LITMIR.BIZ

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a slit in the barn door as his father slaughtered a calf. He held an axe, concealed behind his back, as he patted the calf on the head. Then, a lightning-like flash of sunlight on the blade, and he brought the axe around and over his shoulder in an arc and hit the animal on the head with the flat end. The calf bucked forward on its knees and collapsed. Mr. Havelock took a knife from his pocket and slit its throat. He tied a rope to the calf’s left rear leg, threw it over a beam, and hauled the carcass up to let the blood drain out. Afterward, in the compost pile, Phil stabbed through a garbage bag to the glistening mass of innards with a pitchfork. These images later became associated in my mind with other things.

      I remembered the day the year before when Mr. Applewood died. Mrs. Havelock stood at the back door of the farmhouse, both hands to her face. The people of Merrick Bay thought of Mrs. Havelock as a sweet woman married to a stick. She was involved in the Women’s Institute and was often away at meetings or visiting the sick and infirm, and when she was home, she never stopped talking. Mr. Havelock said little. He was a secret drinker: he kept a twenty-four of Dow in the basement and a fifth of Crown Royal in the garage. He would lurk in the yard with a broom with which he chased away the chickens while Mrs. Havelock prattled on. But on that day she was, for once, silent.

      Mr. Havelock and Donny, the Applewoods’ silent foster son, ran toward the pickup. They had ropes, crowbars, and the chain saw. Phil stood beside the truck.

      Mr. Havelock turned and yelled at him: “No, absolutely not. You stay here. Show the ambulance the way when it comes up the road.”

      The pickup roared away, leaving a cloud of dust settling over the pale grass of the farmyard. Phil and I stood still until the truck was out of sight. Then we ran back toward Sucker Creek. We shoved the yellow canoe into the water and paddled upstream as fast as we could.

      “What happened?” I asked Phil. “What’s going on?”

      “You’ll see.”

      After we passed through the tamarack swamp, the creek broadened to a wide bend and the land suddenly seemed to open up — a clearing in the forest like a secret garden. The Applewoods’ farm was out of place there: neat fields, a perfect green barn, and, on a small hill in the distance, a white frame house with green trim. By a stand of poplars, between the creek and the field closest to the old pump house, we saw a group of figures. We saw the Havelocks’ pickup and other cars driving across the fields. As we drew closer, I spotted a tractor overturned in the grass near the trees, one of those oddly thin Massey-Fergusons with the front wheels close together, the kind of tractor people used to scythe grass or plough vegetable gardens. And then the immense roots of a poplar tree that had toppled over, pulling itself loose from the spongy bank of the creek. We scrambled ashore. Through the leaves I saw a hand, palm to the sky although the man lay on his stomach. The hand was faintly blue. The man’s eyes, half-open, were still bright. The trunk of the tree had missed him, but a large branch lay across his back. The branch looked as though it were just resting on Mr. Applewood, that he might stand up and brush it aside. It had crushed him to death.

      The buzz of a chain saw. In the distance I saw Mrs. Applewood with her arms around the neck of a girl. Marjorie Applewood. She had dark hair and large dark eyes that shone with tears.

      Now, with Mr. Applewood gone, the farm was beginning to slip. The front gate was off its hinges and the lawn at the side of the driveway was going to seed with dandelions and plantain. There was a harrow with grass growing through the tines and a couple of old cars up on blocks — a common sight along the back roads of the district, but incongruous in front of the Applewoods’ still bright green barn.

      The cars were Donny’s: junkers that he brought home and sold in bits and pieces to garages and body shops. When Mr. Applewood was alive, Donny had to keep the cars out behind the barn. Donny was the Applewoods’ foster child, had lived with them since he was four years old. Some people said he wasn’t quite right in the head. I thought he was just quiet. Scary quiet.

      But Phil Havelock seemed to understand Donny, and he knew people like Chicklet, too, who lived in the district year-round and attended the high school at Iron Falls, and the big Indian from Parry Sound that everyone called Spook. Phil and his friends went to bars — the Shalomar, just beyond the village, or the Golden Dragon, down the highway. Phil was almost nineteen, but he looked about twenty-five. He was six feet tall and had a dark beard. He was starting to go bald. He had deep wings and a bare spot on the back of his head the size of a silver dollar, and the beginnings of a paunch. Phil was working around the farm that summer and helping his father look after the summer places. In September he would even have to pay rent, which I thought was very strange. The good news was he had his driver’s licence.

      We’d been sitting in the Havelocks’ kitchen, listening to Phil’s mother talk. She talked endlessly about the families in the district and what they were doing: the MacNabs, the Aults, the Reeds, the Merricks, what was left of them. And the Applewoods, especially the Applewoods, poor Marjorie and Donny — not quite right in the head, if you asked her — and now the father dead and all, and the mother starting to go just a little funny, too, and the older brother gone to study art in Toronto.

      “Art school. Can you imagine? Someone from Merrick Bay, an artist?” she said. “Although I’m not surprised, really. The mother has brains. And look at the job his father did on the barn, God rest his soul. But how can they afford it — that’s the question I ask myself.”

      And then she’d mentioned the party.

      “What?” said Phil.

      “A party,” said his mother, “at Marjorie Applewood’s. Supper, next Thursday. It’s going to be a barbecue. Hot dogs. All the Coke you can drink!”

      “Shit,” said Phil, rolling his eyes. “Miss Goody-Goody has a fucking tea party.”

      “Philip Havelock!”

      “Pardon my French, Mother. I’ll wash my mouth with soap.”

      The reason for the party was that the Applewoods had rented out the farmhouse and would soon be moving into another smaller place nearby, and to mark the finish of the school year for Marjorie and her friends. In the end, Phil had agreed to go and had dragged me along.

      When we arrived and I introduced myself, Marjorie blurted, “I know who you are. You’re Ray Carrier. Your father brought the old river house from Phil Havelock’s uncle. I met you at the Havelocks’ place when I came to deliver honey, last summer, and once at Ault’s store. I work there mornings, helping out Charmaine. You were there with your aunt, carrying boxes out to the car.” She spoke these words all in a rush. Then she paused and touched my wrist. She turned toward the barbecue. “Here, help me light this stupid thing. It keeps going out.”

      It was a small party. Besides myself, Phil Havelock, and Marjorie and Donny Applewood, there were Chicklet and his sister, who lived on a farm down the road; Henri LaTroppe, who lived in a room above the Shell station in Merrick Bay and had arrived at the party on a motorcycle; Monica and Clarrisa, two giggling girls from Marjorie’s high school in Iron Falls; and Charmaine Ault from Merrick Bay, whose mother owned the general store. Chicklet used to say, “Know what? Charmaine Ault?” He would make a pumping gesture with his right hand and provide sound effects by working the chewing gum in his mouth. He always had gum in his mouth, his name was Jerry Reed, and everyone called him Chicklet. He had bright darting eyes and a brush cut. “Yeah, you try to touch her hooters, she thinks it’s real bad, like the devil’s going to get her? So she rubs it for you just to keep your hands off of her.” He would speak in a breathy voice — “Oh, Ray, it’s so big. Oh, Ray, let me look after it for you. Let me stroke it. Here, Ray, hold these,” — and stick out his chest to imitate Marilyn Monroe.

      Chicklet and Phil and I used to horse around in the stream where it pooled beside the old hen house at the back of our garden. The creek bed was red clay; you could duck-dive underwater and grab handfuls of it, make ashtrays, paperweights, and little bowls. One time Chicklet made a figurine, with great round breasts, long nipples, and an enormous penis. He placed it, temple-like, on the back of the bird feeder.

      “What is it?” I asked.

      “A

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