A Kid Called Chatter

Chris Kelly

• Publisher: University of Calgary Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781773852645
• eBook ISBN: 9781773852669

The kid called Chatter has an affliction. Perhaps it is a gift. He attracts dying jackrabbits. Orphaned by parents whose names he never knew, he was worshiped and savaged in the institutions that raised him. Pushed out by his peers, trailed by the dying, the kid called Chatter fled.

In an isolated river valley on the western frontier, as the Great Depression drags on, the jackrabbits are undeterred and the kid called Chatter is trapped inside the choice to survive. Moonshiner Ruddy Lou offers him a future as a messianic faith healer, as long as he never asks questions and never exposes the con. Fierce Azalea, leader of children with no home, calls for him to be a hero in her failing orphan's war. Bound by loyalty and lies, stalked by a vicious shadow, the kid called Chatter must trace a path forward as death trails relentlessly behind.

A stunning work of Prairie magical realism, A Kid Called Chatter is a kaleidoscopic mingling of history, truth, folk tale, and fiction. A fable of belonging, it explores how humans use stories to confront what can't be explained, and the way communities come together to protect—or to destroy—the things that make them unique.

Chapter 1

A white-furred jackrabbit crawled under the fence boards. Taller than the kid, she crept forward with her odd jackrabbit gait, a pause then tilt, a pause then tilt, on limbs stiff as porcelain. When she was close to where he sat in the grass, her forelegs failed, and she collapsed between the kid’s feet. Little more than a toddler, the kid had no notion of death, but he noticed the shiver in his chest fade. For the rest of his life, whenever his thoughts strayed into hope, he would recall her muscles loosening under her skin. He would remember pushing his fingers into the bunched fur at the base of the hare’s neck, and the shadow that fell over him. He never forgot the gasp.

Later, when he was called an orphan, the kid came to suspect he was unnatural. Whenever that hateful notion arose in his mind, he returned to the shadow, the flurry of motion above him. The gasp, the single sound to which he ascribed the title Parent. He fostered the tone at night, stretching it into a full scene, a contested exchange of words in a nearby room. There was fear in the voice, he felt sure of that. On better nights, he didn’t even blame the voice. Fear is natural to life, he told himself. Other nights, however, when his inside voice grew hard and angry and coherent, he cornered himself with the inescapable question: How long would anyone keep a baby that attracts dying jackrabbits?

When he wearied of this line of inquiry, his thoughts turned to the only other aspect of the memory to which he was attached: the unmistakable feeling in his chest. The call-and-answer in his heart as the hare neared, overwhelming the kid as she came close enough to touch. It was this, perhaps, that encouraged him to reach out, to lay his hand upon her fur, this dislodged sensation that longed for completion. The kid pondered the shiver, placing it against the outwardness of the gasp, and learned something about himself, about the secret, the wordless nameless, which was as part of him as an organ. Before he accepted a name, he accepted this. He would sooner strip off his skin than rid himself of the shiver. It was his first instinct, his always instinct, to attribute the shiver to the approach of another dying jackrabbit.

Occasionally, the shiver in his heart preceded a different animal. Several species entered the city, unmistakably headed towards whichever orphanage housed the kid. Many, growing lost, succumbed on the way; he was always unsure if the corpses in the gutters were meant for him. Of the common species, the dried husks of squirrels and robins and crows, he found speculation pointless. When he came across a weasel, however, or a badger, or a tire-treaded falcon, he dared wonder. Was this proof? Those animals, saddled with their nameless plagues, or bearing wounds that cruelly permitted travel, only entered the city to die. So, the dead, discovered in the streets, became barbs of failure. He wasn’t sure if his presence comforted, but as he accepted his affliction, the kid felt glad for the animals that reached him.

Once, when he was eight, a black bear died in a lane a half-mile away from His Holy Rules, the last of the kid’s orphanages. One of the boys there, a gangly blond named Sandy Bixby, claimed to have seen the creature collapse, and mimicked the shake of its limbs and its laboured breath. Huff huff huff, Sandy said, and then paused. Huff huff huff.

The sound replaced the parental gasp in the kid’s nights for months. He pictured the bear through its last paroxysm, or speculated about what he would have done if the animal reached him. In this way, the jackrabbits became a balm for his fear. Whenever the kid felt an approaching animal, he was overcome with relief when it resolved itself into a pitiful, dying hare.

This is how the kid came to love the jackrabbits.

Chapter 2

When the kid came to All’s Well Boys Dormitory, an admitting nurse, who’d spent the afternoon at the grocer, named him Custard. He went unnoticed by most of the staff because of his habit of sleeping for fourteen-hour stretches. He was judged three years old. The custodian at the All’s Well, Selwyn de la Rosa, found the first jackrabbit three days later. A leveret, its head too big for its body. Thin with winter sickness, it collapsed near Selwyn’s woodshed.

Selwyn collected the corpse and neglected to burn it for two days. His head buzzed. He thought of his mother, Alexandria de la Rosa, the final in a line of Andalusian soothsayers. Her whole life, she’d considered herself a failure for not bearing daughters. Men merely muted the family talent. Selwyn never doubted his mother’s love, but grew up with the fact of his inferiority. He drew solace from being her favourite. She granted him the duty of cleaning her hutch and feeding the family of European hares she kept as familiars.

