Cover

Dedication

For Barbara and MoJo,who hold so many of my stories

1.1 [close to the bone]

LIGHTS FLASH, my score pops up—best ever—and the game’s over. I played Rescue 911 first, then Buck Hunter, got right into it, hands and brain working together. A real buzz.

I shrug into my hoodie and saunter out of the arcade like I own the place. At Subway, I check out the menu. After I’ve returned my library books, the plan is to come back here and eat in one of the booths, a Footlong Cold Cut Combo, extra mustard and onion, skip the tomato.

I wander around The Source, looking at all the electronic stuff I don’t have, then head for the mall exit. Lorne Meisner is standing outside the beauty parlor, his back to me, waiting for his mom. Any other eleven-year-old would be in the arcade or the sports store. Not Lorne. He’s such a jerk, just about begs you to pick on him.

Can’t give him a wedgie at the mall.

My sneakers quiet on the tile floor, I amble up behind him, dig my fingers deep into his shoulder, and squeeze. The kid’s nothing but bone and gristle.

I say, innocent as can be, “Hey, Lorne. How’s it going?”

“Good.” He’s trembling.

“Only good?” I squeeze a little harder.

“Real good.” He starts whimpering, so I let go.

He scuttles into the beauty parlor.

When I turn around, a jolt goes right through me. Pete MacLellan, Floyd’s boss, five-feet-seven in his built-up heels, is stationed near the pet store, staring at me. He was brought in from Truro a year ago, after the previous manager retired. Ever since, it’s been no fun living with Floyd, who’d obviously assumed he’d be the next boss.

Floyd is my father.

As I pass Pete, I nod politely. Then I aim for the exit, trying to walk the way Floyd walks, like you’ve got the world by the tail and you’re whipping it around your head.

I cross the parking lot to Main Street. The GM dealership, where Floyd works, is on my left; I walk faster. The RCMP detachment is next, and the bakery. You can smell their chocolate chip cookies a block away. Why all the cops aren’t overweight, I don’t know.

The library is a red brick building with a few scrubby bushes on either side of the door. There’s a rack just inside where they display the theme of the week. Perennial Gardening. No use to me.

Billy Gottrich is thumbing through the DVDs, the cuffs of his jeans bunched around his ankles, crotch mid-thigh. Pathetic. While it’s tempting to hassle him, I decided long ago to keep my nose clean at the library.

After making sure he’s not watching, I choose six picture books for Cassie, my little sister. They’re all by Dr. Seuss, who’s the flavor-of-the-month.

Three books have come in for me, travel books on the High Arctic and Mongolia, and an autobiography, as well as a couple of CDs: Metallica and AC/DC. The real bonus is a DVD of one of AC/DC’s concerts. I swipe everything through the automatic checkout.

Let’s get this over with. I’m a reader. Nonfiction mostly, because I like to hoard information. I’ve tried novels, but you can’t trust the facts any more than you can trust the authors to keep the emotional lid on. I’ve even tried poetry. Lids off and toss ‘em in the air, that’s what poetry’s all about.

Although I own an old-fashioned boom box with a CD player and an AM/FM radio, I don’t own a laptop, iPod, iPhone, or Blackberry, and Floyd hogs the TV—what else is there to do every evening from November to April except read?

I wish I owned a laptop. On Sunday mornings, when he and Opal sleep in, I sneak into his study and use his; ditto when they go out together. But it’s not as good as having your own.

1.2 [and introducing...]

I’M WONDERING which book I’ll start first, so my mind’s somewhere else as I leave Main Street and cross behind a row of new Chevy Cobalts.

“Why aren’t you home?”

I stop dead, like I’m the buck who’s been shot.

Floyd strolls toward me in his blue striped shirt, freshly ironed, and his dark blue tie. You could slice an artery on the creases in his trousers.

“Did you hear me?” he says.

“I’ve just been to the library. I’m gonna grab a Sub, then I’ll go home.”

“Where did you get the money for a Sub?”

“Opal gave it to me.” Opal’s my mother.

When I left the house, she was upstairs in her office—the place where she keeps her angel cards, crystals, and aromatherapy crap—so I helped myself from the jar in the pantry. Near enough to the truth, even for him.

Anyway, what can he do so close to the GM dealership? It’s been nearly three weeks, though—twenty days, to be exact, and his max is usually a month. For some of that time he was on vacation, so I’m hoping it doesn’t count.

“You can give the money back to her, kiddo, because you won’t have time for lunch,” Floyd says with that empty smile of his. “Two cords of hardwood are being delivered this morning.”

“I’ll go home right after I eat. It’s only eleven o’clock.”

