The Program - Softcover

Known for his provocative fiction and penetrating cultural criticism, Hal Niedzviecki is an acclaimed author, and the founder and current fiction editor of Broken Pencil, the magazine of zine culture and the independent arts. A National Magazine Award–winner, he is a contributor of short stories and essays to many periodicals in Canada and the United States. The Program is his third novel.
From the Hardcover edition.

Part 1: Morphology

Danny crams potato chips into his mouth.

Hey, Maury says. Give me some of those.

Danny turns the bag upside down, shakes it into the grass. Powdered bits drift out, empty crumbs. The boy crunches, swallows, smiles. All gone.

You little . . . Maury says. He ruffles his son’s hair. I didn’t even get any.

Danny smiles again, shows teeth. All gone, he says. All gone. Ha.

Sure, rub it in, Maury says. The boy is ten but sometimes talks, Maury can’t stop himself from thinking, like he’s five.

Otherwise, the moment is perfect — commercially vibrant, Maury’s marketing colleagues might say. Not that they would be caught dead in the forest. The night all around. Maury keeps eyeing the woods. There’s nothing out there, he tells himself. And hey, here’s something else to keep in mind: there’s nothing wrong with his son. He’s trying to keep that in mind. Haven’t the experts examined? Weren’t tests run? Maury pictures a test — an examination — jogging down the halls of a hospital, doctors and experts chasing after, white coats fluttering, stethoscopes bobbing. Ha ha. All gone. It’s not funny. If they don’t know, who knows? They can sink into his son, go past the point where Maury gets stuck: Parental longing. Need. Desperation. Did it happen, or didn’t it happen? My brother. One day, Maury thinks, he’ll pay for what he did.

What did he do?

Danny fidgets, floats a hand across his face. All gone, he says in a simpering voice.

Yeah, I know, Maury says. I know.

Danny stares at the fire. Makes to throw the bag into flames, looks to his father.

Okay, Maury sighs. We shouldn’t, but just this once. Bad for the environment. The ozone.

Danny flicks his wrist. The chip bag dances, settles, shrinks from green to purple, flames creeping over it.

Cool, Danny says. He leans his head against his father’s shoulder.

Maury puts an arm around him, is relieved about something out of proportion to what just did or did not occur. He swallows the lump in his throat, blinks. Through the woods, on the other side of the lake, wolves howl. Maury thinks: Kodak moment. Time for a Nescafé. You deserve a break today.

But it’s not like that at all; the sound is instant and collective, the opposite of some force-fed jingle. Necessary. Like air.

Daddy?

Just the wolves, Maury says. He holds his son tighter. Glances, again, at the furtive night concealed in the looming woods. Just the wolves, he says again. They don’t mean any harm.

Wolves are cool, Danny says.
Danny used to be afraid of the dark. Ha! What a baby. Afraid of the dark! He’s ten now. He’s not afraid of anything. He can stay up all night. Even alone — I’m not — alone in the woods. Sure, could— Wolves out there. Won’t hurt me. Could—

Danny wants to be alone. He wants the dark, the woods. That’s what he’s discovered. A revelation, though he doesn’t know the word. Have fun, his mother said. Have fun with your father. She said it like she didn’t really believe it. Danny picks up on things like that: back-of-the-throat tremors and vibrato inflections; the way his parents say things they don’t mean as if they think they can make a lie true by giving it words.

Danny doesn’t trust words. His father heaves himself to his feet, throws a handful of branches complete with rusting pine needles on top of the dwindling blaze.

Woosh. The heat peaks, flames curling toward Danny.

Careful, Maury says. Step back.

Danny extends his palms. Feels his skin singe. Words are what people say. Have fun with your father. Careful. Step back. Danny prefers silence. Prefers feeling.

Pain on flesh.

—hot—oww! Too close—

Things happen. What do words do? They don’t happen.

Just as quickly, the flames recede.

