the opening sky by joan thomas1

8/11/2019 The Opening Sky by Joan Thomas1

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The Opening Sky


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Also by Joan Thomas

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OpeningSky

Joan Thomas

McCLELLAND & STEWART


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Copyright 2014by Joan Thomas

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or

otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the

publisher or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from

the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency is an infringement of the copyright law.

CIP DATA IS AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST

isbn: 978-0-7710-8392-1

ebook isbn: 978-0-7710-8393-8

The epigraph is from the poem River Edge: from the collection Torch River.

Elizabeth Philips 2007. Used by permission of Brick Books.

Typeset in Fairfield

Printed and bound in the United States of America

McClelland & Stewart,

a division of Random House of Canada Limited,

a Penguin Random House Company

www.randomhouse.ca

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Nothing is more beautiful

than anything else: this is how April warns us

and breaks us down.

Elizabeth Philips,River Edge:


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FOUR CHILDREN WERE LOST THAT NIGHT, THATS

what they thought at first. And at first this reassured them

how could anything terrible happen to fourkids at once?

Then an open Jeep drove into the clearing with two little boys

in the back, the white-blond brothers from Wisconsin. Someone

from a nearby cottage had picked them up on the highway. Their

mother, a pretty woman with platinum hair cut as short as theirs,

ran across the clearing and fell on them, hugging them, cuffing at

them (You brats, you stupid little jerk-offs, she cried), and their

father, who had spent the afternoon drinking cider and sleeping

in a hammock tied between two trees, strode around the Jeep toshake the drivers hand.

So then it was just Sylvie missing, and the dark-haired boy with

the sick mother, Liam.

From where she crouched at a corner of the woodpile, Sylvie

could hear most of what they said. She was thirsty, and light-

headed from hunger, and her feet were cold and hurting. Shed run

barefoot up from the lake, avoiding the paths where the adults hur-ried back and forth, calling the kids names. The tops of the trees


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were bright, catching the last of the light, but darkness had settled

onto the forest floor. The nameless trees were wide enough to hide

her, and in the dusk shed scrambled from one to the next, stiflingher yelps of pain when the twigs and roots hiding under the leafy

carpet bit at her. Not a child, she was not a child. She was a dark

forest creature, lost by her own hand.

At the edge of the clearing, she squatted in fragrant shreds of

bark. Above her the forest canopy opened to a dome of brilliant

evening sky; a minuscule jet from a different world lifted silently

into it. She saw a police car roll up the lane, and then they were allaround it, the blond boys and their parents, the driver of the Jeep,

the filmmaker, the babysitter, and Sylvies mom. The faun was led

forward. She was the fifth child, the one kid who had not been

lost. Two policemen in Smokey the Bear hats (sheriffs, they were

sheriffs) bent over her. She was wearing jeans now, and her hair

had been taken out of its elastics and straggled down her back. She

was talking now too, though Sylvie couldnt make out what she was

saying for her crying.

Then Sylvie heard her own name ring out. She shifted on her

heels and pressed her face to a gap between the logs. Her mother

was standing with her back to the woodpile. Eleven, she said to

the officers. Quite tall for her age. Her hairs about to here, sort of

reddish blond. Shes wearing a bathing suit.No, sobbed the faun, shaking her head.

No, said the mother of the blond boys. Shes not wearing the

swimsuit.

So Liz tossed her head and began to describe Sylvies clothes

in detail: her jeans, her sandals, her glittery belt, her white T-shirt

with the turtle design.

Yellow, interrupted the faun. Its yellow.White, yellow, Liz cried. I doubt youll mistake her either way.


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Did you think of searching your own vehicles? asked one of

the sheriffs. Everyone started eagerly across the clearing in the

direction of the cars.In her yellow T-shirt Sylvie sprang from her crouch and

slipped towards the house. There was a side door that opened to

the kitchen. The house was quiet and full of warm light. She ran

quickly up the stairs, heading for the front bedroom and a man

was standing there. She gave a little prance of fear. But no, it wasnt

a man at all, it was a shirt hanging on the back of the closet door.

She was alone, in the room with the braid rug and the iron bed andthe big wooden desk, where a family photo stood in its cardboard

frame, and the boy with the falconers sleeve gazed out at her with

neutral brown eyes.

She went to the desk and opened the drawer. In a tray of pens

and paperclips lay a retractable knife, the sort of blade people use

to cut open a cardboard box or hijack a plane. She fished it out and

slid back its casing. The point of the blade bit boldly into the photo-

graph, slicing through it and through the cardboard backing.More,

the blade ordered, deeper, so when she was done excising the boy

from his family, she went to the bedside table and picked up the

book she had looked through earlier, a beautiful gilt-edged book.

First she slashed its cover with jagged lines, and then she turned to

the colour plates inside and took the blade to them. It was a furiousrelief, this slashing and gouging; it felt natural, like a language she

used to speak when she was little.

When shed had enough, she slipped the picture of the boy into

the pocket of her jeans and went to the window. Night had fully

fallen. She could hear the squawk and stutter of police radios. A

revolving light revealed and then erased the trees at the edge of the

forest. Car doors slammed and strangers stepped into the clearing;they sprang up in brilliant detail and vanished. The faun, wearing


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a jean jacket now, stood with the parents of the blond boys. The

father reached for her, and in spite of her size (she was almost as

tall as Sylvie), he picked her up. She clung to him, drooping overhim. Then headlights caught Sylvies mother. Alone, perched on

the edge of the picnic table, her white capris gleaming. Standing

in a fold of the dust-smelling curtain, Sylvie pressed her forehead

against the cold glass and peered down, through hot tears willing

her mother to turn and look up.


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the opening sky by joan thomas1

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