He pulls my left wrist toward him, smiling nonstop, then pushes my sleeve up and twists my wrist as though he wants to check my watch. His nails bite into my skin. My watch strap’s loose, which gives him the excuse to keep twisting until he can see the numbers. Pain shoots up my arm. I lower my shoulder, trying not to flinch, clinging to the books and CDs in my other hand.

“I’ll go home right now.”

He drops my arm. “Good,” he says. “I’d better go back to work.”

He strides between two of the Cobalts and disappears inside the glass doors of the showroom. Rubbing my wrist, I scuttle behind a big black truck. GMC Canyon. If I’d been paying attention, I could have avoided him.

1.3 [half-split]

THE ATV is parked behind Sobeys. I jam my hair under my helmet, not easy because it’s long and thick, and buckle up. Floyd has his hair trimmed every three weeks by a barber who used to be in the military.

The mall backs onto Dave Sanger’s woodlot; a network of trails through the trees around Hilchey Bay connects the houses, the river, and the logging roads. To go home, I follow the river upstream as far as the bridge. We had the wettest June in years, so what with mud and the usual rocks, steering takes concentration plus four-wheel drive.

Our place is near the bridge; Floyd inherited the house and all the furniture from his father before I was born. You can’t see the house from the road because of the forest and because the driveway curves around some granite boulders. Erratics, left by the glaciers 10,000 years ago when the granite was already 370 million years old. Does this reduce Floyd to size? I wish.

Just as well the house doesn’t show from the road because it’s in serious need of a coat of paint and a new roof. Trees crowd around it as if they’re propping it up.

I take the last bend, gravel spitting from under the tires, and jam the brakes on without even thinking about it. The ATV slews toward the ditch. To one side of Opal’s car two cords of split hardwood have been dumped on the ground.

He did warn me.

Jeez, I’m not psyched for this. It happens once a year, and once a year it’s my job to turn the heap into a woodpile. You’ve heard of obedience training? I’m the beagle.

I’ll start after lunch, even though I won’t do it right. Beats being accused of slacking off.

Before I can wipe the frown off my face, Opal comes out the side door, a handwoven bag slung over her shoulder. She’s wearing her work clothes—long flowered skirt, fringed turquoise shawl, dangly earrings made of crystal. Her eyes are turquoise too, and it’s not contacts. Cassie’s are the same color, except Cassie’s don’t come at you like lasers.

Opal has straight black hair and cheekbones that’ll stay put until she’s ninety. It weirds me out that my own mother, no matter that she’s piss-poor at the job, is beautiful.

“You were gone long enough,” she says. “Cassie’s inside.”

“I want you to look after her again in a couple days.”

“You don’t run my life, Brick.”

“You don’t pay me for babysitting!” She and Floyd were away last week. Seven whole days of Cassie, no time off for good

behavior.

“We put a roof over your head.”

“Some roof—covered in moss with the gutters falling off.”

“Exactly,” she says, with her feral smile. “I can’t possibly bring my clients here, which is why I need you to babysit. I’ll be back by four.”

She’s a psychic healer. Self-proclaimed.

She brushes past me and climbs into her shiny new Malibu. Three years ago when Floyd won the provincial award for GM Salesman of the Year, he and Opal went to Halifax for the ceremony. I can’t remember ever calling them Mom and Dad. Or Mother and Father. I don’t call Floyd anything, while Opal always made it clear that being anyone’s mom was rock bottom on her list of priorities.

This seems like as good a time as any to deal with the basics:

Name: Brickson (Brick) Thaddeus MacAvoy

Father: Floyd Thaddeus MacAvoy. Thaddeus was Floyd's father, who, by all reports, wasn't someone you'd want sitting across from you at the kitchen table. As for my name, the -son got dropped a long time ago.

Mother: Opal MacAvoy, formerly Audrey Brickson — last name was dumped after Floyd swaggered into view, no regrets that I can see, and what kind of a name is Audrey when you're preaching how a bunch of gardenias will bring about universal love.

Sister: Cassandra (Cassie) MacAvoy, just turned four.

Age: fourteen years and seven months.

Grade: nine, next September (school's only been out a week and a half and already I'm bored out of my skull).

Sports: hockey, Bantam, B team, defense.

ATV: red Honda FourTrax Automatic that Floyd won at the hospital fundraiswe (he doesn't like getting his clothes dirty, so he never goes near it. I'm allowed to use it, important errands only).

Girlfriends: none

Address: 138 Hilchey River Road, RR #4, and no, I don't blame you if you've never heard of it. Head down the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia and you're going in the right direction.

Nearest town: Hilchey Bay. Could be you've never heard of that, either.

Long-term plan: leave here the day I turn sixteen. Three weeks before Christmas. Yes, Floyd, there is a Santa Claus.

I WALK indoors, hang my helmet and hoodie in the mudroom, and go into the kitchen. Cassie’s sitting at the table with her stuffed skunk. She calls him Rover because she wants a puppy, even though I told her we can’t have one. Ever.

