One hundred metres along Les discovers the hunter lying on his side, facing away. He grows alarmed and, moving closer to the figure on the ice, notices blood spreading out from its face. Leaning over the body he sees that, in fact, there is very little face left. By the aggression of the act and the senseless snatch of missing face, of missing life, Les knows that a human being has done this.
Has just done this.
4
Falling
The detective looks like a hockey player. He has a penalty box chin and eyes that recede way up into the cheap seats, the greys, faint in a mist beneath his heavy brow. His tie flips across his chest like a cat’s tail, alive, kinking against his knuckles for attention. The suit is not his preferred uniform, not the one he trains in. That one has action figure invisibility, so he ignores what he’s wearing, and the suit sails up over his shoes, gathers thickly in his armpits, and keeps rising north. He looks over at the man sitting across from him. Quiet. Patient. The detective thinks of himself as a people scientist. Les Reardon is a quiet, patient man.
Sitting in the little coatroom of a country church, surrounded by a dragon of wire coat hangers, Les Reardon has been shifting uncomfortably on a small wooden chair for two hours. Expecting to leave any second, he’s kept his coat on. Now that the detective has come in and sat down, Les regards the chain of hangers circling him as a lost opportunity. With his coat off he might have appeared cooperative, casual, at home in the investigation. Les puts his heavily padded elbows on his knees and twirls his cap in his hands. He feels restless. He wants to say something.
The detective continues writing in a folder. He’ll do this for five minutes. Testing his theory. Mr. Reardon is a quiet, patient man. Mr. Reardon works with someone else’s cows and horses. He’s a drama teacher. The detective likes men with decent effeminate professions. He looks up at Les to assess the femaleness of the man, to determine whether to contest it or flirt with him. The detective notices that his own handwriting is pioneering the interview, the dots are pecking impatiently on the outskirts of the “i”s, and a brusque circle around the date misses something crucial. The detective introduces himself.
“Mr. Reardon, I’m detective Peterson. How are you? I appreciate you co-operating.”
The detective attempts to untuck his sleeves at the elbow, but can’t.
“I guess what I need to hear from you is exactly what happened out there.”
Les tells his story. He remembers it as a western, a shootout, but he tells it as if he were a decent man, protecting his property. As he tells the story, “I found a wounded deer in the garage last year, so I have posted the property…” in Les’s head, or rather his imagination, a crazy bulb swings at the end of a cord, and the drama teacher stands in its green light, staring down the sights of a weapon. His grin hangs off the side of his face, a stirrup lost across the ankle of a boot. When he’s finished, the detective gauges the effect of the murder scene on Les. A drama coach, or whatever he is, he’s not so decent. He’s acting.
Let’s see a show.
“Awright, I have a dead man, and I have a man here, sitting across from me, who I found at the scene. You chased the victim into the dense brush, swinging his rifle at your side, and all of a sudden it’s a homicide scene. Now, what do I say? What do I do with your connection here?”
Les straightens the label on the inside of his cap. It curls back against his baby finger, a tighter furl for having been unwound.
“Uh. Detective, I didn’t shoot him. He wasn’t shot. He was… uh… he was…”
“Yeah, yeah, we don’t know what he was yet. Was there anybody else with you?”
“With me? No. Not with me. I didn’t see anybody else.”
“You live alone Mr. Reardon?”
“Yep.”
“Ever married?”
“Well, not quite.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I lived with a woman for four years.”
“Here in Pontypool?”
“No. In Toronto. In Parkdale.”
“Any children?”
“Yeah, uh… one.”
“How old?”
“One month.”
“Really. Daughter?”
“Son.”
“Awright, Mr. Reardon, we’re going to be in touch with you. So, make sure you stay available. If you should happen to remember anything, anything at all, call me at this number.”
The detective gives Les his card and leaves the coatroom door open as he goes. He turns down a hallway that he’s sure Les will not take when he leaves. Peterson leans his thighs against a radiator that runs the length of a wall underneath a basement window. He looks up at the parking lot that spreads out from his chin. A lone vehicle sits in the southwest corner. The truck is Les Reardon, remote, beige, built for leaving in. Closer to the detective is a pyramid of ice, jaundiced and sore with crystal pellets. This is the son. The detective looks for the baby’s mother. The small parking lot is bordered by a winter-toughened hedge. In its chipped line are rocks of ice. No mother. Beyond, the highway. Car-free. Further, the heavy trees and, not visible from this little window, a frozen river that has a crazy, pink spot in its eye. No mother. A month old. Jesus, what happened there?
Les stands four feet from his car with his arms stretched out and his knees bent. A warm wind arrives, just as he steps onto a large patch of ice. Now he hangs like a surfer against a blue screen — dipping and rising — not walking. Eventually he falls. In the middle of his wheel to the earth he doesn’t think of his son, he thinks of the infant’s mother. He remembers — when Helen’s blood sugar levels slipped off and she would seem to lose sight of everything and her hands made small, brittle help-me flights up to her face — how impossibly cold her lips became. He’d kiss them just to feel their cold, their distinct mark on his own melting mouth. He loved her then.
The ice slams against his temple. He holds his head in his hands as he lies there, pulling his knees up. Les is crying, and if he’s crying for anyone it’s himself, even though a tiny bug, in the centre of his brain, shaped like a baby, is crying as well. The baby’s crying. Les moves to the edge of the ice, and he presses the tips of his fingers over the frozen bubbles drawing himself forward. He manages to get to his feet and recovers quickly. He crawls the truck to the edge of the highway and pauses to join the traffic on the empty road.
Detective Peterson has his hand over his mouth, as much to stifle noise as to keep a piece of sandwich from flying loose. He’s just seen Les fall, and he’s laughing with his back to the wall. As his laughter hardens, he slides down onto the radiator. It will spread heat up through the seat of his pants, and he will have to jump forward, yelping. He will lose a little nugget of bread and fish while he spins around, palming the cheeks of his ass.
As funny as this is, and it’s probably funnier than it seems, it’s more. It’s what you get for laughing cruelly at the pain of others.
5
The Ed Gein Thing