Arctic Smoke Read online

  “Oh, shit.”

  He clutched himself tighter and tried to breathe, deeply, droplets pooling beneath him. He stood, then crouched against a tidal head rush. After the wedges of light stopped spinning his head, he wobbled to his feet and looked about the darkened room.

  The angel was gone. The wall intact. But the snow globe was not on the dresser.

  No. Fuck. Ing. Way.

  He crept around the bed and knelt. Sure enough. There, on the floor, a shattered globe, leaking water and bits of ersatz snow in a tiny river rushing under the bed toward some lost baby sea. The igloo and its inhabitants were vanished into the night, drowned, saved, who knew.

  Lor knelt, shivering, for a long time, listening to his girlfriend’s breath and the drip of water off his wet skin. He felt all the discrete worthless moments in his life compact and ignite. In his stomach, up toward his throat.

  Enough, he thought. I am out of this shit. Not another birthday in this town.

  He remembered sleigh bells and reached for his pants, pulling out the Wiccan’s keys, kissing them absentmindedly. He towelled off, dressed quietly, then packed his black guitar into its case with a bank card, toothbrush, and grainy photograph. He left his last girlfriend to her dreams, walked nine blocks, and stole her car.

  He fled north, across the Wind River Bridge and through Sevens, hitting Grinteeth Road at almost twice the speed limit. Then north on the 15, stopping once in Butte to gas up and throw up. In Black Rocks, between swaths of national forest, he bought a sandwich; he gobbled through Helena, felt it churn his stomach as he rolled down the window west of Hauser Dam, puked it out in bits and pieces all the way to Great Falls.

  After a restless night in a Great Falls parking lot, something drove him north again. He cruised to Shelby, then cranked it up and headed for the border, all the way north to Sweet Grass.

  What was that dream? He must have taken some psychedelic and forgotten about it, hidden it from the Wiccan. He sighed. Yes, that was it, a forgotten psychedelic, he was going to have to quit that shit.

  He parked for an hour next to the crossing, tried to clear his head. Failing that, he got out to walk and buy some smokes. At the duty-free store he sent a postcard to an old friend in Vancouver, scribbling his story in elliptical sentence fragments. Why had he done that? Never mind, would probably never arrive anyway. Puffing a Lucky Strike, he drove north again, crossed the parched grasslands of the border, and entered that strange vast land named Canada.

  † † †

  “I ask you one last time,” the bellboy said. He picked up the open Bible and placed it neatly on the cart. “What is the cause of your sorrow, the source of your vexation of spirit? You will never finish your journey in such a mood.”

  “Spirit?”

  “That seems, to me, precisely the word.”

  “You seem to know everything. Why ask at all?”

  The bellboy leaned on the cart, creaking the wheels. A chunk of curtain loosened and swept across the window, blocking light, pouring more shadow. “Happy birthday. Thirty? Time to go.”

  “Thirty, yeah.” Lor bit a nail. “It’s . . . how did you know my birthday was today?”

  He took a step into the shadows, winced as his fist pressed a ragged cuticle. He felt the guitar at his side. Overtones tickled the hairs on his calf.

  “A birthday should be a cause for joy, as should a journey’s beginning.” The bellboy reached to the bottom shelf of the cart and pulled out a fat green bottle. “Why not try for some cheer? On the house, chilled.”

  Cold drafts circled Lor’s wrist. He noticed the jar of blue-green ice chunks, re-appeared.

  “I don’t need to be reminded of my birthday,” he said. “I’m not going on a journey. I don’t need a drink.”

  “There is no good reason for—”

  “Get out.”

  Wind rattled the window. A guitar string snapped.

  “Enough bullshit,” Lor said, kicking the cart into deep shadow. It hit the wall. Dirty dishes crashed, ice cubes spilled to the carpet. The bellboy dropped his bottle.

  “Sir, I must ask you to refrain from such—”

  “Out of here.”

  Lor kicked the champagne. Somehow the cork popped. The bottle spun across the carpet, shooting foam.

  “You’ve wasted an expensive hotel wine, not to mention these carpets.”

  “Carpets!” Lor pulled his guitar off the stand and threw it at the shadows, heard a musical crash as it hit the cart, a twang, more breaking glass. Ice crunched beneath his feet. He retrieved the guitar, raised it over his head, smashed down into the splintered ice, hitting the nightstand behind him, reeling backward.

