It was 1992 when it all happened in the small town of Corvin Valley. The papers made it out to be bad, but in reality it was much worse. All you could smell was the heat, the melting, the sizzle of sweat dropping on the roads and the hiss of the bugs as they baked wherever they were. You could drive down any road and see the mashed up pieces of some carrion animal left there to rot, tiretracks and whatnot creating zigs and zags through it and away from it. Not even the birds, what might have been left still, would come down and peck at those kills. But, in truth there were no birds left to circle, no shadows overhead to blot the sun out, even if for the smallest second in time and to give just a second of relief. They all left to some other area. And those that did stay died out quickly and weren’t heard or seen from again.

*

Mary-Beth Watkins

I don’t remember much of seeing of that girl, Susanna Perkins. I remember her mother though. She was a bitch. Had been since high school. Always thinking she was better than everyone else. Well, she wasn’t, let me tell you that. Used to swear that she would get out of this shit-hole town and leave us all to die here while she was off living some dream life out there. God’s justice she’d get knocked up senior year. Wasn’t with Susanna, though. Most people don’t know this, so if anyone asks you didn’t hear it from me, but she got knocked up by Bill Jacobsen at some party. I wasn’t at the party, my sister was though. Said she saw the two of them walking up to the room and him leaving a little while later. She was still in there in the morning, passed out. They had to take her back to her house, left her sleeping on the porch for her parents to find. She was gone from school a few weeks later. Didn’t no one know where she was, but I heard that she had gone and aborted herself after she came to and realized. Had to stay in the hospital for some time. Killed the baby and almost herself, too. After that, she clammed up a bit. Still was a bitch, though. Lots of people felt sorry for her, even the ones that didn’t know what really happened. I didn’t feel for her, though. Now, here she is how many years later, staying here in Corvin Valley to die with the rest of us. Even after all that in high school, I never could stand her. She had Susanna some time after high school. The father up and left, though. Far as I can say, he made a sensible decision. You’re asking me about that little girl disappearing, though; well I don’t doubt that that girl just up and wandered off. Maybe when the heat quits it’ll be easy to track her down. Maybe then we’ll know where Susanna is. We all tried to band up together, go out and look for her. I seen her mom—that bitch—over there, crying her eyes out, saying Oh please, find her. I don’t know what happened. Doubt we ever will, but maybe we’ll find her yet. That looking for her lasted all of a few hours until the heat drove everyone indoors. That’s where most of us stay now unless we need something from the market. Then we go out. Problem is the heat’s gone and shot most of the air conditioners to hell, busted them down, and when you go to the market all you have is the smell of rotting fruit and the sound of flies buzzing all around you.

*

Arnie Fletcher

He hits me most days. Sometimes with his hands, other days with something else. A belt maybe. A ruler. A shoe even. Once it was a cereal box—kept hitting me with it while all the colored pieces were flying all over the kitchen. I had to clean those pieces up afterward. He yells. Most times I don’t know what he says. Just a lot of words that don’t really go together. He’ll come home from work and call me in and sit me down and he’s all dressed in his shirt and his tie and his nice pants and shoes and he yells and then he says something like You’re worthless, You’re nothing. Then he hits me. I try not to cry, but I always do. Mom left a year ago. I wish I could. I’m glad she’s gone, though. That way she doesn’t have to get hit anymore. Just me, for the both of us… Oh yeah, Susanna Perkins. I know her, or knew her, or whatever. She’s in my class. Has been since first grade. I always liked her, always wanted to talk to her but I never did. Always too scared. He’s right, I think, my dad that is. I am nothing.

*

Jefferson Dupree

They’s many a times I set hard down and wonder who I’s is in this world. Seems they’s no more important thing in this world, nor none greater problem than to be unsures as to who you is. I look in the skies and them stars and cards and warnings from preachers and whatnot for some direction as to that answer. Ain’t heard none from no ones yet. Don’t know if ever I will. Sometimes I’s feels like I’s living the wrong life, like I’s been meant to be doing something different. Maybe better, maybe worse. Don’t know. Just seems like it’s an awful big waste of unknown out there not to look at it and wonder at the least. Reckon that feeling ain’t nothing but regular living. Whatever life you got.

*

Lois MacDugen

I found the two of them the other day. Was out looking for that girl, but I was feeling sick and dizzy. Started to walk home when I look over in the corner there on Market and Winneg streets, there in that gutter alleyway that runs between them two streets, and I saw two shoed feet sticking up in the middle there. I thought it was that Susanna girl, so I ran over there thinking I was gonna be a hero, write about me in the paper and be on television and all, but then I seen it was two red faced bums. They was dead when I saw them and still there when I came back with the police. Can’t suppose they could survive here in the sun like it is and has been. When I think of them though, I can’t imagine that girl could fair much better.

*

J. Gregory Thompson

I was born here, you know. I moved away for a stretch. Used to be a journalist up in the city up yonder, so I know what it is you’re trying to do—get a good story, ‘bout the heat, and that girl. I tell you, though, I sure as hell am glad I don’t do it any more. Every morning I would open that paper and look at the stories I’d write and the others around mine and I would always think My God all there is is death. I remember asking my editor why it is that all we print is negative—the killings, car crashes, murders, rapes, war stories, whatnot—and he answered simply that that is the life we all lead. It’s negative, get used to it. It’s important, he said, for people to realize what it is that’s out there, what ninety seven percent of people live and if some reader is fortunate enough to be of that three percent, then maybe he’ll be more appreciative of what he’s got. I tried some time after that to think that way, but after writing more and more about the bad things out there I got tired and moved back here. I thought I could get away from it all, moving back home, but some things just seem to follow. Maybe it really is just life. All I do know is that I won’t look at any newspaper, not here, not anywhere else ever again. I don’t know if ignorance is bliss or not, but at least it lets me rest my head at night and sleep without bad dreams.

