MATILDA DYCK; or, THE MONK: A CANADIAN GOTHIC (A Novel)

by Catherine Greenwood

BA with Distinction, University of Victoria, 1999

A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Masters of Arts

in the Graduate Academic Unit of English

Supervisors: Mark Jarman, MFA, English Mary Rimmer, PhD, English

Internal Examiner: Diana Austin, DPhil, English

External Examiner: Sean Kennedy, PhD, History, UNB

This thesis is accepted by the Dean of Graduate Studies

THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW BRUNSWICK

August, 2007

© Catherine Greenwood, 2007 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de Pedition

395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington OttawaONK1A0N4 OttawaONK1A0N4 Canada Canada

Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-56540-7 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-56540-7

NOTICE: AVIS:

The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par Nnternet, prefer, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats.

The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission.

In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these.

While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis.

I+I Canada ABSTRACT

Matilda Dyck; or, The Monk: A Canadian Gothic, is a contemporary version of Matthew

Lewis's 18th century horror novel, The Monk: A Romance, and integrates corresponding

plot elements of abduction, rape and murder found in media accounts of a recent crime

story. The title character, a monstrous amalgam of Lewis's demonic transvestite Matilda

and infamous Canadian serial killer Karla Homolka, retreats to a rural monastery after

serving a prison sentence. Despite Matilda Dyck's attempt to construct a new identity by

undergoing gender reassignment and becoming Brother Karl, s/he fails to escape

her/himself and re-enacts similar crimes. The text recycles traditional Gothic motifs:

dungeons are replaced by a drug tunnel used for smuggling marijuana across the border; the supernatural is supplanted by technology; and the transsexual figure fulfils the cross-

dresser's role as signifier of disrupted categories, a repository for displaced anxieties that

facilitates the genre's cathartic function.

u ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many thanks to my co-supervisors Mary Rimmer and Mark Jarman for their

generous and helpful criticisms and editing suggestions, and to my examiners

Diana Austin and Sean Kennedy. I'm grateful also to all of my other professors

at UNB for coursework that in unexpected ways informed this thesis, and to the

university and SSHRC for financial assistance which allowed me time to work

on the project. The idea for this novel originated during time spent at St. Peter's

Abbey in Saskatchewan: I'm indebted to the late Brother Randy Senecal for his

concept of the Genesis metal sculptures, and to the writing group Chickweed for

wild humour and a collective Gothic imagination. Many friends and family

members have offered much appreciated encouragement and support, and I must

especially mention Rebecca Fredrickson and Anne Greenwood - thank you both

for believing in me. Finally, much love to my husband Steve Noyes for his patience and support throughout what proved to be a rather long and challenging

writing process.

in "Terror at Casa Loma, I'd call it, I would get in the evils of the Family Compact, the martyrdom of Louis Riel, the horrors of colonialism, both English and American, the struggle of the workers, the Winnipeg General Strike..." Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

"If I make you laugh, for I cannot flatter myself that I shall make you cry, I shall be content." Horace Walpole

IV TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii EPIGRAPH iv TABLE OF CONTENTS v PROLOGUE 1 BOOK 1 24 BOOK II 72 BOOK III 192 AFTERWORD 276 ENDNOTES 292 BIBLIOGRAPHY 294 CURRICULUM VITAE

v PROLOGUE

The Lord himself- with your permission - seems to me to have been masquerading pretty freely at the time when he took on flesh and dwelt among us. Seven Gothic Tales 2

Mat Peters waited on the wooden chair Mrs. Blaine had set out for him in the small post office annexed to her house trailer, shifting against the bars of its spindled back as he stared out the window at the street. The hard-sided orange suitcase propped protectively between his knees wasn't big enough to hold much more than a change of clothes and a toothbrush.

With maybe a bible for ballast, mused Mrs. Blaine. His hairstyle, the straw- coloured bangs flopped over his brow as if his mother had cut it around a bowl, and the snub nose above his full lips, reminded her of the adolescent heartthrobs her daughter

Libby had once mooned over in teen magazines - what were those things called, Tiger

Beatl - thirty-odd years ago. The same sullen poutiness, the white space between his irises and lower eyelids evoking withdrawn discontent. Or smugness, depending on whether the corners of his pinkish mouth were pointed down or up. In his beige pullover, blue pinstriped shirt, and pleated grey pants he had the style of a Fuller Brush salesman, although he appeared a bit on the youthful side, too delicate perhaps, to be properly called a man.

"Brother Anthony should be here any minute now. Abbot Paul said he left a good while ago," she said, leaning her elbows for comfort on the counter-top postal-code directory and peering over her bifocals. The yellowing plastic lenses were so outdated she could no longer see properly with them, but as she liked to tell Mrs. White, her eyes were fine and that new woman doctor in the valley didn't know her nether-end from a fresh dug post-hole.

"You'll hear him coming before you see him, anyhow. The man doesn't have a driving license so he gets down the mountain on the Green Machine." 3

"The Green Machine?" Mat Peters turned reluctantly. Mrs. Blaine's wiry grey head wobbled on a wizened neck, her slight quivering nod steady as that of those little flocked dogs that ride in rear windows of family cars. She was bundled in a brown plaid housecoat that must have belonged to the late husband she'd mentioned several times

since Mat's arrival.

It was still early. When the bus had dropped Mat on the highway beside

Bridesville, the sun was just rising over the jagged silver tips of the mountain ranges far to the east. As he'd walked the length of the town only one dog, a stained tattered bandage on its rear leg, had run out from a dark yard to bark at him, limping and wagging. There were no lamps on the single street, just porch lights left burning in a few of the nicer houses, the post office run by Mrs. Blaine, and Siemen's General Store, and several fluorescent standing lamps flickering around the perimeter of a small boarded- up school. A single gas pump rusted amid bunches of dead brown grasses like a standing stone erected by a lost civilization, its original purpose and meaning forgotten.

Mat Peters had hesitated, knuckles folded lightly against the aluminium door, before knocking at such an hour. But he'd been told to wait at the post office and there was clearly no such thing here as a cafe, or even a public restroom. The street was icy, and he was shivering so hard his teeth rattled.

Mrs. Blaine, bleary-eyed, had offered him a coffee, indicating through the door adjoining her kitchen an old-fashioned percolator sitting on her harvest gold stove, and he'd said no, no thank you, it's too much trouble. He'd suddenly felt wistful for the city he'd just left, where he'd become accustomed to sipping a latte late each morning in a coffee bar near the clinic, watching as tumour-ridden pigeons pecked crumbs in the courtyard and frowning people strode to work in expensive black suits. 4

The windows rattled suddenly and Mat's chair vibrated against the linoleum as

another large semi-truck hurtled along the highway behind the houses on Mrs. Blaine's

side of the street. The whine of brakes died away and was replaced by lawnmower-like roaring that grew louder as it neared.

"Here he comes. You're in for a bumpy ride, I'm afraid," said Mrs. Blaine, with

a cryptic little laugh.

A deep green all-terrain vehicle putted to an abrupt halt in front of the post office

and a small middle-aged Asian man with a face like a worried Buddha hopped out and

clumped anxiously through the door. He wore a quilted jacket over his black robes and muddy rubber boots.

"Hello, hello," he said to Mrs. Blaine with a small bow of his round balding head, and bowing again to Mat, said "Sorry, sorry I take so long time." He shrugged and raising his eyebrows with mock-resignation, said "Lauds. Lauds," as if the word itself explained everything.

Mat stood up over his orange suitcase and held out his hand. "Brother Anthony, I presume?"

Brother Anthony took Mat's hand gently and shook it slowly while looking unabashedly into his hazel eyes, as if the younger man were a pump he was personally charged with priming.

"Mat, you Mat Peters? Very nice meet you."

"The Abbot must be pleased to have a new young man entering Saint X." Mrs.

Blaine replaced her bifocals and shuffled some envelopes. "Especially now, what with

Father Gerald having to leave so suddenly," she said, glancing sidelong at Brother

Anthony. "You must all be missing him." 5

Brother Anthony raised his chin and sniffed. "Yes. Yes. We very happy to

acquiring young new man. More the merrier, Father Abbot say. Yes, yes, very happy."

He nodded once again to Mat, his hands folded primly over his scapular.

Mrs. Blaine, looking slightly disappointed, stopped pushing paper into piles.

"Well, while you're here I have another package for you to pick up. A big one this

time." She flipped the hinged end of the counter up and beckoned Brother Anthony in to

the cramped area behind her where an assortment of boxes and envelopes were shelved.

Brother Anthony brightened when he saw the lumpy object tipped against a

corner. Wrapped in layers of brown paper and wound all about with coarse twine, it

looked similar to a conical garden shrub readied for winter. Bending at the knees, he

tenderly wrapped his arms around its middle and managed to lift it a few inches from the

ground before setting it carefully down.

"She too much heavy. I scared to breaking," he said. "Mat, you please help?"

Mat set his suitcase on the chair and went in through the counter. He touched the

package, which felt hard beneath the paper. "What do you want me to do?"

Brother Anthony motioned him with impatient fingers to lift at the bottom. "You

take foot, I take head."

Grunting a little, Mat hoisted the package off the floor as Brother Anthony

steadied the top end and backed out with it. Mrs. Blaine held the door open and watched

as Anthony carefully stepped backward off the porch.

"Thank your stars. They're easier to manoeuvre once rigor mortis sets in," she muttered as Mat squeezed by. 6

The two men set the package down on the muddy lawn, and after Brother

Anthony had opened the tailgate, they lifted it between them like a log and laid it in the plywood-lined bed lengthwise. It just fit.

While Brother Anthony secured his treasure with a bungee cord, Mat Peters came back inside after scraping his shoes at the door, and picked up his suitcase. Mrs.

Blaine was once again leaning on her counter, now looking mildly annoyed at the dirty snow Brother Anthony's boots had left melting on her linoleum.

Mat hesitated, then asked, "What is that thing, anyhow?"

"He collects Virgins." Mrs. Blaine straightened up and removed her bifocals.

"You know, Madonnas. One came postmarked from Italy once. This one can't be that special, it's from the garden center in Kelowna."

"Oh," said Mat. He was partway through the door when he turned, as if compelled by an afterthought at the end of an exam, and said, "Thank you for everything.

Sorry about waking you up."

"No bother," said Mrs. Blaine from her post. "Never a dull day here. See you around."

Mat sat on his suitcase beside the package, clutching the side of the Green

Machine as they turned off the paved street and rattled down a gravel road which dipped into a gully behind Bridesville. Eroding backyards edged onto a dirt cliff that crumbled at an angle into the ditch. An incinerator barrel had rolled partway down and come to rest beside some rusty bedsprings and a refrigerator. A small travel trailer with flowered towels covering the windows sat on a lumpy hummock; on the door a hand-painted board read Wise Owl. Now risen, the morning sun illuminated the back of the store, its whitewashed false-front fanned out against the weathered wood like the ruff of a grouse. 7

The slopes on either side of the town were terraced with frost-covered fields, and on the rolling hilltops dark patches of forest speared up darkly among the snowy pastures.

Brother Anthony rode with his gumboots staunchly planted to either side and clutched the handlebars, black sleeves flapping. They slowed to bump over the metal bars of a cattle guard, and speeded again as the road wound up the mountain, until they arrived at an unmarked turnoff flanked by two ancient pines. A russet squirrel darted up a tree trunk, its angry chatter drowned out by the motor as they entered. Around the bend, a silver gate barred the way.

Brother Anthony jerked the Green Machine to a stop and asked Mat to open the gate. "Watch out for cow," he said.

On the other side, three golden heifers stood chewing cud as if it were gum.

Their furry ears were pierced with metal tags, and small pink teats protruded beneath their bellies like the fingers of inflated rubber gloves. They ceased their slack-jawed chomping and stared beneath blonde lashes with stupefied interest while Mat unhooked the chain, the cold metal biting the tips of his bare fingers.

As soon as he'd swung the gate open, scattering the slow-moving, uncooperative cows, he saw the bull, a dense black form, watching from the shadows beneath a tree.

The animal snorted and swung its lowered head from side to side, flinging long strings of drool over humped shoulders, then ambled forward into the weak wintry light on cloven hooves that looked polished, like tight pointy shoes. Between massive haunches, a huge purplish fruit, his scrotum swayed. A tendril of hair hung down from the tip of his sheathed penis, as if he had materialized from a dark cloud and solidified into this sleek, rippling vision, trailing from his center a lingering wisp of smoke. 8

Mat moved carefully backwards, holding the gate before him like a shield.

Brother Anthony had driven through and waited, idling. After Mat fastened the chain, he realized he'd shut himself on the wrong side. He climbed over the fence beside the gate and walked slowly toward the vehicle.

One of the heifers gave out a raw bellow. The bull stared into Mat as if it knew him, and in one sickening instant he saw its dark particles disintegrate and pour like sand down a funnel: time shifted to before, he was back in the rose-papered room on Mason

St. where the blindfolded girl lay whimpering on the floor, Mat's hand slick with blood, the figure who sat on the bed as if it were a throne glaring down with eyes full of that same opaque rage, and then the bull, pawing a rut into the snow, flicked the thick pink meat of its tongue over rubbery blue lips and rolled its inky eyes back to reveal bloodshot whites and Mat knew it was only an animal, a thing of blind muscular urges, and that he had allowed his own fear to follow him here.

Heart pounding, he jumped up into the vehicle, and, as quietly as possible over the engine noise, called to Brother Anthony, "Go."

As they drove further the dirt road sliced deeply into the side of the mountain.

Spindly evergreens among fat stumps leaned above them on loosening roots, clinging to the crumbling bank like teeth in the gums of an aged man. Mat turned his head to look down, the knuckles on his smooth hands whitening as he tightened his grip. The crumbling soil at the edge was stitched together with dead weeds, roots holding the road in place against the hill. In the cleft above the highway clouds hung in delicate pink shreds, veiling the town far below.

"Almost there," Brother Anthony yelled as Mat shifted stiffly on the suitcase. 9

They emerged from a cluster of silvery aspen and lurched over a cattle guard constructed of rotting wood. An old log barn loomed ahead and nearby a two-ton flatbed with side-rails sat beside a maze of empty paddocks, hay trampled into the frozen mud.

Brother Anthony followed the road's sharp left toward a two-story farmhouse and pulled into a circular parking area marked with peeled wooden posts. The Green Machine shuddered to a halt between a shiny black truck and a red sedan. An old diesel tractor and a blue passenger van bearing the monastery's logo occupied two of the other eight stalls. The monk hopped down and hurried back to open the tailgate.

Mat stood up slowly and looked around. Behind the farmhouse was a large squat building painted the same pallid yellow. Four stories high, it had the stark look of a barracks. On a ridge beyond, red cattle with white mask-like faces lay on the patchy fields in the morning sun, still and small as plastic farm animals. Sheltered from the east and the north by the lush hilly land, the buildings were still shrouded in shade.

The breeze at this altitude was bitter. Mat shivered and tucked his hands into the sleeves of his pullover.

He'd accidentally left his leather jacket on a bench in the Vancouver bus station.

By the time he realized and raced back to check, just minutes before the bus left, his coat was gone. When he boarded the bus again, he'd noticed a surly looking girl with short bleached hair wearing a brown jacket with covered buttons and overstitched pockets that looked similar, but he wasn't sure enough to risk asking where she'd got it. He picked a seat one row behind on the other side of the aisle and stared at the sleeve until the girl had turned around and wondered aloud to no one in particular what the fuck that fucking freak thought he was fucking looking at. At the next rest stop Mat Peters had bought a black lined notebook at the gas station's convenience store, and as the bus pulled out of 10

Hope and onto the highway he sat in the back and wrote, "If that was once my coat, it is now another aspect of my past that has been absorbed into time and transformed beyond recognition. Another small lesson in learning to let go".

He left his orange suitcase in the Green Machine to help Brother Anthony carry in his prize. There was no one around to steal anything.

"Monks finish breakfast," Anthony explained. "They working or praying now.

Or maybe on coffee break."

They shuffled along facing each other, Mat again holding the heavier end. A concrete sidewalk led past the farmhouse to a simple garden courtyard fronting the barracks-style structure. On the farmhouse roof, a trio of dormer windows had been fitted with peaked amber arches, plastic resin panes leaded to mimic Gothic tracery. As they passed, Mat looked up and saw a dark form moving behind the last window,

shadowy as a fish stirring in a murky pond.

After some difficulty in getting through a door which insistently swung shut on its metal arm, they entered the monks' quarters, which Brother Anthony called the enclosure, and lugged the package up two flights of stairs, both of them puffing. Heat blasted from radiators in wide, wood-panelled halls that smelled of pine cleaner and floor wax, and, at some of the doorways that opened onto the halls, ranker aromas of sweat and unmade beds.

Brother Anthony nudged open the fir door to his own cell, which was neat and bright, with a narrow cot and a tidy desk. The little room was also crowded around the perimeters with an astonishing array of Holy Virgins, their plastic and marble and carved wooden arms held out in varying poses of prayer and benediction. Entering the room was like walking into a surprise party where the celebrants, wholesome young 11 women ranging in height from six inches to six feet, had all arrived wearing the same blue gown.

"Wow," said Mat, after helping Brother Anthony shuffle the parcel into the least crammed corner. He straightened, rubbing warmth into his hands, and tossed back the hair from his eyes, looking around the room as the monk sawed at the twine with nail scissors and tore open the brown paper wrapping.

Among the statues on the floor, the tallest Madonna was slightly larger than life and painted in candied carousel hues. A flesh-toned foot with gilded toenails peaked out from under her azure hem and rested lightly upon a fat black snake whose fangs were skewered in an apple.

Smaller figures were arranged within a bookcase by type, like high-school girls who had gravitated toward their own kind and formed cliques. On the bottom shelf the

Madonnas were grouped according to country of origin, slender African ebony at one end, stout Inuit soapstone and a set of painted Russian nesting boxes at the other, and several Guadeloupes from Mexico between, crude wooden carvings with fringed vulvular halos. The middle shelves held hand-painted porcelains and colourful poly- resins of varying quality, hair shade and skin tone dictating placement. As if it were a maternity ward full of smiling new mothers, the top shelf was reserved for figures cradling babies ~ gilt pietas and a few Marys with mangers who appeared to have strayed from nativity sets.

On the desk, a pale plastic Glow-in-the-Dark Holy Mother was housed in its original box. 12

The new arrival, a grey cement garden ornament whose diadem was designed to

hold a plant, stood among the other statues with her hands tilted down as if stroking the

heads of invisible hounds.

Brother Anthony stood back with arms folded and beamed. "Yes, Yes. This a

very nice Holy Virgin. Very nice."

A couple of thumps on the ceiling accompanied by frail but insistent bellowing

interrupted his assessment. Brother Anthony muttered a foreign word under his breath

then turned to Mat with an air of resignation. "I go now see to Father Norbert. Sorry to

leaving you."

"Is he sick?" Mat asked.

"Old. Very old. Time for changing diaper."

Anthony gestured Mat into the hall, taking a last lingering look at his new

acquisition before shutting the door behind him. The shouting from above was muffled

somewhat.

"You wait in refectory. Eat breakfast. After I find for you Father Abbot."

"The refectory?"

"Yes, main floor. This way." Brother Anthony indicated the top of a stairwell as he started in the other direction.

As if suddenly remembering his manners, he stopped, and with a formal bow,

said, "Welcome. Welcome, Mat."

He burst into a fit of high-pitched giggles.

"Welcome mat, get it?"

Beaming with mirth, hands clasped with delight, Brother Anthony went off to perform his tasks. Fresh contractions of laughter bounced off the walls and followed Mat 13 down the stairwell. He pushed past the door's restraining arm and walked briskly past the courtyard to the Green Machine. His suitcase was gone.

He stared a moment at the vehicle's empty box, then raised his bangs with one hand and scanned around. A hunched cat gazed at him from the porch of the farmhouse.

The odd windows glinted in the sunlight, inverted gold badges. At the center of the courtyard stood a single large cedar. Next to the overgrown flowerbed encircling the trunk, a scarecrow was arranged on the damp brown lawn in a position of casual ease, its shaggy straw head propped on a gloved plaid arm at a contemplative angle. The other arm, which rested along its bony denim hip, lifted and slowly plucked a purple crocus from the dirt.

Mat approached and asked, "Are you one of the monks?"

The scarecrow, a scrawny teenager whose attempted goatee was as patchy as the grass he lay upon, turned toward Mat. His face was somehow a mockery of itself, a

Nordic handsomeness distorted by overdeveloped cheekbones and eyes that should have been blue leached icily clear of colour.

He snorted with ridicule at Mat's question. "Yeah, I'm a monk. Not. I'm just like, working here?"

"What are you doing?" asked Mat, watching him tug ineffectually at a clump of dead stems surrounding a green sprout.

"Uh, weeding?"

"Did you see anyone take an orange suitcase out of the Green Machine?"

"An orange suitcase?"

"Yeah. An orange suitcase. I need it."

The kid pondered this, thinking hard. 14

"Nope. Never seen it."

He gestured loosely behind him toward the main building, flinging an uprooted

daffodil over his shoulder in the process.

"But if you go to the kitchen Ethel'll get you a potato sack. You could put the

oranges in there." His tone was entirely free of sarcasm.

Mat stared at him. "Thanks."

As he turned to enter the abbey, a big man with a John Deere cap and a genial

smile on his broad face opened the door. His wore outsize black-framed eyeglasses that twenty years earlier would have been au courant, and a Navy blue sweatshirt with white

letters reading Saint X marks the spot.

"You must be Mat. Welcome."

Mat shook the large knuckly hand the man offered him.

"I see you've met Buddy."

He turned to the boy on the lawn. In smaller lettering the back of his sweatshirt said Catholic Youth Summer Camp.

"How's it going there, son?"

Buddy stirred and pulled with a hint more vigour at a particularly tenacious bulb.

"Pretty good," he said.

"Awesome! Keep her up!"

The man steered Mat back inside.

"Come on in, Mat. Let's go to down to my office and get you straightened around." 15

"Buddy's doing some court-ordered community service here. Got caught with a bit of the funny stuff,' the man explained, demonstrating by holding an imaginary joint to pursed lips.

He pressed the button for Basement and the doors of an elevator lurched open.

"He's not all there but he's harmless. The doctors say it's foetal alcohol

syndrome. Oddly enough he's got a twin that turned out normal."

The doors opened onto a dimly lit basement corridor. They passed several doors and entered a room at the end of the hallway labelled "Abbot Paul."

The Abbot's office was utilitarian, plainly furnished with file cabinets and a large wooden desk set on the diagonal. He sat down behind the desk in a large leather chair, the room's one allowance of luxury, and removed his cap to bare a head full of salt and pepper curls. On the cinderblock wall behind him hung several framed diplomas and photos. In one of these, he was holding the ribbon-adorned halter of a polled bull whose woolly face bore him a faint resemblance. In another, he stood next to the Pope, wearing a cassock and a cross on a chain around his neck.

"I understand Tony inveigled you into sneaking another girl up to his room.

Whatever will we do with him?"

He smiled indulgently and shook his head with simulated rue. Mat Peters sat awkwardly on the other side of the desk and waited while the Abbot rummaged a file from a drawer.

"What.. .how do you prefer to be addressed?"

"Oh, we don't stand on ceremony here. We tend to keep things on a first name basis, at least amongst the brothers. You can call me Paul. Or Father, if you prefer." 16

He raised his eyes from the papers he was thumbing through and studied the

slightly built man sitting across from him.

"The question is, Mat, what are we going to call you? Some of the monks, like

Brother Troy, prefer to keep their birth names. Most of us, as you know, take the name

of a saint or an apostle - something to live up to. Don't let that scare you," he added with a hearty laugh.

"But first things first."

He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands expectantly across his stomach

in a way that hinted at muscle beneath the first layers of a mid-life paunch.

"Now. Tell me why you're here."

Mat Peters stared down at his clasped hands. "I.I have a calling."

"How can you tell?"

Mat sat silently for a few moments then peered up from beneath the thick fringe of hair. "I just. I know that I do. I want to serve God. I want to do some good things to

... to make up for other stuff."

His lower lids brimmed suddenly with tears. "I want to change."

The Abbot paused before responding. "Mat. I have no doubt you believe what you are telling me. But it's not that easy to change."

Abbot Paul stood and went to the transom window set above the foundation's cinder block walls. Someone's boots walked past and momentarily muddied the rays of incoming light.

"Some people come here because they are running away from something, or running away from themselves. Like Brother Michael, who's on the rebound from a bad marriage and doesn't know what else to do with himself. Six months later? He leaves." 17

He turned around and smiled. "Becoming a monk won't get you out of doing the dishes, is what I'm saying."

Mat's reply was indignant. "I don't want to get out of anything. I know I will have to work hard here."

"It'll be harder than you think. Much harder. Or a et Labor a. Work and Prayer, that's the deal. "

"I am prepared to work hard. Let me assure you .. .Father," Mat said, reddening

slightly at the pretentiousness of his attempted formality, "I have no intention of abandoning my calling."

The Abbot waited, a faint patient smile on his lips.

Me took a deep breath before continuing. "I want to be reborn in Christ. I... I want to leave behind the way I was. The.. .the aspects of me that don't serve God."

The Abbot returned to his chair and leaned forward on the desk.

"Everyone here has made mistakes, son. We've all had lives, believe it or not.

Even the oldest monks who entered as boys are not entirely ignorant of the world."

He picked up a pen and thoughtfully tapped Mat's file.

"You can take your vows, and along with that a new name and a new set of clothes, but you'll still be the same person inside, is what I'm saying. Can you accept that?"

"LYes. I'll try."

"So long as you understand. In his letter Father Ricardo certainly seems to think you're right for us. I just hope we're right for you."

He scribbled a note in the margin of a form, which he placed back into the file, then looked Mat over, sizing up his slender hands. 18

"Now. What kind of work can you do? Ever operated farm equipment?"

"Um. Not really, no." Mat thought for a moment. "I'm computer literate. I have good administrative skills." He realized at once how ridiculous this sounded.

"Brother Jerome, the novice-master - Jerry's office is just down the hall, you'll be reporting to him — he's our secretary at present. But there's always plenty of work in the residence, caring for the older monks. Brother Anthony could use help --"

Mat quickly interrupted. "I used to work in a vet's office, helping with the animals. Sedating them, removing stitches, cleaning the kennels..."

"I see." The Abbot raised an eyebrow. "Well. Father Bernard manages the livestock. You can work with him. Mostly feeding and mucking out stalls, but you'll get to do a bit of veterinary work. Dehorning the calves, inseminating cows, that sort of thing."

He laughed at Mat's expression. "Not as horrible as it sounds. You'll likely just have to hold the tails out of the way while Bernie does the inoculating."

"Of course." said Mat, relieved. "But, don't you have a bull for that? That black one?"

"We breed pure Hereford here. The Black Angus belongs to an American ranch on the south side of Rock Mountain. A bad-tempered brute. Keeps breaking the fence and getting through."

"Oh. Well, working with Father Bernard sounds good." Mat tried to sound enthused. "Thank you." 19

"You're welcome. Now. You aren't officially re-Christened until you profess

your solemn vows, but I don't have any objection to you choosing a name today.

Sometimes it's good to get used to it right off."

Mat nodded. "Yes. I'd prefer that."

"I thought so. Well. Do you have something in mind?

"I like John."

"Oh. Well, a good choice, but I'm afraid it's already taken. One of our elderly

brothers," the Abbot said sympathetically. "Who's your favourite Saint?"

Mat thought a moment and said "Agatha?"

"That's just doesn't work for me, son."

For the first time that day, Mat laughed. Abbot Paul grinned and nodded with

satisfaction.

"Did you have a favourite brother in your family?"

"No brothers. I'm the middle between two sisters."

"Well, what's your dad's name?"

"My father's name was Carl."

The Abbot spun his chair and from the shelf behind him pulled a brown book titled in gold letters 'Calendar of Catholic Saints". He thumbed through the index at the back then turned to a page near the middle.

"Father Karl Leisner. Was a seminarian in Muenster, Germany before being imprisoned by the Nazis. Managed to get himself ordained in jail... died a couple of weeks after liberation from tuberculosis, it says."

He looked up from the page. "What do you think?"

"My father was born in Germany," Mat said. 20

The Abbot shut the book and looked at him for a moment. "Well then. Welcome,

Brother Karl."

The younger man's eyes again grew shiny. "Thank you, Father."

The ensuing silence was broken by a plaintive growl from Mat's empty stomach.

"Well. Grub first, ethics later," said the Abbot, rising from his chair. "Let's get you some breakfast."

The kitchen and refectory were on the main floor in the building's north wing, adjacent to the monastic enclosure. The Abbot left Mat with a dour turnip-shaped cook named Ethel, and told him to rest in his cell, which was located directly opposite Brother

Anthony's, until the midday bells.

"You can't get lost. The chapel's out back," he said, "You'll see it from your window."

Mat sat at one of the long Formica tables and quickly ate the shrivelled bacon and drank the bitter coffee Ethel slapped grudgingly in front of him.

She pointed to a stack of turquoise cafeteria trays and said, "You guys serve yourselves off the steam table each meal," before stomping out the door with a parka over her apron and an unlit cigarette between her lips. When he finished, Mat set his dishes neatly in the kitchen sink, unsure whether or not he was expected to wash them.

As he turned onto the second floor corridor in the enclosure, he could hear

Brother Anthony chanting the rosary behind his closed door. Across the hall, the door to

Mat's cell stood ajar. In the middle of the narrow bed sat his orange suitcase. A tall monk with elegantly coiffed grey hair stood looking out the window, manicured hands clasped behind his back. 21

"Welcome, Mat," the man said, without turning, "though I hear we're to call you

Brother Karl for now." His accent bore traces of a borderland brogue that sounded neither quite Scottish, nor English either.

"I," he said, spinning around on his heel, "am Brother Jerome."

Mat tried not to stare. Beneath intense grey eyes and above a dashing moustache,

Brother Jerome's handsomeness was marred by the florid deformity of his nose, a lumpy and painful looking protuberance of rosacious flesh.

"Hello," Mat said lamely, averting his gaze as Jerome looked him over.

"We can't have you coming to chapel in this state, now, can we?"

Mat didn't answer, assuming the question was rhetorical.

"I've brought you Father Gerald's old habit," he said, indicating a black garment hung on the back of the door. "You're much littler than him. You'll need to take it to the laundress -" he pointed out the window to a small square hut"- Mrs. Gibbs, to have it shortened."

Mat couldn't help wondering if Brother Jerome's nose had always been that way.

It didn't seem likely. "Thank you," he said.

"And you'll be needing a haircut from Brother Neil, our barber. You can't go about looking like a girl."

Karl nodded, heat rising in his cheeks.

"Now," said Jerome, pacing back and forth. "I'll be overseeing your assimilation.

I've left you a Holy Bible, in case you neglected to bring one - most of you younger lads don't bother - and a copy of St. Benedict's Rules."

He tapped a small green staple-bound book sitting on top of the bible on the desk.

"Read this carefully, there'll be a test later." 22

Mat started to laugh politely and stopped when he realized Brother Jerome was serious. He cleared his throat. "Okay."

"I'm afraid the Abbot is a bit lax about the dietary requirements. When I was a novice, we ate gruel, and it did us no harm. Overindulgence is a cruelty in itself," he added, shaking his head.

"Now then, Mat - that is, Brother Karl, I'll leave you to unpack. Make yourself at home," he said, gesturing with mock grandiosity around the room. "Not quite what you're accustomed to, I'll wager." His unpleasant grin revealed snagged grey teeth.

Yes, actually, it is exactly what I'm used to, Mat felt like saying, but thought better of it. Instead, he asked, "Did Father Gerald pass away?"

"No," said Brother Jerome, looking briefly taken aback at the question. "He's been sent off to jail for a spell. For buggering wee boys."

He paused before leaving. "Maybe you should be glad he's away, lad, you look his sort. Perhaps a bit old," he muttered loudly as he shut the door, "even our Gerald drew the line at mutton dressed as lamb."

Mat sat heavily in the room's single chair, absorbing the insult of this encounter.

That busybody Mrs. Blaine had been right; he was in for a bumpy ride. After a few moments, he went to the window and, with some difficulty, raised the sash, as if to dispel the embittered tang Brother Jerome left like a palpable odour in his wake.

A few hundred yards away, nestled against a thicket of pines, the whitewashed clapboard chapel, with its stained glass transom and twin steeples, sat waiting like a mirage, a false promise. Mat closed his eyes and opened them again. The bright little structure, both absurd and yet in perfect symmetry with its artificial dominance over the wild surroundings, was still there. 23

Mat looked around the room. A plastic crucifix above the bed adorned hospital green walls. The cell felt like jail, a room in the world's loneliest hotel. There was no closet, just the row of hooks on the door where the cast-off habit hung. Mat snapped open the orange suitcase and put his few clothes — pyjamas, some t-shirts, a pair of jeans

— neatly away in the dresser drawers. He set his shaving kit on top of the dresser, and beside it a framed photo in faded colour of three little girls: white-blonde and dressed in summer clothing, they were giggling over a striped kitten as it struggled in the smallest child's grip.

As he placed his notebook on the desk, it fell open to a page near the front where he'd clipped the pen. Beneath his single entry about the stolen coat, printed in shaky capital letters, were the words GOD IS WATCHING YOU. He didn't recognize the writing as his own. 24

BOOK I

What you have told me is quite a romance, a romance of art one might call it, and the worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic. The Picture of Dorian Gray 25

CHAPTER 1

Mat Peters, now Brother Karl, trudged sweatily in his monastery-issue gumboots through the long grass behind the barn. The mid-summer morning promised another insufferably hot day. The novice monk was on his way to Father Eli's studio in the

Quonset hut at the edge of the south hayfield.

Brother Karl had never seen the inside of the studio, or the sculptural work the other monks talked about - some of them, like Brother Jerome, with a hint of derision.

Karl took their implied criticism as a sign that the work was actually pretty good — envy, easily disguised as piety, was one of most readily indulged sins around here. Father Eli was an enigma who kept to himself, missing meals, sleeping through lauds, showing up for chapel in his work clothes. There seemed to exist an unspoken acceptance in the community that the resident artist could bend the rules as easily as he shaped broken bicycle spokes into halos. Karl, continually under Jerome's surveillance, felt mildly jealous of the artist priest's freedoms himself.

Abbot Paul appeared from behind a shed, leading a polled steer on a blue nylon halter. He pulled the animal to a lumbering halt and wiped his brow.

"Karly. Hot as heck today." He eyed Karl's manure-smeared boots with approval.

"Bernie tells me you're settling in nicely." He reached out and squeezed Karl's bicep through his checked shirt. "Well. We'll have to see about getting some muscle on you.

Like Apollo here," he laughed.

Karl reached out and stroked the animal's hornless brow then discreetly wiped his hand on his pants. The steer stared at him with obdurate pink-rimmed eyes. "Nice looking steer," he offered. " A bit smaller than the bull." 26

"Yes. Well. That's the point. Our palace eunuchs. Steers don't burn off energy chasing the heifers. This guy's getting a nice layer of grain fat on him. I'm planning to show him at the fall fair. Hopefully he'll pick up a ribbon. We could use a little notoriety around here, couldn't we, Apollo?" Dust rose from Apollo's hide as the Abbot gave it an enthusiastic slap.

Karl sneezed and blew his nose on a monogrammed handkerchief he pulled from his shirt pocket. He'd forgotten to take his hay fever into account when investigating monasteries. Last night he'd sneezed during the chanting of vespers, and Brother Jerome, standing in the pew ahead, had turned and glowered at him, his flaring mole-like nostrils quivering as if the sound of a sneeze alone pained him.

"Bless you," said the Abbot. "What's M.D. stand for?" he asked, indicating the hanky as Karl stuffed it away again.

"Oh. That." Karl took it out and blew his nose again, this time taking his time to fold the handkerchief before putting it away. "Nothing really. When I worked at the vet's I got to go to pet food conferences, and they would give out little prizes at the booths. I can't remember which one I got this at, but I think the initials stand for doctor.

It probably was a promo. You know, from some veterinarian's display table."

"Well. Medical doctors going to pet food conferences. Will wonders never cease?" As they parted, the Abbot pointed to the horseshoe Karl held, its prongs pointing toward the ground.

"Careful. You're letting your luck run out."

At the Quonset hut, Karl took a deep breath and then knocked on the door in obedience to a large white sign with red letters that read, Danger, Welding Zone. Knock 27

First! The glass pane in the door was obscured with a gingham curtain. From behind the door came sputtering, sizzling noises, and the clanging of metal. Karl knocked again and something clattered loudly to the ground. Father Eli, wearing white overalls and a plastic welding mask that made him look like a centurion armoured for battle, yanked open the door. His face was flushed and sweaty and thin metal shavings of metal clung to his beard like silvery hairs. His eyes, slightly bloodshot, pupils pinpointed against the light, were even greener than usual.

Eli's expression of annoyance flickered briefly to surprise when he saw it was

Karl standing there. "What?" he asked tonelessly, without making way for Karl to enter.

Karl had never spoken to Father Eli, except once at dinner, when he'd sat at the same table and shyly asked him to pass the salt. He'd noticed Eli looking at him sometimes in chapel, but if Eli caught Karl noticing he'd look instantly away.

Karl blushed deeply and stammered as he spoke. "Sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt. Brother Bernard sent me over. Beauty threw a shoe."

He remembered the horseshoe in his hand and offered it to Eli as if it were physical evidence authenticating the necessity of his errand. Eli observed the object briefly without taking it. Karl dropped his hand, and the horseshoe swung there awkwardly, points down, like a magnet draining the last of its charge into the ground.

Eli pulled the plexiglas helmet from his head and scratched his sweat-drenched scalp with his free hand. A few strands had escaped from the ponytail, and threaded among the dull gold were hairs of burnished silver and copper, as if he were slowly absorbing the patina of the metals he worked with.

"Bring it inside," he said. 28

Karl followed him into the dimly lit building to a long low table littered with pipes and small piles of wire and bolts. As in a hardware store, there were shelves on one wall with cubbyholes full of small metal parts, screws and nails. Larger pieces of metal were heaped around the room's perimeter. At the far end, in a cleared space on the concrete floor, stood two towering forms, poles surrounded with rims that reminded Karl of illustrations in old catalogues of the hoop-skirts ladies once wore. The hoops grew smaller in circumference as they neared the ceiling, giving the forms the general shape and impression of enormous artificial Christmas trees. All that was missing were white plastic branches.

"So," said Eli, setting his helmet on the table and taking the horseshoe from Karl.

He held the battered metal up in one of his powerful hands and squinted at it. "What exactly does Father Barnyard -1 mean Bernard — want me to do?"

Karl answered quickly, "He said to tell you he wants to bring Beauty over for new shoes. This is one of the front ones, the one he lost."

"Yes, I realize it's the front one. I made it."

Eli set the shoe in a box on the table. "Tell him to bring the horse around tomorrow afternoon. I can't get to it until then." He sized up Karl. "While you're here, you might as well give me a hand getting some stuff in from the truck."

Karl hesitated. "Will it take long? Brother Bernard -"

"If Barney asks where you were, just tell him I can get to his job sooner this way."

The truck, a red International with a rounded hood, was parked around the side of the building. The vehicle sat high on oversized tires and shiny chrome spoilers ran along the sides, yet the interior appeared to be original. The brown leather bench seat 29 was rife with cracks and the brake was a hand-pull device sticking up from the ravaged wooden floor. The dented box was filled with scrap metal, pipes and engine parts from some sort of industrial machinery.

'Wow," said Karl, picking up an instrument with several dials and gauges. "This stuff is old."

"I got it all for free across the line, in Oroville. It was all just lying around out on the desert, I think there used to be some sort of factory there."

He plucked a piece of sagebrush from an irrigation hoop and started hauling things inside. Karl loaded up his arms with as much as he could carry and staggered after

Eli. After a few trips they had all of it brought in and began stacking the pieces.

Karl dusted off his hands and walked around the two towering sculptures. "What are these going to be? If you don't mind my asking," he quickly added.

"I don't like to discuss my art before it's finished," said Eli. "Usually."

He stood next to one of the pieces and stroked one of the center rings. His long square fingers were marked with blisters and burns, as if he'd been playing with fire.

"But since you ask - and please keep this to yourself," he said, pausing to stare at Karl a moment, as if to impress upon him the importance of this request, "I don't want anyone pilfering my ideas - these two pieces are going to be The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and The Tree of Life.'"

"That's brilliant," said Karl, shaking his head appreciatively and tearing his eyes away from the monk's to look at the object he was himself appreciately stroking. The metal hoop felt smooth and cool. "I never would have guessed."

"Yes. Well, I hope I can execute this idea in an original and meaningful manner.

Here," said the monk, warming to his topic, "I think I'm going to use these as leaves." 30

He picked up an oblong silver tag from a box on the table, and handed it to Karl.

Their fingers brushed and Karl felt a thrilling little shiver go up his spine. One of the ear tags used to mark cattle, a registration number was stamped into its thin tinny plate. In the box along with the silver tags were yellow and orange ones, some of them oval.

"My pieces are typically very static, structurally speaking, but with this I want to wire each leaf individually, so the sculpture conveys a sense of motion and life."

"Cool. This is a really cool idea."

"Here," said Eli, taking the tag back from Karl and pointing to the pole at the sculpture's interior. "I'll show you how the branches are going to work. Pass me one of those pipes would you? That one's fine, any of those will do,' he said, as Karl rummaged through the scrap they'd hauled in from outside.

As Karl lifted a thick pipe several feet in length from the pile, a strange staccato buzzing noise came from inside it. Puzzled, he held it out in front of him. The buzz sounded again, like the rattle of morocco, vibrating loudly against the metal in the cylinder's middle. Suddenly a long shape shot out from the end nearest his body, and

Karl was struck with a bolt of blinding pain in the flesh covering his ribs. The pipe clattered on the floor as he watched a thick grey snake, banded with charcoal stripes, slither in quick ropy coils out of sight among the junk.

"Shit!" said Eli. "That's a rattler! Did he get you?"

"I think so." The back of Karl's mouth tasted oddly rubbery.

"Let me see," said Eli.

Karl started to say no but his tongue felt strange, like a piece of dead leather. He tried feebly to push Eli away but already he felt faint and nauseous. Limp and sweating, he heard metal clattering as Eli cleared a space, and helplessly he allowed the monk to 31 lift him up onto the workbench. A sharp object, a bolt or screw, dug into his back. He felt Eli untuck his shirt from his jeans and push the cloth up out of the way, revealing

Karl's chest. Then a painful sucking sensation over his ribcage, the spot of burning skin.

Before Karl passed out, he raised his head and saw Eli turn his head away to spit out the venom. About to put his mouth back to the wound, the monk glanced up along

Karl's torso and paused. He had seen the scars. Eli looked up and saw Karl watching him, and this time he didn't look away.

Fronds of green lily pads, raindrops sweetened with the liquor of plant sap, the scent of spring grass shoots. Karl, falling into Eli's transparent green gaze, felt the verdant sun-warmed waters close gently over his head and sank, swooning, into bottomless peridot depths. 32

CHAPTER 2

A red permit bearing a large letter L slid crookedly from its spot in the dusty rear window of the Acadian as the car rattled wildly around another steep switchback. The woman in the passenger seat stamped her foot on an imaginary brake pedal and braced her hand against the dashboard, as if trying to control the vehicle by sheer willpower.

"For the love of God, Aura, slow down on these curves!"

The driver, a teenage girl, herself looked mildly frightened as she steered the car hard into a hairpin bend, too busy white-knuckling the wheel to answer back. She slowed, braking heavily when they rounded the lookout point on Anarchist Mountain.

The precipice dropped away to reveal bright blue water far below.

"Shift into second," advised the woman, her eyes glued to the road as they headed down the long steep grade sliced into the rock. "It'll save the brakes." She wrinkled up her nose. "I think I smell rubber."

"Whatever," said the girl, making an exasperated face. She popped the automatic transmission into low gear with the air of humouring an incompetent, and was instantly distracted by a couple of brief honks from behind. An antique red truck with a rounded snout hovered on her tail, impatient to pass.

The woman turned in her seat and gave the driver the finger. "That's an accident waiting to happen," she said. "Just ignore him."

"It's not his fault I'm going this slow," said Aura. When a gap opened up in the oncoming traffic, the truck pulled ahead, and Aura caught the flash of a toothy white smile directed at her. A thin stream of blue smoke poured from chromed pipes as the vehicle roared ahead. 33

"Jesus, boys used to tool around in those hotrods when /was a girl. Talk about a case of arrested development. That heap must be held together by baling twine."

"It's called vintage? Like, the guy probably restored that truck? He didn't look that old to me, " she added. The way the driver had grinned at her had given her an involuntary little blush of pleasure and caused her to sit up straighter.

The cement shimmied in the heat as the space between them widened, a river of wavering black water. In the oblong rear window of the truck, the back of another head appeared beside the driver's as someone shorter sat up beside him. Aura's mouth dropped open.

The woman took her eyes off the road for a moment and looked at her. "Well, don't listen to me. In future I shall refer to such rust-buckets as a chick-magnets. A vintage term, " she added.

The girl said nothing in response, but slammed the gearshift back into drive and accelerated slightly around the final switchback at the bottom of the incline.

A sign over the highway leading into Osoyoos read Canada's Hot Spot. The town, set on a scorching plain nestled between sage-covered brown mountains, had grown up around the elongated lake that irrigated the surrounding orchards and vineyards. Once distinguished as being the only place in the nation capable of growing bananas, the success of the vineyards in recent years had shifted the town's promotional emphasis from fruit to boutique wineries and white sand beaches. Many of the original settlers, apple growers and pig farmers, had been Portuguese, and that history had somehow inspired the first chamber of commerce to promote the desert climate by adopting an ersatz Spanish theme. 34

A few decades later, time-share resort condos with Italianate balconies and names like Sole Vita and Casa del Otranto had sprung up in dense developments around the shoreline, and in local businesses the red-tiled roofs, faux-adobe facades and tendency toward fiesta-themed names remained, giving Main Street the air of a converted movie set.

Sweltering tourists were strolling the main drag of Osoyoos, shopping and perusing the menus posted outside the Mexican restaurants and steak parlours. Some stopped before the window display of the art gallery El Limitos, expensive hand-blown glassware and pastoral watercolours painted by local artists, to read the poster advertising an exclusive exhibition of new work by "the celebrated metal sculptor known only as Father Eli."

The gallery's proprietor, Marta Gudrunsdottir, a retired art critic from Toronto, had at last indulged an impulse to curate something visceral, something edgy, something real, and tonight she was hosting the opening for the enigmatic artist and monk, who was becoming something of a local hero. The curiosity factor alone would bring in a clientele who didn't normally frequent art shows. Balancing a tray of wine-filled plastic cups, Marta wheeled nervously about the room, hopeful that among the ranchers in town for Friday night and the young Quebecois fruit-pickers and the Hawaiian-shirted

Albertan tourists she might see someone she recognized from Vancouver's art scene.

A man whose weathered face was demarcated by a hat-induced tan-line, the upper half of his forehead pallid as marble, sidled up on legs that protruded like unearthed white tusks from his cut-off jeans.

"I got a heap of scrap I could weld together and sell you," he smirked, setting an empty cup on her tray. He helped himself to another drink and gestured toward the 35 nearest installation with a hand gnarly and brown as a root. "I'm pretty good at balloon animals. Should be able to whip up something along these lines."

"Thanks. I'll keep that in mind," Marta replied icily. The air conditioner had reduced the temperature inside the art gallery to that of a walk-in meat locker, and she wasn't convinced that some of these yokels weren't in here just to cool off and guzzle free wine. She excused herself and bustled over to greet two women coming in from the street.

A mother and daughter, apparently, from their similar refined good looks. The older woman's long dark hair was shot through with sophisticated streaks of grey, and she wore a hand-dyed silk shawl over her black cotton shift. Marta was particularly taken by the girl. She had sleek blue-tinted black hair and stainless-steel piercings in her eyebrow and lower lip, and wore dramatic pale makeup of the urban Goth-style seldom seen in a place where people came to baste themselves like rotisserie chickens on the beach. It was almost possible not to envy the girl her slumped, timorous beauty, knowing how it would abandon her before she fully understood what she possessed.

"I'm so embarrassed," she was saying to the woman. "I can't believe you brought R2-freaking-D2 with you."

"What? I suppose you'd be happier if I keeled over dead?" said the older woman, lifting the heavy hair away from her neck and fanning herself with her scarf. A thin plastic tube ran from her nose to a small oxygen tank, which she wheeled along behind her like a small robotic pet. It was decorated in black marker with cat-like whiskers and soulful cartoon eyes.

"Don't guilt me out," said the girl in a petulant voice. "You could've left it in the car." 36

The woman looked suddenly very weary. " I'm sorry, Aura. I'd like to be free of this, believe me."

Marta cleared her throat as she approached with her tray. "Good evening, ladies.

May I offer you a glass of wine? Supplied by one of our premier vintners, Mirage

Wineries" she said, as they each accepted a drink. She noticed how the girl hesitated, looking at the woman first.

" Makes your worries disappear," Marta added with a wink. "Mirage should have me writing their promo material."

"Why, thank you," said the woman, half-draining her cup in one swig. "It's hotter than Hades out there."

"Indeed, indeed. Enjoy the air-conditioning while you take in Father Eli's magnificent show. I'm Marta Gudrunsdottir, by the way," said Marta, waiting expectantly before adding, "I used to write the art reviews for The Orb."

"Very nice to meet you," said the woman, extending a poised hand. It was impossible to tell whether she recognized the name or not. "I'm Elva and this is Aura.

She wants to be an artist, too. She thinks."

Aura clenched her mouth and stared at the floor.

"Are you at the university in Kelowna, dear?" Marta asked hopefully.

"Nope," said the girl.

"We just moved back to Bridesville," explained Elva. "Aura will be going to high-school in Midway come this fall."

Marta's eyes widened. "Bridesville," she said brightly, stretching out the first syllable. "My. Goodness. How interesting. That's a rather.. .unique.. .place to relocate.

At least you'll have St. X nearby," she added, encouragingly. 37

"Yes," said Elva, and, "May I," finishing her drink and taking another. "I grew up in the Boundary area, so it made sense to come home. We needed to get out of

Vancouver --."

"Can we look at the sculptures now," Aura interrupted.

"Of course, dear," said Marta, "And are you familiar with Father Eli's work?"

"I saw this article in Border Crossings one time."

"Wonderful, dear, that's wonderful!" Marta exclaimed, while glancing toward the door. A thin man in a rumpled shirt with sweat stains under the arms who had recently arrived was wandering around uncertainly, clutching a notebook and wiping his brow with a handkerchief. "Now, ladies, if you'll excuse me, I see Len Goldman of the

Oroville Weekly is here. Enjoy the exhibit. And don't forget we have items from our regular collection available for purchase!" Marta gestured expansively toward the room before whirling off to replenish her platter of wine and greet the press.

