Cracked Pots , livre ebook

Ecw Press - Heather Tucker

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261 pages

English

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' It is the voice of the characters, the kindness of strangers, and the ingenuity and determination of our protagonist against terrible forces that make this story sing. San Francisco Chronicle on Tucker s debut, The Clay Girl From the author of the Indie Next List pick The Clay Girl comes a deeply moving novel about the resilience of a remarkable young woman unraveling the mystery of a missing friend while struggling to grow past the trauma of her calamitous upbringing. From the waning flower-power 60s in Toronto through her East Coast university years, Ari fights to discover who she is and what it means to be the child of an addicted mother and depraved father. When her friend Natasha, the perfect girl from the nicest family, suddenly vanishes, Ari sets out to find out what has happened to her are her troubled parents to blame? With wit, tenacity, and the incessant meddling of Jasper the seahorse in her head Ari

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Publié par	Ecw Press
Date de parution	05 octobre 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781773058122
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Cracked Pots A Novel
Heather Tucker

Contents Dedication One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen Fourteen Fifteen Sixteen Seventeen Eighteen Nineteen Twenty Twenty-One Twenty-Two Twenty-Three Twenty-Four Twenty-Five Twenty-Six Twenty-Seven Twenty-Eight Twenty-Nine Thirty Thirty-One Thirty-Two Thirty-Three Thirty-Four Thirty-Five Thirty-Six Thirty-Seven Thirty-Eight Thirty-Nine Forty Forty-One Forty-Two Forty-Three Forty-Four Forty-Five Forty-Six Forty-Seven Forty-Eight Forty-Nine Fifty Fifty-One Fifty-Two Fifty-Three Fifty-Four Fifty-Five Fifty-Six Fifty-Seven Fifty-Eight Fifty-Nine Sixty Sixty-One Sixty-Two Sixty-Three Sixty-Four Sixty-Five Sixty-Six Sixty-Seven Sixty-Eight Sixty-Nine Seventy Seventy-One Seventy-Two Seventy-Three Seventy-Four Seventy-Five Seventy-Six Acknowledgements About the Author Copyright

Dedication
For my sister, Susanne Rayner, the gold filling the cracks in this world.