*

The heat seemed a biblical plague to the people in the valley, a curse against them from some spiteful and vengeful spirit god. It lasted two months, coming with the disappearance of that girl. Reserves dried and water had to be carried in from other towns and cities and areas. As the heat continued, some members of the town fled. Those who did stay would look out the window at the burning ground to the outer dust regions of the earth and watch the spirit heat vapors rising upward from the land only to get sucked back into the sky, and they would question their own actions and pasts and memories, searching for some reason to their affliction, but never would they come to an answer, and so they began to live life again anew, in a belief they were continuing on their existence in purgatory or worse yet and they would not care how they lived, or loved, or hated. And then the heat fled from the town and things were brought back to normal again.

*

Margot Schotts

I sat on the edge of my bed that night. It was so hot, just the beginning of the heat spell. I don’t know how many hours passed. I was holding my pillow to my chest and I was rocking back and forth. In my head were songs and pictures and voices that were playing in my mind like a movie, all different movies playing together and I couldn’t really tell what was what from the other for the most part. I love you, he says. I remember I could hear that, over and over. I still hear it most nights. All lies though. Lies that echo around me in the room, then and still now. The lights were off that night but I could still see the room—I knew it in the dark. Our wedding bed. Surrounding me were the pictures of us. There weren’t any tears left, but I still tried to cry them out. All that came out was noise, though. And in the silver moonlight that’s coming in through the blinds—all shut tight except for the one little edge on the right—through the moon’s light I could see the reflection shining back, coming off the gun that was laying on the bed next to me. I was waiting for him to come home, but he didn’t. Still hasn’t. And I don’t think he will be. But I’m still waiting.

*

Titus Bayman

Some years ago, when I was twelve or thirteen, I visited the city with my mother. Don’t remember why we were there, maybe shopping or something. But as we walked out of one of the stores, it was night mind you, we walked past this building and there must have been two dozen people out front sleeping on the streets there, some smoking, others drinking, talking, laughing, staring. My mother walked quicker than normal then and held me close. I remember looking at this one woman, her hair all stringy and wet and dirty and her clothes all rags and she was crying. But not like regular crying, but she was rocking herself side to side and screaming crying, like the end of the world was upon her, and I remember I stopped and watched her. My mother tried to hurry me along, but I just couldn’t move away. I wanted to help her, but I couldn’t. Finally, she looked up at me and for a second, just a second, she stopped and smiled at me and then she looked the other way. I noticed then that she had a tattoo on the side of her neck, in big black blocks 11:26. I walked off and through the years forgot that trip, but I never forgot her. I would make up stories in my mind of how she got to be like that, of where she came from, where she went. Some of the stories were happier than others, some were sad, but still, every day at 11:26 I think of her and I smile a bit and wish her well. I only tell you this because it’s 11:28 right now.

*

Amos Burnett

Here’s a funny story for you. Happened some time back now. Little Jeremy Daniels is sitting there in the dentist chair, his mouth open and whatnot as the dentist does his poking and prodding and such in there with his mirrors and picks and what have you. The boy had to be no more than six, maybe seven now, mind you. And the dentist—guess he finds something in there—takes out his tools from the boy’s mouth and starts poking around with his fingers, grabbing on to teeth and moving them, or whatever a dentist does. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you? Anyway, as was told me later by Jenny Handler, the nurse, my neighbor—such a good young lady—the boy’s there tearing up, bout to start crying, making all kinds of little whimpers and moans and what have you, and all the while the dentist’s fingers are stuck inside this boy’s mouth. Well, I guess the dentist hits something right because that boy slams his mouth like a beartrap right down on the dentist fingers. Guess there was blood and screams throughout the room. You see that dentist walking through town today, you take a good glance at that left hand of his and see him missing two of them fingers at the nub. Bit them clean off, that boy did. It’s a true story. You can go ask Jenny if you like. She’ll tell you.

*

Abigail Garner

I don’t know what happened to Susanna. I seen her one night and the next she’s gone. She would have told me if she was gonna leave; I’ve known her for eight years, since kindergarten. We told everything to each other. Her mom’s been causing a mess since she’s been gone though. Always out screaming for someone to go help her. I went out on that first look, but I didn’t stay much time out there. Too hot, almost passed out and had to be brought in and sat down and they poured water over my face and arms. I do hope she comes back, or they find her. She owes me twelve dollars she borrowed from me the other day.

*

Silas Watkins

My mother always told me to watch after my younger brother Elias. Said, Silas, you are your brother’s keeper, and then she’d send me off to read the bible as she tended to him. He never was much smart, though. Might could have been if he’d stayed in school. I’m proud to say I finished high school. Elias though dropped right out after our mother died. Cancer got her and, truth be told, I’m happy she went at the end with how she was looking. I know her passing was hard on him. It was hard on me, I’ll tell you that. Since it was just us two left, since our father died down in the mines ten years back, we had the choice to either go into the coal mines or go out and join in on the war. We decided the latter suited us better. Gave us sunshine we would say. So we went off to the desert over there. After two years each we were let to come back home. I did my best over there, watching him and such, but I’ll always regret that last bout there. We were days from leaving for home when Elias goes off and gets himself shot. Wanders off to the goddamn sands where we were all told not to go. Told you he was never much smart. Or maybe he was just braver than I was since I was biding the rest of my time out waiting to come back here. I’d rather think he was dumb rather than thinking I was scared, but never you mind that such. The doctors said he’d make a right recovery. That’s what they told me, at least. Wasn’t ‘til we were on our way back home, walking that airport that I noticed his bad limp and saw the blood running out from his trousers in stains and I ask him bout it. He said he had to go and change the bandages. On the plane, he looks over and, smiling, says to me, says Silas, I’m trying to figure life out now, how it’s gonna be without. Can’t tell how I’ll find a girl now. I didn’t understand then, not ‘til I looked down at his pants again and saw the blood stain spreading out more in his lap and down his legs. He tried to cover it up with a shirt he had with him. And I looked back at him and saw him cry and he leaned over and hugged me and cried and cried into my shoulder and I knew then. When we got back, we both got to working in the mines, just like our father. We would go out at night to Roy’s and get a beer or two. That’s where he met Jean. Wasn’t long, though, ‘til he came to me worried bout how to tell her, wondering if she would leave him. Said he was happy with her, as happy as can be he says. But how would she love someone like him who couldn’t really love her back really. I told him to tell her, that she’d understand it all, but I guess I wasn’t that surprised when I come out the next morning, ready for work, and see him slumped over in the chair, his feet sitting in the dark blood pools coming from his arms. He wrote me a note. I still have it. I read it lots of the time when I’m feeling lonely. It says, Sorry Silas. Pray for me. I could never live deformed. Don’t think anyone could love me back. I’m sorry. I wish I could tell him how wrong he was, though.

