Candale stood in the doorway. He seemed shrunken. “Todd, I wish there was something I could say. But I can’t. I’m being transferred.”
“Transferred? Where to?”
“The company has an office in Vancouver. They want me to go there. If I don’t, I’m laid off.”
“When do you go?”
“They want me there next week. This is the last Friday I’ll be here.”
Sangster, her voice cracking, said, “You’re not the only one. My company is closing down. I’m lucky. My boss has a company in Winnipeg. I’m moving there at the end of the month.”
The four friends slumped in the apartment, the conversation sparse, the laughter of their visits a memory. They finished the pizza that Todd had belatedly ordered and the wine that one of them had brought. When it was time to leave, Todd held his hand out to Ross, but his friend reached for him and embraced him. Then all four of them were holding on to one another.
Alone in his apartment, Baxter tried to do the math, but his thoughts kept whirling, like the suction of an eddy, back to his financial state. He was broke. He’d heard of the value of saving money, but it was more fun to spend it. At thirty-one, retirement was a lifetime away. Now he had enough to last eight weeks at most. He could move to a cheaper apartment, but he had to give a month’s notice, so any savings wouldn’t add to much. Move in with his parents? Not an option for him or them. Go someplace else? Where? He was a software engineer. As far as he knew, the only place with any openings was Ottawa. He didn’t like the idea, but right now, his priority was getting a job.
7
SURVIVAL
On Darius’s tenth birthday, his uncle told him they lived in dangerous times, and he needed to know how to defend himself. When he had lived with his parents in the city, he had immersed himself in books rather than roughhouse with other children on the sports fields, so the suggestion he learn to fight was alien. But Uncle Rolf had been insistent. On one occasion, he said, “Between the gangs and the rioters, I’m not sure which is worse, but you need to be able to fight, and I’m going to teach you until you can beat me.”
“But Uncle Rolf, I’m not very big. I can’t fight you.”
“That’s not what the English said when they faced the Spanish Armada.”
The Spanish Armada didn’t seem relevant to him. Besides, it was pointless having Uncle Rolf teach him. Since the man had never fought, he made a poor teacher. Or he would have. As Darius would never realize, his uncle’s lack of experience was an advantage. Darius never learned to fight, but he did learn to brawl. Over time, he learned how to use speed and agility to escape an attack. He learned where the sensitive spots were on the human body and how to strike to inflict pain. He learned that skill could overcome size, and although he sometimes thought it would be better to have both, if he had to choose, he’d pick skill.
Uncle Rolf also taught him weapons. On one occasion, he gave Darius a knife that looked peculiar, a single piece of steel with a handle that had no grip. Uncle Rolf said this was a throwing knife he had bought at an auction many years ago. He had never practiced with it, and he wasn’t sure how to use it, but the knife was now Darius’s to master. Darius set up a target, but he realized how tricky it was on his first throw. The knife hit the target, but it landed hilt first. Still, he thought, just getting it to the right spot was an achievement. He whooped with pride on the throw when the knife embedded itself in the plywood. It was off-centre and crooked, but it stuck. Over time, he figured out how to hold the knife, how to release it, how to give it a twist that would let the blade arrive just as it reached its target.
Now he was engaged. Mastering this piece of steel became an obsession. He practiced with different amounts of force, varying speeds of release, changing distances to the target. He practiced at night and in the rain, and one day when his aunt Helena asked him to butcher a chicken for dinner, he threw stones at the chicken until it ran. He impaled it in full stride. His aunt berated him for damaging the meat, but his uncle winked at him and grinned.
His uncle also introduced Darius to archery. In his youth, Rolf had won some awards at a local fair for his skill with his homemade bow and arrows. He taught Darius how to select a sapling for a bow, how to twist plant fibres into a bowstring, how to straighten long sticks into arrows, how to flock them with feathers, and how to chip flint for the arrowheads. When Darius became proficient, his uncle took him into the bush near the farm where he shot his first mule deer. That night, after his uncle showed him how to field dress the deer, he cut out the animal’s heart and watched his aunt slice it and fry it with potatoes and onions as if in some ritual of passage.
On one of their hunting trips, they encountered two men, natives, hunting in the same area. Rolf readied his bow, then signaled for Darius to back away. The natives, their own weapons at the ready, watched as Darius and Rolf withdrew into the woods. Darius glanced behind him as he stepped backward. When he looked up, the natives had vanished. His uncle said, “Be careful of the Siwashes. You can’t tell what they’ll do.”
“Why not? Aren’t they hunting just like we are?”
“Darius, these are the first Siwashes you’ve ever seen. Am I right?”
“Well, yes. How come? How come we don’t go to their village like we do to some of the others?”
“We don’t mix. People don’t like the Siwashes.”
“Why not? What’s wrong with them?”
“They were partly to blame for the Collapse.”
“How? What did they do?”
“You’ll find out soon enough. For now, just avoid them. If you meet one, be polite, but be careful. And never let one in your home.”
“Are they dangerous?”
“They’re just different. Most people hate them.”
“Do you hate them?”
“Hate? No. I’d just rather not have anything to do with them.”
“But Uncle Rolf—”
“Enough for now. Pay attention to the hunt.”
WHEN DARIUS WAS twelve, his curiosity about the Collapse reached the point where he would not be dismissed. After supper one evening, he said, “Uncle Rolf, tell me about the Collapse.”
“Don’t worry yourself about it.”
“But I want to know. What caused it?”
“Darius, you’ll learn soon enough what happened. For now, just leave it be.”
Darius took a deep breath. He hadn’t confronted his uncle before, but he wasn’t willing to let this go. “Okay, tell me what it was like here before the Collapse.”
“Before? What’s the point? Whatever happened before is ancient history. Look, Darius, just let me relax. I’ve been working hard, and I need to rest.”
Darius persisted. “But Uncle Rolf, before the Collapse, people had all kinds of tools. They knew all kinds of things. Why didn’t they use what they knew to stop it? Why did they let it happen?”
His uncle slammed his hand on the arm of his chair. “Damn it, Darius, I told you to drop it. Now let me rest.”
Darius turned to his aunt. “Aunt Helena, can you tell me about the Collapse?”
She hesitated. “Rolf, Darius deserves to know what happened. It’s time to talk about it.”
His face tight with anger, Rolf said, “All right, you want to know what happened. Here it is. The country was doing great until a bunch of cowardly politicians, greedy businessmen, Siwashes, eco-freaks destroyed everything. We got hit by a bunch of blind asses who had no idea of how things worked and who didn’t care as long as they could line their own damned pockets. The Collapse came because there was nobody in the whole bloody country who could see beyond the end of their own narrow interests.”