One
The train slows. Mechanical wizardry, air and friction working together, is bringing this massive locomotive to a precise stop. Mikey tells me this. At eight years old, he loves the physics involved. Me? I just wonder how I’ll move my one hundred and twenty-six pounds of cells through the warped space and time ahead.
I know where I am without clearing the window; still, I wipe away the condensation. The familiar landmark comes into view. When I was eight, “JOHN 3:16” was painted in big letters on the barn’s roof. Now, at sixteen, just rusty holes and a faint “OH 6” remain. My Oh shit point on each journey back to Toronto. It’s here when I feel most stretched in two, pulled east, back to my aunts, to clay, to Jake—and forced west, to chaos, to waste, to—
Aaron .
Bloody hell, Jasper, don’t start stirring this up again.
Outside, a girl races the train, hair flying like a charm of finches. Her hand lifts and—pop-pop-poppity-pop!
Mikey’s head snaps from the pillow. “What’s that?”
“Just a kid throwing firecrackers.”
“Where are we?”
Eight hundred miles and four long months from Cape Breton. “Quebec.”
The passenger car is hot as soup. Mikey tucks up, stretching a worn undershirt over summer-scraped legs. He studies my swollen cheek. “Does it hurt?”
“Really bad.”
“I heard Missus Butters tell Huey that the rockslide was an omen.”
Neck hairs startle up with the draft from doors opening. “You know the Missus is the Cove’s tall tale spinner. She’s always telling shivery stories. It was just the heavy rains and growing roots that caused it.”
He scratches at a mosquito bite on his ankle. “Maybe so. Just seems off when water breaks rock. And, and . . . there was all that other stuff.”
William, the train’s steward, directs a roly-poly man our way. “Well, little miss, look what I’ve found.” I’m years, and inches, past being little, but through all my rides, I can’t recall a trip where William hasn’t taken care of me.
The man is a doctor, conscripted from somewhere on the train. He plunks down, eyeing my cheek with half spectacles. “Good gracious. What happened here?”
Mikey says, “A rock dinged her.”
“Now, who’d throw stones at such a pretty girl?” He opens his bag. “When’d this happen?”
“Friday.”
Eyes open. Eyes closed. I see it. Birds rocketing from the ridge seconds before the sonic crack. Then a boulder, big as a bus, ripping away, cartwheeling into the ocean. Water, red with dirt, pluming. Rocks, stones, pebbles cascading, trickling, then—dead quiet. In the settling dust, I looked up. The path to the acres we named Moondance, gone. By a root, a young cedar swung like an acrobat. Atop the ridge, Jake stood, peering down, looking as terrified as me.
Weeks before, same night as men walked on the moon, Jake and I went all the way. Sleeping with a boy was still cosmic with newness, and there I was, in the rubble, sensing in three days, two nights, one morning, I’d be launched away.
Now, on the train heading further into Jakeless space, Mikey quavers, like the words are haunted. “And you know what?”
“What, son?”
“Our dog snatched Ari’s shoe. Spinner ran circles before giving it back. Then, Ari met Huey walking a cranky foster. She took the baby so Huey could go off and take a pee and wouldn’t you know it, a bear was blocking the path back. If not for all the holdups, Ari would’ve been right where it happened.”
“So, instead, she caught a bit of shrapnel?”
“Yes.” I bury a scream as the doctor digs.
“Quite the whale tale.”
It is. The kind of yarn that will become a down-home legend, a ballad even. Mikey shrugs. “Maybe, but it’s not a lie.”
“Here’s the trouble.” A granite shard, smaller than the tip of an eyelash, is in his tweezers. Disinfecting stings, but the agony is gone—poof. He gives me a tiny tube. “Dab of this and it should settle right down.”
William leans over the plush seat. “Imagine that: a beagle, a babe, and a bear kept you from being squashed. There’s big magic in that.”
“You see good ahead, William?”
“Truth?”
I lengthen my spine. “Give it to me straight.”
“Dark roads to come.” Into a small leather pouch, William drops ten pennies, then tosses it to me. “But fret not, ’cause one by one, I’ll collect these and when the last coin drops, you’ll be home.”
“In the Cove, right?”
“On my whiskers, day’ll come when this walrus and your seahorse will dance along that shore, and you’ll know that it’s your own solid legs that carried you there.”
Mikey asks, “Me too, William?”
“Sure as sure. But I suspect you’ll travel back on a wing, laddie.” He tips his hat and moves along.
Across the aisle, a lady, sleek as an eel, tucks her skirt away from the disruption that always surrounds me.
Mikey asks, “Hey, how’d William know Spinner’s a beagle?”
“Aunties M&N say he’s got second sight.”
“Because he’s walrus kin?”
“It’s as good an answer as any.”
“That doctor was a penguin.”
“Right. My cheek does feel cooler.”
“If I died, would my dragonfly die too?”
“Yeah, Kira would be gone, gone, gone. Inner animals are like those cleaner fish who live because other creatures need someone to eat their fungus.”
“They’re symbolic.”
“Symbiotic.”
“If I died, you could stay in Pleasant Cove.”
“Nah. The Dick would just go after my sisters to force me back.”
“You’re just saying that so I don’t feel like the worm that hooked you.”
Mikey is indeed the millstone dragging me back, but he’s guilt-weighted enough without me adding to it. “Think about it, bro. When you go fishing with Jake, does the bait have any say in what happens?” I pat down his sea-urchin hair. “The Dick’s not letting me off his hook before all Len’s money comes to me. Why’d you think he got hitched to my mum this summer?” Mikey’s dad, Richard Irwin, aka the Dick, is husband number three, giving me an Oreo of dads, two complete shits, with soft, sweet Len Zajac in the middle. If Len had known the trouble his money would cause me, he’d have burned every dollar. “Um, while we’re talking Dickshit, think we better keep this whole animal friend thing hush-hush.”
“So he can’t comet you to the loony bin?”
“Commit. Yeah. And maybe keep under wraps that the Missus taught you to knit.”
“Jacques Plante’s a knitter and a goalie.”
“The Dick thinks Plante’s a sissy for wearing a mask.”
“I hate hockey.”
What Mikey hates is the boozy fury when the home team loses. “Worry less, bro. We’ll come up with a lie that gets us out of crapdom on game nights.”
“How come those Commandments say we shouldn’t lie?”
“Because Moses never walked through our wilderness. Just imagine life in Toronto without Sabina helping us.”
“It’d be awful, but why even think it?”
“Lies got Len and his family out of Poland. Sabina was the best liar in the resistance, helped the good guys win the war. It’s just story-weaving and we’re going to spin one that gets us out of crapdom for good.”
“If Pops died, we could both live in Pleasant Cove.”
“We’ll get back. Jasper says so.”
“Has Jasper always been with you?”
“Since the moment Huey and Jake found me bundled on the shore.”
“Is he really real or pretend?”
“All I know is Jasper gets me started and stopped like the magic that gets this train where it’s supposed to be.”
“I never told anyone about my dragonfly, not ’til you.” Mikey blots a bead of blood from my cheek before dabbing on a pearl of ointment. “How come everyone doesn’t have a talking animal?”
“They do. Most just stop listening.”
Mikey offers me his pillow and starts a round of our favourite game, Death to Dick by Alphabet. He singsongs, “Arsenic applesauce. Bowling ball bomb. Cyanide cookies. Dynamite doughnuts. Electric eels. Fire-ant fog . . . Here’s a new one, ground-glass gingersnaps.”
“With our luck he’d just shit chandeliers and clog the toilet.” There’s pulsing under me as the train picks up speed, like Celtic drums. I relax into it, closing my eyes to eel lady’s disapproval of Mikey in raggedy hand-me-downs, plotting murder, and of me in quote-scribbled jeans, talking crazy.
“Hemlock hamburgers. Icepick injections. Killer kangaroos.”
The window’s frame creates snapshots as the train pulls into Union Station. Aaron West. Expected. Mr. Ellis. Unexpected. Officer O’Toole. Disturbing. Mikey looks from the platform to me. “Maybe Pops was in a shootout slaughter.” It’s the most hopeful he’s sounded since leaving Ple