  “This is not only expensive, but, for a punk musician, very much clichéd.” The bellboy grabbed the jar of glittering chunks and stuffed it in his coat.

  “S’that right? Here’s more cliché for you.”

  Lor swung behind his head and ripped down the heavy curtains. They hit the floor with a whump; the room lit like a galaxy. Lor doubled over at the light’s centre, leaning on his splintered guitar.

  “One more,” he said, out of breath.

  Then he raised the guitar and cranked it, smashing down, unearthly chord jangling. Chips of wood and finish blew off, clinking glass before spiralling to the carpet.

  “My last guitar,” Lor gasped.

  It was the black guitar, the wise but capricious one. It finally came apart at the neck bolt, the way the blue one had the night of the flies, back in Underwood. Lor held up the broken neck, dangled the fractured body from a remaining string.

  All the light gathered and rushed inward. Lor dropped the guitar and fell into a cold mash of ice. He was out of guitars. Out of energy.

  After a long silence the bellboy shuffled in the corner.

  “Well,” he whispered. “I’ll be going. But we will meet again.”

  † † †

  On the final stretch to Lethbridge, the plains swept from Lor’s eye to the pale blue horizon, sun baked, endless. Mesmerized by distance, velocitized by the perfect line of the highway, he crossed the Milk River, where berries dotting the coulees were turning to autumn orange, where towns dotting the map had names like Drinkwater and Smoke Hill.

  At Indian Head, hidden birds chattered at him. Aye aye aye, but he paid no attention. He was magnetized north, pulled toward the only place in Canada he had ever known, drawn past high and wide signs for Antelope, Rainbarrel, Stony Beach, through tall grasses, under spacious clouds, over trickling prairie streams and rippled hills. He stopped at sundown, by a creek bed where all the moisture had evaporated to hot winds.

  Why hadn’t he ever noticed any of this before? He stepped from the stolen car to piss on a cactus, warmed by an exploding sunset. His pee sizzled; his thoughts scattered. Minutes later, he was speeding to Lethbridge, a site which held a secret and seminal meaning. Franklin’s town, the town where Lor’s punk had started, and so, the town where the Weird must have started. But by now Lethbridge must be free of punk and weirdness. Everyone and everything he had known there was gone: dead, lost to drugs and madness, vanished to either coast.

  That was good. That was great.

  That was exactly what he needed: the same geography, but all the layers peeled, stripped to the fossils. Then he could see clearly. Because deep beneath these sun scorched hoodoos and thirsty riverbeds were bones. And Lor’s own bones remained in Lethbridge, somewhere, bleached clean by ten years of wind and sun, ready to give up their secrets.

  He smiled at his own wisdom. Friends and lovers got in the way of clarity and sanity. Love in all its varieties was an invocation of chaos, the Weird, for God’s sake. Why had he bothered with so many girlfriends? Better to cut the ties.

  I’ll avoid the old haunts, he thought, inspired. I’ll find some hotel I’ve never been inside, downtown, in the old district, where I can forget that batshit Underwood drug dream, and the Weird will never find me. I’ll crouch beneath the buildings, hide from this sky, let things reveal themse
lves. That’s it. Downtown, out of sight: the Marquis Hotel.

  He cranked it up, cruising through Windy Butte and Crow’s Bluff, blowing bits of memory out the tailpipe, leaving them to mingle with dust, grass, night.

  PART TWO

  Family Reunions

  Our security agencies work with each other and with others around the globe to track people who are threats to Canada.

  —Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, 2013

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A Walk Instead

  When Serendipity Hamm was a young girl, she had her very own dark angel. A ceramic Gabriel, stained with India ink, blowing the horn of judgment. Sooty Gabriel lived at the very top of a precisely over-stacked toy chest, fixed in the north corner of Seri’s room. In it, toys and books lived in a carefully maintained hierarchy: angel and Barbie in heaven, Slinky and Frisbee on middle earth, a purgatory of puppets and costumes, finally an underworld of picture books. And at the very bottom, perhaps in Toy Hades, her favourite—an enormous, lavishly illustrated hardback of C.S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair.