A variety of sculptures made of reclaimed and salvaged objects were positioned around the main space of the small gallery, starkly executed interpretations of vegetation and creatures native to the region. A deer, its blue muzzle a gun barrel and alert ears triggers, stood poised on rifle-stock legs. Rattlesnakes constructed of gear chains sat in corners and sills, some in slithering positions, some coiled to strike. A large raptor with wings layered from serrated saw blades swung from the ceiling in an attitude of flight.

While Elva sat in an alcove drinking her wine, Aura wandered among the sparse, oddly mixed crowd, avoiding the only people close to her own age, a group of dread- locked and deeply tanned fruit-pickers who spoke to each other in a Quebecois French she didn't understand. One of the boys, dark-eyed with white teeth and filthy sandaled feet, smiled widely at her and she turned away quickly, pretending not to see. 38

Blushing, she bent to examine a mole with a bolt-nipple nose and claws fashioned from forked garden trowels. Maybe making such things was something she could do. In Grade 8 metal shop at Van Tech, she'd made a candelabrum out of shelf- brackets, which Elva left behind when they moved. There was plenty of metal lying around in the midden down the bank behind their trailer. All she needed was the right tools, and to learn how to weld everything together so it looked real, alive rather than soldered and lumpy at the seams. Caressing the little creature's ingeniously rendered joints, Aura stood amid this artificial wilderness of polished irons and transformed steels and felt a strange alchemical stirring within.

Earlier that day, Elva had sent her over to the junkman's next door to find a decent frying pan. After rooting unsuccessfully among the overflowing boxes of cast-off utensils and heaps of car parts that bled from his front yard into the street, upon returning home she saw two little girls who'd set up a card table at the side of the road and were selling lemonade. She dug in her bathrobe pocket for change, wondering what type of traffic they were expecting in this ghost town.

"It's nearly lunchtime," the older of the two, a square-faced girl with wiry auburn braids, said with gleeful disapproval. "You're still in your pyjamas!"

The smaller one, with dull sickly eyes and thin wisps of hair ratted in knots at her nape, sucked her dirty thumb and stared at Aura's pierced lip as she drank their sugary lemonade.

"Want a pickle?" the other one asked, offering her a blue plastic bowl of warty gherkins. "It's free if you get a fortune."

"A fortune. How much?"

The girl assessed her hopefully. "A dollar?" 39

"I have seventy-five cents."

The girl placed Aura's quarters in the Pear's Soap tin that served as a cash box, then took Aura's left hand and gently bent back the fingers to expose the palm. She traced the intersecting pink lines with her index finger, then squeezed her eyes shut in concentration. "You won't get married. You won't have any kids."

Aura shivered as the girl, thinking hard, lightly stroked her palm.

"You'll live here for good... I mean, up there, " without opening her eyes the girl pointed behind her, "on Rock Mountain." Frowning, she screwed her eyes tighter. "You will get famous." "That's all. No. Wait."

She opened her eyes and let go of Aura's hand. "Watch out for phonies."

The small girl, still staring, giggled wildly. "Big fat phonies!" she screeched, laughing at Aura while she hopped around clutching herself as if she might wet her corduroy britches.

Aura, both charmed and disturbed, went back to the trailer munching a withered pickle. Now, she wondered. Was this what the girl's prediction had meant? That part about becoming famous. A famous artist, like Father Eli. Someone with the power to salvage the obsolete, the discarded, the broken, and forge a transfigured world. To take garbage and turn it into something worthwhile.

Something holy. She gravitated toward the towering metal figure that dominated the exhibit at the center of gallery. A brief essay posted on a pillar was titled The

Temptation of Benedict II: Song of Longing. Monstrous and pitiable, the sculpture depicted the saint at the apogee of his temptation, his flayed anatomy roped together by exposed copper tendons. Pitchfork ribs, a tractor-saddle pelvis. Several strands offence wire were suspended in front of the thing, and an aluminium hand clutching a knob- 40 ended gearshift hovered threateningly above them. The cheekbones were fashioned from scythe blades, and the open mouth, a small leg-hold trap, emitted a soundless howl.

Off to the side, as if watching the Saint in his struggle, lay another, cruder figure, constructed of rough fence boards zigzagged into a reclining pose. Between the rails representing legs nestled another saw-toothed trap, and upon the torso rested two coiled chains, rattlers ready to strike. There was no head. The crude assemblage conveyed merely the idea of a woman, yet gave the impression that the head had been torn off or rolled away.

"That's a funny place to put her mouth," said the white-legged man as he wandered up with his companion, a weather-beaten woman in a floral smock. "Maybe you should try it, might shut you up."

The woman elbowed him in the ribs. "Beats talking out of my ass."

Aura pointedly ignored them and finished reading the exhibit card:

".. .the baton poised to fall upon the pelvic drum or the xylophone of the ribs and strike the tortured song of the Saint's desire. Mediating between this fraught object and the body is a barbed-wire fence strung like a five-lined musical stave; against this field each viewer's angle of perception situates the stick's single note in a unique, ever- shifting composition."

Aura, staring at the inanimate being bolted and wired together from scrap, felt as if she had at last stumbled upon a kindred soul. Her heart, creaking, a mechanical bird, spread its rusty wings and sang to life.

Despite the trim beard and Benedictine cassock, Elva recognized him the instant he walked in. His tawny blonde hair was longer now, tied in a short ponytail on the 41 nape of his neck. From her alcove Elva watched the way he worked the room. Hands clasped behind his back, he struck an unassuming pose beside a fawning Marta

Gudrunsdottir, who'd steered him over to have his photo taken by the newspaper reporter.

"Look," pointed a woman to her friends, several women in their early thirties sporting elaborate make-up and painted-on tans, "it's Father-What-a-Waste."

"Oh my god. He's gorgeous. Have him bathed and sent to my room."

After giggling through a few lewd fantasies the women flocked around him, seeking Father Eli's autograph. One of them hung back, waiting, until her friends drifted off, and then wordlessly handed him something. Eli gave only the faintest smirk of acknowledgement as he discretely palmed the object. In a lull after he'd finished chatting with an elderly gentleman in golf attire (who'd expressed an interest in commissioning a sculpture for his private putting green in Calgary), the monk, starting slightly, noticed Elva observing him as he read the woman's business card.

"Hello Ralph," Elva said, knocking back the dregs of her wine. She set the plastic wineglass beside a growing collection of empty cups. Her cheeks were mottled with thin purple capillaries. "I thought they kept your kind locked up."

The monk quickly recovered his composure. He slid his hand into the pocket of his habit and nodded coolly.

"Elva," he said. "I heard you were back." He took in the oxygen tank. "You look different."

"I'll take that as a compliment. Looks like you haven't changed a bit, Ralph."

"It's Eli. Father Eli." He cleared his throat. "How's Wendy?"

"Dead, thank you." She smiled brightly at him. "Nice of you to ask." 42

He was about to turn away when Marta, beaming proudly, appeared with her tray of diminishing wines, towing Aura by the hand. " Here he is! Our genius, Father Eli! Eli, darling, this young lady is a big fan."

Aura, blushing, said quietly, "I love your work. It's really cool."

The monk smiled modestly. "Thank you. It's God's work really, my role is to simply to empty myself and allow His glory to give meaning to what I do."

"How very humble of you," muttered Elva, helping herself to another drink. "I think you have to have a lot of this 'Mirage' stuff to make it work," she said to Marta while looking Eli up and down. "Certain ... things... haven't disappeared yet."

Aura glared at her and Marta fixed upon her a sour, mortified smile. Father Eli, appearing not to have heard, was staring at Aura.

"Do I know you?"

"I don't think so. I just moved to Bridesville."

He smiled. "Well, you must come up to the monastery and see my workshop."

Elva, snorted loudly. "That's original," she spluttered, and started choking on her wine.

Marta, looking thoroughly appalled, gingerly passed her a serviette. Father

Eli, ignoring Elva, asked Aura, "Will I be seeing you at Mass this Sunday?"

Sufficiently recovered from her coughing fit, Elva answered for her. "No thanks, we're trying to quit."

"Shut up!" Aura hissed between clenched teeth.

The monk's chiselled cheekbones burned hotly as he registered that Elva and the girl were here together. He glared at Elva, his eyes becoming a vivid glassy green.

Beneath the pale skin of his temple throbbed a vein thick as an earthworm. 43

"Dear," said Marta to Aura, glancing at Father Eli with dismay as she set down her tray and took Elva's arm, "I think it's time we got her home."

As the car engine churned on the ascent toward Anarchist's summit, the lights of

Osoyoos — neon hotel signs, streetlights, the campfires that dotted the beaches and outlined the long spit that practically clove the lake in two — twinkled and glimmered on the water. In twilight, set against the harsh outlines on the mountains surrounding it, the town was a brittle, ridiculous vision.

Aura watched its false sparkle disappear in the rear view mirror, replaced by blackness as they rounded the summit. Maybe none of it happened, she thought, maybe there was no town and no gallery, no Marta, no monk. Maybe she had imagined the whole mortifying episode. The sculptures, though, the gleaming metal forms with their forked claws and glittering ball-bearing eyes, in order for those to exist, the rest of it would have to be real. Aura swallowed hard, ears popping with altitude pressure as the car climbed higher into the hills. The breeze filling the car turned chilly, and she cranked the car window closed.

Elva shifted stiffly as she woke, rubbing her neck. "Where's the water bottle?"

"Don't know. Maybe you should drink some more wine."

Neither spoke for several miles. As they rounded one of the last steep curves, the headlights slid over a roadside shrine, revealing briefly a white cross hung upon the metal guard-rail; beneath the cross people had placed jars of flowers, now wilted, a forlorn teddy bear. When they reached the plateau, a huge semi-truck appeared from behind and bore down on Aura's rear bumper. The driver leaned heavily on the horn as 44 the truck blew past her on a double line, the boxy car rattling and swaying in the semi's wake.

"Jesus," said Elva, "Pull over next time. Those bastards won't stop for anything."

"I so cannot wait until I get my real licence." Aura spoke to the steering wheel.

"Don't think I enjoy being dragged along on your outings. It's not exactly fun being the ball and chain."

"You seemed to be having a pretty okay time. All the free booze you could suck back --"

Elva slapped Aura across the side of her face. "Don't talk to me like that. I'm not

some slab of shit sitting on the sidewalk."

Aura, cheek stinging, blinked back tears. After several more miles of strained silence, the center line slipping beneath past the headlights like a thread leading through the dark hills, she quietly asked, "Why did you have to be such a cow to Father Eli? The only non-freak I meet in this godforsaken outback. What did he ever do to you?"

"Plenty. Believe me. You don't want to know." Elva sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose, as if she had a headache coming on. "Listen. I didn't mean to.... I'm sorry."

Aura acknowledged the apology with more silence. After a moment, trying to sound uninterested, she asked, "What do you mean? About Father Eli?"

"I'm not going to spell it out for you. Just stay away from him. He's bad news."

"But. He's a monk," Aura, said, incredulous.

"Right," said Elva. "I forgot. Monks aren't men. They neuter them as they come through the monastery door." 45

Aura pressed her lips together. The high-beams illuminated the quills of a dead porcupine on the roadside. Silvery little finishing nails. The car headed down the long incline towards the dimly lit houses of Bridesville, caught on some unseen fisherman's hook, the white line endlessly reeling them in. 46

CHAPTER 3

Gerlinde Klumpe pried another nail out of a punk two-by-four and tossed it into the ice-cream bucket on the cement floor. The growing heap of bent and misshapen nails reminded Gerlinde of the worms she gathered for those times her father had pulled her out of school early and taken her fishing at the Kettle River trestle. Playing hook-ie, he called it, which was about as witty as Norman Klumpe tended to get, and each time

Gerlinde would laugh, the two of them united in this small rebellion.

Not much laughing these days, she thought, placing another board across the sawhorses. Things had changed between them since the mill closed. Since Gerlinde, growing up, had become closed to her father somehow. She didn't intend to be that way.

Things just changed.

Gerlinde eased out the long nails, rocking the claw of the crowbar and making grooved indentations in the soft pine. How did they get Christ down off the eross without mangling his hands? Maybe it didn't matter since he was already dead. The battered head of the last nail in the board broke off and she hammered the bent length flat into the grain of the wood, then set the tools aside and wiped her hands on her pants.

It must be getting near lunchtime. She was hungry and needed to pee again, and the bells signalling the monks to mid-day prayers would soon begin.

As she was struggling to open the shed's sliding metal door, bending to push the panel along on the rusted roller track, a pair of sandaled feet beneath a softly swaying black hem stepped into sight.

"I wondered what all the grunting was about," Father Eli said, before giving the door a good shove with his square calloused hands. 47

He stepped through, blocking the flood of sunlight as he slid the door closed behind him. Gerlinde edged backward into the shadowed coolness, wondering how long

Father Eli had been watching, and why he wasn't at prayers with his brethren.

He eyed the pile of salvaged boards and nudged the nail bucket with his toe, as if testing its weight.

"Been working hard?" he asked.

Did he expect her to say no? She nodded her head. "Yeah. Some of those boards were really tough. I got nearly all of them mostly all done," she added quickly, as he reached for one of the boards in the small pile that had been left unfinished. "I was hoping it would be okay if I left a little early today. My dad wants me to help with the irrigation pipes," she said, pulling a piece of pink paper from her pocket and unfolding it.

Father Eli casually dropped the end of the board he was holding. It bounced against the cement. "You haven't quite finished your task here. I believe you are on the schedule until four?"

Gerlinde held the rumpled paper toward him, her hand slightly shaking. "Yes, I know. That's what I wanted to ask you about. I'm supposed to finish my hours this weekend. My hearing is on Monday."

"And?" Father Eli said, folding his arms and tilting his head expectantly.

"And I was hoping you would sign me off now, so I could go home and help Dad.

He'll be really mad if I don't."

Eli shook his head, reorganizing his facial muscles beneath the tanned skin as he adopted a pained expression. "Gerlinde, you disappoint me. You know I can't credit you for hours you haven't worked. You still owe more than a full day." 48

He looked her over, his eyes lingering on her breasts. She crossed her arms over her chest, trying to make the movement natural.

"You are old enough now to take some responsibility for your actions. That's why you are here, after all."

"I know Father, and I'm really, really sorry for asking you. I totally intend to come and work a full day tomorrow. " Her voice trailed off. Those intense, long-lashed green eyes, his generic movie star good looks, made her nervous, even though she felt a dislike she couldn't quite identify.

"Tomorrow is Sunday. I'm sorry, but you should know I can't sanction you working here on the Sabbath."

"I'll make up the time next week then. Please, Father Eli. They'll send me to the detention center if I don't finish my hours. It would kill my dad. Please? I'll never ask you for anything again."

The noonday bells began their insistent pealing, reverberating through the corrugated metal roof. The monk waited until the tolling ceased before answering. "You realize you are asking me to falsify court documents for unearned community service," he said, with actorly incredulity.

"I won't tell anyone. I'll make up the hours, I promise. Please, Father, just this one time. "

Father Eli stepped forward and gripped her shoulders. There was something sweetish, like fermenting silage, on his breath, but it didn't smell good. He rubbed the ends of her tangled red curls between his fingers. Sweat made the Lily of the Valley cologne rise off her neck in nauseous waves. 49

"And if I were to do this favour for you, what would you be willing to do for me,

Gerlinde?" he asked, sniffing the tips of her hair after tickling it like a brush against her skin.

She backed up into a sawhorse and briefly lost her balance. The monk grabbed her arm as if to steady her, and quickly pulled her against his body. He slid his free hand down her back, and with the other caught her wrist in a vice- like grip and pressed her hand into the small space between them, his fingers scaly and rough. As he wriggled up against her, she could feel through his robe his erection prodding her palm.

"What will you do for me?" he breathed softly into her ear.

Gerlinde struggled free from his grip and abruptly pushed him away. "Get off me!" she blurted.

Eli backed away, flushing deeply. "I wasn't on you," he said. His voice was tight with fury. "I was helping you up." He walked toward the door.

Gerlinde saw the piece of paper on the floor and grabbed it.

"Wait! Please Father Eli, I'm... I'm sorry. I just need you to sign my forms. I can't get sent up to Juvie, I just can't!"

Weak light fell in a dusty swirl around the tall black-robed figure blocking the exit. Without turning back to look at her, he quietly said, with an air of officious formality, "You are not welcome back here. I will regretfully inform your social worker that you were unwilling to complete your assignment."

Gerlinde felt the scalding tears rolling up. "Please, Father Eli!"

She started weeping and hated herself for it. The harsh sound echoed off the walls. 50

Eli paused at the threshold. "Pull yourself together before you leave. I don't want to see you on monastery grounds again." The door groaned along the rusty track.

Gerlinde snapped, mid-sob. "Then fuck you! Fuck you, you horny fucking hypocrite! As if you never did anything wrong in your life! You're way worse of a

sinner than me, Father Eli."

She spat out his name with scorn and pointed straight at him, arm steady as a rifle, aiming her hatred. "Let God turn a deaf ear on you one day and see how it feels, you pious sin-licking phoney! I hope maggots eat your useless withered balls, you heartless sack of unconsecrated shit!!"

Suddenly wracked with sobs, she fell on her knees and pounded the hard floor, the crumpled pink paper in her fist.

The solemn, reverent voices of the brethren of St. X, chanting the midday hymns, poured in through the open door with a tide of light. Gerlinde raised her head and wiped her flushed face with a trembling hand. Peering back through the gloom was the monk's shocked, staring face. She saw for a split-second its dead white bones, the skull's scaffolding beneath that absurdly handsome mask of skin.

Then the door slammed home with a crash, amputating the cantor's hope-filled solo and the last small wedge of light as he shut her in.

Gerlinde pushed her bike off the dirt road and hid it among some Saskatoon bushes as well as she could, then climbed carefully through the barb-wire fence. The moonlight was almost bright enough to see by. She had brought a flashlight for navigating the trail once she reached the woods. She zigzagged up the hillside, through clumps of yarrow and thistle growing sparsely among the dry, yellow stubs of the 51 overgrazed grasslands, breathing heavily by the time she reached the cairn of field-rock at the top of the ridge.

Here, she could see across to the tips of the mountains that ranged to the west, beyond Osoyoos and along the Similkameen Valley. Silhouetted against the dregs of the setting sun, the Cathedrals were black and flat as paper cut-outs. Despite the moon's brightness the stars were vivid, a brilliant scattering making sense of the sky's immense blackness. The Milky Way arched above the earth like a white band of quartz imbedded in darker rock.

A lucky rock, her father had once told her when she brought him such a stone from the garden, slightly dirty in her small hand and still bearing the sun's heat. Bury it and make a wish, he'd said, that's what you do with those.

She probably had wished for something stupid, a Barbie doll or a pony. If she could go back now and find that rock she'd dig it up and wish for something worthwhile, plain luck for starters. A satellite orbited overhead, destroying the illusion of the sky's unconquered purity. Even in the midst of such beauty, it was impossible to shake the sick feeling that filled her chest.

As she turned, a cricket leapt up and bounced off her leg, causing her to gasp and clap her hand to her chest. Gerlinde paused and gathered a deep breath before continuing her trek. In the southeast corner of the monastery lands the Big Tree near the border stood out clearly, a beacon and a landmark. Leif said it was safe to meet there, but she wasn't entirely convinced. Since the fires of the previous summer, there had been strange animals in the region, straggling herds of elk trailed by cougar. When her father had gone to Bridesville the other day Mrs. Blaine told him that a bear in cub had been sighted on Pendergrast's bottom land, feeding on late berries. 52

Gerlinde forced herself to trudge steadily on, looking behind her nervously as her footsteps crackled and swished in the dry grass. The still air held pockets of warmth, the heat released by the earth eddying as she passed. At the edge of the field the hulked shapes of resting cattle lay, chewing the day's grasses. The green ferment of their breath wafted upward in faint waves. Gerlinde turned the flashlight on, and shone it before her, avoiding the cow-pats splattered on the ground. The eyes of the resting animals glowed bluely in the beam of light. An old bull with a grubby white face watched her benignly, the brand on his flabby haunch barely visible as the Abbot's circledX. Gerlinde veered cautiously around the creature's bulk and followed a deer trail into the trees. The land sloped upward more steeply here and it became harder to pick out the top of the Big

Tree, surrounded as it was by jack pines and copses of tall, spindly aspen. Gerlinde startled as an owl hooted softly from a nearby branch. Beneath the trees her flashlight caught the gleam in an animal's eyes as it bolted, rustling, into the underbrush.

The hairs rose up on her arms. She took tight, shallow breaths through her nose, as if leaving the air undisturbed by sound would render her invisible, and safe. The path tapered out as the brush opened up ahead into a small meadow, and the Big Tree appeared again, bathed in eerie silver light.

Leif was leaning against the enormous trunk, smoking.

Gerlinde sucked in a deep draught of air, and waved away the joint he held out.

"I'm freaked out enough already," she said in a strained whisper. "Could you possibly have picked a scarier place to meet in the middle of the night?"

"Sorry." Leif s voice came out cramped, small wisps of smoke escaping. He exhaled slowly before speaking normally. "I thought you wanted to be sure we didn't get 53

caught." He stooped forward to kiss her, the lingering smell of marijuana sweetening his

shaggy blonde hair.

"I have to pee," said Gerlinde.

She squatted behind a gooseberry bush and wiped herself on a mullein leaf. She

pulled the zipper of her pants as far up as it would go and pulled the oversized t-shirt out

over the waistband. As her clothes had started getting too tight, she'd been improvising

her wardrobe, going in for the same baggy style worn by Leif and the other local boys.

Like his twin Buddy, Leif wore the habitual toque and plaid shirt over rumpled pants,

but unlike his brother Leif managed to make the same articles of apparel look cool, not

like some rudimentary protection from the elements scavenged from the laundry hamper.

Gerlinde and Leif climbed down the small bluff at the base of the tree to a heap

of tumbled rocks below, and sat side by side on a boulder. From this vantage point, the

abbey buildings and grounds were visible at the other side of a large sloping hayfield.

The compound was dark save for the parking lot lights and a room in the wing of the

main building that housed the ground floor refectory. Just behind where they sat, set

into the bluff beneath the tree, was the opening of an abandoned mineshaft, barred with a

metal grid. The monks had blocked the entrance several years earlier, after a calf fell

down the shaft and snapped a foreleg. At the base of the boulder were the scorched

remains of a camp-fire, and the ground was littered with shards of a broken beer bottle.

Local teenagers came here to party, getting stoned and telling ghost stories, until

one of the monks, usually Brother Jerome, or The Mole, as Leif called him, saw the

lights and chased them off the property. Gerlinde had been to one of those parties at the

beginning of the summer, with Leif and Bud and a few other kids, including a slutty girl named Nola Timmins (who had an annoyingly obvious crush on Leif), and a standoffish 54 girl from Vancouver who'd sat hunched on a rock looking very uncomfortable and out of place. That was the night Kenny Dumont told the legend of the miner's ghost.

According to Kenny, this miner, Morrison, a recluse considered an eccentric failure by the people in Bridesville and Rock Creek, had managed to blast a tunnel all the way through to the American side of the mountain.

"He was hauling out sacks of gold across the line and stowing it in a bank down in Molson, so he didn't have to pay taxes or something," Kenny said. "No one'd seen him for a long time, so old man Seimens — Mr. Seimen's grandpa — came up to check if he needed supplies or whatnot. He called out and looked around but there was only some splashes of blood and a bit of guts on the ground. That's how they found the tunnel went across the line. The killer must've drug away the body but the intestines had fell out and were spooled out along the cave. They followed the string of Morrison's innards until they saw daylight."

Besides Leif, who asked where the missing gold ended up, no one questioned the veracity of the story. Buddy, rolling another joint, had enthusiastically proposed coming back the next day with the requisite tools to explore any untapped veins. Nola screamed and claimed to hear moaning inside the mineshaft as an excuse to cling coweringly to

Leif s arm. Gerlinde, who'd been drinking an equally proportioned mix of cola and rum, had staggered off and vomited behind a boulder.

She and Leif had also come up here in late winter, with a sleeping bag, when the ground was still hard and cold.

"This is all I brought with me." She indicated the shoulder bag slung over her knee. "I didn't want Dad to notice any of my stuff was gone. Where's the car?"

Leif pointed southeast. "O'Hara's." 55

"I think we should go straight through to Alberta. My cousin told me you can get a job at McDonald's there making twice the minimum wage here." She looked at Leif, who had crossed one foot over his knee and was pulling burrs from his sock. "We can find Jason Knight in Edmonton, he'll let us crash at his place until we get set up."

He stared down at the monastery. "There's a bit of a situation."

"Yeah, there's a bit of a situation. I'm going to fucking jail tomorrow if you don't get my ass out of here. Is that the situation you're talking about?" Gerlinde's temper rose quickly. Her dad said it was the redhead in her.

"Hey, hey! Chill, Gerl." Leif held up his hands placatingly. "It's taken care of, there's just been a bit of a delay. I have to do a run for the boss, he wants me to go to across the line tomorrow." He said this last with an air of importance. "Don't worry, though. I got you a job with him, too." When Gerlinde gasped, he added, "Just temporary, until I get back next weekend and we can leave together."

"So, what? What am I doing? Dancing at his strip bar?"

Leif snorted and patted her stomach. "You're getting a bit fat for that, babe.

Although I must say your tits are getting bigger." He put his arm around her waist and groped her, trying to chuckle her into a receptive humour.

"Fuck you." Gerlinde pushed his hand away. She felt herself blushing in the darkness. What a stupid thing to say. No one would hire her as a stripper. Leif had told her once, without meaning to be cruel, that she looked like Alfred E. Neuman, the freckled gap-toothed guy on the cover of Mad Magazine. It was true.

"What low-life job have you got me?" she asked, quietly. 56

Leif grew serious again. "It's decent coin, Gerlinde. Cleaning a crop. He wants it ready fast, and I told him you were a hard worker and could be counted on to keep your mouth shut. You can hide out there until I get back."

"Great. That's great, Leif. I get to hide out in some gangster's grow-op doing the dirty work. What if it gets busted?"

"Don't be silly. You worry too much. He's been running this operation for years.

Besides, you're underage, they can't make you do real time."

Gerlinde shook her head in disgust and said nothing. A cricket broke the silence with its rasping little song, and in the distance a coyote yipped mournfully. Below, a light came on in the original old farmhouse, illuminating one of the pointed yellow windows. Before the Benedictines had purchased the property in the seventies to build the monastery, a penniless sect of Hare Krishnas from New York had briefly owned the ranch. With their saffron ensembles, shaved heads and shoulder bags, and aversion to eating beef, they hadn't lasted long in the neighbourhood, but they'd left their mark by converting the farmhouse into a dormitory and adding the lanceolated plexiglass panes.

The locals amusedly referred to this folly as The Golden Arches.

"Look," said Leif, pointing to the light. "God's having a Big Mac attack."

Gerlinde ignored him. He made another attempt to break the strained quietude. "Don't be mad, Gerl. What else could I do? I can't say no to this job, you know that."

"All the more reason for us to get out of here."

"We could stay, you know. We could tell Norm.. .and .. .get married or something." His voice trailed off uncertainly. 57

"My dad would have your balls. He thinks I'm still a virgin. We can come back after. He can't do anything then." She turned to him, imploring, "Let's just go tonight, together, please? Please, Leif?"

Leif wrapped her in his long, thin arms. "Don't worry, Gerl. It'll all work out.

You just have to be patient." He slid off the rock and put his hands on her knees. "This way we can make some cash to set us up. Just don't say anything to my brother about us leaving next week."

"Bud?"

"Yeah. He's taking you to the place tonight. He's in charge of this gig."

"Buddy is. In charge."

"Yes, Buddy." Leif was sounding annoyed.

Gerlinde pictured herself just walking away from Leif right then. Just walking away and riding her bike in the dark down Rock Mountain's gravel road to the highway.

She pictured herself standing on the shoulder with her thumb out, waiting for a ride until sun-rise as she hitched toward Midway. She pictured the truck-stops, and the cramped sleeping bunks in semis rank with the sweat of unhappy, hard-drinking men cranked up on drugs to get through the endless miles, her own underwear sticky and smelly with their bodily fluids and the rest of her clothes stiff with dirt after a week, her hair growing rancid with grease. She pictured the grey fields of cement parking lots and the tangled power-lines at the intersections of every new city, each uglier and bigger and lonelier than the one before, and she pictured the last few coins in her filthy too-tight jeans pocket, and the pains in her belly from eating burgers and truck-stop coffee for breakfast every day. She pictured her belly.

"Alright," she said. 58

They scrambled across the hill to the car, the stars winking down through the trees. Gerlinde, shivering hard, stopped and pulled a flannel shirt, one of her dad's, out of her bag. 59

CHAPTER 4

Karl woke up to the sound of the noontime bells. Bright sunlight poured through the open curtains into his cell. His mouth was dry and swollen, as if he'd been on an all night drinking binge. He sat up weakly, his muscles shaky and aching, and swigged deeply from the glass of water someone had placed on the wall-mounted shelf beside his bed. He lifted his striped pyjama shirt to uncover the gauze taped to his side, and pressed tenderly. The wound beneath throbbed lightly, but the skin around the small bandage looked healthy.

He didn't remember how the bandage got there. Or how he came to be in bed, in his pyjamas. On his dresser, beside his hairbrush and the framed photo of the three little girls, was a plastic Madonna with a large multicoloured halo. This one looked like a cast member from a cartoon production of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. She hadn't been there before.

Someone knocked on the door. Karl coughed dryly as he bid the visitor to come in. Father Eli entered, dressed in monastic robes and carrying a small tray with orange juice and a plate with cheese and fruit. Tucked beneath his arm were some rolled-up magazines. He set the tray on the desk, and placed the magazines beside it.

"How do you feel?" he asked, as he pulled out the chair and turned it around to sit facing the bed.

"Okay. I think," Karl said hoarsely. "I'm not sure, I just woke up."

Eli leaned forward, his large hands clasped under his chin and his elbows on his knees. He gestured with his head toward Karl's torso. "What about the bite?"

"Don't know. It hurts a bit but I haven't looked at it. Someone put a bandage on it." Blushing, Karl forced his eyes away from Eli's intense green gaze. 60

"The doctor from Osoyoos did that."

"He did?" Karl involuntarily touched the place beneath his pyjamas and winced.

"I don't remember."

"She did. She said you were lucky. It could have been real ugly. Some people lose a lot of tissue if a bite isn't treated right away."

"I remember you .. .you sucking out the venom." Karl said. He blushed again and pulled his blankets higher. "Thank you. You saved my life."

"Not really." Eli leaned back and crossed his legs, tucking a strand of loose hair behind an ear. Beneath his black skirts the hem of his jeans was showing. "Brother

Bernard keeps a snakebite kit with his veterinary supplies. I never anticipated needing it up here. The rattler must have been sleeping in that load of junk I picked up in the desert."

"What about you?"

Eli looked at him quizzically. His forehead wrinkled into a pleasing pattern of clenched muscles beneath smooth skin.

"I mean. Did the poison affect you .. .or anything."

"My lips felt a bit numb. I think. Maybe it's all in my head. The doc fixed me up with a dose of antidote as well, just in case." Eli smiled and lightly traced the outline of his full mouth with his forefinger. "Attractive woman, that new doctor."

Karl said nothing. He picked up his glass and sipped it slowly. The sun coming through the window fell fully on his face, uncomfortably hot. After a few moments of silence Eli stood up and picked up the photo on the dresser.

"Cute kids. Who are they?"

"My sisters. And my cousin." 61

Eli studied the faces closely and looked at Karl before setting the frame back down. "The middle one looks like you."

Karl set his empty water glass on the shelf before answering "My younger sister.

We got that a lot when we were growing up. We are related after all." He sat up straighter, his back stiff against the antiseptic green wall. "I'd better try and get up."

"Of course," said Eli. He smiled, as if remembering a private joke. "I'd better get back to the studio." Before leaving, he turned and looked pointedly at Karl.

"Anything else you want to ask me?"

Karl appeared to consider the offer before shaking his head. Nearby, the bells rang loudly, signalling the end of noon prayer.

"Feel better soon." Eli was about to shut the door behind him when he stopped and added, as if it were an afterthought, "I brought you some magazines. You might want to take a look at those. Come see me when you're up and around." The statement was a command, rather than an invitation.

As Karl was getting dressed in his work clothes, the door knocked again.

Hurriedly, he pulled his t-shirt down as Brother Anthony entered. Anthony beamed broadly and bowed when he saw Karl was up.

"Mat - oops." He giggled through his hand, "Brother Karl, I meaning to say." He gestured to the Madonna on the dresser. "I bring you this special Virgin, she look after you, bring healing. Very special Virgin." He nodded his head expectantly at

Karl.

"Thank you very much, Brother Anthony. You are too kind." Karl slowly finished buttoning his shirt. "Did. Did you help me into bed, as well?" 62

Anthony shook his head vigorously and held up his hands in protestation. "Oh, no. Father Eli, he feeling so sorry about what happen, he put on your pyjamas himself."

"Oh."

"I not meaning I not want to put on your pyjamas," said Anthony hurriedly, with an expression of dismay. "I plenty experience, putting on other monk's pyjamas," he said, as he pointed toward the ceiling and rolled his eyes, "but Father Eli insisting to put them on himself."

As if summoned by Anthony's irreverent expression, a thump sounded on the ceiling above. Then the terrible frail bellowing began.

"Speaking of Devil," said Anthony. He sighed heavily and exited to do the unseen thumper's bidding. Karl wondered if Anthony thought of his work as an act of atonement, if the Brownie points one racked up with God were dependent on how distasteful or difficult the task might be.

He noticed the magazines Eli had left on the desk and rifled through them. An old National Geographic with a cover photo of camels on top of the stack. A News of the World tabloid featuring the story of a space alien interbreeding with the Mexican

President's pet Chihuahua. Underneath were a couple of outdated MacLean 's newsweeklies, the first thicker than usual with the annual university rankings, grinning international students cradling textbooks in front of austere stone buildings. Karl slid this aside to reveal the issue beneath it. He gasped and sat down heavily on the bed, the thin collection of pages trembling in his hands.

The reproduction of the cover photo, a long-lens shot blown up to a close-up, its pixilated colours blurring, achieved the effect of an antique portrait in oils, one in which the subject, a young woman of privileged standing with the requisite golden tresses and 63 porcelain skin, looked sullen and bored and utterly disaffected. The accompanying

headline, in bold yellow type, read Matilda Dyck, Girl Next Door.

Inside was the whole story: the woman's involvement with her husband in a

series of sex-slayings of virginal girls, the public's outrage at her plea-bargain - the

infamous "deal with the Devil" - and her impending release from what the reporter

called a "cushy incarceration at Club Fed." All the gory details of the murders, in a neatly condensed chronology, leading to speculation about where she might go and what

she might do now that her prison sentence was nearly completed.

"A monster will soon walk free among us. Do you want this woman living in your neighbourhood?"

The room began to spin. Karl bent forward, cradling his face in his hands. His elbow slipped from his knee, and he gathered himself, sweating and chilled, to stagger down the hall to the communal washroom. He pushed open a grey cubicle door just in time to vomit, standing, into the chipped bowl, then sank to his knees on tiles scented faintly of piss, and rested his head on the toilet's cool rim. After a few minutes, he wiped up spatters of orange juice and bile with a handful of toilet paper and flushed. He got up and splashed his face with cold water at the sink, then dabbed at his forehead and flushed cheeks with a brown paper towel.

When he looked in the mirror, he saw her watching him.

Karl waited until evening, after Chapel, to go to the Quonset hut. As usual,

Father Eli had not come back after supper to join with the others in the day's last session of prayer. 64

The door to the studio was ajar, as if the monk were expecting Karl. Eli, wearing his white coveralls, was examining a piece of steel in the harsh blue glare of the overhead florescents. When Karl entered, closing the door behind him, Eli raised his head and set the metal down. His large hands, curled gently into fists, rested expectantly on the table, wrecking balls poised on their chains. Both men stood silently, each waiting for the other to speak first.

Karl walked over and laid the magazines on the table. On top of the pile was the

MacLean's with the photo of the woman. "I'm done with these," he said. "Thanks."

Eli emitted a harsh, involuntary laugh. "You're done with those?" he said, with a faint smirk after quickly recovering his composure. "You realize, of course, that I've figured it out." He fixed upon Karl a stare both challenging and bemused. "I know who you are."

Karl's mouth became suddenly very dry. He steadied himself by leaning in what he hoped was a casual attitude against the table. "Oh, really? Who. Who am I?" he said, his voice cracking. He cleared his throat.

"Well, for starters," said Eli, relishing the opportunity to respond, "probably the most loathed woman in Canada. You look a little different these days, of course. You cut off your.. .your..." Eli's hand hovered briefly in front of his own chest, then skimmed up over his head. "And you cut off your hair."

Karl felt his bowels clench. He sagged against the workbench and looked for a place to sit down. Eli pulled a rolling toolbox from under the end of the bench.

"Here, have a seat," he said, guiding Karl by the elbow and patting him kindly on the back.

Karl slumped forward, weakly resting his forehead on his fists. 65

"Don't worry. No one else saw the scars, except the doctor. She won't tell."

Outside the pounding of hooves sounded as the cattle ran down the path beaten past the Quonset hut to the trough by the barn for their evening water, snorting and bellowing, the plaintive bleating of calves penetrating the thick silence inside. After the noise passed, Karl rubbed his eyes and looked at Eli.

"It's not what you think. Men can get breast cancer, you know."

"Oh, please." Eli shook his head pityingly. "Don't add to your sins. You're not much of a liar."

"It's true though!"

Eli smiled at him sadly. "Karl, Karl, Karl. After yesterday, me saving your life and everything, I'm hurt that you don't trust me."

Karl flushed a deep red and stared at his feet. After a moment he raised his eyes to Eli's. "It is true that I got cancer. When I was still inside."

Eli nodded encouragingly and waited. Karl took a breath and continued.

"They operated ~ just on one side — and I was planning to have reconstructive surgery. Once I got out, you know. The prison only paid for prosthetics. And then... a short while after I was released... I just. I just decided."

Karl stopped short, remembering the moment he'd crossed over. Matilda had been lying in a hammock in Mexico, wearing a t-shirt over her bathing suit and drinking a watery beer. She was taking a day off from the cancer clinic, exhausted from being pumped full of B-17, a precaution against the cancer cells returning. As she watched the other women walking down the beach in their bikinis — the slender, the voluptuous, the lardy and the pallid and the tanned and the wrinkly women of all ages and sizes and colours — she realized she was no longer one of them. It was a psychic rather than a 66 physical disfigurement that marked her. In that wavering instant shaken by the insistent maracas of a nearby busker and flecked with sand fleas hopping in the heat, Matilda changed. In hindsight the mastectomy simply became the first stage of dismantling the person she had been. There was no going back.

"It's not exactly that I wanted to be a man. I... I just didn't want to be me anymore." It was a hard thing to explain. That urge to shuck the old, ruined image and start afresh. Anonymous to everyone, even oneself.

"So, how exactly did you accomplish this transformation?" Eli pressed. "What with the expense, and the situation surrounding your...fame. All that."

"It's a long story. I went south for a while," Karl said, looking away and closing the subject.

Eli upended a large plastic pail and sat down opposite Karl. "And where will you go now?" he asked, in a tone of concern.

"Go?"

"Yes," Eli nodded. "You certainly can't stay here."

Karl stared at him, aghast. "I can't go back out there. If you figured it out, so will others, eventually."

Eli stared at him, implacable.

Karl took his trembling hands away from his mouth and held them out in supplication, his body rocking slightly as he spoke. "It was awful. They. They spat on me when I went to the grocery store and graffitied my car. Old women in my apartment block hissed me. Reporters kept sneaking into the building and knocking at my door."

"What did you expect?" said Eli, shrugging unsympathetically. "Really, a bit of hissing is hardly a violation of the same magnitude as.. .well, you know." 67

Karl shook his head frantically. "You don't understand. One time.. .once the police saved me from...in an alley, some boys...." His voice trailed away into a whisper and his eyes flooded with tears.

"If. If you send me away ...do you realize what they'll do to me if I'm found out?"

He looked pleadingly at Eli. "Please" A tear slipped down his face and dripped from his chin.

Eli reached out and rested his hand briefly on Karl's knee. He shook his head regretfully. "I'm sorry. You can't stay here. This is a monastery. And you," he said,

"you're a girl. Woman, rather," Eli corrected himself. "Excuse me."

"I'm not! I'm not a woman anymore. It says Male on my driver's license, I can show you."

Eli's mouth puckered unflatteringly. "I don't think that's something I particularly want to see."

Karl straightened up, blushing angrily. "Not like that. I meant I'll show you my documents."

Eli smiled sadly and shook his head. "You can change your name and you can give yourself a haircut, and... whatever else it is you people do, but you're still the same inside...

"I've had the hysterectomy —"

"—you're still a woman, Karl." Eli continued, waving away Karl's protestation as if it were a minor annoyance, a mosquito. "I mean, Matilda^ 68

Eli laughed lightly. "I'm relieved, actually. It explains my attraction to you." He smiled at Karl with something resembling gratitude. "Unlike some of the guys in this place -dare I say, most of them- I'm not a queer."

Karl caught his breath. He longed to reach over and tenderly brush the strayed strands of hair from Eli's face.

" I know. I know what you mean. I feel it too. But those .. .emotions.. .will pass.

For both of us, once I start my hormone treatments."

Eli stood abruptly. "Whoa. Way too much information. Look, it just isn't cool.

You can't stay."

It was then that Karl started bargaining. For time, so he thought. The simplest and most inexpensive of commodities, cheaper and more plentiful than air. He promised to stay out of Eli's way. That as soon as the medical process was finished — the treatments he'd arranged for at the clinic in Osoyoos, at least -- he would leave. He vowed to do whatever Eli thought best, if only he would let Karl stay through this phase of his physical transition.

Until I am truly no longer Matilda, Karl thought.

"Don't you think," said Eli, "it's going to be just a bit obvious when you suddenly develop male pattern baldness and sprout a beard?"

"It happens gradually. Very gradually," said Karl. "And when I'm done this round of hormones, it will be much easier for me to pass."

So far Karl had delivered his pitch with a blend of restraint and enthusiasm born of seasoned desperation. Matilda had had plenty of practice, trying to sell herself to parole boards throughout the latter years of her incarceration. 69

"It would be better, really, for Saint X that way. There would be far less risk that the media would find out I'd been in here."

He carefully gauged Eli's response to this last. It wouldn't be prudent to have any of his arguments sound like a threat. Eli was considering relenting, he could see.

Karl suddenly felt extremely weary and stopped talking.

"You've made some valid points, " said the monk, thoughtfully stroking his chin.

"And I believe you when you say that you sincerely want to change. I wouldn't want to deny you the chance to become a better ma-- a better person."

Eli came back and sat facing Karl again. "Look. I know you like me. I've seen how you look at me. It's weird. The whole thing is weird. But. I think we can make it work. I think we can be friends."

The monk placed his palms on Karl's shoulders, and stared deeply into his eyes.

Through the black cotton fabric of Karl's robe, Eli's heavy hands burned coldly. Karl felt something stiffen inside, as if his soul had been dipped into a fire and was now being moulded into a shape both familiar and strange.

On his way back to the enclosure, Karl saw Brother Bernard, a thin, elderly man with bowed legs and a battered cowboy hat, and Abbot Paul, still in his robes, standing by the forge behind the Quonset hut. Karl moved quietly around the side of the building into the dusk, hoping they wouldn't see him.

The Abbot turned and waved him over. "Karly! Come here for a second."

An intense heat emanated from the iron furnace. Beneath the lean-to roof attached to the main building, blacksmithing tools - an assortment of sinister looking files and tongs — were hung on the wall. Beside the furnace was a half-barrel filled with 70 oily water, in which hot metal was dipped and fixed into its ultimate shape. It was here that Father Eli put the finishing touches on his work. The place looked like a torturer's lair.

"Thought you might like to see this. Your nemesis," said the Abbot, gesturing to the ropey looking creature Brother Bernard held out on the end of a forked stick. The snake's body looked like a piece of blown-out rubber from a bicycle tire. Its fanged mouth was wide open, and the slit nostrils on its broad nose gave it an expression of hostile belligerence.

"Want to touch it?" said Brother Bernard. Chuckling, he shook the dangling corpse at Karl as if badgering a dog. Blood trickled from the thing's punctured neck, red as the juice of freshly crushed berries.

Karl backed away, tripping on the hem of his robe. Abbot Paul frowned at

Bernard, a rare hint of disapproval in his expression.

"Good instincts, son," he said to Karl. "Stay well away. A viper can still bite after it's dead."

He nodded to Brother Bernard.

The old man opened the furnace door and fire licked out. He grinned hideously at them in the flickering orange light, exposing a gummy black gap of missing teeth, then tossed the snake into the flames. The three watched the body coil and curl, as if alive, its striped skin sizzling and smoking in the maw of crackling flame.

Karl muttered his goodnights and quickly turned and walked away, saliva pooling beneath his tongue. When he rounded the corner of the building he stopped and rested against the wall, beneath the gnarled branches of a lilac bush. 71

A black draft horse with a flowing mane, silkily feathered fetlocks above the oiled hooves, was tethered to a nearby pole. The animal snorted and shifted anxiously.

Smoky clouds were streaked like soot against the pink sunset, and mingled with the fragrance of the lilacs, the oily smell of roasting flesh hung heavily in the air. 72

BOOK II

There's something queer going on back there in that woods. And I intend to find out what it is. Trixie Beldon and the Happy Valley Mystery 73

CHAPTER 5

Aura awoke sweating in her cramped, stuffy bedroom, the sweltering midday sun beating in through the loosely woven fabric of the orange and brown striped curtains covering her single-pane metal-framed window. She had been asking Elva for heavier drapes but none were forthcoming. She pulled off the t-shirt she'd slept in and wiped her armpits with it before throwing it on the pile of clothes behind the door, which was getting harder to open. She needed to do laundry but they didn't have a washer and there was no laundromat in town. Elva had taken to washing her own things in the bathtub then hanging them to dry on a clothes tree in the front yard, and had told Aura she was welcome to do the same. It was like they were camping. Permanently, and Elva didn't care. Whenever Aura went to brush her teeth the bathroom sink was full of underwear.

On the night table crammed against the bed, the hamster ceased its perpetual spinning and the wheel squeaked to a stop. He scrambled over and gripped the bars of the cage expectantly with tiny vampire-like hands, the bald skin of his long knobby fingers sparsely covered with strands of white hair. Aura gave him a sunflower seed and he held this object up reverently between both paws, as if in blessing, before stuffing it quickly into his mouth. The manner in which he sat hunched in his loose brown hide with his little pink hands dangling at his sides, as if he'd been interrupted in the middle of washing dishes or was giving his wrists a rest before resuming playing the piano, and the way his furry skin draped loosely beneath his armpits like baggy sleeves, lent him a monkish aspect. His happy black eyes shone like beads and his left cheek bulged slightly where he'd tucked away the seed.

"Here, Spamlet," said Aura, handing him another. 74

She watched as the hamster enacted his miniature ritual again, then crawled to the end of the bed and looked at herself in the dresser mirror. Her eyelashes, clumped with yesterday's mascara, looked like spider legs. Her stomach growled emptily, but she decided to fix her face before eating. There was barely enough room between the bed and the dresser to open the drawers. She pulled open a small side drawer by its broken brass handle, and rummaged around in the jumble of cosmetic bottles, then cleansed her face with pink liquid on a cotton ball. Standing on the dresser top amidst tubes of lip- gloss, a large plastic Madonna figure looked on in benign approval as Aura began applying a fresh layer of foundation. On its upheld arms were hung Aura's thick tarnished rings, their skulls and crosses providing a pleasing contrast to the figure's rosy smile and yellow halo, and draped around its neck were several heavy chains. The

Madonna's own tacky chastity belt, if that's what it was, was missing a couple of large sparkly jewels, but she made a funky jewellery holder.

Put her where she can watch over you, the new monk Brother Karl had said, when he presented the figure to Aura on one of his surprise social visits, and Aura had humoured him with effusive gratitude, enjoying how much this irritated Elva. That one's got a crush on you, Elva had warned her, but Aura doubted it. Karl seemed intent on toadying up to Elva, not her. He was weird, anyway, with that white blonde hair and the pretty snub nose and wiry ingrown hairs stubbling his smooth cheeks. Shorter than

Aura, he seemed like he was caught in some odd stasis of aging, as if his physical body was growing old around the atrophying soul of a teenager. Aura was quite certain he was gay. Queer as a 3 dollar bill, as the old post-office lady liked to say. Mrs. Blaine was convinced all monks were homosexual. 75

Aura had other ideas about the artist monk, Father Eli. She'd seen him only once after the humiliating events at the art gallery. Late one morning in early July, she'd been walking down the street toward the post office in her pyjama bottoms and a t-shirt, face stale with flaky day-old makeup, on her way to mail Elva's medical claims.

In the parking lot of the General Store was the antique red truck that had passed them on the night of the opening at El Limitos. Father Eli, wearing grubby jeans and a white t-shirt that set off his dirty blonde hair and tanned skin, had exited the store and climbed into the driver's seat. The truck pulled out of the gravel parking lot around the abandoned gas pump and idled to a stop beside Aura before she had time to cross the street. Father Eli leaned casually out the window and flashed his toothy grin.

"Well, hello, there. Aura, right? How's your art coming along?" In full sunlight his eyes were extremely green, like wet beach glass.

Aura, head tilted toward the ground, muttered a lame response through the shield of her uncombed hair. She wished she had a paper bag to put over her head. There was usually no one around worth getting dressed for. Except maybe Leif, the cute one of those weird twins. But he was hooked up with that fat redhead Gerlinde.

"Why don't you come up and see my studio," Brother Eli was saying. "I'll give you some welding lessons."

Aura mumbled an acceptance. She couldn't very well say I'm not allowed. I'm not allowed to go anywhere near you. The closest she had gotten to the monastery was the old miner's cave on the hillside above the hayfield, when she'd gone drinking that one time with the twins and Gerlinde. That hadn't worked out. The ugly one, Bud, had stuck to her like a shadow all night, muck she couldn't scrape off her shoe. And she and the red-haired girl had immediately struck up an intense mutual dislike. Aura had gotten 76 used to the idea of being friendless. Loneliness was just one more condition of deprivation, a non-optional sort of asceticism she was settling into. Cutting herself off from longing, becoming pure. She had recently begun to consider becoming a nun, since she couldn't be a monk, rather than going to art school after graduation. She blushed as she stared into the monk's green eyes. He could see right into her starving empty heart.

"I'm working on something," she had offered shyly.

