Chapter 16

(Monty)

I wasn’t going to relax about the Delaney acquittal until the thirty-day deadline for filing an appeal had passed. Two weeks to go. The Crown attorneys could not appeal the jury’s verdict just because they didn’t like it, but they could appeal if they found any legal errors committed by the judge. If they were successful, Delaney would be tried all over again. I didn’t think Ken Palmer made any errors, but then I wasn’t looking for any, the way Gail Kirk would be. Until that deadline had safely passed, I would be on guard for anything that might look bad for Delaney if a new trial were ordered.

This was Sunday, however, so I would put those concerns aside for the time being. The choirs at St. Bernadette’s took turns singing at the eleven o’clock Mass on Sunday mornings. Sometimes it was my group, the St. Bernadette’s Choir of Men and Boys, sometimes it was the girls and boys from the choir school, and occasionally it was the adults from the Schola Cantorum Sancta Bernadetta, which attracted religious and lay people from all over the world. This Sunday, it was a combination of the men and boys and girls, so Normie and I had a gig together. Maura and the baby, Tom and Lexie were in the congregation. We did Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli, one of my favourite works, and we did justice to it, if I may say so.

Our priest and choirmaster pronounced himself satisfied — even pleased — with our efforts. He stood at the back of the church saying goodbye to people on their way out. Maura, with the baby in her arms, stopped to chat, and I joined them. Dominic smiled and stretched his hands out to the priest. A sentiment that I couldn’t read flitted across Burke’s face; then he smiled back and took one of the pudgy little hands in his.

“Aren’t you a fine Catholic lad, Dominic?”

“Why don’t you come over for dinner tonight, Father? We haven’t seen you in a while. Have you been slacking off in your parish visits?”

Right. She said he had not been around for a while. I wondered why not. Well, I wasn’t about to ask.

“Thank you, Mrs. MacNeil,” Burke replied. “You’re most kind. But I have other plans for dinner tonight.”

Whoa! What was that about?

“You’ve had a more promising invitation? Something better than my home cooking? Surely I didn’t hear you correctly, Father.”

“You heard only the preliminaries, madam. I’ll be doing the cooking myself.”

“Well! I must really have botched things in the kitchen last time.”

“Not at all, at all. Mike O’Flaherty and I have the place to ourselves. In the usual course of things, we can’t even set foot in the kitchen without inducing heart fibrillations in Mrs. Kelly. But she’s out of town visiting her sister. Why don’t the crowd of youse join us for dinner?”

“I’ll bring a vat of wine,” I offered, “as long as I’m not expected to quaff it all myself.”

“Oh, you’ll be ably assisted there, I’m thinking.”

(Normie)

We got invited to the priests’ house for dinner. They were going to cook all by themselves! Tom and Lexie couldn’t come so it was me and Dominic, Dad and Mum.

I’ve hardly ever seen Monsignor O’Flaherty without his black suit and collar on, but this time he was wearing light brown pants made of corduroy, like the ones I have, and a bright green sweater. He made a big fuss over the baby in his stroller, and wheeled him into the dining room. He told us Father Burke was busy with his chores in the kitchen but would be out of there soon. Which he was. He had on a pair of jeans and a black sweater with flour spilled down the front of it. He was carrying plates of pasta with delicious-smelling sauce.

Daddy said: “You didn’t make the pasta yourself, surely.”

“No. Made the sauce though, Monty.”

“Just wondering about the flour.” Dad pointed at his sweater.

“Ah. I made the dessert. Chocolate cake, with a bit of Baileys in the icing.”

I said: “Ooh! I love Baileys!”

They all turned around and gawked at me. “And how do you know what Baileys Irish Cream tastes like, little one?” Daddy asked me. “Being ten years short of drinking age.”

“I got into it by accident one day. I didn’t know what it was.”

“Oh, yeah, the old accident defence again.” They all looked at Daddy. “But enough about that. Let’s eat.”

We settled down to our dinner. The food was good and there was lots of funny talk. “Isn’t this great craic now?” Monsignor O’Flaherty said. “We should do it more often, I’m thinking.”

“We should,” Dad and Mum both said at the same time.

That’s when we heard a big loud bang. I jumped and spilled my milk. Somebody was hammering on the dining room window. We peeked outside and saw a person staring in. The grown-ups all got out of their chairs, but Father Burke waved at them to sit back down.

