The Light You Cast - 5. Chapter 5

Orange light spread through the clouds as the truck rolled on. Twilight settled over the forest. Black streets, dirty grey snow banks, and tree trunks lit up in the beams of my headlights.

The monotonous road threw me into a state of hypnosis. Moments flashed behind my eyes. The fire poker in Jonathan’s hand. Leah standing in my doorway with a blanket, worried I’d freeze to death. Mrs. Jameson’s puffy eyes. Jonathan’s frozen body, frosted with snow. Blood flying from Mr. Jameson’s mouth.

"I’m bored," Michael said, snapping me out of it. The widow fogged up near his mouth when he spoke. He traced a pattern through it with his fingertip. “Could I drive for a while?”

"You don't have your license, do you?"

"I know how to drive. We have to stop for gas in a minute anyway,” he pointed at the gas gauge, which was nearing empty. “And you look like you need a break."

I tapped my fingers against the steering wheel and looked him over suspiciously. "How’s your eye?"

"It's okay, it's just a bruise."

"Let me see it."

He turned his shoulders to face me and tried to smile. Only half his face was able to make the motion.

"It’s swollen. You should keep the ice on it."

"It won't stop me from driving. I swear to god it looks worse than it is. I can still see through it."

"Put your ice pack on it," I said. "I'll think about it." He murmured something about the cold. I didn’t blame him. But he pressed the pack to his face anyway.

With his free hand, Michael reached out and fiddled with the radio, searching through the static for something to come through. He landed on the only station with decent reception, K-97 Classic Rock. Bad Company spilled out into the car, and Michael took the opportunity to play the air guitar, pretending to sing along.

“And I don’t even know how to play the guitar,” he bragged as the song faded and a commercial started up. “Bet you couldn’t tell, huh?”

“Shocking,” I smirked.

He flipped down the visor, pushed a button for the passenger side light, and inspected his eye in the little mirror on the back. “I think it makes me look kind of cool,” he said. “Like a badass street hustler who won’t take no for an answer.”

“You look nothing like a street hustler,” I pointed out.

“Fine. I look like a prize fighting boxer from Brooklyn who took a hard hit but still came out on top.”

I raised my eyebrows at him. “You watch too many movies,” I concluded.

“What do you think I look like, then?”

“I think you look like a kid who got punched in the eye,” I said flatly.

Michael gave me a look of pure suffering. “We really need to work on your imagination.”

We stopped for gas about an hour outside of Edmonton. I bought a few sandwiches and two paper cups of hot tea from the attached convenience store. Michael sat in the passenger seat, bundled up and picking at his sandwich as the tank filled up. When his good eyelid started to droop, I gave him a pointed look.

“I could drive,” he argued.

“Not gonna happen.”

“Fine,” he mumbled.

As the drive wore on, my old truck clamored over every bump in the road, so Michael’s head kept bumping against the window. He fell asleep anyway.

The images took over again. Mr. Jameson’s face distorting under my fists. His cheekbone crunching. Blood dribbling out between his teeth. He’d spat at me, clawed at me. The lines he’d carved across my forearms began to burn. And Leah, the way she’d looked at me… I was so disgusted that I could taste bile on the back of my tongue. The nausea made it hard to breathe, hard to see straight.

But I hadn’t killed him. He was still breathing, still alive. For that reason, I was able to force the crawling insanity back into its box.

By the time nine p.m. rolled around, we reached the outskirts of Edmonton. I was ready to find a place to stay for the night, so I nudged Michael with my elbow a few times, but he didn't budge. His hood had slipped off from all the jostling, taking his beanie with it.

I had to do a double-take when I noticed that his hair was matted in the back with dried blood.

I gave him a good shake. "Wake up, Michael."

Michael blinked at me. "What?"

"The back of your head - how bad is it?"

He reached back, winced, then touched his hair tenderly. "Ugh..." he breathed for a second. "It's hard to tell 'cause my fingers are numb."

"Okay. I'm pulling into this motel on the right. Put your hood back on and stay awake."

Ahead, I saw that the motel parking lot was empty aside from one lonely car covered in a blanket of white. A yellow sign flickered vacancy, casting a glowing circle on the snow. Lights shone dimly through the lobby window.

I pulled into a parking spot and checked my face in the rearview mirror. A scuff or two, a shadow of stubble on my jaw. A little blood spackle just blended into everything else that was wrong with my coat. I scraped a few dried blood spots off my chin.

