TEACHER HAD WRITTEN the script for the play and given it to the class in early January, and after two months of studying it, and different versions of the poem, they knew the story well. All through January and February, Bo hurried home to be with Bear and train her, and time flew in a way he did not know it could. Bear could stand on her back legs and turn, the beginning of a dance, he thought. She could clap in a bearish way, and she was a brilliant, natural wrestler. And now, before Bo knew it, it was the week after March break, a Monday. The class began rehearsals today.
And here was Rose in the school to help out. Bo saw her from down the school corridor, and cringed. She did not look small; she looked smaller than that. She looked like a drawing of a person. She stood outside the principal’s office, hugging herself, as if to become even tinier. She wore jeans and a big sweater under her winter coat. The coat was shorter and less bulky than the sweater and so she looked poor, and lost. Bo was happy the rest of his class was gone or in rehearsals already so they would not see her here looking tragic and scared.
“Mum,” he said when he got closer, and she looked up.
“Bo.”
“You didn’t have to come.”
“It’s okay. I don’t mind.” Teacher had told Bo that Rose was coming, and that she had organized it this way to minimize his embarrassment at having his mother be there, but Teacher had misunderstood. He wasn’t embarrassed. He was ashamed. And he wasn’t ashamed of Rose. It was something deeper. It was the shame Teacher conveyed, by trying to fix things. He wanted to shout that these things were just broken. He wanted her to understand about the pride of broken things.
Behind him, Bo heard the clack of heels and turned to see Teacher.
“Rose,” she said. “Thank you for coming.” Teacher made an awkward bow. “Is everything okay, Bo?”
“Yes.”
He watched as Teacher handed Rose a script for the play. “So you can read it when you have time,” Teacher said, and his mother thanked her.
“I’d like to show you the stage too,” said Teacher. “We are rehearsing by scene, so only some of the students come to each session. Can you stay until five?”
“Yes,” Rose said, and turned to Bo. “Orange is sleeping. Are you going home?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m not in today’s run-through.”
He ran hard then, thinking of Bear, and how he would get home and there would be no one to tell him not to bring her inside. Bear would do things on command, but only sometimes. The rest of the time, Bear did what she wanted. She head-butted, and rolled, and fell asleep. She nipped, and chased her tail. She infuriated, and was beautiful.
When Bo arrived home, he saw that Orange had somehow opened her bedroom door. There was a trail of clothing, shit, shattered dishes; and the ancestor shrine was toppled. “Orange!” Bo said, and she looked toward him from amid the debris and cracked her strange smile. “Oh, Orange. Messy!”
He brought her to the living room, and went back to prop the Buddha and the sticks of incense back in the shrine. He found the broom and pushed the rest of the mess into a pile. He put a garbage bag over it and caught it up. When he had the bag tied, he got the mop and swabbed down the trail. Orange slumped on the living room floor, cocked her head and rocked back and forth on her hands.
“Naughty Orange,” Bo said, a number of times, even if he kept glancing at her and half smiling, shaking his head. He breathed through his mouth to avoid smelling all the bad smells.
Bear whimpered out back, and Bo said, “Do you hear that, Orange? It’s the bear. It’s Bear.”
Bo brought Orange into the kitchen and turned on the radio, holding her in one arm while he fiddled for the right station. And then he blasted it so that the house seemed to shake. He set Orange down and she swivelled on her butt along the linoleum floor. Bo told her to wait while he let Bear in. He went to the back and opened the door, unhooked Bear from her chain, a chain long enough that she could get beneath the porch and hide in the wooden cabinet he had found on a garbage day and turned into a kennel for her. He climbed back up the stairs and whistled for her to come.
The bear barrelled up the back steps and down the hallway, stopping short to somersault through the kitchen door. Bo pulled off Bear’s collar and then stooped to take off his shoes. He glided in his socks all over the slick lino flooring.
“Dance!” Bo said—the music was loud—and Orange pushed her bum in the air so that on all fours she began to sway, and this is how she found the rhythm. The bear lunged up to standing and bounced from one foot to the other, following Bo’s arms as if he were a conductor. When the music stopped, and the announcer talked weather, and sports, and news, Orange pounded the floor with her little hands until the next song made her sway again. This was happiness, Bo could see. This was a full-body smile when the mouth wouldn’t do the work.
He turned the radio even louder, felt the music pulse through the floorboards. The walls breathed, and Bo danced like crazy, laughing at Orange’s twisting ways, her bent, nutty self exploring the bass here, the drum there, until, closing his eyes for a time, it felt as if there were nothing else but song and pulse and sway.
And then the song ended. Ads were playing. Bear stopped to clean her paws. Bo doubled over. Between the wild swinging and the laughing, he was heaving for breath. He splayed himself on the floor and watched Bear lumber off down the hall to Orange’s bedroom. Happy.
LATER, DARKNESS COMING, his mother still not home, and Orange asleep, Bo collared and leashed Bear to take her down the street. He did want some fresh air, but more, he wanted to feel the trains hurtle by, that violent shift of air. It was like he was in a dream, the bear sitting beside him, quivering nose up in the air, scenting Bo didn’t know what, maybe the cattle at the stockyard a mile away, or maybe just spring rising from the earth. The train pulled him toward it as it raced downtown, and he imagined being sucked right into it, his body slammed. Bear recoiled from that same train’s shattering wind, tugged on the leash, afraid. Bo let go and laughed, watching her bound back toward the house, then he followed.
Rose was home. She leaned over the table, the ceiling light giving her face a golden halo and illuminating the script, which she had clearly been reading. She looked up and Bo watched her pupils adjust.
“I was just gone for a few minutes,” he said. “Orange was asleep.”
“It’s okay. She’s still sleeping,” Rose said, and then, “What is the underworld? The fairy place?” He thought she looked like a child when she asked this.
“It’s just what it says,” he answered, but he wasn’t actually sure anymore. Teacher had said something about thresholds, and he had liked the word so much he had thought about it, and moved it around in his head, and felt it in his mouth, like food, and in doing this, he had stopped listening.
“No,” said Rose. “It says: ‘I rode into a rock, and went three miles or more.’ How can this be? How can a person ride into a rock?” She poked herself when she said “person,” to show her own solidity.
“Thresholds,” Bo said, and looked at the wood trim of the doorway he stood in. “Teacher said something about doorways, and magic. We were talking about the play, and she said something about them being important.”
“What did she mean?”
“I can’t remember.” He wondered if the thing he had forgotten happened in every doorway, and this began to stress him out. “I’ll bring Bear out back,” he said.
“When it’s warm, you should bathe her. She stinks, Bo.”
“Okay.”
Then she looked back down at the script. “A castle! I see a castle over there!” She was reading his lines.
Bo knew them all, and had begun the work of making them come alive in the way Teacher wanted. He always imagined the castle made of blue paint—Orange’s castle. He knocked on the doorway to the kitchen, just as he was supposed to knock in the play, and turned to his mother as if she played the porter. In fact, Sally was the porter.
“Listen,” he said. “I am here to soothe the king with my music and stories. Let me in.”
Then his mum said, “You have to say this?”
Bo nodded and recited, “Some stood without heads, and some had no arms, and some had wounds through the body and some lay mad, bound, and some sat on horses, and some choked as they ate, and some were drowned in water, and some were all shrivelled with fire, wives lay in childbirth—” and here he looked over and realized his mother was sobbing.
“Mum,” he said. “Mum.”
“What a sad play,” she managed to say.
“Not really,” Bo said. “It’s about a hero. He rescues his beautiful queen from the underworld.”
His mum looked up at him. “That never happens,” she said.
He wanted to go to her, but he had already promised himself not to step through the doorway, so he turned and walked past Orange’s room, careful not to wake her, and out to the backyard. He chained Bear to the metal floor of the porch. Bear hurled herself down the stairs and hid straightaway.
When he came back through the house, his mother was reading again. Maybe he had been mistaken about her sobbing. “I remember,” he said. “The doorways mean change. Transformation. That’s what Teacher said.”
Rose looked up and then back to the script. She said, “You’ve got a lot of lines.”
“Yes.”
She didn’t look up again, but he could see the tiniest smile at the edge of her mouth as she read, and he knew she was proud of this—that he could learn all these lines, that he’d been chosen for this hard part in the play.
THE NEXT DAY, after school, Ernie slammed Bo’s face into the last of winter’s snow in the yard, and then slammed it again. It was the same old thing only it had accelerated as spring approached. Bo didn’t feel like fighting Ernie. He wanted only to play-grapple with Bear, or to be back again fighting for a paying audience. In some way, he didn’t care to exist for Ernie anymore. It had become dull. A bunch of children gathered, forming a circle in motion around them, and the fight was on.
“Try harder, Bo,” someone yelled.
The ground didn’t hurt but it looked as if it might. Bo let Ernie think he’d won. It was uncanny that almost every afternoon after school a fight could break out and no one, not one teacher, janitor or parent seemed to notice. It was as if the kids cheering and yelling surrounded them in magic. Bo reached up as Ernie basked in his win, grabbed Ernie’s face and pulled his cheeks down to his own face and bit him.
