She fills a mug and sits beside him.
“Leather listens better moist.”
“I know.” She picks up the hole punch and indents the stitches to show through the other side.
He aligns the eye panels with matching marks. Next step is hole punching, then sewing. “Where’s the floss?” He lifts the leather and the pattern.
“Think Cody took it to the bathroom.”
“Where is he now?”
“Go easy,” she says.
“Thought he might want to make hoods.”
“I’ll get him.” Sets a roll of film on the table. “Last couple months.”
He nods.
“Milo rescued my truck. I’m going to head out.” She stands and leans on the chair back. “I know you won’t try,” she says. “She might breed fine. If you gave it one year—”
He waves her off. She won’t. The bird is present — locked in her pen — but only partly. The white’s around in the same way his leg is still around. A ghost of what it used to be. “Go fetch him already,” he says.
The moon has come up, faint, and like it’s stepped into the world after a rough, rough night, and so badly needs to wash its fucking face. She takes her bag from Cody and throws it into the cab of her truck.
The kid will do well with the hoods. So he’s not a hunter. Axel needs a helper. A companion, after these last few days.
She finds her keys in her vest. Across the paddock in the window of the dairy house she can see the outline of a person — Milo or Melanie — against the curtains, the window lit orange around the shadow like the house is being candled. That’s one thing she’ll be glad to escape — whatever hatches there.
Cody wraps his arms around himself. He’s changed into loose khakis and an orange fleece. Wears Axel’s extra set of boots. The porch door opens. Axel pauses on the stairs then walks into the training yard.
“Got my bird?” she calls. “That was a joke,” she tells Cody. She reaches in the truck and — thank goodness — everything starts. She leaves it running — let the engine warm — and walks to the back and opens the canopy. A mess. Her equipment tub tipped in the crash and dumped her supplies over the box. She slides the live noose trap to the side and throws the fit-all pigeon trap on top. She crawls in. Calcium supplement has spilled, nothing to do about that, but the pedestal scale and tail guards are good. She repacks the tub. Mite and lice spray, hides she picked up from the locals at the meat draw, trainer kite, sand anchor for the kite, swivels and carabiners, duck-wing lure, rabbit-skin tube lure. Gloves she’s made, two: winter-lined and spring design. Both calfskin, brown, full cuff.
She flips the gloves over. The truck creaks and she turns. Cody presses down on the tailgate. Kid’s cracked lip is swollen, his nose too, though it doesn’t look broken — that’s a plus. Bruise over the eyebrow and eye. Scratches — bites? What can be done. She crawls over and sits beside him. Hands him the winter-lined calfskin.
There’s a knock on the side of the canopy. Axel. She stands and brushes calcium powder from her knees.
“Here.” Axel extends his arm — a bird. The white. The big, blind beauty. So white she looks like someone erased a bit of scenery. Hooded in blue.
“Axel.” Kendra holds up her hands.
“Take the asshole.” He tosses a bag of frozen chicks in the tub with the traps, then goes round to the passenger side and sets the bird on the headrest. Kendra motions Cody off the truck and slams the tailgate and closes the canopy. She walks to the front and to Axel, runs her fingers over the weather strip and then — what the hell — over the white’s back. The bird dips and straightens.
Not Lola, not a hunter, but look at her. Well, look at the gesture. Thirty years, over three thousand falcons, and, best guess, one point eight million feeder chicks. Axel won’t breed her, but she can give it a go. The bird can be her start. Does he know that, giving it to her? She smooths the feathers at the bird’s crop. Does he need to know that?
The night is clear along the western horizon, and the mountain under it looks like a missing patch of sky, black and rough, as if the bottom has been ripped away. The flecked moon hangs half-finished and trails behind it a crush of lavender over the eastern valley.
Cody steps back from the truck. Behind him, the dairy house, the barn, grey and diminutive in the moonlight. They’ll survive — no stopping it. She salutes him, then grips Axel’s hand. Her right hand in his, then her left on top of his again. Knuckles, calluses. She breathes — pulsed, focused — a shot of eagerness at what comes next, what she doesn’t know, can’t see, but what will grow, riled and thirsty, out of the flopped and baleful past, into the now, the What Comes Next.
Acknowledgements
This book was made possible in part by financial support from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Writers’ Trust of Canada RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers.
Thank you to the literary journals who’ve published my stories over the years: The Malahat Review, PRISM International, Little Fiction, Riddle Fence, Granta, and Ambit.
Thank you to Sarah MacLachlan, Janie Yoon, Melanie Little, Maria Golikova, and everyone at House of Anansi Press, and to my agent Rachel Letofsky and the Cooke Agency.
Thank you to the faculty and mentors who encouraged me during my years at the University of Victoria, to my many writer friends who read and helped these stories, and to my non-writer friends and family who gave me places and time to write. Special thanks to Lorna Jackson, Cody Klippenstein, and Bradford Werner.
About the Author
Erin Frances Fisher’s stories have been published internationally in literary journals such as Granta, Ambit, PRISM International, The Malahat Review, and Little Fiction. She was the winner of the RBC Writers’ Trust of Canada Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, The Malahat Review’s Open Season Award for Fiction, and PRISM International’s Short Fiction Grand Prize. Erin holds an MFA in Writing from the University of Victoria and teaches piano at the Victoria Conservatory of Music.
About the Publisher
House of Anansi Press was founded in 1967 with a mandate to publish Canadian-authored books, a mandate that continues to this day even as the list has branched out to include internationally acclaimed thinkers and writers. The press immediately gained attention for significant titles by notable writers such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, George Grant, and Northrop Frye. Since then, Anansi’s commitment to finding, publishing and promoting challenging, excellent writing has won it tremendous acclaim and solid staying power. Today Anansi is Canada’s pre-eminent independent press, and home to nationally and internationally bestselling and acclaimed authors such as Gil Adamson, Margaret Atwood, Ken Babstock, Peter Behrens, Rawi Hage, Misha Glenny, Jim Harrison, A. L. Kennedy, Pasha Malla, Lisa Moore, A. F. Moritz, Eric Siblin, Karen Solie, and Ronald Wright. Anansi is also proud to publish the award-winning nonfiction series The CBC Massey Lectures. In 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011 Anansi was honoured by the Canadian Booksellers Association as “Publisher of the Year.”
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 Erin Frances Fisher
Published in Canada in 2018 by House of Anansi Press Inc.