CVU1

Chapter 50: The Rescue

October 29 was the hard day of the fast, when concentrating on anything else seemed impossible.

I decided, in the haze of desert dryness in my throat, that I was trying too many things at once. I would fail at all of them, but I had a chance at some of them. And of course the one to give up was this painful fast. The blackberries topped a big male beaver when night came, hauled out of his lodge and sucked dry in seconds.

From the general miasma of knowledge that was getting harder and harder to source in my head, I supposed that I might get a stronger bite with sharper teeth, a better flutter-kick, and a stronger sense of territory. Indeed, I was strangely reluctant to leave this park despite my original timeline of when the hunters would track me here. After breaking my fast with the beaver I wanted to dig in somewhere, prepare traps, and drown or crush any fuckers who wanted me. All from such an innocent and iconic animal.

Before I might have had recriminations - it was a typical result whenever I failed to meet my expectations in exercise, in school or work. But now I handled the broken fast better, seeing it as an engineer deciding that the system needed more fuel. I had perhaps made one notch of personal improvement all on my own.

I left the Queen's park on the 30th before dawn, a day before my hard deadline, shambling down to Balsam Lake and the tiny provincial parks down there. All too small to keep out the noise, and too populated. A quick swim got me to Grand Island in the afternoon, where I waited for nightfall and soon the start to Halloween. I decided that November would begin with a sweep of those no longer wishing to live from Kawartha Lakes.

With only a small moment's of hesitation as I sat leaning against a strong red pine, I closed my eyes and launched the three rescuers. I was still getting Mr. Voorhees's machete sharpened, and the motors in the Cyborg's limbs needed to be a little quicker, but tomorrow would be their time.

Off they went, the caped crusader and agent seven and the spartan. I wondered if they'd do any better than the three spies sent from Boulder into the empire of Flagg.

***

Kawartha Lakes is a rural municipality, with slim pickings if you're looking to euthanize people.

On October 31 I passed through Bobcaygeon, population 3500. The small town's primary tutelary was tapping his toe as he leaned against the wall of the public house. He sang out to me when I tried to walk past him:

It was in Bobcaygeon,

I saw the constellations

Reveal themselves,

One star at a time

Around me, the streetlights went out, bringing up the stars in the Halloween sky, and I stopped to stare up. The tutelary finished his song, which was his song because he had written and sung it in life. He was the young ghost of Gord Downie, and I was perhaps one of 'the men they couldn't hang.'

Once he was done, and I waited for a confrontation or a warning under the flawless sky riddled with unnaturally bright stars, the spirit called out my mortal name, and said, "You come from my town!"

"Yes," I said, startled. "That's where I was born."

There was a waved hand in the darkness, and then all the streetlights returned, cancelling out the stars overhead. The singing spirit was gone. I decided to hurry along. Such demonstrations are usually all a tutelary needs.

But of course he wasn't singing for me.

***

After extracting the life of a lonely blind cow in a field south of Bobcaygeon, I hunkered down in the grass and focused inward.