She’s scowling at me. “You went to the library without me.”

“You were asleep.”

She shoves a picture book across the table. “We gotta take this back.”

The book is about a pink dragon called Petronella, whose hobby is turning the villagers’ gardens to soot. “It’s not due yet.”

“It gives me nightscares.” That’s her word for bad dreams.

“We’ll take it back in a couple of days.”

“Now!”

“We can’t. I’ve got to do the woodpile. What was the night-scare about?”

“A dragon burned down all our trees. Its eyes were red like its brain was on fire. I hid under my bed and its claws went scritch-scratch on the floor.”

“Gross.”

“You weren’t there to save me.”

I pat her on the sleeve. “Dragons like Petronella live in faraway countries.”

“She lives in our oven. She’s why the tuna melts went black.”

I had my nose stuck in a book and forgot about the tuna melts, that’s why they went black. Try telling that to Cassie, who has enough imagination for six kids. Good thing she watches daytime TV. Tyrone and Pablo from The Backyardigans are sweeter than fudge, and so are the reruns of Blue’s Clues.

“How about I make bacon and eggs for lunch?” I say.

“Then we’ll go to the library.”

“Not today, we won’t. But I’ll hide the book in my room so you’ll be safe from Petronella.”

“Ketchup on the eggs.”

“Okay.”

Floyd’s empty coffee mug is still sitting on the table, the Eric Lindros mug he’s had for years: Philadelphia Flyers, #88, good-looking guy, big, physical. Everything I’m not.

Sure, I’m tall for my age. But the day muscles were parceled out, I must have called in absent.

Using both hands—you dropped it, kiddo?—I place the mug in the dishwasher, back right-hand corner, nothing touching it. Then I fry up some bacon while Cassie watches for the toast to pop up. The bacon turns out crisp but not burnt, perfecto when you add eggs easy-over and toast slathered with strawberry jam. Cassie feeds the crusts to Rover.

Normally, with Floyd at work and Opal out, we could watch TV. I go upstairs, drag on my oldest jeans, and rummage for my work gloves in the bottom drawer. Floyd’s the Hilchey River Road Woodpile Expert, studying the different types of wood and reading articles on the Internet. In the meantime, I supply the boy power because—let’s not kid ourselves—manpower it ain’t.

Manpower, I’ve decided, is like the peak of Everest. Not many get there and they leave a megatrail of garbage along the way. Useful Fact: if you’re ever crazy enough to climb Mount Everest, in the Dead Zone at the peak where the oxygen runs out, you’ll be staggering past the corpses of long-dead climbers. Impossible to cart them away. Don’t get too big for your crampons.

Anyway, feel free to skip the following description of the MacAvoy Woodpile, as stacked by yours truly last July. It’s behind the house in the middle of the clearing. It’s two tiers deep, oriented west-east to catch the prevailing winds, the top covered with a black tarp (maximum heat absorption, hence maximum evaporation, up to fifty percent of the weight of green wood is water—I could go on). The whole thing sits on wooden pallets from Home Hardware. No bottom rot in our woodpile, no sir.

I lug six pallets from the cellar. First decision, where should they go? Don’t want them under the trees. They shouldn’t go too close to the back of the garage. Should I start by taking wood from last year’s pile and stacking it in the cellar?

Should I lie down on the grass, put my ball cap over my eyes, and go to sleep?

After I lay the pallets on the far side of the present pile, I tip several wheelbarrow loads of wood onto the grass beside them. Birch logs, half-split, the grain pale. Put ‘em bark side up, leave gaps for air circulation, one-over-two then two-over-one. I quit on the third row. I’ve shown willing without doing so much it’ll take me all day tomorrow to redo it.

1.4 [the Semple challenge]

CASSIE’S WATCHING Treehouse when Opal gets home. Floyd won’t be back for another hour and a half, and I’m in a lousy mood. I sneak out the side door, tramp down the driveway, and cross the road by the bridge. It’s one of those days to plunk myself on a rock beside the river and blot everything out.

Today, it doesn’t work. Two cords of wood. Bruises on my wrist. Thirty-one days in July. Thirty-one more in August. Cassie and me. Me and Floyd.

The river’s so freaking goal-oriented, always on a big tear to reach the sea.

Eventually I stand up, wincing because the granite’s rough and I don’t have much in the way of padding. I’d better hike home. It would be just like Floyd to skip out early.

Then, as I clamber up the bank to the road, I get lucky.

Glenn Semple’s walking across the bridge, his greyhound, Igor, ahead of him. No one else on the road owns a dog; but if they did, it’d be chained up, not mincing along on a pale blue leash that’s long enough for six dogs.