"Wait here. I'll be right back."

I handed over two wrinkled twenties to the attendant, who hardly looked at me as he completed the transaction and handed me a door key. Normally I wouldn't shell out forty dollars for a room, but I didn't see any alternatives. An extra train ticket, an extra mouth to feed. It was going to be tight. Really tight.

I shuffled our bags into our cold little room as Michael turned up the heater to full-blast. He sat down on the bed closest to the radiator and held his hands out over it.

"I'd better look at that," I said, nodding at the back of his head.

"I think it's okay."

“Let me make sure.”

He pulled back his hood, freeing his mop of thick brown hair. Dried blood stuck a clump of hair to the back of his head. I pushed it aside gently as I could. The skin looked raw and swollen.

"It looks scraped, but it’s not split. I can’t tell how bad it is. How do you feel?"

"Um," he said, "Freaked out? Shaky… look at my hands." He gave a small exasperated laugh, looking back at me. His eyes were big and dark on his thin face. “I mean, I have no idea what I’m doing and I’m scared.”

My heart sank somewhere into my stomach. I’d felt that way so many times I’d lost count long ago. But what could I say? There was nothing I could do to comfort him. I was on such unsteady ground myself that I had nothing to offer.

“Does your head hurt? Do you feel dizzy at all?”

He shrugged. His reply came out in a much quieter voice. “It’s okay.”

"You should get a shower,” I said. “You’ll feel better. And we have a long day tomorrow."

He nodded. A minute later, steam was pouring out under the bathroom door and clouding the windows. He stayed there for a long time. I listened to the sounds of water and cars passing by on the highway, feeling far away from home.

To distract myself, I sat on my bed and dug to the bottom of my duffel bag. My journal was down there, worn leather peering up at me. Inside the journal, tucked into a slit in the back cover, was something that I should never have kept. Not if I wanted to stay safe, or sane. I’d thought about throwing it away, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I pulled out the plastic bag carefully, mindful of the sound of the shower.

Slave Lake Laborer Suspected of Murder, read the headline. I’d hardly dared to touch the bag, let alone read the article. The feelings it brought back to me were painful and cruel. But an urge to see it still crept in. Maybe I wanted it to hurt. Maybe I deserved it, after the things I’d done.

I opened the bag, tugged the article out, and my jaw dropped loose. I gasped and threw the article onto the bed, backing away from it. Tucked into its folds was a color photo I hadn’t seen since I was sixteen years old. I stared at it, wide-eyed, like it was some kind of viper.

After the initial shock wore off, I reached out and took the photograph into the palm of my hand.

In the picture, my mother sat on the left. Warm acorn-colored skin, round face, the soft curve of her chin and kind eyes framed by straight, thick black hair. The picture was faded, yet despite the age I swore I could have reached out and picked up her necklace of tiny colorful beads and rolled them between my fingers like I did when I was little.

My sister stood to her left in a fancy red dress, forehead leaning gently against my mother’s cheek. She was about six years old in the picture, with her long black hair in two braids. I ran a finger along the curve of her small, sweet face and remembered what it felt like to hold her on my lap.

I stood on my mother’s right, with my hand resting on her shoulder. I was only fourteen but my shoulders were already broad and strong. With a look of steadiness and calm in my eyes, I looked ready to take on the world for the two women in front of me.

That day I had insisted on wearing a grey long-sleeved flannel over the white button-up shirt she’d asked me to wear. I smiled at the memory, my eyes blurring with tears.

“You’ll look so much nicer without that old thing,” my mom insisted, referring to my flannel.

“But I always wear it,” I argued. “When you and Sophie look at this picture, I want you to remember who I really am. I don’t want to pretend I’m someone else.”

Mom sighed, but she gave me a look of genuine love, the kind of look that overwhelmed me with warmth. She didn’t say another word about the flannel, and I couldn’t help but hug her as a fierce protective flame flared inside my chest. I kissed the top of her head, easy to do because she was a foot shorter than me.

“I love you,” I said, both in the memory, and aloud in the hotel room.

I looked at all of our faces as my tears welled over. God, but memories could be painful. I must have left the photo behind at Jonathan's house when I ran away, all those years ago. I’d forgotten all about it.

The shower stopped. Quickly, I folded the article and tucked the photo back in its hiding spot. Then I wiped my eyes on my sleeve, kicked back on the bed and pretended to be reading a book.

