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plastic bags down by the porch steps at the front of the house, and the smell of barbecued chicken wafted up from one of them. He was surprised his uncle wasn’t more outlandish, that he wasn’t wearing a tiger-skin loincloth like a circus performer, brandishing a whip in one massive hand and holding a stool in the other. He’d been a daredevil, after all. But his Uncle Roger turned out to be an ordinary man. No – he wasn’t just ordinary. He was vulnerable. It was as if the wind could knock him down.
    Hi, said Damian, holding out his hand as his uncle approached the steps. I’m Damian.
    Hello, Damian.
    His uncle tapped the cane against the bottom step. Damian dropped his hand, feeling stupid about having heldit out to a blind man, and watched his uncle work his way to the top step, where he turned, carefully, and sat down in one of the chairs.
    You met Elvis?
    Yes, said Damian, picking up the bags and following him up the steps. His mother was going to come to the screened door soon, asking what he’d done with the chicken and the potato salad.
    Roger swivelled the slender cane in front of him. Long drive?
    Pretty long, said Damian.
    Hot too, I guess. Sit down for a bit.
    Damian set down the bags and sat on the broad wooden arm of a chair.
    You’re the artist, said his uncle.
    You could say that.
    Roger folded up his cane. Damian watched, fascinated. There were four parts to the cane and they folded like a tent pole.
    I was going to go down for the funeral, Roger went on.
    Damian wiped the sweat from his forehead. He’d wanted his uncle to show up at the last minute, miraculously appearing from behind a curtain, except that there hadn’t been a curtain. He’d expected him to come, even though Lisa had never met him. His mother had expected him to come. And they’d been disappointed – sharply disappointed – when he hadn’t.
    Well, Damian said slowly, a lot of people came. I didn’t realize how many people knew Lisa. My father came.
    I know him. Your dad.
    You do?
    Well, I did. I knew him years ago.
    They sat together without speaking. The chestnut tree had darkened in the muted evening light. The grass was furred with stripes where the shadows fell across it.
    When your mother phoned, she said you wanted to scatter Lisa’s ashes here, said Roger. In the river –
    Yes.
    You’ll probably have to do it in the dead of night so they don’t slap you with a fine. That’s what they’re like. Very early in the morning – that’s the best time.
    Inside the house they heard a clatter of pans.
    She doesn’t know where I keep things, Roger mused. Can you hear her? She’s talking to herself. My mother did that – your grandmother – she was always talking to herself.
    She used to do that when she visited, said Damian. Granny. And she clucked.
    A grey cat slunk through the grass under the chestnut tree, paused, leapt at a moth. It fluttered out of reach, and the cat, thwarted, began licking the fur under its leg.
    Elvis came up the steps. He’d unhooked the guitar strap, and now he held the guitar by its neck so it banged lightly against each of the steps.
    Hello, Elvis, said Roger. You met Damian.
    Yes. He put his hand up, fist clenched. I met Damian. He has a boat on top of the car.
    Does he?
    Yes. A yellow boat.
    Elvis’s fist was still up in the air, and he turned it this way and that.
    This is Damian, he went on. Damian Benjamin MacKenzie, May 31, 1987, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

 
    THERE’S TOO MUCH , Ingrid sighed. She looked around Roger’s bedroom at the piles of clothes on the rug.
    Let’s stop then. Roger was sitting on the bed, holding a bunch of silk ties. You’ve been here three days; you can’t do everything at once, you know.
    But who’s going to go through this stuff? It’s not something you can do with Elvis.
    I never open that closet.
    But we’ve got to
deal
with it. Look at all these suits of Dad’s. I think they’ve been here for sixty years. And up here, his sweaters – let’s