A Moose in the Dark

By Heather Browne

Heather Browne's short fiction collection questions our ways of knowing. Each story's protagonist finds affinity in unexpected places: a moose in a kitchen helps old friends communicate; a skull saves a child from drowning. Browne's stories risk the intervention of the uncanny, and immersion in the elements.

 

"…seductive, slippery, and sometimes a little shifty-eyed" – Diane Schoemperlen, author of This is Not My Life

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wording Around Press
• Release date: Mar 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9781777373979

Book preview

Copyright ©Heather Browne 2024

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency. www.accesscopyright.ca,

[e-mail].

Wording Around Press

Fredericton NB

EDITING: Deanna Janovski

COVER & LAYOUT DESIGN: David Jang (1st ed, 2017 Tightrope Books), Kathy Mac (this edition, 2024, Wording Around Press)

Pencil drawing interpretation (David Jang) is derived from Fred cardboard moose head by Spanish designer Luis Rodrigalvarez from Cardboard Safari in Charlottesville, Virginia

Produced with the assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and The Writers Union of Canada.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Browne, Heather., author

A moose in the dark / Heather Browne

Short stories.

ISBN 978-1-7773739-8-6 (softcover)

I. Title

To my parents, who gave me the world

If you have a house, then there is always something to do—especially when the hours are stretching out in front of you like a long centre line on a dark night on a lonesome highway. In that time, civil dusk, that time just before it all goes black as pitch, you can make a homemade moose call and see what comes. Just as those were Heather Browne’s words, that moose call is exactly what she’s made, and so who comes to it? All those peculiar half-forgotten relatives who are just as human as we are—the quick and the dead, the old folks and the children, the long gone and now. Can Heather’s house stand up to all these visitors? If you run your hands over the wood, you will feel how well constructed it is, how she’s built it solid and sanded every beam. We don’t know if a moose will come or not, but we will. We can all live in Heather Browne’s house because that’s where we are already.

—Keith Maillard, author of Difficulty at the Beginning

Poo on the Dock

Occasionally a wind pulled against the forty-foot cruiser, moving it like a toy and releasing it once again to rest against the new dock. Dogs, tethered on the island’s rise a little distance away, were content under the shade trees. Theirs was a vigilance beyond knowing. The pup intoned the older dog’s whining and got his ear bitten for his participation. The ropes holding the boat released and then tensed. It was a nautical breathing, and the dogs clearly did not like it.

Ritchie had just finished building the elevated dock, laid the last piece of new cedar. He was talking to Lance’s father about angles and load. Barth was nodding, listening, and appraising Ritchie’s workmanship in his quiet way. Ritchie, Barth knew, could handle this kind of talk more readily than talk of Lance and his recent diagnosis. So, they stood away from the others for the time being and reworked the project in their heads.

Lance was taking care of the business of his illness: he said to the family gathered on the dock that he and Megan needed a trip away by themselves before his hospital schedule took them over. Megan would sketch in the Laurentians. Mountain light would be instructional for her career, he said. He might get his driver’s licence later on, but for this outing, Megan would drive. Already he imagined a great, full sky. He wanted to witness hang gliders articulating the air currents soundlessly. It seemed essential. He said this more to his uncle Stuart than to his own mother. Stuart had a map in hand; he was showing the most direct route to Mont Tremblant. He spoke quietly while Megan looked on. Stuart made sure she was following along. The map sometimes lifted in the wind. On the dock, Megan’s arms were laced with goose bumps. It was over twenty-five degrees, but she couldn’t get warm. Her eyes watered all the time now.

Stuart wanted things to go well for his nephew’s trip away. He wanted to make sure there were no wrong turns, bad meals, needless mistakes. Everyone knew that Lance was terribly ill. His cancer now was at a stage that required chemotherapy.

Once Megan gets you here, Stuart said, pointing at the map, take the gondola up Mont Tremblant. That’s the best location to watch hang gliders.

At the other end of the dock, Lance’s cousin Jake was in trouble. He had gone in for a swim with his eight-month-old son, a first for him as a new father. But Jake hadn’t imagined the dead weight his child would assume once they were in the water. Pushing off from the last step of the steel ladder, also newly installed, he lost sight of the family. The dock blocked the sun. Panic seized him as he and his infant son in his arms started to sink.