Although Glenn’s half a head shorter than me, he never has the wit to act scared. But I’m surprised Igor hasn’t run for cover, seeing as how I’ve been known to fire rocks in his direction.

The leash is trailing in the dirt between me and Glenn. I don’t want to get tangled in it, so I give Igor a kick in the ribs.

The dog yelps, skitters behind Glenn, and flattens himself against his legs.

Glenn bunches his fists. “You leave my dog alone!”

Before I can duck, he lands two good ones to my chest. I move in for the kill. “Dog? That’s not a dog, it’s an overgrown weasel.”

My heels digging into the dirt, I grab his wrist, lever his arm behind his back, and pull up, nice and easy.

He’s standing on tiptoes. His teeth are gritted, but he can’t keep the sounds from escaping. He doesn’t cry, though. Never has.

Igor whines in sympathy. Then I hear a logging truck at the top of the hill, jake brakes blatting as it starts down the slope to the bridge. I kick Glenn’s feet from under him and let go of his arm. He drops to the ground, still clutching the leash. I’m halfway down our driveway before the truck roars past.

You gotta be careful with the arm-twisting routine because you can dislocate someone’s shoulder that way. I googled it.

Glenn moved here from Toronto two years ago. His father is a retired music professor who owns a bookstore on Main Street. Glenn has blond curly hair, makes top marks in school, and plays the flute. He doesn’t play hockey, football, basketball, or soccer. All of which should put him at the bottom of the social pile.

The girls are all over him. The guys like him. Even the jocks tolerate him.

None too smart putting life and fair in the same sentence.

1.5 [Brickpower]

FLOYD ARRIVES home at five thirty sharp. He brakes by the heap of birch logs and turns off the ignition of his Hummer H2 SUV, Silver Ice Metallic. He’ll keep that vehicle until it’s an antique.

I’m in the kitchen washing a saucepan. KD for supper, spirals at Cassie’s request. Floyd walks around the logs then strolls out back. I fight the temptation to go to the other window and watch him.

Five minutes later he saunters into the kitchen and leans against the doorframe, hipshot. “Why did you put the pallets there?” he says, pleasantly enough.

“So last year’s wood is nearest the cellar door?” Declarative statements can be dangerous. They don’t teach you this in grade eight English.

“I keep hoping—against all the evidence—that you’ll develop a modicum of brains and initiative. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to start by piling last year’s wood in the cellar?”

“Guess so.”

“You guess so?”

“Yes. Yes, it would have made more sense.”

“Do it, then. Correctly this time.”

He pauses. My turn to say something. “Okay.”

“Which pallets will you use?”

Trick question? “The ones I put on the grass?”

“Brilliant.” He straightens. I tense. He says, “I expect the new wood to be stacked by the time I get home from work tomorrow. That’s not asking too much, is it?”

I shake my head. Beagle with its tail between its legs.

“Once you’re done in the dishpan, you’d better head for the cellar.”

I nod. Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full. Which, in case your childhood was deprived of nursery rhymes, comes from “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep.” After Cassie outgrew Mother Goose, she latched onto Jack and the Beanstalk, and if you’re reading that book to a kid you don’t have a worry in the world about TV violence.

The cellar isn’t deep enough for me to stand up straight. The overhead light is a bare bulb, the steps rough wood, ending near a cupboard barricaded by boxes. The rest of the cellar? Cracked cement floor, cobwebs, grimy little windows—perfect set for a horror flick.

Our oil-wood furnace is state-of-the-art.

I haul open the door to the outside and toss the logs I piled this afternoon off the pallets. My wrist hurts. When I’ve carried the pallets back down to the cellar and lined them up a foot away from the side wall, I start transferring last year’s dry wood into the cellar and stacking it just so.

I quit at a quarter to ten. Too dark outside to see what I’m doing, bumped my head twice on the sill, moths dashing themselves against the lightbulb, and I’m bone tired.

Wales is losing to the New Zealand All Blacks, so that takes care of Floyd. He prefers rugby to American football—no padding, more injuries. In my socked feet I circle his chair and climb the stairs. Cassie’s fast asleep, Rover squashed against her chest, Horton Hatches the Egg lying open on the quilt. Usually I read her a bedtime story.

I set my alarm then read about the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. All that space with hardly anyone in it. Growing in the sand is a tree called saxaul, which camels like to eat. If you burn a saxaul tree, it gives off three times the heat of birch.

Long way to go for a cord of wood.

*

THREE IN the afternoon, twenty-seven degrees and not a breath of wind; the scorched smell of pine resin hangs in the air. My shirt is stuck to my back. Back, arms, legs, head—all aching. The cellar wood is stacked. The heap in the driveway is three-quarters stacked. Floyd could be back in two hours, and there’s nothing he’d like better than to catch me with the job not finished.

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