Free The Island Walkers by John Bemrose Page B

maroon frame and no fenders, which meantyou got sprayed when you rode through a puddle. Andy Wilson’s bike was different altogether, with its silver handbrakes and the swept-under handlebars that reminded him of the horns of the mountain sheep in Animals of the World . Looking at the racer made him happy, like looking in the windows of Eaton’s that time his family had gone to Toronto, all the little elves working away in Santa’s shop, and the electric train chugging through the tunnels in the mountains, a happiness for looking only, you couldn’t touch.
    He drifted away from the stands and through the yard, lingering for a while to watch several Grade Six boys play conkers. A chestnut flew down and struck another chestnut, hanging on a string. There was a loud crack and a cry from the boys as the struck nut swung crazily in an arc. When it settled, they saw that a bit of its shell had come off, revealing the yellowish meat inside. “Mick’s gonna have a ten-kinger,” a boy said.
    Jamie went over to the chainlink fence that surrounded the yard and stood with his back to it, hooking his fingers in the wire and leaning out. Behind him, on the other side of the fence, an enormous elm tree rose, its great branches drooping over the yard “like a giant umbrella,” his new teacher, Miss Wayne, had said. She had showed the class the leaves of the elm, pointed like spearheads. He gazed around the milling yard, where boys ran or gathered in groups. Some were trading or flipping cards, or rough-housing, or talking in bragging, shouting voices. A few stood alone, like him, but these boys were too old, or too young, to be friends. Last year, in Grade Two, Johnny Simms had been his friend. But Johnny’s dad had been laid off at the mill, and in August the whole family had driven away, Johnny’s mother and sister in the car, and Johnny and his dad in the cab of the truck with all their furniture, and Johnny’s face had looked down at him, Jamie, from the high cab, and Jamie’s heart had gone No no no under his T-shirt because he’d heard his dad say that they, the Walkers, would probably never see the Simmses again.
    He looked up into the elm arching like a vaulted roof over a third of the yard, and remembered what Joe had said about not believingin God. When he’d said that, Jamie had sensed something leave with extraordinary speed, woosh , like the wings of the ducks that time on the river. Everything looked the same as before — the backyard, the picnic table, his daddy’s face — but something had emptied, as if his own insides had poured out. I believe in God , the voice said.
    Jamie looked around, half-expecting to see somebody. He never did, though. Whoever spoke in that voice — that voice that was so close to him, it seemed to have slipped into his own head — was gone. Gone or invisible, like the Invisible Man.
    Once, driving after supper in the country, he and his family had got lost. On both sides of the road, green water shone among trees. An old man on a horse had come by, sauntering along beside the car with a slow clop-clop. He wore a slouchy hat, bronzed like his face in the thickening light, and he drew to a halt as the car stopped and pointed back up the shadowy road to show where they should go. Sometimes, in the early morning, Jamie woke to a sound he did not understand: a faraway cooing that filled him both with sadness and a happiness that was even deeper than the sadness, like a lower note. Looking out the window, he could never see exactly where this sound was coming from — it seemed to come out of the hill and the trees and the river, and yet from none of these things. And once, looking for its source, he had seen the old man in his slouchy hat, standing under a tree across the river. He had nodded to Jamie, and Jamie had nodded back. Later he wondered if the old man had been God. Or perhaps he was an angel, and God was nearby.
    You can’t see God , the voice said. He’s shy .
    “Hey