The baby, who was as fat as a Butterball turkey, so they all said, was naturally equipped with the diving reflex of a young pup seal. The family was not alerted. They had not seen them descend. They were not prepared for a drowning while they chatted and made preparations. Meanwhile, Jake was grasping for his son, who was slipping from his chest and into the water’s shiny cloak. The little butterball slid beneath Jake’s legs.

Shadows cast from the dock and the edge of the cliff changed the underwater world he had known as a boy; it was puzzling. He reached out, but his search was random, his vision clouded, tinged with green.

He grabbed at the murk.

He plucked up his son.

He pushed him toward heaven.

They rose together, but he knew immediately that he couldn’t make any headway. The baby’s weight was like a sinker tied to a line, where he was the line. And the line was being drawn down again. They were sinking.

The baby’s mother, Jillian, who had awakened in the boat’s cabin to some magnetism drawing her to its bow, cried out that her husband was trying to drown her son. The family, still talking of mountains or docks or food, looked towards her. She was waving. Was she crazy? Why was she wringing her hands? Why was her shirt-front wet with milk while she pointed?

Jake descended for the second time. He grabbed for a shape bouncing by his thigh, then his son’s body stuttered by his feet. He secured him: with one hand clasped to his son’s pudgy arm, they rose up through a gold-green infusion. Jake choked and spat at the water’s surface; the baby rested on his chest, his face shining. The ladder and dock were closer. The family was stunningly revealed. Their heads and shoulders floated above him, seeming to levitate above the dock. For Jake the world had turned mad, and yet the disembodiment of his father and the others was only a matter of angle and distance. Clutching his son high above his head, he shouted for his father.

Stuart dropped the map and started down the ten-foot ladder. The dock’s shadows chilled him; a dank smell filled him with dread. Jake pushed up his butterball boy. An exchange was made between the watery grave and the steel steps. No one recalled the exact details. The handing over of the boy and the lifting up was fluid. Their ascent, quick and unremarkable. And there they all were: perfectly fine on the new dock.

There were no cheers from the family. Thoroughly chastened by the mother’s shouting, their lips were like stones. Under the clear sky, their cheekbones appeared bleached out, their eyes dark. Megan looked first at Jake, then to Lance. She shivered.

On the baby’s plump face, a tear lingered and didn’t fall.

Jillian dried their son, held fast within Jake’s arms, with a thick yellow towel. She laid down a diaper on the dock, and they began their ritual: one held his fat belly while the other secured the Velcro-like tabs. The tabs ripped and nipped until the boy was perfectly bound. They patted his little nose, his chin, and ran their fingers down his chest. Lance and his parents watched this procedure holding hands. Megan stood apart, the artist, a lone witness. Jake said to his aunt Peggy, Let’s break out a beer, and someone else responded, Hear, hear. Aluminum pull tabs popped, and Jake was handed a brew, Jillian smiling now and holding her son, the air peppered with All right now, Never noticed a thing was wrong, You can hardly believe we were sitting right here, and finally Uncle Ritchie said, I think it’s time to put on some hamburgers. It was his duty now to cook, and Peggy’s place to prepare the table. The baby lay near her while she opened plastic bags of cups and blue-lined, heavy-duty paper plates, the blue of them so much more intense now, the white patio umbrella brighter than before as Peggy adjusted it against the sun, the baby near her even more dear, if that was possible.

Lance stole away. His cousin’s tragedy averted, he climbed the rise from the dock with Megan to release the two dogs, who had been barking and were pulling at their ropes and upsetting the tents erected there. They were jumping at Lance’s legs, putting him off balance. Megan was trying to make sense of it all. Her thin green dress was the wrong choice for the wind. She tried to stop her teeth from chattering in July’s heat. Until today, she had refused to take off Lance’s wool sweater. With Peggy and Ritchie’s invitation to the lake and at Lance’s behest, she had given in.

