Free The Retreat by David Bergen Page A

scent, a mix of leaves and sweat and soap, and overlying that, a slightly wet odour that reminded Everett of the sculptures he had created in his junior-high art class.
    It was Lewis’s job to fix the stair, and Everett asked if he could help, which really meant that he wanted to watch. In Calgary, when his father had worked Saturdays, Everett would walk over to the glass-blowing factory, sit on a crate, and watch. He liked the tools, the rubber tubing, the lapping wheel, the pastorale. His father would make him wear special glasses. He’d put them on and watch the liquid glass pulled from the furnace. The movements of his father’s hands, and the shapes and colours that suddenly appeared. He made vases, birds with long necks, butterflies, and fancy ashtrays. Sometimes, when a piece didn’t turn out, his father would set it aside, let it cool, and then hand it to Everett. “You can take it home,” he’d say.
    On this day, Lewis intended to rebuild the stairs completely. He held a pencil, eyed the square, and said that it was absolutely essential to measure the stringer at least three times so as not to waste a good piece of board. “Care must be taken.” And then he nodded in the direction of the Hall and said, “Like I was saying, it is not a pretty thing to watch men stew in their own crap. Or women. You know?” He seemed to want to say more, but then he shook his head and said, “Ach, I sound bitter.” Then he said that Norma was content at the Retreat, and if she loved dipping into those dull conversations in the Hall, who was he to complain about their mother’s happiness. “Eh?”
    Above them a V of geese was flying north.
    “Here,” Lewis said, handing Everett the hammer and some nails. “Drive in a few spikes.” The hammer was twenty-twoounces and Everett had trouble holding it. He tapped lightly at a nail and it went spinning off into the grass. He tried again and this time managed to put the nail in halfway before it bent. Lewis took the hammer back and said that he shouldn’t be timid. The hammer was a simple object really. “The less you stare at it, the more you seize and hold it, the more real it becomes. If you try too hard, you will either bend the nail or miss completely, or hit your own thumb. Sort of like life. Oh, listen to the wise man.” And with three swings, Lewis drove in a nail.
    Everett tried again and managed to put home a nail with many hits.
    “There you go,” his father said. “Feels good, doesn’t it? Sometimes too much thinking can get in the way.”
    One night, Everett woke and heard Lizzy and William talking. William was telling her about a dream, something to do with a cave and an animal inside the cave. Then Everett slept, and when he woke again the light from the moon was falling across Lizzy’s bed. He could see her hands resting on her chest, and he watched them to see if she was sleeping or not. She looked childlike, soft and innocent, though he knew she wasn’t innocent. When Lizzy and Lewis had drowned the kittens, Everett had been sad not because the kittens were dead but because his father had seen that Everett was incapable of helping. And, it was true. He might have failed. Choosing Lizzy made sense. She was efficient and she could be cruel. Lately, she had seemed to him distracted and restless, and onetime she had asked him what he thought of Raymond, the boy who delivered chickens. When she asked the question, Everett felt as if she were turning away from him to look in another direction, and he did not like this feeling.
    The cabin began to open up and reveal its shape as dawn arrived. Everett crawled out of bed and dressed and went outside, and instead of walking up to the outhouse, he went into the bush and peed. He pulled up his zipper and stood in the grey light, listening. Everything alive in the bush seemed to be moving, crawling through the leaves, flying in the air, calling and screeching. “A cacophony,” his father had said late one