N.A.C.L. – “Swans” by Eva Crocker [short story]

N.A.C.L.  – Eva Crocker’s “Swans”
“Swans” was an honourable mention in Salty Ink’s 2010 short fiction contest

Click here to read about Salty Ink’s N.A.C.L literary sort-of journal

“Swans” by Eva Crocker

This is the way the house was: there was a toothbrush nestled between the toaster and the wall in the kitchen. The bristles that had begun to spray away from the rounded tip of the brush and were sticking out. It might have been there for months. Something was always moldy. Someone was always yelling down the stairs,

“Did you find what’s moldy?” 

And someone else was always yelling back,

“No, I threw out those dish cloths but it still smells.”

The insides of cupboard doors were covered in phone numbers written in ballpoint pen that sank into the wood when you wrote. You could read the inside of cupboard doors like Braille in that house.

Clive drove a van that dropped off lost luggage once the airport found it. He got the job through a relative who worked with Air Canada. Someone rich had donated four swans to Bowering Park. They arrived at dawn in two big cages made out of chicken wire and two by fours. Had the swans been standing they would have had to stoop their long necks but they were sleeping with their heads folded under one wing. The cages weren’t heavy but they were awkward. It took Clive and two luggage handlers, as well as some guy on a smoke break from Tim Horton’s to get the cages, one in front of the other, into the van.

People were trailing out of the airport dragging little suitcases on wheels behind them, they were all craning their necks to take in the swans. Clive secretly enjoyed moments where he appeared to be instrumental in making important things happen. He made a big show of thanking the luggage handlers and Tim Horton’s guy for helping him out. Clive looked at the four white mounds as he shut the door, he could see one eye showing just above a feather and it looked like a black Mardi Gras bead.

He had gone to see a band that night. He and Ann Stapleton had done shots at the bar. He was pretty sure he wasn’t still drunk. Everything had been sort of soft and fuzzy around the edges, he woke up with everything so sharp and clearly defined it made his head hurt. He’d only slept two or three hours. He and Anne Stapleton had started to have a heart to heart about her boyfriend moving to Manitoba. Pieces of the night had been coming back to him all the way to the airport. Anne had cried, he was pretty certain he hadn’t cried. The band had covered Blondie “ Dreaming”.  Anne Stapleton’s front teeth had scratched across his.

Every time he rounded a corner or slowed down the cages skidded across the floor of the van and smashed together. Every time this happened Clive cringed, he started cringing even as he approached corners and it made his face hurt. Clive was supposed to drop the swans off at the main entrance to the park. He was expecting to be met by park officials. When he arrived there was no one. A bunch of teenagers were leaning over a railing on the other side of the pond, they were throwing beer bottles into the pond. The bottles would soar over the pond in a wide arc and land with a smack against the slick surface. They weren’t wearing jackets, clinging loyally to the last days of summer. Clive paged his boss. He got out of the van and smoked. Lately Clive pretty much always felt like he was hung over. He drank too much coffee and didn’t sleep enough. There was a streetlight that shone right in his bedroom window.

The outside fold of your ear curls over like the edge of a damp sheet of paper. Lying in his bed, Anne had put her finger in that fold and traced all through the canals to the hole in the middle of his ear. Her finger felt thick and warm. Then she did the other one. Her finger moved through his ear like a person going down a water slide.

He was about to page the manager again when he saw a man in a windbreaker making his way over to the van. Clive jumped out.

“ Are you the park guy?”

“ Yeah, have you been here long? They said the swans were getting in around six.”

“ It’s twenty to seven now.”

“ Oh, is it? Sorry.”

Clive didn’t like how laid back the park guy was. Clive was nervous opening the doors to the van, but the swans hadn’t moved. The park guy opened a hatch on the cage and lifted the first swan out like a pile of folded laundry.  He leaned backwards and let the swan’s weight rest against his chest, his arms wrapped around the bottom of it in a hug. He moved towards to the edge of pond with his knees bent and laid the swan on the bank.

“ So are they drugged or something?”

“ Are you kidding? A swan would never let you hold it like that. No animal flies without being drugged.”

Clive hated the park guy now. What a fucking ostentatious jacket. After carrying the second swan to the mud by the edge of the pond the park guy threw the empty wire cage out of the van with one arm. It bounced once on the pavement walk way.

“ So when are they going to wake up?”

The park guy was squeezing hand sanitizer out of a little see-through bottle he’d had in the pocket of his windbreaker.

“I’d say early this afternoon.”

He was trying to remember if she had said the boyfriend left already or was getting ready to leave. Driving home from the park, Clive saw people wandering up from downtown, they were cold and huddling against each other. The shock of wind off the Atlantic after having been surrounded by warm sweating bodies. He’d left her in the bed. She smelled like stale beer and there was eye make up smudged on the pillow. An arm over her head, legs straightened out and a little bend in her hips, she looked like a violin bow. She was so white against the navy sheets. He pulled the blankets up over her before he left. He might climb back in with her when he got back and pretend that he never left.

Clive and his roommates rarely saw each other, they all worked forty hours a week. The mess was part of their religion. It would have been stupid to think they could control the mess. The mess controlled them. Sometimes when Clive got angry he would take on the kitchen. He would make all the surfaces bare and leave the dishes in great glistening, dripping, pile on the other side of the sink. They did not think he had taken care of the mess.  He had harnessed the mess, filled himself up with the mess. He truly understood the mess. In those moments he was preparing them all for the new mess to come.

When Clive got home he stood in the kitchen. He could feel his pulse buzzing in the back on his head. The last bit of pink sky was caught in the bend of the silver faucet. Clive made toast. He picked up a knife off the top of the stove, the pattern of the burner was left on it from when someone used it to do hot knives. He buttered the toast on the palm of his hand. The margarine had been missing its lid for two weeks. Suddenly the kitchen was filled with the sound of his phone ringing inside his pocket. Adrenaline rushed through his body and he was shocked to find the toast still held aloft in front of him. He had frozen.

“Clive?”

“Yeah.”

“When did you drop off those swans?”

“I was there quarter to six, the guy didn’t show up till seven.”

“Alright, good.”

“Why, did the guy say I was late?”

“No, somebody strangled the friggen’ swans.”

“Someone strangled them, why?”

“I don’t know. Why do people do anything? Vandalism.”

“Jesus.”

“I’m going to need you to do a run to the hotel in an hour or so.”

Clive couldn’t believe it. The worst part about it was that it seemed to make a joke out of the swan’s beautiful, long necks. He would wake Anne up and tell her. He would offer her the toast. He opened the bedroom door and saw the bed was empty. The dark blue sheets were crumpled like waves at the foot of the bed.

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