  She looked at the pictures almost every day, especially the one of the wicked Green Witch, whom she found more interesting than Barbie or dumb old Gabriel. But getting to Narnia meant an almost daily unpacking and repacking of the toy chest, always in the same meticulous order.

  “This toy chest of yours.” Her Granny Finnegan sat in the window seat and stretched the Slinky across her lap. “It’s like a sedimented library.”

  “Are we going to the liberry?” Seri looked up from the Green Witch, then frowned at the neat pile of toys.

  “No Seri,” Granny said. “I’m just wondering why you put your favourite book on the bottom and the toys you never play with on top.”

  “Oh that.” Seri closed Narnia. “Well, the book is the biggest, so it has to go down low. The books can bend a bit. But the angel is all funny-shaped, and he’s got the wings, and he won’t bend at all.”

  “Should he bend, Pepper?”

  “An angel shouldn’t get so hard.”

  Gran laughed, but Seri didn’t know why. It wasn’t a joke.

  “But Potatoskin,” Granny said. “It takes you so long to take everything out, then put it back in.”

  “I know.” Seri looked down, scratched at the book’s cover.

  “Don’t you want more time to play?”

  “Yes.”

  “So why don’t you put your favourite books at the top?”

  “I tried, Gran.” She looked up, squinted at the sun. “I tried so hard. I can’t do it. It makes me feel all funny.”

  “Like what?”

  Seri paused. “In my stomach. Like I have to go to the dentist.”

  Gran laughed again. “That’s called anxiety, Pumpkin.” She leaned forward. “Here. Where in this sediment does the Slinky go?”

  “In the middle. Slinky can bend real good, so he won’t break.”

  “Clever girl,” Gran said. “Let me help you.” She slid from the window seat and bent until her knees cracked. “See? All going to the right place. You show me.”

  Then Gran’s eyes got a funny look, like when Aslan was disappointed. “Ah, Pepper. You’re too much like your father.”

  “Oh.” Seri hadn’t thought of Dad since Ricky’s birthday. It made her feel dried out, until she remembered that Dad was coming back, if she only wished hard enough.

  “Damned preacher,” Gran muttered. “Lost his toys.”

  “Toys? He never even liked toys, Gran.”

  Gran paused to consider the children’s Bible in her hand. “Faith and hope. But come, these are too heavy for a child.”

  “When’s he coming back?” Seri let the Slinky cascade from her hand.

  Gran closed her eyes and sighed. She whispered something to herself, then looked at Seri. “Honey, he isn’t coming back.”

  Seri leaped to her feet, tumbled into her Grandmother’s arms. “I’ll never run away! I promise.”

  They clasped for a long time. It felt like the whole afternoon. Seri nuzzled at Gran’s neck, making herself smile. Because whatever anyone said, she’d wish hard enough, and Dad would come home.

  “So,” Granny Finnegan said, later, when the toys were packed tighter than treasure. “Tomorrow would you like to read The Silver Chair again? Or play with the angel for once?”

  Serendipity tugged at a meaty cheek. She squinted at the window glazed with sun.

  “Granny,” she said, finally. “Maybe we could take a walk instead.”

  † † †

  Years later, Intelligence Officer Serendipity Hamm drove a company car toward the vast prairies of southern Alberta. It was a province she did not know or understand, with such wide skies, such strange acres—Windy Butte, Broken Rock, Blackie—towns and cities named with a kind of dusty magic.

  Her car, an ancient grey four-door Pontiac from the unmarked fleet, neatly fulfilled the Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s ongoing and particularly Canadian mandate to appear less interesting than it actually was. One mile from a new assignment, somewhere west of Crowchild Trail in Calgary, the tires went to sleep. Seri lost control of the car, which skidded through an intersection onto a snowy boulevard, then stalled and died.

  “Darn this freaky blizzard.” She pulled the repair manual from the glovebox, climbed out, cracked the hood. This was no battery or starter trouble, wrong noises for that. More like a loose vacuum hose or broken wire.

  “Lovely.” Seri frowned. The hoses and wires were fine, but the engine was unfamiliar, all strange angles. She flipped a few pages in the manual. Here. Something called the ECU could apparently run a diagnostic. But where was it?