The leveret was the closest Selwyn had come to the wild animals that sheltered in the distant river valley. While he kept the leveret, Selwyn rarely left his room next to the boilers. From time to time, he reached out his hand and corrected the jackrabbit’s head on its paws. He burned the body in a private ceremony.

By the end of the month, Selwyn had cremated three more jackrabbits. He kept their skulls after speaking with a huge skeletal hare in a dream, believing this a message from his mother. His clumsy hands, however, collapsed brainpans and cheekbones. He cracked the jaw of another. After three weeks Selwyn destroyed the skulls and the shrine beside the water boiler, in a rage meant to wipe away his sacrilegious fumbling.

In the course of regular eavesdropping, Selwyn learned that Custard also unsettled the staff. One of the nurses discovered that Custard didn’t sleep for fourteen hours at a stretch, but instead lay awake, his eyes pressed closed. “Listening,” whispered the nurse loud enough for the room to hear. The kid wasn’t adopted once in his first or second year at All’s Well, despite his relative health and plainness. Couples meeting with him sensed the staff’s unease. Although five years of age, he didn’t speak, and gazed upon prospective parents until they felt the need to answer an unasked question.

Selwyn’s mind hummed. He watched the boy.

His suspicious were confirmed after an April sun shower the following year. That clear and dry morning, Selwyn removed a section of the gutters in order to replace rusted rivets. He worked through the lunch hour, and was close to finishing when a pocket of rain swept over the grounds. Selwyn hauled the repaired section up the ladder, desperate to preserve what remained of the gardenia patches. He slipped once, and almost lost his life. The rain passed as he fit the trough into the joists and set it into place. It was then, as he admired his work, that motion on the grounds caught his attention. A jackrabbit emerged from the birch near the mowing shed.

A sharp creak split the air, the shunt and slide of a metal door. Custard slipped out of All’s Well, his little head and little hand first in view. He crept across the courtyard, bent almost double. Avoiding, Selwyn realized with a flush of anger, the line of windows where his minders might have spotted him. Sure enough, the kid hunched his shoulders, and he scampered away from sightlines. Such intention, such flagrancy, incensed Selwyn, and he felt about to shout, when the kid’s eyes flicked upwards, from the gardenias to the ladder to Selwyn. Custard shivered, Selwyn saw it, a shiver and shock and his spine straightened in panic. The kid’s eyes went wide, and he beat a retreat into the orphanage. He’d gone far enough into the courtyard by that point, however. Selwyn saw his face. He knew it wasn’t a mistake. Custard sought the jackrabbit.

The very next week, Selwyn went on strike. Overturned books and crumpled pages soon littered the hallways; sheets of dust drifted through slanting sunbeams. The orphans adapted quickly, and invented games of avoidance in each upset hall, but the staff of All’s Well were in a constant state of stumble. A few days after this, a jackrabbit died in the field. Four days later, another corpse was found in the concrete courtyard.

Summoned by the most official tone of Missus Bliss, the director of All’s Well, Selwyn spoke of his mother and the hares of his childhood. He described how their fur smelled in mountain rain. He held up his hand and used the lines of his palm to show how big their paws grew. When Selwyn detailed the jackrabbits that died at All’s Well, and the three years of private ceremonies he’d held in the basement, Missus Bliss was surprised at the wetness of her cheeks. Selwyn shook his head, he stared forlornly at the mountainous horizon. “Why isn’t someone doing something about this?” he wondered. Missus Bliss, unsure the question was posed to her, put on her fieriest manner, and commanded Custard brought posthaste.

Custard came into the office with his eyes rooted on the webbed and curling cream tiles. He kept his hands clasped before him and didn’t even raise his head when Missus Bliss said his name. Not even when she repeated it. The kid clung to this quiet, even when the noise in Selwyn’s head grew, even in the face of Missus Bliss’ questions. Did he have a whistle that called the jackrabbits? Was he taught a trick when young? Missus Bliss couldn’t find evidence of his parentage; she seemed not, even, to know how the kid arrived at All’s Well, other than the year of admittance, 1928, which, she admitted, revealed nothing. And still the kid was quiet. As silent as the animals, whose open faces proclaimed so loudly, while their manners were rooted in a primordial wordlessness that, so it seemed to Selwyn, was dangerously contagious. The kid wouldn’t answer any of Missus Bliss’ concerns; each accusation drove him further into himself. He wouldn’t raise his eyes. Selwyn felt himself begin to shake. If only the kid could admit to his oddity. Even that would reinforce his humanity. But the kid kept quiet. As silent as suffering.

Selwyn only stopped shouting when Missus Bliss’s hand smacked flat on her desk, upsetting a yellow pencil holder and a cup stained with dry coffee. She warned Selwyn that she was not so crippled as the city. Thousands had lost their jobs after the market collapse, and she could easily find another custodian amidst those unwilling to join the bristling relief camps in the countryside. Selwyn made to respond, but the only sound that emerged was wordless, the inarticulate noise of a defeated animal.

