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CBC LITERARY AWARDS

The Bob Weaver
Fiction Prize

THE LOST BOY (p. 3 of 3)

1 | 2 | 3 | MAY '04

If the world were kind, what happens next would not happen next. Nobby would go to the store and bring back rice and insult us and bully me and life would go on. My mother would be right about spring. Summer would follow. The new baby would be a boy.

But instead, Mr. Chiyo comes running yelling about an accident, his hair and shoulders dusted with snow. Nobby’s bicycle wheel slipped on some ice right when a truck delivering produce to Pam’s Grocery turned the corner onto Ox Street.

"No!" my mother yells, and crumples. She hits herself on the side of her head over and over again.

Laid out on a table in the community centre, Nobby is dressed in a suit and tie two sizes too big. I didn’t realize Nobby had such a big Adam’s apple, but it is stuck in his throat like a stone. Now his lips are even more blue, his skin, ashen. His hip and one leg are mangled and although some of the damage is hidden in the bottom half of the coffin, some is still obvious. My mother sobs out loud. The little Kamegaya girls hide behind her skirts.

That night when I dream, I am outside skating and see Nobby laid out on our kitchen table. I keep skidding, and I keep falling under wheels. I shudder awake. In a way, it’s true. In a way that I didn’t see before Nobby ran his fateful errand, I have been skating on slippery ice, and after that day I am dragged along under a truck’s tires for the rest of my childhood. My mother goes to the bedroom and refuses to move from bed. She won’t nurse the baby or consume any food.

A week later, so much has happened. The ground is too frozen to dig; in the end, the fathers have to borrow a backhoe. Mr. Kamegaya moves his family into a distant cousin’s house. Our children are farmed out. My mother is still in bed; she only appears to use the outhouse. She doesn’t attend Nobby’s funeral for fear of what the community will whisper.

The next morning I kneel by my mother’s feet. "Mom, please get up. I love you." I mean that I love her too much, that she’s scaring me, that I need her to look after us.
At first she doesn’t seem to have heard me, but then her eyes swing up and she meets my gaze. I have never seen eyes look like that, like unexposed film. If I had been able to fall into them, I wouldn’t have stopped. I would have tumbled down and down and down. Suddenly she’s up, so fast I lose my balance.

"Why didn’t you go to store for me?"

Didn’t I offer? I would have died in his stead; I would have sacrificed myself if I could have.

My mother leaves the bedroom. I follow on her heels. The other bedroom yawns emptily, its cloth removed. She does not bother with boots, so neither do I. I snatch the Brownie camera, pull on my winter coat. We are still in pajamas. My mother strides the back way, skirting the houses and prying eyes. My feet are frozen inside five seconds. She takes the road away from town. Tears chip off my face like grains of rice.

She stops at Princess Gorge. My mother weaves at the edge, arms held out. She will be an angel, I think. Wings will sprout as she flies. No one else is around; no one has followed us. I am so afraid of heights. When I see her tilt forward, I scream.

She manages to right herself.

I tiptoe closer meaning to wrest her away, to tackle her, but she grabs my wrist and for a minute we totter there, nearly going over, my stomach in my throat. She tugs forward as I yank back.

She is very beautiful. Always, I have thought this about her. I don’t know whether I should love her at that moment or not, but I do, I love her, I drown in loving her. I am totally doomed. She takes the camera and throws it over. It clips off the rock as it falls, going from camera to speck to invisible in seconds. The gorge is lovely; softened by the snow, the walls are striated like layers of Neapolitan ice cream. At the bottom, if we could reach it safely, is a river that could carry us both away. [ ]

Jane Eaton Hamilton is the author of six books. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times, Maclean’s and Canadian Gardening. Originally from Ontario, she now lives in Vancouver, where she is in training to become a Master Gardener.

Marie T. Gingras This Tamara de Lempicka fan studies at the Algonquin College School of Media and Design. A Sudbury native, she loves engraving and looks forward to a career in illustration.

Jury
Austin Clarke’s most recent novel, The Polished Hoe, won the 2002 Giller Prize and the 2003 Trillium Prize.
Leading playwright Tomson Highway’s latest children’s book, Fox on the Ice, is the final instalment of an English-Cree trilogy.
Anne Michaels is the author of the award-winning novel Fugitive Pieces. She has also composed musical scores for the theatre.

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1 | 2 | 3 | MAY '04