*

R.F. Atkins

George Deakins’ wife died some years back. That’s when he shut off from the world. He would have the groceries delivered to him, leave the money in an envelope under the mat, stayed all shut up in that house, just him and that dog of his, Regina was her name. Lots of people made up stories about him, some said that he tried magic to bring his wife from the dead, others said he was holding her bones in that house with him and would sleep next to them every night like she was still there. The most hushed story told that I heard though was about him and that dog, Regina. Kids mostly would tell it, like they were breaking the rules for telling it, but they said that he had gone crazy and that he believed that dog to be his wife. That he would eat with it, talk to it like it was still her, even lay with it, if you catch my meaning. Don’t know what the truth was, though. Probably all made up, but still, people like to talk and someone like George let people talk a lot. The only real thing I know for sure is that he died a few months back and that no one knew bout it until the grocers didn’t get their money for a week or two and they went in. The delivery boy told me that when he walked in the house all he could smell was a burning smell, like hair on fire is what he told me, and that he found George in his bed, died of a heart attack or some such thing, and laying next to him was that dog, Regina, dead only a couple of hours. Oh, you were asking bout that Susanna girl, weren’t ye? I have not the faintest clue where she got off to. Sorry I can’t help more.

*

Eli Tierney

Her ma was a beauty queen down in Austen, I believe. I heard the stories of her though, Sarah I mean, that’s the girl. I know her from school. She’s always been quiet, kept to herself. Always seemed she was better than the rest of us. She’s been gone from class now a few weeks. I just found out yesterday from my ma that she’s in the hospital over in the city there. Seems her ma wanted her, Sarah I mean, to be in contests and such as she herself was back in Austen, or wherever it was. When she was in kindergarten with me, Sarah I mean, she was always a little rolly liken the rest of us. Not fat or none, just more skin. This was twelve years gone back now. Anyways, when she got some older, maybe three, four years, she started getting to really skinny. Her eyes looked as they were popping from her face and her skin seemed see-through. Was scary now I give it some thought. At the time, though, no one seemed to notice much, as she was always away from us. And she was always sick, not showing to class for some stretches at a time. I never liked her all that much. Now I feel bad for not. But I heard the stories some time after that about how her ma would lock her in her room and keep food from her. No one knew ‘til lately how bad, but I hear sometimes she would go a week on a slice of bread and a couple cups of water. Her ma says now that Sarah wanted it, that she wanted to be like her ma and be a beauty queen. You ask me, though, I say it was her ma wanted it. Can’t imagine someone wanting to not to eat. I tried it for a day once and felt like I was dying. Anyhow, couple weeks back, she stopped coming to class. I found out later, that would be two days past, that she, Sarah that is, tried to kill herself by drinking too much water; she drank gallons and gallons and they found her in her tub with water and throw up all around her….Don’t mean to laugh or smile none, but seems awfully funny-like with all the other ways she coulda gone and done it, like the Watkins boy, that’s Silas’s brother, who did it with his wrists not so long ago. My ma told me about him the other day. Always knew Silas, he’s our neighbor. He’s a good guy; I like to talk to him. Never knew his brother much, though. But anyway, back to Sarah—seemed she was trying to show her ma something. Didn’t work though, or maybe it did. She’s in a coma now, that’s Sarah I mean. I guess she got her wish since she seems dead to the rest of us, even when she still is breathing. At least she’s getting fed through them tubes now, I suppose.

*

Grant Easley

I been a cook down at Sue’s for the last thirty seven years. Don’t necessarily make me happy, but life could be worse. There’s a group of them come in here every morning bout the same time. Always order the same, coffees and toast around. On some days, some of them prefer a muffin to the toast, but the coffee is still the same. I seen them age deeper and darker every morning. Old men. Strange to watch the movement of life to death in their faces. They don’t smile as much as they once did. I allow the current state of things is a reason for that. Last year one of them died and I think that they all realize now that it ain’t that far off for them, too. Even when they see the lines stretching across their faces in the mirror, it takes more than a dead friend to remind them that their time is almost due. I set just a few years younger than them and it makes me consider things in a different light, also. They talk a deal about town news. Most of the talk these days is on that girl, Susanna, or the heat. Most seem to be making a darker deal of the weather than I allow. Seems to me it’s just the state of things now. Like living and dying, there’s only two ways it can be, good or bad. I try to see the between, as tough as that may be. The clouds’ll come and with them the rain and then, when that happens, everyone but me will be feeling an idiot over all their worrying and carrying on. The girl though, that’s a sad one. I hope she just left town on her own, off living somewheres out there. I surely do hope for that. When I do worry, I look to them old fellers over there, and see that though they may be afearing death and whatnot, they don’t show it. They may smile less, but they carry on like none of this is happening, like it’s just another day. Only difference is, they been ordering juice now instead of coffee. Too hot I suppose.

