IV. Ugly fat ants
"If you pierced my brain open, oil would come out, some people said. Thick and rancid, with ugly fat ants dying in it."
Previous chapter recap —
Before her departure, Hedy gifts the managers a collection of detailed topographic atlases that helped her map their route to the sanctuary in British Columbia. J.R. and Boggs attempt to use this newfound talent to rebrand Hedy to Merle, the sanctuary’s manager, as a potential cartographer for his operation.
Companion Playlist —
Chapter IV. Ugly fat ants
“Nasty stomach bug”, they said. Had to close the auto shop for at least a couple days, had to postpone everything. Ian, the Little Prince lookalike, called all the clients to spin that yarn while Wayne drove to Winnipeg and back the day before to buy as many trail cams as he could in different hunting shops, the ones you can set up on trees and they snap pictures or capture videos when they detect movement. He zips a heavy duffel bag with twelve of them inside and drops it in the back of his pickup truck parked in their shop, just where J.R’s was when Tad came. “How long?”
His younger brother sits in the driver seat, setting up a GPS on his phone set up on the car phone holder. “Shy of three hours to Route 168, but the Black Mare Lake that Tad talked about for their first camp isn’t listed. There’s a few unnamed lakes, small ones.”
Wayne leans on the driver’s door. Studies the map his brother navigates, the many unnamed ponds and lakes, barely any dirt roads around them. Seems more isolated than he thought. He winces and chews the inside of his cheeks.
Ian spots that and takes his chance. “I say it’s sketchy. We’d have to drive around trying to find them. Stay multiple days, maybe. Set up trail cams all over this area hoping they’d pass in front of one so we would know where exactly they camp. Who knows if other people will be around and see us, if they’d trigger the trail cams, get our license plate, who knows. And we don’t even know what tranq this guy’s carrying, we don’t even know if it’s xylazine. Don’t even know what you could make out of it.”
And just when Ian thought he had his brother, planted that seed that would make him give it all up, Wayne taps the hood of the pickup, “Whatever he’s carrying, there’s always gonna be a buyer. C’mon.”
If that little blinking orange light was a person, Boggs would be getting pretty close to smashing their teeth in with a hammer. He sits on the driver seat of the pickup, stationary, with Hazel next to him, the two old-timers battling to set up what J.R. said was called a dash-cam and had to be up and running for insurance purposes. It’s a little GoPro-like camera just under the rearview mirror, filming everything when the truck’s driving.
Boggs turns it in his hands, looks for a secret button or lever or whatever would stop the light from blinking. “S’posed to be a red light you said?”
“Green, green light. Red is when it’s recording” Hazel says, flipping through the handkerchief-sized manual.
“Well, I got orange.”
“Orange is… How the heck did you get orange?”
“Blinking orange.”
“Orange… Oh you need an SD card, it says here. SD card.”
They both search on the seats, no real clue what they’re after.
J.R.’s voice comes from outside, “Brakes, Boggs, brakes!” Boggs obeys and smashes his boots on the brakes, screaming out the window, “Why the fuck d’you put the two old ones on this SD card thing eh?!”
J.R. lies down on the gravel between the pickup truck and the trailer, right under the new hitch ball, to connect the brake wires and secure the breakaway cable. It’s a cool evening, with gusts getting a little more aggressive, and fast-moving clouds, a tease of the Colorado Low they’ll try to dodge in the morning. There’s a shy fire in a barrel not too far, and the three other girls around the trailer, loading it with a sense of pleasant urgency. And even though J.R. is cursing these wires and old man Boggs barks at him, he knows it’s probably the most cohesive moment they had as a team so far.
“Again, again, Boggs, the brakes! Hedy, talk to me!”
Hedy stands at the back of the 18-foot-long trailer and watches the rear lights. “We have just the left one sir, just the left one is red!”
J.R. adjusts the wires, pushes one a little deeper in its socket.
Boggs pecks on his sunflower seeds, forces himself to soften his tone. “J.R., what’s an SD card?”
“Just brake one more time, Boggs, again. Hedy, do we have the right one?”
“I ain’t braking till you tell me what an SD card is.”
“Goddamn motherfucking piece of– It’s a small flat rectangular piece of plastic that you insert in the little camera. It’s where the footage is stored.”