  “Goodness.” The contraption wasn’t even in the engine, but under the passenger seat. That made so little sense, like keeping your favourite toy outside the toy chest. Seri climbed back in and dug the ECU from under the seat, then whistled. The thing was so small, so smooth, just a box. What kind of miniature tools did you need once you snapped it open? She checked the manual, shook her head. You couldn’t even get at the workings. The diagnostic involved display codes, switching modes, erasing memory.

  “Gosh.” She plumped the box on the seat and fished her antique pocket watch, stroked its face. Here was an analog beauty, all the springs and wheels. How different from that ECU, that realm of hi-tech ghosts.

  “I could use a few angels right now.” Seri smiled, cheeks dimpling. Perhaps three heavenly messengers, dressed in overalls, speckled with grease. But there was only one angel she knew in Calgary. Swallow your pride, she thought, grabbing her cellphone from the dash.

  “And darn this freaky blizzard.” Her hands were cold, but her gloves were far west in Vancouver, neatly folded atop Granny’s hearthstone. She dialled with numbing fingertips.

  “Hullo?” A Newfoundland accent, crisp hints of Japanese, and a clean French finish.

  “Anselm,” she said. “Gosh, glad you’re in town.”

  “Serendipity Hamm?”

  “I just had a little accident with your car.”

  A pause and a slurp at the other end of the line.

  “I’m fine,” Serendipity said. “Just stalled.”

  Another pause and slurp. “Secret Agent Serendipity Hamm?”

  † † †

  The last time Seri had seen Anselm was two weeks earlier, back in Vancouver, the day she received the mysterious letter. When she read it, she got so nervous she caught insomnia, and spent half the night perched on her bed, eating peaches in the dark. In the morning she flinched to see peach stones strewn across the bed and carpet. She plucked one from the pillow and studied it, disgusted by the cracks and peach meat stuck between. How much folded space in a pit? So convoluted, like a brain. She gathered and tossed them, then peeled the juicy bed sheet and went for breakfast.

  Over tea and oatmeal she studied the mysterious letter again. What to do? Rooke, her old CSIS supervisor, wanted her to quit the service proper and come work for a special task force. The request was vague and unu
sual. Why a letter? She half thought it was a joke. But then, if memory served, Rooke was fully legitimate, with a clean and distinguished record.

  First thing after breakfast, Seri biked in to the office to ask around, see if anyone knew of this secret branch or Rooke’s secret mandate. But nobody had even heard of Rooke. She made a few phone calls. No luck. So she sat down at her desk during the lunch hour to pray and read the Bible.

  Rising from forty minutes of fruitless prayer and meditation, she biked to the library. But, after hours in the Government Documents, she still had no answers. This whole episode was unfolding with such a lack of definition and order. She needed something certain, one true thing, a rock on which to build her decision.

  By teatime she knew her choice. “I’m not going.”

  Granny Finnegan sipped a Pilsner and crunched a pretzel. She cleared her throat. “Seri. I think we both know what’s happening here.”

  “I will not leave this family.”

  Gran swished her bottle. “He’s not coming back. You will.”

  “Can’t do it.” Seri ground a pretzel against the tabletop.

  Gran plunked down the beer. Foam bubbled over the lip. “You were five, Serendipity. Do you know what he said when he left? To your mother and me?”

  Seri shrugged.

  “He said that God had lost control. That the only things left were evil,” she pinged the bottle, “and chaos.” She folded her arms. “You going to let that stand?”

  Seri stayed silent.

  “You going to let him win?”

  “I won’t leave,” Seri whispered. “I can’t.”

  Gran snorted. “Never heard you say that before.”

  Seri plucked another pretzel, nibbled the end.

  “Look at it this way.” Gran slugged the last of her beer. “If your faith is genuine, if there is order in this world, then you’re coming back. As certainly as he isn’t.”

  † † †

  The next day it rained. Serendipity packed quickly and neatly, but found too little room in her suitcase. After minutes of careful figuring, she removed her skipping rope, her folded gloves, and a box of tampons to make room for a chain reference Bible, Dante’s Divine Comedy, an advanced philosophy text, and Saint Augustine’s Confessions. She put them on top. When she was done, she packed a lunch, took the last peach in the fridge, and set it momentarily on the hearthstone.