Stuart noticed his nephew’s slender arms patting the dogs. Then he watched him draw Megan to him and hold her close. His bare legs were painful to look at. The dogs were frenzied and running about, wanting human companionship, ready to topple Lance as he held to Megan. It was then Stuart said to Ritchie, who was wiping down the grill, There is poo on your dock, Ritchie.

Of course there’s not. I just built my dock. My dock is made of sweet cedar boards.

Stuart pointed at a wet patch. What’s that then? He winked at Lance’s father and mother standing quietly, their eyes on the hill, watching their son freeing the dogs tangled up in leashes and trees. On the dock was a nugget of excrement exposed in a swill of water, possibly from the water still running off Jake’s legs.

That child of yours pooed on my new dock, Ritchie said to Jake. And Jake went for the diaper bag, grabbed some paper toweling. Lance’s father and mother were non-participants in the banter. Talk seemed an effort for them. Barth leaned into his wife.

What will the lad do next? Ritchie continued in his needling of the new father. "Poo on my boat? I don’t think so. And the family got into the heart of Ritchie’s banter: cheerful, tentative quips rose up, Watch the dogs, they’ll be into it." And sure enough, the young one was sniffing about.

Poo and hamburgers coming up. Take your choice, Peggy said.

You have perfect poo, Jake said to his son, loudly and with intent.

Stuart mentioned a movie about a young emperor whose excretions were measured each day by his mentors and passed around for all to see. Lance’s mother said that she had thought like that once, too. Every detail was a miracle.

I’ll take him now. He needs a nap. Jillian carried her son into the boat’s cabin.

"See, see, what has come of this? Ritchie shouted, gesticulating. First my dock, then my boat."

Our dock, our boat, Peggy said to no one in particular. You old toughie, as if you cared. When she kissed Ritchie, he blushed like a younger person might, from his stubbly beard to his hairline. Go away, woman. I’ll burn the buns.

Smoke was already rising from the flame licking one buttered bun; the smell of burgers drawing everyone to the table except the lovers, Lance and Megan, who were drifting away, taking the dogs with them for a walk on a woodland path. We’ll be back.

Stuart waved his nephew and Megan on. There’ll be time to eat.

Lance’s father mumbled, Just kids.

No dessert if they don’t eat their meal, Lance’s mother said, pulling her shorts at the waist, tucking in her errant shirt.

Just kids, Stuart said.

Oh hell, they can have mine. I’m too fat already. Look at these shorts.

And it was a day like that: one thing breaking into another, intimacies becoming acute, time becoming a conductor, the common exchange becoming its own ally and its own thief. There were the shared stories and the things impossible to share. On balance the day came and went without any great losses. Megan and Lance left early with his parents because they needed to pick up a car for their trip to the mountains. Neither of them had had any interest in owning a car before this time.

In the weeks after their trip, Megan added colours to her favourite mountain sketches. In one, Lance was sitting opposite to her in a cable car; a glass cage surrounded them. A great fir tree was in the middle distance. With a horizontal motion of her brush, she added branches. Then she created more. She delighted in their shapes, their slope, their ease.

Too green to be real, she said to Lance. She put down her brush. What is happening to us?

Clearly, I’m turning into a tree, he said, studying her artwork. She had added white to his face and to the verdant green boughs approaching him. A slim one at that.

As Lance’s illness advanced, the points of the trees came closer and closer to him inside the gondola. I don’t get it, she said. Why us? He watched as she added canvas after canvas to their room. He watched himself from their sofa, and then from his hospital bed.

By the end of her study, the trees crowded into the gondola. They pushed and jostled Lance; their branches wove into his sweater so that wool and needle meshed. They brushed by his tidy beard that he was so proud of. Lance appeared in these paintings like a tree-hugger or someone who’d gone out for a Christmas tree and come home with all of them because they were so beautiful he didn’t want to choose between one glorious-smelling conifer and another. Of course it was ludicrous, but there he was.

Where are you? he asked.

Here, she said, patting his bed.

"In the painting! Where are you?"

On the other side.

In October, Jake paid a visit to Megan’s apartment. He had promised her at Lance’s funeral that he would come by the next time he was in Montreal.

"A fifty- or sixty-foot