*

Linda Nolan

He came to me and said he had a problem and he was crying and so I helped him, I mean what was I supposed to do? It’s a mother’s duty to help her son when he has a problem, but I wasn’t expecting it when I came into his room. There she was, that girl, laying on the carpet, red all around her head. She slipped, he told me, slipped and hit her head and he didn’t know what to do, so he waited ‘til I was home from work and then he told me. I didn’t want to ask him what they were doing, what she was doing that she could slip from and hit her head. I thank God everyday that his father is dead and didn’t have to deal with none of this. I’d never seen the girl before, but she looked younger than Steven. I asked him and he told me she was two years younger, that he had known her since grade school, but he didn’t say no more and I didn’t want to hear no more than that. All’s I could think of as I bent down and felt her forearm, cold and sticky, my hands were shaking and I couldn’t breathe all that good, all’s I thought was how I couldn’t lose Steven, not after losing his father a year ago. I could imagine how he would be locked away, how I would sit here alone every night and think about him wherever he was and how when I would go to the store all the women and men would look at me and say there she is, how could she raise a killer like that and all the other muck people talk behind your back and I thought of growing old without anyone there, how I would never be a grandmother and I would die that way, I thought of all that when he told me it was an accident and I thought that it must have been because my Steven was too good a boy to do nothing bad like that and so I told him to get a trashbag and come back and he did and we rolled her over and that was the first time I saw her face and I feel bad now that I thought this then as I held her dead body, only twelve or thirteen years old or so, but I did, that she would have been a beautiful daughter-in-law and I was more sad of that than I was of anything else then, and we bent her small body, which was hard since her body was all stiff and such by then, and we forced that little thing into that bag and he went out and got another bag and he helped me bring the bags with her in them to the garage and put it into the backseat of the car and we set off in no direction but the woods, and after some time driving I pulled over and he ran out with the shovel he brought and after some time he came back and said that he dug it deep enough and the both of us carried that bag out there and dropped it into the ditch he had made and we both covered it up best we could and threw some rocks on top for good measure and neither of us said nothing as we drove back and still we didn’t say a thing as we went in and cleaned the bloody carpet as best we could and I went to bed and all I could think before I fell asleep was how the rains would wash that body up, but then a miracle came with the heat and no one went out for the heat. It was hard hearing everyone asking around about the girl and I felt bad for the mother, but what hurts me still the most is how most nights I walk by Steven’s room, the door shut tight away, and hear him crying. And most times when I hear him, I slink down to the floor where I am and I weep with him, a door separating us.

*

Finally, the heat storm passed. And when it did, when the skies opened up and rain drops were felt and seen and heard, the town seemed to forget what had happened during those uncounted months, and Susanna became just another memory of what the plague had brought. She became merely another piece of dust that the rain swept away.

*

Susanna Perkins

I was playing with a model aeroplane, rearranging my Matchbox car collection or trying to figure out how to recharge the batteries for my remote control car, I can’t quite remember exactly what I was doing when my father raised his head from a large weekend paper and announced “We’re buying a canoe.”

“What’s a canoe?” I asked.

“It’s a small boat, powered with paddles,” he said.

“Like a kayak?”

“Yes, like a kayak, but you can fit two people in a canoe.”

“But I thought you could fit two people in a kayak.”

“No, usually a kayak is for one person only and your legs are covered, while a canoe is for two people and it’s open.”

“Canoe’s a strange word.”

“Hmm, it’s a French word.”

“How do you spell it?”

“C-A-N-O-E”

My dad knows so many things.

*

“We’ll have to buy roof racks so we can transport it,” he said.

“Transport it where?”

“Well, first we need to buy it and bring it back home, and then we’ll need to transport it to the water.”

“What water?”

“We can take it to Lake Conjola.” We had a family holiday at Lake Conjola every year and it was the BEST. For anywhere between two and four weeks we could bodyboard, bike ride, play bingo, go fishing and prawning and now, go canoeing.

“And maybe we can take it on weekends to The Lakes.”

*

During the year when it was hot and we were too far from the beach, we used to swim at Thirlmere Lakes. There were four connected freshwater lakes. They were surrounded by reeds and set in bushland, rich in native flora and fauna including beautiful flowers that snapped shut when you touched them and long grey goannas. The first lake was closed for public use, the second was dedicated to those using motorboats pulling along water skiers. In actual fact it was way too small for skiers so it wasn’t too popular for that in the end. The third lake was left for swimmers and had a long wooden wharf that was perfect for running along and jumping into the water. It also had a ladder, with which you could climb back out of the water and then run and jump again over and over. The fourth lake I very seldom saw as it was past a locked gate that we inevitably named ‘The Locked Gate’. It was privately leased and had a caravan park on it that was rumoured to be a nudist camp.

*

When my father told me we may be taking the canoe to The Lakes I immediately was worried about having to take the canoe into the motorboat lake, over all the waves of the skiers. I hated to think what would happen if we got in their way and how mad they’d be. Perhaps one of those big noisy boats would come crashing into us.

“I think we can take it into the swimming lake.”

“But what about the rangers? Isn’t there a sign that says no boats allowed?”

“No, I think its okay, you can take small unmotorised boats there.”

*

I had to reinstate my pre-pubescent social standing and rationalise the fact that we were not a motorboat family. Scot Casey, my friend around the corner, belonged to a motorboat family, but his dad was a builder and my dad worked in an office. It was only fitting that they had a huge V8 powerboat with water skies and an aquaplane, while we had a little paddle-powered French-named canoe. Motorboats scared me a bit, so I was happy enough that we were a canoe family.

*

“We’re gettin’ a canoe,” I said, the next day at school.

“It’s a French word and it’s spelled C-A-N-O-E. You can fit two people in a canoe but only one in a kayak and that’s why we’re gettin’ a canoe instead.” Everyone was clearly overawed by my wordly intelligence and jealous of my family’s new venture. I suddenly looked around the sad faces of all my friends and thought, how can they not have a canoe?

*

We fit new roof-racks to our little old white car a few weeks later and hopped in for a fifty minute ride to finally pick it up.

“How’d you know where to get a canoe, dad?”

“I found it in the Trading Post. It’s made of fibreglass.”

“What’s fibreglass?”

He explained that it was a lightweight material that was stronger than plastic. Fibreglass was a new hi-tech material for me.