“You people enjoy your dinner. I’ll deal with this.”

Mummy made a joke: “Maybe it’s a commando raid by Mrs. Kelly. Rumours reached her that you and Mike were using the stove by yourselves!”

“If that turns out to be the case, I’m sending you out to handle her. I won’t be able for it.”

But he went to the back door and opened it. He said something, then a woman’s voice screeched at him. It sure wasn’t Mrs. Kelly, unless she had turned into the type that curses and swears in a loud rude voice!

Daddy excused himself from the table and went to the door. We all scooted out after him to see what was going on. Mummy put her hand up to stop me from going, but I pretended I didn’t see her. Out in the parking lot a really tough woman was yelling right into Father Burke’s face. She was wearing fake leather boots with high heels, tight white pants showing her belly, and a purple top that showed . . . other things. Her hair looked all dried out and was scraped back from a skinny face.

“Drugs on board,” Dad whispered to Mum.

“Why don’t you take it easy, now,” Father Burke was saying.

(I have to use bad language again. That’s her fault, not mine!)

She said: “Fuck you! Are you the preacher here?”

“I am.”

“Well, you don’t look like it. Where’s Cody’s money?”

“Cody would be, em . . .”

“Don’t you understand English? Give me Cody’s money! I need — he needs it now. He’s sick and I have to get him medicine. It’s an emergency!”

“Calm yourself down now and tell me who you are.”

“Who the fuck do you think I am? You told my kid you owe him a hundred and fifty dollars. Well, it was more than that he paid, it was like . . . five hundred dollars, and you’re trying to rip him off. I want it all back. Now!” She made a sneaky look behind her shoulder. “I don’t got all night.”

“Oh, the one hundred fifty dollars. So Cody would be one of the lads who paid for an introduction to —”

Then another rough type of person busted into the scene! This guy was like the guys in the movies who wear really bright clothes and big old-fashioned hats. The woman gave him a scared look, then turned back to Father Burke. “So, like I was saying, I’m not going to do you out here in the parking lot, okay, but if you want to come with me —”

“Ah, now, don’t be talking like that. Let us get you some help. We could take you to the clinic —”

“Bitch not goin’ to no clinic,” the bad guy said. “What was that you was saying to Cody back home about cash? Is this the guy that owes the money?”

The man grabbed her and yanked her around so she was face to face with him. She yelled out in pain, then answered: “Yeah! It’s him. Cody told me it was a preacher at this church who said he’d open a bank account and put the money in it. But I told him we need the money now, and it’s five hundred!”

“Let go of her!” That was a kid’s voice, coming from behind us.

Now we had another person in the parking lot, a short, skinny boy who was maybe ten or eleven years old. I remembered him; he was one of the boys who chased Derek and Connor Delaney at our school! Now he was running towards the woman, but before he could get there, the big man reached out and hit the boy across the face, really, really hard! I couldn’t believe my eyes. The boy fell down on the ground, and I saw blood spurting out from his nose.

“Mum!” he cried out. “Mum!”

Then you wouldn’t believe it! His mother screamed at him: “Shut your mouth! It serves you right! I told you, Cody, stay home and let me deal with this. Is that the guy who said he’d give you the money?” She jerked her head at Father Burke.

But Cody didn’t answer. He just curled up on the ground and began to wail and cry as if the whole world, as bad as it was, was coming to an end.

The bad guy started walking towards him. “Shut up that bawling! What are you, a man or a bitch?”

Father Burke and Daddy went to the bad guy. Father Burke said in a furious voice: “How dare you hurt that child!”

The man whipped around and got a hold of Father Burke, grabbed him by the throat, and slammed him up against the wall of the building. Daddy jumped on the guy’s back and tried to drag him off, but all of a sudden the woman glommed onto Daddy and started pulling his hair, and she kicked him in the back of his leg. I was scared to death and started crying. Daddy let go and turned around, to stop her from hitting him. Then I saw Daddy get her arms in front of her, and he held on to her.

But Father Burke was still pinned against the wall, with the bad guy hollering at him: “When I get finished with you, choirboy, you gonna be my bitch!”

By that time, Mum and Monsignor O’Flaherty were in the parking lot, shouting that the police were on their way.

I looked at Father Burke and saw him twist the bad guy’s arms away, and he flipped the guy onto the ground, face down. Father held him there and told him off. He said: “Nobody here is anybody’s bitch. Everybody here, child and woman and man, belongs to God. Not to you. Understand?”

