Miracles Of Ordinary Men , livre ebook

Ecw Press - Amanda Leduc

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167 pages

English

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Amanda Leduc's stunning novel is the tale of two unlikely dreamers: Sam, a man who wakes up one day to find himself growing wings and Lilah, a woman who has lost her brother to the streets of Vancouver. As Sam finds himself falling away from the world as he grows feathers from his back, Lilah seeks sexual penance under the harsh hand of her boss, her own transformation subtle and terrifying. Sam and Lilah fall deeper into their separate spiritual paths and the two hurtle closer and closer to a dark, unknown destiny.

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Erotic literature

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Publié par	Ecw Press
Date de parution	01 mai 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781770903944
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0450€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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For my family, who never stopped believing in this story.

And is it not true in this instance also that one whom God blesses he curses in the same breath?
SØREN KIERKEGAARD

Ten
Sunday
Sam’s cat crumpled like paper under the truck’s wheel. He knelt down to touch her and then something like heat, some sudden shock of air, surged through his hands.
Suddenly she was breathing, blinking up at him through a mass of matted fur. Dead, and then not-dead, and his were the hands that had done it.
A car door slammed; he cradled the cat, heard footsteps. When he looked up he saw a boy, standing white and terrified in the same spot where the truck had crushed the cat against the curb. Moments ago, only just. The boy’s mother stood close to the truck, her eyes large and dark with guilt.
“It’s fine,” he said, when he could speak. He avoided the mother and spoke instead to the boy, his hands around Chickenhead, his fingers throbbing with alien power. The wings ached in the chill of the early evening air. “I know it didn’t look like it, but she’s fine.”
“I saw . . . blood,” said the boy. He had stubborn hair. He looked like the kind of boy who would grow up to argue with Sam in one of his classes. One day, if he was still teaching.
“It was a mistake.” He couldn’t think of any other way to say it. “I thought so too, but look.” He let Chickenhead go and clenched his hands to stop the shaking. The cat dropped lightly to the ground and sauntered over to the boy. Sam could hear her purr from five feet away.
“She’s okay,” said the boy. Like Sam, he sounded as though he couldn’t quite believe it. When he knelt and held out his hand, the cat rubbed against his fingers. “What’s her name?”
“Chickenhead,” said Sam. The mother laughed — a high laugh, edged with hysteria — and the boy made a face.
“Chickenhead?” he repeated. If he could see the wings, he wasn’t letting on. “What kind of a name is that?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said, perfectly honest. “I was — ” he almost said high , and then thought better of it. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
The boy’s mother rolled her eyes. “Aidan,” she said, “we should go.”
The boy nodded, but he didn’t get up. “What’re those rips in your shirt for?”
“Those?” Sam shrugged and pointed a lazy hand, careful not to touch the wings. There was his answer, right there. “It’s just an old shirt.”
“Aidan,” his mother said again. “You’re going to be late.”
He was tempted to ask what the boy would be late for, just to keep the two of them there and talking. Instead he whistled, and Chickenhead jumped out of the boy’s arms and sauntered back to him. Aidan gave a small wave and climbed into the truck. And off they went — piano lessons, karate, soccer practice, whatever.
Still clutching the cat, he leaned forward and vomited into the gutter. There was blood on the asphalt. A few clumps of dark fur. The wind flapped against the holes in the back of his shirt.
“Well,” he said. “What happens now?”
Chickenhead, bathed in light, began to purr. She turned on her back and stretched her legs so that her claws caught the wings, which were white now, the feathers long and soft. Sam stood at the end of his drive and let them unfurl — six feet across, maybe more. When he flexed his shoulders, they beat hard against air. He rocked slowly on the balls of his feet and watched the clouds. The sky waited above him. It was almost night. The air was cold. The only light on the street came from him.
Saturday
In the morning he gave in, finally, and cut holes in all of his shirts. Chickenhead watched from the bed as he moved the scissors through the blue plaid shirt from Julie and the cream silk one he’d bought at the overpriced suit store on Robson. The rugby shirts and V -neck sweaters were next — he’d had some of his students pick these out, his finger no longer quite on the pulse of the fashion world. A system that had suited them all — his cash, their amusement. Wasted now, with every thrust of his scissors.
He stopped when he got to the linen shirt that would have seen him through the wedding. Time for coffee, maybe even a morning stroll.
No one used the garden this early on a Saturday, so he took Chickenhead out with him and watched her stalk bugs in the grass. The wings were long enough to touch the ground and bounced softly in the air with each step of his slippered feet. He walked around the pond and watched them unfurl in his reflection. A gift , the priest had said. A gift, and it wasn’t even Christmas.