And J.R. waits. Wipes his face with his greasy hands. Twists his neck to catch sight of Hedy watching the rear lights like it’s the best cartoon on TV, and her face lights up all red now, lit by both rear lights. “Yay, yay, both now!”
“Fuck yeah.” J.R. crawls out and leans on the pickup driver’s door. Boggs takes the lead before his nephew can say anything, “It’s green now, look. See?”
“Green’s good?”
Hazel still has her nose in the tiny manual. “You want it recording, so red. It starts recording when the engine turns on.”
Boggs kills the engine, starts it again. Sure enough, his favorite little light turns red and he taps J.R.’s arm like you pet a dog when she’s been a good girl, “See? Like kicking a turtle in a tunnel or whatever they say.”
“Shooting a fish in a barrel.” J.R. winks at him and focuses on Oneida maneuvering the bobcat toward the trailer, a massive hay bale on its front fork. She’s swift and agile, and drops the bale nicely inside before going back out in reverse, leaving the floor to Jean who’s carrying some canvas tents.
The trailer is halfway full with the bale in one corner, saddles and duffel bags in the other. Jean jigsaws the tent lengthwise, between the bales and these boxes that are neatly aligned against the wall. There’s about ten of them and Jean pauses a moment to take a closer look. “Fragile” tape on all of them. She glimpses inside a box, spots clear transparent liquid in vials between protective pads. “XylaMed”, it says on the bottles. There’s about fifty of them. And she lets out a “holy shit” whistle before giving Oneida a helping hand with some tent poles.
It’s a nice ballet, and J.R. nods to himself, proud of what they’re doing here, and he offers his hands to Hedy just behind him now for a big nice high-five and even though she doesn’t know how to do one, it still counts as a bonding moment.
“You get a couple hours of sleep now Hedy, alright?”
“Sleep, yes. So I… Do I– I still go with you?”
“The moment east is turning pink, we’re on the road. All of us.”
“Mister Merle said so, the mister from the sanctuary?”
“Didn’t pick up, I’ll try again tomorrow. You go get some sleep now, we’ll wrap up and finish packing. Go now, go.”
And Hedy scampers to her little trailer near the treeline over there like a kid on Christmas.
A deer tiptoes for breakfast at the edge of a birch forest. Is a little confused by the thin layer of ice on a pond that blocks his water access. Stops mid-movement and raises its head, spots some horses over there in the distance. Four of them, carrying the girls and Boggs, making their way in the beige Canadian prairies.
Boggs leads on his mustang, carrying Hedy right behind him wrapped up in blankets, as comfy as a kitten in a sock drawer. She holds a Manitoba map, eyes wide open like a newborn. Turns to watch Oneida, Hazel and Jean on their respective mustangs. They’re all soaking in the dichotomy of this fall morning, with skies black as crude oil in the East, but in the West, where they’re headed, it’s nothing but pink and sugar. None of them speaks, none of them wants to disturb anything. Everything feels so delicate. A sense of half-forgotten quietude in all of them, like the most gentle rebirth.
The pickup has the long straight road to itself, going West, toward those early morning washed-pink hues ahead, running away from these ugly hail-filled clouds behind. It carries the 18-foot trailer, heavy and full, with Wrench inside, in a special spot for himself, some hay on the ground, his eyes big and panicky as always.
J.R. has to keep his hands steady on the steering wheels so the wind gusts don’t derail him. He’s got Merle on the phone, on speakers, “It’s not that she can’t ride, she can. But Wrench is a tough one to crack, that’s all.”
“So she can ride?”
“It’s… Yeah. Sure.”
“J.R., just be straight with–”
“–We think she can, she told us she grew up on a ranch in Scotland.”
“In Scotland? Till what age?”
“It’s like biking, you don’t forget.”
“Until what age, J.R.?”
“Look. Hedy’s got that flame in her, and she’s good with maps, Merle. It’s like Rain Man, Boggs and I never saw that before. She doesn’t shy away from any task, she never gives up, she... She’s a horse with two hearts, man.”
Just the static for a moment. “Talk to me, Merle.”
“I just don’t get it. You guys lost a colt because he got trapped in a gate and broke his leg. The next day you plan on kicking Hedy out because she can’t ride and you also said she was a liability, which makes me say that colt never got caught in a gate in the first place: it’s all on Hedy. And now you call me back to say she can read maps?”