Dad was still holding the woman, and he called out to Mum and Monsignor that there was a little boy lying hurt on the pavement. Mum looked at the boy, Cody, then she disappeared for a second, and came out with a white cloth. She and Monsignor went over to Cody and talked to him. He wouldn’t answer them. Mummy sat down on the pavement and gently moved Cody’s head till she was cradling him sideways across her knees. She didn’t mind about the blood. They looked like that statue by that famous guy, showing Mary holding her Son, except this was a dusty parking lot and it was just my own mum who isn’t holy like Mary, and this little guy from a bad part of town. Cody’s voice cracked when he talked to Mum and swore at her: “Fuck you! Leave me alone!” But Mummy ignored that and wiped the blood off his face with the cloth and looked at him as if she loved him even though she never saw him before.

That’s when we heard loud sirens and saw lights flashing, and two police cars came speeding into the parking lot.

Dad and Mum looked over at me and then at each other, and made signals with their eyes. I could tell they were upset because I saw all the stuff that happened. They never want me to see bad stuff like that. But I did see it, and I will never forget it.

Then the ambulance came. The emergency guys lifted Cody up from my mum and put him on a stretcher. I saw Father Burke take a hold of his hand and talk to him really softly before they loaded him into the ambulance. Father smoothed back his hair and made the sign of the cross on his forehead. Cody’s evil mother and that boyfriend of hers were shoved into the police cars. I hoped they’d be thrown in jail for the rest of their lives. The police made us all give “statements,” even me, and then they zoomed away in their cars.

After all that, we went back to the dining room. The grown-ups just sat there at the table and didn’t say anything. That’s what happens in books and movies when people are “in shock.” Or maybe they didn’t want to talk about it in front of me, because I’m just a kid. The only lucky one was Dominic. He was fast asleep in his stroller as if nothing had happened. He doesn’t know yet about bad people. Bad parents. I wish he could live his whole life and never know. Suddenly I got up and grabbed him out of the stroller and — I couldn’t help it, maybe I was in shock too — I kept clinging to him and rocking him, and I said over and over again: “How could they hurt their little boy like that?”

(Monty)

It was a subdued crowd of dinner guests that left the rectory Sunday night.

A wisecrack about supper with the boys without Mrs. Kelly’s supervision died on my lips. I had a sleepy girl on my hands. I had taken Normie for a late-evening treat at the Dairy Queen because she was so upset after the scene in the church parking lot, she couldn’t eat the Baileys cake. Brennan assured her that he would save it in the fridge for her, and she could sneak over from school on Monday and have a gigantic piece of it with a glass of milk. We decided that she would spend the night at my place. I drove her around the city to calm her down and make her sleepy, and it worked, just as it had when she was a baby. After we got home, she curled up on the chesterfield beside me in the den downstairs, wrapped in a soft blue cotton blanket.

“Normie, it’s past your bedtime, dolly.”

Her eyes were at half-mast, her voice dreamy. “I’m too tired to move. I’ll sleep here.”

“No, you’ll be more comfortable in your room. I’ll carry you up.”

“I’m too sleepy . . .”

I wanted to catch a bit of the CBC News, so I switched on the television. My attention was caught by something Peter Mansbridge said about one of the upcoming Democratic primaries in the U.S. I tuned in to a report from Washington and let my daughter off the hook for the time being. When it was over I heard her mumbling: “Matthew. It’s Matthew.”

I looked at Normie. She was asleep but she was visibly distressed. Her fingers clutched the blanket and pulled it up around her neck. I remembered Maura telling me the name Matthew had come up before. Normie had been mumbling that name in her sleep. I didn’t want to wake her, so I said in a quiet, conversational tone: “Could you remind me who Matthew is, sweetheart?”

Her eyes didn’t open. She responded: “It’s Matthew, not David.”

“Right. It’s not David because . . .”

“It’s Matthew Halton, not David Halton.”

Oh! That’s all it was. David Halton was a senior correspondent with CBC News. I had just heard his report from Washington. She had obviously heard it too, as she drifted towards sleep. But wait a minute. Matthew was David Halton’s father. How did Normie know about him? He had died years ago, long before my daughter was born.

“Can you tell me about Matthew, Normie?”