“You fuck,” said Ernie. The cheek had reddened but the skin wasn’t broken, and the fight was on again.
Ernie retaliated by pushing Bo’s face away from his. A bad move, it turned out, since it forced him to let go of the grip he had on Bo, and gave Bo the opportunity to shove him off, then scissor-kick him in the ass, and get to standing. This riled the crowd. The rest of Ernie’s face turned red now, out of embarrassment, and he ran at Bo. The impact of this should have hurt, and it did hurt, but not Bo, because he sidestepped and let a couple of the boys in the audience take the hit. Ernie turned, angry, and fisted Bo in the gut twice and then punched his nose. The blood dripping out of his nose cinched Ernie’s triumph. Bo held his head back and limped off toward home. The entire episode lasted maybe three minutes.
“Wait up.” Bo turned and there was Peter.
“I’m busy,” he said, blood trailing from his nose.
“Yeah, I see that. Here.” Peter handed Bo a Kleenex, and Bo made two wands and shoved one up each nostril. Red wicked along them.
“I gotta get home.”
“Yeah.” But when Bo started walking, Peter followed him. “The thing is,” Peter said, “is that every day for years I’ve been betting on you. I figure you can beat him. You got the footwork, Bo. Why don’t you give it to him for once?”
Bo stopped and stared at Peter. “You bet for me?”
“Yeah. You’re better on your feet than he is. Anyone can see that.”
Bo pulled the Kleenex out of one nostril, checked to see if the blood still flowed. It did. He put it back. “So, how much have you lost on me so far?”
“Maybe a hundred dollars.”
“I didn’t know you were so stupid, Peter.”
Peter made puppy eyes, scrunched his mouth up to his nose, a plea, and when Bo started walking, Peter called, “Come on. Just win once, okay. You owe it to yourself, man. Ernie is a dick. We all know that.”
But Bo wasn’t listening. He had to get to Bear, then train. Because Rose wouldn’t let Orange out to watch, he would bring Bear in for Orange. Bo had taught Orange to hold one end of a stick while Bear chewed and tugged on the other. With her instability, Orange got tossed side to side while Bear yanked, yanked and shook the stick like it was prey she’d hard-won. Gerry hadn’t lied. With the table scraps they gave her, and the immense bags of kibble Gerry brought by, she was getting big.
When Bo got home, he slipped past his mum, who was sitting in the living room, and washed his face in the kitchen sink. He dried his face on a tea towel and went to his mother, watched her for a minute until she looked up at him.
“Mum,” he said. “I’m gonna train in Orange’s room.”
“No bear shit,” she said.
When he brought Bear into Orange’s room, Orange woke to them mirroring each other, the bear clumsy and silly, the boy persistent. Bo sang the Prince song “Purple Rain,” and made up a simple routine with hand and feet motions. The cub mimicked him clumsily, bored with her day under the porch, eager for treats. Orange clapped for them, contorted her strange little body, huffed when Bear huffed, and begged for treats too, not when she did something clever but when the bear did, as if she had something to do with Bear’s ingenuity.
Bo heard the doorbell ring but ignored it. His mum could get it. He kept training, giving Bear and Orange each half a cookie, even as he heard the door close and then voices. He didn’t dare bring Bear out, but after twenty minutes or so, he made her sit and stay, and brought Orange out into the hallway, and set her down, before closing the bedroom door and making his way to the kitchen. His mother was sitting behind her sewing machine, working on a costume for the play, and Teacher was about to leave.
“Miss Lily has asked me to sew more costumes,” his mother said. She concentrated on pushing gold thread through the machine’s needle. There was an abundance of material around her, so that it looked as if she were nestled in a golden cloud.
“Some of the other mothers dropped out—” Teacher began.
His mother cut her off. “This is Emily’s dress for the final scene.” She stopped threading and gestured at the bunched goldenness of it. “She will be beautiful.”
Teacher said, “Yes!” and at the same time Bo said, “Emily?”
It was as if they had manifested her. When he turned toward the hallway door, there she was, holding Orange’s hand.
“Hi, Bo.” That wave again. “I was just in the bathroom.”
“Hi, Emily.” Bo looked back at Rose and she gave him an achingly tiny smile.
“We’re fitting,” Teacher said.
“Can you take Orange?” his mother said, and then rapidly, “Họ đột nhiên xuất hiện. Tôi có thể làm gì?” They just showed up so what was I supposed to do?
Orange clutched Emily’s hand.
“It’s okay.” Emily squatted down to Orange’s height. “We were just practising walking, right?” and then she picked Orange up and handed her to Bo. “All yours,” she said.
Orange smelled of Bear.
Orange pulled away in Bo’s arms and rocked her body such that he almost dropped her. “Orange!” Bo said and jostled her so that she crumpled against his shoulder.
“She likes Emily, it looks like,” said Teacher.
“Đưa cô vào phòng cô, lam ơn” said Rose, not looking up, and Bo obeyed, taking Orange back to her room, but not before hearing Emily tell Rose that she loved to mind Orange.
He lay down on his back on Orange’s mattress and let his sister slap him and bounce near him. Bear came and nuzzled his armpit. He pushed her gently away and when she came back for more, he pushed her again. After a while, he said, “Sleep now,” to Orange, and like a miracle she curled up beside him.
He got up after she slept and wandered back to the murmurs in the kitchen. Emily now stood on a chair in the golden gown while his mother pinned the hem. Teacher was gone.
“Hi, Bo,” Emily said, turning her head toward him.
“Hey.” He tried not to stare and then, feeling awkward in the room with her, went back to Orange. He waited, listening for Emily to leave. Minutes later there were voices and then the door opening and closing. He heaved himself up and brought Bear into the yard.
When he was down the steps and about to chain her up, he noticed Emily smiling at him from the backyard gate.
“That’s a big dog,” she said. “Holy.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Where did you get her?”
“That’s the thing,” he said. “It’s sort of a secret. Her name is Bear. I’m training her to be a circus bear—a wrestling bear. That guy you saw my mum with? His name is Max and he’s sorta my boss.”
“Sorta?”
“Yeah.”
Emily unlatched the gate and let herself in. “I’ve been smelling this scent on Orange for a month or more, every time I babysit. I didn’t think she smelled like dog,” she said. “But today it was super strong, so I decided to follow my nose. This is so cool.” She came very close to Bo and Bear. “Can I pet her?”
Bo nodded, and Emily knelt, facing the bear at eye level. “Bear,” she said. “You are very nice.” She ran her fingers along the swirl of fur between Bear’s eyes and Bear stayed very still and let this happen. “Oh, you are lovely.”
“Promise not to tell,” Bo said.
Emily looked up at him. “Promise,” she said.
IT WAS THREE WEEKS before the play and Bear strained at the leash, pulled Bo down the hallway and through the kitchen, past Rose, sitting in near darkness, her sadness like a force field, the tumbler rattling on the table to Orange’s percussive angst. Orange ran her body against the door to her bedroom, and the house seemed to shake. The fact of the play was plaguing Bo. He had to get outside, into the dark, just to get away from his house. If he moved, he could stop thinking about it all.
Bo took Clendenan, then turned down through Ravina Park. There were dogs there, let loose to do their business, and Bear yanked Bo from scent to scent, sniffing and paw-swatting at the larger dogs. Bo and Bear did not linger, though—their destination was farther south. He sidled with his bear down shadowed streets until they came to High Park. The night brought strange rustlings but no trouble. In the park, Bo let the bear off-leash so the two of them could go freely cross-country.
Bo continued, silent, down the hill on Spring Road, where the brush hid them, and deeper into the park, Bear on his heels. There was some light from the half-moon, not much but enough to manage. The park was all but abandoned on the weeknights and in-between weather seasons, and what wild had made its home here had not ever thought of bear, had no natural fear of one, except from some primordial reflex—the smell suggesting some bigness. Raccoons and skunks waddled across their path and looked warily at Bo, but seemed to disregard Bear.
Each night since the trees had leafed out, Bo had done short training sessions in the backyard or in the dark and safety of the forest’s opening canopy. He would have Bear sit and stay, or beg or roll over, and then give her freedom to climb a tree, or dig or upend a rock to look for grubs, things Bear loved doing. They had explored all over the park, but now they were in the dense brush in the northeastern edge, uphill from the reservoir pond.
“Up. Up,” Bo said.
And Bear sprang up on her back legs and danced.
When Bo ran out of treats to give her, he scratched her behind the ears and rubbed her chest, and she was grateful and leaned into him. Bo showed her cartwheels and somersaults and the cub learned bearish versions. She would try most anything the boy showed her, like she was an extension of Bo. That is what Bo liked to think.
When Gerry visited every week, Bo demonstrated all she could do—a clumsy dance, a flip, how she wrestled his legs to topple him. “Oh-ho,” Gerry would say. “I knew you were the man for it.”
Bo heard something in the thicket next to them. “Crouch,” said Bo. Bear did, compressing herself as best she could. She was a big girl, now, like Gerry had said—she was a full bear’s head taller than Bo when she stood on her back legs. Bo gave the signal for quiet, and Bear nuzzled her nose under Bo’s elbow by way of communicating she understood and then splayed like a carpet on the forest floor. Bo lay beside her, heart thumping.
