Best Canadian Stories 2020 Read online

  The melting snow had left a series of cracks through the ice on the Amisk River, and you could clearly see the spot where Jim had fallen through after the party. There was a thin layer of ice over the hole and in the busted-up area where he had been dragged out. Whiskeyjacks swooped all around us checking out what we were doing in their area, their grey and black feathers bristling with the prospect of a free meal.

  “Awas,” Jim yelled at them, then muttered. “You’re giving away our goddamn position. Damn beavers will know we’re coming now.”

  “I think the yelling gave us away, not the whiskeyjacks,” I said.

  “No one cares what you think,” Jim grumbled and pulled a jar of hooch out of his saddle bag. “Shouldn’t be too shooken yah think?” He took a big swig.

  “Not many beavers around here,” I said.

  “Oh they’re coming, believe me, those toothy motherfuckers are coming.”

  Jim and I hopped down from our horses and tethered them to a couple birch trees. They immediately started pawing up the snow to get at the old grass underneath it. The horses both seemed more than content to bask in the sun and eat the grass while we figured out where the best place to watch for beavers was. Jim made sure to bring the hooch, rifle, and the rolling tobacco from his bag while I kicked snow out of the way to try and make a dry spot for us to sit. For the next couple hours, Jim and I sat beside the creek and he drank the first bottle of hooch, and then the second bottle of hooch, and then started to get into a third. At some point during the second bottle Jim started firing the 30-30 randomly at the ice.

  “Think I got one there.”

  “Think the bullet ricocheted off the ice, Uncle.”

  “Yeah, ricocheted right into a beaver. Just like I was planning.” He fired another one. “See, got another one.”

  “Don’t know if you did, Uncle.”

  “How many men you ever shot kid? Huh? I think I know when I hit a beaver or not.” Jim’s dark brown eyes were rolling circles in his head. “Think that’s enough killing for today. Let’s head back and see what Granny’s doing,” he slurred.

  I got the horses and saddled them up while Jim ‘kept watch for beavers’ while rolling smokes for the ride back. As soon as I helped Jim up on his horse, he lit one of the smokes and then immediately fell asleep. I grabbed the reins from his mare and hitched her up to my horse and we went down the trail. The animal noise and chatter had faded with the setting sun. The only sound now was the snorts and snores from Jim as he half dozed and half smoked from behind me on the trail. At one point he woke up from his drunk, looked at me and said, “You know any Cree?”

  “Not much,” I answered. “How about you?”

  He had already fallen asleep before I finished asking. The smell of hooch on him was so strong it overpowered the mare’s breath, which wasn’t exactly mint fresh. All I could think of was getting him dropped off in a bed back at Granny’s.

  As we got closer to Granny’s cabin, I noticed something was happening. I could hear shouts coming from inside. I stopped the horses, hopped down, and snuck up to the cabin. The shouts kept getting louder. It sounded like a couple of rough male voices with Granny’s mixed in. As I got closer, I realized I should have grabbed the 30-30 from Jim. Then I decided that it might be some of the family from down the road getting into it after a few too many drinks. I eased up a bit with this thought and walked through the woods with a bold step. I was almost at the cabin when Granny came flying out the door, and not of her own free will; two mounties followed. Their pale cheeks red with rage. I ducked behind the wood pile and watched as the one hit Granny across the face, knocking her back down.

  “Damn squaw, you’re going to tell us where the still is or we’re going to burn this all to the ground,” the one who hit Granny yelled. The other mountie went and kicked her while she was on the ground.

  I panicked. Granny swore at them in Cree and got up. The mounties kept pushing her back down. I gotta get Jim I decided, forgetting that he was wasted off his tree. The mounties, too obsessed with Granny, didn’t notice me start running back towards where I had left the horses and passed-out Jim. The shouting from Granny and the mounties followed me. When I got there, I found the horses, but no Jim. Stupid drunk, probably passed out under a tree nearby, I thought. I had to figure out what to do about Granny and the mounties. I thought of riding to my parents’ cabin and getting my father. It was only about fifteen to twenty minutes at a full gallop. In the distance the screaming continued. I was about to hop up on the horse when I heard the gunshot. And then another gunshot. And then another.