“How could you get fibreglass shaped like a canoe?”

“I don’t know,” replied my father

When I was a child fibreglass canoes were cool and this had been an extravagant and complicated purchase that I needed to adjust to. I would be a canoe owner now. Our family had been rocketed to a new level of hi-tech-ness and I could hardly recognise us anymore. I couldn’t believe we had once been a family without a canoe.

*

But a stream of new questions accompanied the newly acquired canoe. What do canoe owners look like? What do they do? It didn’t look so hi-tech when we picked it up. It was a new boat and we had to complete it by installing buoyancy foam inside each end. We also bought two paddles and a couple of life jackets.

“What’s buoyancy?”

“When something’s buoyant it floats in the water. The buoyancy material will help the canoe float if it gets too much water in it.”

“It’s a strange word.”

“Hmm, buoyancy is a French word too.”

“How do you spell it?”

*

We went down to The Lakes and tested it out for the first time. There were two seats, one at each end but it was large, so large we could nearly fit the whole family in it, though it looked like it might start taking water. Instead we decided to only put three or four of us in at the most, which included one or two kids who went in the middle, side by side. It turned out that, unlike a car, the person at the back steered and the person at the front helped power us forward. We all wanted to steer and so each of us shuffled around the small boat to take our turn. I also learned that you could steer by paddling on the opposite side of the direction you wanted to head or just by dragging your paddle on the same side. These French were so different from us I thought, so smart.

*

Not many trips to the lake had passed before me and my brother were allowed to take the canoe around by ourselves. We explored the other side, mooring our canoe for minutes at a time, admiring the swimming side where all of the people were. It looked so different from this side. We’d hike around a bit, then return for fear that our canoe might be rushed out into the middle of the lake by storms or what have you, but it was always right were we left it. We explored the edges covered in lilies and watched silently as small fish and sometimes little turtles came to the surface. The water was black so you could only see about a metre down. We also explored the reeds in great detail, forging paths through them with the sharp tip of our fibreglass canoe to find bird nests, spider webs and more reeds. It got really hard to paddle the canoe when the reeds were thick though so mostly we had to paddle backwards towards the lake to get out.

*

Sometimes the wind picked up and we had to paddle against it towards the wharf and I’d be worried that we didn’t have enough strength to get back, but my older brother would always have enough muscle power to get us safely back. At other times it was so still that you could hear the echo of the paddle on the aluminium rim as you dropped it to admire the calm of the middle of the lake. Sometimes we’d even jump off it for a swim, out in the middle, and you had to know how to get back in without tipping it over. It was best to do this from the front or the rear as opposed to the middle, otherwise someone would need to lean in the opposite direction. We would sit on the tip of the canoe instead of the seat to make it more exciting while we paddled. Friends would be towed as a few people sat inside and it wasn’t long before we’d exhausted every possibility of what you could possibly do with a canoe in a lake. That was until we had a fantastic new idea.

*

I can’t remember who thought of the idea first, if it was either me or my brother but we started to talk about it whenever we thought about the canoe. Was it possible?

We asked our dad.

“Are all the lakes joined?”

“Yes, I think they are, and they are all fed by the same river system.”

“So does that mean that water goes all the way from the swimmin’ lake to the motorboat lake?”

“Yes it does.”

“Do you think we can paddle all the way from one to the other?”

“There are too many reeds.”

“I know, but if there was a path through the reeds, could we?”

“I don’t see why not.”

It was settled then. We had a new challenge.

*

The next time we were at the lake we waited for a time when the family had finished with the canoe for the day and set off to check out what secrets lay between the lakes. I don’t think our parents really thought that we’d give it a proper go, seeing that the distance was too great, obviously nobody had ever attempted such a difficult challenge, we were bravely going where no-one had dared to go before. Well, perhaps the aborigines had dared but we were definitely the first ones since they’d been hunting birds here.

When we got there we were both a little scared of what we’d find behind the reeds, but it just seemed silly to go back now.

“Let’s go!” said my brother and so we prepared our run-up. We gained speed and ploughed straight into the reeds. I had adrenaline pumping through my little veins. Pretty soon, after about  five metres it got really hard to paddle because there were just too many and they were too thick. We had just about come to a stop when we started using the reeds themselves to pull us inwards and before long we disbanded the paddles altogether, clunking the canoe floor. We pulled as hard as we could until finally the resistance was too great and we came to a halt. We looked back and saw that we were now completely entrapped within the reeds, like some sort of natural prison. Only the blue sky was above us and nothing but those green-grey reeds all around us. You could hear nothing but the rustle of reed on reed. The sound was intoxicating. It was obvious. They were just too thick to paddle through. For a second we stopped to think about what to do. I took one of the paddles and found that I could touch the bottom with it, about half a metre below us. We used the paddles to push off the ground and make another metre or so forward. It was then so shallow that I could nearly touch the bottom with my hand. It was too shallow for a canoe now. My brother suggested that if I was a little too weak and scared, maybe we should turn back. I thought this was very thoughtful of him but I would show him that I was brave and strong enough to go on and so I jumped out and started to pull the canoe through the reeds. It was too heavy with him in it so he got out and the canoe suddenly felt really light. As we both pushed it the water became shallower and shallower until finally there was hardly any water at all and we were trudging though the reeds with only ankle deep water. The reeds thinned out a little and it became easier still. Suddenly, our spirits soared as we entered a small clearing in the reeds. We reefed the canoe into the open and smiled. We’d reached the halfway point and we were going to make it.

I never would’ve believed it if anybody had told me… A secret place in the middle of the two lakes. And we had discovered it. I would stare for ages from the dirt access road, which circled the lake, and remember this day. I’d try my hardest to sneak a peek at this place, but unbeknownst to me I’d never see it again. Then something amazing happened.