“I seen you, kid.” A strange voice, viscous and strangled.
Bo shook his head, gestured stay to Bear, and waited, meting his breath out long and slow to calm himself.
“I god-damned wasn’t born yesterday.”
Bo signalled again to Bear to stay, rolled away as far as he could, and stood, hoping to draw attention away from her. It was a vagrant. Bo tried to see if the man was crazy or drunk or both, and, if both, in what mixture. He was little, under five feet tall, his hair long and filthy with sticks and bits of forest debris in it. A wild man. He wore a green camouflage army jacket, stained, torn and several sizes too big. His nose was a gaping hole, and his chin was wrapped in a bandana.
“The rest of you,” the man said. His words were slurred and wet.
The sight of the man froze him. Who was this? What was this? “Just me,” Bo said. “A kid.”
“Fuck off,” the vagrant said. “If I didn’t see a bear, I sure as fuck smelled one. Where’d he go?” The man was right up close to him now, and Bo stared at the inside of his face. A twist of pink flesh and bone, tooth, sinew where there should be nose, a damp bandana. “Stop staring, you ignoramus.”
And stupidly, looking down, Bo gave Bear away.
Bear lifted, scenting the vagrant, her nose crinkling back, young fangs glinting white in the moonlight. “She’s mine,” Bo said.
“Nobody never owned a bear,” the man said, “and nobody never will. A bear owns itself, just like any man owns hisself. One day, he’ll tear your arm off to prove it.”
“She. I’m her trainer,” said Bo, chastened by the wreckage of the man’s face, his poverty—his roughness.
The vagrant came a step closer and took a long look at Bear. “I can take her with me now and bring her to a place where she could really live.”
Bo shook his head.
“What you got to lose, boy?”
Bo shook his head again. But there was a turning in his gut—dinner shifting—like a wrongness was being revealed to him.
“Who are you?” Bo asked.
“Who am I? Well, they call me Soldier Man. I run off and joined a war and it took my face. I’m ugly now, so I pretty much just hide in here.” Then he said, “Come here, bear,” and snapped his fingers at her.
Bear pulled up to beg and sucked in so much of the man’s scent Bo felt air brush him. She was learning the vagrant, some part of him Bo would never catch. But she did not move. Instead, she glanced at Bo. The vagrant gestured, beckoned, and the cub pulled back fast. It would take some doing now to get her to come.
“You scared her,” said Bo.
“Sure.” And then there was a movement and the place where the man had stood was dark. A branch still swayed, but he was gone.
Within seconds, Bo moved on too, thinking how he would have to be more careful late at night with Bear. But mostly, he thought about what war, and what soldier, and then, before he could stop his mind, he thought about his father, sharks, water.
BO GOT HOME TO FIND MAX sitting in the kitchen as if he’d never left, looking more serious than Bo had ever seen him. Rose flitted, picking Orange up and putting her down. Orange was sick, Bo could see. Mucus burbled at her nose and she looked overly pink. Bo hated it that she was even in the room, because it meant that Max could look upon her. But when Bo glowered toward Max, Max was looking at him, not at Orange. He was looking at Bo and at Bear, and he looked pleased.
Rose said, “Why don’t you show Max what you’ve taught your bear?”
Max cleared his throat. “Circuit’s starting up. Gerry must have mentioned.”
“He said something to me last week when he stopped by. Millbrook Fair this Friday. But he’s saving Bear for the Ex.”
“Oh, he is, is he? I suppose it makes some sense. A novelty should have a special reveal, right?” He nodded at Bear, and reached out to pat her, but Bo pulled back on the lead.
“Bear’s tired.” Then he felt it himself, a cover of exhaustion being pulled over him. Soldier Man’s destroyed face flashed in his mind, and then it was gone, just as he had disappeared. Bo needed to sleep.
He coaxed Bear to the back of the house and out the door to the yard. Bear did not want to be chained but she let it happen anyway. Bo scratched her between the eyes and went back to the kitchen.
“I’m taking Orange to bed,” he said to his mother.
But it was Max who answered. “Good idea, son.”
His mum smiled, and said, “Yes.”
Bo made a face at Max and picked up Orange.
“What?” said Max, throwing his hands up in the air. “You don’t like the bear I gave you?”
So, that was how it was supposed to work. In Max’s mind it was a trade.
He hoisted Orange a little higher and shook his head. He could feel the rage rising in him, so to stop himself from hitting Max again, he took Orange to her room, then stayed with her until she slept so deeply that he felt for her pulse and the soft air releasing from her nose, to be sure she was not dead.
The door was cracked open and he heard snippets of conversation, but not enough to make sense of anything. He stood up and then sat again, this time with his back leaning against the wall near the door, to hear better.
“I’m so glad you’re back,” his mother said.
“I missed you, Thao.”
And as much as he wanted to purely hate Max, this other thought was pressing against the rage: his mum was happy again. What if it were okay that Max was here? Maybe Max’s feelings for Rose had somehow stopped him from preying on Orange. Maybe this was normal. Maybe everything would be okay.
“WHAT STINKS?” said Ernie. It was the Monday after the Millbrook Fair—first of the season and Bo had revelled in his fight with Loralei. He’d come home too tired to bother washing. Bo realized he smelled of adult bear.
Bo said, “Whoever smelt it, dealt it.”
Peter and Ernie and he were waiting outside the school for rehearsal. It was three-thirty, the afternoon sun hot. They had to practise the part just before the Fairy King steals Heurodis. In one week the play would go on, and in two, school would be over and it would be summer. Bo was glad to have had his lines memorized so long, because now they were just part of him. Still, he was nervous, and would be glad when the play was over and he could concentrate full-time on training Bear and getting ready for the Ex.
“Whoever denied it, supplied it,” Peter said.
Bo got up and sat downwind from the others. He loved the way he smelled.
“Whoa,” said Ernie. “What is that? Like a zoo or something. Like dead shit. Like the stockyards. You stink worse than the yards, you little asshole.”
Bo did not mean to. It was Ernie calling him an asshole. It reminded him of Max calling him an asshole that time. His body reacted. He plowed Ernie’s face so hard it jerked back and pulled him with it and then Bo was straddling Ernie and punching and punching, Peter just standing there, and Ernie too surprised to do much but take it, so that by the time Bo stopped, Ernie was a swollen bleeding mess.
Bo got to his feet, muttering, “Sorry, sorry,” and stepped back.
Bo caught the edge of Peter’s joy, as they both watched Ernie stumble off toward his house.
Then Bo started walking too. “Tell Miss Lily I got sick,” he said.
“You’re blowing off rehearsal?” said Peter.
“Yeah.” He knew his part backwards and forwards and didn’t want to explain to Teacher why his knuckle was bleeding, and why Ernie had left.
He stopped at the side of his house and ran the outdoor tap over his right fist, let the water pink and flow down the paved gully. Then he splashed his face and rubbed the water down his neck and chest and over his hair. He figured Ernie would wait a day or two to pay him back, that he had some breathing space. He walked up the metal porch stairs, looked down at Bear looking up at him, entered the back of the house. He could hear his mum crooning a Vietnamese love song from the kitchen, and knew she’d been drinking.
“Bo?” she called. “Is that you?”
He stopped in on Orange on the way by. She was bobbing her stuffed donkey up and down. He thought, new creature, and smiled.
“Bo?” His mum’s voice was urgent.
“Yes, Mum. I’m here.” He was at the kitchen door, and her back was to him, but now she turned and he saw she was not only drunk but also crying. “Oh, Mum,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s okay. I don’t mind.”
Now, though, she shook her head. “Father Bart was here. We have to leave the house—we have until the end of July. He said the church group feels we need to find our own way. The diocese is selling the house. He said he knew we would understand.”
“Leave to where?” asked Bo.
“I don’t know.”
And then the doorbell rang, and before he could answer it, Max was in the kitchen.
“Ready?” he said. He must have seen then that she had been crying. He said, “Hey, Thao, what’s the matter?”
“We have to move,” she said.
Rose stood and Bo saw then that his mum was wearing a new dress, and shoes with heels. “Mum!” he said. If her eyes weren’t puffy from crying, she would be beautiful.
Max hugged his mum and said, “It’s okay.” He was patting her back. “We’ll figure something out. Don’t worry.”
Rose went to the sink to run cool water over her face. She rummaged in a little pocket in her dress and pulled out a lipstick. Bo watched Max admiring her as she leaned toward a tiny mirror over the sink and applied a dark red to her mouth.
“We’ll be back by ten,” Rose said, then. “Okay, Bo?”
“Okay.” Bo wasn’t sure whether it was. He looked at Max and tried his hardest to smile, even while his heart raced.
After they left, Bo checked on Orange. She was awake and no longer so pink. He nestled her between cushions and tucked a sheet around her and then tightly under the mattress to restrain her. Her face was filthy with dried sweat and mucus, so that it was almost black in patches, and he left this, for fear if he tried to wipe her clean, he would upset her. There were bedclothes and diapers and odd assortments of clothing strewn throughout the space, all reeking of bear. He gently nudged these into a pile and pushed it out the door to be added to the laundry his mother tackled as infrequently as she could get away with. He could hear Bear moaning in the backyard, but he ignored her.