"Good, great, you must show it to me," he said quickly. He had driven away in a cloud of dust when he noticed Elva on the front steps of the trailer, looking up the street toward them.

Aura hadn't seen him since. She looked at her naked breasts in the dresser mirror, wondering what Father Eli would see, if he thought about sex. She wondered if what

Elva said about him was true. There had been that person with him in the truck on that time on the highway to Osoyoos. It was probably just a hitchhiker.

As Aura was finishing up her eyes, Elva, holding a can-opener, pushed the door as far open as the pile of clothes would allow. She was wearing shorts and her pasty white thighs were marked with knotted blue veins, as if a ballpoint pen had randomly leaked blotches from the inside of her skin. Aura was never going to let herself go like that. If her body ever did go all to pot, she'd at least have the dignity to cover it up.

"Where's my egg-beater?" Elva said. "Things keep going missing from the kitchen."

Aura crossed her thin arms across her breasts. "Jesus! Can't you knock?"

"It's high time you got up. It's like living with a giant hamster. Up all night, sleep all day." Elva looked at the bottles and compacts strewn across the dresser table, 77

and the mascara wand Aura was clasping delicately between her finger and thumb.

"Who are you making yourself up for anyhow?"

"Nobody. Myself." She looked pointedly at Elva's hand upon the doorknob. "Do

you mind?"

Elva raised her free hand toward Aura, brandishing the can-opener as if about to

embark upon a particularly combatitive topic. "Where...?" she began, then changed her

mind and lowered her arm. "Lunch is ready. If you want to sleep until noon I guess you

won't mind having wieners and beans for breakfast."

"I don't eat hot dogs. In case you didn't know, they're made of cow lips and

rectums."

"Oh. Well, in that case I'll just cook you up a nice filet mignon," Elva said with a fixed smile, and slammed the door behind her.

Aura forcefully jammed the brush back into the mascara cylinder and yanked on a faded tank top. She was about to open the door and yell that she wasn't hungry anyhow, when she remembered her dream and sat back down on the end of the bed.

She had watched everything happening in the dresser mirror, as if it were a

screen. Kneeling across the mattress on her hands and knees, she wore a black lace bra and nothing else. As she turned her head to watch herself, only her top half was visible.

Father Eli was bent over her back, behind her, his upper torso appearing in the mirror.

He was wearing a close fitting white t-shirt that revealed his muscular physique. His tawny blonde hair had come loose from his ponytail and obscured his face, but she could see his large teeth drawn brightly back in a grimace of intense pleasure. She moaned with delight as she felt him moving inside her, filling her deliciously as he slid slowly back and forth. Their lovemaking became more frenzied, and as she leaned forward on 78 her elbows, opening to him further, the speed of his movements intensified.

When she tossed her long black hair from her face and glanced at their conjoined reflection, she realized Eli's body was stationary, and that it was his arm, muscular biceps bulging beneath the tight sleeve, that was moving vigorously back and forth. The vision in the mirror expanded, revealing everything: The monk stood behind her wearing white pants, and gripping something in his fist which he pumped in and out of her with the concentrated workmanlike intensity of a plumber plunging a clogged toilet.

He glanced into the mirror and met her eyes, and when he saw her horrified face, stopped what he was doing and grinned. Well, you wanted it hot-dog style, didn 'tyou? he said, holding up a large sausage on a skewer.

Aura felt queasy. She hadn't eaten anything since last night. She inspected her perfectly made-up face, and spoke softly to the mirror.

"I'm not hungry, anyways," she said. 79

CHAPTER 6

A moth fluttered in tightening circles around the flame of a taper set into a wall- mounted holder fashioned from an inverted kitchen faucet. When the stupefied creature fell into the flame the light sputtered, briefly dimming the Quonset studio with darkness almost entire. The flame caught and flared, feeding upon the moth's body, and its revivified light revealed Father Eli amongst the long shadows, hunched over the worktable at the center of the room. His white coveralls were bunched around his ankles, revealing muscular buttocks stippled with several pimples. He leant forward, supporting his weight on one palm, and grimaced as he thrust himself into the woman pressed face down beneath him against the table's wooden surface. With the other hand he wiped sweat and a strand of hair from his eyes.

"Who am I?" he muttered into the woman's ear. " Huh? Who am I, bitch?" he asked, bent low across her body, steadily thrusting.

The woman's pleated navy skirt was flipped up in back, exposing tops of nylon stockings held up by the elasticized hooks of a matronly-looking garter belt. Long, lustrous black hair fanned across her naked back and partially covered the straps of a purple bra. Almost indiscernible in the shadowy light, the deep hues of her clothing bled into a bruised grey blur against her pale skin.

"You're the king," she uttered, moaning enthusiastically. "You're the best cock

I've ever had.. .1 mean, you're the only cock I've ever had... I'm so lucky I'm a virgin..." As she strayed from the breathless script, she glanced backwards, betraying her uncertainty, and the silky hair swung like a drapery across her face.

The monk grabbed the back of her head with his free hand and forced her face against the table with a thump, yelling, "Don't look at me!" He continued grunting 80 against her, face twisted with thwarted concentration, before pushing himself off in defeat.

"For fuck's sake! You stupid fuck! Fuck fuck fuck!" he raged, punching her three times sharply in the back for emphasis. "You make a lousy virgin," he said petulantly as he tucked himself into his underwear and yanked his rumpled coveralls up over his t-shirt.

The woman slowly straightened, pulling the skirt down to cover herself. As she pushed the tangled black hair from her face, her wig slipped to one side, revealing

Brother Karl's pale blonde bangs.

"I'm sorry," Karl said, surreptitiously rubbing his kidneys and averting his eyes from Eli's glare. "I'll. I'll finish getting you off if you want."

A loud rapping on the door interrupted the ensuing strained silence. "Quick," hissed Eli, pointing beneath the table before giving his zipper a quick check.

Karl ducked and scrambled into hiding, pulling the rolling toolbox in after him as a shield. Through the thin nylon stockings his kneecaps grated against the concrete floor.

The bluish fluorescent overhead lights came on and Karl watched Eli's booted feet walk toward the door. He heard the bolt click back and the door squeaking open.

"Yes?" Eli asked, after some shuffling noises and a brief pause. "What do you want?"

"I'm looking for our little friend Brother Karl," said the voice of Brother Jerome.

"He's been shirking his duties. " The r 's curled emphatically off his tongue in the odd brogue and echoed haughtily against the walls. Jerome swished slowly toward the table and stopped in a dusty swirl of metal shavings that tickled Karl's nostrils. In his cramped position Karl stealthily moved his hand up to pinch his nose, afraid to breathe. The toes 81 of Jerome's shoes were so close that if he were to glance down he would see Karl's spooked white face reflected in their polished black sheen. There was a soft thunk as

Jerome picked something up from the tabletop above Karl's head. The polished feet turned to face the other way and Karl saw slightly scuffed heels.

"And what new masterpiece are we working on in our little shop of horrors?" asked Jerome. From his vantage point, Karl could see at the end of the room the bases of the two metal towers, and the corners of the blue tarps Eli had draped over their hulking forms.

Eli's legs moved into view. "Never mind." "There was another, heavier thunking noise as the object was replaced upon the table. "You do your job and I'll do mine. I can't keep track of your novices. He's probably at Lectio Divina."

The black skirts swirled as the boots clicked away from the table. "Yes. Of course," said Jerome, with an audible smirk. "He's very devoted, that lad. I imagine he's nearby praying as we speak. No doubt he's been spending all sorts of time on his knees lately."

The black hem twirled elegantly around to face Eli's grubby white cotton legs.

"If you should see him, you might tell him he's wanted. We're overdue for a wee talk about Benedict's rules. The bit on avoiding particular friendships."

There was a pause, and a couple of loud sniffing noises. Karl, still stifling a sneeze, imagined Jerome's florid proboscis quivering like the needle on a lie detector as it filtered information from the muggy metallic atmosphere.

"I didn't know you wore scent," said Jerome. "I must confess to indulging in a little splash of toilet water myself now and then." 82

"Actually, I don't wear cologne," said Eli coldly. "I think there's a rule about

that."

"Och, well. I'm afraid I've let the cat out of the bag. I trust you'll keep my little

secret. We all have our vices. Don't we, Father Eli?"

The door thudded shut and the lock clicked back into place. Karl peeked

cautiously out from under the table. His nostrils contracted several times as the urge to

sneeze subsided. He slid out into the light and stood, rubbing his knees.

"Toilet water?" Karl said to Eli. He chuckled hopefully, dipping a tentative toe

into the chill wake of Jerome's intrusion. The monk ignored him and began searching

through boxes of parts on a shelf.

Karl pressed his lips together nervously as he removed the lavender lace bra and

quickly pulled his crumpled black habit on over his head. From beneath the robe he pulled off the pleated schoolgirl's skirt, then undipped the tops of his stockings and rolled them down. The sturdy garter belt with its old-fashioned rubber clips was made of industrial strength materials used in the corsetry favoured by women of an earlier era.

The stout, mannish saleslady at Modern Apparel, where Karl had purchased these things, had likely been armoured thus under her mustard-coloured crimpoline dress. Entered by a door tucked beside the hardware store on Main Street in

Osoyoos, and up a flight of narrow wooden stairs, the store was like a museum, a relic from another time ignored by the tourists who spent their money on sarongs and expensive bikinis in the street level boutiques. Karl had felt safe in the empty aisles, shopping among the mothballed racks of bright polyester dresses. All the merchandise seemed to be vintage, yet new — linen handkerchiefs in yellowing gift boxes, elbow- length kid gloves and silk stockings with visible seams in unopened cellophane 83 packaging, feathered wool hats dull with dust. Karl had quickly picked out what he needed, holding the navy skirt to his waist to gauge the fit while the saleswoman, peering down through horn-rimmed glasses perched on her bulbous nose, was busy replacing the cash register tape. Just getting some things for my girlfriend, he'd said, pulling his wallet from his rear pocket and thumbing off the bills the way he'd watched other men do it. With square hands much bigger than his, the woman had efficiently wrapped Karl's items in pink tissue paper. The manner in which she'd asked Will that be every thing... Sir? - pausing and looking at him poker-faced as she enounced the last word ~ had caused Karl to blush. She was letting him know. He'd been read.

Holding the nylons by their opaque beige toes, Karl shook his sticky feet free the way he'd squeeze stewed rhubarb or thawing meat from a freezer bag. As his heels slid out they bounced lightly on the floor. His cheap rubber sandals, an Army surplus donation recently acquired in bulk by the Abbot for all of the monks, sat in plain view on the end of the table. Jerome must have seen them. Perhaps he'd assumed they belonged to Eli, although they were obviously too small. Karl glanced at Eli, whose back was still turned, and quickly strapped his feet into the sandals. Maybe Eli hadn't noticed this gaffe.

In the rectangular rear-view mirror he'd found in a pile of auto parts, Karl wiped off the penciled black arcs above his eyes and the carefully painted pink pout outlining his lips with a dab of mechanics' hand de-greaser and a clean rag. Trying to master being a man, he'd nearly forgotten the work of being a woman. Once upon a time

Matilda had been an expert at it, the curling irons, the eye shadow, the sexy little outfits, putting herself together each day and dismantling herself in the bathroom each night.

Now, devoid of makeup, Karl's skin looked doughy, pallid and featureless, his sun- 84 bleached eyebrows nearly invisible. He wondered what Brother Jerome had seen, if he had looked into the mirror when he'd picked it up, or if the man avoided his own reflection and the deformity in the center of his face.

Eli still had said nothing since Jerome's departure. After opening the lid on the toolbox where he kept his costume stowed between sessions, Karl stood a moment, watching him. Nervously, he smoothed the tangled black strands of the wig. The thick, wavy hair was crudely stitched to a skullcap fashioned from a feedbag.

"Brother Bernard... Brother Barney is pretty upset about Beauty," he offered, clearing his throat. "He says... he says he's going to find out who did it and skin them alive," he continued, attempting another laugh. He held the artificial scalp out at arm's length, a trophy to mutual pranksterness and pleasure.

Eli tossed an ear-tag back into its box. He turned around and quickly scanned

Karl's habit and the proffered hairpiece, then immediately glanced away without looking at his face, as if the sight sickened him. Karl's heart contracted painfully and the core of his being went cold with dread. Inert as old road kill, the wig dangled like a dead thing in his hand.

"This isn't working," Eli said bluntly. He stood tapping his boot heel against the toolbox. "You aren't the same since you started those hormones. You're starting to look like a guy."

"I am," said Karl, quietly. "I am a guy." He balled up the stockings and tucked them in his pocket. He'd have to wash them in the lavatory sink later, when the other monks were asleep.

The purple bra lay open on the table, silicone bust enhancers nestled in the stiff lace cups like jello setting in moulds. Eli absently poked at the rubbery flesh-toned 85 substance with his fingernail, leaving thin indentations. He became aware of what he was doing and put his hands in his pockets.

"No," he said, shaking his head. "This won't do." He paced around to the other side of the table, and then looked up hard into Karl's eyes. "Now Dick-Face thinks I'm a queer because of you. You've got to go, Matilda."

Karl's lower lip began to quiver. If he started to cry, Eli would only get angrier.

Since being on the hormones, he wept less, but Eli could still reduce him to tears without even trying. Karl bent and put the wig into the toolbox, and fiddled with the hasp on the lid. He took a few deep breaths and collected himself before straightening and facing Eli.

"I can't go yet," he said. "I'm just getting started on the hormone treatments again. Once my beard comes in it'll be easier to pass outside."

Eli snorted at Karl's audacity. "Not my problem, Mat. You'll do okay out there, you have so far."

Karl felt his arguments, all his carefully weighed persuasions, slipping away like ore funnelling through a sluice. He had been a fool to expect compassion from Eli, and yet he still hoped for some minute return on the investment of his feelings. Even now - especially now — Eli looked more beautiful than ever. His hair, stiff with the sweat of his recent exertions, was coiled into serpentine waves that framed his crystalline green eyes like gold gesso. Karl longed to lean forward and brush Eli's full lips with his own.

"I. I love you," he said, his voice cracking.

Eli wrinkled his nose and raised his brows. He appeared never to have considered the notion before. Karl felt himself flushing a deep painful red. How stupid he was. 86

"Look, man," Eli said, with a shrug, "I never should have let you stay in the first place. I was just trying to do the right thing. But, be reasonable. You must see this isn't going anywhere."

He hopped up onto the table and swung his leg back and forth like a pendulum.

"You're not cut out for monastic life if that's how you feel." He smiled. "Remember the part about the vow of celibacy?"

"We don't have to be. I don't have to be.. .physical about it. I just want to be around you. And I do feel like I'm meant to be here," Karl added. He could hear his voice rising girlishly, the tinny vibrato of hysteria setting in. "I like the work, the prayers.. .1 like the mountains, and taking care of the animals. And the community.. .the other monks..." he added unconvincingly.

Eli shook his head. "Trust me, you'll get sick of it. I only stay sane because I have my own work." He glanced obliquely at the twin alpine silhouettes of the sculpture rusting in the corner. Karl knew Eli was secretly frustrated with the piece, that it remained static and derivative of his earlier endeavours despite his attempts to breathe new life into it.

"At least," Karl said, begging now. "At least let me locate a doctor in another city first, so I can continue my treatments."

"My mind is made up," Eli said decisively. "There's no reason for me to let you stay. You've got three days to get your stuff together and get away." He went to the wall and snuffed the candle stub, still flickering in its makeshift sconce.

Karl couldn't make himself budge. Eli went to the door and placed his finger on the light switch. He looked at Karl expectantly. 87

"Okay," Karl heard himself saying. "Maybe not. Maybe you don't want to see what I got for you."

Eli slowly lowered his hand. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"I got her," Karl said, so quietly that the night breeze outside was softly audible, as if an immense creature slumbered above them. Karl could feel its warm breath condensing on the metal roof, the temperature outside dropping as the sun went completely down.

"What did you say," repeated Eli.

"I got her," said Karl. "I got what you want." 88

CHAPTER 7

"I wish we could open one of these windows," Gerlinde said to Buddy for what seemed like the twentieth time that week.

They were sitting on a grubby plaid sofa whose uncomfortable seat cushions were flattened with age. On the coffee table was a heap of freshly dried marijuana plants, and on the linoleum floor beneath it were two large plastic bins full of clipped buds. Gerlinde placed another neatly trimmed head into her bin, then tidied discarded stalks and leaves from the table into a black garbage bag. The buds were crystalline and sticky, laden with high-potency resin, but the stems and the large fanned leaves weren't worth saving. That 'sjust advertising, Buddy had explained when he showed her where to clip the plants, and it made sense. The emblematic leaf, its impotent green fingers, was merely the plant's hand waving the buyer in.

Gerlinde stood, stretching, and rubbed the stiffness from her shoulders and arms.

"I've totally lost track of whether it's day or night," she said, exaggerating only slightly.

The window behind the sofa was covered with a sheet of plywood, and the two smaller ones in the adjacent kitchen were boarded over as well. They were working under the light of a halogen floor lamp and a little kiddie bedside-lamp with a plastic poodle-dog base, straining their eyes in the perpetual gloom. A small tunnel of daylight poured down the chimney into the charred brick mouth of the empty hearth, dust motes swirling in its beam.

Bud ceased his lacklustre snipping motions, and dropped an imperfectly trimmed clump of greenery into the bin. His tub, unlike Gerlinde's, was only a third filled, and discarded plant material was littered at his feet. He considered the shaft of light in the fireplace. 89

"It's daytime," he said authoritatively. "Hey, turn on the TV while you're up.

And bring me a root-beer."

Gerlinde wiped her tacky hand on her pants and flipped the dial on the ancient console TV with its snowy rabbit-ear reception. They had been watching syndicated reruns in black and white, an exercise in frustration since the sound crackled badly and the picture eventually started rolling once the set got thoroughly warmed up. Two cartoon mice were creeping across the screen, their long shadows moving independently of them in a caricature of old detective movies.

"AnimaniacsV Buddy exclaimed gleefully. He started singing along to the program's theme song in a monotone a half-beat too slow. "They 're Pinkie and the

Brain, Pinkie and the Brain, one of them's a genius, the other's insane..."

Gerlinde took her sticky scissors into the messy kitchen and opened the bottle of solvent that sat on the counter amongst the dirty pots and empty tin cans. She tipped the bottle and dipped a rag into the solvent and cleaned off the scissors, then scrubbed her hands, the chemical stinging the accidental nicks between her fingers. The marijuana resin was like syrup, building up as they worked until it gummed the scissors shut and glued the skin of their fingers together. Periodically Buddy would roll the stuff off his hands into little balls that he stashed in the cough-drop tin stowed in his shirt pocket.

"They 're laboratory mice, their jeans have been spliced,'" he sang.

Gerlinde wasn't interested in getting high. The natural hallucinogens seeping through her skin made her nauseous, and she had a sick headache now that only went away each night when she stood beneath the high little window in the attic room upstairs and breathed in the chilly mountain air. There was a bluebird nest in the eaves above, and when she woke each morning, Buddy lumpishly snoring in his sleeping bag on the 90 other side of the room, she would lie in her camp-cot watching bright blue wings flashing past. The chorus of frantic cheeps settled and surged with the comings and goings of the parents carrying food to the fledglings.

As with the main floor, the rest of the windows upstairs were boarded over with plywood or thick cardboard battened by two by fours. On tiptoe, Gerlinde could see very little from the window, but enough of the distant skyline was visible that she could recognize a familiar looking ridge of mountaintops to the west. Buddy, playing the gangster, had insisted she wear a blindfold the night he'd brought her here, and at Leif s goodbye request, she had humoured his brother. Sitting in the passenger seat of Buddy's red sedan, she felt the car bump down the mountain's gravel road until they hit the smooth highway and sped up. It seemed as if they'd turned right, toward Midway, and she could smell the dampness of the river. Then they'd slowed and turned onto what must have been a dirt road, rougher and more muffled than cement, eventually returning to highway, before ascending more spine-rattling gravel in a low gear, to end again on dirt. She had a suspicion Buddy had taken an elaborate circuitous route and that they'd ended very near to where they'd started. Though she couldn't tell exactly where, she guessed that this was somewhere up Rock Mountain, near the border.

"They're Pinky, Pinky and the Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain...'''' came Bud's voice from the living room, as she fished two floating cans of pop from the cooler, the ice now completely melted. The supplies and living quarters left a lot to be desired. Gerlinde had expected something quite different than being stuck in an abandoned farmhouse with nothing but Buddy and a can-opener for company. At school one of the grade twelve girls had bragged about working on a trimming crew in Creston where the guy had 91 treated them all to an in-house masseuse and catered meals, plus all the beer they could drink.

In this kitchen, there was no fridge among the dull yellow shadows cast by the naked lightbulb, just an old avocado-green gas range on which Gerlinde heated the monotonous meals of canned beans and beef stew. The rest of the kitchen was crammed with plastic trays of seedlings in moist black dirt, bags of potting soil, and white plastic drums of fertilizer for the hydroponic tanks in the cellar, where the clones were incubated under rows of lights set on timers. Heat from the nursery below rose up through the floor, and the derelict old house was humid as a sauna, the walls furred with grey mould. In the living room the ancient embossed wall-paper was peeling away in long strips, and in the bathroom the buckled ceiling drooped precariously. The taps in the chipped porcelain tub still worked, and twice Gerlinde had taken a quick shower in cold rusty water, using the bar of orange carbolic soap to wash her hair since there was no shampoo. Since there were no towels, either, she had dried herself on her sweatshirt.

"The words are wrong," said Bud, staring at the TV through half-closed lids.

"They aren't wearing any jeans."

The two mice were sitting at a control panel, viewing icebergs on a computer screen. While the one with the big head and the scowl was plotting to take over the world by melting the North Pole, his skinny buck-toothed sidekick readied their beach gear.

"Genes," said Gerlinde, as she resumed clipping with clean scissors. "It's their genes have been spliced."

"That's my whole point, dude," said Bud, impatiently. "They don't have pants."

"Right. Got ya," Gerlinde nodded, rolling her eyes. 92

The cell phone in Bud's pocket began to play When the Saints come Marching In.

"That's the boss's ring," he said, importantly, as he scrambled to answer it. He cleared his throat before punching a button and answering tentatively, "Hello?"

He silently nodded his head in agreement every few seconds, concentrating carefully. Gerlinde could hear a low male voice issuing instructions of some sort on the other end.

"Dex? Okay," Buddy said. "Yup."

The voice continued. "Okay," said Buddy. "Just a sec" He took the phone away from his ear and fiddled with it, then held the device up in front of his face and aimed it at Gerlinde.

"Say Cheese," he said.

Gerlinde took the pop can away from her mouth and said, "Get lost! What are you doing?"

Bud looked at the phone and pushed some buttons, then put it back to his ear.

"Did it work?"

There was some more talk from the other end and then a click. Bud folded the phone up and put it carefully back into his pocket, handling it as if it were a fragile unhatched egg.

"What was that all about?" asked Gerlinde.

"Bullet's sending Dex for a pick-up later today," he answered. "We better get this batch finished." He started clipping in earnest, lopping off a pinecone-sized bud.

"No," she said, plonking her pop on the table in exasperation. "The part where you just took my picture. What was that for?"

"The boss wanted to see what you look like," he shrugged. 93

"But why?" insisted Gerlinde.

"I'm not at liberty to divulge that information," said Bud.

"Buddy, as if you know dick-all," she snorted, but she didn't like the sly smirk he answered with. It wasn't like him not to get the last word.

She gathered the remaining plants from the adjoining bedroom. The fans were on full tilt, and the pungent stalks, hung upside down to dry on strings tacked like clotheslines across the unfurnished room, swayed gently back and forth in the artificial breeze. In the corner a confusion of thick wires ran between several wall-mounted fuse boxes and electric meters and down through large holes drilled in the fir sub-floor.

Maybe they were pulling in power from the States. If there was a generator on the place, she hadn't heard it above the constantly blowing fans and the humming of the lights.

"So, did Bullet say anything about Leif?" she asked hopefully, as she dumped the plants onto the pile on the table. She brushed off her t-shirt, filthy with sweat and resin and ketchup stains. "He should have been back to get me by now."

"Brain, brain, brain, brain - nope," Bud answered distractedly, eyes on the TV.

"Leif s not coming back here," he said.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Nothing," he said quickly. "How am I supposed to know what he's doing? Just because he's my stupid brother." He squinted at the screen. "Hey, look! It's your old man!"

The local newsbreak was on. Gerlinde's father was standing next to a female police officer on their front porch. He was much smaller than the officer, as if he had shrunk since Gerlinde last saw him, and the lines on his strained face were deepened by the TV's black and white contrast. The police officer was writing on a note pad, her 94 blonde ponytail bobbing as Norm spoke through pressed lips, cigarette trembling in his hand. Gerlinde hadn't seen him smoke since she was seven. With much struggle, he'd quit his habit at her insistence.

".. .concern that the young people of this region are falling between the cracks," the accompanying female voiceover was saying. "Norman Klumpe's daughter, Gerlinde was a good student -"

"—what crack is she talking about?" Buddy interrupted. "You couldn't fall through a crack if you tried, your ass is so fat -"

"Shut up!" Gerlinde shushed him and turned the crackling volume louder. The screen was filled with her own round freckled face, an outdated eighth grade school photo she found mortifying in the extreme.

Norman Klumpe came on again. "Gerlinde, if you're listening," he said, directly addressing the camera. "Please come home..." he paused, his mouth quivering for a fleeting second. "It's okay. You won't catch heck...."

He finished abruptly then turned and went into the house as the TV screen started slipping. The camera panned backwards and Gerlinde watched the door swing shut and the house slide down the screen, the cracked concrete steps reappearing at the top as the roof disappeared.

A promo spot for the local Shriners came on. The image of tasselled caps looped down and back around, spinning like a Ferris wheel ride. Gerlinde turned the volume low and sat down.

"I need to get out of here," she said, after a minute, fiddling pensively with her scissors but not trimming. "I need some fresh air so I can think straight." She wanted to 95 ask Buddy again about Leif, but he could be stubborn. She'd have to wait until he was off his guard to broach the subject again.

Buddy shook his head. "Not allowed to leave." He looked at her twiddling with the scissors. "Hurry up and get this done before Dex gets here. We have to help him bag."

"I will. Just give me a minute, I haven't set foot outside in three days." She went over to the door and turned the handle. It was locked. She fiddled with the deadbolt and it didn't move. "How do you get this open?" she said.

Buddy shook his head and focused intently on his clipping. "Not allowed to go out. The boss says."

"He doesn't mean outside, he just means not to go out, like, away,'''' she said.

"Besides, you went out yesterday to get rat poison and toilet paper. Remember?"

"Yeah, I remember," said Buddy. "But you aren't allowed out. I have to keep you in until Dex gets here."

Gerlinde's face went blotchy with rage. "For fuck sakes Buddy, open the goddamn door!"

He shook his head smugly. "I'm the supervisor so you have to do what / say.

And I say get to work. Chop Chop," he added, snipping his scissors in the soupy air.

Gerlinde fought the urge to grab them out of his hand and hack his straggly yellow hair off. One side, where he'd singed it lighting a joint over the gas ring, was a frizzled clump. If he wanted snipping, she'd snip all right. She'd be doing him a favour.

A nice bowl cut, right around the edges of the stinky black toque permanently glued to his skull. 96

She took a deep breath and counted backwards from ten, like she'd learned in anger management with her school counsellor, Mr. Bradley, then went and sat down.

What Buddy had said about Leif.. .and then her dad, on TV, smoking cigarettes again.

She had to stuff her temper back in and clear her head. Something felt wrong.

After ten minutes of industrious clipping, she said, "I'm getting kind of hungry.

What about you? Do you have the munchies?"

Buddy's pronounced cheekbones, and the way his large yellowing teeth protruded forward as if his mouth were too big for his jaw, gave him a deceptively emaciated look. Along with Gerlinde, he could put away the food. His appetite was

Pavlovian. At the mention of food his stomach growled audibly.

"Yeah, I could go for some snackage," Bud said. "Make us some lunch, Gerl," he ordered, trying his recently announced authority in a new, stern voice.

Gerlinde obediently went into the kitchen and banged the cupboard doors. She came back to the entrance and held up a tin can. "This is all there is. I'm so tricking sick of meatballs and gravy. Can we order takeout from Tran's?"

Tran 's Vietnamese Noodle Barn belonged to Brother Anthony's sister and her family. They had rebuilt on the spot beside the highway in Rock Creek where the Gold

Pan Cafe had sat for decades, before the owners torched it for the insurance money. The restaurant did deliveries to the surrounding area within a 10-kilometre range.

"I'll treat you," she added. "I have cash."

Buddy frowned, processing the implications of her proposal. "We don't have a menu," he said. "Or a phone book."

"That's okay," said Gerlinde, "just get them to bring us the Family Special. The phone number is YUM-TRAN. Order a side of spring-rolls, if you want," she added. 97

Buddy pulled out his phone and stared at it in confusion.

"Do you want me to dial?" she offered.

He stared at her through narrowed eyes. "This is a secret hideout. If Johnny Tran comes up here with takeout, it won't be, like, secret, anymore?"

"Oh, shit," said Gerlinde, nodding slowly as she jounced the can of meatballs up and down. "Never thought of that. Too bad." She went back into the kitchen and started banging some pans around. "I was really jonesing for sweet and sour," she said. There was silence in the other room.

"Hey! I know," said Buddy, suddenly inspired. "Give me the money and I'll go pick it up."

Gerlinde came back in and pulled her tote-bag from behind the sofa. She riffled through it, pulling out two twenties.

"You better give me back all my change," she said, before handing him the bills.

"Paranoid," he said. He stuffed the money in his pants pocket, then pulled a key tied around his neck on a long string from inside his t-shirt, and opened the door.

Gerlinde blinked as sunlight flooded across her face. Like a scrap of solidified sky a bluebird flashed brightly past, and she saw a long wooden shed, tilted and gray with age, on the other side of the overgrown dirt driveway.

Buddy held up the key, wagging it back and forth. "I'm not stupid, Stupid."

Before locking the door behind him, he added, "If you try to get out? Bullet will kill you."

Gerlinde waited, ear pressed to the door, until the car engine faded entirely away.

She went to the kitchen and rifled through the junk drawer full of baler-twine and flypaper and red plastic rifle shells until she found a screwdriver. 98

"Kill me. Jesus, Buddy, you moron. You kill me. Haven't you ever heard of a figure of speech?" she muttered. Nevertheless, she reached toward the doorknob gingerly, as if it might burn at the touch. 99

CHAPTER 8

It was very early in the morning, well before Lauds. In Jerome's darkened office

Brother Karl and Father Eli were silhouetted against the blue glow of the computer screen. Karl, seated in the desk chair, attached a tiny black box to the hard drive with a cable, then keyed in a password. Six asterisks appeared in the User ID field. Karl hit

"enter" and clicked the mouse to open a file called My Home Movies.

A grainy black and white view of a small, cluttered bedroom appeared. The image was static, a poorly composed photo lacking a focal point or depth of field, the immediate foreground defined by the edge of a flat surface, nearer still the elongated tops of nail-polish bottles in an array of heights. Clustered together, the cylindrical lids looked from this angle like chimney pots in a movie-set's mock-up of a small industrial shire.

Eli peered intently over Karl's shoulder. He was wearing a cream-coloured surplice edged with elaborate embroidery over his robe. This morning it was his turn to perform the Mass.

A slight, scurrying motion in the room's far corner animated the computer screen.

"What's that?" asked Eli, whispering.

"Her hamster."

An indistinct blur, the tiny creature set its wheel spinning, then stopped running and climbed down to clutch the cage-bars expectantly. A few seconds later, an obviously female torso dressed in a form-fitting tank-top, slender arms bare, filled the screen and blocked out the background. Her fingertips stroked the tops of the chimneys, as if she were contemplating which house to pluck at random from its moorings, then dipped below the screen and reappeared holding a small, disc-shaped bottle with a chipped lid, the word Silencio sprawled across it in an ornate script.

"Is that what you had on?"

Karl nodded. He could hear the monk's excitement constrained by the effort to suppress the volume of his voice.

The hands were removing the lid from the bottle, tipping the liquid against the pad of the index finger, now stroking the perfume along at the base of the neck, in the soft hollow above the thick links of a necklace chain. The slender fingers impatiently brushed the long black hair back from her shoulders, and briskly screwed on the lid before setting the bottle back out of sight. Karl wondered what sort of shadows the hands would cast, if the light were right, what unseen performance these deft puppets might be conducting on the wall just out of view.

An elegantly pointed chin dipped briefly below the top of the frame and then the girl turned and in a heartbeat was across the room, sitting on the bed to open the cage's trap-door, holding out her flattened palm. Her face remained veiled by long black hair as she bent forward. The hamster scrambled onto her open palm and she let it run down into the other, pouring it gently back and forth between her hands, a perpetual rivulet of delicate bones flowing beneath dark fur. She set the hamster down on her slim leg and it waddled hesitantly along her thigh and clambered up the waistband of her jeans. She started, as if tickled when tiny paws touched bare skin, and when she gathered the animal between her palms, something glinted at her midriff. The girl returned the hamster to the cage and shut the door. Still seated on the bed, she pulled the tank top over her head and threw it somewhere off-camera.

Eli sharply sucked his breath in through his nose. 101

Naked from the waist up, the girl stood and flung back her long mane with a toss of the head, revealing Aura's face. In grainy black and white, her heavy makeup job approximated the look once peculiar to heroines in silent movies, a starveling's expression of painted-on trauma. Her lower lip and her nipples were pierced with small metal rings. Staring in the direction of the camera, she leaned back against the wall and struck a Sears Catalogue pose, one hand perched on her hip, the other languid and relaxed along her side.

"It's like she knows we're watching," breathed Eli.

"She's just admiring herself in the dresser mirror," Karl said, snappishly, his voice rising above the requisite whisper.

"Ssssh!" said Eli. "All that going to waste on a mirror," he mused to himself in an awestricken whisper. "She's begging for an audience."

After considering her reflection a moment, Aura adjusted the initial pose, first undoing the button on her low-rise jeans and pulling the zipper partway down. A thin chain looped around her waist was clasped together on a ring in her navel and drooped slightly to rest on her hips. She slid one hand into the top of her panties, and with the other, cupped a breast and aimed it like a weapon at her viewers. She tested an open- mouthed sneer, flicking her tongue, a pale blind slug, slowly in and out between her lips.

"Jesus Christ," said Eli, transfixed by the vision.

Karl, despite his irritation at the effect Aura's vain posturing had on Eli, sensed the intensity of the monk's desire and felt this longing transfer itself to him like a surge of electricity. Or a virus, a quick-replicating contagious disease. Aroused by his own jealousy, he was acutely aware of Eli's body beneath the coarse layers of fabric. 102

Tentatively, Karl touched the robe beneath the hem of the surplice. When the monk didn't resist, he began very lightly stroking his thigh.

Aura, suddenly bored with herself, ceased playacting and stepped out of her jeans. These, as with the tank top, she pitched somewhere off-camera. As she approached the mirror, her face and bottom-half again disappeared from view. The small hoop in her navel to which the chain was attached was clearly visible. The full smooth flesh of her breasts filled the screen, lifting slightly as she raised her arms and removed the thick chain from around her neck, then sloping gently toward the camera as she leaned forward, holding out the heavy necklace in both hands like an offering. The scene was suddenly obscured, except for a small sliver of crescent-shaped light leaking through a link in the chain.

"What happened?" asked Eli, frustration straining his voice.

"She uses the Madonna as a jewellery holder," said Karl. "There wasn't much I could do about that." He slid his palm around Eli's upper thigh and rubbed gently. "I can replay it," he offered, moving the mouse across the screen.

Eli stepped away from Karl's grip, the spell broken. "We'd better get out of here," he said, glancing at his watch. "We'll talk after chapel."

Karl's own urges ebbed abruptly. Eli was slipping further and further out of reach.

Eli scanned the corridor before exiting the dank little room, then turned back to

Karl. "Good job," he said, "That took nerve. You're not nearly as much of a pussy as I thought you were." Smirking slightly, he shut the door.

Karl chewed on this dry bone, sucking out the marrow of Eli's meagre approval.

For now, it was all he had. It would have to do. 103

He shut down the computer and pocketed the tiny spy camera device, careful to leave Brother Jerome's office just as he'd found it. 104

CHAPTER 9

Karl didn't have a chance to meet with Eli after Lauds that morning. Brother

Bernard had rounded him up right after breakfast to help with the freshly baled alfalfa.

Thunderstorms were predicted for the beginning of the week and everyone was working hard to get the last of the second crop in. Karl's job was to stand at the edge of the hayloft and grab the bales coming up the conveyor, hoisting them off to Dean, one of the itinerant farmhands, who stacked them in neat piles against the walls. Karl's arms ached from slinging the dead weight of the bales, each as heavy as a human body. The air was thick with pollen and dust, and despite the kerchief tied around his lower face, after a couple of hours Karl's eyes and nose ran with hay fever. And although he'd worn work gloves, his palms were crisscrossed with painful red marks from the binder twine.

Yet he felt strangely happy. From his vantage point in the loft he'd watched the pink sun rising above the blue shadows of the distant mountains, the fields warming to a soft golden-green as the morning wore on. A pair of hawks circled, hunting the mice that rose from the stubble like beads of blood on freshly shaved skin, nests destroyed by the blade of the swather. The raptors' harsh cries sliced the stillness as they wheeled and dipped on the air currents, their shadows, slow dark angels, slipping patiently over the hillside below. It was a beautiful place, truly God's country. Karl could understand why so many had come to test themselves here, against the land, against the isolation. He rubbed his bicep beneath the thin chequered cowboy shirt. He was developing some muscle, just as the Abbot had predicted.

On his way back to the barn after prayers and the noon meal, Karl ran into

Gerlinde Klumpe leaving one of the outbuildings. She was struggling to slide the heavy door shut, her face damp with snot and tears. Karl helped her roll the panels closed, and 105 timidly asked her what was wrong, but she had spurned his consolation attempts with a stream of foul utterances and stomped away, trembling with rage. The encounter left him shaken, and blackened the promise of the late summer day. He and Gerlinde were friends, or so he'd felt. When he'd first arrived at the monastery in spring, they'd worked together helping Bernard dehorn and inoculate the new calves, and, with a shared empathy for the scared, bleating little beasts, the two had struck up an instant camaraderie. She hadn't been around much lately, since becoming involved with that lanky blonde boy, but she and Karl still shared the occasional smile in passing. The

Abbot had warned him early on about her temper tantrums, but Karl had never expected to see that side of her.

Licking his wounds, he doubled back to stop in at the Quonset hut, seeking some sort of comfort from Eli. Still dressed in his black habit, the monk was pacing back and forth, running his hands through his tawny mane and muttering to himself.

"I. I've been looking for you. You weren't at midday chapel," said Karl.

"I was working," said Eli.

The sculptures at the end of the room were still concealed beneath the blue tarpaulins. There were no tools out on the bench.

"Do you know what's wrong with Gerlinde?" asked Karl. "She just told me to go fuck myself."

"Maybe you should take that advice," said Eli tersely. "Since it's an option."

Karl's cheeks reddened and stung, as if he'd been slapped smartly across the face with a pair of pigskin gloves.

"I'm sorry I disturbed you," he said. "You're obviously busy." 106

"Wait," said Eli, grabbing Karl's arm and pulling him back in the door. "Look, I didn't mean it. I'm just under a lot of pressure right now."

Karl stood with his arms crossed, considering the lumpen shapes of solder where the drippings had hardened on the floor. For once, he was not going be easily mollified.

Eli wanted something. Karl stared at a shiny little blob in the shape of a miniature snowman, forcing himself to outwait the tense silence.

Eli cleared his throat. "Look, Mat," he offered again, "You know I'm just teasing you. The reason I wanted to see you after... well, after this morning, was to thank you. I really appreciate that you went out on a limb for me. It took guts to get that video clip."

He laughed. "You must have old Elva wrapped around your little finger."

Karl looked at him. "Hardly," he said, with all the sullenness he could muster.

"Oh, come on, Mattie," said Eli, sensing an opening. "She's probably hot for you.

Who wouldn't be?"

"You," said Karl, choking on the word as the humiliation of welling tears made him blink and defeated his stony glare.

Eli reached out and gave him a comradely punch, causing Karl to wince and rub his shoulder.

"Oh, come off it, now. Don't go getting all emotional on me. Besides, I know you were just as turned on by watching as me."

"I better get down to the barn, Brother Bernard will be needing me."

"Wait a sec," said Eli, again. "I want you to do something for me."

"Why," said Karl. "Why should I?" He took a deep breath before continuing.

"You want to send me away from the monastery. I love it here. This is my home now." 107

"I'm sorry about that. I didn't mean it. I was just shaken up by Jerome walking in on us last night." Eli chuckled. "Did you notice him looking at you funny in chapel this morning? Doing that thing with his nose? He probably went into his office after we left and smelled that someone had been sitting in his chair."

"Could we stay on topic?" said Karl, "What is it exactly that you want? And what are you willing to give me in return?"

Eli raised his eyebrow, taken aback by Karl's tone. "I think those hormones are kicking in, Bro. No sweet-talking you anymore."

Karl felt a flush of pleasure at Eli's flattery, and then was instantly angry with himself. He would not be sucked in. He would not be Eli's doormat anymore.

"What do you want from me this time?" he repeated.

Eli sighed and shrugged. "Okay. I give. I want you to get me in there somehow.

Get that hag Elva out of the way. Or help me get Aura up here."

Karl pursed his lips to disguise his jealousy. "What for?" he said, already knowing.

"I want her. I want to be the one to take her virginity."

Karl snorted. "Virginity? You think she's a virgin? Were we looking at the same video?"

"Exactly. That's exactly how I know," said Eli. "She's ready. She's desperate for it. And she wants me to be the one. I know. The times I've met her, it was written all over her."

"How good of you to oblige," said Karl, icily. Eli rolled his eyes in a pantomime of self-deprecation. "I admit it, it's not entirely altruistic. I want her just as much. I can't sleep at night, thinking about her.

Those legs, those tits..."

He interrupted his reverie, noticing Karl's annoyance.

"Look, I wouldn't do this if I wasn't certain it would be the best thing for her.

But if I don't take care of it myself, and give her some sexual relief, she's going to do something stupid. Ruin her reputation. Get herself knocked up or something worse.

Would you rather she lost her virginity to some pimply syphilitic runt from Midway

High? Some inexperienced twerp who'll come on the third stroke and give her a dose of chlamydhia, then dump her the day after and brag about it to his meth-head friends?

That young girl deserves much better than that. "

Karl was speechless, staggered by Eli's rationale. There was no correct answer.

"If she's so into you, then, invite her up to the monastery for a visit," he said.

"And do your good deed right here." He jerked his chin toward the bench he'd been bent over the previous evening.

Eli either ignored or didn't absorb the sarcasm. "I have asked her up, for welding lessons. Elva won't let her set foot on the place, she's got a beef with the Abbot about some land."

"If Mohammed won't come to the mountain..."

"I can't exactly phone Aura up and make a date. You know Elva doesn't like me."

"And just why is that?"

"Don't know. Prejudiced against me for some reason. I think it's because she's always had a thing for me herself. She's just bitter, a very sad and bitter woman." 109

Eli shook his head and waved the question away. "That's not the point, anyhow.

Aura needs my help with this, it's for her own good. I'll be careful, use protection, of course. But she can't know."

Karl's jaw dropped. "You want to have sex with her without her knowledge?"

"I need to be very discreet with this situation. Aura will know on a deeper level, on a spiritual plane, that she's been touched and...," he searched the air above his head, looking for a word. "... transformed. But I can't risk her talking about it. There can't be any negative publicity brought upon the monastery. Not after the situation with Father

Gerald last year."

"And just exactly what am / supposed to do?"

"I'm not sure yet. We need a plan."

'We? Why on earth should I help you do this?" Karl ventured reluctantly, afraid that Eli would threaten to truncate his novitiate again and send him away. Better not to bring up the obvious. Better they both acted as if Karl were doing Eli a favour. "What's in it for me?"

Eli lazily stretched his arms over his head, then slowly rubbed his outstretched hands over his chest and downward, smoothing out his robe. He eyed Karl slyly.

"I'll let you watch," he said. 110

CHAPTER 10

There was nothing to do.

In the garden shed out back, where she'd cleared the plant pots off a work bench,

Aura had assembled all the pieces she needed for her sculpture, but she hadn't the means to weld it together. She'd considered stuffing everything in her back-pack and taking it up to see Father Eli, but it was an extremely long hike up that hill to the monastery in the heat, and Elva guarded the car keys like a warden. Aura wouldn't get her own set until she was independently licensed, and that wasn't happening anytime soon. For the first time in her life, she was looking forward to the start of school. Even a bunch of redneck gangbangers and Rodeo queens would be better than holing up here alone.

She slid down the embankment behind her back yard, raising eddies of dust and sending clumps of earth trickling down the slope. The rounded little travel trailer with the handpainted sign reading Wise Owl sat shimmering like an outsized stainless steel toaster in the midday heat. Aura knocked on the screen door, a rattle rather than a knock, and peered into the gloom. One of the shadows inside shifted and stood, then shuffled slowly to the door and looked out through the mesh at Aura, blinking against the sun. So wrinkled and old it was impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman, the occupant croaked hoarsely, making a generic questioning sound.

"I'm looking for the girls," said Aura. " I was hoping they could come out to play." She hadn't seen the two strange ragamuffins around since the day the older one had read her palm. It was high time to get her fortune told again.

The ancient stared incomprehensibly at Aura through vague, colourless eyes.

"Girls?" it croaked, perplexedly. The word set off a fit of dry coughing. After the fit subsided, the wispy head shook in denial. "No one here but me," it said, and shuffled Ill

back into the shadowed interior to continue its mysterious shrivelling existence in the

trailer's canned heat. A gin-ridden whiff of desiccated perspiration wafted past the lintel.

Wherever they had lived, the strange little girls were now gone. Aura wandered

back along the gravel road beside the slough to the top, and hopped a fence to get cut

back to Bridesville's Main Street. She pulled a few handfuls of grass from the ditch and

fed them to the bony horse that lived in the paddock wedged between the two roads.

I actually live in a one horse town, she thought.

And not even a horse you could ride. The mare's square yellow teeth scraped

Aura's open palm, the blue rubbery lips softly flapping as it chewed. Mr. Siemens at the

General Store kept joking about how the horse was going to the glue factory any day

now. The dry, trodden grass inside the fence was grazed down to the roots, and the

animal's ribcage stood out beneath its dusty hide like the curved hull of an upside-down

ship. No sailing off into the sunset on this rickety old mare.

Aura walked back along the length of the town's skinny single street, past the

boarded-up elementary school and the antique gas pump and the store. Mr. Siemens had put the Closed sign in the window for his lunchtime nap. He was probably dreaming

about horse bones and glue. When Aura reached her trailer at the far end of town, the

sprinkler was on, watering the tiny patch of lawn overshadowed by a big pine. She pushed open the screen door and stood a moment before entering the dim, cool room.

The plasticated danger sign, with its red on white no-smoking symbol warning of an

oxygen-tank inside and danger of potential explosion, was streaked with a glob of

gummy sap.

The door slammed softly shut behind her. Elva was flaked out on the sofa, a

tumbler with an inch's worth of sludgy ice and a bottle of Wild Turkey on a folding TV 112 tray. The oxygen tank with the painted-on face sat faithfully on the floor beside her, resting on its wheels like a dog on its haunches.

"Well, if it isn't the happy wanderer." said Elva. "Come on in and cool your heels. There's lemonade in the fridge."

Aura looked pointedly at the bourbon. Elva had switched to alcohol at the beginning of the summer, after her compassion club got busted. Aura discovered that she much preferred living with a pothead to living with a drunk, and had suggested as tactfully as she could that Elva find another source for her chosen pain reliever. But Elva didn't have a contact here. What do you expect me to do, she'd grumbled in frustration as she came home from the valley with yet another twixer, go down to the beach in

Osoyoos and score a bag of shake from those over-baked delinquentfruitpickers? Elva's drinking had become an ongoing bone of contention between them. Aura believed that

Elva was using her illness as an excuse to get wasted, and that she liked boozing a lot more than she let on. As it was, she made icky faces after downing her doses of bourbon, making out as if it were a vile tasting elixir she'd been prescribed by the local snake oil representative.

"What?" said Elva, irritably. "What are you looking like that for?"

Aura sighed heavily. "Isn't it a little early to be self-medicating?"

Elva snorted. "It's early to those who don't haul their asses out of bed until 11 am. I've been awake since six, cleaning this place." She swept her arm around like a TV game show girl, indicating the mobile home's interior as if it were the prize package behind door number three. Ajar of wildflowers, already beginning to wilt, graced the kitchen table, the oranges, purples and frothy pale yellows of Indian paintbrush, lupines, and yarrow - poisonous to cattle - standing out brightly against the grey arborite. 113

"And doing research," Elva added. Research came out mushily, her words already beginning to slur. She propped herself into a more upright position on the sofa, picked up the book that lay open on her stomach and fanned herself with it. She was reading a thick black book with red letters, something called A Pizza the Pie: The

Columbus Complex and Land Claims in British Columbia. On top of her usual pile of bodice rippers was a government pamphlet with the title Staking a Claim: Mineral

Rights and the Law embossed on its puce paper cover.

Aura resignedly got herself a glass of lemonade from the little fridge and sat down in the matching armchair. The previous occupant had left them the living room suite, a comfortable flocked velveteen set in autumnal tones with carved fruitwood arms.

Aura found it reassuringly ugly. She nodded toward Elva's book. "Finished with Love's

Reluctant Bride!"

Elva disregarded the inherent sarcasm of the remark, and put her reading glasses back on. "This is interesting stuff. Very interesting. Listen to this," she enthused, picking up the pamphlet and rifling through it. "Subsection 12: A pre-existing claim once expired may be renewed if not contested, nullified or transferred during the subsequent interim period ..." She frowned and stopped. "Well, there's a bunch of stuff. I need to get my cousin Doreen's husband to translate the legalese for me. The point is, that smug

Abbot won't be ignoring me into submission for much longer."

She lowered her book and pushed her glasses up on her head. "That reminds me.

You missed your boyfriend. He was just here looking for you. I let him play with your hamster instead. He's fond of animals, he says. Misses his pets."

"Brother Karl?" said Aura, incredulously. 114

"Yeah. He's actually quite nice. Walked the recycle over to Norton's for me. It's nice to have some help now and then."

"I can't believe you let that panty-sniffer into my room!"

Elva shakily poured herself another splash of bourbon. "Well, there's plenty of panties to sniff, isn't there? Maybe it'll encourage you to do your laundry once in a blue moon."

