Five Little Indians

With less than a hundred yards behind him, Kenny ran back, untied the punt and pushed it back into the water. Let them think I drowned. Once again, he reached the crest of the hill. Not far off, the main road, a grey-black ribbon, wound toward the harbour. He thought of that cop who didn’t believe him, and rather than risk capture again, he walked along the craggy shoreline. Just as the last light of dusk seeped into the darkening sea, he stepped onto the docks and made his way to the far end, away from junctures, searching out areas where the fewest people might be. The throaty call of the owls warming up for the nightly hunt got him thinking about bears and coyotes hungry for the day’s remains from the boats, and he wandered back in the direction he’d come from, craving some sort of shelter.

They fell into an easy routine, tending the smokehouse, carefully preserving the half-smoked salmon, managing a simple life. On Sundays, they would stay home all day with the curtains closed, just in case the visiting priest got wind of Kenny’s return. Neither of them spoke of their years apart, and over time the truth of their separation grew between them, like a silent wound, untended and festering. Kenny started spending more time at the docks, visiting the fishermen and making friends […], Bella started spending less time at the smokehouse and more time at the kitchen table, smoking and gazing out the window. Sometimes she wouldn’t even hear Kenny when he came in from a day of wandering. He would slip into the chair beside her and marvel at the two-inch ash at the end of her smoke.

[Dad] smelled of woodsmoke and fish, and that primal smell tumbled me back in time to a thin memory of me and my mom meeting him at the dock, him tossing me in the air, me laughing so hard my belly hurt. He would carry me home like I weighed nothing, my face in the crook of his neck, rough sea salt rubbing off on my face. They told me that after I was taken, no one told them where I was. They still didn’t know which school I’d been sent to. I couldn’t help but wonder if they’d tried to find out. They must have. But the angry question kept rising in my anyway, and their constant affection began to disgust me.

I lasted a month. No matter how hard I tried, […] these people, though kind and loving, were like strangers pretending to be family.

Lucy left the lights off and quietly sat at the kitchen table. She watched the usual goings-on outside her window but remained distracted and overwhelmed by the flood of memories she’d worked so hard to keep below the surface. Clara had been there with her at the Mission School, but she was older and they hadn’t talked about it much. It was an unspoken agreement between them: the past was the past. It’s hard to run from the past, but once stuffed away, they knew it couldn’t be allowed to poison the present moment. They couldn’t be who they were now, with their lipstick, paycheques and rooms, if they were also those children, or the children who’d left the other children behind.

Lucy looked away. “You’re gonna think I’m stupid.”

Clara laughed. “I already know you’re stupid, so what can it hurt?”

The two giggled, startling Baby-girl. Lucy held her closer and she quit her half-hearted fussing. Lucy looked away again and blushed. “I thought they wouldn’t give her to me.”

“What? You see? I knew you were stupid.” They giggled again, but this time Clara stood up and put her arm around Lucy and the baby.

Lucy whispered, “Were we ever allowed anything good?”

They sat in silence together, lost in a shared truth rarely spoken.

Clara rallied first. “Let me hold her!”

Beaming, Lucy handed Baby-girl over.

The infant cooed and gurgled in Clara’s arms.

Look, I don’t want to waste your time. The only reason I am here today is because I need to hold on to my hope that I will get out of here sooner than later. I know what you need me to say. You want to know I’m sorry. That I’ve been rehabilitated. That I deeply regret my wrongdoing and I will never do such a thing again […]. You already know that I have a clean record in here. Not one disciplinary note. Not a single one. And this is the only crime I ever committed, if you must call it a crime. But I am not sorry. Not at all. You have no idea what that mad did to be and a whole lotta other little boys. He deserved what he got and more. Where was the law when he was beating us, breaking bones, and other, even worse things?

The sky seemed to hum with the spray of stars laid bare of clouds by the wind. Clara thought of another night sky, the full moon, small and cold, a bitter orb above the badlands as she lay there, wounded and certain her death was upon her. John Lennon had put himself between her and death, lying next to Clara against the deep chill that night. Turnaround is fair play. The near-full moon was golden and so bright it cast shadows. Still, there was something so completely unfamiliar about the earth in darkness, no matter how confident Clara walked in the daylight. Storm clouds recaptured the stars as she closed the porch door behind them.

[O]ver the next few weeks [Kenny] happily settled into a home life he’d only ever dreamed of. It seemed easier this time. It was just a matter of days when he was home last before those restless urges were on him. It was not a lack of love, but something inside of him that drove him, something he could never explain to Lucy, much less to himself. A pressure that only eased up if he was on the move. But this time, things were going well. The foreman put him on the books after only a week, telling him what a hard worker he was. He was always on time and never showed up drunk.

Kendra seemed to grow every day […].

They spent Kenny’s days off at the beach or the neighbourhood park […]. So it was a surprise to him when fall came and that old restless urge returned.

“I’m just going to run down to the corner. I need some more cream for the gravy.”

“You want me to go?”

“Naw. Drink your coffee. I could use the air anyway.” She slipped into her jacket, hesitating, resisting the urge to turn the lock back and forth the way she would if Kenny weren’t there, counting the clicks before opening the door. It wasn’t that Kenny didn’t know. It was just that there was nothing he could do about it, so he left her alone about it. She gave him a quick smile and opened the door.

A half-hour later, Kenny stepped out of the office and headed for the men’s room. He barely made it into the stall before he puked. Why did the lawyer need to know all that? Kenny told him he was abused, but the lawyer said he needed details. More and more details. Kenny leaned over the toilet, his stomach in knots, heart pounding. He could smell Brother, leaning over him, hard against him, grabbing his hair. Kenny knew the pain in his side was his liver, but all he could think of were all those days of shallow breathing, avoiding the pain of broken ribs.