*

I turned in delight to my brother, but he wasn’t sharing my excitement. Something had caught his attention and he was standing and gazing. I followed his gaze and turned nearly 280 degrees before I understood his fixated attention. There was a medium-sized tree stump, sticking out of the swampy ground. Better than that, I followed the stump upwards and it became a full-grown wattle tree. It had long died and was without leaves, but what a magnificent sight! We discussed why we hadn’t seen this tree before from the road and neither of us could explain it. It was magic to us. Of course, I started to climb it and as you know wattle trees at the best of times are very brittle, but I was an experienced tree climber and I managed to get halfway before my brother started too. I climbed about 12 feet in height while my brother was close behind, at about 8 feet. The branches started to thin out and brake above me, so I stopped and had a look around.

*

The view was spectacular. Imagine a flat valley of nothing but long reeds, rimmed with gentle, rolling hills of untouched, pristine Australian bush. That’s what we saw. We could hear the motorboats and we could hear children’s squeals as they jumped off the jetty. Time stopped still. There was another sound too that was much closer and less reverberant. It was like a child singing. I got shivers down my back and listened closer. It sounded primal, like something from thousands of years ago. I imagined the aborigines who used to call this place home. Imagine a young child who’d run away from his community and was exploring the bush alone. He had skills far beyond what my brother and I possessed for exploring and surviving out here. For starters, we’d go home to sleep in our soft beds at night and we only knew of a few things you could eat. Imagine the child coming closer as his song grew. He was singing his way through the bush, following imaginary lines, like a map in his mind. I saw the reeds rustle and was hypnotised as the small child entered the clearing below us, carrying what appeared to be his father’s large spear. He was around the same age as me and moved quickly and he strode over the muddy ground. I couldn’t hear his footsteps at all, just his song. He didn’t notice us, or our canoe. It was as if we didn’t exist to him. Soon he trotted off out of sight again and his song died away.

“What are you doin’?” asked my brother, and just then the branch underneath my right foot gave way, sprinkling him with small pieces of bark as it hit the ground. We scurried down the tree and took up the canoe once again. We headed onto the next stage, breaking through to the other side and into the motorboat lake. Everything worked in exactly the opposite way and we popped out on the other side of the reeds, right as a speedboat was careening towards us, trailing a water skier. The wanderlust of our explorations had been ripped away from under our feet as we remembered again that we were not a motorboat family. We were a canoe family.

We were tossed around by the waves of the boats and the skiers and we had to precariously stick to the outer limits of the lake for fear of being capsized. This lake was treacherous in a canoe. We had to leave.

*

A funny thing happened on the way back. We returned through the reeds to the swimming lake towards our mother and father, where they were waiting for us with our sister in the car. We followed what we thought was the same route through the same grey-green reeds but we missed the clearing in the middle of the lakes altogether. I still don’t know how we missed it that second time and I was never able to find it again. To this day, I’ve never been back to that secret place. I guess that makes it all the more special.

And it turns out that neither canoe, nor buoyancy, are French words.

It was like being underwater, the way that he woke up. Sounds echoed too-loud, and distended round his ears. His vision all gummed-up and hazy.

He took a moment.

Took several.

A doorway was squared firmly above him. A doorway, or just the overhang of one of the monoliths he adored around here. Mothering stones, sanctums, sweet and solid bedding haunts. Cold concrete floors. Good for the spine.

A few more moments and he could feel the shadows stretching back, time-lapsing into sunrise. Early-morning masts were moving. The first of the boats were heading out to taste the open sea, to trawl around the islands and beyond. The port would be full of fish, sated like a fine-living whale, come three, four hours time.

He sat up, though it took a minute, and wiped his hands on his inside shirt, the cleanest, before he rubbed his eyes. Not much clearer, but he could tell that the woman walking towards the metro station across the road was Rosa. That was a name he’d given her, like he’d scribble it on the back of a print to sell to someone later. She’d been leaving work over on the Rue de _____ when he first saw her, and he’d named her then, as he watched her walk down that street past all those ‘exotic’ clubs, places where men with underloved members and money to burn could go to get their fix. He’d seen her leaving and he’d thought he’d try and save some money just to see her dance – he thought hers was a dancing club – but it hadn’t quite happened yet because his latest paintings hadn’t quite sold.

Every morning she was here now, a quiet cockerel crowing, like a muted wooden cuckoo chiming for the hour of four. Half a year, of her life and his. He didn’t take a break and neither did she. She was getting older, though, getting around to looking older. A few years and she’d be like the other hags that hung outside the club doors, rotten meat to tempt the unzipped flies. She’d be ugly as the rest of it.

And then Rosa was into the subway and his day was going uphill or downhill from here, though it hadn’t been decided which. He thought the sky was clear, so he’d look up towards the church today, way up on the hill, and paint its silhouette, deep indigo on white, then pinken it, then lay white wax on places he wanted to keep clean and wash sky-blue ink across whatever’s left.

If he worked quickly, he could make Marseilles vanish three, five, eight times today and it would still be here in the morning. It would be gummed-up and hazy and here.

*

Bits of fish blood were running in the hosed-out water towards the small bollard where he always sat to paint. That wasn’t good for business. Tourists would avoid stepping in things like that, things that scuffed the holiday, stained the postcard picture prints. Maybe Scousers, like he’d been once, wouldn’t mind, but then maybe they’d gone soft in the past thirty years.

He’d sold one of his older charcoal things for twelve euro earlier, but he thought that he was done for the day now. That wouldn’t get him so much as a sniff at the doors over on Rue de _____.

It’d barely get him fed.

There were women handing out razors walking about the dock-front, wandering the streets, but he forgot he had a beard until they were gone because he wasn’t thinking about the razors.

*

In the afternoon he sold all four paintings. He charged twenty euro for the first two, then twenty-five, then thirty, and he dipped his hands in the water and squinted at them, dried them on his shirt, squinted again to make sure they were clean, then rubbed at his eyes.

*

He bought a kebab from a place that agreed to serve him if he didn’t sit down. He’d said Can I just stand here then? and the man had taken his money and said something about his mother, not getting the joke. The meat tasted good from there, though, so he’d try to go back, if he could remember where it was.