"Maybe if we could go to the laundry-mat," Aura retorted as she went in to check that her belongings were intact. And pay with what, poker chips? she mouthed sourly into the dresser mirror, dubbing Elva's answer from the other room.

The hamster was sleeping, curled up like a clod of dirt in a nest of shredded newspaper. His cage needed cleaning. The mound of laundry, a Matterhorn of pink and black poly-cotton under things, apparently remained undisturbed. Her jewellery was still hung around the Madonna's neck as she'd left it, rings draped like bangles on its outstretched arms. She scanned the bottles of cosmetics on her dresser.

"Hey!" she demanded loudly, "Where's my perfume?" She poked her head around the door. Elva was passing out again, the glass tipping precariously in her hand as her eyes repeatedly drooped shut and then jerked open.

Aura slammed her door shut in disgust. Never mind, she muttered as she flopped onto her unmade bed. You probably drank it. She popped a Switchblade Symphony cd into her portable stereo and turned the volume low, then pulled a dog-eared romance novel from under her pillow. She was finally getting to the good parts. Shy lane and Dirk were cantering around the riding ring at her wicked uncle's manor, having sex while mounted on her favourite horse.

It wasn't her fault she was reading this dreck. There was nothing else to do. 115

CHAPTER 11

Hanging low and close and blindingly bright above the crest of Rock Mountain, the moon, not quite full, was a radiant three-quarter-face profile marred by a gaping mouth, a smooth-browed heroine's O of unutterable dismay. Every now and then, as he picked his way along the overgrown path to the cemetery behind the little white chapel,

Karl would halt and gaze up, in thrall to the impression. An anguish older than time, as if it had taken centuries - eons - for that expression to be formed, and the sound the mouth was shaping itself around would be coming soon, was on its way. He had seen that look before.

The square granite headstones gleamed whitely in the reflected light. This was the monks' cemetery, intruded upon only by the lonely ghosts of past settlers, whose few graves were marked by white wooden crosses replaced periodically as the old ones rotted, the names and dates repainted in simple black strokes. When the Benedictines arrived on Rock Mountain and built the monastery, they had placed a picket fence around the original graveyard, and enclosed it within the confines of their own. The more recent graves of the brethren were laid out in orderly rows. On each simple slab was engraved both the surname each man had been given, and the first name, the Saint's name, he had chosen, and lived the rest of his days attempting to earn. The date of each monk's birth and of his death, and the fanned, four-pointed symmetry of the Benedictine cross.

Distorted by shadow, the symbol resembled a snow angel many years since melted, some lost imprint of Karl's childhood. The girl Matilda giggling up at the crisp, clear afterschool sky in her fake-fur parka and poorly insulated plastic boots. 116

Karl read the carved words under the cold rays of moonlight, the names imbedded in stone. Father Albert Greschner. Brother Joseph Boyo. Father Basil

Patterson. The most recently deceased, Brother Eddie-John Tom.

Not all of the newer monks opted to change. Brother Troy, for instance, who had once been a roadie for Pink Floyd and now strummed a twelve-string acoustic at morning lauds. The community observed Troy's name-day on the Feast of St.Trojan, which came closest to the name his mother had given him. She 'd never forgive me, Troy had explained with a rueful laugh when Karl asked him about it.

Eli, on the other hand, obviously had selected his name quite intentionally. Karl had borrowed the book from the Abbot's office to look him up. St. Eligius, or Eloi, whose miracle had been to remove the leg from a horse in order to dress the hoof in a new shoe and then put the horse back together again. Patron saint of metal workers and blacksmiths. And Humpty Dwnpty, Karl had thought, as he read the outlandish account.

Karl's name fit him no better and no worse than the faded black hand-me-down robe that had formerly belonged to the disgraced Father Gerald. He'd readily accepted the Abbot's suggestion without deliberation. A near random choice made in relative haste, like someone buying a forged passport in the airport parking lot before passing through security and leaving his country of origin for good. There were no birthday cakes here. When he completed his novitiate, Karl would be Karl. Someone entirely new.

As he waited, thoughtfully touching the honed edge of Brother Eddie-John's headstone, Karl felt a pang and a hope all at once, a deep and certain prayer that he too would be buried here one day. To live, like these most of these other men, to be very old.

It would take a long time to atone for his sins, to gain mercy beyond all human understanding. 117

He was wiping a tear from his eye when Leif stepped out from the camouflage of the aspen copse on the slope. The young man approached the cemetery in slow, quiet strides, a sweet pong of pot smoke smudging the cooling air around his thin form. Karl shivered, nerves and the night air raising goose bumps on his skin.

Leif opened the gate and stepped through the low fence, gravel crunching softly under his running shoes. He stopped and dropped the roach and ground it out with his heel. Like the rest of him, his feet were long and narrow.

"How'd you get my number?" he asked in a low voice.

Soft puffs of smoke emerged from his mouth as he spoke, an effect akin to that produced by dry ice. Unlike Eli, tawny and leonine, Leif s blondeness was arctic, crystalline, lending him an aura of angelic purity. Tall and slender, he emitted a certain cool strength, and seemed both fragile and sharp as an icicle. Karl understood at once what Gerlinde saw in him. Fire and ice. He wondered if she left handprints, melt-water like sweat on Leif s skin wherever she touched him.

Karl was momentarily at a loss for an answer to Leif s question. He decided to tell the truth. "I went through the Abbot's community service folder and found the emergency contacts listed in Gerlinde's file."

The boy's head tilted back slightly as he studied Karl, deciding.

"I'm only doing this because you're Gerl's friend," he said. His narrowed eyes reflected the moonlight, glittering bluely. Cold sparks of diamond fire. "Right?"

"I.... Yes. I thought I was. Her friend." Karl cleared his throat. "I was going to ask you about that. She seemed very upset yesterday."

"Not about you."

"Oh. I'm relieved, I -" 118

"Ask your big-shot artist what all happened. See what sort of bullshit he spews up."

"Father Eli? What... ?" Karl remembered suddenly Eli's foul mood of the previous afternoon. Him still dressed in his habit after missing noon prayer.

"Never mind. Whatever. It's not your business."

He plucked something from his toque's rolled brim. "Here."

He dropped a small zip-lock baggie into Karl's palm. About an inch square, the package was tiny. The lumpy little wad inside didn't seem like it would last very long.

Karl reached through a slit in his cassock fabric, digging for his wallet in his jeans.

Leif shook his head, rejecting payment with a hint of disdain. "This is from my personal."

"Thank you." Karl hesitated. If Elva went through pot at the rate she went through bourbon, it might not be enough. Not if it took more than one try.

"It's for a sick parishioner. Is.. .is it okay to call you again, if she uses this up and needs more?"

"I'll be out of town for a few days. On business," Leif added, importantly.

"What about your brother?"

"No," he said, abruptly. "He just finished probation."

"What about... whoever ... you get yours from?" asked Karl. Quickly he added,

"I'd be happy to pay."

"I thought you guys took a vow of poverty."

Karl nodded. "But we do get a small monthly allowance." 119

"My connection doesn't deal in dime bags. Normally, I would say not to bug him for anything less than a pound."

Leif glanced around, as if checking to be sure they were alone, then stared off into nothing, considering.

"But," he said, "If it's for a sick oldster, he would probably do you an ounce pro bono. He's a pretty decent guy."

He pulled a pen out of his shirt pocket and felt around in his other pockets. "Do you have something to write on?"

Karl checked his own pockets.

"Give me your arm." Leif held his lighter up and started writing on the inside of

Karl's wrist, the planes of his angular face flickering in shadow as he leant forward, squinting, in the light of the small yellow flame. Karl held the wide black sleeve out of the way. The thin skin of his wrist stretched and pulled beneath the strokes of the ballpoint pen. The cool tip of Leif s balancing pinky sent a thrilling little shiver over him.

"There," said Leif, releasing the lighter switch and stepping back into blackness.

The flame left a dancing afterimage in Karl's eyes. Despite the moon, the night seemed darker now.

"That's Bullet's cell number. But don't let him know you're with the monastery.

He says you're all two-faced faggots." Leif paused just long enough to let that sink in.

"Just tell him you're a friend of mine."

He shut the cemetery gate behind him and faded back into the aspens, his fine white hair lifting in the breeze like thin wisps of mist, a pale corona beneath the black toque. The grasses exhaled the last of the day's warmth as cold night air settled over

Rock Mountain like a veil. Autumn was already in the air.

Karl stood shivering in the graveyard, holding the little bag of marijuana. It was time to go back but he needed a moment to think about how this all might end. He was up to his neck in this thing with Eli now. He tried to imagine their headstones here with the others, years hence, set side by side for eternity among the wildflowers. But he couldn't see Eli's, or envision the writing on his own.

An owl called suddenly from the aspens, the soft hoots startling in the silence.

Who? it cried, Who?

Good question. Karl didn't know. 121

CHAPTER 12

Gerlinde's attempt to open the front door with the screwdriver had failed. After finally succeeding in removing the nickel faceplate, no easy task since the screws were thoroughly glued into the wood and the indents in their soft X-d heads started crumbling under torque, she'd been unable to spring the lock's mechanism. Hastily, she replaced the plate, then went around to the boarded-up windows on the main floor, one by one, testing the edges of the plywood to see if they might be pried free. Unlikely, unless she could find a crowbar somewhere. When she'd leaned on the screwdriver for leverage, it bent under the stress.

The door to the cellar was in the kitchen, propped open with a tub of plant nutrient. Bright white light emanated up through the slats in the narrow steps that led down into the basement, illuminating Gerlinde's sock feet. She halted halfway down the stairs and considered running back up to the kitchen to put her shoes on, but she'd wasted too much time trying to pick the lock, and Buddy would be back soon. Based on the length of time they'd spent driving on gravel the night they'd arrived here, she figured she had at least an hour, twenty or thirty minutes travel time each way and another fifteen or twenty for Mr. Tran to prepare the takeout order. Hopefully he'd be in one of his chatty moods and take longer.

She stepped down onto the dirty cement floor of the cellar. The grow lamps, intense light deflected downward by white metal flanges, were suspended from bare ceiling joists on chains, and shone brightly over green plants in tanks that covered most of the floor. This crop was young, but would grow rapidly and be ready for harvesting in a matter of months, maybe weeks. So said Buddy, but he was hardly a horticulturist.

Gerlinde was certain the plants would have died by now if it had been up to either her or 122

Buddy to do more than baby-sit. Someone - their boss Bullet, she supposed, or Dex - had set up a self-timing system of lights. Buddy was charged with making sure that the tanks stayed wet in the sauna-like heat, and that the artificial daylight, on its accelerated circadian clock, switched itself on and off as intended. The whole basement room looked like a mad scientist's laboratory, and reminded Gerlinde of an old science fiction movie she'd seen, where sentient plant spores came down from Mars and possessed people's brains. The conditions here were hardly clinical, however, and the mouldy, cluttered space smelled like a swamp, the moist air as pungent as if a skunk had just sashayed through. A small fan whirred lazily and the rows of plants swayed gently from side to side, like blissed-out fans at a rock concert. She could hear their hushed breathing.

Gerlinde roused herself and rooted through stacks of empty plastic fertilizer buckets. Nothing. There was a pile of wires and hoses and spare light-shields on a shelving unit tucked into the shadows around the other side of the stairs, on the wall behind the ash box at the chimney-base. She went and rifled through the junk, and found nothing of interest except Buddy's blue plastic lighter, which she pocketed. Not a crowbar, but at least her search had turned up something useful. Maybe she could torch the place. Or singe off the rest of Buddy's hair. She permitted herself a nasty smirk, picturing him with that straw mop sizzled into a nerdy little fringe. She wouldn't do it, of course, but it was pleasant to think about such things. She had to amuse herself somehow.

Her stomach suddenly let out a long, snarling growl, a threatening roar, as if the thing in her belly had awoken from centuries of slumber and, ravening, shook off its chains, demanding meat. Automatically, Gerlinde, embarrassed, said Excuse me, then giggled. She felt stoned, like a giant sponge absorbing THC through every pore in her 123 skin. She must be stoned. What a stupid idea, anyhow, getting out. Where would she go, home? Her dad might let her off the hook, but the courts certainly wouldn't. She was just tripping and being paranoid about Leif. He wouldn't leave her with his idiot brother indefinitely.

Imagining all the various ways Leif might have been delayed, she was about to head upstairs to wait for Buddy to bring supper, when she noticed a door next to the shelves. Set flush against the paneled walls, this entrance was camouflaged with matching planks. The only thing that noticeably protruded was the hewn wooden handle, an elongated U shape placed vertically along the edge. Gerlinde wrapped her fingers around the smooth, curved wood and pulled. The door resisted and stuck. The moist environment had caused the wood to swell within the frame. She leaned back, leveraging her weight, and pulled hard with both hands. The door budged open a couple of inches.

She shook out her arms and took a breath, then stubbornly yanked on the handle again.

The door swung heavily open, grazing the poured-cement floor.

Over a half-foot thick, the door had originally been built to serve as insulation against the warmth of the house, and opened onto what must once have been the farm's cold cellar, where blocks of ice and perishables were stored. Gerlinde's grandmother had had such a cold pantry. When she was little, the day of the funeral tea, stout ladies smothering her in lavender-scented hugs and vowing to preserve the memory of her poor dear mother, Granny Maclntyre had sent her to the pantry for ajar of apricot jam.

Gerlinde had taken one look at the rows of canning jars, all the strange colours and odd textures muted and magnified against the glass, and burst into hysterical sobs. Granny

Mac, tut-tutting as she wiped the snot from Gerlinde's nose, had grabbed the jar of 124 preserves herself and ushered Gerlinde into the kitchen, and left her with a plate of raisin cookies and a glass of milk, saying, Compose yourself, girl.

It wasn't until much later she'd understood that the jars filled with pink and grey meaty things floating in greasy fluids held potted rabbit and pigs' feet, and not the embalmed remains of her mother. And that maybe her grandmother had actually said,

Gerl, meaning her name, and was less unsympathetic than she'd seemed at the time.

Gerlinde peered past the memory and into the dark beyond the door. Empty shelves, where such preserves would have been stored, lined the walls, and a strange object hunkered below these in the dimness. Gerlinde flicked the lighter, and pulled a string tied to a dangling chain, illuminating a bare ceiling bulb. An old chemical toilet, its plastic lid set on an ungainly metal base, squatted on a raised plywood platform at the center of the square little room. A previous occupant must have wanted an alternative to the outhouse in winter, in the days before the plumbing went in upstairs. On the floor, a tangled cotton string mop, grey with dirt, poked out from beneath a yellow tarp laid out against the length of the rear wall.

The front door opened and closed upstairs, the soft click and whoosh sounding oddly close, creating a weird echo in Gerlinde's head. Footsteps clumped heavily on the linoleum in the living room above, and then moved away toward the drying room, then echoed on into the kitchen. Buddy sounded like he weighed a ton, like a bull had gotten into the house. An auditory hallucination. Gerlinde listened to the steps go farther and farther away, as he went up the stairs into the attic room. There was a chain lock on the inside of the cold-cellar door, for privacy she supposed, and with this she quietly pulled the door to, leaving it slightly ajar so she could listen for Buddy's approach. He'd be sweating bricks right now, wondering where she was. She decided to wait until the little prick came downstairs looking for her, then jump out at just the right moment and scare the shit out of him. She giggled, imagining Buddy's stunned expression at her bursting suddenly upon him with a blood-curdling scream. She must time it just right, she thought, giggling nervously, as the slow, heavy scuffing of the shoes descending the stairs stropped and sharpened her nerves. She pulled the light switch and waited, all aquiver, in the dark. 126

CHAPTER 13

On Monday mornings the monks started working particularly early, to make up for the previous day of rest. The Sabbath was reserved for activities such as Lectio

Divina — solitary prayer and scriptural study -- and visiting housebound parishioners, and only the most necessary chores, such as feeding the animals or milking the six

Guernsey-cross dairy cows, were permitted. Anything else of particular urgency, such as getting in a crop before a storm, usually fell to the temporary hired hands who worked the crops and bunked each summer in the old farmhouse.

Today, Karl had been assigned by Bernard to assist Dean with finishing the fence repairs on the southeast quadrant of the property. On Saturday afternoon Harper's randy black bull had broken through yet again, and, trailing a strand of barbed-wire that was nastily wrapped around its hind hoof, it had come bellowing down to the monastery barnyards and gotten into a head-butting match with the Abbot's best bullock. The two had eventually ended up battling it out in the parking lot, with the bullock backed up against the blue van and a dent bashed into the door panels before Brother Bernard and the Abbot had succeeded in separating them with a fire hose. Wiry little Bernard, surprisingly spry for his sixty odd years, had deftly and bravely leapt in and jabbed the bull in its gleaming black haunch with a syringe full of potent animal tranquillizer. By the time Mike Harper had gotten over the hill with his truck to retrieve the beast, the red bullock had been penned and the black bull stood slavering docilely in a loading chute, blinking its red-rimmed eyes in mute confusion as the dust settled.

Right after breakfast, Karl and Dean rode up to the border in the Green Machine, parking it at the south-eastern edge of the main hayfield and then hauling by hand the new posts and two rolls of wire the final hundred yards in through the aspen thickets. 127

Dean had walked the line the day before and found where the bull had torn through, the wooded area obscuring the boundaries between the properties, just west of the ridge with the big tree on top of the miner's cave. When they reached the broken section they dropped the posts and wire on some flattened gooseberry bushes. There was a particular stench in the area that didn't smell of cattle. Karl nearly stepped on a large turd.

"Do you think there's a bear around here somewhere?" he asked, looking at the the cairn of toppling black scat.

Dean eyed him with something akin to pity as he took a long swig from his water bottle. "There's always a bear around."

When he grimaced to swallow, the dark gap where his front teeth had once been briefly showed. Now somewhere into his thirties, he must have been a handsome man at an earlier point in his life. Vestiges of a particular appeal — a chiselled cleft chin and long-lashed blue eyes, a straight-stanced swagger -- clung to him like the grandeur of a once proud city whose ruin had come swiftly, defacing the facades but leaving the structures stubbornly standing, plumbing and elevators somehow intact and functioning amidst the blight. Karl was both fascinated and repelled by the man, sensing that behind the blown-out windows there was something salvageable in the locked, abandoned rooms.

Dean wasn't interested, however, in being picked over for treasure or otherwise explored and repaired. As Karl had been told by a perplexed Brother Anthony, he'd made his off-limits status quite clear to all the "do-gooders" at the abbey. Leave the gentrification to the gents, he'd said, waving away the Abbot's offers of counselling and retraining. I'm just here to work. The other field hands came and disappeared again at the end of each season, some of them from Quebec and Alberta, some up from Mexico. 128

Dean was a regular now. He worked the monastery fields every summer, drying out and fattening up on the three free squares a day - more meat in a week than the soup line serves all year — then spent the winter on the coast, drinking his pay and living in whatever mouldy flophouse room or ditch-pitched tent hotel he could find. He harboured a particular bitterness for their American neighbours, and his animosity seemed to thrive on the monastery's proximity to the boundary line.

Karl had never seen the border marker before, a stout silver-painted obelisk about the height of a regular fence post. On the north side, facing him, were raised letters spelling Canada; the south side read United States of America. A number, 127, was embossed on the remaining two sides. As Karl was kneeling to examine the words, an arc of rust-coloured urine sailed past his head and splashed between the wires into a cluster of tiger lilies growing in the shade on the American side.

Dean sighed with satisfaction as he leaned forward and carefully shook the last few drops onto enemy soil. "The sons of bitches want everything out of us for nothing - they drive down the prices on our wood, our cattle, next they'll be getting our oil for free.

Well, I don't got a problem with giving 'em our water. Provided it comes out of the proper tap."

He zipped up and turned to the problem at hand, restoring the necessary barriers to free trade between ungovernable animals. The Abbot wanted "that black bastard" kept out before he fertilized any of more of the purebred Hereford heifers with tainted seed.

"You ever fenced before?" Dean asked, pulling out a pouch of Drum and rolling a cigarette. 129

The answer, of course, was no. After they cleared away the damaged section of fence — tangled wire and crudely quartered logs punk with rot ~ Dean showed Karl how to dig fresh holes with a post-holer. They sunk the new posts, machine-peeled aspen poles, across the breach, replacing a bit extra at either end for good measure, all told a thirty-foot line. Karl hammered u-shaped anchors over the wires as Dean winched each strand taut. By the time they were done, Karl's muscles felt stringy and weak, still sore from pulling bales. He'd be sore tomorrow. One thing about Dean, he knew how to work.

They were cleaning up well in time for noon bell.

"Pork chops for lunch today," said Dean. "Not missing that."

As Karl collected and stacked the old posts, he stopped and looked east down the mountain along the border. The fence cut visibly along the hillside through the trees, like the part-line dividing a head of hair. The land looked pretty much the same on either side.

The tin roof of a barn glinted in the distance. Karl wondered if that was part of Harper's place. O'Hara Lake, not much more than a big pond, spread over into the neighbouring

American ranch. The cattle fence continued on through the lake, although the water itself could not be divided or contained.

Something flashed and caught Karl's eye on the Canadian side. He squinted and made out the corner of a dwelling tucked out of view beyond a stand of nearby pine- trees. The sun struck and glimmered against an old-fashioned TV antenna mounted on the roof.

He called back to Dean. "Who lives there?"

Dean, carrying the post-holer and a coil of wire, trudged over reluctantly. He looked toward where Karl was pointing. "Nobody," he said. "Let's go. I don't want to miss lunch." "But," persisted Karl. "Whose ranch is it? Is that the O'Hara place?"

Dean shook his head dismissively. "Used to be. It don't belong to nobody now.

He turned abruptly and headed off to where they'd parked the Green Machine, effectively closing the subject. Karl heard him muttering, "Nobody you'd want to know." 131

CHAPTER 14

Karl threw his robe on over his jeans and hurried in to prayers. From his pew across the centre aisle, Eli threw him a significant glance during the reading of that day's proverb. Karl nodded slightly. He could feel the Mole looking at him, his judgemental gaze boring holes in the back of Karl's head. As they filed out to the refectory, Eli brushed past Karl and bumped him with his elbow without acknowledging him openly.

Despite Jerome's surveillance, Karl couldn't put off meeting with Eli for long.

After lunch - pork chops smothered in canned pineapple, tough but tasty as Dean had predicted, especially after a long morning of hard work - Karl returned to his room and hung his robe on the hook behind the door. He pulled a slipper from beneath the bed and took something from the toe, which he tucked into the pocket of his jeans. The door creaked open behind him. Brother Jerome stood watching, hands behind his back in his customary pose.

"My goodness. Saying your prayers again. Or were you just checking for dust bunnies?"

Karl reddened. He wondered how much Jerome had seen. "Just tying my shoe."

Jerome looked out the window with a knowing smirk. "Good thinking. No flies on you. You wouldn't want anything to trip you up, now, would you?"

His insinuations were becoming insufferable. Karl felt required to say something.

"I'm not sure what you mean. Is — is there some problem with my performance, Brother

Jerome?"

Jerome hacked out a delighted, nasty laugh. "No, lad. No. Your performance is spot on." He giggled again, as if Karl had made a joke and it was just too good. "Och, you are a card, aren't you?" 132

He wiped his moustache and when he removed his hand the smirk had been

smoothed away. "No. You are meeting the basic requirements of your novitiate thus far.

Or so it would appear." He fixed Karl in his stony glare. "Is there anything you'd like to

say?"

Karl swallowed. "I — I don't think so. What — what did you want to talk about?"

Jerome succeeded in looking gratified and wounded all at once. "I had hoped,

Brother Karl, that you would be forthright with me. I am your novice master, and if there's a problem, you should feel free to confide in me."

Karl hesitated. If confiding in Jerome was the only way out of this mess with

Eli.... there was no way. He cleared his throat. "I ~ things are fine. I'm very happy here."

Jerome shook his head and sighed. "I expect you to give your next confession some hard consideration. God can do nothing for those who are unwilling to face the cesspools of their own souls." With this parting wisdom, he swished out into the hall and lightly slammed the door.

Karl was still shaking with adrenaline when he stopped in at the Quonset hut on his way to the afternoon's work at the barn. He checked around nervously before slipping inside.

Eli was waiting. "Did you get it?" he asked impatiently.

"Yes," hissed Karl. He pulled the bag from his pants. In the dark the night before he hadn't been able to see how the plastic was stamped with a red bulldog wearing a spiked chain and a snarl. In daylight the cartoonish image looked like a warning sign.

Beware of Dog. Of "dog" spelled backwards. As usual, Brother Jerome had gotten to him. Karl's hands trembled noticeably as he handed it over. 133

"What's with you?" said Eli, observing Karl's perturbed state. "Scared you're going to get busted for possession?" he asked, laughing derisively.

Karl wished he could confide in him. Explain that Jerome was on to them, at least about their sexual relationship --former sexual relationship, he corrected himself ~ and giving him the gears, turning his novitiate into boot-camp from hell. He started tearing at his fingernail with his teeth and stopped himself. His nails were a ragged mess, bitten to the quick. He was on tenterhooks these days, waiting for something to happen.

Brother Jerome had something up his sleeve, Karl could sense it.

But he couldn't say anything about this to Eli. Eli would just order him to leave, intent on covering his own pimply white ass. Karl realized with a shock that he hated

Eli. Hated him and, in some sick way, loved him too.

Eli was holding the bag up to the light in the window and squishing the contents between forefinger and thumb. "This is it?" he asked Karl, looking at him in disappointment. "One measly bud?"

Karl shrugged. "That's all he had on him. He said to contact some other guy if she - if we — need more."

"What guy?" demanded Eli. "Did you get a number, at least? I am seriously doubting that this little pinch is going to get me in. You know the old bag hates me."

"Maybe so," said Karl. "But she's pretty hard up." He'd seen the letter from the federal government when he went through Elva's recycle bin. They were demanding back payments owing on several shipments of medical-grade marijuana, and threatening to garnish her disability pension. She was several grand in debt. And Karl knew from a few things she'd intimated, while under the influence, that booze was a poor substitute 134 for cannabis and that she was looking for a new source. Obliquely, she'd been asking him for help.

"Give me the guy's number," Eli said. "We may need to try more than once."

"Fine," Karl said, rolling up the sleeve of his work shirt. The numbers were slightly smudged, but still legible. He hadn't showered since yesterday afternoon before

Vespers. Eli raised a brow as he eyed the writing on Karl's wrist, but transcribed the number into a little black notepad without comment. As Eli wrote, Karl saw diagrams of the tree sculptures. Most of the sketches were messily crossed out. Eli saw him looking and flipped the notepad shut as soon as he finished writing.

Karl buttoned his cuff. "Leif said not to bug the guy. You maybe should let me do the calling if need be."

Eli put the black book and his pen in the pocket of his overalls, and crossed his arms. "Hmmm. Well, if things don't transpire as intended I may have occasion to return alone, Mat." He drew an invisible little circle on the floor with his steel-capped toe.

"Just who is this drug-lord that you are hoarding all to yourself?"

Karl shook his head in resignation. "Whatever. Go ahead. I don't know. Some guy named Bullet."

Eli's head snapped up upon hearing the name. "Oh," he said. He paused.

Apparently Eli knew of the guy. Karl wasn't about to ask how.

"Were you able to get the other stuff?"

Karl nodded. "It was easy enough, after that whole thing with the bulls." Brother

Bernard had given him the keys to the veterinary supply cabinet.

"Good. Good work, man." said Eli. He went over to the work- table and started to fiddle with a plumbing elbow. "Meet me right after supper. The Abbot gave us 135 permission to go and pick up a grain-seeder north of town. We can stop by their place on the way home."

"Are you sure," asked Karl, giving it a final half-hearted try, "Are you sure you want to go through with this? You" - We, he thought - "could get caught."

Eli looked at him in minor amazement. "No chance of that. Besides, who's going to believe anything that a deadbeat alcoholic, and a teenage slut who makes pornographic videos of herself, might have to say against the word of two monks?"

He patted Karl on the shoulder. "Don't go soft on me, now, Mat."

"Oh," he called out after Karl as he left, "remember to wear your robe."

At the barn, Karl entered Beauty's stall. He stood next to her and leaned his throbbing temple against her smooth dark shoulder, letting the trembling of his nerves subside in the animal's calming presence. Karl understood now the purpose of Eli's inviting him to watch. He needed a dupe, a witness as an alibi. There was no getting out of it. And that sadistic snoop Jerome would most certainly note Karl's absence from the monastery in the evening hours.

Karl ran his palm distractedly up and down the length of Beauty's thick brush cut mane, which was slowly growing back after the scalp job. She was looking pretty butch for a mare. Karl rubbed the stubble on his own jaw. The treatments were starting to take effect.

The sweet, mouldy straw made him suddenly sneeze.

"Don't take this the wrong way," Karl whispered to the horse, "but I have to say that compared to most, your shit smells pretty good."

Beauty snorted softly and fixed him forgivingly in her gentle liquid gaze. Karl hugged her neck then picked up the shovel and began mucking out the neighbouring 136

stall. The overworked muscles of his arms felt like twice-chewed gum. The afternoon was just starting, and already it had been a very long day. 137

CHAPTER 15

Gerlinde's sense of smell had been heightened of late, although more acutely in the earliest months. Not long after that first time with Leif — almost immediately after, in fact, a thought which now gave her pause ~ her nose had begun telling her things she didn't want to know. That her father's feet, for instance, housed decaying colonies of invisible creatures who dumped toxic pollutants and left their dead unburied. That

Buddy failed to change his shorts on a regular basis, although that was no surprise. That the bad-tempered cook at the monastery hadn't washed the chicken grease from her calloused hands before slicing the loaves of bread. Faint traces of frog tainted the well water, and the slightest whiff of chicken shit persisted in boiled eggs.

Fortunately, the worst of that stage had passed, yet here, in the cold-pantry, the dark intensified everything, returning Gerlinde to that supernatural nauseous state of being able to taste every pong and reek that wafted her way. In the insulated coolness of the space, beneath the top-notes of dry dust, and the infiltrating eddies of mould and skunk from the hydroponic tanks in the area beyond, she sniffed something rotten, a sweetish, rank bouquet, like beef jerky improperly cured.

A small shiver set itself going over her skin. It seemed she had been hiding on

Buddy a long time, yet his slow, thunking footsteps traveling around the main floor, and then up, and then down, the attic stairs, must in actuality have completed the trip in a few brief minutes. A heavy clump on the top of the basement stairs caused her jaw to tighten and her muscles to clench, and shut down the quivering in her bones. Light seeped in around the edge of door, slightly ajar, and as the footsteps descended another step, and then another, blocks of shadow scissored through the brightness. Like a cat hunkering for its mouse, Gerlinde prepared herself to leap. Buddy's cell-phone suddenly rang, playing the Boss's signature tune. Gerlinde sucked her breath slowly through her nostrils, letting out an exasperated sigh. The incredibly poor timing of this call took the edge off her whole enterprise. When the

Saints Come Marching In would frighten Buddy more than any of her hell-raising bellows ever would.

She was about to shove the door open, when the chipper electronic ringing ceased, and an unfamiliar voice said "Hello."

It had to be Dex. He was early. Very carefully, she eased her hand down the surface of the door, hoping the dangling chain wouldn't scrape against it, and listened.

"They're not here. His car's gone."

A long pause. "Buddy's an idiot, but he's not stupid. There's got to be a good reason. She can't be far, her runners are still in the kitchen."

Another pause, followed by laughter. "Yeah, doesn't look like she uses them for jogging. That's grade A heifer, alright."

The skin on Gerlinde's face went tight and hot.

The footsteps moved away from the stairs and the voice receded. "The water- babies are coming along nicely. And it looks like they've got the deliverables near ready to go."

Mumbled uh-huh 's, yeses, and noes, as the footsteps again drew nearer and clomped back up the stairs.

"Not a problem. She skipped a court appearance and her dad told the cops she ran away."

He stopped directly opposite the door. More laughing. On the other end, a loud nasty snort, like a fart sucked backward through a hose. "Gizmo'11 put her on a diet alright. You heard that one yet? Crystal-Lite?" Pause.

"Yeah, yeah. Nice red hair."

He stopped at the top of the stairs. "I'll let you know when she shows up. In the meantime I might as well cull the males in the shed. Buddy wanted to do it but he can't tell balls from bananas."

There was a tiny beep, and then diminishing footsteps and the sound of the front door opening and closing, in real time. Gerlinde experienced an unblinkered plummet, and was instantly sober, stone cold certain of what she'd heard. She didn't know who

Gizmo was, but she could imagine what was in store.

Two years ago, a girl in her class, Stephanie Utterson, had run off with a mysterious older boyfriend. Nobody had actually ever seen him, and Gerlinde had doubted his existence when Stephanie had bragged about him giving her gifts. She figured Stephanie had spent her own ill-begotten Four-H money to buy the rhinestone jean-skirt and red leather Come-Fuck-Me-Shoes she kept stashed in her locker with her curling iron.

At first, when Stephanie disappeared, and the whole school, teachers and parents and students alike, had started reassessing her previously unblemished character,

Gerlinde had been secretly pleased. Ever since the Grade 3 Christmas pageant, when

Stephanie had been given the role of the angel, dressed in a white satin gown and net wings and a gold garland halo, and Gerlinde had gotten stuck playing a shepherd, wearing her father's old bathrobe and a feedbag tied around her head, she'd envied

Stephanie bitterly. Everything came to her too easily. Stephanie's mom helped her through her homework every night and made lunch-bag sandwiches with happy faces cut into them, and her dad did all the grooming on her steers before the fairs. No wonder she got straight A's and blue ribbons. No wonder Miss Clark had said in the change- room after the pageant, Isn 't she just the most beautiful thing? Well, who wouldn't be, wearing a hand-tailored angel suit, Gerlinde had wanted to say.

Six months after she went missing, Stephanie was found in Vancouver, working

as a prostitute. The imaginary boyfriend had turned her out and introduced her to crack-

She was thirteen. Gerlinde, savouring Stephanie's fall from grace, had anticipated her

shame-faced return, and imagined how she would magnanimously welcome the prodigal back into the fold, believing it now possible to be friends. But Stephanie never showed at school again. Her parents sold up and moved back to Prince Albert.

At the moment, any irony in the memory lost its flavour. Gerlinde was, more than ever, well and truly fucked. She flicked on the lighter and found the string on the lamp. It would be easier to think if she could see. She tugged the door tight as it would go, in case Dex or Buddy came down and saw the light shining out around the frame, then, out of habit, put on the chain-lock. Now that she was stuck in here, she needed to pee. Badly. She always needed to pee these days, but fear made the urgency worse.

Gingerly, she raised the lid on the chemical toilet, wary of what might await in the bucket. There was no bucket, just the metal interior of the base. Even in these circumstances, it would hardly do to have it leak out in a puddle all over the floor. She peered inside. There was nothing, just a dark, empty hole. A cesspool, inside the house?

This was even more disgusting than a bucket. She hated outhouses. The flies, the feeling that rats or snakes or something worse could reach up and grab you, the stories of people drowning, or newly born babies dropped in. Typically, this privy was out of toilet paper.

She pulled down her jeans, and squatted over the rim, the edge of the raised wooden base beneath the toilet digging into the soles of her feet. She heaved a small sigh of 141 relief as her bladder emptied. The emptying seemed to go on and on, and as she waited nervously for it to end, she realized that the stream of urine seemed to fall for a very long time before splashing, and it didn't sound like it was landing on anything wet.

When she finished, stepping down and zipping up her pants as far as they would go, just before she put the lid down she peered again down the hole. There was no bottom visible, but something, a silvery line imbedded in the shadows, caught her eye.

It struck her as odd that the plywood base, the small throne-like dais upon which the toilet was anchored, looked relatively new.

She hunkered down and poked around the edges of the raised base with the screwdriver she'd been carrying around in her back pocket. Someone had gone to an awful lot of trouble to put this little platform beneath a John. At the rear of the toilet, there were heavy brass binges where the wood met the floor.

As she knelt to examine the hasps, the mop sticking out from the tarp caught her eye. Up close, the tangled white strands didn't look like string. They looked like hair.

Very slowly, she lifted back the tarp with the screwdriver, and clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle the terrified moan coming out. A man, recognizable as such by the goatish beard on his shrivelled chin, lay on the cement like a bundle of sticks dressed in denim and leather. Withered hands with long yellow fingernails dangled, scrawny as boiled chicken feet, from his cuffs. His mummified face reminded Gerlinde of dried apple carvings, wrinkled features caved in. The eyeless sockets beneath brows shrunken into an upturned gaze, and the grinning lips stretched away from blackened gums to reveal stumpy brown teeth, gave the thing a bemused, almost quizzical expression, as if he were finally getting the great joke that had been played upon him. 142

Despite the chill in the pantry, a feverish sweat formed on Gerlinde's skin. She spread her fingers over her lips, and breathed slowly through her mouth, fighting the urge to be sick. She kicked the tarp back into place with her toe, wishing she'd worn shoes. Frantically, she scrambled around to the front of the toilet and levered up the platform with the screwdriver, almost dropping the wood heavily on her fingers in her haste. She heard the toilet lid bang open as it tipped backward.

She was staring into a square, wood-framed opening that led straight down.

Along one side of the floor was a metal rod designed to hold the toilet base in a raised position, like the hood of a car. Struggling with the weight, Gerlinde hoisted the plywood up with one hand and attached the pole to a latch on the underside, bracing the platform open. Directly beneath her, a chain ladder with metal rungs disappeared into the darkness of a rough-hewn tunnel with walls of dark stony earth. Beside the ladder, a heavy chain with a huge grappling hook hung from a winch mounted on the bracing that framed the aperture.

Gerlinde sat back on her haunches, and looked at the chained pantry door. She could put everything back and leave this room as she'd found it, then go sit upstairs and continue trimming weed as if nothing had happened. She could try to escape from this

Gizmo creep once she got to whatever city they took her to. But Dex would figure it out.

He had searched through the whole house for her hiding spot. Everywhere but here. She knew too much now for them to ever let her go.

She stuck the screwdriver into her back pocket and turned and eased herself over the edge, the damp walls of the tunnel closing around her as her sock feet slipped against the ladder's round metal rungs. There was nowhere to go but down. CHAPTER 16

"This is nice," said Elva. She sounded slightly dubious, as if not herself entirely sold on the idea.

Pant cuffs rolled up below the knee, she was standing with her toes in the lake water at the edge of the public beach in Osoyoos, sipping cold Pabst from the can. On the gravel shore behind her the oxygen tank sat near her shins, a dog at heel waiting for the stick to be tossed upon the water. Elva gestured toward the calm surface with her beer can.

"The water's like bathwater," she said. "You should get in for a swim while you have the chance. The weather's going to change any day now."

From her vantage point at the picnic table, Aura, pulling a piece of crispy skin from the barbecued chicken they'd picked up at the supermarket, squinted sceptically at the lake.

"Aren't you supposed to wait half an hour after you eat or something?"

A wasp hovered insistently above the remains of the potato salad. She put the lid on the Styrofoam tub and wrapped the remains of the chicken in the tin-foil rotisserie bag, then walked down the grassy slope to the shore.

"It looks kind of weedy," she said.

Elva didn't answer. She was staring pensively across the lake's smooth surface toward the Indian reserve. The parched desert hills were neatly embroidered with row upon row of green vineyard grapes.

Aura knelt and placed her palms face down in the water, swishing them clean of chicken grease. The water felt soupy, a gritty warm broth.

"I feel stuffed," Aura said. "I must look like a pot-bellied pig." 144

"There's no one here to see you."

Aura kicked off her flip-flops and dipped her toes in, one foot at a time. Her feet were grimed with sweat and black dust and she hadn't been swimming all summer.

The other picnic tables were deserted. Two canvas tents were pitched under some spindly trees, cases of empties and plastic coolers and clothes strewn messily around, but the occupants appeared to be away, likely picking the last of the season's peaches at the small orchard next to the park. In another camping spot an elderly couple wearing shorts silently played cards beneath the canopy of their RV and listened to a talk show on a battery operated radio. A homeless man slept in the shade of the public restroom building, using his pack as a pillow. The only other people around were a pair of young mothers working on their tans while three children ran back and forth from their blankets to the water, screeching and giggling. A younger child, a downy-haired boy in a paper diaper, sat watching them play, juice from a neglected Popsicle dripping greenly down his arm. The last of the season's tourists were elsewhere, buying time on the clean white beaches belonging to the resorts.

"I guess I could go in in my underwear," Aura said, raising the skirt of her purple sarong above her white legs and wading in, "but I don't have a towel." The tepid water lapped ticklishly at the back of her knees, and the small rough stones beneath her feet gave way to murky sand as she went deeper.

"I'll get one out of the car," Elva offered, draining the dregs of her beer. The wheels of the oxygen tank scraped across the gravel.

It was a quiet Monday afternoon. They had come to the valley to shop for Aura's school supplies, and Elva had insisted on going down to Oroville to do the laundry.

While their clothes shrunk in the ancient industrial dryers they'd wandered the 145 disappointing shops of a generic strip mall. In my day, Elva had said, irritated by Aura's refusal to try on jeans at the JC Penny, in my day, my mother would buy each of us a new pair of Lee's and we 'd smuggle them back across the line in the laundry bag. Duty-free.

Which was exactly what they'd done with Elva's bourbon. After inspecting

Aura's learner's license and peering into the back seat at the plastic basket topped with neatly folded bed-sheets, the border guard took a final involuntary glance at the oxygen tank on the floor beside Elva and waved them straight through. Aura found the whole operation tedious and nerve-wracking but now there would be clean underwear in her dresser. And Elva had a month's supply of cheap American booze.

Aura balled up her sarong and tossed it onto the grass, then waded in, raising her arms and rising on tiptoe as the deepening water cooled uncomfortably against her skin.

She could feel various hard objects embedded in the sand beneath her feet. As soon as she was deep enough to swim, she steeled herself and plunged forward, face tilted up out of the water, feet scissoring in little splashes, her peculiar combined technique of dog- paddle and breaststroke both ineffective and inelegant. She had never properly learned how to swim. Puffing, she rolled onto her back and floated, closing her eyes against the bright blaze of the sun. Her long hair floated softly around her shoulders, and the slight weight of the chain around her waist tugged at her bellybutton. Submerged, her ears amplified the harsh sound of her breath, the beating of blood in her veins, and muffled the squeals of the children on the beach and the buzz of speedboats across the lake.

Aura concentrated on staying still, submitting to the brackish green water, trusting it to hold her up. Whenever the sun on her face started to burn, she flipped over and paddled along perpendicular to the shore before rolling onto her back to rest again.

There was a raft, but she didn't want to venture out that far, nor did she want to stay in the shallows, where she might inadvertently touch bottom. The lake looked clean on the surface, and at the shore where she could look down and see the magnified stones, but here where it was deep enough to swim the bottom was murky, and the depths beyond her comfort zone were populated with lurking unknowns.

If she were silly enough to let such fears take hold. She gave over instead to the elements, basking in sun and the buoyant sensation of being alone. Her mind drifted freely until her thoughts snagged on her usual fantasy about Father Eli. His glassy green eyes, the full lips beneath the groomed moustache, the thick tanned muscles of his arms.

She had run away with him, they were sharing their first intimacies in a highway motel.

He was waiting for her on the bed with the sheets folded back, his hands sliding up her waist as she slowly opened her towel...

Something slimy stroked her back. Slick unseen ropes flicked ticklishly against her arms and legs. Aura flipped over and found herself over her head amongst a patch of weeds, treading water in a cold spot. Something tangled and wrapped itself around her ankle. She kicked against its grip, trying to pull free.

Then suddenly she was panicking, splashing and sinking and snorting, trying to gather enough breath for a yell that came out as a faint gargled scream. She went under and opened her eyes to a terror of dark green snakes swaying amidst motes of swirling light, her breath rising from her in a rush of small glass balls. She forced herself up through the surface, splashing and fighting, before going down again. The rope around her ankle pulled tighter as she broke surface again. She felt hands slapping her arms, heard a voice call out Stop! as she blindly grabbed for something to hold onto, clutching and scraping at air. Suddenly something punched her sharply between the shoulder blades, knocking the last bit of breath from her lungs. She sank back stunned and exhausted into the water, and found herself resting against a body, a man's forearm supporting her chin.

Stop fighting, panted the voice behind her ear, lay still!

There was no energy left in her for fighting. She felt the weeds release her shin, their final slithering caresses as the man towed her away with long slow kicks. Her heels bumped against soft mushy sand, and a few seconds later she was dragged into the shallows. She rolled over on her hands and knees, retching up dirty water.

Her rescuer helped her struggle to the shore and knelt beside her, cradling her head as she lay on the stony beach coughing. When she was at last able to breath, he helped her into a sitting position, and she leaned forward, folding her arms over her bent knees and resting her forehead. The man thumped her gently on the back as she hacked water from her lungs.

"Hope I didn't kick you too hard," he said, "but it was the only way I could get near you. I thought you were going to pull me down."

Aura slowly raised her head and wiped mucous from the corner of her eye. She found herself staring into the face of the man who had been sleeping beside the public toilets. Wiry grey hair hung around his face in dripping clumps, and on his forehead between his thick brows was a hand-inked tattoo, a small imperfect circle encompassing a smudged looking symbol shaped like a horseshoe with the open-end pointing down.

He was staring at her intently with lake-water gray eyes. She had the feeling she'd seen him before.

"Okay?"

Aura nodded and started to speak, which set her coughing. The man stood and glanced over toward the driveway that ran down to the parking lot several hundred yards off. A police cruiser was rolling down the hill, making its slow daily rounds.

"Just a minute," he said, eyes on the police car. He loped across the worn lawn to collect his backpack and boots, sodden jeans drooping low on his hip-bones. When he returned he was buttoning on a checked cowboy shirt. Above the harsh tang of bile in the back of her nostrils, Aura caught the sharp reek of weeks-old stale sweat.

"I gotta get going," he said. "I've wore out my welcome in this town."

"Wait," she croaked. Her throat felt raw. "Who ...?"

"Never mind," he said. "You're welcome." He pulled a small jar out of his pack and handed it to her. "Here," he said, pointing to her waist, "that chain you're wearing, rub some of this on."

Aura glanced down at her belly and noticed a small streamer of algae draped around the metal. Her cotton underpants had gone saggy with the water and her nipples showed through the wet transparent fabric of her bra.

"What... what for?" she whispered hoarsely, hurriedly plucking the algae off the chain and huddling her arms around her knees, trying to cover herself.

"Protection," he said. He hoisted the pack onto his shoulders. The tip of a large white feather poked jauntily out the drawstring opening. "Your grandma could use some too."

Elva was trundling hurriedly across the lawn, carrying a striped towel and another can of beer.

"She's not..." coughed Aura, but the stranger was already gone, hopping over a guard rail onto the highway that ran past the lake. 149

"Who was that lowlife you were talking to?" Elva demanded, wheezing slightly with exertion as she bent to pass Aura the towel. "Isn't he one of those hired geeks from the monastery?"

"That guy just saved her life," piped up one of the young mothers. She'd come running down to see what was going on as soon as she'd gotten her bikini top tied back up. She was carrying the tot whose Popsicle drippings were now set on his cherubic pale hands like verdigris stains on a statue. The other children filed up solemnly. The eldest, a girl, thoughtfully offered Aura her red plastic pail.

"Here, you can use this if you need to sick up again."

Aura huddled shivering beneath her towel. She shook her head and forced a faint smile.

"Okay, Tiffany, leave the poor girl alone," said the woman, reaching the child back by the shoulder. "Maybe you should take her to the clinic," she said to Elva. "She might have breathed some pretty bad germs into her lungs. The E-Coli count's pretty high this year."

Elva's hand was clamped over her mouth, her eyes widening as she absorbed and assimilated the varying sources of information. Hesitantly, she placed her hand on

Aura's shoulder. "Oh, Aura, honey," she uttered. "Oh my god."

Aura, to her intense mortification and relief, started to cry. 150

CHAPTER 17

The hillside across the highway filled the picture window of the mobile home like a painting, a naive bucolic depiction in umber and celadon pastel. A few hours of evening light remained, imbuing the scene with a rich golden glow.

From where she lay on the sofa, her damp gritty hair hanging over the button- tufted armrest, the top of a power pole intruded into the frame and marred Aura's view.

She squinted and made the pole and its wooden bar laden with glass transformers into a cross, the long shadow of which lay diagonally across the corner of a field where freshly swathed green hay lay drying in curving, labyrinthine rows. She had read somewhere that the patterns of medieval labyrinths were intuitively modeled upon the cerebral layers of the human brain, their designs mimicking cross sections of grey matter. How had their makers known such patterns existed? An unpleasant image involving vivisection, based on some other obscure fact about explorers eating the brains of live monkeys, their skulls lopped off like the tops of boiled eggs, intruded on her line of contemplation.

It was too hot to think clearly. The trailer was humid with the dregs of the day's heat and only the faintest of breezes filtered through the mesh screen door. Aura listlessly combed her fingers through the tangled knots in her hair. The faintly rotten pong of lake-water clung to her skin.

Elva had finished putting away the last of the clean linens as soon as they got home, before stocking the pantry cupboard with bourbon and cracking the first bottle.

She gathered up Aura's empty tea-cup and the untouched plate of crackers and orange chedder. Sliced from the hardened end of the block, the cheese was waxy and stale.

"Are you sure you don't want something to eat?" 151

Aura shook her head and closed her eyes. "I still feel sort of gross."

"You really should've let me take you to the clinic," Elva said, shaking her head.

"God knows what sort of germs were in that water."

"Do you mind?" said Aura, and sat up. "What would they have done, anyways?"

"Pump your stomach maybe. Give you oxygen."

Elva automatically touched the clear plastic tubing in her nose then quickly lowered her hand. She threw the crackers and cheese into the garbage under the sink.

"Well," she said. "No doubt you'll be fine."

There was a moment of awkward silence. Things had shifted between them somehow. Since they had moved to Bridesville, a mutual resentment had been festering unchecked, a seeping green wound sweating damply beneath the grubby plastic Band-

Aid of just getting by. So suddenly exposed to the air, nerve ends itched. Driving home from the lake, Elva had had to pull over. Weeping, she put her hand over Aura's and told her she couldn't bear to lose her too. Aura had felt glad, and yet somehow resistant to

Elva's sudden neediness. It was embarrassing.

Elva picked up the jar sitting on the kitchen table and made a show of sniffing its contents. She let out a short incredulous laugh.

"This is bear grease," she said. "Eddie used to get it from one of his relatives who was big on native healing. Supposedly to stop him going bald. Then he ends up dying from a brain tumour."

"Yeah, I know," said Aura, concealing her disappointment. Bear grease? Not myrrh? Not magical honey extracted from the combs of extinct purple bees?

"You've told me that story before. The brain tumour part." At least a hundred times. 152

"It's not a story," said Elva. She screwed the lid back on the jar and wiped her hands on her shorts.

