Sarah de Leeuw - Where It Hurts

You know this game, right?

Its played at dinner parties?

After a few glasses of wine?

When weve left the kitchen and the dining room and were all sitting in the living room and theres been three-in-a-row of those awkward conversation lulls, when saying anything seems too loud so were all busy saying nothing at all, looking interested in the carpet?

The game where you try to figure out the lie in three guesses or less?

Like this.

I say: In my life I have eaten bear, shark, raw sea-urchin egg, ox-heart, seal, and caribou.

If you guess which one I havent eaten, if you catch my lie, its your turn to fabricate a story. To tell an untruth.

Mostly people guess bear. Especially if Im in a city. Bear! You cant have eaten bear!

Thats wrong.

Ive eaten bear. Quite a lot of bear, actually. Shanks of black bears pulled from the backs of 4x4 pickups, hunks of skinless slopping red flesh chucked onto stomped-down cardboard boxes thrown flat to keep the blood off the paint of the truck bed. Being hauled to the dump by trophy hunters. Meat rescued by my dad. Hundreds of pounds of meat thumped onto the kitchen counter and hacked into manageable wet slabs, chasing off the cats mewling at the fatty scent, wrapping it in newsprint, turfing it into the freezer. Turned into stew. Then fed to the dogs when it became too frostbitten for even our hungry mouths, a strange grey ice-mold that sometimes the dogs would pause over, sniff at before swallowing back in loud gulps.

If no one can guess what I havent eaten, I get to lie again.

I could say: I have travelled to Seoul, Paris, Sofia, Istanbul, Tokyo, Delhi, and Chicago. One is a lie. Its everyones job to figure out which place Ive never set foot in.

I like the game. I like all the strange truths people keep hidden inside them. How easily a lie can be buried in such plain sight.

i

Before that flight back to Vancouver from Sydney, the kind of flight that makes your kneecaps throb and leaves your eye sockets feeling like theyre filled with salt, sand, and lemon juice, I didnt know that planes were sprayed down with fire hoses when they are landed by a pilot making his last-ever flight before retirement.

How the water arches and sparkles in the sunrise of a new continent, how water streams down the planes windows, christening an entire aircraft, how stewardesses clap and smile and how the co-pilot comes onto the planes intercom system and announces how proud he is to have accompanied Captain Vincent MacDonald on his final flight as a pilot, how Vince is a good man whos put in more than forty years with Air Canada, how from here on in the only flyin Vince is gonna be doin is down to Puerto Vallarta or, shucks, Las Vegas, with his wife and grandkids. How theres a bottle of champagne waiting in the Pilots Lounge and how Vince is going to have a glass or five even though its 6:30 in morning, Pacific Standard Time. How by then everyone on that massive Boeing 747 is clapping along with the pretty stewardesses, a few voices calling congratulations, Vince, congratulations man.

Before that flight back to Vancouver from Sydney, I had never held a man as he died.

As he pissed himself lying spread out on the floor of the airport, his wife screaming, screaming, screaming, hang on Murray, hang on Murray, oh god someone help, hang on Murray.

I did not mean to hold Murray as he died.

If I had not turned around as we were all running from one delayed flight to another flight we were worried we might miss, if I had not turned around when I heard a strange choke-gasp ragged breathing a few steps behind me, if I had not turned around to figure out what that sound was that Id never before in my life heard, I would have missed the collapse, the buckling knees of the unremarkable-looking middle- to late-middle-aged man in jeans, the guy with the red-purple face sweating as his wife held his arm saying slow down Murray, we can walk, if we miss the plane, theres another.

If I had not turned around, I would not have seen the man crumple and I would not have dropped my one allotted carry-on piece of luggage in an attempt to catch him and I would not have been the first person to put my hands under his head, his head I was worried must have really hurt from its crash to the ground, its crack against rock-hard floor. I would not have begun to turn him from his back onto his side, some grey-fog memory from some lifeguarding class I failed in Grade 10 forcing itself into my brain, into action.

Now that Im holding Murray, Im talking softly and saying its OK its OK its OK, try to breathe slowly, Im saying this gently, trying to convince him, but his breath is becoming a high-pitched squeal through windpipes, his face changing from fuchsia to yellow ripped with white-blotching, the spit starting to bubble in the corners of his mouth and I dont know what to do so I am reaching into his mouth and trying to pull out his dentures. Seeing how they are so loose and slippery, I think they must be choking him. I feel the sticky warm wet inside of his mouth, my fingers against the smooth roof his mouth, my fingers fumbling deep inside the mouth of a stranger, trying to make space for breath, people in a circle all around us. I yell: Is someone here a doctor, is someone here a nurse, but there is just silence, a few people taking pictures on their smartphones. So then I really yell, loud, someone call a fucking ambulance and that moves a few people.

But. Still. Still there is a silent circle around us, Murray and me on the airport floor. Still his wife is kneeling behind me, except now shes just crying, just crying and crying and not screaming. Shes telling me some story about how this is their first vacation away as a family, how they didnt want to miss the flight, how his nicknames Chicken, how everyone calls him Chicken, how he has a pacemaker, how it was just put in, how is he going to be OK? Is he going to be OK?

How with my fingers pulling out of his mouth, I see the piss pour out of him, stain his jeans and flow a little ways beyond his body down the airport floor, how I feel him jerk lightly, his head against my thigh, his eyes rolling backwards.

How out of the corner of my eye, as Im feeling all of this, I watch his wife crawl up a little closer, on her hands and knees, and gingerly pick up her husbands rose-pink plastic dentures, with their perfect white teeth that Ive carelessly swiped away across the floor, and try to discreetly place them in the pocket of her light blue summery linen pants, the kind so many women wear in airports when theyre getting ready to travel somewhere new and warm for holidays.

ii

We were, well, lets see: how would you put it?

New to each other?

Dating?

Yes. I suppose wed just started dating if that word can apply to two people in their late 30s and late 40s, circling each other like dogs of previous owners whod occasionally taken to kicking them in the ribs. New to each other and still a bit bruised. Skittish and snarling from time to time. Waiting for the boot.

We were settling into each other, sitting next to each other on my couch. Breaking up the quiet moments with chirpy quips. The way people do who dont yet know each other well, who havent yet lapsed into silence being a warm comfort. We are waiting for a friend of mine, a woman youve never met. Youve told me about your nervousness, you being the man from Toronto, a city man, a southern man, a new man to me.

My friend is the coroner in a town 600 kilometres away. Down the highway. She also goes into all the reserves, all the tiny little places along massive northern rivers with oolichan runs and orcas, with seals and grizzly bears. A few years ago most of the places were fly-in only. Now a paved highway reaches right up and inside them. Totem poles for corner posts on bridges that the Ministry of Transportation and Highways inspects.