BO SAT IN THE GREEN CHAIR. The end of July was a long way away, he thought. They could find another place to live in by then. He was working again and they would manage. A flicker of movement at the kitchen window made him look up, and there was Emily waving something above her head. Then she ducked down and he heard her coming up the stairs and onto the porch. He jumped up.
“No,” he said, and shook his head at her through the glass.
She ignored him and let herself in. “You missed rehearsal,” she said.
He showed her his knuckles. “I hit a brick wall.”
“Ernie?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, Miss Lily had to call it short and when I was walking home I saw your mum leave with that Max guy,” she said. “Guess what? My parents are away and—Have you noticed how warm it is today?”
She had a bundle of clothing in her hand, a dress that was just the right size for Orange and little sandals, and that was not all. There was a bathing suit, and outside on the sidewalk, an old blue pram.
“She’s not a doll,” said Bo, to stem the direction things were headed. “Emily, you can’t just take her.”
“Bo.”
“No.”
“You promised, and it’s so warm.”
“I didn’t promise.”
“We both made promises. And I’ve kept mine,” she said. “It’s just wrong that she never goes out. My mother says she’ll get rickets. She needs some sun.”
“You can’t just take her.”
Emily was already down the hall, pulling the sundress over Orange’s sleepy head. “Oh, it’s darling. Look, Bo!”
The dress managed to correct some of the torque in Orange’s figure so that her torso looked fairly normal with it on. The problem was that her head was so over-large and her legs and arms so twisted that it was impossible to focus solely on the torso, and so, in the end, Orange looked more monstrous than ever.
“Freak show,” he muttered, but Emily was already busy strapping on the sandals. “She doesn’t like this, you know? Plus, she’s sick, otherwise she wouldn’t let you do it. You’re taking advantage—”
“No, Bo. I am not. I am taking her to cool off in my pool. You can stay here and suffer or you can come along.” She put a sunbonnet on Orange and tied it under her chin. “Look how cute,” said Emily. She went outside with Orange in her arms. “Going to the pool,” she was saying, over and over, to cheer her, and she placed her gently in the pram.
Bo snorted. His sister looked ridiculous bent into the small space. “This is not a good idea.”
“I don’t care.”
Orange lay staring up from the bed Emily had made in the pram, grabbing at the rim of her new bonnet. His mother would have a fit.
“No one had better see this,” he said. “How are you going to get her in the pool without anyone seeing?”
“I’m not.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean people might see her.”
“But—”
“Bo,” said Emily. “She’s going in.”
She said this in such a way that Bo did not know how to argue against it. He imagined the water sucking his sister in, like a great liquid maw. Besides, Emily’s house secretly terrified Bo, and now they were heading there, the pram bouncing over every bump it hit.
And then they were in front of the house—the ivy sweeping up to the roof and edging along it. Bo looked up and as he did, the ivy seemed to breathe, and then it bloomed in sharp downward wingbeats as hundreds of swallows emerged and swung into the air, billowing above the house like a black and dissipating cloud. Orange seemed to be watching them too.
Bo felt suddenly sick. It was terrible to see Orange out of the house in daylight. She would fall, she would drown, she would—something awful would happen. “Where are your parents?”
“They trust me.”
“Lucky.”
“Well, your mum is hardly around either.”
“That isn’t trust,” said Bo. He tried to imagine what he would do with himself if he were truly alone and came up with: fighting, thinking about fighting, looking for a fight. He could also write in his journal, but without Orange, there would be no tower, no blue, no point. He didn’t want to think about life without Orange, the ugly chasm that would be not-Orange.
“Bo,” said Emily.
He looked from Orange, twisting about in the pram, into Emily’s green eyes. They were shiny and smiling. She had eyes that could do that. Orange had flipped onto her belly and was bum up, rocking until she might pop out, so Bo grabbed her by the waist and swung her up and out of the pram. Tucked her under his arm like a football.
“Pool,” he said, acting brave, and strode along the side of the house to the backyard.
“All right!” Emily said.
The pool was an egg-shaped concrete in-ground pool, and even though Emily maintained the water was clean, it had a green murkiness to it that reminded him too much of the sea.
“My parents are against chlorination,” said Emily. “They like the pool to be reminiscent of a pond. Not everyone can afford a cottage, my father likes to say, so we have our cottage right in our backyard.”
Bo could not see the bottom. He lowered himself to a squat and put Orange down.
“Come on.” Emily lay down, leaned her arms and head over the edge and lightly trailed her fingers in the water.
The ripples seemed alive, but he followed her lead and helped Orange to do the same. He had to hold her tightly by her sundress when she realized what this was, for she began to slap the surface of the water, sending waves all about. The squirming brought her closer and closer to falling in.
“There is a little rubber dinghy,” said Emily. “Do you think she would lie still?”
Bo shook his head. “You can’t predict what she’ll do.” He thought of the worst thing that she could do and found his thinking could not stretch that far—he could not move.
“I’ll show it to you and then you can decide.” Emily stood up and strode off to a dilapidated shed in the back of the garden, brought back a pink blow-up boat, more or less round. “We’ll put her in and hold the boat steady if she moves too much. Nothing can happen.”
But Bo was thinking about having to get in the water, and water in general, so that now his head, and his whole body, were shaking, no.
“I think it’ll be okay, Bo. The water will soothe her,” said Emily. She pulled off her T-shirt and her shorts and she was already in her bathing suit. “Seriously, Bo. We got this far.”
“Yeah.”
Orange was skimming the water now gently with her palm, sending the tiniest waves out from herself. It seemed to please her, and she did it again and again. She was mesmerized, still, calm. Bo got up from the pool deck and complied with this insane request, pulling his shirt off and then his shoes and socks until he was in his shorts. “Okay,” he said to Emily.
“What now?”
“If we disturb her she might get upset, so how are we going to get her in the boat?”
“It was your idea.”
Emily gave him a look, then pulled the boat close to the edge so she could dump it in the water. They watched as it bounced and then floated away from them. “Orange?” Emily said. “See that?”
Then she sat on the edge of the pool with her legs tucked into herself. “Watch,” she said to Orange, and then slid down, the green water disappearing her, cutting her off.
“It looks like you are cut through the middle,” said Bo. It was almost a whisper, windlike, coming across more like thought than sound, but he knew Emily heard because she turned and then lifted her feet—first one and then the other—to prove they were still there. And then she launched into the water and swam to the little boat. She grabbed the side and pulled herself up. She paddled it closer to Bo and Orange.
“A boat,” she said, looking at Orange.
Emily pushed off the side of the pool and the boat spiralled and eddied. The little wavelets emerging from it met the water trails Orange had made with her hands, and disrupted them, making new configurations on the surface of the water. Orange was watching this as if she could read its meaning.
Emily was now at the far end of the pool, looking back. “Do you want a ride, Orange?”
Bo watched his sister slow the motion of her hand and wait for the ripples to broaden out into velvety green fabric, like the surface of the water was sighing, falling asleep. She looked toward the dinghy, her bulgy eyes askew, and her head now lolloping slowly back and forth, as if assessing.
“You do?”
“She doesn’t,” said Bo, though he wasn’t sure.
“Yes, she does. Don’t you, Orange?”
Orange pressed back from the edge and lifted her bum into the air. Bo grabbed her by the sundress again. “I wish your parents believed in chlorination,” Bo called.
Emily laughed. “There are even frogs living in here. I’ve seen them.” She was out of breath, paddling back toward them. “Orange,” she said. “Your turn.”
Bo was now holding Orange aloft as she tried to dive for the boat. “No, Orange.”
“I got her,” said Emily. “Let her go. I have her.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.” And there she was, his sister, cradled in Emily’s lap, floating across the water, the dinghy rocking erratically. “Shh,” said Emily. “Shh, Orange,” and his sister began to calm, and the boat did too.
No one talked for some time and it was only the thick air, humid and still, and birdcall they had not noticed before, and a bumblebee, and some sounds Bo could not identify—city and nature all blended. Orange rotated along the water, her head resting on Emily’s legs, a little strand of drool dangling from her mouth.
Bo squatted and then lay down so that he could watch his sister from almost the same level, and their eyes could lock—if Orange would even look, which she would not. Bo felt himself rocked by the pulse of the moving water, mesmerized, so that the splash completely surprised him. He looked up to see a plume of green and transparent water, as if the water itself were bucking and thrashing, and then he saw Orange’s sundress billowing as she landed face down in the pool. He stood up before he knew he was standing up. And then he knew he had to jump in.
He looked to Emily, frozen in the moment. She leaned over the dinghy and grabbed the straps of the sundress and pulled. His sister sputtered as she came out of the water and began to flail her arms, like a crab, a caught lobster. Water streamed off Orange’s protesting self. Back in the boat, she thumped about like a landed fish, and the boat rocked crazily.
“She’s a floater!” Emily said triumphantly. She was laughing down at Orange, trying to keep her still so they wouldn’t capsize. “She’ll be swimming in no time.”