He walked up the hill to the station so he could see all of the place, and all of the place looked how they filmed soft-focus in old porn, with petroleum jelly on the lens. He didn’t know if they still did that anymore. Maybe some studios did, trying to be more authentic. Those greased-over actresses would be like the old dogs on the Rue de _____ now. All the old dogs except Rosa.

The greased-over men would be like him.

It was a long walk back down to the port for a night when he’d eaten as heavy as that, but if he stayed here then he’d miss his cuckoo clock, his wake-up call. He tucked some spare bits of salad into the napkin and packed it in his pocket and put the polystyrene case in a clear plastic bin-bag. He knew someone who stole one of those to sleep in once. Said it was warm, but that he woke up with his clothes damp on the surface from the condensation that caught up inside.

*

Rosa! he called and wasn’t sure at first if he’d actually said it, or even if it was her. It wasn’t too light and his eyes were gummed over again. He rubbed at them and remembered that he hadn’t wiped his hands. He did so and then rubbed his eyes again. Noticed the crusted lashes that came away on his thumbs.

The woman turned to look and then turned back.

Rosa! he said once more, but she must have thought he was having a nightmare or something and she didn’t turn around again.

He got up and wanted to follow but didn’t.

*

His paintings were the same as yesterday’s, and it was rare that that happened, but he couldn’t think straight. Maybe the kebab hadn’t agreed with his stomach even though it had very much agreed with his tongue.

He didn’t pinken the pictures today, though, and he didn’t wash them in sky-blue.

He sold one painting for thirty euro and thought that he might be having a lucky day and if he’d ever been a gambler he knew that he would be one now.

*

The man looked at him, at the box of paints and the two sheets of stretched canvas under his arm. Admission was fifteen euro, but he gave the man twenty and was let in. One of the old dogs seemed to be eyeing him up as she stood outside smoking and he almost wished the gumminess would thicken further, faster, settle firm like his concrete bed.

There were small booths inside, like they used to have in telephone exchanges, with curtains pulled across, or like changing rooms in clothes shops. A pair of ankles and stiletto heels stuck out of one, the curtain of another shook. Everything, especially the lights, looked greased-over, looked like there was jelly on his lens.

There was a pole on a platform at the end of the room and there was a woman moving around it. She had one leg raised and bent at the knee, and she lifted it higher, until her foot was by her head.

He almost called her name again, but didn’t, and just sat down to paint. She had sky-blue where he gave her sky-blue, her eyes, her hair. She had pink where she had pink. He looked at the paper and he looked at her, and he really focused on her and even with her looking all greased-over, maybe because of that, she looked authentic. Those old movies were like her. She wasn’t like them. Those old blue movies and her sky-blue hair.

Rosa!

He didn’t call out, but he wanted to. He moved right to the edge of the stage and wanted to call out and laid some money down, so she’d reach over to take it up. Her fingers lifted it as though it were clay from which to sculpt the world anew; like it just turned liquid in her hands, fed into her skin. She pulled it up across herself, smiling. She pulled it up across herself, waved it at him – the price of the prize – let him savour, kept on smiling. Didn’t think of how it was that she’d be young and here forever when he finally went blind.

It was his habit, strictly observed, to take 45 minutes for his lunch in the park on the other side of the road from the office. There was a cafe within a green pagoda at the centre of the park; if the weather was fine, he sat at one of the round tables outside. He drank his coffee, ate his sandwiches and cakes, and watched the afternoon strollers. When he was finished, he went back to work.

The job was not important – he disliked it – but it paid relatively well. He would have struggled to explain its details and responsibilities to anyone who thought to ask, but few people did. His wife was not particularly interested, his daughter less so, but they both respected the hard work he put in to help support them. Often he was so tired when he got home that he sat through dinner in silence and fell asleep on the sofa watching the news. He was reasonably content.

One afternoon, a day bright enough to banish all shadow from the park, he took his usual seat outside the green pagoda and placed his usual order. When the food was delivered to his table, a soup, coffee, and cream cake, he ate and watched pensively the young office workers lounging on the grass, the children from the nearby primary school playing football, the burgundy disc of a frisbee passed back and forth between two groups of students.

While he waited for the bill, a young man and a young woman sat down at the table next to him. The young man studied him, but he pretended not to notice. A moment passed. The young man said:

“Afternoon.”

“Hello,” he said.

The young man said, “How do you feel?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You don’t look well. You look ill.”

The young woman was watching him too. She nodded and smiled, gently encouraging.

He could hear children shouting on the other side of the park, a swarm of compact bodies massing around an unpredictable sphere.

The young woman said, “We can help you get home.”

“There’s no need.” Then, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, I feel fine. Absolutely fine.”

“You’re sure?”

The young man smirked, and took from his jacket pocket an open packet of cigarettes. He lit one and passed it to his partner – girlfriend, wife.

“Stake your life on it? Very bold…”

He called for the bill, paid, and stood up to leave.

“Careful,” the young man said. He blew a tube of smoke into his cupped hand.

*

Back in the office, after an hour or so, he began to feel bilious and sick.

It was two o’clock.

He went to the communal toilets, locked himself into a cubicle, and experienced the most furious, implacable bowel movement of his life. It scorched from him, acres of a black, fiery paste. When he was finished, he wheeled around and barked some vomit into the bowl. There were flecks of blood on the upper reaches of the porcelain.

He washed his face, and on borrowed legs walked back to his desk. In moments, he was rushing back to the cubicle, still swamp-rank with his leftover smell. Another monstrous evacuation, guts heaving into the bowl, clenching and unclenching like an agitated fist. While he was washing his hands it came on again, but this time there was nothing left in him to expel.

He spoke to his supervisor and was sent home. He drove, twitching on the seat, nervous in case his stomach launched a final rebellion while he was equidistant to the toilets at home and back at work.