When he got back inside he picked up the phone and dialed Julie, even though he wasn’t drunk. He moved to hang up when a male voice answered the phone, but then he coughed and his anonymity was gone.
“Sam,” said the voice on the phone.
“Derek. Can I talk to Julie?”
“It’s pretty early,” he said, as though Sam didn’t know. “She’s still sleeping. I can give her a message, if you want.”
“Sure.” He thought for a moment. “Tell her the church still smells the same.”
“Okay.” If Derek found this strange, he didn’t let on. “You have a good day, Sam.” Then he hung up the phone.
Sam was supposed to be the one hanging up. Sam, in point of fact, was supposed to be the one sleeping beside Julie. He listened to the air for a moment. Chickenhead, who had adjusted quite happily to the tuna juice — he was now the only person in this household losing weight — glared at him from where she sat, concentrated on her food.
“I am trying ,” he told her, and he shook the phone for emphasis. But his threats, as they both knew well, were laughable at best. She remained impassive, bored, infinitely superior. She licked a paw as Sam watched. Her eyes said pussy , as plain as day.
Friday
School ended in a one-on-one conference, Sam on one side of the desk, Emma on the other.
“You’re not going to tell anybody?” she said.
“There’s nothing to tell. No one will believe me.” He paused. “Are you going to tell anybody?”
This made her laugh. “What makes you think anyone will believe me if they’re not going to believe you?” She ran her fingers over the faded wood of his desk. Her face held a deference he didn’t like. “Are you going to leave?”
“I’m thinking about it,” he said. Which was a lie; he hadn’t thought about anything until right then. “Maybe I’ll go on a road trip.” Suddenly the idea shone in his mind. Sam and Chickenhead and the dying Jetta, Joni Mitchell on the open road. “A pilgrimage.”
“Where would you go?”
“I have no idea.” The word pilgrimage made him think of two things: Mecca and Memphis. Hot sun and fervour and praying five times a day — and Elvis. But he didn’t have the cash for Saudi Arabia, and he wasn’t really a Graceland kind of guy. Besides, a road trip along the Sunshine Coast? With his cat ? Taking God’s gift for a spin, that’s all it would be. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said. “You’re always staying after class. I’m getting looks.”
“I have something for you,” Emma said. She reached into her bag and pulled out a twisted loop of metal. There was a circle of string around one end. “It’s an infinity puzzle,” she said. “You’re supposed to get the string off.”
“Thank you.” His hands went automatically to the string and started working it through. “Is this supposed to drive me completely over the edge?”
She laughed. “I was hoping it would save you, actually.”
“Too late,” and his tone was light, even though the words were not. “I don’t think I have that much further to go.”
Thursday
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
Like riding a bike, the old cliché. The church felt the same, which shouldn’t have surprised him but did — it had been two years, only that, and somehow it felt as though he’d been gone forever. Worn floorboards and the same threadbare cushions in every pew.
But it wasn’t the same, not really, because Father Jim wasn’t there. Instead, a small dark-haired man shook Sam’s hand and directed him into a pew. His name, he said, was Father Mario. His voice was also small — Sam had to still himself completely to hear him, which was probably the point.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” he repeated. Though he hadn’t come to confess and didn’t believe in sin anyway. But there — that was how he started.
“How long has it been since your last confession?” The priest’s accent was soft and unobtrusive. Filipino, maybe — a roly-poly young boy who’d grown up with the light of God in his eyes.
“I don’t know,” and he shifted in his pew. He’d eschewed the anonymity of the confessional on the chance that Father Mario might have noticed the wings, like Emma, but so far he hadn’t said anything. “I’m not a fan of confession, actually.”
The priest smiled. “Most people aren’t.”
“I’m,” he felt restless now, “not here to confess. I need . . . some advice?”
Father Mario smiled again. “Most people do.”
If this were Father Jim, he would have taken Sam into the rectory and offered him a glass of Scotch. Father Jim, who went way back. He’d taught catechism until Sam switched schools and was famous in the diocese for going sober at Lent. Once upon a time, he was going to marry them, with Bryan there to act as best man and Julie’s mother ready to outdo the town florist on dahlias.
Today, there was only Father Mario, small and stooped in a pew before the altar. He raised a hand and patted the cross at his neck. “What do you need?”
“I’m afraid,” said Sam.
“Afraid of what?”
What, indeed. “I think I’m . . . changing.”
“Change isn’t always bad,” the priest said instantly. “Especially when it draws you out of yourself.”
Sam snickered before he could help it. “I suppose it’s doing that, yes.”
“Not all change seems natural, either,” said the priest. “It is natural, for example, for a man to doubt. The growth to believing is what is so hard.”
Jesus. They actually still said these kinds of thing