“She almost drowned. She almost—”
“Nonsense. She’s a natural. Come in and grab us, will you? Bring us to the shallow end so I can get us out and get a flutter board.”
“What for?”
“Come on, Bo.”
Orange was thumping wildly, and Bo was spinning back in time to an altercation between his parents right before they got on the fishing boat, his mother shrieking, “Get on, please get on!” His father—what?—scared?
Emily had one arm curved under Orange’s armpit. Bo could hear his sister’s frantic breathing; it was the most noise she could make without a wall to throw herself against.
“Orange,” Emily said. She sounded like Teacher, and it soothed him, the authority of it. “If you want to go back in the water, Orange, you will have to listen to me. You have to stop squirming and I have to be absolutely sure you will listen to me.”
Orange thrashed for a little longer, then quieted, face up now and panting, her eyes fixed on Emily’s face. Bo was slowly guiding the dinghy along the side of the pool toward the shallow end. Once they arrived, Emily explained to Orange that she had to go with Bo, and again, that she had to listen. Emily jumped into the water and then pulled herself up and out of the pool. Again the surface gulped and the water spun in surprising ways, bubbles, fog, a kind of dance, and Bo found himself unable to look away.
The flutter board was a rectangular bit of red foam. Bo knew that the swimmer was meant to hold onto it, and kick and so move about safely in the water.
“Emily,” he said. “She hasn’t got proper fingers.”
“Shh,” said Emily. “It doesn’t matter. Come. Orange, come. Jump.”
“She can’t,” said Bo. His sister was twisting to get out of his grip. “I’m holding onto her.”
“Then let her go, Bo. She’s a floater,” Emily said, as if this would be entirely obvious to anyone. “I have her.”
She bit him then, and he let her go before he could think about it. She scuttled sideways and threw herself into the pool. The water reached out its wet hands and grabbed her, and then the hands were gone, as the water drank her. The water swallowed her, but she bobbed, face-up, jubilant, whipping her head back and forth. Emily pulled her over and slipped the foam under her belly.
“You can swim, Orange.” She held her along the back and made a sound like “Wheeeee” as she swung the flutter board in a wide curve. “Kick! Kick! That’s it. Harder. This leg, then this leg,” and here Emily held one leg, and then the other, and began counting a rhythm she wanted Orange to follow.
Emily looked up at Bo. “Come on in, Bo.”
“No,” he said. “I can’t.” Even watching Orange, he thought he would die.
THAT WEEK HEATED THE CITY UP, but Bo and Orange did not go back to Emily’s pool. The class was busy with rehearsals and fittings and finding last-minute props. And then it was the day of the play. They had made programs in art class. Two children from grade seven were going to hand them to the audience as they entered the auditorium.
Late that afternoon, after school, his mum fussing with a seam on his costume in the kitchen and Orange asleep, Bo heard the ice-cream truck bell, and scooped some change from the little box in his room. He intended to take the cone and go for a walk with it, but he was anxious, so instead he wandered to the yard, hung out with Bear. He’d forgotten about losing the house, he’d forgotten all of it. And later he would think how he should have been paying more attention, how there must have been details he missed, some explanation.
Instead he dripped ice cream into Bear’s mouth, and later ate a tense meal, with Max holding forth about the new season, and all the opportunities a curiosity might have on the U.S. circuit—he meant Bear but he kept glancing at Orange and Rose.
Rose caught Bo staring at her, and made a face. “What is it, Bo?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you nervous about tonight?”
“Nope.” But of course he was. His stomach was churning and clenching and he had been to the bathroom three times since he got home from school.
At the school, after dinner, Teacher gave final instructions as Rose fussed with pins and Velcro. The insular feeling that had built around the play, the particular camaraderie that had formed as they rehearsed, was being challenged by the swelling noise of people chatting and laughing and moving chairs about on the other side of the curtain. Bo had a floating feeling, standing there in his silver braid and velvet costume, and he looked across to find his mother, who was fixing the hem of Emily’s gown where she’d stepped on it and it had torn. She was too polite and quiet to tell Emily to stay still, and she struggled with the shaking fabric as Emily wiggled.
Teacher was suddenly in front of them. “You’ll have to stop talking,” she said, not seeming to notice that Rose and Emily had not been talking. “The curtain is about to rise.” Bo had never seen her so flustered.
The curtain did not rise but pulled apart, Sally working the silken ropes to reveal Peter and Ernie playing the grafted tree, holding papier mâché limbs aloft, one with apples, the other with pears, all fruit the children had made and painted that term. They had been instructed to stay quiet until the audience stilled, and then take their cue from Rose, who sat on a chair just below them at midstage.
Bo felt air brush his face, watched the golden fabric of Emily’s gown shimmer, and let his brain wander knowing there was some time until his cue. He thought of Bear, and Loralei. He thought of Gerry, who had told him that Max had put a great deal of stock in Bear. He wanted to prove something at the Ex, so that he would be invited back the following year.
“We gotta be our best every day,” Gerry had said, and when Bo looked back quizzically, he growled, “A man has to earn a living,” as if this should be self-evident. To Bo, it rang true. He would have to take care of his mother, and of Orange. He would have to take care of Orange for her whole life. He shuddered at the sudden image of the doctor saying how Orange’s life expectancy was short, and that smug look that crossed his face. It was dishonourable to hit a doctor, but Bo wished he could go back in time and smack him.
And then he heard Emily screaming and the pounding of her feet across the stage and knew the scene was ending and he’d be on. And before too long, he was facing the audience, looking stage left and stage right for his queen. He looked behind him and there she was, her back to him, and then she turned. They were alone. Fake blood trickled down her face. Emily was very good at looking unhappy. She wailed and told him the story of how she’d fallen asleep and met the Fairy King in her dreams and how now she would have to go with him.
Bo summoned his army to stand guard against the Fairy King, and as they tromped around, the tree sidled back onstage, and Emily fell into a swoon, and he and the army stood guard while the lights dimmed, until it was so dark that no one could see. A single spotlight followed Michael as he rode in on the white hobbyhorse his father had carved. Its eyes gleamed so real. Bo stood right behind the action, and watched Emily follow Michael offstage, and felt an awful thickening anxiety that he could not name. He liked Michael well enough, but in this moment, he despised him.
When the lights rose and the guards realized she was gone, Sir Orfeo’s rage and sudden emotional collapse merged with Bo’s feelings, so that it felt good to rage and hate and swoon. He projected his lines so clearly and with such intention, he saw Teacher smile. He commanded his favourite baron: “Take care of my lands while I’m away. I will go into the wilderness, and live there evermore with wild beasts in grey woods.”
The guards and ladies cried how they did not want him to leave. There was much weeping and lamentation. Even Peter and Ernie looked devastated, as they had been directed to look, though Bo saw their veiled amusement and tried not to laugh. Backstage, Bo stripped off his royal garments and donned a tunic his mother had fashioned from a potato sack. Before the crowd, he turned and turned and turned, and as he did, the others came back onstage dressed as trees and tried to tear at him.
When he had turned ten times or more, he bent over a cluster of the trees and fetched his disguise, and when he spun to face the audience, Ernie said, “Through wood and over heath, into the wilderness, Orfeo went. There was nothing there to give him comfort, and he lived in great distress. Where he had lain upon a bed of purple linen, now he had hard heather. He covered himself with leaves and branches, and in winter, he covered himself in moss to stay warm. For food he dug to find his fill of roots. Sir Orfeo suffered ten years and more with only his harp and the wild beasts to keep him company.”
The fake grey beard and wig straggled down to Bo’s waist and he attempted to look utterly despondent.
Act Two ended and Act Three began, the play un-spooling like a dream. Bo descended to the underworld and walked through its devastation. He sang to the Fairy King and won Heurodis from the dead. And then all was fine, and Orfeo and Heurodis ruled again in peace, and at last, like some truly strange magic, the audience erupted into applause.
Bo was stricken by how he must come away from being Orfeo and be himself, bowing and smiling out into the clapping darkness. Looking down, there was Rose, his mother, beaming up at him. She could look sad even in her pride. But still. He had not missed a line.
They walked home together, with Bo asking her if she had seen this and that small mistake they had made. His mother finally stopped him, saying, “Whatever happens, I will always be proud of you.”
He did not ask because he wanted to think that it meant she loved him, and that no one knew the future, which she did mean. Bo smiled at her and said, “Thanks.”
Max was minding Orange, and Bo spent the rest of the walk preparing how to avoid him once he got home. The house was quiet when they arrived, and Max was in the kitchen. Orange must be asleep. Bo turned toward his bedroom, but Max called out to him.
“How did it go, Bo?”
“Okay,” he said. And then, because he really did not want to talk to Max, he said to Rose, “I’m really tired, Mum. I’m going to go to bed.”
She nodded. “You were very convincing as Sir Orfeo,” she said. “You were a real hero with all those lines too.” She hugged him.
Bo smiled and hugged her back. He had not hugged his mother in so long, it felt strange. He climbed into his bed and nestled his head into his pillow, listening to the murmurs of Max and his mother far off, and then it was morning. Nothing had disturbed his sleep, and he had not dreamt at all.
