Jacob balances precariously on the thin
branch, his knife cutting deep into the thick flesh of the poplar tree. He is making this place a memory so that he
can store it away in some dark hidden part of his mind. One day years from now he will take the memory
out, marked with an X like a macabre treasure in the dark hours of the morning
and think about what he has done to his dog, and ponder the act of kindness
remembering the steam that wafted up from the rush of blood as he slit the
starving animal’s throat. His shiny
knife given to him on two birthdays ago glinting in the grey winter light as it
followed his command flawlessly. Given
by his absent father who left him and his mother and his little sister Helen in
the log shack that still smells of chickens and dirty feathers and bird droppings
even though its former inhabitants have been gone for years now.
“Please
stay dad.”
The
place where he and Helen spend evenings stuffing old newspapers and the pages colorful
glossy pages of the Eaton’s catalogues full to overflowing of things they can’t
afford into the chinks between the grey logs; while their gaunt mother sits by
the woodstove drinking brandy, or vodka, or whatever she can get from a white
porcelain mug. He does remember the time
before her eyes became accusations.
Right
now, right now, in this time, he is only going to think about the crunch of the
snow and underbrush beneath his boots as he follows the tracks back from the
edge of the lake, and concentrate on the way his breath floats off to the side
and behind him as he makes his way up the trail and maybe, by some miracle he
can follow his footsteps back through time before all the rabbits died and the
lake ice made fishing impossible, before he watched the day to day death as
ribs pushed further and further underneath lesioned skin. The memory has been
marked for future reference during sleepless nights in the distant future which
may never come; to be analysed and re-analysed in the warm glow of a glass of
amber whiskey.