Michael came out wrapped in one of the small white hotel towels. His lean pale body was littered with red marks and bruises. I didn’t look at him for too long. Instead, I made myself busy as he dressed.

Setting the book aside, I fished through my duffel bag. I set a clean shirt and pants on the bedstead for tomorrow, arranging things squarely. Michael's eyes tracked me as I worked.

"Do your hands hurt?" he asked. I shrugged. My knuckles were bruised and there was dried blood on my hands, but I ignored it and lifted a few more clean clothes.

"That's my dad's blood."

I stopped rifling through my bag, and gave him a hard look. Michael held my gaze long enough to make me feel uncomfortable. I was in no shape to hold a stare. Obviously he wanted to talk, and I wasn’t getting out of it.

"How bad did you hurt him?" Michael asked.

"Less than I wanted." I started fixing the corners of my shirt, making the folds straight and even. “Maybe more than I should have.”

"You were furious," he said. "I've never seen anyone mad like that. Not even him."

"Yeah," I shifted uncomfortably. "That's a problem of mine."

He frowned a little. He sat in a bundle on the bed, dressed in navy blue long johns and a white tee-shirt. When he pulled a pillow up under his chin, he looked about ten years old.

“Listen, Michael,” I said. “You don’t need to be scared of me, okay? It’s just when I see…” I held up my palm as if to offer him the words I couldn’t quite put together.

“I’m not scared of you,” he reassured me. “But I know you weren’t planning on having me with you. And me being all fucked up,” he pulled a hand back through his wet hair and closed his good eye. “Anyway, thanks for everything. And if you change your mind about having me along, I won’t hold it against you. But for the record I can fend for myself and you won’t have to be like a babysitter or anything. I can be like a partner and help you.”

“I think you could help me a lot, actually.”

He glanced up. “Yeah? What are you thinking?”

“Well, we’re going to Toronto and I’ve never been there before. I don’t spend a lot of time in big cities.”

“I’ve never been there before either,” he said.

“But you grew up in Calgary. You’re used to being in a city. I’m not. So maybe you could help me figure things out.”

“I could do that,” he said. “I’d actually be good at that.”

When I gave him a smile, he returned it times a hundred.

I cleared my throat. “I’ve got to take a shower,” I said. “We have a long day tomorrow. I want to try and sell the truck, and the train leaves at 10 AM.”

“Sounds good,” he said. “Should I give you my cash to help pay for the ticket?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Really?”

“We’ll have to be careful about what we eat. You might have to spend some of your money on food.”

“What did you think I was going to spend it on, hookers and blow? It’s fine. I’ll pay for stuff, too.”

I gave him an incredulous laugh before I left for the bathroom, closing the door behind me.

*****

“Oh come on, I know it’s not a Rolls Royce but it’s got to be worth more than three hundred dollars.” Michael haggled with the used car salesman while I hung back with a cup of coffee. His sunglasses slid down his nose, and he pushed them up again with his index finger.

“Not if you want to walk out of here this morning with cash, it’s not,” the salesman said, crossing his arms over the soft-looking bulge around his stomach.

Michael threw an exasperated hand in the air and it made the guy flinch. “You drove it, right? This thing’s going to last another decade, seriously! I know these trucks.” He ran his fingers along the side of the bed, shook away the rusted paint chips that broke off on his hand, then pushed his sunglasses up again. I smiled into my cup.

“The paint’s a little rusty but it could haul just about anything and it hasn’t broken down once in three years. You’ve got to go a little higher. It’s worth a thousand at least. How much did you pay for it, Ethan?”

“Um, fifteen hundred,” I said.

“See? You can still get that much out of it at least.”

The man took off his hat and rubbed his thinning red hair. “Like I said, you can get more value if you do a trade-in. If you want cash, I can’t go any higher than five hundred, bottom line.”

Michael got quiet and they stood there looking at each other for a minute. “Fine,” Michael said, putting a hand out. “Five hundred.” They shook on it.

I signed off the exchange. We shouldered our bags and made our way down to the sidewalk. It was a crisp morning, a few white clouds hanging peacefully against a clean blue backdrop. But beyond that, nothing resembled the tiny town we’d come from. This place was wide open, no forest canopy to protect a person from view. Service shops and warehouses sat on wide lots, sprinkled with a few young poplars and pines on rectangles of sludge. We had to walk three kilometers on a street that ran parallel to the highway to get to the train station, a nightmare in its own right. I trudged alongside Michael stiff with nerves.