Aura caught the jar in mid-air, its stopped velocity stinging her palms. If she'd missed, the jar would have cracked like a rock against the window's single pane.

"What?" Elva said, folding a tea-towel, "I pitched for senior girls softball at

Midway. Bet you didn't know that."

She sat down and settled into a comfortable slump. "So your hero thinks we damsels are in need of protection. Just what is it you're supposed to do with this gunk?

Dab it behind your ears and the insides of your elbows then spin around three times chanting mumbo jumbo?"

Aura reddened. She had done pretty much just that. As soon as they had gotten home and she'd gone in to her room to change into dry clothes, she'd taken off the belly chain and lightly dabbed some of the mysterious ointment along its length, buffing the residue off with a paper serviette leftover from the picnic. Before putting the chain back on, she'd laid it carefully on the floor, and standing within its tenuous circle, repeated a truncated version of the Lord's Prayer three times in a row. Feeling oddly compelled to execute the ritual instantly, Aura, raised on condensed novels and powdered milk, felt her plea to be delivered from evil both essential and sufficient.

"He didn't give exact instructions."

"Well, maybe if he didn't have to run away from the police he'd have more time for casting spells. I know, I know," Elva added, seeing Aura's expression. "I shouldn't bitch. I'm grateful."

She sighed heavily. "Your big sister could have used someone like him around." 153

"That was a long time ago," said Aura, so quietly she wasn't sure Elva heard.

Elva topped up her tumbler from a fresh bottle of bourbon on the TV tray at her elbow and settled back in the armchair in a slackening heap. This early in the evening and already Elva's cheeks had attained a purplish glow, her lower lip drooping at the corners as her face sagged with the effects of the alcohol.

Aura perched on the edge of the sofa, poised for flight.

"Maybe," she ventured, clearing her throat before going on, "maybe drinking so much is making you look old before your time. He thought you were my grandmother."

Elva stiffened and sat upright, her head quavering slightly on her shoulders, a nearly invisible tremor. She carefully set her drink down and stared narrowly out the window behind Aura's head.

"Sorry," Aura said. "I mean. I shouldn't have told you that. I just think..." She fidgeted uncomfortably. "Maybe he thought so because you had me when you were, like, older...." she offered.

Elva shook her head and left the room. Several long minutes later she returned, holding out a piece of paper.

"Here," she said, handing the page to Aura. She sat back down, watching Aura as she studied it.

A microfiche copy of an old newspaper clipping, the article enumerated the events of the annual Rock Creek Fall Fair. In the top left corner was a photo of an attractive young woman in a cowboy hat astride a gleaming bay horse with a star on its forehead and a ribbon attached to its bridle. Smiling confidently into the camera, the woman wore a pageant sash, the lettering partially obscured by her arm casually resting on the pommel of the saddle. 154

Beauty and the Barrel Race, was the article headline. The caption below the photo read, Taking first place in Ladies' Barrels, a crowd-pleasing competitive event, local rodeo favourite Miss Bridesville (mounted on Dancer) proves she's a queen both on and off the ground.

Aura peered at the photo and looked up at Elva. "This was youl"

Elva nodded. "I was pregnant with Wendy then, though I didn't know it at the time. I was just starting Grade 12. Back when Eddie was working the Rock Mountain spread for the Hare Krishnas -" she paused and took a scornful, puckered sip "- useless as tits on a bull, that crew."

"This is awesome. You look like an actress. Or a model."

"Say that again sounding slightly less amazed and I'll consider it a compliment."

"Sorry," said Aura. "I didn't mean it like that."

"Whatever." Elva pressed the tumbler against her flushed cheeks and forehead.

The ice cubes tinkled and scraped, a small monotonous music. "It's Christly humid tonight. Flap that door, will you, honey, and get a breeze going in here."

Aura fanned the front door back and forth. Mosquitoes hovered hungrily on the other side of the screen. The air in the trailer was sweltering. A night too hot for sleep.

"What happened to the original photo? This image is totally vintage. I could get it framed."

"Who knows where it is. Who cares," said Elva, wearily dismissing her lost youth along with a bit of lint she flicked from the front of her sleeveless denim shirt.

"That's not the point."

She stared dolefully out at the hills. Aura turned sideways on the sofa and leaned her chin on her hand, the newspaper article resting on her bare knee. The sun was 155 slipping down behind the gray mountains and the sky was richly stained with smokey pinks and golds. The evening suddenly felt very quiet, as if the town were empty except for the two of them. No dog barking in the junkman's yard, no passing semi-truck whining into low gear down the long slow grade of the nearby highway. Even the crickets had fallen silent, as if an unlikely rain were on the way. The local ranchers had been working hard to get the hay in, trying to beat thunderstorms predicted for the weekend.

Elva spoke again. "So what if before you know it you're a wrinkly old bag with a shitload of unfinished business, like anyone else. I just came across that bit of memorabilia when I was researching some other stuff in the town archives —"

"What stuff?" Aura swivelled around to face Elva.

"Local history. Land titles. Police reports and such." Remembering, Elva returned to her earlier theme. "That's not the point though. The point is time."

"What do you mean, time?"

"It runs out. Like the disability check at the end of the month. Then drags its ass until the beginning of the next. There's either too much or too little. As that photo amply illustrates, I've used up a goodly share of mine. I may not have much time left."

Carefully, Aura folded the microfiche page and opened one the books piled on the floor beside the sofa. Government of British Columbia Registry of Brands. A list of ranch owners' names and locations, each accompanied by a simple visual image of the approved symbol to be seared as a stamp of ownership into the hides of their livestock.

The Flying Arrow, the Lazy L, the Double-Hook. Aura placed the folded paper between the pages and set the book on the coffee table. 156

"I think you may have a bit too much time on your hands?" Aura jerked her head sideways toward the jumble of books.

Elva sighed, a small weary gust of breath that barely raised her slumped

shoulders.

"Don't squinch up your face like that. If the wind changes it'll stay that way."

Aura rolled her eyes and stood. "Look, can we talk about this time stuff tomorrow? It's been a long day. I need to go lie down and read or something."

Elva grabbed Aura's forearm as she passed. Her grip was surprisingly strong.

"Sit down and listen for once. There's some things you should know."

Aura hesitated then obeyed, plunking herself heavily back on the sofa. There were light red marks on her skin. Elva topped up her glass and frowned with concentration as she screwed the cap on the bottle, its threads slipping uncooperatively.

"Eddie had a deal in the offing with those Krishnas when he died. Then the

Diocese bought the place and built the monashtery."

She paused and squeezed her lips sideways between her thumb and bent forefinger, pulling the words into their proper shapes before continuing.

"A number of things happened. The upshot of it all's that there's a 40-acre parcel on the border that by rights is mine."

"So?" Aura was sulkily rubbing her wrist. "What does this have to do with me? I don't care about some bit of useless land."

Elva bristled. "There's nothing useless about property. Especially when you have none. I know you don't give a rat's ass about it now. But you will one day, you will, when your world goes to hell in a handbasbket." 157

She paused and wet her lips with bourbon. "You'll get sick of staring at four walls in a mouldy basement suite in some suburb in PoCo, living on rations of canned food. You'll start wishing you had a place where you could see sky out the windows and plant a radish to call your own."

Aura stared at her. She and Elva were accustomed to living in dark basement suites and eating food bank macaroni. For the last few years, certainly, that was what

Aura had known. Elva was sounding like one of those survivalists who wrote recipe books on cooking squirrel.

"Besides, it's good land. There's a spring fed well. Maybe we could start up a bottled water business like that Hendricks guy over in Sidley. He's done okay for himself."

Aura raised her eyebrows sceptically.

"There's an old gold mine on it. There might still be some ore down there. If nothing else we could trade it for a down payment on a condo. Or keep it and sell off the timber and use the money for you to go to university one day."

Aura drummed her fingers on the coffee table. "Well, if it's worth money," she said in a moment, "and it's legally yours, maybe you should try and get it back."

"Thank you," said Elva, throwing up her hands. "I do plan to get it back. Why do you think we've been sitting it out in this sardine can all summer? I didn't move back to

Bridesville for the social life."

"That's for sure." Aura said. "I don't see you out there in a crinoline, square- dancing with Tom- What' s-His-Name and the rest of those veiny-legged old ladies."

"He's like a rooster," said Elva, irritably "that thing he does with his head." She demonstrated, bobbing her neck. 158

Aura laughed, a wild unexpected howl of mirth bubbling up from her belly. Elva started laughing too, both of them snorting and giggling and stamping their feet, until geysers of tears spouted from their glistening eyes and ran down their faces.

"Oh," moaned Elva, clutching her stomach until the joke wore out.

A long time had passed since they had laughed together about anything. Aura wiped her eyes and then rubbed her wrist again. The two of them went quiet.

"So," said Elva, sobering. "So I've been looking for proof that it was Ed's land."

Aura got a glass of water at the sink. She took a long drink as she eyed Elva's pile of research.

"Do you mean like a cattle brand or a mining claim or something?"

"Exactly," said Elva, slicing her palm through the air and down against her thigh for emphasis. "I need evidence, some sign to prove to the Diocese that the land was

Eddie's. But there's nothing. It was handshake deal, so far as I know, and I haven't found any record of title or deed. I did get a copy of the survey showing where the parcel sits. But that doesn't prove that the intent of the Krishnas' application to section off that forty was so they could give it to Ed."

The sky in the window was deepening, dotted faintly with nascent stars among the remaining wisps of pink. Aura switched on the standing lamp beside the sofa and sat down inside its circle of yellow light.

She frowned, eyes narrowing as something occurred to her. "Is this why you've been letting that weirdo hang around here?"

"Yep," Elva nodded. "When Brere Karl started stopping by, doing his weekly round of community outreach or whatever he calls it, I realized it might help, having one of the monks onside. He still hasn't been able to get the Abbot to meet with me - 159

"If he's even tried!"

"Well, it's not his fault. I haven't told him what it's about yet. I'm figuring though, I figure, since he wants to be my new best friend, he might be willing to do a little sleuthing through the monastery files on my behalf. There must be something on record up there about them purchasing the land that would help my case - I'm pretty sure there is, why else won't the Abbot hear me out?"

"I wouldn't trust that mealy-mouthed little wimp as far as I could throw him," said Aura. "Karl, I mean." She folded her arms in front of her indignantly. "Why didn't you tell me about this before?"

Elva shrugged. "You're the kid. You shouldn't have to worry about such matters.

I thought it would be easier to get it all sorted out, I guess. And then, when we came back here.. .there were things in my way I didn't expect."

"I'll go up there and search through their files!" offered Aura. "I can sneak in when they're all in chapel -"

"No," said Elva flatly. "This isn't some Nancy Drew mystery story. It's not safe for you up there."

"What's the worst that could happen?" scoffed Aura. "If the Abbot caught me he'd make me say ten Hail Mary's and muck out a barn or something. He's totally soft onjuvies."

"Oh, is that so? How'd you know that?" Her tone was accusatory. The alcohol in her rose like a tide, reddening her cheeks.

Aura looked away guiltily. "Just something that guy Leif said. Look, just let me do it. I promise I won't get caught." Elva, settling her gaze back into her tumbler, shook her head. "No. It's a dangerous plaish."

"What do you mean?" asked Aura. "They're monks, for goodness sakes!"

Elva ignored the question, musing to herself. "That might juss work," she was muttering, "a little tid-bit of information to dangle over Paul's head." She refocused on

Aura with some difficulty.

"Plan B," she announced, plonking her drink on the table. "If nothing else works,

I've got another card to play. That pompous ass thinks he can blow me off forever but I know something he doesn't."

"What?" asked Aura, growing irritated. "What's the big deal? Everyone knows about Brother Gerald already."

Elva pinched her lips together until they disappeared, then let them out again.

She chewed on the bottom lip. "Oh Christ. Why am I telling you this?"

She rubbed her hand wearily over her jaw, deciding, as Aura watched from inside her impatient young face.

"How well do you remember your sister?" she asked, at last.

"Wendy?" said Aura. "Not very well. I remember her giving me a bath in a pink plastic tub and making quack quack noises with that rubber duck I used to have. I remember thinking she seemed kind of silly. Why?"

"That's sad," said Elva. "That makes me sad." Her eyes maudlin pools shining in the dim light's glow.

"It's not my fault," said Aura. "It's not my fault she died. I don't remember

Eddie either but you don't seem to get sad about that." 161

"But you never knew him. Wendy and I left here six months before you were born. Eddie was already gone."

"Well, I wish I would have known my dad. That makes me sad. He sounds like a

cool guy."

Elva averted her gaze. Staring into her lap, she shook her head. "Your father wasn't the man I've made him out to be."

Aura felt the sweat on her neck chilling. She shivered, the hair on her arms rising

despite the mobile home's suffocating heat.

"There's some things," said Elva. "There's things you should know."

The valve on the oxygen tank clicking out the seconds, steady as a metronome.

"What are you talking about?" Aura said, feeling suddenly nauseous. The rotten vegetation taste from the lake rose up and flooded beneath her tongue.

There came a soft rattling knock on the screen door. Aura and Elva turned their heads in unison. Brother Karl's face hung there, pressed against the mesh, a pixilated blonde and pink blur, enveloped by the darkness at his back. There was no knowing just how long he had been standing there, watching. 162

CHAPTER 18

After vespers, Karl and Eli skipped dinner and headed straight to the Quonset hut, wearing jeans beneath their black robes. Eli pulled his habit over his head and handed it to Karl, who folded the cloth neatly and placed it atop his own robe in a large paper bag.

Eli hastily gathered some tools. Outside, Eli set the tools in the box of the old red truck and then opened the passenger door from the inside for Karl, who climbed in and set the paper bag between them on the cracked leather bench. Karl, who used the monastery van for his weekly medical appointments in Osoyoos, had never been inside the truck. The cab smelled of motor oil and stale sawdust, and something older, familiar, that Karl couldn't name. A museum on wheels. Eli swore softly under his breath as he primed the choke, the engine coughing and sputtering into silence again and once again, before firing on the third turn of the key.

They put-putted down the circular drive beside the outbuildings, slowly passing the squat monastic enclosure and the attached refectory. Karl stared ahead at the barn as they passed the old farmhouse with its odd yellow windows, willing Brother Jerome to be inside, with the others, eating their Monday evening meal. Soggy perogies and canned saurkraut, likely, or undercooked spaghetti with meatballs puny and dry as sheep turds. Jerome would be furious at him for skipping dinner, thought Karl. Ethel's meals were punishments in themselves, nearly as good for the novice's spiritual constitution as

Jerome's lamented gruel.

As they rounded the turn by the barn, bumping over the broken wooden cattle guard, Karl involuntarily turned and looked back. Brother Jerome was striding along the path from the enclosure toward the parking lot, black skirts swirling, deformed face twisted with rage. Karl felt like a disobedient child, a teenaged girl sneaking off to the 163 drive-in movies with the local delinquent against her father's orders. A vision of Jerome,

waiting up drunk at the kitchen table and unbuckling his belt to administer a whipping,

made Karl giggle, a giddy girlish squeal taught with nerves.

"What's funny?" asked Eli, glancing over.

"Nothing," answered Karl.

They emerged from the trees and Eli ground the stick shift into low as they began their descent along the narrow dirt road sliced into the steep slopes of Rock Mountain.

Neither spoke. Eli had been tense and preoccupied all through Vespers. He tried to mask it, but Karl could tell Eli was nervous. And excited. Like an actor feeling performance

anxiety on the opening night of a play with his first starring role.

Of his bit in the drama, Karl himself felt sick. He wanted it over. His stomach lurched as the truck bumped over the ruts and gopher holes. With whispering strokes, the tall weeds growing up in the middle of the road brushed against the vehicle's undercarriage, slapping insistently at the plywood floor beneath his feet. Dust billowed up behind the tires and hung in the air behind them like a trail of smoke. In the cleft of the valley below, the highway curving past Bridesville glimmered in the heat, a thin grey snake. Karl got out and opened the silver gate.

As they rounded the slough nestled at the foot of the mountain, a red-winged black bird perching on a bulrush flew up into the air, revealing the vivid scarlet patches beneath its glossy wings. Through his open window Karl heard a scrap of the bird's shrill warbling song, the sound so clear and pure and brief he wanted to collect it somehow, use the piercing notes to pin down the moment and make permanent the lazy heat, the bright metallic sky, the late summer scent of alfalfa drying in the terraced fields. 164

The truck rattled up the gravel slope behind the town, the backs of the little houses with their overflowing garbage bins and abandoned cars made squalid by the sunlight.

Eli rolled to a stop at the highway. He waited, turn signal flashing, until a large truck carrying a load of timber had hurtled past, on the way downhill to the mill at

Midway. Eli pulled out and turned left onto the highway, heading up the long grade toward Sidley.

"It's up there," he said eventually, peering beneath the sun-visor toward an old farmstead situated on the ridge of a bald plateau.

They turned right off the highway onto a gravel lane. A cluster of faded wood buildings sat on the corner of the two roads. JESUS SAVES was painted in large white letters on the side of a leaning weathered shed that faced the oncoming traffic from

Osoyoos.

The turnoff to the farm was marked with a wooden sign hanging on chains from a metal standard: Miracle Springs, the sign read, the words arcing in an optimistic curve above a brown and blue painting, a woodcut style outline of Moses knocking his staff upon a boulder, a small froth of water bubbling forth from a cleft in the rock.

The farmhouse appeared to be abandoned, but a man wearing a casual white linen shirt waited in the yard, leaning against a silver Porsche Bauxter. Eli parked beside the car and the monks stepped out of the truck.

"That's quite the machine," said the man, sticking his cigar in his mouth and shaking first Eli's and then Karl's hands. He wore a large onyx ring on his third finger, and a heavy gold chain around his neck that gleamed brightly against his tan.

"Yeah," said Eli. "Well, so's that." 165

The man glanced back at the Porsche and shrugged, a smile crinkling his overly browned skin. The sparse hair at his forehead was dyed and sprouted from his scalp in plugs like the artificial tresses of an old plastic doll. He nodded and scuffed at a clump of grass with toe of his leather sandal.

"True enough," he agreed. "True enough. Well, the water business is doing okay.

Going gangbusters, actually. We're building a new bottling plant in Vancouver."

"You trucking the water out to the coast?" asked Eli.

The man nodded again. "Yes. As you can likely tell, we're not working the land here - haven't for several years now—just renting pasture. You might mention that to the Abbot, if he's looking for grazing."

"Will do," said Eli. "So what's the story on the machinery?"

"Like I said on the phone, the bigger items are going to auction but there's some smaller pieces lying around I'm willing to let go cheap."

"I'm interested in the grain-drill," said Eli. "Just the box."

"Oh," said the man, pondering. "I hadn't reckoned on parting it out. But sure, why not? I doubt the feeders are working on it anyhow."

He pointed up to a lone pine tree marking the crest of the rise behind the house.

A heavy platinum watch hung loosely around his wrist.

"It's sitting up there. Go take a look-see. If you want just the seed bin you can have it for a coupla hundred bucks."

"Two hundred," said Eli. He looked at Karl. "What do you think?'"

Karl was staring at the highway, watching the cars passing through. Everyone going somewhere, heading toward something. He pictured himself standing on the side of the road with his thumb out. 166

"Brother Karl?" Eli said.

"Gee," he said, catching Eli's look. The night just starting and he'd missed his first cue.

"That's a bit steep. I'm not sure the Abbot is going to be pleased with that."

"You take fifty?" ventured Eli.

"Well," said the man, tucking in his chin and tapping the ash from his cigar with the tip of his manicured pinkie. "That's significantly lower than I'd normally expect. But seeing how you are men of the cloth, call it eighty-five and we got a deal."

Eli reached for his wallet and dug out a fresh twenty, some tens, and a dog-eared five-dollar bill. He counted out the rest in pocket change. He and the man shook hands, then Eli and Karl headed up the hill as soon as Eli had collected the tool bag from the back of the truck.

The man stood looking after them as he finished smoking, then dropped the cigar on the driveway and rubbed it beneath his foot. He got into his car and drove off. As

Karl trudged up the hill beside Eli, he turned his head now and then toward the highway.

The sun glinted pink on the Porsche's silver roof as the car glided out of sight, heading west.

The lone jack pine stood out black against the pink and gold sky, the sun already slipping away behind the silvery ridge of mountains in the west. A heap of field rocks was piled around the base of the tree. As Karl and Eli approached, a striped chipmunk ran out from the rocks and scampered up the trunk, chattering anxiously.

The grain-drill sat on the hill at a slight angle, a hulking red entity resting on flat black wheels and tilted forward on its long hitch-rod. The discs that opened the soil to receive the seed had settled into the ground, a marriage of dirt and metal, tall grasses growing up around the chassis. Eli kicked one of the airless tires, and raised the lid on the faded red box. The hinges creaked. Empty husks were spread in a thin papery layer on the bottom, and a soft white bundle of fibre and straw sat in the corner. Karl reached in and touched it carefully with the tip of his finger.

"Don't worry," said Eli. "The mice are long gone. You won't get bitten."

"That's not what I'm worried about," said Karl. "I'm just glad we're not disturbing the nest."

Eli snorted. "Whatever you say. Didn't know you had a soft spot for rodents."

He selected a wrench from his canvas bag and started working the bolts on the end of the box.

Karl wanted to say something more. They hadn't yet spoken of what they were doing, where the evening was heading.

"What will you use it for?" asked Karl.

Eli stood a moment, assessing the machine.

"The Tree of Life piece," he said. "As a symbol of fertility, maybe. Or of death.

The end of agrarian culture as we know it? I'm not sure yet how I'll incorporate this artifact into the sculpture, but its purpose will reveal itself as I work."

What crap, Karl thought. What utter crap. They may as well be castrating pigs as dismantling rusty junk that was only going to sit gathering dust. The seeder was just an excuse to get out of the monastery so Eli could attend to the other thing.

"Give me that blowtorch, will you," Eli said, ignoring Karl's pointed silence and wiping drops of sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. 168

Karl, following Eli's instructions, trained the blue flame on the metal as Eli

worked the bolts free. The task was more difficult than they had expected, and Eli cursed

impatiently as he struggled to dismantle the machine.

When they were finished, Eli slung the tool bag over his shoulder and together they lifted the box free. The wide metal container, about six feet long, was heavier

empty than Karl had expected, as if the air inside had acquired its own peculiar weight.

By now the sun had all but disappeared behind the hills.

"We should hurry," Karl said, acquiescing to the hour. "We're running out of time."

"I'll go in front," offered Eli, cupping the bottom of the box with his arms behind him and starting down the hill. Karl following like a pallbearer, holding up his end. CHAPTER 19

When they pulled off the highway and onto Main Street, only a faint wash of light remained, the hills on either side of Bridesville sleeping black silhouettes. Eli cut the engine and the truck rolled of its own momentum into a patch of shadow beneath the big tree by Elva's trailer.

Using the penlight on his keychain, Eli shone a narrow beam into the glovebox, shuffling through insurance papers and bits of string until he found some packaged hand-wipes. He tore the tinfoil open with his teeth and passed one to Karl. Karl wiped the dust from his hands and neck, the lemon-scented cleanser slightly stinging his skin.

"Your chin is dirty," said Eli, shining the flashlight in Karl's eyes and then giving his own face a quick inspection in the rear-view mirror.

Karl smoothed the quickly drying towellette down over his cheeks, bristly with stubble, the uneven new growth he shaved off every few days as he waited for his beard to fill in. He took the folded robes from the paper bag and handed Eli his, then they both got out, and standing on either side of the truck, its doors still open, pulled the cassocks over their heads.

Eli was taking a while, and Karl realized he was removing his sandals. The sound of unzipping, then Eli leaning forward into the cab and tossing first his jeans, and then his underwear, onto the seat. Grinning at Karl, his teeth a fleeting white snarl in the dusk. He heard Eli grunting as he bent to buckle his shoes.

Karl clicked his door handle shut, making as little noise as he could, and went around to the driver's side and waited, already sweating inside the heavy black cotton.

When he had finished changing, Eli reached under the seat and pulled out a small leather case, not much bigger than a shaving kit. "Got the backup?" he whispered.

Karl frowned impatiently and patted his cassock pocket in reply.

Eli nodded. "Okay, let's do it."

They walked across the dehydrated lawn, past the picture window that framed the living room. Elva sat slumped in a floral armchair, Aura on the sofa, the back of her head leaning against the lace doily draped over it. Frozen in lamplight, the two of them static as characters in a soap opera in the final few frames of a scene.

As Karl and Eli neared the steps around the side of the trailer, Elva, blurred but visible through the screen door, raised a glass to her mouth and missed.

"She's loaded," whispered Eli with barely suppressed buoyancy.

They mounted the steps and Eli ducked into the side of the landing, gesturing for

Karl to go first.

Aura was speaking, her voice full of challenge. Karl listened, waiting, as the women's voices floated out, uncontained, on the current of warm evening air.

Clearing his throat at a pause in their conversation, he knocked softly on the narrow edge of the door. Arguing, they didn't hear. Absorbing Eli's palpable urgency, he knocked again.

This time Aura leaned forward and looked, Elva turning at the same time, to notice him standing there on the other side of the screen. Both of them staring.

"Forgive me for interrupting, " said Karl, poking his head around the edge of the door. "Is this a bad time?"

"Brother Karl. Well, speak of the devil," said Elva, squinting shrewdly over the rim of her tumbler. "Come in. I've juss this minute been telling Aura what a great help you are." 171

Karl pulled back the door and stepped through, and neat as a bullet dropping into

an empty chamber Eli fell smoothly into place behind him, crossing the threshold before the door could swing closed. He sidled around Karl and stood slightly in front, holding

the little briefcase before him with both hands. A gold cross was embossed on the burgundy leather.

"Good evening, ladies," he said smoothly, nodding formally to Elva then bestowing a warm smile upon Aura.

Aura's eyes widened and she folded into a bashful hunch, putting her hand up

into her tangled hair and pulling it over her face.

"Hi," she said.

Elva sat up sharply in her chair and set her tumbler down.

"Whatever you're selling, we don't want it," she said, looking disdainfully at

Eli's case. "We have a toilet brush already."

Aura gasped. The room went very still.

Karl, stammering slightly, stepped forward. "Father. Father Eli, very...very kindly, has come here at my request. He can offer counselling. Or, or hear your

Confession. And administer the Holy Communion, if you wish."

"I'd rather drink piss," said Elva, emanating rage like a furnace.

Eli's neck was flushed, his voice calm and even. "I see you've found a substitute you enjoy equally well." He gestured toward the bottle of Wild Turkey.

"Brother Karl has expressed to me his concern for your health. We would like to assist you in finding a more suitable way to mediate your condition."

"Hah!" Elva sneered. "What, are you gonna pray for me? You. Praying. That's rich." 172

Eli pressed his lips together and breathed out slowly through his nose. He glanced over at Aura on the couch, watching wide-eyed with the tips of her fingers resting over her parted mouth.

"Indeed, Elva," he said. "I agree that prayer is a powerful healer. But sometimes more immediate and earthly remedies are required. Brother Karl has informed me of your need."

At that, he reached into his cassock pocket and pulled out the tiny bag of marijuana. He leaned forward and placed it like an offering on the coffee table, next to

Aura's jar of grease.

"What's that?" Elva scorned. "Dried lettuce?"

"No, actually," said Eli, briefly thrown from the script. He paused for a beat before recovering.

"This happens to be a regionally developed cannibis hybrid, blending the best pain relieving properties of both the Indica and Sativa strains."

His delivery was flawless, if a tad over-rehearsed.

What a bullshitter, thought Karl, marvelling as he watched. Amazingly, Elva looked like she was buying it. She leaned forward, peering at the bag.

"I can get more if this works for you," said Eli. The offer smacked of bribery.

He blew it, thought Karl. A smile tugged at his lips.

"Fuck you," said Elva. "You come in here and try and buy me off with a lousy gram of weed? Get the fuck outta my housh."

Eli's face went dark with suppressed fury.

"As you wish," he said coldly. "I will be in the truck, Brother Karl." He turned at the door, unable to resist delivering his parting line. "If you won't think about what you are doing to yourself, consider the effect your drinking is having on this girl."

"Get out!" shrieked Elva, rising from her chair and flinging the tumbler at the door as it swung shut. The glass hit the frame and shattered on the floor.

Aura rose from her seat, her eyes full of tears. "Jesus Christ, what is wrong with you?"

She hastily pulled on her flip-flops. "I can't take this shit anymore." She headed for the door, walking through glass.

"Come back here," said Elva. "Right now."

Aura turned and flipped her middle-finger up.

"Fuck you," she said.

"If you leave now don't bother coming back!" Elva yelled as the door slammed, again, and then fell back into her chair. Her hand shook visibly as she picked up the bottle and took a swig.

Karl assessed the room. "I'll get a broom," he said, cheerfully. CHAPTER 20

The light of the nearly full moon illuminated the surrounding hilltops and shone upon the cracked surface and crumbling edges of Main Street, transforming the tarmac into a silver tributary, a turgid creek running sluggishly through town.

When she reached the highway, Aura slowed and paced back and forth on the gravel shoulder, stopping every now and then to lean forward, palms on her knees, as she caught her breath. She stood and looked first west, then east, then west again. No headlights appeared on the summit, no sighing of air brakes heralded a semi gearing down on the long grade past town before crossing the bridge at the canyon and descending the hairpin twists into Rock Creek, then barrelling on through to Midway and beyond.

Aura turned back. There was no point standing there all night, sticking out her thumb for nothing. She really didn't want to run away. She just didn't want to go home.

As her adrenaline subsided, she became aware of something jabbing painfully up through the bottom of her left flip-flop at each step. She stopped beneath the streetlamp beside a turquoise cottage with a rose garden full of garden gnomes and faded plastic flamingos, and removing the shoe, held up her foot to inspect it, standing unsteadily on one leg in the middle of the road.

A shard of glass imbedded in the bottom of the spongy footwear had worked its way through and made a deep dent in the bottom of her sole. She limped across the street and sat on the steps of the boarded-up schoolhouse, grimacing as she rubbed the arch of her foot, the thin tender skin marked but not broken.

The street was empty except for the soft sound of voices and dishes clinking in a nearby sink. On the other side of the street, the light from Mrs. Blaine's television set 175 flickered from the annex on the post office. She would be watching her soaps, taped during the day while she sat on her tall stool at the front counter, knitting and chatting the ears off whoever stopped in, managing the meagre flow of mail.

Aura could go and knock there. And if she did? Child welfare would come and stick her in some overcrowded transition home populated with horny, bullying boys and acne ridden girls who'd steal her makeup then threaten to cut her face.

Into the quiet came a steady frantic huffing, and in a moment the junkman's three-legged husky shuffled around the corner of the school, nose to the ground. The animal raised its head and growled softly when it saw her.

"Nice dog," she said, holding out her fingers for him to sniff.

The dog lurched forward, hopping on front paws. When Aura reached to pat him on the head he attempted to insert his wet black snout between her knees, tail wagging, rear end wobbling precariously on the single back leg. Aura pushed the creature's head away, her hands sinking into the dirty ruff of fur around its neck.

"Beat it, gimpy," she said. "Get lost. Go. Go home."

The dog stared quizzically, its pale eyes transparent as those of something blind, then whined softly and resumed sniffing, following a trail that invisibly wound across the dark silent yards of the shabby houses.

Aura shivered. The air was still warm but she had on only a tank top and shorts.

Nor had she eaten since before going swimming. She suddenly felt very tired, and hungry, despite the sick pit of nerves in her stomach. There was nowhere to go to wait until Elva slept it off. Except the shed. She picked the piece of glass from the shoe and put it back on. 176

As she walked past the trailer she saw Karl through the window, opening cupboards in the kitchen. Elva was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he'd put her to bed and was making her a cup of tea. Or was looking for her stash of booze to pour down the sink. Aura hoped.

Beneath the big pine, Father Eli was waiting, leaning back against the truck. He must have seen her coming. She tugged at the back of her shorts and quickly ran a hand through her frizzy hair.

The monk said nothing, but watched expressionless, his arms folded, as she approached.

"So," she said, attempting a joke. "I think that went well."

"You're limping," he said. His voice flat and sullen.

As if he were angry with her.

Aura, remembering that Elva's tumbler had been aimed at him, heard her voice quaver as she answered.

"I stepped on some glass," she said. "Inside."

He raised his head, a slow half-nod. A reaction, rather than acknowledgement.

"Brother Karl's not come out," she observed.

Eli, faintly scowling, stared off into the middle distance. He glanced fleetingly at

Aura, then back at nothing. At length he spoke.

"That woman has got big problems," he said, as if to himself.

"Yes," agreed Aura, relieved. "It's gotten completely out of hand. Her drinking lately."

She cleared her throat. "Thank you," she offered. "For trying to help."

Eli shrugged, his lips pressed tight. 177

"Too bad it was a complete waste of my time," he said.

"I'm really sorry."

He didn't answer.

"I guess I'll just wait out in the shed," she said eventually. "Until the coast is clear."

"The shed?" asked Eli. He turned and looked at her, as if finally becoming aware of her presence. "What shed?"

She pointed into the dark, toward the rear of the property, where the earth fell away down the crumbling slope.

"Ah," said Father Eli, "Domesticity, gender. The usual weary themes." He seemed to have snapped out of his funk.

He was standing before Aura's workbench, examining her work-in-progress, a small figurative sculpture composed of disparate parts.

A gear-wheel from Elva's pilfered eggbeaters sat like a halo atop one of the whisks. Inside this featureless oblong head a white feather suspended on nylon fishing line. A pair of tarnished dinner forks hung at the sides like arms, tines bent into supplicating claws. On the figure's back, a tin can lid crimped in half served as a pair of serrated wings. An inverted tin funnel formed the skirt, the entire thing wired together with twist-ties.

"And what are you attempting to express?" he asked, tapping the metal skirt. "Is this a gesture toward repressed sexuality?"

He turned his gaze on her. His eyes, leached of colour in the dimness, glassy and cold. 178

Aura flushed. She shrugged, and looked down.

"Don't misunderstand me," said Eli chummily, taking a seat beside her in a folding lawn chair.

On the dirt floor beside him sat the mysterious valise. He crossed his legs comfortably and leaned forward on his knee. In her fantasies she had imagined having him here, inside her studio. Now, having him here for real was weird. He looked smaller, somehow, swallowed by his robes. In the light of the oil lamp, when he smiled, his large teeth looked yellow. The lines on his face, deepened by shadow, made him look quite old.

And he didn't like her work.

"I agree with your approach," he continued. "It's always a good idea to start small, both in concept and execution. Your technique is obviously crude - not your fault, since you don't have the necessary tools - but your vision is promising."

She looked up at him.

"Tell me what you were trying to say with this," he prompted, and sat back expectantly.

"I.. .she doesn't have a mouth. The feather is her thoughts."

He nodded encouragingly. "And? What do you call the piece?"

"Angel of the House Arrest." It was the first time she'd said the words aloud.

What a stupid title.

"I was thinking of doing a bunch of different angels --" she stopped herself from explaining further.

Like, how there's different types of Barbies? You know, Career Barbie, Teacher

Barbie, Hawaiian Holiday Barbie, that kind of thing? Only, I was thinking Angel of the Unwed Mom, Angel of the Failing Grades, Angel of Slow-wasting Death. Along those lines.

God. How dumb would that sound?

"Good," he said, "Good work. Bring her up to my shop at the monastery. I'll teach you how to weld and finesse your assembly."

"Cool," she said, trying not to beam with pleasure at the scant bit of praise.

Somehow he made such a visit sound possible, as if after that scene with Elva things were back to normal. Better than. She wished.

"Now," he said, leaning forward, "let me take a look at that foot." Awaiting her permission, his fingertips softly brushing the skin above her toes.

Aura felt a small shiver run up her spine at the gentleness of his touch. Acutely aware of her chipped black toenail polish, she hesitated, and then realized it would bring more attention to her embarrassment if she demurred.

"Okay," she said, kicking off her shoe.

He slid his hand around her heel and lifted it onto his lap. Flexing back her toes between both thumbs to expose the sole, he squinted in the dim light, his head tucked back and to the side.

"Kind of hard to see," he said, rubbing the bruised spot with his thumb. "Does that hurt?"

Aura winced slightly as she shook her head. "Not much."

"We need to get the blood circulating so this heals," said Eli, as he began massaging her foot. His hands working up, circling her ankle.

"You have beautiful legs," he said, assessing her with the same matter-of-fact tone he had used when critiquing her sculpture. "Have you considered becoming a 180 model?"

"No," she lied.

"Well, yeah, I guess, actually," she corrected herself, with a half-smile.

She felt all her tension ebbing away, her leg relaxing and then that warmth spreading upward with each stroke of Father Eli's palms.

"Beauty is a gift," said Eli, his voice caressing her, slow and patient as his hands.

"There's no need for shame. Tell me," he continued, "what are some of your fantasies?"

"How do you mean?"

"Do you like to be looked at?" he asked softly, concentrating on her foot. "It's okay, you can tell me. We all want to be admired. Nothing wrong with that."

He understood her so intimately. Aura felt herself talking, the words pouring out of her unstoppered mouth as if magically summoned by his sympathy.

I have thoughts, she was saying, I sometimes imagine myself being like one of those girls on the cover o/THRUST. My boobs hanging out of my shirt, my jeans undone with the top of my panties showing. Licking my lips and guys standing at the grocery store magazine rack seeing my photo and getting erections. Getting hard for me and I can't believe I am telling you this...

Suddenly, she wanted to pull her foot away. So close, Father Eli smelled like dirt.

Maybe it was her, a residue of sewage on her skin from the lake.

"I think I want to become a nun," she said, the spell broken. "Since I can't be a monk."

She withdrew her foot and replaced the flip-flop.

"Oh," said Eli. He leaned back into his corner and cupped his hands, fingers interlinked, in the bowl of his lap. His face in shadow unreadable. 181

"Well, then. Would you care to take Holy Communion?" As if he were offering her tea.

He reached down and tapped the side of the little leather case. "I have everything

I need right here."

"Sure," said Aura, cautiously. She didn't want him to get angry again. "Thank you. I'd like that. But, I'm not a Catholic."

"That's fine," said Eli, reverting to his professorial tone. "We practise open

Communion under certain circumstances, and if you feel you have a calling, I am happy to help you develop your relationship with God."

He rose and placed the leather case on the workbench.

"You'll have to move this," he said, indicating the sculpture.

Aura carefully shifted the tenuously held together angel, removing her to a shelf on the wall and balancing her beside an empty flowerpot.

Father Eli had covered the surface of the bench with a white linen cloth. He draped a long purple scarf around his neck, and then carefully laid out the contents of the case on the makeshift altar. He seemed to be following a particular order in placing these items, his movements rehearsed and automatic.

A silver chalice, a small silver plate. He unwrapped a piece of flat bread from a square of wax paper, a tiny brown loaf quilted in little squares, and set it on the plate.

Aura's stomach growled and she instantly crossed her hands atop her belly, but Father

Eli didn't seem to have heard. Unscrewing the silver lid from a glass bottle, he carefully swirled its contents, as if stirring up the essence of the amber liquid inside, and slowly poured the liquor into the cup. 182

Aura cleared her throat, uncertain whether to speak. "I thought it was supposed to be red wine," she said.

"At St. X we use our own mead for the Eucharist. Made from the honey harvested from Brother Stephen's bees. For Benedictines, the bee hive is a symbol of monastic life."

Father Eli put the glass bottle back in the case, empty, and turned to her.

"The colour of the wine doesn't matter," he explained. "Once consecrated, the liquid in the cup is the Blood of the Son. The bread becomes the Body. These gifts represent the sacrifice of innocence for us. Are you ready to renounce your sins and partake of His table?"

She nodded.

"Kneel," he said, "and I will prepare the Host."

Aura got down onto the floor, the dirt gritty beneath her bare knees, as Father Eli turned and began praying, the sleeves of his black robe draping back to reveal his calloused hands which hovered like a sorcerer's across the table, touching the objects set out before him, transforming them as he spoke. The unfamiliar words, delivered in a monotone, merged hypnotically in her ears, an incantory hum.

The metal angel stared mutely down upon them, watching from within her eyeless head. On an invisible thread the white feather, slowly twirling inside its cage.

"This thing?" asked Karl.

He was holding an odd little appliance he'd found next to the blender in a cupboard above the stove. 183

Elva raised herself up on one elbow. She had been lying on the sofa, a damp washcloth folded across her forehead. The cup of tea Karl had made was sitting on the coffee table before her.

"Yes," she said. "That's it. Bring it here. Oh, could you get the schissors ~ scissors ~ from the cutlery drawer?"

In the aftermath of the evening's unpleasantness, which had continued for some while after Karl and Elva were left alone, during which interlude Elva had called Karl a

"weaselly little buffoon," and accused him bringing "that scuzzball" into her home, Karl had resumed his toadying role, ministering to Elva's infirmities.

At one point, after he had emptied the dustpan of glass and taken the bursting rancid garbage bag outside, he was reminded of how Brother Anthony, in tending Father

Norbert and the other elderly monks, seemed to have grown into a vine that found its direction by clinging to an oak. Karl wondered who Anthony would be, without the aged and the ill to define him. Perhaps this was the purpose of "good works".

If so, then what had Karl himself become? One of those parasitic little fishes that feeds upon the shark? Here he was, as usual, doing Eli's dirty work. The cleanup rather, which was taking a rather long time. Well, Karl was already up the creek with the Mole. He might as well take some enjoyment from the thought of Eli pacing impatiently outside, stewing in his own juices now that his pathetic little plot had gone awry.

Elva took the scissors and the appliance, which she had called a vaporizer. She unwound the electrical cord from the implement's squat plastic base before setting it down on the coffee table, then lifted off its round glass dome, exposing the black heating element that sat in the center like a pedestal. 184

"Be a dear, and plug it in for me, will you? Down there, by the lamp."

She picked up the square zip-lock and squinted at the red bull-dog logo.

"I think I need glasses," she said, and pushing open the mouth of bag between finger and thumb, sniffed its contents.

"Where'd he get this shit, anyhow?" she asked, as she started snipping little bits from the bud and pushing the trimmings into a tidy pile.

Karl shrugged. "Some guy."

"I'm sorry what I said earlier," she said, scraping the pile up with a piece of paper and tapping it onto the vaporizer's element. She replaced the glass dome and waited for the element to heat.

Karl shook his head. "It's okay, Elva. I'm sorry too. Like I said before, if I'd known there was bad blood between you, I never would have asked Father Eli to come."

Despite Karl's diplomatic persistence, Elva wouldn't say what her beef with Eli was based upon. She had merely extracted another promise from Karl that he would attempt to get the Abbot's ear on her behalf. Karl wondered also what that was all about, if that is what she and Aura had been talking about when he and Eli had arrived.

Smoke slowly filled the glass globe, reminding Karl of incense suffusing a censor in church.

"Wouldn't it be easier just to put it in a pipe and smoke it?" he asked.

Elva, bending to place her mouth over the vaporizer's long straw-like tube, looked at him as if he were an imbecile.

"With my lungs?" she said. " I can't tolerate harsh smoke. Besides," she said, tapping her oxygen tank, "light a match near me and kaboom." 185

She inhaled and sat back on the sofa, her thumb over the end of the tube, and gestured questioningly to Karl.

"Want a hit?"

He started to shake his head no, and felt absurdly prudish.

"Well, okay," he said, and, kneeling on the other side of the coffee-table, turned the base of the vaporizer around and took a long toke.

He sat back on his heels, holding his breath. The smoke was mild, more like breathing a sweet aroma than smoking pot. He grinned, reminded of the standard / didn 't inhale disclaimer. Moral grey ground. The thought left a footprint in his mind and another poured in, filling the impression like wet plaster at a television crime scene. / didn 't kill her I just did what he said he made me.

Karl got off his knees and stood up. He was thinking too much. It felt as if anyone could see inside his head. Elva sucked out the last of the swirling vapours and the dome cleared like a fortune-teller's glass bubble.

"Can you hook me up with more of this stuff?" she asked, with a weak cough.

She sat up on the sofa and waited.

It felt like a trick question. Karl bowed his head and folded his hands in front of him.

"It would help me stay off the sauce."

"I'll see what I can do."

"Thanks," she said. "I started off for medicinal purposes.. .we're all addicted to something. Right? "

She drifted off and stared slyly at her tea-cup. Her long black hair, streaked with silver, fell across her tanned face. She was a gypsy, full of charms and spells. 186

"But it's become something else," prompted Karl.

His feet were stuck to the floor. He was in her power. He resisted the urge to

look at his watch. Eli would be beyond furious.

"What?"

"Alcohol," said Karl. He didn't want to pursue this conversation any further. He needed to get out of there.

Elva's eyes widened.

"Right," she nodded. "Now Aura's run off and I'm shitting here sit-faced -

She made a harsh brief noise, somewhere between a laugh and a sob.

" ~ I mean, whatever."

"I'll go outside and look for her," Karl lied.

He didn't intend to find her. Whenever she saw him, Aura didn't bother to conceal the disgust Karl aroused in her. She had a way of staring at him with her upper lip wrinkled that was rude in the extreme. Tonight he had observed with perverse pleasure how mortified she'd been to be caught by visitors unprepared. In faded play- clothes, her face bare of makeup except for raccoonish smudges of leftover mascara beneath her eyes and pierced with infected metal stigmata, she was a scrawny waif.

Surely Eli had seen for himself that she was nothing but a child, a gangly pudding-faced girl with knobby knees. Even as a man Karl had better legs than hers.

"Are my car keys on the hook?" Elva asked suddenly. Her eyes, heavy lidded and bloodshot, were drooping shut.

They both turned to look. The keys were hanging on the little wooden peg over the counter along with her purse. 187

"She can't have gone far," said Karl. He uprooted his feet and took a few careful

steps backwards.

Elva nodded, or perhaps it was just a slight involuntary motion, her head sunk

down into the thin cradle of her shoulders.

"She'll cool off and come back. Remember, tomorrow's another day," said Karl,

shutting the door.

Eli wasn't in the truck. Karl looked in the driver's window and saw the pants and

underwear still crumpled on the front seat. He went to the edge of the lawn and looked

both ways along the street. At the far end the light of a television screen flickered

intermittently from the annex attached to the post office. The general store looked closed,

the windows dark. There were lights in some of the little houses along the way. Karl

walked up as far as the derelict elementary school and stopped.

This seemed like a place Aura might be. On the plywood board covering the hole

where the front window had been, teenagers had left typical amateurish graffiti in

variously coloured inks. Kevin + Juanita 4ever. A phone number accompanying an

advertisement for indecent and improbable acts by someone named Sheryl Genning.

Random swear words. Cartoonish lopsided drawings of a large nosed gnome and pair of

disembodied breasts. Scraps of dismantled poetry: Bear ruined choirs and Stopping by

the hood on a snowy evening. Scrawled across it all in crude red spray paint, foot high

letters reading SATAN RULES.

Something skittered across the boards inside the building. The ghosts of outgrown children, forever trapped inside with the dust and mice and rotting ceilings, the lines from last night's detention beginning "I will not'" inerasably chalked on Mrs.

White's blackboard. 188

The fine yellow hairs on Karl's arms stood up and his scalp tightened. He quickly turned and walked back the way he'd come, stopping when he reached Elva's place. There was nothing much beyond her house, just the junkyard with its heaps of scrap pressing up against the chain link fence that divided the property from the parking lot belonging to the community hall.

The faint sound of a bass line thudded from a stereo somewhere deep inside the junkman's ramshackle house. Karl suddenly wanted to go and knock on the door. He had a vision of himself, stepping inside past the heaps of bundled newspapers and empty pop bottles in the hallway, into the kitchen with the nonworking fridge that reeked of rotten fish and the cat perched on the stove licking the frying pan. Karl parking himself at the kitchen table dotted with dried ketchup, while the junkman, wearing a grubby cap, his silvery beard streaked with grease, dismantled the motor sitting in the middle of the linoleum floor, bitching all the time about his shiftless ex-wife. Karl nodding sympathetically, drinking his fifth beer, and all night the three of them ~ the junkman,

Karl, and the cat — listening to Bob Dylan and Led Zeppelin and Big Brother and the

Holding Company.

He went back to the truck and waited. A mosquito buzzing around his ears bit him on the forehead before he could slap it away. A chill was setting in, his high slipping away in layers. He was staring up toward Rock Mountain when he registered a faint square glow floating in the darkness, just above the little cliff that slid down behind the town toward the slough. He felt mildly cheated when he realized it was just a window. As he walked toward it, the outline of a small wooden building revealed itself against the moonlight that shone down from above the mountain. He could hear Eli's voice, a steady liturgical cant muffled within the shed's thin walls. Approaching 189 stealthily, heart hammering, Karl raised himself on tiptoe and peered through the smeared glass pane.

Dank yellow light from an oil lamp hung on a hook from the ceiling, revealing a mesh lawn chair in the far corner; in the foreground, very close to the window, the back of Eli's head, the blonde ponytail. Karl, craning his neck and peering down, could see a pair of bare heels upon the ground, protruding beyond the blackness of Eli's robes.

Someone kneeling in front of Eli. The heels tipped slowly over sideways and Eli's head dipped out of view, then reappeared a moment later with a pair of arms flung limply around his neck and over his shoulders. Aura's dark hair came into view, her head flopping against Eli's chest like that of a large lifeless doll. Eli shuffled her backwards in a drunken clumsy waltz, settling her into the saggy nylon bindings of the tipsy chair.

Bending over her, his body blocked whatever his hands were busily doing.

Karl sank back onto his heels and sagged on his shoulder against the rough boards. In the early stages of his transition, he'd briefly dated a transsexual woman named Eleanor he'd met at the clinic in Vancouver. She supported herself doing call work, and she liked to entertain Karl with stories about her Johns, laughing gaily at their follies as she made up her face before yet another date. One of her regulars, a wealthy business man who'd made his fortune on the manufacture of artificial hip implants, had commissioned a collection of sex dolls he called the sick bitches. Life-sized, made to order, the dolls were highly realistic, each weighing as much as a real woman, with human hair and lashes, realistic teeth, eyes and toenails, and fully articulated bendable joints, right down to the knuckles in the fingers. Complete with the requisite functional orifices, of course. Each mannequin was modeled after a notorious woman: Eva Braun,

Lizzie Borden. Matilda Dyck. Eleanor hadn't known about Karl's past, or she wouldn't 190 have told him the things the man did to the dolls as he replicated versions of their crimes upon their inert unresisting bodies, sometimes rupturing the expensive synthetic skin.

Or maybe Eleanor had known, it occurred to Karl now, as he peeked back into the window. Eli had removed his robe and his naked buttocks glowed whitely. He was pulling Aura's top off over her flopping head. Karl felt a certain sick exhilaration set in, as if he were caught in the same unending story, his own life plagiarized and happening beyond his control. He had been here, done this, before. Through the window, Eli's bearded face blurring into that of Matilda's lover, in his eyes the same manic glow.

