“I ain’t packed for this. I’m gonna need some things,” he said. “Rope, snare wire, fishing line, hooks, matches, a hatchet, and one of them folding pick axes and shovel, a pack. The forty I give out was most of what I had.”
“Deirdre,” his father said.
She rolled over on to her side and reached down beside the bed and came up with a cracked old leather bag. She rummaged around in it and brought out a clump of bills. She held it out toward the kid.
“There’s enough there,” she said.
“Jesus,” he shook his head and looked toward his father.
“Bring me back a bottle for now and a few for the trip,” his father said. “It don’t matter much now.”
He looked at the kid and waved him off. The kid buttoned his mackinaw and when he looked up they were both watching him.
“What?” he asked.
“She said you favour me.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Around the eyes and how your mouth sits,” she said and gave a small grin.
The kid let his gaze sweep around the room; the gathering of tools, worn and broken and unused for years. “You sure you’re ready for this? We still ain’t made a move yet.”
“I’m sure.”
He stared at his feet a moment then nodded without looking up. “I’ll bring the horse,” he said.
He strode to the door and swung it open and turned and looked back at them. His father lay with his eyes closed with his cheek against the woman. She was propped up against the wall on three thin pillows, swathed in cheap sheets and a pilled wool blanket. Her hands were reaching down, cradling his face in her palms, and her expression reminded the kid of the Madonna and he stood and watched a moment as a solitary tear slid from one eye and travelled slowly down her face, hung on the cliff of her chin, and then dropped onto his father’s brow. She smoothed it into his skin with one finger and when she looked up at the kid she raised the finger to her mouth and licked it and he nodded solemnly to her and stepped out into the hallway and eased the door closed behind him.
He led the horse up out of the dinginess of the river edge and on through the merchant strip. His father rode sloppily, fighting to find the rhythm of the horse with both hands clutched around the saddle horn. The horse neighed and shook her head around at the rough weight and the kid had to keep a tight hand on the halter. It was mid-morning and the shops were busy with the regular flow of housewives, delivery people, and rural folk in town for supplies. People stopped and stared openly. His father kept his head down, more out of a desire to sit the horse, the kid thought, than any discomfort at the gaze of the townsfolk. The pack was cumbersome and he’d have to reload it once they were out of town and he shrugged and tried to settle it better and each time he did the horse kicked up some. The scrape and rattle of hoofs on the pavement drew more looks and the kid did his best to stay focused on the road. He didn’t like attention. He’d always done his business here quickly, never straying or altering from the list in his mind, never speaking more than what was due and moving as quietly and as efficiently as he did on the trail. Now he kept his eyes straight ahead and pulled firmly on the halter. He felt ashamed, as though everyone knew the nature of his journey, could discern from the look of him that his father would not return, and he kept his eyes on the road and walked.
Once they were beyond the main street the walking was easier and they made better time. Still, the motor traffic unsettled the horse and when she shimmied his father grumbled and cussed and leaned back in the saddle and swayed.
“Just sit the damn horse,” he said.
“Tryin’,” his father said.
“Not hardly.” He found the dim trail that led down from the mountain and once he walked the horse on to it he could feel her relax. There was the crunch and shuttle of gravel under her hoofs and even with the taint of the mill the air was cleaner and the kid inhaled deeply and set his shoulders into the walk up out of the river valley. When the grade sharpened his father leaned forward in the saddle and the kid could smell the fetid breath of him again, all booze and tobacco and a rotted high smell like a dead thing. He turned up his nose at it and pulled the horse harder up the grade. His father grunted at the effort of holding on to the saddle horn. When they crested the ridge and eased out onto the flat the kid was sweating and he stopped the horse and wiped at his brow with the sleeve of his coat. Then he wrestled the pack from his back and reached for the canteen draped off the saddle. While he drank, his father sat upright in the saddle, looking down at the town and the roiling of the mill stacks against the green wall of mountain and the perpendicular push of the sky.
“Lived here a long time,” he said.
“Yeah?” the kid said, sloshing a handful of water across his face.
“I’ll miss it.”
“What’s there to miss?”
“You get known somewhere, it hangs on you.”
The kid leaned the pack against a log and began to sort it out for balance. His father had only brought an extra set of clothes and he’d bought himself a sweater and a pair of dungarees and socks with the money the woman had given him. He settled the clothes in the main compartment and arranged the bush things and the booze in the side pockets. Then he used some of the rope to lash the breakdown pick and shovel and hatchet to the sides. When he was satisfied he lifted the pack with one hand and tried it for heft and balance. It sat right in his hand and he clipped the hasps closed and set it back against the log.
“We got no food,” his father said.
“Don’t need food.”
“Plan on starvin’?”
“Plan on gettin’ us what we need.”
“Don’t got a gun.”
“Don’t need no gun either.”
“You’re the boss, I guess.”
“That’s right.” The kid kicked at the dirt and then took another swig from the canteen. His father hauled a bottle out from inside his coat and tilted it up and drank a few hard swallows then cupped a hand over his mouth and his chest heaved some.
“You wanna be takin’ it easy on that,” the kid said.
“It’s just for the sick. Calms me down.”
“If you can’t sit the damn horse, we ain’t going nowhere.”
He handed the bottle down and the kid stuck it in the pack. When he swung it up onto his back his father nudged the horse with his heels and she stepped forward farther onto the shale and gravel of the flat overlooking the river valley. He leaned forward so his forearms rested on the horn and swept his gaze along the serpentine wind of the river and over the jut of the town before settling on the stained edge of the sullen and downtrodden neighbourhood they’d left that morning. He nodded and raised a hand to it, purse-lipped and solemn.
“Mean that much to you?” the kid asked.
“There’s memories.”
“Seems kinda grim.”
“Yeah. Still.”
“I guess.”
The kid reached for the halter and turned the horse, and his father looked back over his shoulder while they walked to the trees, and when the view winked out he raised his chin and looked up at the sky and sighed so that the kid looked up and studied him. There was a redness in his eyes. He pulled a smoke out of the pack in his pocket and lit up and he swayed some so he pressed with his knees to steady himself and sat deeper in the saddle. The horse nickered. The kid looked forward on the trail and led them deeper into the woods and soon they could no longer hear