  Back at Granny’s cabin, I found Jim standing over the bodies of the two mounties pointing his 30-30 rifle at them, red blood splattered across the white snow. One had been shot in the arm and the leg, the other just in the arm. Their firearms had been thrown into a pile over by the cabin’s steps. They stared at Jim with horror. Both young men from somewhere in Ontario, never guessing that they would be facing death in the northern Alberta bush. Jim held the rifle with the authority of someone who had killed before.

  “Well now, why would you two go and beat up on an old lady for something as silly as moonshine?” Jim asked, his voice calm now, lacking the drunken stupor of earlier. Both the mounties stared at him, neither daring to answer. The one who had been shot twice started hyperventilating. “Alright, go on both of you back inside the cabin. We gotta get you bandaged up.” Jim prodded them with his rifle. Neither of them could move on account that they had been shot up, so I took to dragging them inside on the sled we normally used for wood. They were both heavy boys, definitely had been eating well inside the depot back in St. Paul, and there was a good yellow piss stain on the snow mixed in with the blood under where the one guy had been laying. Inside Granny’s cabin she had been prepping bandages and tourniquets and got to fixing up their bleeding. She wrapped them both in wool blankets and sat them down by the wood stove to help with the shock.

  “Relax, no one’s going to die tonight,” Jim said. “But if either of you ever think of coming back to this area, well, that’s going to be a different story.” He lit a cigarette from where he sat in the chair with the 30-30 pointing at them. Granny finished fixing the mounties up and started pouring tea. I stood back in the corner trying to stay as close to the door or a window in case Jim changed his mind.

  “After we finish this tea, thank you, Granny, by the way, you two boys are going to head back into town and tell the sergeant that you got in a fight with a couple of beavers out by the Amisk River. Got it?” Both the mounties nodded their heads as fast as they could. “Or as we said in Quebec, a good old castor fight.” Jim exhaled smoke in the faces of the two mounties. “Now you going to thank Granny for being so kind to make you tea?”

  “Th-th-th-thanks,” they both said.

  “Now let’s get you boys on those horses.”

  As the mounties set off on the horses towards St. Paul, Granny, Jim and I turned back to where the 30-30 cartridges sat in the snow surrounded by blood and piss stains.

  “I think it’s about time you headed back to your parents for a bit,” Granny said to me. “At least until your goddamn trigger happy uncle figures out his place.”

  “They would have shot all three of us if I hadn’t of stepped in,” Jim said. “Should of known they would have been waiting until after we took off. Goddamn beavers.”

  “Mounties, Jim, mounties.” Granny said. Her eyes were fixed on the blood. “Hooch is getting to that brain of yours.”

  “You know what, I think I’m going to go and fix those beavers up right now.” Jim said. Without turning back to face us he walked over to where his horse was still standing saddled up from earlier that night. He hopped on the horse and headed back down the trail we had come from, the darkness quickly enveloped him.

  “Should I go after him?” I asked Granny.

  “Leave him be. Come on, let’s get this clean
ed up.”

  Jim didn’t come back that night. Granny told me not to worry about him and to save my own skin and head back down to my parents. She figured the mounties would be coming back with everything they had. The next day, instead of heading in that direction, I went towards the river where I found Jim’s horse tied up to the same birch tree that he and I had tethered up to the day before. A couple of empty hooch jars lay haphazardly in the snow beside a dozen cigarette butts that led in a trail towards a hole in the ice that hadn’t quite frozen over yet.

  Madame Flora’s

  Camilla Grudova

  Victoria’s menses stopped. Her nanny looked through her old diaper bustles, the ones that hadn’t been thrown away yet. It had not arrived when it was supposed to. Her nanny checked the diary she kept of Victoria’s menses (‘Light’ ‘Regular’ ‘Thick’ ‘An Odd Smell’). Each sentence was accompanied by a fingerprint of blood, from the moment little Victoria, aged thirteen, held up a bloody hand saying “Nanny I am dying,” to which Nanny replied that the diaper bustle Victoria had always worn was in preparation for such bleeding and that the bleeding was best called blooming and the blood best called flowers by a young lady.

