liked Larry; they hardly noticed me. There was always a
couple following him at school. He trained his hair with a blow
dryer like the singer Bobby Vinton. He had muscles; I, freckles.
– ’Merican poontang, Larry said. It was a new word; he liked
using it.
The pair sat at the end of our bench.
– The tall one is mine, Larry says.
– Are you from around here?
– Nope, Larry replied. Tennessee. You?
– Canada, said one.
– We never met American guys before, the friend gushed.
– It’s your lucky day, Larry winked.
– I’m Cindy, the tall one said, sliding closer. She’s Corrine.
Larry introduced himself as Tate. I, he said, was Ken.
As the girls huddled, he whispered to me: I changed my mind.
The other one’s got bigger jugs.
Larry handed out Camels and corralled us around a lighter. For
just an instant Corrine’s shoulder brushed mine. The heat off her
tanned skin surged through mylimbs like a jolt of something powerful.
Another body. A woman’s.
– Are you guys going to the fairgrounds tomorrow night? asked
Cindy. There’s going to be live bands.
– For sure, Larry said.
– Have you got wheels?
Larry indicated a Corvette across the street and dangled a set of
keys — his house keys.
– It’s got a .327, he said.

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In the Quiet After Slaughter

excerpt

spaghetti western. The ballplayer tried willing the inebriated soldiers—
wrestling in the dirt now, smashing bottles, urinating in the
ditches — to vanish, all a mirage. For the film crew to put away its
equipment and the brutal caliph to strip off the fake moustache and
disappear inside a trailer.
But it wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t a movie. The comandante was
swaggering through the clearing.
– El hombre comunista! he roared, a prosecutorial digit aimed at
Paco. And then, leaning over Witherspoon, Your Mexican friend is
not a student, yanqui! He is a dangerous radical!
But Witherspoon’s formal education had ended prematurely. He
wouldn’t have been able to identify a communist if one was standing
before him, although he seemed to recall being told that to be one
was a bad thing. Since puberty his had been a world of curves and
splitters, of wind sprints through a freshly cut outfield grass.
There had been an American teammate in the Florida State
League, a prospect from California. Every time he struck out, which
was often, the kid muttered, Effing commie bastards! For the longest
time Witherspoon believed a communist to be a southpaw who
threw breaking balls.
The comandante ordered his centurions to strap Paco to a tree. A
mango was placed atop his head. The soldier reached into
Witherspoon’s duffel bag and removed a baseball. It was Wild
Man’s talisman, the ball used in his first professional victory. He’d
intended to place it alongside his father’s war medals.
– It’s very warm today, the comandante addressed the crowd. We
need some entertainment, no?
Witherspoon was familiar with the expectations of spectators —
knew well that where they collect in sufficient numbers, so must
there be a performance.
First in Spanish, then in English, the comandante explained his
intentions:
– If the gringo knocks the mango from his friend’s head, the rebel
can continue his journey. We’ll pick him up another time. But if he
misses . . . The comandante’s gold tooth gleamed under the blazing
afternoon sun.
Witherspoon rose to his feet. He placed his fingers along the
seams of the baseball. A murmur rippled through the crowd.

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In the Quiet After Slaughter

excerpt

vapourized. If Fender was still in the vicinity, people reasoned,
someone should have seen him by now. Fears that he might have
wandered into unfamiliar territory, into an unsympathetic street or
— worse — into the clutches of a you-know-what, were left unexpressed.
The All-Stars sought solace in the Ouija board.
If he was on the run from welfare authorities, the prevailing suspicion,
few knew their local geography like our Fender. He knew where
the best berries grew, the bountiful vegetable gardens. He was familiar
with the dumpsters likely to yield the most refundables.
As news of his disappearance spread, more volunteers turned up
at Esther Rhodes’ door. Kids skipped classes, adults booked off
work. I was press-ganged into acting as courier and delivery boy,
the search party’s factotum. A photo of Fender was mimeographed
and taped to the rear window of automobiles. It was posted in the
laundromat and on the notice board in the community centre.
The disappearance galvanized the Project. Mobilization became a
kind of social event. It brought people out of their homes — out of
themselves, a respite from their own narrow concerns. New friendships
were formed, animosities put on hold. The fellow who broadcast
the hockey games went on air to plead with Fender to return
home, as we knew the boy carried his transistor. Porch lights were
left on throughout the night.
Finally, the boy missing two weeks, evidence turned up that he
was still alive. An old gentleman from the top of Normandy Drive
reported that the previous evening he had been wakened by a noise.
In the morning he found a branch of his plum tree stripped clean.
– Fender was crazy about plums, wasn’t he? inquired one of the
All-Stars.
– He raids our tree every summer, confirmed Alice Travers, the
Rhodes’ next-door neighbour.
– You never know, someone else cautioned. Plums aren’t ripe yet.
It could’ve been the starlings.
– I found this, the man said.
He spread a sheet of paper on Mrs. Rhodes’ coffee table. It was a
tracing of the footprint he’d found in the wet grass. One of Fender’s
shoes was retrieved. It was a match.
Then a lady living on Vimy Crescent called to say that a few nights
previous she had heard someone tearing up her tomato plants.

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In the Quiet After Slaughter

excerpt

work-in-progress. On account of all the babies about, it was known
as Diaper Hill.
A few years after the family took possession of its new bungalow,
Mr. Rhodes, who drove a truck, was killed in a traffic accident. The
Mrs. had already lost her firstborn, a girl, to a heart defect.
In the early days of the Project the streets were unpaved and
unidentified, lined on both sides by the skeletons of unfinished
homes. It was a world of lumber and brick, of bulldozers and mud,
the air rank with dust and diesel fumes.
Fender dropped out of school in Grade 8. He busied himself
doing jobs others declined: cutting lawns and weeding gardens,
washing cars, helping out with paper routes — whatever he was
asked to do, whatever he was capable of. He was rarely seen without
his red baseball cap.
When I was working for Kellman’s Drugs, stocking shelves and
delivering prescriptions, Fender was running lunches to store owners
too busy to abandon their counters. He swept walkways and cleaned
windows. Occasionally somethingwould happen to remind us Fender
was different. He would anchor himself on the gravelled shoulder of
Rupert Street at rush hour, oblivious to the cars speeding under his
nose, unresponsive to concerns for his safety.
– Where’s he going so fast? Fender might ask of a passing motorist.
Fire someplace?
And if you, strolling by, should shrug your shoulders and walk
on, Fender might give chase, as he once did with me, whispering
into my ear, Maybe he’s going to the dentist! Maybe he’s late for
work! Then he flashes those green eyes of his as though it’s you
who’s the simpleton.
Most of the time, though, Fender was simply a little strange. He
was a devoted fan of the lowly Vancouver Canucks, following their
ineffectual tribulations on a transistor radio. He felt compelled to
announce each home-club goal to the world, running breathless into
shops to deliver the news.
More troubling was Fender’s habit of scaling telephone poles. He
used the steel service pegs running up both sides to make his ascent,
positioning himself centimetres from a live wire.
– It’s dangerous, Sgt. Toby McManus warned Mrs. Rhodes. The
lad will sizzle.

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