The house was empty when he got home. It was possibly the first time since he had gathered a family to him that he had been home alone, and the thought was oddly exhilarating. He drank a pint of water and went to bed, casting off his sweat-soaked clothes. He fell asleep and dreamt fitfully of gigantic machines that operated through the administration of thousands of human beings, crawling over their surfaces like pink ants; little fleshy cogs in a vast, unflagging mechanism.

He heard first his daughter then his wife, back from school and work. His daughter was oblivious, but his wife must have noticed his jacket in the hall. He woke again to find her sitting on the edge of the bed, stroking his hair. She asked him if he was ill, and he mumbled a reply.

When he woke up again it was dark outside. There was a cup of tea on the table by his bedside. It had gone cold, but he drank it.

*

Intending to go to work the next day, he got as far as putting on his tie when his wife intervened. Sweat had already darkened his shirt; his face was thick with it. His stomach was on the rampage under his belt, and he had shuttled into the toilet five times already that morning.

“Back to bed,” she said. “I don’t know what you think you’re playing at.”

He assented at once, glad that someone had made the decision. His wife phoned the office for him, and by eight o’clock he was back asleep, the dreams equally fitful and catastrophic as they had been the afternoon before. It was as if he were dreaming of the cataclysms of the distant future, or all the hell and violence of the distant past.

*

He stayed off work for the rest of the week. By Friday, his wife could no longer disguise her alarm.

He could keep nothing down, and had trouble getting anything in. Spoonfuls of soup were sour in his mouth, and he had to spit them back into the bowl. He choked on more generous fare. He kept secret from his wife the strange protrusion he could feel in the centre of his gut, an oval of hard, obdurate matter, like a thickened column of muscle. Taking it in both hands, he could move the growth, or the swelling, whatever it was, first from one side then to the other before it met any internal resistance.

A doctor’s appointment was made. In the days beforehand he felt that he was putting on weight rather than losing it. Smothered in a greasy sweat, his skin puffed up and swelled to swallow his features. His wrists vanished under a spongy covering of fat. The protrusion inside him began to deliquesce, and was absorbed back into his swollen trunk. His dreams, in the broken moments of his sleep, were extraordinary. No details remained with him when he woke now, just a tone and atmosphere of incredible threat. Strictly, he couldn’t call them nightmares, because they did not make him afraid.

The doctor, when he saw him, hurried to take swabs and blood samples as if acting under a time limit. He was given an immediate referral to the local hospital, and was told to go home and pack a bag. An ambulance would collect him tomorrow.

In the car, driving home, his wife began to cry. He felt ashamed for the strange thrill in him, the low exultation that official notes and medical certificates were legitimising his absence from work. The job – which he frankly despised – was consigned now to a storage room in his memory, temporarily shelved while he devoted himself to more important concerns.

They tried to have dinner as a family that night. For their daughter’s sake, his wife controlled her weeping. His daughter interrogated her plate with a bright blush in her cheeks, unused to these levels of high seriousness. He couldn’t eat, but he tried to propose a toast. His breath came short. When he sipped his wine, he retched into his palm.

His hair started falling out. Over the years, his hairline had made bold advances against the unflappable defence of his temples, but now the hair was reeling back in plain rout. Even his eyebrows started to thin. The ambulance came for him first thing in the morning.

A platoon of doctors brought their specialisations to his immobile body. Now almost twice the size he had been in that epochal period of good health, he lay under starched white sheets as the doctors collected their samples; a vast and paralysed mammal held captive for its milk.

He couldn’t get out of bed unassisted. All energy had drained from his white, hairless body. He was wreathed in dreadful smells, and a continual viscous sweat ran from him in torrents. He was put on a drip to replace lost fluids; at night, while he waited for his consciousness to switch off into sleep, he watched in the subdued light the level in the bag decrease under the slow pressure of a sequence of continually expanding circles.

His wife and daughter came to visit him every day. In the expression on their faces was the map of his illness’s route. Every morning before they arrived, he told himself that he must present a front of affable optimism, for their sake, but as the days went on this did not seem so much like a role or a position falsely adopted, but a genuine feeling. A fever boiled in him, he felt like a sack of skin loosely folded over a cauldron, but the peace of the hospital, its rituals and enforced lack of expectation, became comforting and restful. Here was somewhere he could luxuriate. In the same way his swelling skin smoothed away the lines of his body, the illness planed away every wrinkle of anxiety, all the uncertainties that had rattled in his head at night and prevented him from sleeping.

His wife and daughter loved him, and he loved them entire, and he did not like to see them in pain on his account. Withdrawing into this new and quiet life of contemplation, where every need was taken care of, he still thought with shame and regret about how easy he was finding this compared to how difficult it must be for them. Then the breeze would move the curtain lace, opening the view to a wide slice of green, the hospital grounds, and from a distant ward came the melody of a classical station; the bustle of the nurses, the drifting sense of a world you could opt into and out of for moments at a time, spending the rest of the day in twilight rest, bouts of sleep and dreaming …

He was moved one day from his ward to a single room, isolated, where his bed was sealed off inside a tunnel of transparent plastic. It was pleasantly humid in there, warm as an early summer’s day. Doctors came to him in protective suits, eyes fastened behind plastic visors.

The screen of his vision was now bordered by two rolls of fat. His skin was luminous and white. He breathed through a tube; food and nutrients were pumped through another ridged tube which connected at a discreet angle directly to his stomach, and a third tube hooked beneath the bonnet of the bed removed waste, unseen.

*

He looks up and sees the face of his wife. A head below her is the face of his daughter. Both are writhing in grief, framed in the porthole window of the double doors on the other side of the transparent plastic barrier.

All discordant sounds are rounded off and smoothed away, all sharp edges are made safe. The tide of his thoughts is slow and relaxed, untroubled, and he knows that when he falls asleep tonight he will have no serious dreams. He tries to raise a hand to wave at them, let them know that he’s okay, he’s fine, but they’re gone.

For a moment, he thinks he sees a young man and a young woman replacing them, a sharp, snide young man and his cheerful girlfriend, but this must be a mistake. There’s nobody there.