  Ladies wore diaper bustles all the time so men wouldn’t know exactly when they were menstruating, it was less obscene that way, the constant taffeta swish swish of the diapers that accompanied women’s movements giving no indication of their cycle. They were large and scented, made out of cotton and plastic. Women past the age of menstruating still wore them, as did little girls, there was no sense of end or beginning. The bustles were reassuring: women would never leak. Women were like eggs made out of marble, not creatures made of meat.

  Nanny told Victoria’s mother who told Victoria’s father that Victoria was dreadfully weakened. Victoria’s father called the family doctor who hurried over, and without shock on hearing Victoria’s period had stopped, handed Victoria’s father a bottle of Madame Flora’s saying he saw this affliction all the time in young ladies, it was nothing to worry about.

  “It’s such a horror, the idea of flowers from a woman’s body. It seems a shame to bring it back when it has disappeared,” Victoria’s father said with the abstract disgust of a man who had never seen it before.

  The doctor laughed. “It is indeed, but a necessity of life.”

  The bottle was made of milky green glass, opaque so the liquid inside wasn’t visible.

  They all knew of Madame Flora’s. Her advertisements were everywhere, on billboards, and magazines, illustrations of fainted ladies contrasted with ones of ladies dancing, and carrying children. Ladies sitting on half-moons, laughing, bouquets of blossoming flowers. In many shopping arcades there was a mechanical wax girl in a glass box, eternally consuming Madame Flora’s. When the bottle reached her mouth, a blush spread through her wax cheeks. Madame Flora’s was “The Number One Cure for Weakness, Nervous Complaints, Fainting and Dizziness.”

  *

  Victoria’s father opened the bottle and took a strong sniff, then another. He stuck his finger in and pulled it out: Madame Flora’s was a dense, dark brown syrup. The bottle label suggested mixing it with tonic water, or putting it in puddings or spreading it on toast with butter.

  Victoria’s nanny tried a spoonful herself. The doctor and Victoria’s father looked away with slight disgust.

  She spat it into her hand then wiped her hand on her apron.

  “Sir, it tastes of . . . bloo—”

  “Nonsense. It’s a one hundred percent herbal mixture, I have read the label and prescribed it to many patients. I would not expect you to know what blood tastes like,” said the doctor.

  “I only know sir, from the smell of it.”

  Victoria’s father grabbed the bottle and looked for the ingredients, but they weren’t listed.

  In small letters on the bottom of the label it said, For Extreme Cases, Please Consider a Vacation at Madame Flora’s Hotel.

  The canopy curtains of Victoria’s bed were closed. Nanny opened them. Victoria lay in bed, reading a book of nursery rhymes and smoking. Her long red hair was greasy-looking. Nanny grabbed her cigarette and put it out under her boot.

  “Nanny!” Victoria cried.

  The doctor and father’s father chuckled.

  Nanny prepared a glass of Madame Flora’s in the bedroom kitchenette. Women weren’t allowed in the main kitchens of houses, but the kitchenette was a place where they could prepare light meals—there was an electric tea kettle, and a tiny plastic oven, which used a light bulb and was decorated with flowers, that could warm toast and make little cakes but never burn anything. There were boxes of powders that could be turned into various porridges, tea, malt powder, and seaweed jelly powder, and always a fresh bottle of milk.

  *

  Victoria tried to spit out Madame Flora’s but Nanny stopped her. She swallowed with a grimace. “Bring me a crumpet Nanny, and some milk, to chase it down, please Nanny.”

  “Be quiet, Victoria,” said her father.

  “Bring the child some milk,” said the doctor. “The taste of Madame Flora’s is not delicate.”

  Victoria was to be given Madame Flora’s in the morning, at lunchtime, and before bed. She complained that Madame Flora’s gave her fevers and constipation. She rinsed her mouth out after, and often went to the bathroom, sticking two of her fingers down her throat until she vomited it up. “I don’t like iron,” she said to herself. She did everything she could to get Madame Flora’s out of her body. She didn’t miss her menses, the gelatinous clots that reminded her of leeches, the fear of leaks even when she wore chafing rubber underwear under her bustle.