Danny sits down again. The dirt under him. Cold. His arms burning. His face damp. His eyelids heavy. He’ll sleep soon. Won’t be able to stop himself.
Maury’s body jammed deep into a sleeping bag. Sunlight through the roof of the tent. He’s in a tent. In a tent in a forest with his son. It’s so simple. But there are complications. The wind blowing past places you’ll never go. There are factors, possibilities. Things that could have been different. Things that might not have changed. What he did. What he knows he did. Knowledge is elusive, slippery. That’s what makes us civilized, Maury thinks. That’s what makes us human. He doesn’t fight with his wife. There’s nothing wrong with his son. What happened might not have happened. That can’t ever be taken away.

Where is he now, Maury wonders. My brother.

Danny squirrels out of his bag. I’m hungry, he says.

He’s hungry. Maury’s got his hands behind his head. He’s staring up at the belled dome of the tent. It’s morning — so what? The boy’s hungry.

Breakfast, Danny explains. He licks his little lips like a calf. Daaaad . . . I’m hungry.

Maury blinks. Sits up. He’s got a hard-on, has to piss.

So how about a good morning? he says.

Hungry.

So okay. Get some water from the lake in the pot. Wait — put something on before you go out. A sweatshirt or something. It’s chilly in the morning. We’ll have oatmeal. The kind you like. Those little packages with the chunks of fake maple syrup in them. You know, the fat guy on the rocking chair. You love that shit, right?

Danny grins. Don’t say shit, Dad. Slips out of the tent. Mitch Moose pyjama bottoms. No top. Tan back. Green forest. Smooth water.

I said put on a shirt or something. Maury crosses his arms under his head, wishes he had someone to tell him what to do, where to go. When to piss.
They hike through the woods, follow the twisting path up the hill to the ranger station. It takes an hour. Longer with Danny. He stops. Looks at a toad.

C’mon, Maury says, though he’s secretly glad of the boy’s interest, wants to have clever things to tell his son: the names of the trees and fungi; the puzzle fit of interlocking lives in this particular swath of semi-wilderness; what lives and what doesn’t get to live; what can be seen without being seen.

Maury wrote a book once. Now he’s lost in the woods. Not really. It’s a marked trail. Still. Maury keeps glancing behind him, feels like someone else is coming down the path. There’s no one there. Eyes on him. In between the dark boughs of the trees. What kinds of trees? He has no idea. Maury has to resist the urge to make things up, doesn’t want the boy to find out one day, think his dad was a liar. One day he’ll write another book. In the meantime he’s no worse off than anybody else. He has responsibilities, pays experts when needed. If, god forbid, they should be needed. You can be an expert in certain things, Maury figures, it’s not impossible, it’s not like there can’t be experts. There are experts in forests, experts in lakes, experts in propane camp stoves. Maury’s an expert himself. Only, he wonders what he really knows. He used to think he could make anyone buy anything. Used to? I can still—

Danny stoops, picks up a grey bone. Shows it to Maury.

Some kind of wing, Maury suggests. Hawk, or falcon, maybe?

It looks like a drumstick — but he doesn’t tell the boy that. What’s the point in telling him that? Sure, it’s a bird bone. Chicken. Somebody’s picnic. Danny picks up a rusted pop can. Coke, Maury says. It’s quiet in the forest. Danny turns the bone in his fingers. Most of the sounds we can’t hear, Maury thinks. Like ordering off the English menu in a Chinese restaurant.

Danny runs ahead, skips in and out of his untied running shoes. Maury doesn’t notice. The boy could fall, trip, graze a knee, skin an eyebrow. Maury sometimes wants to argue with his wife. Danny’s not as fragile as he looks. They walk. That feeling again. Like he’s the girl in the horror movie, watched through binoculars, stalked for some deviously nonsensical reason. Maury knows he’s just being paranoid. Woods! There’s just too much in them! Not much of a slogan. Seriously, though. They’re always twitching and creeping. Maury doesn’t like to think about what may or not be in the woods. Details annoy him. He prefers to take the long view, to see things expansive and hazy like the sky touching the crest of the path, forest into a layer of melting cloud, the ends of things looking a lot like beginnings.
From the Hardcover edition.