SOME STILLNESS, a vacancy, woke him early. He would go pee, he decided, and then fall back to sleep, but when he made his way to the bathroom, he could sense the not-breathing space of the house. He began turning on the lights, and in the brightness he discovered that they were gone. His mother had gone and his sister was not asleep in her room, and, save for the reiterative scraping from the backyard, which must be Bear, he was alone.
Bo went in his underwear to unchain Bear. He brought her in the house and sat in the kitchen with her for some time, Bear poking at his leg a few times and then, realizing Bo wasn’t going to play, curling up under the table to sleep. The note in front of Bo read: This is for the best. Call Gerry. We’ve arranged it. Love, Mum. But Bo did not want to go to Gerry, and he sat there until it was too late to go to school. When the phone rang, he didn’t answer it, figuring it was the school asking after his whereabouts. He sat beyond the sightlines of the window in the front door, so Emily couldn’t see him when she came knocking after school. He fed the bear in between times, and by her moan, knew she had to go out—but he ignored her, until the house took on a smell and he knew Bear had done her business inside.
He couldn’t cry. He didn’t move. The phone rang, and he answered it this time, out of reflex.
“Bo Jangles,” Gerry said, and Bo could not deny the sound of his voice comforted him. “How you doing?”
“Fine.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” Bo imagined Grimsby, the sad truck, Loralei circumnavigating a corroded peg, an ugly peeling bungalow, and Gerry, standing in the doorway, scratching his belly. He whispered, “I’m fine.”
“I’ve been calling and calling,” said Gerry. “The plan is I come get you and you stay with me until the Ex. We work out the kinks in your act, get that bear in working order. Max agrees we should rest the animals until then. Forget the little fairs this summer; we have our sights on the big-time. So, you’ll come here and you’ll keep training Bear. I got all you need right here.”
Gerry’s optimism, and the fact of a plan, might have pleased Bo. But the letter sprang to mind:
We’ve arranged it. Meaning Max had arranged it.
Bo felt his throat close. “No,” he managed to say into the accumulating silence. Bo could hear his own breath, his heartbeat, and already in his mind, he was running. “How long have you known?”
“Kid,” said Gerry. “I’m really sorry. This can’t be nice for you.”
Bo tried latching onto just one thought. “Gerry,” he said, “where did Max go with Orange? Where did he take her?”
“I’m not at liberty, kiddo.”
“Say.”
“Well, the fact is—” Bo could hear Gerry drawing greedily on a cigarette.
“The truth is I honestly don’t know. All I can say is they came by here to sort out some paperwork. The kid and your mum were in Max’s trailer, and the lot of them were happy.”
“Orange—?”
“She was smiling, Bo Jangles. I won’t lie to you.”
Again Bo was quiet, only breathing.
“Max wouldn’t say which direction they were headed.” Bo heard the pop of Gerry’s jaw, and imagined a series of elegant smoke rings dancing within one another. It was a party trick of his. “You’ll be happy here,” he said. “Bear’ll love it too. It’s for the best, kid.”
The peg, and there was Loralei sitting, and the scritch-scratch of her habitual rubbing. Bo imagined a doughnut of bare earth around the peg where Loralei had trod a path, bored, insanely bored.
“I’m staying here,” said Bo, blood fleeing from his extremities. He might faint, he thought.
“Kid.”
“I’m not coming.” Bear sat in the hallway, her eyes lit and lively, watching. They could stay in the house until the end of July, he thought, despite how ludicrous he immediately realized this would be. Bo said, “We’re not coming.” And in his mind this new plan took some loose shape—he’d train Bear, not only to perform but also to protect him, and together they’d busk wherever they could. They’d rove the fairs until the Ex. Fuck Max. Fuck him.
“She’s my bear, Bo Jangles,” Gerry said, a warning entering his tone. “That’s my fucking investment.”
No, Bo thought, she’s mine. And as he hung up, Bo could hear Gerry saying, “I’m on my way, Bo. You better be there for me, or I swear I’ll find you. Jesus, kid. Don’t do this—”
Bo stuffed into a rucksack an assortment of clothing, the tin from the fridge that now held only fifty dollars, his journal and the photographs he had taken of Orange those months ago. He looked around at the yellowed walls, the cracked, dirty linoleum, the ragged, dingy carpet running the length of the hall. Leaving this felt good. He’d finish training Bear and then he would find Orange, save her, and—then what? He felt so unequal to this task. What if he could not find her?
He stood at the window, paralyzed by all these thoughts pressing in, and watched Teacher come up the front steps. She saw him before he could duck. He opened the door and stepped outside so that she wouldn’t see Bear, or smell her.
“Hi,” he said, as if things were normal. His voice quivered at the lie of it.
“Hi, Bo.” There were furrows between her eyebrows and he tried to assess whether she was worried or angry.
“I’m sorry I missed school,” he said. “I overslept and then—”
“You weren’t the only one,” she interrupted, “but why didn’t your mum call? Is she here? I’d like to speak with her.”
“She’s not home.”
“That’s impossible,” she said. “She’s known about this makeup doctor’s appointment for weeks.” Teacher checked her wristwatch, looked back up at him. “Do you know when she’ll be back?”
He shook his head fast.
“What is it, Bo?”
“She went with someone. They took Orange.”
“Oh,” said Teacher. She made an odd face, like she couldn’t take in this information. And then he realized it was more that she didn’t want to meddle. “She’ll have to make another appointment, as soon as possible, herself. It’s very important. Do you understand, Bo?”
“Yes.” He wanted to ask why it was important but he didn’t. His mother didn’t go to doctors.
“Bo,” Teacher said. “You were very fine last night. I think you might be a born actor, you seemed so real up on the stage. I can’t tell you how happy I was for you.”
“Thank you,” he said. He wished she would leave so he could go. He could hear the faint click of Bear treading through the house.
“Bo, there is something else I need to tell you,” she said. She took a deep breath and held it for a beat, then sighed. She avoided his eyes, so that he wondered whether she would cry. “I’m leaving my job at the school, going back to my hometown. I won’t be back in the fall.” There was something more she wasn’t saying, he knew.
Bo said, “Oh,” and then, “Does my mother know that?” because he wondered whether she might come back if she knew no one would be there to try to get her to a doctor.
“She really needs to make that appointment,” Teacher repeated, biting her lip.
“I’ll tell her.”
“Thank you, Bo.”
When Teacher turned to go, he realized he would miss her, and wanted to say something about that, but instead he said just “Goodbye.”
BO WENT BACK THROUGH the house and stood in Orange’s room, looking for some piece of her to take with him. And he knew right away. He went to the kitchen and found the sharpest knife, brought it back and slid it under the wallpaper, cutting a sizable piece. A knight on a massive blue steed, in full gallop, a jousting pole readied, and beneath it, his own drawing of a soldier pointing his pistol at another man whose hands were held up in surrender, and below that a great toothy fish coming to swallow it all. A bedtime story he had drawn for Orange.
He folded it carefully and tucked it between the pages of his journal in his rucksack. He sat at the kitchen table, the bear at his side. “We’ll go, Bear,” he said, “and then we’ll come back every few days and check to see if they’ve come home.” He missed Orange. He felt this missing like a hot stone beneath his rib cage. Bear looked up at him and then flopped down, tucked her head under her paw.
It was night when Bo left, hoping the darkness would hide Bear—ten months old, she stood over three feet at her shoulders and could never be mistaken for a dog. They were not far from the house, cutting behind the school toward Ravina Park, when Bo saw Father Bart, his black vestments crisply swinging, heading in the direction of Bo’s house. Bo thought the priest had not seen him, and was surprised when he stopped and turned toward the maple tree where Bo had tried to hide with Bear.
“Bo?” he called. There were three street lights broken on this stretch of road and it was dark.
Bo did not move.
“Bo,” the priest said. “What is that, son?” The priest’s voice was pitched up with the birds. He spoke as a man who imagines himself to have gone crazy. “My God, is that a bear with you?”
Bo emerged from hiding, and stood with Bear on the end of the leash. He said nothing, did not really know what he was doing, and when the priest gawked, his gown fluttering in the evening breeze, his shoes polished so carefully, Bo merely turned and walked away at half speed. Father Bart called out that he was sorry about how things had gone, but Bo kept walking—the priest’s calling meant nothing to him. He walked into the night, the park, that otherworld.
The way to the forest had never felt more strange. There were hard moments in the short journey from the house he had shared with his mother and sister, in which he considered what he was doing, so that the half hour or so it took him to get into the dimmest portion of the High Park woods, to the place he thought he might hide, took a spiralling lifetime. He was gutted by the time he arrived, so emptied, so cried out, finally, over all that had happened—his mother and sister leaving, and his father dying, all compiled into one pitted loss. He was alone with it all, and it hollowed him.
IN THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED, Bo missed the fights with Ernie. He missed the shoving, hard-hitting anger of it. He took to baiting Bear, fighting her more than he should. He let it go too far, let her hurt him sometimes, so that he could feel the adrenaline surge and ebb.