In thrall to the familiar, a feeling he could only call love, however twisted it might be, Karl went around the side of the shed and opened the door.

Eli was annoyed rather than startled. "Where were you? Here, take her feet.

Help me get her on the bench."

Karl rubbed his fingers against his thumbs, hesitating, then bent and took hold of

Aura's thin ankles. Naked but for the unzipped shorts pulled halfway down her thin hips, she hung slumped between them. Eli was about to hoist her up onto the workbench when from behind them came a shuffling noise followed by a gasp.

Elva, her mouth open, stood in the open doorway, blinking and clutching the frame for support, oxygen tank at her heels.

"What...? Let ...her... go..." she said.

The words weak and wheezy, all her energy expended in absorbing the shock of what she was seeing.

"Fuck," said Eli. 191

Karl froze into a hunch, cradling the dead weight of the drugged girl's knees. Eli

lowered Aura back down on the floor, holding her beneath the armpits and balancing her

spine against his naked knees, his erection rapidly wilting.

Caught with his pants down, Karl thought, feeling a jolt of self-righteous

smugness. Eli's eyes were red with fury.

"Deal with this."

Karl released his burden and straightened up. He wanted to leave, walk out and

leave Eli standing there, pant-less and pathetic, his cock a shrivelled purple slug, his face a pinched bolt of impotent rage.

Instead, Karl felt in his pocket and pulled out a clean rag and unwrapped the little glass vial folded inside the cotton. With steady hands he opened the stopper and emptied the liquid onto the cloth, careful not to breathe, and, stepping deftly over to Elva, clapped the wet side of the fabric over her mouth and nose. She scrabbled frantically at his arm and Karl grabbed a handful of hair at the back of her head with his other hand, struggling to hold her steady. She was stronger than he'd thought. Her fingernails bit like teeth into the skin of Karl's wrist as she fought him. All the while staring straight into his soul, her pupils black pits of animal terror, until her eyes eventually closed. 192

BOOK III

And certainly the hate that now divided them was equal on each side. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 193

CHAPTER 21

The hot sun blaring in through the flimsy fabric hurt Aura's eyes when she forced herself to open them. Marooned in bed with one of the worst hangovers she'd ever experienced, mouth parched and stomach sickly ravenous, she raised herself up onto her elbows and immediately fell back onto the pillow. Dizzy, nauseous, head pounding. She slowly rolled over. The hamster slept inside his cage in a satisfied, ignorant ball. Aura felt an absurd envy. There was nothing worth waking up for today.

She desperately needed a drink of something. She slowly sat up on the crumpled bed and looked down at herself. She was still wearing her shorts, which were partially unzipped, and her khaki tank top, which was inside out, seams exposed. She wondered if she had been wearing it like that all yesterday evening, in front of Father Eli. Her foot hurt when she stood up. She zipped up her fly and limped into the kitchen. There was some orange juice left in the fridge, which she drank straight from the carton until it was empty.

Elva was passed out flat on her back on the sofa in the adjoining living room, long black hair flung across her face, which was tipped slightly to one side, facing into the kitchen. The half-empty bottle of bourbon was still on the TV tray beside the armchair. The vaporizer sat on the coffee table like a downed space-ship, its skunky after-burn lingering in the stuffy air.

Aura slid open a window to let in some air and then rooted quietly through the cupboard. When she found the bottle of Ibuprofen, she washed two pills down with a handful of water from the tap. Her stomach gurgled. She was starving. Leaning against the sticky counter, she ate blueberry yoghurt from a tub with a dubious expiry date. The 194 yogurt curdled in her gut but she forced herself to keep spooning it in, as if she hadn't eaten in years.

There was the picnic yesterday. Chicken and potato salad. Which she'd vomited back up on the beach. The thought of chicken skin now, the greasy goose-bump flabby bits, made her stomach involuntarily heave. She turned and stood over the sink, drool dripping from her lower lip.

And then nothing else until last night. Nothing but the meagre square Father Eli had broken from the communion loaf, a bland brown nourishment disintegrating on her salivating tongue.

"Be careful not to touch it with your teeth," he had instructed in the midst of the ritual, his voice a stage whisper. His hand resting firmly on top of her head as she knelt before him in the dirt.

"I've never done this before," she remembered herself saying at some point. The tasteless bread stirring a stranger, deeper hunger than the emptiness that rumbled in her belly.

Holy, holy holy... Do this in memory...Lord, lam not worthy...

His words and hers blurring together. The Body, and the Blood. Father Eli raising the silver chalice to his full, softly parted lips, then wiping the edge with a linen square and handing it to Aura, watching as she drank from the other side. The sweet amber mead warming her throat and her chest as it went down, lighting a fire deep inside.

Father Eli had encouraged her to swallow what remained in the cup, explaining afterward how the celebrants must consume the communion entirely, that it would be a blasphemy to waste the sacrament by spilling it out upon the unconsecrated earth. 195

Or something. It was all jumbled up now. That ugliness with Elva, and the freakish little monk Brother Karl watching smugly as Aura stormed out. The desolate emptiness of the street. Father Eli's unnerving changes of mood, and her own mixed-up revulsion and attraction as he sat stroking her foot. And then the synthetic solemnity of the ceremony that followed, as if she and Eli were playing at church, casting make- believe spells before the crude altar.

The rest of the night was a black hole, punctured with pieces of a weird vivid dream. Eli raising his cassock, exposing pale sturdy legs and a rigid penis that glistened purplishly in the lamplight. His hands roughly kneading her breasts, the nylon webbing of the lawn chair cutting into the backs of her thighs. An Alice down the rabbit hole sensation of shrinking and stretching, her body a rope of chewed gum.

She touched the zigzag stitching on the hem of her inside-out shirt and looked down at her knees, which bore faint traces of dust. What had she done? She didn't remember coming back into the house, or going to bed. The only other time she'd blacked out like this was after drinking a twenty-sixer of Demerara rum with her best friend Cynthia before a junior high dance. She'd woken up the next day on the shag carpet of a wood panelled rumpus room next to a snoring zit-faced boy she'd never seen before, her hair stiff with puke and her jeans damp with pee.

The communion mead must have been pretty high proof. On an empty stomach yet. Aura ran the tap and splashed her face, discreetly wiping it dry with a tea towel. She didn't want Elva to know she was hung over. She was still lying in the same prone position on the sofa, but she could be watching, spying through the strands of hair across her face, unwilling, as Aura was, to break the silence between them. Through the picture window above where Elva lay, Aura could see on the other side of the highway a green tractor crawling across the hillside, the baling machine it towed behind consuming the rows of raked hay. The field was dotted with rectangular bales, and the baler excreted another in its wake with a slow mechanical thunk. The distant droning noise from the tractor was the only sound in the room.

The hairs rose on the back of Aura's neck. The oxygen tank on the floor by the sofa was silent, its perpetual clicking absent. Aura came slowly around the counter that divided the kitchen from the living area, and stood looking at Elva.

"Hey," she said. Her voice came out husky and dry.

Elva didn't move. Her left arm was jammed between her body and the back of the sofa in a way that looked uncomfortable, if not painful. Her hand was mottled and blue, as if the way she were lying had cut off the blood supply. After a moment, Aura reached over and poked lightly at Elva's shoulder.

"Hey," she said again. Louder.

Steeling herself, half expecting Elva to jump up and yell boo, Aura lifted the curtain of hair away from her face. Elva's eyes, open wide, stared off into nothing. A thin line of clotted vomit ran from the side of her mouth and down under her chin.

Aura stepped back and bashed against the coffee table. Her head went numb, and her skin felt tight as if her skin was shrinking around her skull. Hyperventilating, her breath coming in brief panicky gasps, she staggered back into the kitchen and leaned over the sink, heaving.

"Okay," she said, aloud.

Okay. Think. 197

She went to her bedroom and, scattering bottles and jars across the surface of the dresser, found a compact of powdered blush, then returned, and hunkered down on her heels beside the sofa. Hands shaking, she fumbled open the compact and held the side with the mirror beneath Elva's nose. Her nostrils were caked at the edges with dried bile, and the skin around her mouth and nose looked scalded and raw.

Aura counted to thirty. Then, to be sure, she counted thirty again, pausing between each number to make the seconds long enough. An uncontrollable tremor had set itself going in her body. When she lifted the mirror away to look, she dropped the compact on the floor.

"Mom?" she asked the figure in front of her, sinking onto her knees on the hard linoleum floor. She touched Elva's bare shoulder, the unfamiliar tenderness of her own hands frightening her. The flesh was cold and hard. Aura started to cry.

"Mommy?"

There was no answer. Aura got up and went to the phone. 198

CHAPTER 22

Aura couldn't sleep. Mrs. White's snoring reverberated through the trailer. Every

once in a while the loud droning buzz would stop, and, just as Aura would start to unclench herself, there would be a revivifying snort and the torture would begin anew.

With mixed emotions, Aura realized there would likely be only another three or four more nights of this arrangement to endure. As soon as Elva's funeral was over, the authorities had no reason to allow Aura to stay in Bridesville on her own. A woman from the Ministry of Children and Families named Mandy, with whom Aura had spoken briefly on the phone - one of the many telephone calls initiated by Mrs. Blaine and Mrs.

White, who had joined forces with the kindly meant intention of chaperoning Aura through the rapidly changing phases of her orphan-hood as efficiently and painlessly as possible — this Mandy woman was in the process of arranging a flight from Vancouver to Toronto, and she was "having a little trouble with booking the tickets." She had told

Aura the airlines were "crazy busy" with the Labour Day weekend coming up, but Aura could hear the whitewash dripping from the paintbrush on the other end of the line. They were foisting her off on Elva's cousin Doreen, a woman who had no children of her own.

Because she didn't want any, Elva herself had said so. But that's where they were sending her. It was Doreen's — the reluctant do-gooder's — or a temporary receiving home.

Aura wished they would all just leave her alone. Mrs. White seemed hell bent on fattening her up. Aura didn't think she could bear the sight of another cabbage roll. Even the cook from the monastery had stopped by after her shift and dropped off a rubbery macaroni casserole, much of which went into the garbage untouched. Only a short while 199

had passed before the police and their medical expert had determined that Elva's death

was accidental and leave was given to proceed with the funeral.

Asphyxiation by aspiration, the woman cop with the blonde ponytail had

explained to Aura as she sat waiting in the back of the police cruiser that first morning, the metal grid between the front and back seats making the confined space a prison.

There were no handles inside the doors.

Aura started to feel panicky.

"Can we get out of here?" she said. "The sun's getting hot."

"Sure, of course," said the cop, her ponytail bobbing as she peered through the grid. The barrier between them reminded Aura of confession booth scenes on late night detective shows, where the murderer confesses through the grate to the priest. Just sitting there made her feel guilty. The cop had been encouraging Aura to help them with anything she might know about Elva's substance use. To help them understand what had happened. For instance, where had Elva gotten the marijuana?

Aura shrugged noncommittally and said she didn't know.

"The government? That's where she usually got it," she'd said, picking at her cuticles and staring out the window at Rock Mountain. She wasn't about to get Father

Eli involved in this, when he'd simply been trying to do Elva a favour. Elva had gotten drunk and choked to death on her own puke. That's all anyone needed to know. Aura watched the two male cops come out of the trailer, followed by the doctor, who seemed to be arguing about something with the one in plainclothes, indicating, as she spoke, the area between her upper lip and nose. The plainclothes cop, gesticulating with equal conviction, said something, which made the three of them look over at Aura waiting in the car. She blushed and turned away, feeling like a bare-assed monkey in a zoo. They had probably gone through her room. At least she and Elva had done the heaps of laundry the day before.

Not long after the ambulance had gone and the police had taken away their plastic bags containing the vaporizer and the remains of the marijuana, along with the nearly empty bottle of bourbon, Mrs. White had set to vacuuming and dusting and stripping Elva's bed.

"What's all this?" she asked Aura, puffing and flushed, as she took a breather from her hectic tidying and stood with her fat marbled arms fisted on her hips, dust rag in hand. She nudged the stack of books tucked around the end of the sofa with the toe of her Velcro fastened running shoe. Aura lay on the sofa, where Elva had lain, feeling too drained and shocked and deadened to move. The doctor had given her a little square envelope with several sedative pills, and she'd taken two.

"I'm keeping those," said Aura, without raising her head to look. "It was her research project. She has - " she paused and forced herself to say it properly, "she had a university degree, you know."

She felt suddenly defensive, as if this woman were judging Elva, rendering criticism with her mop and broom.

Mrs. White had raised her hands in polite surrender. "Oh, of course, dear. Of course. You should keep what was important to her. You are the best one to know."

The first night, after Mrs. White had fallen asleep on her makeshift bed on the sofa, Aura desperately wanted to get numb, but when she went tiptoeing through the trailer and looked in the kitchen where Elva had stored her fresh stock of booze, the cupboard was empty. 201

As soon as the funeral was over, she was hoping now, maybe then she could at

last find a way to be alone for just a few hours. She couldn't think, let alone cry, with these people she barely knew constantly hovering. Both the ceremony and the interment

were scheduled to take place in the morning, at a non-denominational church in Osoyoos, which Mrs. Blaine had recommended.

"You can't plant her at the monastery," Mrs. Blaine had said cantankerously, when Aura had suggested accepting the Abbot's offer of a plot, which had been relayed by a telephone caller named Brother Jerome. "She's not a Catholic. Besides," she'd added darkly, "Elva wouldn't have wanted that."

"Why not?" Aura asked quickly.

(Earlier, when pressed, Mrs. Blaine had not been able to provide a good reason, not that Aura could see, for dissuading Aura from her other idea, that of scattering

Elva's ashes on the monastery lands near the border. She'd muttered something about coyotes eating the unburnt bits of bone).

"Well, said Mrs. Blaine, shrugging and pushing out her lower lip as if Elva's impractical preferences were equally a mystery to her. "She had her pride, I suppose."

Despite taking a sedative after dinner, Aura couldn't stop thinking, the frenetic confusion of the last couple of days mixing in with anxiety about the funeral and the yawning black unknown beyond tomorrow. She couldn't conjure up any image of

Toronto to sink her hopes into. In her worst moments she envisioned a bleak Cinderella story in which she dusted and scrubbed the toilets in a tiny sterile condo while Doreen was out shopping for stilettos and having latte with her hoity friends, Doreen's jock lawyer husband coming home unexpectedly from work to corner Aura. Maybe she should take her chances with the welfare placement. She kicked off the sheets, her mind twisting the knots of misery ever tighter, and suddenly a great pang of loss filled her heart, becalming in its immensity. Tears poured in silent rivulets down her cheeks and dribbled into her ears.

A loud sharp snort interrupted the stillness, wrenching Aura out of herself. Mrs.

White had resumed her steady monotonous snoring in the other room. Aura felt a sudden flush of anger at this intrusion upon her grief, and sat up, determined to go into the kitchen and slam some pots around, when the snort came again, this time closer, from somewhere outside. She sat up on her knees on the mattress and slid the adjacent window all the way open.

A horse and rider were standing at the far end of the trailer. The horse jigged its head impatiently, jingling the bridle, and the rider softly slapped the reins against its proudly arched neck. The animal stepped forward, prancing, the eerie light of the low hanging moon catching brightly upon its silvery flanks and the rider's white Stetson.

The rider uttered a soft command and reined in opposite Aura's window, silhouetted against the starry sky. The bridle and saddle were ornately tooled and studded with gleaming medallions, and the rider wore fringed leather chaps and large silver spurs on her boots. Her mount leaned down and pulled a few blades of grass from the ground, making soft chomping sounds.

It was the same old horse from the paddock at the end of the road, sleek coat gleaming over muscled haunches, no longer a sway-backed sack of bones. The saddle creaked as the rider shifted her weight and turned to face Aura, resting one hand on the pommel and with the other tipping up the brim of her hat to reveal her face. Elva looked much younger now without the plastic tubes in her nose, and lighter, somehow, unanchored from the burden of the oxygen tank. When she spoke, her voice was not laboured but clear and smooth, full of breath.

"Three things," she said.

Almost singing, the syllables riding on air.

"Stand up straight."

She waited expectantly, continuing only after Aura, leaning her head through the window, understood she was to answer, and nodded.

"Hold your ground."

Aura nodded again, more emphatically.

"And for God's sake stop dying your hair. That colour makes you look like death warmed over."

With that she sat up and, tossing back her own black hair, reined the horse's head up from its grazing. The animal stamped its burnished hooves impatiently, and Elva nudged it forward with her heels.

"Wait," called Aura. "Where are you going?"

"Home," said Elva over her shoulder, the horse already sidling toward the hills.

She made a little lassoing motion above her head. "Don't worry, I'll be around."

Her spurs, jingling as horse and rider wheeled and disappeared into the air, hung pinned and glittering like stars in the sky above Rock Mountain.

When Aura was certain they were gone, she got up off the bed, rubbing her arms where she'd been leaning on the metal sill runner, and went quietly down the hall past

Elva's empty room, linoleum cold beneath her feet. The back door squeaked on spring hinges as she pushed it open and stepped down the cement block stairs. She walked out 204 onto the dried-out lawn and stood there, looking up at the heavens. The Milky Way like a trail through the darkness, pebbled with stars.

The fragrance of saddle soap and leather hung in the warm air. And another smell, warmer and richer. Grassy silage, fermenting apples. On the ground by the corner of the trailer, a small cairn in the moonlight, sat a pile of fresh manure.

A bullfrog croaked loudly from the slough, breaking the silence. In reply, a muffled snort reverberated within the walls of the trailer, as Mrs White, deep asleep, started up a fresh onslaught of snoring. 205

CHAPTER 23

Eli was leaning against the front of the old red truck, peering intently through a pair of binoculars toward Bridesville. With his tawny blonde ponytail and white coveralls, he looked like a graduate biology researcher looking for a rare breed of grebe.

Or a hipster spy masquerading as an electrician.

All he needs is an earring. Karl, dressed in a sweaty madras shirt that had been washed so often his skin showed here and there through the pattern - at least the double thickness of the pockets concealed the scars on his chest - waited impatiently in the passenger seat. He stuck his head out the window.

"Can we go already?"

Eli ignored him and leaned forward, gripping the binoculars, as if the awaited specimen had at last flapped into view through the cluster of aspen that formed a makeshift blind for the truck. Eli had pulled off Rock Mountain's main gravel road into a fire-lane, and they'd been parked here well over an hour, the cab growing hotter as the sun slipped higher, pulling up the shadows that staked it to the ground. From the back yards and driveways of the town, faint sounds of voices, screen doors and car engines, floated up across the slough. Eli lowered the binoculars and came around and climbed in.

"She's home," he said, as he primed the choke. "I think she's alone." The engine sputtered as he backed out onto the road. Nosing the bulky front end around, he headed downhill toward the town.

"I don't want to go," said Karl. "Drop me off. I'll walk home."

"What's with you? It's like you're on the rag or something."

Karl said nothing and turned his face toward the window, eyes filling with furious tears. For once Eli's cruelty was unintentional, yet it hurt just the same. And it 206 irked him that Eli was right. Karl was unusually moody. The way he felt now reminded him of Matilda experiencing a particularly bad bout of PMS, the shrieking rages tempered with jags of remorseful weeping. A way of being he'd all but forgotten. The skin on his cheeks was already beginning to feel softer, just when his beard had been coming in so nicely.

And the irony was, this was all Eli's fault. Karl had had to skip his weekly hormone injection because of that whole fiasco Eli had involved him in, both of them agreeing to lie low for a couple of days afterward. In retrospect, Karl thought, he might as well have kept his doctor's appointment in Osoyoos, and then stopped in for a visit at

Elva's on the way home as usual. It would have looked better.

After the first tense day had gone by, Karl had relaxed slightly, allowing himself to believe that everything would be okay. No police had appeared to accuse Eli of attempted rape, there had been no summons to the Abbot's office to discuss any unusual complaint, and he'd cautiously agreed with Eli's surmise, that Elva had been so inebriated she didn't remember anything. And while Eli refused to elaborate, Karl was confident there hadn't been anything much for Aura to remember, even if she could.

Maybe things would actually be better now, Karl had hoped, now that he'd humoured Eli by playing out this folly. Judging by the way in which the monk had been moping around, even seeking comfort from Karl, it seemed not unreasonable that Eli had relinquished his plan to play out this risky - and puerile, thought Karl - fantasy of deflowering a girl who was hardly a virgin, and about as sexy as a weed. Surely Eli had seen this for himself.

Excused from haying because of his allergies, Karl had even managed to dodge

Brother Jerome, who had been busy with the rest of the able-bodied monks in trying to bring in the crop before the predicted rain. No doubt a reckoning would come, but the embittered novice master would be subtle about it; Karl hadn't actually broken any rules or contravened any explicit directive from Brother Jerome simply by going off with

Father Eli to collect a piece of farm equipment.

It was Brother Anthony who'd told Karl the news.

"Terrible news, very terrible." Anthony shook his head woefully. A small package was cradled in the crook of his arm.

Karl had just finished restocking Brother Bernard's veterinary supply closet, and was on his way back from the livestock barns through the parking lot, where he met

Brother Anthony parking the Green Machine. Anthony had just been to town to pick up something from the post office - a Holy Virgin pencil sharpener, he explained reluctantly, when pressed, but for once he did not insist upon removing the wrappings and showing off his prize. While he'd been at the post office, Mrs. Blaine had told him some terrible news.

"New strange lady in town. Poor lady. She drowned."

"'Drowned?" asked Karl. Maybe Elva had gone swimming, maybe the oxygen tank had dragged her down.. .maybe that post-pubescent jailbait of a girl had gone in after her and drowned also.

"How? How did she drown?"

"Drowned in own sickness," Brother Anthony said quietly, so quietly Karl barely heard it. "Very terrible way to drown." 208

CHAPTER 24

As the car crested the plateau and began the descent into Bridesville, Aura glanced up at Rock Mountain. The tin roof of the barn belonging to the monastery of

Saint X glinted briefly above an aspen grove then disappeared. The humble clapboard chapel with its two whitewashed towers was not visible from the highway.

According to Mrs. Blaine, who'd kept up a running commentary the entire road home, life was a series of ups and downs and Aura was going to have to roll with the punches. Although this, she conceded, this was indeed a hard way to learn. Aura, staring silently at the passing hills, churned with resentment at Mrs. Blaine's unsolicited platitudes. Mrs. White, nodding in distracted agreement, throwing in the occasional unh huh, rolled to a halt at what they both still referred to as Elva's place. As if Aura, just a girl, herself merited none.

"Will you be okay on your own for a while, dear?" asked Mrs White, hoisting herself around with some effort to face the back seat. "I need to get my flowers watered, it's going to be a scorcher today."

She looked flushed and sweaty in a navy polyester pantsuit. Mrs. Blaine, beside her in a floral shirtdress, the stiff buttoned collar holding her permed head upright on her withered little neck, appeared crisp by comparison, as if there were nothing left to sweat out.

"You can eat supper at my house tonight," offered Mrs. Blaine. "Long as you're not fussy."

The novelty of Project Orphan was wearing thin now that the departed had been properly sent off. And now that Aura's flight to Toronto was in the works, despite

Aura's subtle protestations. The good ladies sat watching, the overheated car idling, until 209

Aura had demonstrated beyond any doubt that she knew how to unlock the door and let herself in. She stood waving through the screen mesh as they drove down the street, shooing them on their way.

She placed the stack of leftover remembrance cards on the kitchen counter. Mrs.

Blaine had printed up a couple of dozen on the post-office photocopier, and Aura had neatly folded the pages into quarters. On the front was the grainy rodeo photo of Elva, copied from the old newspaper article. Are you sure you don't want something more recent? Mrs. Blaine had asked dubiously, but Aura had insisted. Now, after all the fussing, most of the cards were unused.

Besides the pastor — a nervous, prematurely balding young man who blushed furiously when offering his condolences to Aura at the tea held in the church basement - there had been few mourners. Mrs. White and Mrs. Blaine, of course, and some of the square dance ladies whom neither Aura nor Elva had ever actually met, and Mr. Siemens, obviously coerced into coming. He'd come hobbling in late on his cane, muttering about tourists hogging all the parking on Main Street, and then left early to return to

Bridesville and reopen the General Store.

Aura had been both relieved and vaguely insulted on Elva's behalf that neither

Father Eli nor Brother Karl had paid their respects. She'd wept when they lowered the varnished pine box into the ground, loudly and inelegantly. It wasn't pretty. She was glad they hadn't seen that. And while Karl's absence was unforgivable, the way he'd been toadying up to Elva, acting like her best friend, Eli's was, to some degree, understandable, after Elva's treatment of him the other night. Whatever had embittered

Elva toward Eli remained a mystery, one there was now little chance of solving. 210

Aura glanced at the clock on the stove. There wasn't much time. She took a quick drink of water then went straight to the closet in her bedroom and rifled through the cardboard boxes, some of them not yet unpacked from the last move. The envelope with her birth certificate and social insurance card was in a box marked Kids Books, tucked inside the white bible Elva's mother had given Aura at her christening. Aura stuffed the bible into a side-pocket on her backpack. She rooted through her dresser, hastily stuffing socks and underwear into the bottom of the pack, and placed on top of these items some clean tops, a long sleeved sweater and a pair of jeans.

From the outstretched arms of the Madonna she removed every ring she owned — skulls, ankhs, Celtic crosses—and loaded them onto her fingers. As she took the last of the heavy chains and placed it with the others around her own neck, she caught a glimpse of her face in the mirror.

Pale, frightened, her features were vapid and bland without makeup. In a belated attempt at respect, she'd dressed for the funeral as tastefully as possible, in a manner she imagined might have pleased Elva. Now she needed a face to shield her out there in the world. Quickly and yet not without artistry, she sponged on a pale base, then dabbed on crimson lipstick and smudged kohl around her eyes. She pulled off the black t-shirt and long black skirt she'd worn to the service and dressed in a clean black tank and some khaki shorts, then rolled the skirt up and stuffed it into the pack. There was just enough room left for a few essential cosmetics, along with some black nail polish, her toothbrush and deodorant, which she wrapped together in a plastic bag and placed on top of the clothes before pulling the drawstring shut.

She felt muddled, rushed, fearful that in her hurry to escape she was forgetting something. With a pang, she noticed the hamster, sleeping in his cage. She went over 211 and poked the tip of her finger through the bars, ruffling his soft brown fur. He blinked and curled deeper into his nest. Aura hesitated. She couldn't take him with her.

Hopefully Mrs. White, who referred to him as that rodent, wouldn't do something cruel like turn him loose for the hawks to eat. Aura tore a piece of paper from one of the notebooks Elva had bought with her school supplies, hands shaking with adrenaline as she wrote.

Hi, My name is Spamlet. I love Cheeze. Please find me a good home.

She taped the page to the top of the cage where he couldn't chew it.

"Bye, Spammy," she said.

Something not quite sad enough held her there. Perhaps the knowledge that the hamster didn't care. Lingering at the doorway, momentum interrupted, she forced herself to gather up her backpack. Suddenly all she really wanted to do was sleep.

Abbot Paul had included Brother Anthony's sad tidings in the announcements after the twelve o'clock service, offering up a prayer for the dead woman's soul. He'd stopped Karl in the hallway of the refectory afterward, and given him leave to attend

Elva's funeral, which, he understood from Brother Jerome's telephone conversation with

Mrs. Blaine, would be held in Osoyoos on Thursday.

"I gather you'd become rather close," said the Abbot sympathetically, while Karl, still too numb to say anything, had simply stood there nodding.

Father Eli sidled up and joined them. "Paul," he said, "If it's okay, I'd like to go along with Brother Karl and pay my respects. I know the woman wasn't a parishioner, but Karl had consulted me about how to help with her drinking problem, and," he put his 212 hand on Karl's shoulder, while Karl stood there listening in mute amazement, "--1 know

I shouldn't take this on myself— but I feel partially responsible for what's happened."

"Well, Eel," said the Abbot, looking grave, and, thought Karl, somewhat sceptical, "if you think that's appropriate. I'll leave it to you and Karly here what best to do."

Karl had been unable to see Eli alone until the next morning. After Lauds, when the rest of the community had gone out to the fields, he found Eli at work in his studio.

The tang of freshly soldered metal mingled with Eli's sweat, as if he'd spent the whole night there. From the tips of the radiating spokes that made up the boughs of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, brass rifle-shell casings hung like newly formed icicles. Orange, yellow and silver cow-tags shimmered and fluttered like leaves on the

Tree of Life. Karl touched one of the numbered tags with the tip of his finger. The metal was crusted with hair and dried blood where it had been torn from the animal's ear.

"We killed her," said Karl.

"No," said Eli, looking up from the work-bench and the wire he was soldering.

His eyes were bloodshot and bright with a manic gleam.

"No, Karl," Eli repeated. He unplugged the soldering iron and began to clear the bench. "We didn't kill her. You did."

That was yesterday.

"Let me out," Karl said again.

Eli, idling at the stop sign at the end of the gravel road, ignored him and checked both ways before pulling out onto the highway. He was taking the long way around.

They heard the load in the back of the truck shift as it slid against the turn. 213

"Hey, man," Eli said, craning his neck and peering between the little houses as he drove slowly past the town. "You're the one who killed her. You were just supposed to knock her out."

"It was an accident," said Karl. "I didn't kill her. She choked -"

"Your fingerprints must be all over the place. You're the one who was doing drugs with her, don't forget."

Eli put on his turn signal and made a left off the highway, slowly to a crawl as he passed the community hall. The parking lot was empty.

"I just want to find out what Aura told the police."

"Then what do you need me for?" Karl asked, knowing.

Eli cut the engine and the truck glided silently over the dry grass, whumping softly to a halt behind the tree. He got out and looked nervously around.

"Wait here," he said. "I'll just be a minute." And left Karl sitting in the truck like a dog. CHAPTER 25

Aura set the house keys on the coffee table and peeked out from behind the curtain. As long as she made it to the highway unseen, she had a good chance of getting picked up by a tourist or a trucker. Mrs. Blaine wouldn't raise the alarm until she didn't

show up for supper, and by then Aura would be long gone. She could imagine Doreen's relief when they called to tell her Aura had run away. That thought alone was almost

enough to make her change her mind.

She was considering whether it would be safer to slip out the back way, when a wiry little man wearing a straw cowboy hat, one of the local ranchers by the look of him, came bow-legging along the street, stapling posters to telephone poles. A cigarette burned in the corner of his mouth, and after he finished affixing a poster to the pole in front of Elva's place, he tossed the butt behind him on the browned out lawn. Aura waited until he passed down to the end of the street, then shrugged the backpack over her shoulders and shut the trailer's front door quietly behind her, leaving it unlocked.

She crossed the lawn and ground the smouldering butt out with her heel.

The freckled, moon-faced girl on the poster was grinning, revealing a gap between large front teeth. She looked younger, more tomboyish, but Aura recognized in the posed junior-high photo the same chubby redhead who'd been partying with Leif and

Bud at the miner's cave in the beginning of the summer. Gerlinde Klumpe: MISSING, the poster said, and offered an unspecified reward to anyone coming forth with information on her whereabouts.

"Going somewhere?" 215

The question, both gentle and accusing, caused Aura to gasp and spin around.

Father Eli, wearing grass-stained white coveralls, stood watching her from just a few feet away.

Aura clapped a palm over her breastbone and took a deep breath. "I didn't know you were there," she said.

Eli looked at the poster and shook his head sadly. "Her father is very worried about her," he said. He fixed his intense green eyes on Aura. "You know, just because you're alone, don't think there's no one to care about you."

She looked at the ground. "You weren't at the funeral," she said.

"I know," he nodded, raising his hands as if to push her disapproval away. "I know, and I'm deeply sorry about that. I should have been there. The Abbot refused us permission to attend. The hay," he shrugged helplessly, looking down at his work clothes by way of explanation.

"Brother Karl," he added, drawing Aura's attention toward the red truck parked around the side of the trailer, hidden behind the drooping branches of the tree, "Brother

Karl felt particularly bad about missing the service. I understand he and Elva had become very close."

A sickening surge of jealousy filled Aura's chest. "Too bad her new best friend didn't do anything about her drinking. She might still be alive."

"Would you like to go inside and talk about it?"

She shook her head.

"Aura," Father Eli said. "I know you are angry. But you need to learn forgiveness if you are going to heal. Brother Karl is in pain too. He wanted to come and offer his condolences." 216

"Not just now. I have to get going "

Eli wiped a bead of sweat from his tanned brow. "It's hot out here and I'm really thirsty. Could I at least get a drink first? Do you have any iced tea?"

Aura hesitated.

"Lemonade," she said, biting back tears. "That's what she used to make me." She

started to weep.

"Well, then," said Father Eli, taking her gently by the shoulder. "Let me."

A faithful, obedient, well-trained dog. A stupid mutt. That's what he might as well be. Matilda had done exactly the same thing, done what she was told, and here sat

Karl, sweltering in the cab of the truck, repeating her mistakes. As if he had no mind of his own. When he turned his head and looked into the rear view mirror, he could see the highway, not more than thirty yards behind him. And yet despite the gift of opposable thumbs, he didn't open the door and get out and go stand on the shoulder and hitch a ride, he didn't go find a phone booth and dial 911. No, here he sat dry mouthed and sweating, his eyes glued to the trailer, awaiting his master's command.

He opened the glove compartment and looked again at the key Eli had placed there that morning. Cast of weighty black iron, the object looked medieval, like something designed to fit the lock on a dungeon. To open, and to close.

Eli was standing at the back door of the trailer, signalling Karl's attention by whistling low and sharp through his fingers. Impatient, waving Karl to come in.

Karl threw him a sullen look. He put the heavy key back in the glove box and went in, following Eli down the narrow hall to the living room. The curtains were drawn 217 and Aura was passed out in the armchair. A jug of lemonade and two glasses, one empty, one full, sat on the coffee table in front of her.

"She didn't tell them anything," said Eli, pacing, excited. "The cops don't even know we were here."

"How convenient," said Karl. "And now she's taking a nap, poor thing."

Eli crossed the room in one step and pinned Karl against the wall, his hand pressed tight around his neck. Karl, balancing on his tiptoes, his wind knocked out, felt the ache in his lungs from lack of air. Eli pressed harder against his throat and glared at him, his brows meeting in a scowl of fury over enraged green eyes.

"Do not give me any of your fucking lip," he said slowly, his mouth so close

Karl could feel his breath. "I am not in the mood. Understand?"

Karl fluttered his eyelashes yes, and Eli released him. He bent over, wheezing, and rubbed his throat. His Adam's apple felt broken.

"We have to get her out of here," said Eli. He took the lemonade and dumped it down the sink, and filled the glasses with soapy water.

Karl waited until Eli finished then rinsed out one of glasses and took a drink of cold water.

Eli, lifting Aura over his shoulder, glowered at him. "This time, don't leave any prints." He gestured with his head toward the backpack on the floor. "Get her bag and lock the front door."

Karl did as he was told and followed them down the hallway. Eli hesitated, then set Aura carefully down on the floor against the wall. Her head lolled to the side and a strand of drool ran down her chin. 218

"Bring that out to the truck," Eli said. He checked outside and waved Karl to follow. Karl threw the backpack onto the passenger side floor through the open window, registering the little orange velour pig clipped to the pack's side-pocket. Eli had opened the tailgate and was pulling the grain-seeder box toward him. He jerked his head, indicating to Karl he was to help. They lifted the box down and carried it up the two cement block stairs, Eli swearing when the door's spring hinges slammed noisily shut behind Karl. He prised the lid up, and paused over Aura, his hands hooked under her armpits.

"Get her feet." Together they hoisted her dead weight into the box, tilting her slightly on her side to make her fit. Her neck lay at a painful looking angle. Eli went into the bedroom and took a small purple cushion from Elva's bed, and tucked it under

Aura's cheek. He closed the lid carefully. Karl stood rubbing his neck.

"Let's go," Eli said. "And if you slam that fucking door again you won't need a fucking neck because I'll rip your head off your scrawny shoulders and stuff it up your useless dried-up twat."

Karl blinked and picked up the end of the box, his fingers sweating and slipping on the metal. Once outside, he balanced a corner on the tailgate, then climbed up and pulled the box toward him while Eli pushed. Karl jumped down and Eli raised the tailgate, clicking it shut.

Karl swallowed painfully. Remembering now, Matilda with her sisters in the back seat of the family car coming home from the pet store, her sitting in the middle and holding the budgie in the box with the grid of tiny holes, the sharp tip of the budgie's yellow beak poking through as it chewed the cardboard, trying to get free.

"She'll suffocate," he said, his voice ragged and hoarse. Eli glared at him, and took a step toward him as if to hit him.

"Fuck," he said. "Fuck."

Karl stroked his throat, milking out the words. "It's okay," he said, "I know

where they keep the oxygen."

Eli followed him back inside and into the kitchen. A single tank sat on the floor

in the broom closet, the one with the animal face painted on it. The spare tank and the

set of wheels weren't there. Karl picked the tank up, his hands shaking. It seemed full,

heavy and with a clear plastic hose wrapped neatly around the valve and secured with an

elastic band. Eli took the tank from him and carried it outside. He wedged the tank

between the grain-seeder and the wall of the truck, and began threading the plastic through a bolthole in the end of the red metal box.

Karl ran back inside, carefully pulling the door so it didn't slam. When he came out again there was a blue tarp tied over the cargo bed. He climbed up into the passenger

seat. Eli was already in the cab, trying to start the truck.

"What the ...?" said Eli, turning his head as he primed the gas, listening for the engine to catch, and in so doing noticing the cage sitting on Karl's lap. The hamster had woken up and was clinging blearily to the bars, rattling the little trap door.

"What do you think you're doing? The Mole won't let you keep an animal in your cell."

Karl stared stubbornly back at him.

"I know that," he said. "I can keep it out in the Quonset hut." The defiant tone faltered, his raw voice cracking like a scared teenaged boy's. 220

Eli stared at him. Karl cringed involuntarily, expecting a backhand across the mouth. Then truck sputtered and caught, and Eli, checking the rear mirrors, began backing out.

"A hamster, for crying out loud," he said, a sardonic grin on his lips. "Whatever turns your crank, man."

Whatever turns yours, thought Karl. He was trembling.

"Shit," said Eli, as he pulled out onto the road.

Mrs. White stood on the boulevard at the other end of the street, playing her hose over a bed of marigolds and craning her neck in their direction. Eli turned the truck slowly and drove toward her, smiling.

"Get that thing out of sight," he said through clenched teeth.

Karl set the hamster cage down beside the backpack on the floor and tucked it between his feet.

Eli drew to a rolling stop, nodding at Mrs. White through the open window.

Holding her hose out to the side, she half-turned toward him and continued her spraying, nodding back curtly.

"I understand you've been looking after the young lady," he said.

"That's right," said Mrs. White, her free arm planted stoutly on her hip. "The funeral was today, in case you weren't aware. A pity there was no one there to represent

St. X."

"Yes," said Eli. "The Abbot sends his regrets. The hay. We're quite behind.

There aren't as many of us still able to do the heavy work." 221

"Oh, of course," said Mrs. White. "And now that Brother Gerald's gone away...." She bent to shut off the hose at a pipe sticking up from the ground, and began rolling it up, the flab of her arms wobbling.

Eli ignored the barb. "Well, we just came by to pay our respects. Please pass our condolences along to the girl. And tell her to let us know if there's anything we can do."

"You didn't just see her?" asked Mrs. White, frowning. She dipped her head and shielded her eyes with the flat of her hand, getting a good look at Karl. He attempted a smile.

"No," said Eli. "She didn't answer the door. We thought she might be with you or Mrs. Blaine."

"No," said Mrs. White. She was starting to look worried.

"Well, she's probably just taking a nap," said Eli. "Although we knocked pretty loudly."

He glanced at the telephone pole at the corner of Mrs. White's driveway. "Poor

Norm," he said. "That's another sad story, isn't it?"

Mrs. White looked at the poster and put a hand to her mouth. "Oh, dear goodness, she blurted out. "You don't suppose she's run off like Gerlinde Klumpe?"

"Of course not," said Eli. "She'd have told you if she'd been unhappy about going to her cousin's in Toronto. I'm sure she's just resting."

Mrs. White, a dubious expression on her doughy sunburnt face, was still staring toward Elva's trailer as the truck rolled down the street and turned slowly onto the highway. CHAPTER 26

Gerlinde stepped off the ladder in her sock feet and right into a damp puddle on

the floor of a small, low-ceilinged room. The ladder was constructed of huge chains with

tubular rungs hung between, some of these bent low in the middle from a weight - unthinkably heavy — that had strained the sturdy alloy. Swinging unsteadily on the

ladder as she'd descended, she'd been unable to free both hands to pull the platform of the secret trapdoor down above her to close it overhead, so she'd left it propped open on the rod; now the light from the bulb in the cold-cellar above poured down, a slanting

rectangular shaft, into the subterraneous gloom.

Gerlinde lifted her sopping foot. She was standing in her own urine, at the center

of a small storage area. Above her, the earthen-walled opening beneath the false toilet was shored up around its crumbling edges with metal trusses and flat wooden boards,

and had been expanded into what now formed a ceiling. Gerlinde flicked on the plastic lighter and held it up. Neatly stacked around the perimeters of the space were bale upon bale of marijuana, the funky, rich stench of wealth seeping out through the plastic packaging. The bags were six deep in places, and piled to the height of the walls, more product than she and Buddy together could trim out in a lifetime.

There weren't nearly enough plants in this shop to sustain such a yield, not even with whatever they were cultivating in the outbuildings. Dex and his crew must have transported the pot in from other sites. But why here?

Gerlinde spun slowly beneath her small flame, bumping against the ladder and setting its links softly aclank. There wasn't much room to move. Directly behind where she'd first stepped down, illuminated in the angled light from above, a large cart raised up on trolley wheels blocked an opening. The cart was constructed of a welded frame 223 inset with mesh and lined with chipboard; a pair of huge grappling hooks, menacing as claws, swung on chains down the side. She stood on tiptoe and tried to look over, but the sides were too high. Gerlinde took her thumb off the lighter and stuck it in her front pocket, then bent forward to push the cart forward out of the way. The metal wheels groaned, and rolled a few feet, bumping to a stop against the wall.

Gerlinde squeezed past into a corridor, the cart's mesh sides scraping against her protruding belly and tearing a button from her shirt. Once around, she again flicked on the lighter, squinting into the darkness. The light slanting down from above now fell dimly behind her, blocked by the cart, making it difficult to see more than ten feet ahead.

She was standing at one end of a tunnel, narrow enough that she could easily touch either side with both hands if she tried. The walls and ceiling were panelled with the same rough boards as the adjoining store-room, reinforced at intervals with steel girders.

The floor was scrap plywood sheeting laid unevenly over a dirt base, loose rock and pebbles scattered along the edges, spilling out at the bottoms of the walls.

Bits of gravel poked sharply through her thin socks as she walked haltingly forward, lighter held out in front like a weapon or a shield. After what felt like a long way, she stopped to dust off the soles of her feet and looked back. Except for the diminishing shaft of light marking its beginning, the tunnel looked the same both before and behind, as if it might never end. She could limp along here in the dark forever, steadying herself by her palms against the crude splintery walls, following the feeble flame of the lighter until it ran out of fluid, and no one would ever find her. No one good.

The pad of her thumb was sore from holding the lighter on. The flame flickered and pulled slightly ahead, as if impatient. Gerlinde, remembering something she'd read in a kid's detective book, wet her finger in her mouth and held it aloft. The air was 224 moving, barely, but it was being drawn ahead. Gerlinde shifted the lighter to her other hand and moved along quickly, the brief spell of lassitude broken. They would come looking for her soon.

The tunnel went on for a few hundred yards, dipping into a slight incline and bearing to the right - what might be east, if she were correctly oriented - until the light at the other end was no longer visible. The tunnel abruptly ended, in a cavernous tumble of rocks. The flame tugged more insistently now, and Gerlinde picked her way through the looming shadows toward a set of narrow steps leaning against a smooth, striated rock wall, beside them two chains with hooked ends suspended in midair. The wood of the stairs smelled new, the fresh sawn ends of the pine two by fours rough to the touch. Like a ladder, they led nearly straight up.

Gerlinde pocketed the lighter and started climbing out of the dark.

Something growled, and for once it wasn't her stomach.

Gerlinde was standing at the top of the steep wooden steps, one hand splayed out for balance on the floorboards in front of her, the palm of the other flattened backward and holding a trap door open like a drink tray above her head. It was still daylight, probably just about suppertime; Buddy would likely be back at the grow-house by now with their takeout order from Tran's.

Blue sky bored brightly through knotholes in the weathered barn-board walls surrounding her, and directly ahead clouds scudded past the doorless opening of the flimsy little shed. Outside, the tips of the branches of a cedar tree danced gently, sighing in the wind. Gerlinde, climbing up from the tunnel, had seen the daylight slicing through the chinks in the floorboards above her, and waiting, hearing nothing moving, had easily pushed open the simple plank door in the floor. Blinking, she'd quickly taken her bearings, noticing several long metal boxes against a wall, beside a pile of something that looked like plastic bags full of sugar.

The cedar tree beckoned. The door was only a few feet ahead, and beyond it,

from what Gerlinde could see, craning her neck, more trees, a small forest into which she could escape and disappear. The growl, a low steady drone, came again from a

shadowy corner, and what had appeared to be a bundle of twigs shifted slowly and clambered to its feet. The dog licked its chops and gnashed its teeth, the fanged under- bite gleaming whitely against the crumpled brindle snout.

Gerlinde slid her hand back along the floor very slowly, and took one step down, lowering the trap-door.

"Good boy. Nice doggy."

Stubby vampire ears swivelled nervously, wrinkling the brutish blunt forehead; the animal stared uncharitably at Gerlinde with red-rimmed yellow eyes. It growled again, louder, winding itself up to a bark.

She slipped and slid down the stairs, dropping the door shut just as the beast lunged. Hooked dewclaws scrabbling across the floorboards, the scraping of his chain.

Gerlinde caught her footing halfway down, and stepped off into pitch dark at the bottom.

She pressed up against the rock wall, heart racing, and listened. The dog woofed a few more times for good measure, then she heard him thump back to his corner, dragging the chain.

Hopefully no one had heard the dog's barking. She waited a few more tense minutes, breathing shallowly, the pounding of her heart subsiding as she rubbed her arm gingerly where she'd scraped it on the way down. 226

Even if she could somehow get past him, it was unlikely that whoever was in charge of the guns and cocaine would leave the dog guarding their inventory alone for very long. They'd probably just gone to get something to eat. If they'd been around, they'd have come in to the shed and checked it out by now. Probably.

Gerlinde blundered blindly over a boulder and flicked on her lighter, hand shaking. She had to go back. She had to climb back up the swaying metal ladder and drop the hatch down and slide the bolt closed and turn off the light in the cellar and slink back up the stairs and hope like hell Buddy wasn't home yet. And if he was, he'd be pigging out on the spring rolls, and in that case she'd stamp right in and bitch about him eating her share, and she'd tell Dex, if he even showed and bothered asking, that she'd been hiding in the bedroom closet upstairs when he'd come through the house, waiting to scare Buddy.

She started to run, ignoring the scattered rocks as they jabbed into the soles of her feet. The tunnel curved and climbed, and the planks that held up the walls like the ribs of a large animal swayed crazily in the shadows cast by her small quavering flame.

Far away, at the end, the light shone faintly down from the cellar into the storeroom with its secret harvest. Gerlinde released the catch on the lighter and slowed as she neared the cart sitting in the tunnel's entrance. She panted to a stop, her hand cupping her belly.

The ladder wasn't there. Someone had unhooked it and rolled up the chains and taken it away. The platform beneath the chemical toilet had already been dropped. A face appeared over the rim of the toilet, back-lit from above by the bare bulb swinging on its string, framed in the oval halo like an old-fashioned silhouette.

"Buddy?" Gerlinde whispered. "Buddy, can you hear me?"

Whoever it was stepped back, and put the lid down, sealing Gerlinde in darkness. 227

CHAPTER 27

The darkness pooled and swam in the wavering light, chill air eddying round as though she were floating, being poled through the night on a torch-lit raft. From a distant world a chapel bell's cold tolling achingly rung her bones, waking Aura from a dreamless sleep. Naked and shuddering under a single blanket, rough wool itching her skin. A button on the thin tufted mattress she lay upon was pressing into her cheek. She forced herself slowly up onto her elbow, and the movement made her aware of the parts of her body that stung. When she ran her tongue dryly around her mouth blood, metallic and salty, moistened the inside of her swollen lower lip.

An empty plastic ice-cream pail and a roll of toilet paper sat on the ground at the end of the mattress. She squatted unsteadily over the bucket and waited. The sound of water drumming into the empty bucket bounced and echoed loudly in the stillness around her. When she wiped herself, wincing, the white tissue was streaked with dark traces of blood, brown in the anaemic light of the candles mounted in their rusty brackets on the wall. As she crawled on her knees back onto the mattress, a chain rattled over the hard surface of the floor, its weight chafing against her ankle. The slenderer chain of her own devising swung lightly from around her waist.

She pulled her t-shirt from the crumpled pile of clothing and pulled it on slowly.

The metal hoops had been pulled from her nipples, and one of them began to seep when the fabric brushed against her breast. A small dark patch soaked through the front of her shirt, sticking the garment to her skin. Unable to pull her underpants and shorts on over the leg manacle, she balled them up to make a pillow, then curled up on her side, drawing the blanket back over her. 228

She lay tensed and blinking, listening to something skittering back and forth in the dark just beyond the tenuous light of the candles. There was no sleep left in her, just raw nerves around a numb core. The seconds, then minutes, perhaps even hours, expanded into something beyond time, as if the drag of her thoughts had stalled the planet in its turning. Exhausted, she briefly closed her eyes.

When next she opened them, a presence was kneeling on the ground beside the mattress, the hooded folds of a black cloak concealing its face. She tried to blink but was frozen, a slick cold terror holding her eyes upon it. The figure sat, composed and still, as if aware of her watching, then it began to turn, turn very slowly toward her, while she waited, trapped immobile in terror, succumbing to the sure knowledge that she would gaze into a visage of pure horror, the grinning mask of death.

As if dispelling an illusion, the figure raised its hand, and with a simple gesture, flipped back the black cowl, revealing Brother Karl's inexpertly shorn head. The bad haircut emphasized the protruding shell-like ears that looked painfully stuck on, and his profile, snub-nosed and pouty of lip, looked pallid and sickly in the shadows, like that of a diseased cherub. Engaged in an act of apparent human normalcy, he had placed a jug of water with a washcloth and a basin on the upturned metal drum that had earlier served as a stool, and was unrolling the plastic bag that contained Aura's toiletries. He began laying these objects - a toothbrush, a comb, a tube of lipstick — neatly on the floor. He sniffed at the lid of a bottle of perfume labelled Silencio and set it reluctantly down.

