A PACT | Fiction by Sacha Bissonnette

Reggie, 

Do you remember the pact we made? 

It was like 7 or 8 in the morning and I knew you hadn’t slept much cause neither had I, and you had been ranting again about Josie’s new guy which you always did when you had too many shots and you got all quiet and asked me if we would still be kicking it in 10 years and I said yes, even though I thought back to 10 years ago and none of those people were still around. You had just seen a bunch of blackbirds dropping from the sky and it deeply saddened you, even though you said it was beautiful.

You said it saddened you more than the death of your grandpa, even though he was a good man that you never really knew well. You just remembered his pipe and liver spots. And you asked me if sometimes my brain ever felt like it was not my own, like it belonged to someone else. And I paused. And then I asked you if you were thinking about it again. I could never say the words because scary words like that could become more than just that. They could quickly crawl like gangrene or morph into a larger concept. And you said nahhhh but the way you held the word wasn’t so convincing. 

So it was simple, I thought of a pact and maybe I should have thought of something else or something more than a pact because what’s a pact between two fucking broken people right? The pact was to just call. To remember to call. To remember each other. If 6 months went by, without contact, one of us had to call the other. That’s it, like I said, simple. 

And you started calling me from everywhere and I was so happy to ask where you were calling from. First it was Western Canada, Alberta, I think. You said you were tree planting and that it was good and honest work and I believed you but it sounded like those words belonged to someone else. You told me that sometimes after especially grueling days you could pass out almost standing up, but on the easier ones, one of the crew would have a guitar and another could kinda sing and you’d get some Neil Young or Sweet Caroline on repeat and that would be just fine. You told me about huge bears and the dark sky preserve where you could almost taste the milky way. 

Five months later you called from France. I had to look it up cause I had never heard of Côte d’Azur. You were speaking so fast and were so excited about a girl you had met. You said there was something about the Mediterranean water that made her different, all wild and free. And you said you were in love. I never thought I’d hear you say that. A few simple words, but words I worried this world would rob you of. I knew you were capable of giving love. But I thought receiving it might be out of reach for you, for people like you. But maybe that’s on me. Maybe I need a greater understanding of all this.

And you did a rare thing. You asked me how I was, and I was usually so busy concerned about you that I had to stop and think. How was I? Was I good? Happy? Actualised? Settled? True? It had been a while since I self-talked, looked inwards. And honestly it sent me for a little spin. 

Next was your 35th birthday. It took me a while to track you down but when I finally did you were down in Mexico in a small town near the American border. We used to watch those old Westerns so I pictured you in a hat, on a horse riding off over copper hills into an open clear sky with a smile on your face and a cold beer in your hand, like maybe a 70s retro cigarette ad or something. I wondered how you could travel with little to no money but you had always been resourceful to say the least. I asked about your love and you said it burned bright and fast and that the Azur water did make the French girls different.

The night we first met you were trying to light a cigarette backwards. I fixed it for you. You nodded slowly and smiled with those green eyes. Sharp, bright, almost serpentine green eyes. You had a bit of blood on your hands and stumbled some. Seconds later a girl in a purple dress came out of the bar and kissed you where your cheek meets your mouth and thanked you. It was sincere and soft. Even though now your cigarette had blood on it too. I figured you punched someone out for her. You walked away into the night waving goodbye with that broken hand. 

On the bus home, I thought about how much I wanted to be just like you. 

Your sister called. I hadn’t realized a whole year had gone by where we hadn’t talked. That was on me. Before she even spoke I wondered where you were when you did it. The thing we could never really talk about. She spoke with some closure in her voice, as if she knew this day was coming but not when, or how. The ‘how of it’ was simple. Like your life, it too was out of some epic beautiful poem or movie where you went to the lake after a feast and a party night at the cottage. I wasn’t there, but god how I wish I had been, if only just to see the blackbirds descend on you and carry you off into the sky. And maybe while I watched them caress and lift your body up I’d have asked myself over and over. While you were out there living and dying. What was I doing?

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