Soldier Man found him in the bush, and disappeared, and found him again. Now he stood near the shelter Bo was building on an east-facing slope under the canopy of a young forest in the northeast corner of the park. Bo used deadfall and pine boughs he’d cut from trees farther south, decorated the lean-to with bits of cloth people had left or lost in the park.
“Make it with confidence, boy, and no one will see it. You try to hide, they’ll find you, I swear.” Soldier Man crouched down, trying to coax Bear with a treat.
“What happened to you?” Bo said.
“Shrapnel,” said Soldier Man. “What happened to you?”
“Nothing,” said Bo. And then he said, “Are you going to just hang around and watch me the whole time?”
So Bo decided to show this guy how dangerous Bear was. Bo whistled to Bear, and she yawned and rolled herself to standing. He signalled for her to lunge and growl, and when she did this Soldier Man just stood there as if nothing had happened.
“What else can she do?” he asked.
Bo tapped on Bear’s right front paw and then the other until she pranced. Then she stood on two legs—one front and one back—and bounced to the other two, an unwieldy ballerina, back and forth.
Soldier Man said, “Jeez.” He folded his arms and nodded. “You know what you need? You need to get that bear a bicycle.”
And the next night, he dragged up an old rusted stationary bike.
“Whoa!” said Bo.
“Well, you ain’t going nowhere. You might as well bike there.” Soldier Man had brought Bo a hot dog too—cold, a bit soggy, but still. Meat.
“Where’d you get this?” Bo said, eager to know where he might find more.
“People throw shit out at the concession stand all the time.”
“You got this out of the garbage can?”
“Sure.”
“Huh,” said Bo, his mouth full, “pretty good.”
Bo sat Bear on the grass and commanded her to stay. The animal waited, biding time, and Bo heaved himself up on the bike. He showed Bear how to do it, legs pumping hard. Bear cocked her head, learning, maybe, or perplexed, or wanting her turn, and so Bo dismounted.
“Okay,” he said. “You try.”
Bear sniffed the bike and tried to climb up, clumsy and reckless, so that Bo had to help her and hold her steady like he remembered his father helping him when he was little. It surprised him to remember so clearly—a paved road and veering off wildly into a green patch and falling, the cutting laughter of his dad. Bear kept on nudging his arms away, making it hard to help her.
“Bear,” he said. “Quit that.”
Bo held her back feet to the pedals. Her legs rotated, and her front body lounged over the bars. After a while he let go and watched her ride to nowhere. Bo needed to perfect this act, needed to feel they might have some sort of show, some way to make money. Bear could dance and she could fight, but that was useless without a ring.
“Tour de France,” said Soldier Man, when Bear pushed herself off the bike and bounded a few metres away, panting. “Pretty smart bear.” He took a sandwich wrapped in a greasy piece of waxed paper from his pocket. He pulled the corner of the sandwich off and tossed it to Bear. When she sniffed the ground and then ate the treat, he tossed another piece a little closer.
“Bo?” he said. “I got news. Some fella is looking for you, kid. Guy said he could smell bear, when I told him I didn’t know anything about anything. He told me not to fuck with him.”
Bo stared at Soldier Man, at his drenched and ragged bandana, and thought this through, how he would have to work harder, hurry, hide better. “When?”
“Evening before last. I guess your second day here,” said Soldier Man, shrugging when Bo made a face. “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger.”
“Okay,” said Bo. “What did you say to him?”
“I told him, ‘Fuck you very much,’ ” and then Soldier Man was gone, not answering Bo’s hushed calls for him to come back.
Bo turned to Bear, watched her sniff the grass where the scent of sandwich must still linger. “Come on,” he said. He leashed her and they began walking. They had a routine already. Days, they slept, and under cover of night, they roamed and trained.
ONE VERY DARK NIGHT, two weeks in, they ventured back toward the old neighbourhood, Bo anxious and yearning. It was obsessive ghost stalking, of Emily’s house, of the stockyards—a place where the sweet smell of cow pat drew the bear more than it drew him. Bo was homesick, and lonely, shifting in the shadows with Bear, and the risk of being seen was immense, even if Bo had never felt more invisible.
His house was dead and cold. The signs his family had lived there—a collapsed flowerpot, the begonias brown, their stems gnarled viscous limbs of some dead thing—insulted him. Junk mail, yellowed, piled up on the stoop.
He and Bear walked along the side of the house and up the metal back porch stairs. Bo had his key in the lock before he realized how crazy this was. He looked in the door window. A night-light burned ochre in a socket in the hallway. He could make out the peeling Naugahyde chair in the living room. No one had been in to clean. He looked in at that past for some time before he pushed the door open, and knew right away he couldn’t go in.
The stale air was so potent with sorrow after the park’s fresh air. His mother was really gone. He thought of her pride after the play when all the parents clapped, and he couldn’t put it together with the fact that she had left him. He thought, he must stop trying to put things together. And then Bear yanked at the lead so hard he let go, and she was down the hall and moaning at a cabinet in the kitchen. The kibble was still in there.
He followed and scooped a big bowl for her, rolling the top of the bag down and shoving the rest in his rucksack. He had learned never to pass by food she might be able to eat. A full bear was a happy bear.
“Come on,” he whispered, and they left by the back door, Bo pulling it shut and leaving the key stuck in the lock. He wouldn’t come back. He turned to descend the stairs and head back through the shadows to the park and there was Emily in the yard, looking up.
“Bear!” she said.
Bo was filthy, he knew, and so was Bear. “Emily,” he whispered. “How come you are here?” He brought Bear to heel and came down the steps.
“I was walking by, and I smelled her,” said Emily, smiling. “She really stinks, Bo!” And then she smiled wider and reached her hands out toward Bear. “Some old guy’s been around looking for you. Father Bart said a sermon for you too.” She laughed a little, and looked at him. “Where have you been hiding?”
“High Park,” Bo said.
“You can’t keep hiding in one place, I don’t think. That guy came around to my house asking if I knew where you were. He said he was your boss. I thought Max was your boss.”
“Max is his boss too. His name is Gerry.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” said Emily. “Teacher told him I knew you, he said. And he said something about getting the authorities involved, and that the newspapers are starting to talk about bear sightings in the park.”
Bo thought he’d been so careful. “Oh, no.”
“Gerry was scared that Max will find out he’s lost you and Bear.”
“We aren’t lost. We just don’t want to go to Grimsby,” said Bo, thinking that Gerry couldn’t lose something he didn’t own in the first place. “Do you know where Max took my mum and Orange?”
Emily shook her head. “I’m really sorry,” she added. “I miss Orange.”
“Me too,” said Bo. “I thought they might come back,” but even as he said it he realized how babyish he sounded. “It’s stupid. They aren’t coming back for me.” He told her how he’d been roaming by night and sleeping by day to avoid people. He told her about Soldier Man and how Max wanted to use Orange.
“You’re kidding.”
“No.” He tugged on the lead and set off, the bear swaying beside him, snorting, chuffing. He didn’t like to be still for long and neither did she. He would have to be more careful in the park, find a few more spots where he could camouflage the bear and hide himself, maybe off the paths, farther south where fewer people bothered to go.
“I’ve got to know if you hear anything,” he said, turning back to face Emily. “Come find me, okay?”
“If you need to, you could hide in my pool shed.” The shimmering image of green water came into his mind, and this must have shown on his face. “There’s a back door from the alleyway. The key’s under a fake stone right below the lock. We keep the poolside door locked too. It’s safe and you’d hear if someone was coming. I’ll put a blanket or two in there in case,” she said.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“In case, is all,” she said. “If you need to deke in anywhere.” She gestured to the house. “No one would ever think of the pool shed.”
Then the bear lunged. Bo let go of the lead, and she ducked under the porch to roll and face-snuffle into the dry warm dirt there, some memory smell of her own childhood enticing her. Bo climbed back up the grated stairs above her and stood looking toward the tracks, half hoping a train would rip through the night and give him awful sounds to cut the feelings he did not want to feel. He recalled ice cream oozing through his toes, Bear’s tongue. When he looked, Emily was watching him, her eyes glinting.
“Thanks,” he said.
“No problem, Bo.”
BO AND BEAR ENTERED THE PARK from the northwestern edge, crossed a creek and then followed it toward the marshes where it opened up into Grenadier Pond. Bear dug her paws into the path, refusing to move then, and Bo heard her rumbling growl. Bo tried to pull her into the rushes behind them, but she wouldn’t budge. Bear rolled her head and scented, then let loose with a full roar when Soldier Man finally emerged from the green.
“Hey,” he said, and Bo’s breath caught in his throat. He had thought it might be Gerry.
“Jesus,” said Bo.
“I scare you?”
Bo nodded.
“Well, you should be scared, I guess. Your friend was here. Right here,” Soldier Man said. “Looking for you and your missus.” He gestured to Bear. “He’s the bear wrestling guy, right?”
Bo nodded.
“I told him you weren’t here anymore. Told him you’d headed west by night down toward Grimsby to find him. I did good, right?”
Bo’s heartbeat battered at his chest. “Yes,” he said. “Thanks.” But the screaming thought that ripped across his mind was, Where’s my mother?