"He wants you to clean yourself up," he said, busying himself with the contents of the bag, as if to look directly upon her incited disgust or shame. His own mouth appeared puffed and slightly bruised, perhaps as a result of his role in Father Eli's sick little pageant. Brother Karl had played his part with apparent relish, acting out Eli's directions like a pro.

Aura watched him from where she lay. Little wonder he couldn't face her, now they were alone.

"How can you stand it?" she asked at length.

Karl ignored her and pulled a plastic-wrapped sandwich from a satchel. He looked about, and hesitated before setting it on down, along with a small bottle of juice.

"Let me go," she said suddenly. She sat up, wrapping the blanket around her.

"Let me go. Please. Just tell him I escaped and got away." She stopped, hearing the bald desperation in her voice.

"I don't have the key," Karl said flatly.

"Yes you do," she said, pointing to the large black key looped in his belt.

"No I don't," he said, "I don't have the key for that," and indicated the tiny brass padlock hooked over the hasp of the cuff hinged shut around her ankle.

Aura put her face in her hands. She looked up hopefully. "You could go get something to open it with, some bolt cutters or something, some tool."

He unscrewed the lid on the juice bottle, and offered it to her, his other hand open beside it, two blue pills on his outstretched palm.

"Take these. They'll help you sleep."

"You can go for help, " she said, pushing the juice aside. "You can find someone to help me and then you can get out too" - she touched his wrist awkwardly -- " we could run away together —" withdrawing her hand when he recoiled. 230

"Please," she said, pleading now. " Please. In the name of God, I promise. In the name of Jesus and the Virgin Mary. I'll tell them it wasn't your fault, I'll tell them he made you."

He held out the pills. "You have to take them. "

She started to cry, low and harsh in her dry throat, gagging on the juice as she swallowed.

"Open your mouth and stick out your tongue."

He looked, avoiding her eyes. When he was satisfied she'd swallowed the pills, he picked up his satchel, then turned and pulled something out of it.

"Here," he said, tossing the little stuffed pig on the mattress. "I thought you might want this."

Aura sucked in her breath and fought back a sob. "Can I have my bible?"

Brother Karl stopped and stood a moment. His sun-bleached hair looked a sallow white, like that of a little old man. Without looking back, he nodded, and then disappeared into the shadows.

A few moments later, she heard the slow squeaking of hinges, a tumbler in a lock clicking heavily shut. Then a plangent pealing of bells broke open. Eventually the music died away, clear tones quavering into silence. The skittering noises started again.

Aura closed her eyes and began to pray. 231

CHAPTER 28

The slither and rattle of chains unrolling and hitting the ground woke Gerlinde.

She was lying under a canvas tarpaulin inside the wheeled cart. On the diagonal, there was just enough room for her to lie stretched out on her side, resting her belly on her palm. Her bladder was uncomfortably full, and something felt torn in her groin, as if she'd pulled a muscle racing back down the corridor in her stocking feet.

She had intended to keep watch, hiding there in the darkness, but because she hadn't eaten she'd been overcome with a sudden fatigue — low blood sugar, the doctor at the clinic had called it, and "just general pre-natal fatigue, nothing unusual" - and she had dozed off. Now, nervous and alert, adrenalin again kicking in, she shifted very slowly into a sitting position, trying to make no sound. She leaned stiffly back against the side of the cart, patting around until she found the screwdriver. She'd taken it from her back pocket when she'd first lain down, trying to get comfortable, and fallen asleep with it in her hand, as if it were a gun. Now she gripped the screwdriver tightly, and pulled the tarp up in front of her chin. The canvas stank of marijuana, and stale human sweat.

After she'd been shut down in here in the dark, Gerlinde had gone back into the storeroom and stood there staring stupidly around, holding her lighter aloft in stunned expectation as if a door somewhere in the walls behind the stockpile of pot might appear and magically open. In her looking, she noticed that one end of the cart was designed to drop down like a tailgate. She had dropped the ramp and climbed in. The cart was empty inside except for the tarp and some lengths of nylon rope. She'd managed, not without difficulty, to close the tailgate after her, reaching up over the side to slide the bolts 232 closed. If there were no way out of this nightmare, she'd go further in. She'd needed to go somewhere.

Now, taut with nerves, she listened to the ladder rattling as the person or persons who'd dropped it began their descent, and wondered what the hell she'd been thinking.

She was trapped. Beneath the familiar pong of weed, the smell of fear clung to the cramped particleboard interior; as she'd lain there earlier, struggling to stay awake, it had occurred to her that maybe the cart was used for transporting people, not just drugs.

People, drugged and bound, maybe girls like her, ferried across the border, skipping customs by travelling underground. For the shack at the tunnel's other end, Gerlinde was certain, sat on American soil.

Slow footsteps, the sound absorbed and muffled by the layers of merchandise padding the walls of the small storeroom, the crop stacked in readiness like last season's hay.

Maybe it's Buddy.

Maybe he'd come to set her free. The feet shuffled past the cart. Whoever it was didn't smell like Buddy. Buddy smelled of stale socks and oily skin, not of leather and expensive cologne layered over acetone-sweet perspiration.

More footsteps, small rocks scattering across plywood, and then silence, a click like a switch being flipped. Fluorescent lights glared on, flooding the tunnel with painful white light. The footsteps started again, brisker, moving into the distance and out of earshot.

Gerlinde, blinking, got up onto her knees, kneading a cramp in her thigh. She sank down into a crouch, and pulled the canvas over her head, waiting, breathing as shallowly and quietly as she could. She hadn't looked for any electrical switches, or noticed any wiring, but Of course, she realized now. The work would require light.

Footsteps again, growing louder, then stopping very nearby. Something being unzipped. Silence followed by a long snorting inhalation. Pause. More sniffing sounds.

The zipper being re- zipped.

"Come out, come out wherever you are...." The sing-song words of the children's game cloggingly delivered with a nasally off-key intonation.

No mistaking that gravelly voice. Dex. Legendary for cocaine consumption and a singularly hideous face. Supposedly the drugs had rotted away the septum dividing his nostrils. Rumour had it that his own mother once told him he had a face like a can of mashed assholes. Prostitutes charged danger-pay to date him, the joke went, on account of his heart-stopping looks.

Gerlinde, huddled beneath the tarp, froze. Another step, closer. The tarp was lifted from her. She squinted in the harsh light, her vision swimming with blackness.

"Wakey, wakey! Rise and shine!"

The voice was directly above her. She craned her head back and looked up. Dex was peering over edge, holding the edge of the tarp between huge, sausagey fingers. He looked a lot like the pitbull at the tunnel's other end. He grinned down at Gerlinde, exposing stained yellow teeth.

"Time for a choo-choo ride," he said, and dropped back onto his heels, disappearing from her sight.

He gave out a great grunt, and the wheels beneath her groaned. The cart started rolling as he pushed, rumbling slowly over the plywood floors, then gradually picked up speed, rattling forward under its own momentum where the tunnel began its slight 234 descent. Gerlinde bounced boneless as a rag-doll against the walls, and fell forward onto her hands and knees, clinging to the plywood floor for balance until the cart crashed to a sudden, shuddering stop.

She stood up slowly and rubbed her bruised knees. There was a sickening pressure above her pelvis, as if something inside had been shaken loose.

Dex was huffing and puffing his way down the corridor, taking his sweet time to catch up. As he neared, his cell phone rang. Bullet's jaunty signature tune.

"Yep."

"Today. Later."

Gerlinde gasped and stifled a moan as a sharp cramp hit her like a fist.

"Damn straight. I told him we start with receivables or not at all."

"What? Just a minute, the connection's breaking up." He walked a ways down the tunnel. "Can you hear me now?"

A sniggering fit of vicious laughter.

"Yep. All rounded up."

Gerlinde noticed the screwdriver had rolled into a corner of the cart. Ignoring the splinters in her palms, she picked it up.

"Sure, just a sec."

Footsteps approaching. Dex popped his head over the side of the cart and gave

Gerlinde a ghastly smile.

"Do you have a moment? The boss would like a word with you."

"Snort this, Fuck-Face," she muttered, and summoning every drop of strength in her body, rammed the screwdriver straight up his nose. 235

Dex lay flat on his back, the hilt of the screwdriver sticking up from the center of his face. He had fallen across the mouth of the tunnel, near the cart.

Gerlinde, stepping off the tailgate ramp, tried not to look at him. The cart had spun to a stop at the southern end of the tunnel, where the manmade corridor opened out into the blasted cavern of jumbled rocks. Fluorescent fixtures were sporadically dotted along the ceiling down the length of the tunnel, and the light harshly illuminated the rough stone surfaces around her. The hooked chains that hung beside the steep wooden steps swung around in lazy circles, as if the recent disturbance had churned up the air and set them turning.

A tinny little voice was saying Hello. The cell phone lay open on ground near

Dex.

Think. Gerlinde counted backwards from ten, forcing herself to calm down. She picked up the phone and cleared her throat.

"Hello?"

"Someone's been a very naughty girl."

The words were measured, the voice calm. He didn't know. He couldn't know.

She stepped around rocks, phone pressed to her ear, listening to him breathe. She needed to find a place where the reception cut out.

"I'm waiting." He sounded unnervingly patient, as if he were willing to wait a very long time.

Gerlinde noticed a ledge overhanging a little cranny in the southwest face of the wall and moved quickly toward it. Static began to crackle over the steady breathing at the other end of the line. 236

"I'm sorry, I didn't hear that?" she said into the receiver, then, holding the phone away from her mouth and loudly addressing the air, "What?"

"Dex wants to talk to you," she spoke again into the phone, as she climbed over a boulder and squeezed through the slit in the rocks. At the precise moment the connection went dead, she flipped the phone shut.

Hopefully she had bought herself enough time to get out. If Buddy was the only obstacle when she got to the top of that ladder and climbed back out through that phoney toilet hole, she'd strangle him with the string he kept the door key on, if that's what it took. Her hands shook clumsily as she set the phone down on the rocky floor inside the hole. She reached in and put a small boulder over it for good measure.

She was about to pick her way back through the boulders when she felt a faint breeze drying her sweat drenched face, the barest hint of fresh air. The lighter was still in the front pocket of her pants. She flicked it on and the flame guttered and pulled back inside the cavity.

She hesitated. A pit bull guarding the south end of the tunnel. Only Buddy - most likely ~ posted at the other. If she did manage to get past him, she'd still be on

Bullet's territory.

She squeezed through the hole in the wall and into a narrow hewn passage, the flame leading her on. CHAPTER 29

The slanting stone walls felt damp and cool, the striated surfaces glinting membranous in the purple shadows. In places the channel through the rock was so tight

Gerlinde barely fit, sidling sideways and fighting off panic, breathing again whenever the space opened slightly. The air smelt of metal and earth, and the rocks were slippery, the floor beneath her slick with a thin layer of slime.

The tunnel widened into a small pocket where pinpricks of milky light penetrated like sun filtering down through deep water. She had an urge to stay here, forever if it were possible, in this patch of unlikely light, the thought of going either ahead or back almost unbearable. She started to lose it, hyperventilating, a small whimper of self-pity slipping out, until another cramp hit her low in the belly and knocked the hysteria out of her.

Forcing herself to stay calm, she gathered herself and pushed on, clammy with sweat, crouching as the ceiling closed in on her. There was no telling now how deep into the rock she had come. A faint light shone ahead. She put the lighter in her pocket, thumbs blistering now, and got down on her hands and knees. She crawled through and peered out into a grotto shallowly illumined by candles set in the rock.

The scene before her was like a tableau stolen from a wax museum, a small tallow-lit dungeon in the chamber of horrors. In the circle of flickering yellow light, a girl lay prone on a thin striped pallet, one ankle chained to the wall. Her naked limbs protruded in careless angles from beneath a grungy grey blanket, and across her pallid cheek lay a tangle of thick hair, a hue of such blackness touched with blue it looked artificial, like a wig. 238

Gerlinde scrambled back into the tunnel far enough to be able to sit up again, and

sat rocking back and forth on her haunches, shock sending her into a numb rage. The girl

was obviously being imprisoned here for the recreational use of Bullet's soldiers. They

probably intended to send her across the line with Gerlinde, a little worse for wear but

"broken in". She knew the way those guys talked, often enough she'd heard Buddy and

Leif aping them. Talking the talk as if they were players, instead of mere minions. She'd

found it both pathetic and endearing, and, despite her better instincts, vaguely impressive.

A sickening, unthinkable wave of paranoia hit her like another cramp. Leif was part of all this. He wasn't away on some job. He was holed up somewhere with the rest

of the crew, and in exchange for selling out Gerlinde had been privileged with sampling the merchandise. She envisioned him entering the chamber to take his turn, obscene remarks and lewd laughter filtering in from the shadows beyond, Leif unbuckling his baggy jeans and lifting the blanket, exposing the girl's long white legs.

Her heart turned heavy as a stone in her chest. Gerlinde crawled cautiously into the chamber, compelled to look at her fellow captive. A pretty, skinny girl. Much prettier than Gerlinde. It was that snobby Goth chick from Vancouver who'd come once to a bush party. Buddy had tailed her around the campfire like a dog and Leif had made mock of his brother, but Gerlinde had noticed the way Leif s eyes slid over Aura, admiring her slender body. Aura. Even the new-age name irritated Gerlinde, who had been relieved when the new girl disappeared off the local social radar. She'd all but forgotten about her.

Now Aura looked dirty and ill-used, more like a waxen effigy than a living being.

Her thinness was pitiable, as if she were wasting away into nothing, being somehow 239 consumed. Gerlinde felt a flood of sudden fear, struck with the certainty that she had to help Aura escape or she would die.

She listened carefully. There was no sound but her own frantic breathing, and the faint distant stir of something mechanical, perhaps a motor. Some practical activity from the real world whose noises penetrated down here below the ground.

The manacle chained to Aura's ankle indicated a potential escape route nearby.

Gerlinde inched over and shook her frail shoulder, trying to wake her. She was out cold.

Up close she didn't look so great. The metal piercing in her lip was infected, and her hair looked grey at the roots where the natural colour had grown out beneath the black dye.

Gerlinde thought of cadavers, how the fingernails and hair kept growing after death.

Aura was breathing though, slowly and deeply, as if sedated.

Gerlinde left her and went cautiously to the far end of the space. Cold light filtered down an old mineshaft into the gloom. Vestiges of the ruined workings, rusted winches and rotted wooden structures remained, and rails nailed with rusted spikes ran along the floor where the ore had once been carted up out of the ground for sluicing.

Gerlinde scrambled up the shaft, her pulse quickening.

A grid constructed of steel rods blocked the exit. Gerlinde gripped the bars and looked out. It was morning, just past dawn, last night's stars still visible in the sky, air damp with dew. Bits of familiar graffiti, barely legible in the nascent light, were scrawled on the flat sides of the boulders blocking her view. She was inside the miner's cavern that sat on the ridge at the top of the monastery. She couldn't see it from here, but the big hayfield lay just below, sloping down to the barns.

Gerlinde pushed against the bars. Solidly closed. A rectangular box with a large keyhole cut through both metal plates housed a lock. She sagged against the wall, rubbing her temples. The chugging of a tractor came within earshot, the thunking of the baler as it compressed the swathed hay and popped out pale green bales. The sounds drew steadily nearer.

Gerlinde gripped the metal bars and started yelling for help at the top of her

lungs, bellowing and shouting until her throat ached. The engine noises echoed off the rocks and died away as the tractor crawled away down the field, gathering the hay from the margins.

She sat down and rested her elbows on her knees, thinking. The tractor would circle this way again as it worked the perimeters of the field, swallowing up the rows of raked hay in ever-smaller arcs toward the center. There was a chance that more workers would be coming soon with a flatbed to collect the bales. If no one could hear her cries for help over the noise of the machinery, she would have to find another way to signal their attention.

She scrambled back down the steep shaft in a scatter of gravel, and looked quickly around the grotto. There was a sandwich and a bottle of juice sitting on a stone outcropping by the mattress Aura lay upon, an upended metal bucket and an ice cream pail that served as a chamber pot. Besides the thin mattress and possibly the blanket covering Aura, there was nothing flammable. Both of these items were too bulky to fit through the holes in the grid that blocked the opening.

Gerlinde needed something that would burn. Something she could poke through to the outside and easily set alight, sending up a funnel of smoke. Something both slow burning and tinder dry, a goodly supply of it with which to feed the fire.

What she needed was stockpiled in the storeroom. She would have to go back. As long as the monks were busy in the fields, there was little chance of encountering Bullet's crew at this entrance. And it was unlikely they would enter the prison chamber through the claustrophobic channel bored through the rock; the miner was legendary for his paranoia, and his goldmine, narrow as a gopher's burrow, seemed decades unused, the apertures at either end cramped and hidden as if designed to discourage exploration.

The man-made tunnel was another matter. From Dex's phone conversation,

Gerlinde had gathered that the deal was supposed to go down sometime later in the day.

She didn't have much time. Infused by a fierce purposeful energy, she took a candle from a rusty sconce, then crawled back through the hole in the wall.

Gerlinde snuffed the candle and laid it carefully by the rock covering the cell phone, then climbed out and picked her way between the rocks, their shadows a harsh blue in the fluorescent glare.

Dex's body blocked the tunnel like a tree felled across a road. Gerlinde steeled herself and stepped over his splayed feet. She moved as swiftly as she could along the tunnel, trying to avoid stepping on the pebbles scattered around the edges of the plywood sheets, the soles of her socks now in tatters. As she neared the storeroom she slowed, hugging the walls and ducking low. The chain ladder still hung down and the hatch above was open. Gerlinde could hear the bass line thumping from Buddy's boom box upstairs. She thought she heard laughter.

She took off her plaid shirt and laid it open on the floor, then piled a few bags of pot inside and did up all the buttons, leaving enough room to knot the bottom closed. 242

She tied the sleeves together to make a strap, and slung it over her head like a shoulder bag.

As she again stepped over Dex, she stole a brief glance at him. Beneath a mop of curly brown hair, his heavily lined face looked hewn from wood, the features exaggerated as those of a troll. His heavily lidded toad-like eyes were open, staring toward the ceiling. Rivulets of blood ran like drying sap down his cheeks from around the base of the screwdriver embedded in his nose.

She could use that screwdriver to try picking the lock on the steel grating if the smoke signals didn't work. And she could probably prise the cheap little padlock loose from Aura's manacle. She set the bag on the floor, and steeling herself, straddled Dex's shoulders and bent to pull the screwdriver out.

It was jammed in pretty deep. She yanked on the plastic handle with both hands and his head lifted up off the floor. She let go immediately and his skull bounced against the plywood. A low groan came out of his thick misshapen lips, and his hands twitched and flopped.

It's just nerves, she told herself. Like a chicken flapping after you cut the head off.

Again she again took hold of the screwdriver, putting her heel on his forehead for leverage. She could feel his clammy skin against the sole of her foot through a hole in her sock. He felt warm.

His eyes rolled upwards. He was staring at her.

Gerlinde gave a great heave on the screwdriver, and with a sickening crunch of splintered bone it slid out, covered in gore. As she staggered to catch her balance, her centre of gravity thrown off with the effort of pulling, Dex's hand flew up and clutched the back of her leg with a vice-like grip. 243

She let out a shriek and tried to shake him off. Fresh gouts of blood spouted from his nose, and his eyes were growing dim and unfocused, but his meaty fingers clamped tighter around her ankle, as if his hand were the only part still truly alive.

"Get off! Get off of me you fucking freak!" she screeched, stabbing his hand with the screwdriver. The fingers relaxed their grip and she pried them away from her pant leg, making retching noises.

She stepped back, panting, and hastily pulled off her socks, using them as rags to scrub the sole of her foot where it had come in contact with Dex's forehead, and then wipe the screwdriver clean of clotted blood.

She froze. Was that a noise from the storeroom at other end of the tunnel? Her ears were still ringing with the echoes of her screams, and it was impossible to hear clearly over the hammering of her own heart. Despite the music blaring from Buddy's stereo, her shrieks may have been heard upstairs.

She balled up the socks and tossed them into the cart, then put the screwdriver in her hind pocket, hoisted the makeshift bag full of pot over her shoulder, and frantically clambered back to the crevice in the rocks. She lit the candle. There wasn't much fuel left in the lighter. The cell phone sat silently where she'd left it, silent and omnipotent as a grenade. She hesitated, then picked it up carefully and tucked it into her pocket. 244

CHAPTER 30

Aura was still knocked out. She moaned slightly when Gerlinde shook her, but

didn't waken. Gerlinde swore softly. She felt very alone, more alone than she'd ever felt

in her life.

She eyed the untouched egg sandwich and apple juice sitting on the shelf of

stone. She took a long swig from the bottle and replaced the cap. She opened the wrapping and took half the sandwich, and ate it, chewing and swallowing hurriedly, as

she lugged the bag up the mineshaft, still carrying the candle in her other hand.

The morning sun was obscured by cloud and the muggy air portended rain. The tractor sounded further away, and in the near distance were the voices of men yelling to be heard above a grinding motor as they shouted instructions to one another.

Gerlinde inserted the screwdriver into the keyhole and probed. The tip of the screwdriver slipped repeatedly, failing against an unseen mechanism.

With shaking hands she dialled 911 on the cell phone and got a busy signal. At her home number the voice mailbox was full. She tried 0. The operator couldn't hear her and after a few hellos hung up. 911 was still busy. She felt like throwing the phone on the ground and stomping it to pieces, smashing it with a rock. She could stand here dialling numbers all day. After a few deep breaths, she put the phone away in her pocket.

She untied the shirt and ripped open a plastic bale and started pushing handfuls of compressed marijuana through the grate. When she touched the candle around the edges of the sticky green clumps, fire smouldered briefly then died. The plant material was still moist, and densely packed, resisting the flame. She reached through the grate and tore the buds apart and made a loose little pile, gathering any twigs and leaves within reach to add to it for kindling. She again lit the pile, blowing at the embers, and 245 soon a small flame caught and grew. Eyes streaming, t-shirt pulled up over her nose, she coughed as she fed the growing blaze, slowly adding the contents of the remaining bags.

The plastic packaging shrivelled and curled and sent up thin streamers of black smoke.

A fat raindrop fell through the grating and trickled down Gerlinde's hot cheek like a tear. She backed down the tunnel, choking and wiping her smoke-filled eyes with the sleeve of the plaid shirt. Heady fumes filled the mouth of the mineshaft and furled up into the air.

Gerlinde was bent low over another cramp when the sky crashed and shook with a rumble of thunder. The spattering of rain. Soon a torrent came gushing down. As the clouds broke, so did Gerlinde's water. CHAPTER 31

She was following a rope through a maze of narrow tunnels that wound deeper into the belly of Rock Mountain. Hand over hand, the gray rope slipping greasily through her grasp, smearing her palms. From somewhere deep within the stone came an elemental moan, an echo: it was the call of someone ensnared in blackness, alone and terribly bereft. She was getting closer. She knew that the earth had swallowed her whole and there was no way out of this stone prison. Another low, tortured groan grew into a sustained scream of pain. She looked down at her slimed hands and understood with horror that she was holding the entrails torn from the miner, the old eccentric who'd gone mad hoarding his gold, and that she must follow this slick twisting rope like a string through a labyrinth until she reached an end.

The chapel bells again chimed the relentless round of hours, their sharp pealing tearing through the heavy cowl of sleep. The moaning, a muffled echo, resumed for a while then died away. Aura tried to clear her head, too groggy and doped to distinguish the ghosts of nightmare from the ghosts of waking. She sat up to wait and wrapped the blanket tighter, shivering. The chamber was chilly and damp, and a vapour of steam swirled at the far end where the entrance lay, somewhere beyond sight. It felt like afternoon. She sensed the presence of the sun nearby, and knew that daylight and warmth yet existed.

A great pang stabbed her. She wished — ridiculously, she knew - that Elva would ride in, starry spurs jingling, and carry her away. She would say she was sorry, that she hadn't understood how hard it must have been for Elva all those years of barely getting by, the constant sickness and poverty wearing her down, her own dreams, 247 whatever those may have been, forfeited for the sake of raising Aura. She should have told her all this and more on that moonlit night when Elva had ridden in out of nowhere.

Please know I am grateful, she prayed. I know you loved me. I know you tried.

Elva and the horse were nothing but glue now, the stuff that seals the eyelids shut over dreams. Aura sat grieving tearlessly, too weary and empty to cry.

Father Eli emerged from the shadows, attired in his black frock. Brother Karl followed several steps behind, cowed and resentful as a woman compelled to attend her husband's taking of a second wife. Aura could read the hatred on his pinched little face.

Wordlessly, Eli presented Aura with her white bible. She accepted it so as not to anger him, and set it down on the mattress. The book was tainted now that he'd touched it. A stink of burned rope had wafted in with him, and every so often his nose wrinkled, as if he were subconsciously aware of the stench surrounding him, the smell of evil leaking from his pores.

Eau de Toilet, she thought, putting her hand to her nose. A scorched sulphurous musk, Satan's own cologne.

He sat on the metal drum and crossed one leg over the other. The soles of his cheap rubber sandals were clumped with wet ashes. The hem of his skirts looked heavy and wet, as if he'd walked through damp grass.

"I'm glad to see you are eating," he said, eyes flicking over the sandwich half and the remaining juice. "You have to keep your strength up."

Aura looked sidelong at the food. She didn't remember touching it. The thought of eating made her gag. 248

"You told me once you wanted to be a nun," he said, staring at her eagerly.

"That's good. I like that. I want to see you on your knees, praying. You probably have a lot of filthy secrets to confess."

He turned to Karl. "Why don't you let her try that on? You're about the same size."

Karl looked for a moment as if he were about to refuse, then he began to undress, removing his black habit. He was wearing dirty work jeans beneath the robe.

"All the nuns I've ever known are sluts," continued Eli ~

"I want to go home," Aura said.

"Home," Eli repeated, saying the word slowly. He propped his face upon interlocked hands and revolved his thumbs beneath his chin, a perplexed expression wrinkling his brow.

"And just where is that?" he said gently. "As I recall, you were all set to run away."

He reached forward and stroked her hair. She flinched beneath his hand.

"You are home, Aura. You're here."

His cupped hand slid down the crown of her head and grasped a fistful of hair at her nape. He pulled Aura forward, and held his face close up to hers. His breath smelled of peppermints and sewage.

"And the next time you have something to say to me? I'd prefer you call me

Father r CHAPTER 32

Gerlinde knelt on the hard stone floor in obeisance to the pain, and leaned her forehead weakly against the rough wall. She had just vomited up the last bit of liquid in her stomach, and was resting between contractions. Rainwater ran in rivulets down the rocks, pooling in the crevices. She bowed her face and drank, lapping at a shallow little puddle like an animal.

The open sky was somewhere not far above. She had made her way back to the bulge in the miner's tunnel, where light leaked in slanting grey sabres through the thin crust of earth overhead. She could hear the rain pattering down above her, millions of tiny hooves, a stampede. A rubbery brown lizard with an orange belly slipped through a crack in the roof and ran down the wall, suckers on the toes of his feet.

Exhaustion overtook her. She lay down and rested her head on her ruined jeans, sweating and shivering, drifting in and out of a wracked and dreamless sleep. A fierce cramp gripped her insides and rolled her over onto her hands and knees. She rested on her elbows, panting and moaning.

Oh god, she said, Oh god help me. Tears streamed down her clenched face.

A great bellow like the lowing of a cow tore forth from her mouth, the sound independent of her, primal and involuntary. She strained and pushed with the last of her strength until the thing came out of her in a great bloody gush, all folded up and shrivelled, hideous as a newly hatched bird.

She wasn't sure it was alive until it screamed. The rain had stopped. Fingers of sunlight reached through the fracture in the

ceiling and touched Gerlinde's face. She was leaning spent against the rock wall, the baby bundled in the plaid shirt and cradled against her chest. The vestibule grew steamy

as the moisture rose in the heat, and the air in the little space was muggy with a mineral

warmth.

Gerlinde shifted uncomfortably, the floor slimy against her skin. She peeked

again at the sleeping infant. A squirming lump of muscle. The lashless eyelids were puffy and swollen, and its crumpled red face was covered in white fibres. A pale blonde tuft sprouted from its scalp, and beneath the sticky hair a pulse beat, visible through the

fontanel atop the skull.

As if it had sensed her looking, the baby opened its milky eyes and started to cry

again, a torturous squalling. She had tried to feed it but it wouldn't take her breast.

Gerlinde stuck the tip of her pinkie between its lips in a vain attempt to sooth it, terrified

someone would hear. By now Dex's body would have been discovered in the adjoining tunnel; Bullet's men would be looking for her. And the baby kept crying, a shrill piercing alarm, the noise appallingly powerful for such a mite of a creature.

Someone was calling her name. She rocked the baby, shushing it, but the voice came closer, calling and calling. Gerlinde! Gerlinde! Dragging out the syllables, making her name into a schoolyard taunt. The voice grew louder, until it was directly overhead, where it went silent, listening.

The baby was sobbing in earnest now, its whole body hiccupping. Gerlinde shuffled frantically away on her bare knees, driven back into the narrowing blackness.

She stopped, sagging with exhaustion. The infant's harsh screams echoed off the rocks. 251

"She's down here!" The familiar voice was animated with what sounded like relief.

A shard of shale fell and smashed against the floor where she had been sitting.

Gerlinde huddled against the wall and rocked the baby. It stopped crying, as if it listened too. More voices came, followed soon by tools ringing sharply against rock, the slow ripping sound of grass being uprooted, stones ricocheting off the walls. A pebble bounced against her head. The painfully bright blue sky falling in.

A face peered down through the jagged hole, backlit by dazzling sun and framed with a cloud of pale wispy hair. He looked like an angel.

"Gerlinde?" Leif said. "Are you okay?" 252

CHAPTER 33

"Father?"

Father Eli, adjusting his scapular neatly over his shoulders as he finished dressing, ignored Aura. She sat huddled on the mattress with the itchy blanket thrown over her. Brother Karl, holding his crumpled robe, was pacing the length of the chamber, his head cocked.

"Did you hear that? It sounds like a baby crying."

Eli wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and listened.

"It's just an animal," he said.

Aura cleared her throat.

"Father Eli?" she said again. Her throat was dry and her voice came out broken, tentative and tremulous.

"What?" he said, his tone abrupt. He smoothed loose strands of hair quickly back into his ponytail, refusing to look at her. In the shifting light of the candle flames that guttered and pulled in the draft, the planes of his face were exaggerated and sharpened by shadow. He looked as hard and implacable as the rock wall behind him.

"Can I ask you something about your work?' The slight emphasis on the last word should have been a warning.

"Oh," the monk said, warming. Like a star stopping to sign an autograph, generously dispensing a few seconds of indulgence. "Of course."

"I read a review once of the Temptation of Benedict piece," she continued, sounding to her own ears unschooled and awestruck, like a rookie reporter. "The first one you did."

Eli nodded, arms folded patiently. 253

"Well," she said, hesitant, as if striving to understand, "the guy who wrote it said the sculpture should have been called When Good Plumbing Goes Bad."

She sat and waited faithfully for an explanation.

Eli's neck flushed. "He's an idiot. It's sour grapes. Like most critics he has no talent."

Aura looked dubious. She didn't answer.

Eli stared at her, his voice taut with irritation. "You said you had a question about my work?"

Fattened like a tick on adulation, he couldn't stop himself begging for more.

Aura, sensing her power to deflate him, savoured his neediness.

"Yes, about your art," she said, nodding apologetically. "It's crap, right?" A hysterical half giggle escaped her. "I mean," she said, the words pouring out unbidden now, her voice growing louder, "you're just a poser. Your art actually is garbage - "

Karl, who had stepped out of the chamber, came rushing back in.

"There's a helicopter out there. Something's going on up at the border. We should get out of here." He finished pulling his robe over his head and waited expectantly near the entrance.

Eli was staring at Aura, his face pale with shock as if some essential fluid were slowly draining from him. He didn't move or acknowledge that Karl had spoken. Aura abruptly bit back a wild squeal of laughter and put her hand over her mouth, her eyes widening as she stared toward the exit.

"Did you hear me?" said Karl. "Let's go."

Eli shook himself out of his stupor. "What if they come looking around here and find her?" he said, looking hard at Aura. Karl shrugged. "Maybe you should've thought of that before," he said, knowing he would pay for his insolence. He didn't care anymore. He'd grown accustomed to being hit.

Eli shot him a look. "Later," he said. He yanked the blanket from Aura. "If someone finds her she'll talk," he said.

"No," said Aura, shaking her head. "No, please." She scrambled to her knees and started to yell for help.

Eli ripped the chain from her navel, ignoring her scream of pain.

"She's got too much to say in any case, " he said, smiling at her triumphantly. He stepped behind her and wrapped the chain around her neck, holding the ends like the reins of a bridle.

"Ignorant little girls are meant to be seen and not heard," he grunted as he crossed his elbows and pulled. The greased chain slipped through his hands and Aura, gagging and choking, fell forward clutching her throat.

"Christ!" he said, wiping his hands on his robe. "The chain's slippery,"

He glanced at Karl, who stood watching with the dismayed expression of someone who has just remembered something too late.

"Don't just stand there looking like an asshole," Eli said to him. "Give me a hand."

When they eventually let go, there was a great wheezing groan like the sound made by a bagpipe, air filling the skin as the piper prepares to play. Then with a soft hissing gasp the body fell forward onto the mattress, where it lay, a broken instrument, silent and tuneless. 255

CHAPTER 34

The air felt freshly laundered, cleansed by the rain as the heat wicked up moisture from the grasses. Gerlinde, jolted along on a stretcher, breathed deeply and felt the sun upon her face, warming the chill from her bones. A paramedic carried the baby wrapped in a green pillowcase, its tuft of pale hair protruding from the swaddling like silk from an ear of corn. Leif walked ahead with a police officer, a woman with a jauntily bobbing ponytail who seemed intent on keeping him from speaking with

Gerlinde unchaperoned.

The racket from the helicopter overhead had made speech nearly impossible anyhow. Gerlinde turned her head to watch as the aircraft made a final pass along the fence line. It hovered like a huge silver dragonfly above the forested crest of Rock

Mountain, before settling slowly out of sight behind the trees. As the beating of the propellers slowed and died away, the sound of men shouting, followed by the crack of a gunshot, became audible from somewhere in the helicopter's vicinity on the other side of the border.

There was an ambulance waiting in the gravel driveway of a ranch yard, where several police cars were parked before a boarded-up stucco house. Across from the house was a pigpen with a tin roof, and nearby the tilting rectangular outbuilding

Gerlinde had once glimpsed through the front door of the grow house. That same door now opened, and a police officer emerged from inside, leading Buddy. Buddy's pockets had been turned inside out and hung down the front of his pants like little white flags.

His arms were pulled behind his back, his hands cuffed. Leif halted when he saw his brother shuffling down the stairs, and the two stared at each other a moment before the lady cop stepped between and hustled Leif over to one of the waiting cars. The way Buddy looked at Leif frightened Gerlinde. From scraps of conversation, she understood that Leif had cut some sort of deal. Before the lady cop had intervened, he'd managed to tell Gerlinde that he'd been apprehended at the border, when his car was searched and the customs officials found cartons of American cigarettes stashed inside the door panels. She had overheard the cop telling him something about a witness protection program.

Gerlinde's stretcher was lifted onto on a set of wheels and raised, then trundled across the lumpy gravel driveway. Barely aware of her own body as someone swiftly inserted the needle for an IV drip into her arm, she watched anxiously as the paramedic attending to the baby inside the ambulance carefully placed an oxygen mask over the tiny scrunched up face.

"Is the baby going to be okay?"

The paramedic glanced out at her and smiled unconvincingly.

"So far so good," he said. He unwrapped the infant and swabbed the umbilical cord, which he then snipped with surgical scissors, before fastening the purple flesh with a clip, the motion akin to twisting shut a bread bag and holding it closed with a notched plastic tab.

"What is it?" Leif asked excitedly, craning his neck in an attempt to see the naked infant from where he stood.

Buddy, being stuffed into the back of a nearby police cruiser, snorted audibly.

"It's, like, a baby?" he said, rolling his eyes. The police officer pushed down on the top of his head and shut the car door on him.

The front door of the house opened again and two uniformed police officers wearing rubber gloves struggled down the steps, lugging between them a body bag on a stretcher. Gerlinde flushed and averted her eyes. One of the officers wearing camouflage was pacing back and forth in the driveway, listening to a crackling radiophone.

"Just a minute," he said, and came over to the ambulance. "Is the access to this mineshaft located on the monastery grounds?" he asked Gerlinde, frowning.

"I think so," she said. "Did you find her?"

The cop hesitated. "Maybe."

Just then a pickup truck came rattling up the driveway and Norman Klumpe jumped out of the passenger seat. He stopped short when he saw the baby in Gerlinde's arms, his face in stages registering first comprehension then shock. The driver, a lumbering dimwit named Ivan Pendergrast, came up behind him and stared.

"Jesus, Norm. I didn't know your girl had a bun in the oven." He gave Norman a clap on the back that nearly knocked the smaller man off his feet. "I guess congratulations are in order," he said, with a hearty laugh, and bending nearer, in a tone ripe with future ribbings, added, "GrampsT

Norm regained his footing and glowered at Gerlinde, his face going deep red beneath sunburnt patches of freckles.

"Who did this to you?" he demanded, meaning the baby. He glowered at Leif, who was attempting to skulk off unseen. "I'll kill him."

The cop listening to the walkie-talkie exclaimed loudly, "A monkl"

He glanced around and lowering his voice, turned away to continue. "Repeat, over, please repeat that please."

Leif threw Gerlinde a pleading look. He reminded her suddenly of a scared little boy. He wasn't a man yet, and, it occurred to her, he might never be. She touched the 258 baby's lock of pale hair with her fingertip, and felt only mildly guilty about what she was about to do.

"Brother Karl," she said to her father. "It's Brother Karl's baby." 259

CHAPTER 35

The helicopter hovered over the bluff above the mouth of the miner's cavern, stirring up twigs and flattening the grasses that grew between the boulders, and then ascended and flew up toward the border fence. Rousted by the noise, a blue grouse exploded from the bushes with a frantic flapping of wings, startling Brother Karl as he turned the lock on the grate. Father Eli was crouched between two rocks, shielding his eyes as he looked into the sun's glare toward the rhythmic whirring of the blades diminishing into the distance.

"Come on," Eli said, rising, "I don't think they saw us."

Karl followed closely, dodging the boulders and gathering up the skirts of his robe as Eli started to run, gathering momentum on the narrow deer trail that led down through the aspen grove onto the hayfield. A gray-brown hare, its coat already beginning to turn, darted across the path, frightened out of its hiding place.

Eli stopped short and Karl nearly bumped into him. An officer wearing khaki fatigues was blocking the way, a rifle cradled in his arms. He was listening to a two-way radio, which he promptly shut off and hooked on his belt.

"Gentlemen," the man said, sounding surprised. He hesitated, and then stepped aside.

Eli turned sideways and ushered Karl ahead. The chain was wrapped around

Eli's fist like a rosary. From the corner of his eye Karl saw him deftly slipping it into the pocket of his cassock.

"Good afternoon," said Eli, stepping forward. He sounded slightly out of breath from his exertions. "Must be hard to run in those dresses," the man said, his mouth bemused. The expression in his eyes was hidden behind oversized sunglasses.

Eli gave him a stony look.

The man cleared his throat and became officious. "Just what are you brothers doing up here?"

"These are monastery lands," said Father Eli. "Perhaps I should be asking you the same question?"

He pulled out a wallet and flashed his badge. "RCMP. I'm afraid I can't discuss our present operation," he said. "Classified information."

"In that case we won't interrupt you further." Eli started to walk down the hill,

Karl following.

"One moment," said the officer, unmoving. "I don't think I caught why you're up here?"

"We're looking for a steer that escaped this morning. The Abbot is showing some purebred Herefords at the fair this weekend. Brother Karl here helps with the livestock," Eli said, turning to Karl.

Karl nodded, speechless. The officer looked into his eyes briefly, and spoke again to Eli.

"Do you know anything about a miner's cavern somewhere around here?"

Karl looked at the ground, struggling to maintain his composure.

"Yes," said Eli. "We once lost a valuable calf when it fell down the mineshaft and broke a leg."

"If you don't mind, I'll get you to show me where it is," said the officer. 261

Eli pointed back up the trail. "It's just up there. The entrance is closed off, by the way."

"For safety reasons?"

Eli nodded. "After the calf, the Abbot had me construct a gate to prevent such an accident from happening again."

"Is there another way to get in?"

Eli pursed his lips, pondering. His green irises glinted and grew transparent against the sun, the pupils shrinking to twin pinpoints of darkness.

"Not that / know of," he said, after a moment. "But the gate has a lock. You can open it, if you need to get in." He gestured to the crude iron implement hanging on

Karl's sash. "Luckily, Brother Karl has the key."

Karl gasped involuntarily. Eli smiled at him encouragingly.

"Now, if you'll excuse me, I must hurry," he said to the cop. "I have to prepare for the afternoon service. Karl can show you the way."

Aura stood up and looked down at her body. It lay crumpled on the mattress like a discarded costume, torn and stained. A man in camouflage gear, sunglasses tipped up on his forehead, was crouched beside the bed. He pressed the tips of his fingers against the thing's bruised neck and after a moment shook his head. From within the mountain came the tinny ring-tone of a cell phone and the man, startled, turned toward the sound.

Aura remembered the song but could not name it, the words crumbling in her mind as she thought them.

Bright light streamed down the mineshaft in slanting rays. Aura stepped onto a beam and rode it like an elevator to the top. Outside, an odd-looking little monk, ugly in 262 his prettiness, was pacing back and forth between the boulders, wringing his hands and then putting them to his mouth in dismay, as if he didn't know which way to go. He reminded her vaguely of someone she'd seen in a movie or a magazine long ago.

At the edge of the spindly white trees, a stag stood waiting. His hide looked worn, like dirty brown carpet, and from his neck a swollen tick hung like a leathery grape.

Between the velvety antlers, a white cross grew up from the creature's head. The stag licked his flat black muzzle and bunted his head against a tree, as if trying to shed his heavy crown. He spoke to Aura with huge glistening eyes, then flicked his tail and stepped daintily onto a narrow path that curved toward a tall, lonely tree atop the bluff.

Aura followed where he led.

Eli, wearing a clean white t-shirt and jeans, was just parking the red truck when

Karl came panting down the cow track that ran behind the Quonset hut. Ethel trudged past with an apron full of carrots and gave Karl a disgruntled nod. The reek of stale perspiration hung behind her in the late summer air.

Karl, too, was sweltering, wearing the black cotton robe over his work clothes.

He followed Eli into the cool darkness of the studio.

"You're still here," he said, wiping a bead of sweat from his brow.

"Yes," said Eli, studying his work-in-progress. "Where else would I be?"

"Wherever it is you were headed when you ditched me with that cop. I can't believe you told him I had the key."

Eli shrugged. "Maybe you should've thought of that before."

Karl fell silent. So this was the payback for his earlier lip. 263

"You were running out, weren't you?" he said, as Eli began dragging the grain-

seeder box out from under the workbench. "You were going to let me take all the blame."

"The blame. For what?" Eli looked up at him. "What exactly did you say to him?"

"Nothing," said Karl. "He just asked me if I always carried the key with me and I said no"

"He must have been shocked to hear you speak." Eli laughed. "Obviously the guy took you for a moron or a mute."

"They're going to come here later and ask us questions," Karl said, incredulity in his voice. "He went down inside and looked."

"That's fine," said Eli. "I have nothing to hide. You, on the other hand, you might want to check that habit you're wearing. Throw it in the laundry to be safe. Get rid of any stray black hairs."

Karl turned to leave. He was too scared to play Eli's sadistic game.

"Oh, by the way," said Eli. "I was about to head into town - on an errand - and

I ran into Ethel at the root cellar. She had some rather interesting news."

"What," said Karl, responding despite himself. "Carrots for supper?"

Eli ignored him, trying to prop the long metal box against the Tree of Life in a pleasing way. He shook his head and shifted it. "That won't do," he muttered. "We can't have people calling it 'crap'."

"What?" Karl repeated.

"Oh," said Eli. "Right. The local gossip. Ethel has it on good authority - Lucille

Pendergrast no less, and she's rarely wrong - that the RCMP just made a drug raid on those bikers who have the place over the hill. Apparently they were holding Gerlinde

Klumpe in captivity. Along with that other girl - what's her name again?" He snapped his fingers, concentrating. "Oh, you know, that one with the face full of hardware you were so friendly with. Anyhow, it turns out the bikers were holding her captive too!

Only, her, they killed." He grinned smugly at Karl.

Karl stared at Eli. The arrogant bastard thought he was invincible. He wasn't the least bit uneasy.

The squeaking of the hamster wheel broke the stillness. Aura's note was still taped to the top of the cage. Karl went over to the shelf and removed the piece of paper, crumpling it into his pocket.

"There's all kinds of evidence here," he said. "And on the ... on her. DNA."

"I guess you would know all about that stuff --" Eli leaned back against the workbench and crossed his arms, "Matilda."

Karl's eyes filled with angry tears. "My name is Karl."

"Sure," said Eli. "Sure it is. Mat. And you're a guy, not a girl."

"You're evil," said Karl. As if the thought had just this instant occurred to him.

As if he had been betrayed. "You're a psychopath."

Eli waved him off. "Blah blah blah. Tell it to someone who cares." He plugged in his soldering iron.

The door shuddered in its frame as Karl slammed it behind him. He hated Eli more than he had ever hated him before.

I'm not your fucking doormat. Not anymore. He walked as quickly as he could toward the dull yellow blocks that housed the refectory and the enclosure, and broke into a run as he neared. He had to do it before he lost his nerve.

The novice master looked briefly surprised when he opened his office door, and then smoothly resumed his usual demeanour.

"Look what the cat dragged in. Busy shirking work again?" Brother Jerome's malformed nose was redder than normal, his grey eyes watery.

"I... may I.. .come in?" Karl asked, hyperventilating as he spoke. He looked quickly down at the floor. He still couldn't look Jerome in the face.

The older monk stepped aside with a click of his boot heels and indicated a chair.

Karl sat slowly in the hard orange seat. He hadn't been in this room since he'd shown

Eli the spy cam footage on the abbey's computer just a week earlier. That morning now seemed a lifetime ago. The desktop was covered with bills and a ledger book, the columns of which the novice master had been filling in with fountain pen. Some of the figures were written in red ink. The blocky numeric symbols looked like a foreign language, an intricate system of signs Karl didn't know how to read.

Brother Jerome sat down in the computer chair and flipped the ledger closed.

"You needn't bother looking at that. It's the Almighty who's totting up your graces and sins, not me."

"I suppose," he said, after a long pause designed to make Karl squirm, "you've come crawling to me because you're in the red."

He curled his lip in disgust and continued in a low mutter, barely looking at Karl.

"You novices, you're like all young people these days, living on credit, wanting everything right away. When you get yourself in a fix, it's as easy as declaring 266 bankruptcy — just spill your guts in the confession booth and in exchange for promising a few Hail Mary's you're sent off with a clean slate."

He pulled a stained handkerchief from his pocket and honked into it, wincing.

"Hay fever," he said, wiping his inflamed nose. "Just another wee cross to bear. The point is to be grateful for such burdens. " He smiled bitterly. "A man has to face himself.

You can't run away forever."

Karl nodded, and opened his mouth to speak. Nothing came out.

"I didn't see you out in the hayfields, Brother Karl. A runny nose is a poor excuse. Ora et Labora - you're here to work. You've also expressly disobeyed my instructions lately. I am your spiritual advisor, whether that suits you or not. And it's my unpleasant duty to inform you, laddy, that you are treading a very thin line."

"He made me," Karl blurted.

"Who?" Brother Jerome asked, impatient. "What are you on about, man? Who made you what?"

Karl pulled up his sleeve, revealing the bruises Elva had left on his forearm. The marks had darkened and turned purple and yellow, the flesh mottled like rotting fruit. A tear rolled down his cheek and dripped from his chin onto his exposed wrist.

"Father Eli," he said, his breath catching raggedly in his throat. He steeled himself and looked up into Jerome's judgemental eyes, focusing hard. The nose hovered, a blurred necrotic appendage, just below his line of vision. Karl started sobbing. He wrapped his arms across his chest and rocked back and forth, until eventually he stopped crying and caught his breath.

"Father Eli made me do it," he said, when he was calm enough to speak. CHAPTER 36

Matilda Dyck checked her makeup in the rear-view mirror. The outline on her upper lip was a bit lopsided. The colour was too dark, a deep brownish red. She read the name on the pencil — Lady MacBeth. Aura had awful taste. Matilda herself preferred more feminine shades, pale plums and delicate pinks.

Although she had to admit the dramatic tone of the lip liner did compliment the black wig. She was wearing Brother Bernard's tractor cap to cover the thin patches where the skullcap showed through the strands of horsehair, accessorizing Aura's long black skirt, and a pink t-shirt with the word Bitch written in glitter across the front.

Matilda wished she had a full-length mirror. Looking down, she could tell her chest looked lumpy in the lace bra. Her feet in the dusty monastery-issue sandals were badly in need of a manicure, and her legs hadn't been shaved in months. Her arms, tanned and bulky in the cap-sleeve top, didn't match her made-up face.

A few dots of razor burn bled through the pale foundation. Matilda dabbed her chin with a final dusting of powder and put the mirror down on the workbench. There wasn't time to perfect her look. From the toolbox beneath the bench she took a pleated skirt and white blouse and tucked them into Aura's backpack, then she put a toothbrush and a comb into a plastic bag with the items of makeup, and placed the bag in the pack on top of the clothes.

Matilda took one last look around the studio. Beside the Tree of Life, the red grain-seeder rested like a casket beneath a wreath of barbwire; the oxygen tank with the painted-on face was tipped toward it like a mourner, position unfixed. Aura's chain was tentatively draped like a garland on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Apparently Eli had been apprehended mid-brainstorm, his masterpiece as yet unrealized. 268

The hamster, its nocturnal schedule confused by the perpetual dimness of the

space, was awake and running on its squeaky treadmill. Matilda filled the feed cup with

sunflower seeds then pulled the studio door shut behind her, carefully replacing the yellow and black plastic police tape that had been draped across the threshold. The

attending officers had, of course, locked the Quonset hut, but Brother Karl knew where

Eli kept a spare set of keys hidden in the smithery around back.

The last time he'd seen Eli was in the corridor of the Osoyoos Police Station.

After Karl had given his statement, an administrative assistant had taken his prints at the front desk. When she'd finished pressing his fingertips onto the pad and rolling each thumb separately over the ink, she had spritzed his fingers with cooking spray and handed him a roll of paper towel.