Each of them, after the length of a moment, turned their attention to the kid called Custard. He kept his eyes on the cream tile. He stayed silent.

Chapter 3

The orphanage named Slatterly was famous for the wide grass field that separated it from the sloping prairie shelf. Mrs. Anders, the administrator, often bragged about her charges, pointing out fit and tanned boys as exemplars of her charity of nature. Indeed, the boys of Slatterly spent most of the spring, summer, and fall outside, although neither the field, nor administrative vigour, were the reason. Slatterly, built of stones from the nearby river, had functioned as an asylum for fifty years, until the building was deemed Cruel and Unusual. This was because of the constant moisture in the walls. No administrator, not even Mrs. Anders, offered to explain this, but a common myth amidst the orphans claimed the stones seeped centuries of absorbed river water. Dampness had plagued the lungs and joints, caused falls in the hallways, and drove the invalids mad with an unremitting applause of ceiling-stone rain. After the building stood unused for two decades, the city converted Slatterly into an orphanage to counter the growing numbers of abandoned children. A skeleton staff of janitors, cooks, and three nurses cycled through their On Wet duties in the main building. Mrs. Anders never mentioned the insistent moisture, and directed visitors to nearby buildings that offered a grand view of both the field and the prairie horizon.

The kid called Custard arrived early in the alphabetical rotation, and received the name Aaron when he arrived, though later he was renamed Clot by Macy Sullivan, a cafeteria worker recently hired. Macy named the kid Clot because of what she witnessed in Slatterly’s famous field.

The kid called Aaron was six, and faced the largest shift of routine in his life. He’d grown comfortable at All’s Well. The 05:45 bell hardly shook his heart, and he felt sure the eggs and oily mash at breakfast were on the cusp of nourishment. The boys of Slatterly, however, housed in a single dormitory, woke each other in the mornings, after the vigourous Mr. Hollis shook the oldest boy, Neils, at 05:30. The kid woke to an elbow in his stomach the first morning, in a bed surrounded by laughing boys. Slatterly’s breakfast was cold porridge, believed by Mr. Hollis to provide all necessary nutrition. They ate this every day, with a dollop of honey on Sundays, for which they assiduously thanked the Lord. The porridge chilled the kid’s tongue, and he ate little of it the first day. When Mr. Hollis noted this, he called it to the attention of the rest. For a week, the boys of Slatterly called the kid a Waster.

No one prayed at All’s Well either. The boys of Slatterly were subjected to Morning Service from 08:00 to 08:45 by Mrs. Anders, the headmistress, who made a point of telling others she was ordained whenever she wasn’t wearing her white and blue robes with a yellow sash. She wore her robes often enough, though, long after Morning Service each day. She wielded her religion like a cudgel of Redemption, and centred the faith of the boys on those she called the Saved, who, to the boys, were merely holy people once as dirty as the rest.

Despite the bounty in her book, Mrs. Anders avoided stories of martyrs. She knew the subject matter would interest the boys, but Mrs. Anders felt the notion of martyrdom, with its apotheosis of suffering, gave the wrong impression of faith. Her figures found enlightenment in their Lord whilst they lingered in the lost world, administering to the wretched. Every morning she evoked the wearied Saved, who toiled amidst filth and decay, and she could not be helped if, every once in a while, she gestured to herself. The boys noticed this, and, before they grew insensate to it, knew she saw them as the scum in which she waded, saintly.

Yet such wallowing figures made little sense to the boys. They saw no worth in being Saved, if you weren’t also spirited away. What reward was a view of the sky, they asked, if you remained in the mud? Not one of the boys wanted to be Saved; none imagined they could endure it. In fact, this was the first advice the kid received at Slatterly: “When Mrs. Anders asks if you want to be saved, say no.”

The kid fell in with one group of boys, then another. He found the different vocabularies confusing. Some camps called Hardheart Wynston a saint of athleticism, others, a dirty masochist. Most wanted to scrimmage like the bigger boys, and spent their time shadowing—falling, punchi...

Table of contents

• Half Title
• Frontispiece
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14
• Chapter 15
• Chapter 16
• Chapter 17
• Chapter 18
• Chapter 19
• Chapter 20
• Chapter 21
• Chapter 22
• Chapter 23
• Chapter 24
• Chapter 25
• Chapter 26
• Chapter 27
• Chapter 28
• Chapter 29
• Chapter 30
• Chapter 31
• Chapter 32
• Chapter 33
• Chapter 34
• Chapter 35
• Chapter 36
• Chapter 37
• Chapter 38
• Chapter 39
• Chapter 40
• Chapter 41
• Chapter 42
• Chapter 43
• Chapter 44
• Chapter 45
• Chapter 46
• Chapter 47
• Chapter 48
• Chapter 49
• Chapter 50
• Chapter 51
• Chapter 52
• Chapter 53
• Chapter 54
• Chapter 55
• Chapter 56
• Chapter 57
• Chapter 58
• Chapter 59
• Chapter 60
• Chapter 61
• Chapter 62
• Chapter 63
• Chapter 64
• Chapter 65
• Chapter 66
• Chapter 67
• Chapter 68
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Series Page