“He had something to tell you, he said, if you wanted to hear it—”
“Thanks,” said Bo. “I don’t want to hear it,” surprised, as he said this, that Soldier Man had his back at all. He realized he would have to be even more careful.
He kept Bear still closer after that, and set about teaching her new commands: bare teeth, bite. No one would be able to take Bear from him. No one.
IN THE WEEKS THAT PASSED, Bear dug a hollow for herself a short distance away from the lean- to and raked grass and twigs into it for her bed. There was some bearness in her that led her to places that smelled good, where she could watch the night parade of fox and skunk and mole and rat. The pond below them tossed with fish, and she liked to watch that too.
Now, Bo could make out Bear’s face peeking over the incline below him—the hill descended in a series of soft steps. The bear’s back shuddered and then her head lifted. She had woken early, long before the sun crested in the east, and Bo woke then too. They’d been sleeping an hour at most.
Bear turned, orienting, noticing all there was to notice in the meagre light, and her nose twitched, taking in the musk of sewage that plagued them in that corner of the park—he had no indication she disliked this—and the particular odour of morning, its fresh greenness, the insects scuttling, earth smells—all the things Bo could neither smell nor see.
Bear emerged from her bed, and bumbled out along the slope. She rooted and tore up horsetail, pushed at deadfall in search of worms and woodlice. It amazed him how much she ate. Bear moved closer to the pond and scratched along the path, turning up what she could—ants, Bo suspected. Then she seemed to hear or smell something farther down and was drawn there. Bo figured it must be close to six in the morning, a time when early risers might bring their dogs into the area, so he whistled for her to come back, but she ignored him and kept on.
He could hear her chuffing, and rattling the undergrowth, and so he rose and made his way toward her. He could not see her. He began to worry about Gerry, worry that he would lose Bear too, and then he would be entirely, awfully, alone.
“Bear,” he called, soft, soft. He needed her.
Nothing.
“Bear.”
He heard her move again and located her, a fur line undulating at the shore of the pond. She looked back at him briefly, and then scooped at the water. The edge of the pond was mucky and grown up with bulrush and willow struggling against erosion. If she dug she might find a frog, but she did not dig. She slapped the water and scooped. Bo wondered if she knew instinctively to fish, if there were fish worth catching, and as he wondered, she forked a large glittering carp with her claws, watched it flop on the shore. Then, she seemed to smile as she tore into it.
Bo could only stare at this, the pink wetness sinking into her paw fur. Bo turned back toward the lean-to, worry rising again that they might be seen. He whistled low and insistent. Bear was up in her nest before he got back himself, curled in a ball. He wondered if she was faking sleep, trying to trick him, but she did not move from her bed again until night had fallen, and then she had to prod at him, he’d slept so deeply. Bear stood on her back legs and scented wildly. Bo jerked to his feet trying to see through the night and foliage to what she might have heard.
“Get down, kid.”
It was Soldier Man, his smothered words. He pushed through the scrub, his hand welted from thorn slash. He was entirely filthy. They all were. Bo made an effort to bathe in the various ponds, keeping to the edges and splashing himself—the opaque water could hide anything. But without soap, it was futile. The grime and smell accrued upon him. Soldier Man was panting, aggravating the bear, who began to make little aborted charges, huffing, a low growl forming. Bo dropped to a crouch next to Bear.
“Down,” Soldier Man murmured, and he reached over to Bo and solidly pushed him down by pressing on his head with the flat of his palm.
Bo hadn’t felt the touch of another human for weeks, and this, more than the violence of the man’s gesture, affected him. He felt grateful.
“They’re coming,” said Soldier Man.
Bo heard it then, a helicopter circling the park, a harsh line of light sweeping by them. The chopper was loud and Soldier Man was clearly spooked, wide-eyed and reliving some dream, or some past life.
“It’s nothing,” Bo said, too loudly.
“Shh.” Soldier Man brought his finger up to his lips, craned toward him and handed him a rag. “Cover your head, put this over your nose and mouth. They’re coming, dude.”
Bo watched the yellow skis of the heli twist upward and away. He wondered if they’d spotted him, but figured no. They were looking for something else. A criminal on the run, a missing child who’d wandered off. The helicopter sliced up the sky, a swoop of searchlights, again and again. Soldier Man slammed flat to the ground, panting to calm himself, bring the tension down. And only when the helicopter putter was far away, when they could no longer hear it, did he let up his vigilance.
After, he was a brittle mess. “Oh, fuck,” he said, the swear word like a sigh emerging from deep in his belly. “Fucking hell, kid. I’m sorry.”
“It was nothing. Just city cops.”
“I know. Yeah.” He panted like an animal. “Shit.”
Strange to watch someone leave himself like that. Bear tromped a tight circle around them, sensitive to Soldier Man’s freak-out, going round and round, pawing at the dirt, lifting a stick with her fangs and shaking it, channelling some predatory neck-cracking technique that was so built in, she couldn’t not do it.
Soldier Man stared at the ground. “In the war they flew over us and sprayed wherever they thought the enemy might be hiding. The shit billowed and wafted. The wind would take it. I’d have hated to be the VC. That shit stung even by the time it was dissipated in the wind. Better you get some bit blown off than breathe that shit. Man.”
Bo was so still. His father gasping. His mother breathing it. “What was it?” he finally said. But he knew.
“Defoliant,” said Soldier Man. “Agent Orange. Devil’s handiwork.”
In the dark, Bo imagined his father and mother crawling just below the fog as it roiled in and down. He stifled a sob, told himself he didn’t care.
“You couldn’t get away from that shit, kid.” The Soldier Man quieted, sensed something, then, “Hey, what’s the matter? I say something wrong?”
Bo shook his head, shook it to unwind the pressing tears and loosen the sense of desperation that was pushing at him. Then finally, when he could, he said, “No. I’m good.”
“Hey, kid, how old were you in ’75?”
“Six.”
“Shit.” Soldier Man got up to leave. It was dry out this night. He slurred his words. “I scared you pretty good, I guess,” and then he was gone into the dark, the undergrowth whispering his departure.
Such silence, then, as if the world had sucked itself deep into a hole. Bo couldn’t even hear Bear huffing and snorting, nothing. No airflow, no beetle scuttle, no bird rustle, no water trickle, nothing.
“Bear,” he said, and Bear jerked her head up at him. “Come.” Bo slid on his belly. He shifted along the ground, imagining his father, and forced his face into the ugliness he had witnessed on Soldier Man’s face and held this expression, so that he merged the two men—the veteran and his dad—and played them, shuffling through the undergrowth to the eastern reservoir. The bear ambled beside him not caring what game this was. She would plunge into the water for the wetness of it, and swipe her paw at any fish or frog that dared to jump near her.
“Down, Bear,” Bo said, and flattened his hand toward the ground, until she hunkered, watching him for what was next. Bo pulled himself toward the water, down the incline, looking up periodically when he remembered the pluming threat of chemical descending. What that looked like, he could not recall, and so he substituted cumulus clouds and had them scud across and down. He pulled his shirt up over his mouth and gasped, and choked, and went into elaborate death throes. It should have been awful, real, some link to his dad, but he kept on until he was laughing at his game and guilty with it.
The last true memory he had of his father: a thin, sun-baked man, perched with his legs bent, his elbows propped upon them, on a bench along the prow of the fishing boat, looking out to the horizon. The sky was a deepening blue, and would become a storm, but this happened later, at least in his memory. His father’s face had erupted with sores, and even his eyes were seeping some unholy wetness. His mother had told him not to disturb his father, that he was in pain and needed to stay still, let the sun bake the edges of these wounds and scab them over.
And so Bo stood at a hatch, in this memory, looking out at his father—had this happened? Yes. The sore-pocked face turned toward him and stared for just too long, so that either of them might have smiled, though neither of them did. Eventually, his father saluted, sharp and perfect in its execution, and Bo saluted back, some boyish code for love. And then his father broke eye contact and went back to staring at the horizon.
“Growl,” Bo said to Bear, and she did, low and resonant. He felt it up through the earth. Bo made the hand signal to go with it. “Bare teeth,” and Bear pulled her lips back less in a snarl than a smile. Again, he had to laugh, because she seemed to know that they were playing. “Oh, Bear,” he said, “come here,” and when she did, he hugged her. But when he wrapped his arms around her neck, he felt the growing vibration of a real growl building deep in her body.
Six months and more since he’d first cradled her, and now they were nearly one creature. He listened for some primal stillness in the back of his head. Sometimes, he and Bear talked in huffs and snorts. He never knew whether this was real talk, of course. The talk was untranslatable, like talking to Orange, but deeper and thicker, as if the thoughts moved from the stomach and the heart rather than the brain. Bo sat still with her for a long time, listening to the park sounds.
There was nothing unusual, and he finally said, “It’s okay, Bear.”
But Bo was jumpy, and twice in the next week, he and Bear had rambled late at night into the Junction, when the feeling of being watched ate at him. They slept in Emily’s pool shed, and both times, left before anyone noticed them. He couldn’t say why he didn’t want to see Emily, except it had made him lonely and anxious to have seen her. It began to feel like magic that they were never found. And he began to count on that magic.