  They tried the whole range of Madame Flora’s products. In addition to the tonic, they sold pastilles, pills, powder, boullion squares for soup, and a line of chocolate-covered Madame Flora jelly that looked like Turkish delight but tasted like rust, sulphur and browned flowers.

  Victoria poured Madame Flora’s on the crotch of her diaper bustle hoping it would pass, but Nanny knew.

  Victoria’s father said he would send her to Madame Flora’s hotel.

  “Can’t Nanny come with me to Madame Flora’s?” Victoria asked

  “No, she must look after your mother,” her father said, and Victoria was secretly pleased, for she wanted to be away from Nanny.

  *

  They took the carriage. Victoria wore a green taffeta dress. Besides her trunk, she had a small black velvet purse. Inside were love letters from her father’s butler and one of her father’s friends. One contained a dried daisy, stuck to the page with horse glue.

  Victoria’s mother brought a large tin of wine gums along for the ride, keeping it on her lap. They were all she would eat. The black currant-flavoured ones in particular. Her father brought cold roast beef, a spiral sausage that resembled a round rag rug, and pâté along for himself. He didn’t stop to eat it but let the smell fill up the whole carriage. “I feel so ill I want to die,” Victoria said to herself. Women weren’t allowed to eat meat. The smell of it was intolerably strong.

  They had to stop twice, for forty minutes each time, so her father could go to the bathroom. There were men smoking and loitering about outside the men’s public restrooms. On a bench by the bathroom door, there was a man with swollen-looking red legs, his trousers rolled up to reveal them. He was eating potted meat with his fingers and grinning. There was a smell around the place, like burnt mutton, her mother held a handkerchief to her face as they waited. “Why do men take ever so long to toilet,” asked Victoria and her mother told her not to be vulgar, drooling as she spoke because of the wine gums.

  Victoria knew the right amount she could piss in her bustle without it leaking or smelling. She did so. There weren’t many public bathrooms for women.

  *

  Madame Flora’s hotel overlooked the sea. It was a white building, like most in the town, a popular seaside resort. The words ‘Madame Flor
a’s’ were written in gold, large letters and there was a billboard on the roof of the hotel with an image of Madame Flora’s tonic surrounded by roses. The main doors were glass with golden bars. The veranda had no chairs, only large potted ferns.

  The hotel foyer smelled of the bouquets of flowers placed everywhere, but it was overrun with suitcases, tennis rackets, and other sports equipment. In the centre of the foyer was an enormous, strong-looking young woman, wearing a fur coat, her dark hair in braided loops pinned to her head. In one hand she held a lacrosse stick. There was a vase knocked over in front of her, the water turning the red carpet a darker shade.

  “I want my own room,” the girl said loudly.

  “If ladies are in a room together, their flowers will blossom together,” a woman in a purple dress with red frills and a matching hat said.

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying,” replied the girl. “Where am I to put all my things.”

  “It is beneficial to becoming well again. It is our policy,” the woman said and turned to Victoria and her family.

  “A moment alone with the young lady, please,” she said, taking Victoria’s arm and bringing her behind the hotel counter into a small room.

  The woman had a fob watch hanging down her skirt. She was Madame Flora. Her bustle was huge, an exaggeration of one. She looked like a dining room chair from the side. She wore a small glass vial on a necklace. She said it was full of Madame Flora’s, from one of the first bottles she had made. The liquid looked dried, dark, and old.

  There wasn’t a desk in the room, but a matching set of patterned couches, a drink service on wheels with crystal glasses and tonic, and a few little side tables with more flowers on them and porcelain figurines and fruit made out of plaster. Madame Flora shut the door and told Victoria to sit down. The walls were covered in photographs and drawings of babies. “From former guests at Madame Flora’s, once their flowers returned,” she said. “Madame Flora’s is available for anyone to purchase, but our hotel is reserved for the most exclusive of clientele. I take a personal interest in all the guests here. Madame Flora’s is made in a factory in the north where the water is strong, but I prefer to be here, with the girls who need my help most, who need their flowers to return.”