As he wiped his hands clean, Karl felt he was removing yet another layer of skin, his identity being peeled away in stages. The cop who'd taken his statement had addressed him as Matthew Peters, and insisted that he sign the forms with that name.

When Karl objected, Brother Jerome, who had accompanied him, reminded Karl that he was not yet solemnly professed (adding under his breath loudly enough for them to hear,

"nor likely to be"). Karl had scrawled the fraudulent signature with trembling hands.

There was a chance that the police, running his prints under a different sex and altered birth date, might not make the link, but Karl didn't hold out much hope. Mat Peters was a bridge, a tenuous catwalk between two lives, and here he was, swaying precariously between the past and the future, the jagged rocks and oily black waters of a gaping abyss visible below.

When Father Eli was escorted past the desk to the pay phone in the hallway,

Karl's stomach lurched. Eli, intent on dialling a number from his little black notebook, 269 ignored him, but as Karl dropped the dirty paper towel in the garbage and started toward the waiting Brother Jerome (who, chin up, managed to appear both mortified and smug at the same time), Eli, without bothering to look over or remove the receiver from his ear, uttered, quite unmistakeably, "You're dead, bitch."

And now he was somewhere out there, released Saturday morning when a mysterious benefactor had posted the exorbitant bail. The diocese, of course, had had nothing to do it. Karl, however, his plea bargain pending, was confined to the grounds of

Saint X, under the authority of the monastic order. The Abbot, through his involvement with the youth rehabilitation program, was on very good terms with the local judiciary, and had pulled a few strings on Karl's behalf.

("I know you're a good kid," he'd said, shaking his large head remorsefully. "I should have kept an eye on Eli. Jerry warned me there was some funny business between you two and I thought he was just being an old woman. Forgive me, Karly, I was wrong to let it slip.")

The late afternoon air outside of the Quonset hut was crisp with an end of summer feeling, a hint of coolness hovering above the sinking heat. Cattle lay placidly chewing their cud in the cropped hayfield, a couple of black calves among the red ones, their clean white minstrel faces impertinent as masks. Barn swallows dipped and swooped above the water trough, catching mosquitoes, and to the west the blue spine of

Cathedral Ridge lay across the sun-hazed horizon like the natural walls of an unguarded fiefdom.

Brother Karl felt a great pang to be leaving this life. His eyes filled with tears and Matilda blinked them back. Hormones or not, at this juncture she couldn't afford to have her mascara run and ruin her face. There was no time for regret. She threw the 270 backpack in the passenger seat and turned the key. The red truck sputtered and gagged.

There was something Eli did with the choke to start the vehicle, she remembered, and she was frantically pumping the mechanism in and out of the dashboard when she heard voices coming from the direction of the blacksmith shop.

It was too early for the rest of the brethren to be returning from the fair, and only

Brother Karl and shy Brother Neil, along with the elderly and infirm, had stayed behind.

Brother Neil had been excused from the annual outing to stay back and ring the bells, and Karl, under the peculiar house arrest, had been assigned as part of his penance to care for Father Norbert in Brother Anthony's absence. But all of the other monks had gone to Rock Creek for the afternoon, to partake of the barbecue dinner and watch from the bleachers as Abbot Paul took his turn around the rodeo grounds in the closing parade.

(Karl had pictured Abbot Paul proudly leading a balky steer behind teenage beauty queens on prancing saddle horses, having his photo taken with local matrons holding prize-winning jars of jam. Square dancers, bingo, cotton candy, fancy-breed rabbits and chickens with ribbons on the cages, draft horse pulls and roller coaster rides

- he was quite sorry to miss it; nearly everyone in the Boundary District, from

Bridesville to Midway, would be there).

A hoot of laughter echoed off the metal walls of the Quonset hut and was followed by a loud crash, as if something had been knocked over. Whoever it was around back sounded as though they'd spent the better part of the afternoon in the beer gardens.

"Christ, look at this sick shit," said one, his drunken voice hoarse as if he'd been shouting for hours. "It's like a frigging torture chamber."

"Haven't you never seen a branding iron, moron?" the other said. 271

The first one ignored him. "Check these out!" A clanging sound, the jangle and

scrape of metal.

"This'll do the job," he said, and let out a loud bellow of laughter.

A lumbering red-faced man wearing a leather vest over bare skin came around the side of the building, making scissoring motions with a sinister looking pair of shears.

A wiry little rancher in a straw cowboy hat followed him. The rancher stopped to light his cigarette, swaying slightly as he concentrated on holding the match steady. Matilda went very still, watching him in the rear-view mirror. He squinted through the smoke and his chin tipped up.

It was too late to duck. He'd seen her.

"Hey," he said, weaving slightly as he gestured toward the truck. "Maybe she knows where the fucker is hiding."

The big one came over and leaned on his arm in the open passenger window. "Hi there, sweetheart. Wanna take me for a ride?" His wispy bangs were stuck to his forehead, and he stank of beer and sweat.

The rancher tapped on the glass on the driver's side. Matilda cranked the window down, trying to look unafraid.

"You'll have to excuse Ivan, miss," he said, "he's afflicted with subhuman tendencies." His words were dangerously slurred.

"Norm, Norm, Norm," Ivan snorted. He stepped back, swinging the shears.

"He's such a kidder," he said to Matilda, and gave her a leering wink.

Matilda squeezed out a pinched little smile in reply.

"We're looking for a monk," said Norm.

So they were after Eli's blood. They must have heard he'd skipped his bail. 272

"You've come to the right place then," said Matilda, playing along. But her voice came out wrong, in a simpering falsetto, as if she'd forgotten how to talk naturally. She sensed the big one looking at her funny. She kept her eyes on Norm.

"We're looking for a Brother Karl," the rancher continued, his tone now deadly serious. "You know where he is?"

Matilda felt a surge of adrenaline. Trembling, she shook her head.

Norm waited, like he was expecting a proper answer. She glanced quickly at Ivan, and forced herself to speak.

"I...he went to the fair."

Norm's eyes narrowed. He shook his head slowly and stared hard at her. "We was just down there. We heard he was here."

Matilda could feel her face hotly blush. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror. Brother Karl's eyes looked back at her. Beard stubble showed through the makeup in the daylight, smeared faintly with red where the shaving cuts bled through.

"Get her out of the truck," said Ivan, who was no longer laughing. Norm looked through the window at him, considering.

"I'd advise you to tell us where he's at," said Norm, "or my friend here will be obliged to start pulling out your fingernails with these." He reached back into his hip pocket and pulled out a pair of rusty callipers.

He opened the truck door. Matilda didn't move.

Ivan came around and yanked her arm, and she stumbled out of the truck, hampered by the long skirt. Ivan pushed her up against the hood. The sun-warmed metal burned her bare arms and her back through the thin cotton t-shirt. He was staring at her, 273 his beery breath blowing heavily in her face. She closed her eyes, feeling sick, about to faint. The sun turned the insides of her eyelids red.

"It's him," Ivan said.

He pulled the wig along with the cap from Matilda's head and threw it on the ground, shaking off his hand as if the thing itself filled him with disgust.

She felt air cool the sweat on her shorn scalp. Her knees buckled and Ivan gripped her arms and held her up.

"Shit," said Norm, sounding mildly surprised.

"You fucking homo — Karl.'''' Ivan spat out his name, voice thick with fury at being duped.

"Come on," said Norm, looking around. "Someone might be coming. Let's get him inside." He went over and tried the door to the Quonset hut. "It's locked."

Ivan, holding Karl's arm, took the keys from the dashboard and tossed them over.

"Try these."

The door swung open and Norm removed the plastic tape. Ivan picked up the shears from the ground where he'd dropped them. Karl dropped to his knees.

"Give me a hand," said Ivan.

Karl's toes, bare in the rubber sandals, stubbed against gravel as they dragged him between them through the dirt.

Norm shut the door, and for a moment everything was cool and mercifully dark.

He flicked on the lights, a bluish glow of buzzing fluorescents.

"Jesus," he said, sucking in his breath.

The three of them stood a moment, looking at the two towering sculptures, magnificent in their hideousness. Karl could see it now, what Eli had been trying to achieve. The spikes of the artificial branches, laden with shimmering leaves, radiated around rusted trunks like cruel halos. He could sense them somehow growing, each tree oddly alive with the weight of its own mythology, leaning very slightly toward each other, unlikeliest of lovers.

"So this is what your boyfriend does in his spare time? When he's not out raping and murdering little girls?" Norm said.

Ivan went over and kicked the oxygen tank. It clanged against the grain-seeder box and rolled across the floor until it came to rest near the work-bench.

"What a pile of crap," he said.

Norm gave Karl a shove toward the workbench. "Get over there. We have a little tinkering of our own to do before we leave." He brandished the shears.

Ivan was pulling the skirt up around Karl's waist. "Christ, " he said, stepping back. "He pissed himself."

"Good for him," said Norm. "Might as well use it while you got it, Karl. You won't be screwing any underage girls again anytime soon."

Ivan pushed Karl forward over the workbench. His face scraping against the wood, the edge of the table jutting into his stomach.

"Hold his legs," Norm was saying. "Don't worry, Karl, I know what I'm doing. I castrate all my own steers."

The tearing of fabric, snap of elastic leg bands, underwear sliding down to his ankles in a soft ticklish heap, cool air on the back of his legs and his buttocks, clammy hands on his thighs.

"What the hell.. .he's got a ... look here."

Silence, the sound of them breathing. The tip of cold metal touching his flesh. 275

"What is it?" Norm asking.

"Fuck if I know. But pussy is pussy." A zipper unzipping, denim sliding on skin, the belt buckle hitting the floor.

When they had finished with him, Karl fell from the table and lay on the cold floor, dull with shock. A dark puddle of blood formed on the cement beside him. A thunking sound, implements being dropped on the table above.

"We better get out of here." Ivan sounded like he was sobering up somewhat.

Norm stood over Karl, smoking a cigarette, and looked down at him a moment, as if he was trying to think of something to say. Finally he tossed the lit butt in Karl's face and left. The door closed with a bang and a click.

The cigarette butt smouldered in the crook of his neck, burning his skin. Karl lay very still, listening. The oxygen tank hissing softly in his ear. 276

AFTERWORD

A Tale of the Canadas

In his analysis of the media response to the murder trial of Paul Bernardo and the plea bargain of Bernardo's wife and accomplice Karla Homolka, Frank Davey observes that "[ajpart from the few newspapers and television stations that resisted interpreting or dramatizing the acts of the story, almost all narrators of the Mahaffy-French story told it

as a Gothic story" (54-55). Citing the works of novelists Ann Radcliffe, Horace Walpole,

and Mary Shelley, Davey notes that it is "easy to see why" this particular genre was so readily appropriated in the reportage surrounding the murders of the two teenage girls,

as the Gothic's conventional plot typically included the abduction of innocent heroines by sinister villains. When Paul Bernardo was eventually arrested and charged with the sex-slayings:

this polarization between good and evil was expanded by the addition of Karla Homolka, who in some accounts would fill the role of the evil "dark woman" who in Gothic plots frequently works to deceive and betray the heroine and to punish her for having intruded upon her own relationship with the villain. (Davey 57)

That Davey does not list among his examples Matthew Lewis's sensationalistic 1796 novel The Monk: A Romance suggests that he was, perhaps, unfamiliar with this early

Gothic, for its shockingly explicit narrative of abduction, rape, and murder bears remarkable similarities to the story that dominated Canadian headlines in the early

1990's. 277

In The Monk, the handsome priest Ambrosio is seduced by Matilda, a woman/supernatural demon who enters the monastery disguised as a male novice.

Ambrosio soon tires of Matilda's sexual favours and becomes infatuated with the virginal Antonia (his half-sister, as it turns out). Matilda becomes his willing procurer: first she supplies Ambrosio with a magic mirror in which he spies upon the girl bathing, then she provides him with a sprig of magic myrtle which gives him access to Antonio's bedchamber and renders in the girl "a death-like slumber," so that Ambrosio might

"satisfy his desires" undiscovered (245). When Antonia's mother Elvira (and, unbeknownst to Ambrosio, his own mother also) interrupts Ambrosio as he's undressing her daughter, Ambrosio smothers Elvira to protect his reputation.

After the initial guilt wears off, Ambrosio and Matilda concoct another plan to make the now orphaned Antonia a captive sex-slave:

Antonia will be in my power!" exclaimed the monk; "Matilda, you transport me! At length then happiness will be mine, and that happiness will be Matilda's gift, will be the gift of friendship! I shall clasp Antonia in my arms, far from every prying eye, from every tormenting intruder! I shall sigh out my soul upon her bosom; shall teach her young heart the first rudiments of pleasure, and revel uncontrouled in the endless variety of her charms! (Lewis 284)

Under Matilda's direction, Ambrosio steals a potion from the laboratory of the adjoining nunnery with which he dopes Antonia, and then hides her apparently dead body in a tomb. The monk rapes Antonia when she awakens, and keeps her imprisoned despite her promise "to conceal her injuries from the world" if released (324). When threatened with discovery by officers of the Inquisition searching the underground vaults for another missing girl (Agnes, imprisoned by a sadistic prioress for the "crime" of being pregnant), Ambrosio, at Matilda's urging and using her poniard, stabs and kills

Antonia. In this brief summary of The Monk's central storyline are several key elements

similar to the events that took place in St.Catherines, Ontario, in the late 1980's and

early 1990's: Paul Bernardo's videotaping of his victims using the bathroom is

reminiscent of Ambrosio gazing upon Antonia in the magic mirror, for example, and

Karla's theft of animal sedatives from the veterinarian's where she worked echoes

Matilda's knowledge of prototype date-rape drugs and Ambrosio's willingness to

employ them; even the ordering of the atrocities committed by the Bernardo couple

follows a similar chronology to those in Lewis's novel.

Like the monk Ambrosio, Paul Bernardo was obsessed with virginal girls and

enlisted Karla's assistance in capturing what he termed sex-slaves, but before going on

to abduct, rape and strangle Leslie Mahaffy and then Kristen French, the first crime the

pair committed together (Paul had a separate identity as The Scarborough Rapist) was

the drugging, rape and unintended death of Karla's younger sister Tammy. This act was

a reluctant Karla's Christmas "gift" to Paul. Karla administered a dose of sleeping pills

and then placed a rag doused with the powerful animal tranquilizer Halothane over

Tammy's mouth and nose. The teenager's ensuing suffocation, immediately following

Paul's raping her, is eerily akin to a conflation of the incestuous Ambrosio's smothering

of his mother1 and rape of his half-sister. Like Antonia, one of the Bernados' captives begs to be released and promises not to tell.

The stereotypical media depiction of the two abducted young women, Leslie

Mahaffy and Kristen French, followed the same apposite sinner/saint, whore/virgin

characterizations of Lewis' two heroines, the criminally sexual Agnes and the absurdly innocent Antonia - "so strict an observer of chastity, that [s]he knows not in what consists the difference of man and woman "(47). As Davey notes: Mahaffy's having run away from her home several times marked her as transgressive; French's numerous community commitments and her straight-A academic record marked her as exceptional. (123)

Nick Pron, in his true-crime style version of the story, Lethal Marriage, similarly observes that "the 'Good girl' murders tended to get all the press coverage. Leslie was still seen as a runaway teenager who never should have been out that late" (281). In true

Gothic fashion, with the genre's "fondness" for sacrilege (Horner and Zlosnik 86), Pron then goes on to describe on the same page how the Bernardos, while torturing Kristin, called her "the Holy Cross sex slave" and mockingly mispronounced her name

"Christian." There is even a haunting reminiscent of Elvira's ghost returning to warn

Antonia in Pron's novelistic account, where a relative of the Homolka family has a dream on the night of Tammy's demise in which she appears at the end of the cousin's bed calling for help (163).

What is it?

When I began rewriting The Monk, it was not my intent to add to the corpus of

Gothicised retellings of the St. Catherines serial killings. In fact, like Frank Davey, I didn't notice the peculiar parallels between Lewis's novel and the story of the Mahaffy-

French murders.3

My original plan was simply to contemporise Lewis's narrative — counter to the usual Gothic mode of setting the story in some historically anachronistic past and imagined exotic locale ~ and to appropriate The Monk's critique of a cloistered retreat from sexual self-awareness to examine current political apprehensions surrounding such fraught issues as international terrorism. My project s template, after all, like those of

Lewis's contemporaries Walpole and Radcliffe, similarly worked to dissipate the

reader's anxieties in the act of creating them against a backdrop of manufactured terror:

The Monk.. .is a response to some of the most pressing issues of Lewis's time - though it makes the typical Gothic move of displacing them onto a distant time and place, seventeenth-century Spain. Foremost among these issues.. .was the French Revolution. (Macdonald and Scherf 15)

I initially intended to write something along the lines of what Margot Northey calls a

"Sociological Gothic", a category proposed to describe the paradoxical fusion of social

realism and Gothicism in certain twentieth century Canadian fiction (62). By virtue of necessity, there would also be a faint strain of "techno-Gothic" (Punter and Byron xviii)

in my version of The Monk, since modern technology manifests even in rural Canadian

settings.

As the previously mentioned parallels between the news story and Lewis's

suggest, the supernatural elements in the novel readily lend themselves to modernizing.

Citing the example of the similarity between the magic mirror and surveillance via

"closed-circuit television," Howard Anderson comments that the "magical devices

bear... remarkable similarities to those developed by twentieth-century technology to

help human beings master the world" (xv). Medical technology would likewise serve to update the transvestite character of the novice monk who enters a men-only environment

in disguise.

In Marjorie Garber's examination of divisive notions of male and female,

transsexualism represents a "distinctly twentieth-century manifestation of cross

dressing" (15). For Garber, transvestite characters in literature signal what she terms a

"category crisis," that is, "a failure of definitional distinction, a borderline that becomes 281 permeable, that permits of border crossings from one (apparently distinct), category to another (16)". A category crisis destabilizes constructs such as gender, class, and race:

a transvestite figure in a text that does not seem, thematically, to be primarily concerned with gender difference or blurred gender indicates a category crisis elsewhere, an irresolvable conflict or epistemological crux that destabilizes comfortable binarity, and displaces the resulting discomfort onto a figure that already inhabits, indeed incarnates, the margin. (17)

The site of the monastic enclosure seemed analogous to a world of closed international borders, and Matilda's stealthy infiltration of its boundaries metaphoric of the generalized threat posed by a demonized "other"-- the figure of the terrorist, for example, who eludes exclusionary practises such as racial profiling which attempt to categorize and contain.

While the strategy of representing repressed fears - "phantoms more terrible than reality itself," as Oscar Wilde puts it in The Picture of Dorian Gray (134) - is a staple within the genre, the Gothic itself remains "notoriously difficult.. .to define .. .especially in its more modern manifestations" (Punter and Byron xviii)." Gothic, according to

David Punter and Glennis Byron, is "a staggering, limping, lurching form, akin to the monsters it so frequently describes" (xix).

Judith Halberstam would agree, terming Gothic "the narrative that calls genre itself into question" (Skin Shows 11). Of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, for example,

Halberstam claims that the question that haunts the monster, "Who am I?" is reformulated within the subtext as "What is it?" This self-reflexive query must be directed at both the monster and the book, itself patched together from "philosophies of life, meditations on the sublime, sentimental narratives of family and morality, discussions of aesthetics" (Skin Shows 31). Shelley's monster is a "totalizing monster",

signifying "an array of societal, political, and sexual threats"; the Gothic monster and the monstrous Gothic narrative, are, in general, "meaning machines" representing "any

horrible trait that the reader feeds into the narrative" (Skin Shows 21,23).

In a moment of misguided revolutionary enthusiasm, the author of Costume

Gothics in Margaret Atwood's Gothic parody Lady Oracle identifies the politicizing

potential in such a medium:

Terror at Casa Loma, I'd call it, I would get in the evils of the Family Compact, the martyrdom of Louis Riel, the horrors of colonialism, both English and American, the struggle of the workers, the Winnipeg General Strike.... (621)

In my version of The Monk, along with terrorism, I would get in the spectre of climate

change, the horrors of mad cow disease, the economic ennui of the softwood lumber

dispute, and the evils of urban meth labs...

If it Bleeds it Leads4

But it would never work. The project took a different turn in the spring of 2005, when, as I was in the early phases of reworking The Monk, Karla Homolka again made the news; a great flurry of anxiety and speculation arose surrounding her pending release upon completion of a twelve-year prison sentence:

Where, they ask, will the bloodless blonde go? How will she live? But deeper, more fundamental questions spring from the Crown's "deal with the devil." Has prison changed her? Will she cross the line again? (Makin F2)

I could not help but recognize in a much re-published photo of the younger Karla ~

"attractive in a slatternly way" with "her pouty face and incongruous halo of blond tresses" (Makin Fl) ~ an image of Lewis's demonic female. A frisson of familiarity perhaps not dissimilar to that experienced by Ambrosio, when he sees in a portrait of the

Madonna "the same exquisite proportion of features, the same profusion of golden hair, 283 the same rosy lips, heavenly eyes, and majesty of countenance [that] adorned Matilda!"

(97).

I had found my monster. Like my character Father Eli, soldering together scraps of salvaged metal in his "little shop of horrors" (MD 85), I set about making my own meaning machine, suturing together two primary textual bodies with spare parts harvested from a variety of sources. The Jekyll and Hyde style drugs effecting Karl's transformation, the Frankenstein-ian reconstruction of his flesh, even the pseudo-scalp torn from the pages of Wacousta, are all rather obvious motifs pilfered from 19th century descendents of the classic Gothics of the late 18l century. Additional plot elements were clipped from newspaper accounts contemporaneous with the story of Homolka's release, such as the discovery of an underground tunnel built for the purpose of smuggling BC marijuana from Canada to the States. Lewis's template became a vehicle through which to Actively answer the flurry of anxiety-inducing questions posed by the papers about

"the bloodless blonde" (and possibly provoke in the reader a different set of rhetorical queries, a different set of fears). She would, indeed, cross the line again.

My appropriation of The Monk had never been intended as a response to Lewis -

Ann Radcliffe, with The Italian5 (1797), got there long before me - nor as a simple rip- off- the anonymous author of an 1810 chapbook redaction titled Almagro and Claude had already done that (Macdonald and Scherf 26). In my use of standard Gothic mechanisms, I tried to stay out of the old argument regarding the superiority of terror vs. horror, and my supernatural elements take something of a middle road between Mrs.

Radcliffe's "explained supernatural" (Punter 22) and Lewis's rationalizing demons:6 the ghost-rider that visits Aura is possibly a hallucination brought on by grief and exhaustion - Aura does tend to drift between waking and dreaming - yet the pile of 284

dung that remains after the vision fades marks a breach between metaphysical and

material realms. Lewis's "blatantly mocking" (McWhir 36) Anti-Catholicism is

similarly reduced in my story to vestigial traces left by the disgraced priest Father

Gerald, whose crime of "buggering wee boys" (MD26) haunts the inmates of the

monastery like an embarrassing odour; Father Eli is himself too much a caricature of

villainy to be construed as a comment on the present state of the priesthood, I would

hope.

My version does, of course, invert Lewis's notion of woman as the downfall of

man, Matilda as Eve in the abbey-garden's "artificial wilderness" (73) seducing

Ambrosio. Father Eli, the instigator, exhibits an arrogance expressed in his precursor as

the sin of Pride,7 and, like the handsome smooth-talker Paul Bernardo as conjured by the

press, Eli is a particular type of deviant who appears normal and "passe[s] himself off as

a law-abiding citizen.. .and might be the boy next door" (Pron 96). According to Nick

Pron's paraphrase of a Special Agent's interpretation of an FBI paper:

Paraphiliacs [are] not only mean but manipulative. There were cases where wives and girlfriends had been molded into sex slaves...Women with low self- esteem were the best victims. Easily swayed, they were taken in by the charm of the paraphilias who kept his oddball lusts tucked well back behind the glitzy smile. Only later came the abuse. First physical, then sexual, and finally a psychological hammering of the woman into submission until she was no better off than one of the victims. (97)8

In the fleshly disguise of Mat Peters/Brother Karl, the title character Matilda Dyck ~

Father Eli's "Frankenfurter" — is the blandest, most banal of evil Gothic women, and, unlike the imperious Matilda, a psychic neuter, passively and predictably re-enacting her

crimes.

As the above-mentioned revisions and condensed versions of The Monk attest,

my own act of textual recidivism is hardly unprecedented. This re-enactment of certain 285 themes and motifs - an "enduring vitality" paradoxically drawn from horror and death

(Wilde 134) ~ is another hallmark of the genre. Syndy Conger, admiring Radcliffe's retreading of Lewis's story, suggests that:

if Gothic literature is destined to cyclic returns to sensationalism, such returns can be generically regenerative. Specific works of Sensation Gothic are often memorable and rarely simply end points, but, as reception aesthetics has recently made us appreciate, rather stimulants to further literary creation. (113)

In a brief forward to the first edition of The Monk, Matthew Lewis acknowledges his own "plagiarisms" (38). His sources include an Oriental tale by Sir Richard Steele upon which the central storyline is based, dream scenes lifted from Samuel Richardson's

Clarissa (retooled yet again in Aura's odd dream, MD 81), and a literary version of an enduring German folktale called The Elopement that supplied the "Bleeding Nun" figure for his main sub-plot (365).

A stigmatic apparition that seeps through locked doors, in The Monk the

Bleeding Nun is the ghost of a murdered murderess who once every five years escapes her containment within Lindenberg Castle and ventures outside to revisit her unburied bones. The local belief in this haunting is a source of great amusement to the two young lovers Raymond and Agnes; they laugh at the porter who opens the castle gate for "her ghostship" "since she could easily whip through the key-hole if she chose" (142). When

Raymond accidentally conjures the spectre with a love song, unleashing the Bleeding

Nun from a sentence imposed by exorcism, their mockery is punished.

While Raymond's unwitting summons revivifies the ghost, it is the repeated oral transmission of her tale that keeps her truly alive: although the former nun-gone-wrong has been dead for more than a century, one cannot "possibly have lived at Lindenberg for three whole months without hearing of the bleeding nun" (140): 286

All Bavaria was scandalized by her impudent and abandoned conduct. Her feasts vied in luxury with Cleopatra's, and Lindenberg became the theatre of the most unbridled debauchery. Not satisfied with displaying the incontinence of a prostitute, she professed herself an atheist. (166)

This residual fascination with "the enormity of her crimes" (165) resembles the

Canadian public's recently revivified interest in the atrocities committed by the

'bloodless blonde' Homolka nearly two decades ago. In his examination of the media

sensation that surrounded the Bernardo trial, Frank Davey explains this phenomenon of

morbid fascination that helps crime stories sell papers:

Cloaked in the protection of self-righteous indignation, of genuinely felt revulsion - we indeed would never have contemplated committing such acts - we read and gain unconscious access to our own remote and secret savageries and fears (51).

The cover of a national magazine (Maclean's: Canada's Weekly Newsmagazine.

Mar21, 2005) featuring an article on the pending release of "Karla Homolka: Girl Next

Door," prominently begs the question "Should she be controlled?" It is precisely failed

strategies of containment that keep alive our anxieties regarding potential re-enactments

of legal, ethical, and moral incontinence. In the news, as in the traditional Gothic, if it

bleeds it leads.

Performance Anxiety

On the enduring vitality of horror imagery in literature, Julia Kristeva offers

another explanation, identifying a primal demonstrative function performed by blood

and other bodily excretions: 287

as in true theatre, without makeup or masks, refuse and corpses show me what I permanently thrust aside in order to live. These body fluids, this defilement, this shit are what life withstands, hardly and with difficulty, on the part of death. There, I am at the border of my condition as a living being. My body extricates itself, as being alive, from that border.... If dung signifies the other side of the border, the place where I am not and which permits me to be, the corpse, the most sickening of wastes, is a border that has encroached upon everything. (3)

This signifying function is also the work of the monster. If death shows us we are alive, the aberrant shows us we are normal: "[ejtymologically speaking, the monster... serves to demonstrate (Latin, monstrare: to demonstrate) and to warn (Latin, monere: to warn)"

(Punter and Byron 263).

Karla Homolka's blood/essness, her apparent lack of humanity, contributes to the social construction of her monstrosity. The fact that she appears to be one of us, epitomizing normal Canadian middle-class values, requires the recognition of some differentiating sign that will identify her as other. Not only is she bloodless, she is tearless. Costumed in a "virginal, going to court frock", her performance at the "grim pageantry of [the] criminal trial" is at odds with her feminine appearance: despite the male prosecutor's best attempts to "break her down," she is "icy, implacable, unreachable," a "cocky, highly coached witness who jousted with him from the witness box" (Makin F6-7).

The line crossed here is a gender line, and the resultant category crisis is ubiquitous in the Gothic motif of cross-dressing and transvestism. In her refusal to weep and display feminine emotion, Homolka is as evil as Lewis's Matilda, who, when she first appears in The Monk out of drag and dressed in women's clothing, similarly demon/strates a troubling "female masculinity": 288

Where she was initially a woman in man's clothing, she is now at least figuratively a man in woman's clothing, and when she is soon after revealed not even to have been human, but a devil in disguise, one realizes the danger of women's power. Matilda is such a frightening creature that she cannot be female, cannot even be male, but must be relegated to the world of demons. (Heiland 39)

By contrast, Matilda Dyck/Brother Karl's uneasy attempts to enact a male identity are pathetic rather than frightening.11 Karl self-consciously handles his money with manly gestures while purchasing women's clothes for his "girlfriend," for example, and the saleswoman sees through his bluff (MD 87). Stripped of his leather jacket just before he arrives at the monastery (by a girl tougher than he), Mat Peters' masculinity is constantly in question, and despite the application of technological revisions to his body, Brother

Karl exhibits unwanted secondary female characteristics, and is perpetually leaking tears.

Gertinde, Interrupted

The "performance of gender," as Judith Butler puts it, is not as simple as "taking on a mask"; "sex" is a construct that must be "materialized" through the reiteration of heterosexual norms, a "fiction" that must be perpetually reconstituted through a set of citational practises (2-13):

Consider the medical interpellation which .. .shifts an infant from an "it" to a "she" or a "he," and in that naming, the girl is "girled," brought into the domain of language and kinship through the interpellation of gender. But that "girling" of the girl does not end there. (Butler 7)

This perpetual interruption and reiteration of gendered subjectivity is expressed in characters other than Brother Karl. While Matilda/Mat/Karl typifies a particular neo-

Gothic trend in which the revisable technological body is "a stage where the subject can act out a number of performances" (Edwards 152-3), other characters in Matilda Dyck also enact identity shifts, and construct surfaces that function to beguile, attract or conceal.

Like his predecessor Ambrosio, whose sermons are as popular with the ladies of

Madrid as "the first representation of a new comedy" (Lewis 46), Father Eli uses the religious habit as drag, a costume which makes him mysterious and desirable to women and allows him to project a pious facade. Aura, making up her face in the mirror and unwittingly performing for Karl's hidden camera, constructs a self modelled upon media images of femininity, while Gerlinde, in an attempt to conceal the very material sex signifier of pregnancy, cross-dresses in baggy boyish attire. Codified male in behaviour as well as appearance, Gerlinde's journey underground becomes a parody of the hero's quest as she gathers talismanic objects, prevails in a mock Arthurian sword-in-the-stone moment, and attempts to rescue the heroine.

The tendency of the Gothic to consume and reconstitute itself can result in "more or less consciously comic effects" (Punter and Byron xix) - puns, for example13 ~ and the hybridity of the genre itself, its refusal to neatly adhere to generic conventions, can produce an odd mix of "mirth and terror" that "reflects the psychic world more accurately than realist writing" (Horner and Zlosnik 8). Alternately, Judith Halberstam contends that realism resides below the surface of Gothic:

Gothic is a cross-dressing, drag, a performance of textuality, an infinite readability and, indeed, these are the themes that are readily accessible within Gothic fiction itself where the tropes of doubling and disguise tend to dominate the narrative. (Skin Shows 60)

In answer to the question asked about Gerlinde's newborn infant ~ "What is it?" ~

Buddy, the literalist, answers, "It's, like, a baby?"(MD 268) Like baby, like monster. Matilda Dyck or The Monk, A Canadian Gothic, necessarily spawns its fictional self as unbridled debauchery performing in a theatre of realism.

A Deal with the Devil

"Movement between critique and complicity is part of the gothic's refusal to set up clear categorical boundaries or distinctions," notes Justin Edwards (75). By presenting such specular scenes as Aura stripping before the hidden camera, my novel not only cannibalizes the pornographic imagery of Monk Lewis, but also participates uncomfortably in the commodification of the story of the videotapes the Bernardos took of their victims.

On the cultural work done by monsters, "their policing the borders of the human, pointing to lines that must be crossed" (263), Punter and Byron note a historical shift in the representation of the Gothic monster, from a horrific "other" serving as a moral warning toward an ambivalent identification that reaches its apogee in late twentieth- century depictions of the serial killer. As a product of the society that forms it, the monster, while not exactly a sympathetic character, shares some recognizable human tendencies with its audience, and boundaries between good and evil are destabilized.

Ambrosio's deal with the devil, his Faustian pact with Matilda (who ultimately rats him out to the Officers of the Inquisition to save herself and ends up punished by

Satan anyhow), is a good example of the traditional Gothic tear-down and re-delineation of moral boundaries. In the instance of Karla Homolka's plea bargain, infamously known as "the deal with the devil," it is the Crown ~ the law itself and the symbolic order— that is seen to succumb to temptation, and the story has no cathartic conclusion: 291

The daily doses of searing testimony at the Bernardo trial came with a cleansing subtext. We were attending the ritual removal from society of an extraordinary evil. Order was being restored. Conviction was a foregone conclusion.

When it comes to Ms. Homolka, there is no such reassuring message. (Makin F6)

If Karla Homolka is bloodless because of her apparent lack of feminine emotion, she is also bloodless because, unlike her victims, she has not been punished in a visceral, visible manner. My version of The Monk provides a semblance of such closure by proxy, in the sadistic vigilante treatment of Brother Karl by Norman Klumpe and his sidekick

Ivan. Karl is a human rather than a demonic monster — he bleeds real blood.14

Frank Davey, discussing the media's focus on the deceptively attractive and trustworthy surfaces presented by the Bernardos, cautions that viewing them in a bipolarized Gothic manner "deprives us of ...the humanity of the accused's lives" (58).

In presenting much of the narrative of Matilda Dyck from the perspective of Brother

Karl and contrasting his complicity with the outright evil of Father Eli, my intent was not necessarily to force an uncomfortable intimacy upon the reader, but to create a dimensional character capable of such transgressions. Brother Karl, like Karla Homolka, is kind to animals, works hard at his job, and (like many of us) desires normal things: a home, security, love.

The totalizing monster, a text that means everything, Judith Halberstam argues, has been replaced in post-modern Gothic with a text that means anything (Skin Shows

27). As a friend of mine is fond of saying, "I don't mean I mean, I mean I don't mean."

During the writing process, my initial attempts to impose a particular set of culturally specific fears upon the story were necessarily abandoned, and no doubt my own sub- conscious worries now infuse the narrative. I must now leave it to the reader to plug his or her own anxieties into my meaning machine and see what the text in turn dispenses.

ENDNOTES 1 George Haggarty reads Ambrosio's matricide as "the only 'bed-scene' in the novel": as a displacement of the same-sex desire dramatized in Ambrosio's attraction to Matilda cross-dressed as the male novice Rosario, the violent misogyny enacted here is actually an expression of self-hatred and heterosexual panic (27). 2 "Karen Horney describes how, rather than responding to each woman as a unique, complex, and therefore potentially fearsome being, men have split the concept of women into pairs of stereotyped antithesis: saint/sinner, vigin/whore, nurturing mother/devouring stepmother, and angel/witch. Objectifying women and casting them as praiseworthy or blameworthy types diminishes the threatening power which women hold for men" (Stein 124). 3 Although the Bernardos were avid consumers of horror videos, nothing in my research suggests that they were familiar with Lewis's novel. 4 The aphorism is generally used to describe a method of selection for the order of presentation of television news stories, but seems to apply also to popular print journalism. 5 Syndy M. Conger calls Radcliffe's revision "the first significant literary protest against The Monk" and sees its sensational gory scenes as "transgression[s] against [Radcliffe's] own notion of sensibility as heightened consciousness " (Conger 113-4). 6 As Ann McWhir points out in her comparison of Lewis and Radcliffe's differing methods of creating supernatural effects, in The Monk "the absurdity of having arguments against superstition put in the mouth of a demon in the form of a beautiful woman undercuts reason" (42). Ambrosio's primary concern after raping Antonia is with his pious reputation; concerned that she will "denounce him to the world" and "proclaim [him] a hypocrite, a ravisher, a betrayer, a monster of cruelty, lust and ingratitude" (322), he dispatches her. Both Ambrosio and Paul Bernardo, an intermittent impotent who fancied himself a sex-god, exhibit symptoms of the mental illness called narcissim that feeds a particular type of violence Roy F. B Baumeister terms "threatened egoism." In his study of violent criminals, Baumeister concludes that these "murderers, rapists and other criminals" consider themselves "superior to others - as special, elite persons who deserve preferential treatment. Many murders and assaults are committed in response to blows to self-esteem such as insults, 'dissing' and humiliation" (56-7). In other words, "[c]onceited, self-important individuals turn nasty toward those who puncture their bubbles of self-love" (59). 8 As David Punter observes of "psychoanalytically-minded" critics of the Gothic, "it would take a remarkable blindness to avoid noticing the diagnoses of insanity, consequent frequently upon the prohibitions of the law and the disorienting effects of transgression, which are offered on every page —although that is not at all the same, of course, as taking those diagnoses at their face value" ("Narrative and Psychology in Gothic Fiction" 5). 9 Frank Davey notes that the ordinariness of the Bernardo couple, a trait defined by the media largely in terms of their typical consumerist aspirations, ultimately rendered them perturbingly banal, "utterly undistinquished and unmemorable, ...empty of specific meaning" (122). 10 Judith Halberstam's term. 11 Because mainstream definitions of male masculinity are seen as natural and non-performative — as opposed to femininity which "reeks of the artificial" - then all "performed" masculinities are suspect and open to interrogation (Halberstam, Female Masculinity 234-35). 12 In horror film, the character Carol Clover calls the "final girl" - the one who survives — is nearly always the "improperly gendered, de-girled being" (cited in Halberstam 141). 13 The economy of meaning inherent in the pun permits the "domestic, the Gothic, the sentimental and the horrific" to work together as a way of providing relief to "dramas of blood and mutilation" (Halberstam Skin Shows 178-79). 293

Ann Mc Whir makes the interesting claim that the Satanic agent who brings The Monk to a close "thinly masks Lewis himself (42). If the writer's engagement with the demonic is a condition of indefinite catharsis, a wrestling with "the inseparable obverse of his very being, of the other (sex) that torments and possesses him," as Julie Kristeva puts it (208), then I suppose I as author am Norm, forcibly regulating the materialization of Matilda Dyck's non-compliant sex. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fiction

Atwood, Margaret. Alias Grace. Toronto: McClelland, 1996.

—. Lady Oracle. 1976. Margaret Atwood. London: Treasure, 1987. 421-699.

—. Surfacing. 1972. Margaret Atwood. London: Treasure, 1987. 263-419.

Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey. 1818. New York: Dover, 2000.

Crosbie, Lynn. Paul's Case. Toronto: Insomniac, 1997.

Dinesen, Isak. Seven Gothic Tales. 1934. London: Penguin, 1973.

Eco, Umberto. The Name of the Rose. New York: Harcourt, 1980.

Egan, Jennifer. The Keep. New York: Knopf, 2006.

Egolf, Tristan. Kornwolf New York: Black Cat, 2006.

Eugenides, Jeffery. Middlesex. Toronto: Vintage, 2002.

Fraser, Brad. Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love. 1989.

Edmonton: NeWest, 1996.

Gardner, John. Nickel Mountain. New York, Knopf, 1963.

Godden, Rumer. Black Narcissus. 1939. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979.

—. In This House ofBrede. New York: Viking, 1969.

Gowdy, Barbara. "Flesh of My Flesh." We So Seldom Look on Love. Toronto:

Summerville, 1992. 160-209.

Harris, Joanne. Holy Fools. New York: Harper-Collins, 2004.

Henderson, Eric, and Madeline Sonik, eds. Fresh Blood: New Canadian Gothic Fiction.

Winnipeg: Ravenstone, 1998.

Hogg, James. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. 1824. Ed. John Carey. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990.

James, Henry. The Turn of the Screw. 1898. The Portable Henry James. Ed. Morton

DauwenZabel. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978. 193-327.

Kostova, Elizabeth. The Historian. New York: Little, 2005.

Lawson, Mary. Crow Lake. Toronto: Knopf, 2002.

Le Fanu, Sheridan. In a Glass Darkly. Ed. Robert Tracy. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993.

Lewis, Matthew Gregory. The Monk: A Romance. 1796. Ed. D.L. MacDonald and

Kathleen Scherf. Peterborough: Broadview, 2003.

Mann, Thomas. The Holy Sinner. Trans. H.T. Lowe-Porter. London: Penguin, 1951.

Monk, Maria. The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk: As Exhibited in a Narrative of her

Sufferings. London: Nicholson, 1835.

Musgrave, Susan. Cargo of Orchids. Toronto: Knopf, 2000.

McCarthy, Cormac. No Country for Old Men. New York: Vintage, 2005.

—. The Road. New York: Knopf, 2006.

McCullers, Carson. "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe." The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. 1953.

New York: Penguin, 1953. 7-85.

McEwan, Ian. The Cement Garden. New York: Simon, 1978.

Oates, Joyce Carol. "The Girl with the Blackened Eye." This is my Best: Great Writers

Share their Favorite Work. Eds. Retha Powers and Kathy Kiernan. San

Francisco: Chronicle, 2005. 371-82.

Oates, Joyce Carol. The Collector of Hearts: New Tales of the Grotesque. New York:

Dutton, 1998.

O'Connor, Flannery. Wise Blood. 1949. Three by Flannery O'Connor. New York:

Signet, 1962. 7-126. 296

Ostenso, Martha. Wild Geese. 1925. Toronto: McLelland, 1994.

Payton, Brian. Hail Mary Corner. Vancouver: Beach Holme, 2002.

Richardson, John. Wacousta; or, The Prophecy: A Tale of the Canadas. 1832. Toronto:

McClelland, 1991.

Radcliffe, Ann. The Italian; or, The Confessional of the Black Penitents: A Romance.

1797. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1981.

Rougeau, Remy. All We Know of Heaven: A Novel. Boston: Houghton, 2001.

Schwarz, Christina. Drowning Ruth. New York: Doubleday, 2000.

Scott, Lawrence. Aelred's Sin. London: Allison, 1998.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Ed. J. Paul Hunter. New York: Norton, 1996.

Stevenson, R.L. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 1886. Dr. Jekyll and Mr.

Hyde & The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables. Ware: Wordsworth,

1993.

Uppal, Priscila. The Divine Economy of Salvation. Toronto: Anchor, 2002.

Walpole, Horace. The Castle ofOtranto: a Gothic Story. 1764. Ed. W.S. Lewis.

London: Oxford UP, 1964.

Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. 1891. New York: Dell, 1968.

York, Alissa. Mercy. Toronto: Vintage, 2003.

Criticism and Theory

Anderson, Howard. "Introduction." The Monk. Oxford: Oxford UP,

1973. v-xvii.

Conger, Syndy. "Sensibility Restored: Radcliffe's Answer to Lewis's The Monk."

Gothic Fictions: Prohibition/Transgression. Ed. Kenneth W. Graham. New 297

York: AMS, 1989. 113-49.

Edwards, Justin D. Gothic Canada: Reading the Spectre of a National Literature.

Edmonton: U of Alberta P, 2005.

Ellis, Kate Ferguson. "The Outsider's Revenge: Matthew Gregory Lewis." The

Contested Castle: Gothic Novels and the Subversion of Domestic Ideology.

Chicago: U of Illinois P, 1989. 131-50.

Fleenor, Juliann, ed. The Female Gothic. Montreal: Eden, 1983.

Garber, Marjorie. Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety. New York:

Routledge, 1992.

Geary, Robert F. "On Horror and Religion." Gothic Horror: A Reader's Guide from Poe

to King and Beyond. Ed. Clive Bloom. London: MacMillan, 1998. 287-301.

Halberstam, Judith. Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters.

Durham: Duke UP, 1995.

Haggerty, George E. Queer Gothic. Chicago: U of Illinois P, 2006.

Heiland, Donna. Gothic & Gender: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004.

Hendershot, Cynthia. The Animal Within: Masculinity and the Gothic. Ann Arbor:

U of Michigan P, 1998.

Horner, Avril, and Sue Zlosnik. Gothic and the Comic Turn. New York: Palgrave,

2005.

Howard, Jacqueline. "Anticlerical Gothic: Matthew Lewis's The Monk." Reading

Gothic Fiction: a Bakhtinian Approach. Oxford: Clarendon, 1994. 183-237.

Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New

York: Columbia UP, 1982. 298

McWhir, Ann. "The Gothic Transgression of Disbelief: Walpole, Radcliffe and Lewis."

Gothic Fictions: Prohibition/Transgression. Ed. Kenneth W. Graham. New

York: AMS, 1989. 29-47.

Northey, Margot. The Haunted Wilderness: The Gothic and Grotesque in Canadian

Fiction. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1976.

Punter, David. "Narrative and Psychology in Gothic Fiction." Gothic Fictions:

Prohibitions/Transgression. Ed. Kenneth W. Graham. New York: AMS,

1989. 1-27.

Punter, David, and Glennis Byron. The Gothic. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004.

Stein, Karen F. "Monsters and Madwomen: Changing Female Gothic." The Female

Gothic. Ed. JuliannE. Fleenor. Montreal: Eden, 1983. 123-37.

Tracy, Ann Blaisdell. "Introduction." The Gothic Novel, 1790-1830: Plot Summaries

and an Index to Motifs. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1981. 1-11.

Thomson, Douglass H., Jack G. Voller, and Frederick S. Frank, eds. Gothic Writers: a

Critical and Bibliographical Guide. Westport: Greenwood, 2002.

Additional Research

Baumeister, Roy F. "Violent Pride: Do People Turn Violent Because of Self-Hate, or

Self-Love?" Scientific American Mind Aug - Sep 2006: 54-59.

Butler, Judith. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex. " London:

Routledge, 1993.

Bridesville Community Club. Bridesville Community Club Millenium Cookbook:

Meatballs and Memories of Bridesville. Bridesville, BC: Bridesville Community

Club, 2002. Club, 2002.

Bullough, Vern L., and Bonnie Bullough. Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender.

Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1993.

Davey, Frank. Karla 's Web: A Cultural Investigation of the Mahajfy-French Murders.

Toronto: Viking, 1994.

Davis, Brian Joseph. "High Finance." This Magazine Jan.-Feb. 2006: 19-23.

Gillis, Charlie. "Karla Homolka, Girl Next Door." MacLean's 21 Mar. 2005: 34-41.

Halberstam, Judith. Female Masculinity. Durham and London: Duke UP, 1998.

Lewis, C.S. Miracles: A Preliminary Study. 1947. Glasgow: Collins, 1990.

Makin, Kirk. "K-Day is Here." The Globe and Mail 21 May 2005, sec.F: 1, 6-7.

Morris, Jan. Conundrum. New York: Harcourt, 1974.

Petrescu, Sarah. "Trans Formations." Monday Magazine 22 May 2004: 7-9.

Pron, Nick. Lethal Marriage. Toronto: Seal-Random, 1995. CURRICULUM VITAE

Candidate's full name: Catherine Mary Greenwood

Universities attended: University of Victoria, 1992-1999, Bachelor of Arts with Distinction, Double Major in English and Writing

Publications: "Black Labels." Grain, Vol.22 No.3 (Winter 1995): 91. "Feeding Time." Prism International, Vol.33 No.2 (Winter 1995): 16. "Brilliance." Wascana Review, Vol. 30 No.2 (Fall 1995): 8. "The Stillbirth." Vintage 95: League of Canadian Poets. Ed. Linda Rogers. Toronto: Quarry Press, 1996. p.18-19. "String of Pearls." Prairie Fire, Vol.18 No.l (Spring 1997): 199-200. "The Last Foal." The New Quarterly, Vol.16 No.4 (Winter 1997): 28-29. Two Poems. The Fiddlehead Poetry Issue, No. 196 (Summer 1998): 144-45. "Reaching the Frontier." On the Threshold: Writing Toward the Year 2000, Ed. Joy Gugeler. Vancouver: Beach Holme, 1999. 79-81. "The Interesting Monster." Geist Magazine, No.42 (Fall 2001): 42. Three Poems. The Malahat Review, No. 137 (Winter 2001): 68-73. "Pearl Farmer's Wife." The Dalhousie Review, No. 81.2 (Summer 2002): 184. "North Atlantic Drift." The New Shetlander, No.220 {Simmer 2002): 17. "Prairie." The New Shetlander, No.221 (Hairst 2002): 36. "The Rag Man's Son.."The Antigonish Review, No.131 (Fall 2002): 58-59. "Burying the Shepherd." Event Vol.31 No.3 ( Winter 2002) p.49-50. "Teeth." Canadian Literature, No. 175 (Winter 2002): 66. "Monk Love Blues." Listening with the Ear of the Heart: Writers at St. Peter's. Eds. Dave Margoshes and Shelley Sopher. Muenster, Saskatchewan: St. Peter's Press, 2003. 142-43. "Eldest Daughter."Graw, Vol.30 No.4 (Spring 2003): 100. "Only Son." Grain, Vol.30 No.4 (Spring 2003): 101-02. Two Poems. The New Quarterly', Vol.22 No. 86 (Spring 2003) 194-98. "If Life Hands You Turtles, Make Turtle Soup." Contemporary Verse 2, Vol.26 No.l (Summer 2003): 76. "Kai Awase: The Shell Game." The Antigonish Review, No. 132 (Fall 2003): 13-17. The Pearl King and Other Poems, London, Ontario: Brick Books, 2004. "Two Blue Elephants." Pagitica in Toronto, Vol.2 No.4 (Winter 2004): 7-8. Two Poems. Qwerty, No. 15 (Spring 2004): 7-11. Three Poems. The Fiddlehead Poetry Issue, No. 220 (Summer 2004): 64-69. "Astrolabe." Prairie Fire, Vol. 26 No.2 (Summer 2004): 102-04. Three Poems. The Fiddlehead Poetry Issue, No. 228 (Summer 2006): 60-69. "Two Blue Elephants." Long Journey: Contemporary Northwest Poets. Ed. David Biespiel. Oregon: Oregon State UP, 2006. 84-85. "Invisible Toothpaste." Descant, No. 136 (Spring 2007): 138-46.