“She’s really good at it.”
“Uh.”
“Listen. Look. She dips her pickles in Nutella and says she likes the taste of it, she’s that kind of a cutie. You’ll fall for her, trust me. She needs this program, Merle.”
“I’m just sorry ‘cause I know you’re the one who’ll have to crack the news, but we won’t lose time training someone riding horses. We need the best riders, guys who know horses. Not the guys who want it the most. Or girls. She won’t fit, J.R.. And I was born here, I don’t need Rain Woman who’s good with maps.”
“I’ll change your mind.”
“We agreed on two ex-cons six months ago, it became four, including a fool or whatever they call it, and she can’t ride. I get my subsidies even if I only take in three ex-cons, so that’s where I’m at, alright? That’s not a discussion. Call me back when you’re in Saskatchewan.”
“I’ll change your mind, man, we’re going to keep working on the riding and I’ll send you videos, OK? We’ll keep working on it and she’ll fit, no doubt about this. Do me a solid, Merle, give it a shot. She needs this.”
“If she can’t ride when she sets foot here, she’s driving back home with you. And if she can ride but I consider her a liability, she’s off too. I won’t be too sentimental, it’s a business, there’s money and people involved, I can’t behave like a charity. That’s all I’m saying.”
“I’ll change your mind, you’ll–”
But Merle hangs up and leaves J.R. with just the hum of his engine and the gusts outside.
Boggs showed the girls how to scrape some birch bark with a knife until you get a sort of powder, and how to light it on fire with a ferro rod, just one spark being enough if done right, and then you feed your newborn fire with the actual bark, twigs, and then sticks and “Voila!” he said, and now this fire is heating a pot of maple beans for breakfast on a birch trail.
Hazel and Oneida crouch near the fire, Hedy just a bit behind trying to fix a hole in her blanket. Boggs stands beside Jean who stirs the beans with a newfound vigor, inhabited by her own tale. “They used to control with negative power, so saying ‘you can’t’, everything was about restriction and limitation of movements and thoughts, y’know. ‘Stay here and shut up.’ Well now it’s the reverse in some sense, it’s ‘positive power’, everywhere you go, it’s ‘you can be whatever you set your mind on, sky’s the fucking limit.’ They keep using words like discipline and resilience, y’know. You become your own little personal project, you brand yourself, and you’re also the arbiter of your standard, the standard of who you decide to be. So it’s an achievement society, y’know. You become, like, obsessed by endlessly maximizing your abilities and when you spend time not doing that, you feel bad. ‘Cause you’re also the one keeping tabs on you, if you’re doing the best you can, and if you’re meeting the standard you set for yourself, and so of course it leads to anxiety and depression. You become your own master and slave. That choice of becoming whoever you want to be, to become your own authentic person, y’know, it looks sexy on paper but comes at a price.”
Hazel takes that in, epiphany-like. “Freedom becomes a burden.”
“Beans ready though.” Boggs focuses on Jean’s vigor, stirring these beans so hard they turn into a morphless puree. It chagrins him.
Jean continues, deaf, “And as ex-cons, y’know, it’s even worse, we spent years with negative power—so prohibition and limitation of our actions—and now we’re out in this–”
“Just fucking stop stirring ‘em.”
“–positive power world where we’re absolute misfits because we don’t know how to do it.”
Jean gives Boggs a tin cup of bean puree. Oneida hands Hedy hers, and asks, “Is it something you think about, Hedy?”
All eyes on her, and she’s a bit ill at ease, with an anemic smile. “I, uh... I reckon it applies to other people, this thing where you can become whoever you want to be. Most of the time, I’m just trying my best to go through the day and not draw attention to myself too much, yes, not too much, so…”
She doesn’t know how to handle the silence and continues, “If you pierced my brain open, oil would come out, some people said. Thick and rancid, with ugly fat ants dying in it, going any which way, dislocated and tangled, they said. Making the sound of train wheels stopping on steel tracks, shrill and stabbing, they said. So… I prefer when someone tells me what to do, ‘cause... ‘Cause I just don’t think I can be my own person.”
And everyone meekly looks away like they just witnessed something they weren’t supposed to.
Chapter V
Insightful. I thoroughly enjoyed this chapter.