Light Lifting by Alexander Macleod Page A

just ourselves? This is it now. Can’t belong to two sets of people at the same time.
    You know we have to go.
    She shakes her head.
    Tell me you know it’s going to suck. Tell me you know it’s going to suck. Tell me you understand that.
    It’s going to suck. I’m sorry.
    Okay then. Thank you. Settled. I just need to know that you know.
    BAD PACKING. The folding playpen. Extra blankets. Cooler for breast milk. All the baby’s gear. Three suitcases. Shovel the car out of its spot. We are weighed down and riding low.
    The baby throws up after only fifteen minutes. Stuck on the Decarie with no way off. Bumper to bumper. The smell. Hot milk vomit soaking through the car seat. Blowing snow. Whiteout conditions. Everyone trying to keep their tires inside the two black lines. Ten hours of driving on a good day. Need to make time in the daylight. Everything harder when it gets dark.
    A brutal diarrhea in Belleville. Green splashing over the sides of a fold-down change table in the guy’s bathroom of the rest stop. Liquid shit blasts out of her diaper, runs all the way up her back to the neck. Poop in her hair. Lines of men waiting for the urinals, watching me.
    Got your hands full there, buddy.
    An entire outfit. White overalls and a long-sleeved shirt. Noah’s Ark. Osh Kosh b’Gosh. It all snaps open at the crotch. Probably worth fifty dollars in the store, but it can’t be saved. Even the socks. I go through my entire supply of wipes. Grit my teeth. Roll the whole mess into a ball and drive it into the garbage. Bring the baby back out in just her diaper and an undershirt. Pink boots pinched between my fingers. She is tucked inside my coat. Feel her wriggling in tight. Marsupial. Burrowing down against the cold.
    WHAT HAPPENED? Where are her clothes?
    Full-scale blowout. Had to ditch them. Completely saturated. No way to save that outfit.
    But they’re brand new.
    Believe me: they’re lost. Those are clothes she used to have.
    Go back.
    I threw them away. They’re in the garbage.
    They’re a present. My mother gave those to us. We’ll clean them up. Go back.
    No. Come on.
    I’m going then.
    The men’s john? They’re lined up twenty deep in there.
    If you won’t go, I’m going to go.
    PULL BACK on the stainless steel chute. Dig through the paper towels. Find the ball. Water running through the tiny denim legs. Green circling down the drain. Stuff the filth into a shopping bag. New layer of stench for the car.
    We squirt cherry-flavoured Tylenol into her mouth with an eyedropper. Fresh pyjamas, fresh blankets. The heater kicks in. Engine hits its regular vibration. The baby falls into a deep, drug-induced car sleep.

    Partial list of substances people have put on their heads to kill lice: rendered dog fat, glasses of human spit, mercury, arsenic, cedar oil, garlic paste and oregano, Ching-Hao, pyrethrum, ground poppies, borax, Vaseline, honey, frankincense, vinegar, bull semen, salt and pepper, mustard, mayonnaise, wormwood, cat urine, beet juice, tobacco, lard, kerosene, gasoline, turpentine, eucalyptus, snake venom.

    Our son in the back seat. He has a booster, sits in the middle, between the girls. We wait in line at the drive-thru.
    I ask the speaker: What does a Happy Meal come with?
    Pay at the first window. At the second, a lady hands us bags of food, a tray of drinks.
    He holds up his hands and says, I am free, right? I am free and I live in Dark Myth.
    Not paying attention.
    Yes, I say. That’s right. You’re free. That’s nice.
    But his big sister shakes her head.
    Not free, she says. Look at him, you big duh head.
    I turn around. He is trying to make his thumb touch his pinky finger.
    Not free, she says. He means three.
    He is three. He is three and he lives in Dartmouth.
    Oh, I say. Okay. I get that. Yes. Three and Dartmouth. That, too.

    Line from Zinsser: “The louse – like man – has, for one reason or another,