The longer we walked, the heavier the wad of cash felt in my pocket. Eventually I took it out with my free hand and thumbed through it. “Here.” I handed Michael five twenties and put the rest back in my pocket.

“Really?” he asked . “Are you serious?”

“Sure, you earned it. I would have settled for the three hundred.”

“But—”

“I want you to keep it. It’s better to have some extra money with you while we travel.”

He stopped arguing and carefully folded the bills, pulling out his wallet from his back pocket and tucking them in. “Let’s go find some cheap pancakes or something,” he said. “My treat. I’m starving.”

“Sure, whatever you want.”

We continued the long walk towards the train station. The air smelled of fumes stirred up by cars and trucks that clamored by us on the street. I found myself breathing less, breathing slower, as if I could detour the air around my sense of smell somehow. It didn’t work.

Michael didn’t seem to notice. He walked a few steps in front of me with his chin up and a straight, proud back. When the train station came into view at the end of the long road, we spotted a diner around the corner, so we stopped and scraped our sludgy boots off on the doormat.

“I want to call home,” Michael confessed after being seated by a fragile looking waiter who was stooped and wrinkled with age. “Mom’s probably scared.”

I made a non-committal sound, looking out the window. Snow freckled the air again, clouds rolling in from the east. “Wait until right before we leave. Trains will get delayed for hours in the storms. I don’t want to leave him enough room to come and grab you before we get a chance to take off.”

“You think he would?”

“I know he would,” I said, lowering my voice. “I don’t want to take any chances with him. If he finds us, he’ll try to kill us both.”

Michael turned his fork between his fingers. “That’s a little dramatic.”

“Just humor me and wait until we check in at the station, please.”

“He’s not going to kill anyone,” Michael grumbled. But he stayed quiet after that, and our pancakes came to a sullen table. Despite the sourness on his face, he still dug into the pancakes with the enthusiasm of someone who hadn’t eaten for days.

After breakfast, we walked the last few blocks to the station. I bought Michael’s ticket at the counter. It cost over nine hundred dollars. I didn’t want to count the money I had left, not in front of Michael, but the number of bills in my pocket wasn’t promising at all. I really would have to rely on Jonathan once we got to Toronto. The leap of faith I was taking didn’t sit well with me, but I stomached it and moved on.

The trains were only delayed half an hour, so I let Michael call home at ten o’clock using the payphone. I took the opportunity to call Jonathan as well. The voicemail picked up, and I left a short message to tell him I’d be there in a few days. When I was done, I sat down on a wooden bench and watched people bustle around while I waited for Michael.

“Apparently Dad went looking for us like you thought he would,” Michael told me when he came back. He gripped the bench seat tightly under his thighs. “Mom said he drove off in the middle of the night. I don’t know how he was driving after you bashed his head in like that. He came back just a few hours ago and she said he was sleeping.”

I looked around self-consciously but no one seemed to be listening in. No sign of Mr. Jameson, either. Just a room of people shuffling around, talking, and otherwise waiting for their trains. “Keep your voice down,” I muttered anyway.

Michael glanced around. “Mom said I should go to my Aunt Terry’s house. She lives in Calgary. She said she and Leah are getting a ride there on Monday. She’s going to leave my dad.”

I rubbed my face with my hand. “If you really want to go to Calgary, I can change your ticket. But I’m warning you now, she’ll take him back after a couple of months and it’ll only get worse.”

Michael let out a grunt of recognition. “She left him three times already and she always goes back. It’s only me he hates, anyway. He’s always nice to Leah, and he never hits Mom. They’ll be a lot happier without me.”

I put a hand on his shoulder. He shook me off, but from that brief touch I could feel his tension, like he was being held together by rubber bands pulled tight.

“Come on, our train’s boarding,” I said. I stood up and pulled my suitcase with me. “I think we both could stand to get as far away from all that as possible.”

Michael nodded, grabbed his bag, and we stepped onto one of the long, silver Via Rail train cars. It felt surreal and terrifying, boarding the train. The start of something new, something very different from the life I’d known since that fateful day I’d run away at sixteen years old. I let Michael lead the way, while I did my best not to turn around and run as fast as I could in the opposite direction.