“This is Matthew Halton of the CBC.”

I leaned close to her. “When did you hear Matthew on the CBC, Normie?”

But she was out, fast asleep. I stood there for a minute or so, then tiptoed away and went up to the kitchen to use the phone. I dialled Maura’s number.

“Hello?”

“She just mentioned Matthew again.”

“Oh!”

“Listen. This is going to sound weird, but bear with me. Do you know if there have been any retrospectives on CBC radio or television about Matthew Halton?”

“David Halton’s father? The war correspondent?”

“Exactly.” I repeated what Normie had said.

“Well, she must have heard it someplace. On the CBC or maybe at school. Something about World War Two. Tell you what: I’ll call my friend Kris at the CBC and you call Brennan.”

“Brennan won’t know what they’ve been talking about in class, unless it’s music or religion.”

“Does he strike you as someone too shy to track down the grade four homeroom teacher and find out?”

“Um, no, he does not. I’ll make the call and phone you back in a few minutes.”

I called Brennan and he said he’d ask Mrs. Kavanagh. I heard back five minutes later. No, there was some discussion from time to time of the two world wars, but nothing about Matthew Halton or any other journalist. I gave Maura half an hour, in case Kris had to do some checking, then I dialled my wife’s number again.

“Nothing,” she told me. “Kris said there’s been nothing broadcast in recent times about Matthew Halton, but she thanked me for the suggestion!”

“Jesus! Where would Normie have heard it? I’m going to see if I can get her talking again.”

“Keep me posted. Never mind what time it is.”

“Will do.”

I went downstairs and checked on Normie. Still fast asleep. I decided on a bit of subterfuge. Changing my voice to what I hoped was that of a broadcast journalist, I said: “David Halton, CBC News, Washington.” No reaction. I waited a few seconds and said it again. I saw her squirm around in her blanket. She licked her lips and started to speak. I couldn’t make it out, so I put my ear up against her mouth.

“Matthew Halton. CBC.”

“Tell me about Matthew, Normie.”

“We’ve got Jerry on the run now! Jerry on the run!”

Great. Just when we got Matthew identified, we were faced with a Jerry.

“We kicked their ass! What are you blubberin’ about? What are you blubberin’ . . . Put him in the army, make a man out of him! We’re gonna kick a little ass right here if he doesn’t stop . . . Shut up! Take that! You little . . . NO! NO! NO!”

I looked at her in horror. Her face was contorted with fear. Tears streamed from her eyes. I couldn’t let this go on.

“Normie, sweetheart, wake up. It’s Daddy. You’re having a nightmare. Everything’s all right. Wake up.”

“No!” Her eyelids flickered open. She stared at me without recognition. Then her expression softened and she reached up for me with both arms. I held her and told her she was safe.

Once I got her settled in her bed, I called her mother and reported what had happened.

“Jerry? I’ve never heard of a Jerry. Back to the clippings file.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “If she’s somehow in tune with Matthew Halton’s wartime broadcasts for the CBC, she may be hearing talk about the Germans, commonly called Jerry by our boys during the war.”

“Oh, that Jerry. But would that have been Halton’s style?”

“Probably not, any more than he would have been saying ‘kicked their ass’ or ‘make a man out of him.’ That must be another voice altogether.”

“My God. What’s going on? It’s not surprising that she’d have a nightmare tonight about someone being hurt, but what’s she doing channelling the war?”

I couldn’t answer that question, but we had a bit of comic relief the next day, which served to distract Normie from her troubles. She called me at work to tell me about a social engagement we had that evening. This was one of those events the details of which were contained in a note sent from the school and crumpled up and stuffed in the school bag, only to be retrieved the day of the event. Too late to bake the goods, buy the raffle tickets, or register for the bonspiel. But this time we were going to make it.

The choir school was having a party for the students and their parents, to give everyone a bit of relaxation before final exams began the following week. It was originally supposed to be in the gymnasium but one of the families had offered to have it at their house instead, if people didn’t mind squeezing in to small quarters. This prompted another set of parents to offer their house in the suburbs. More space, apparently. Normie was on the phone now, taking care of the logistics.

“Mummy is staying home with the baby, which is okay. Dominic’s too young to have fun at the party anyway. So it’s you and me, Daddy.”

“Sounds good. Do you have directions?”

“Yeah, Richard Robertson gave us a map.”

“Richard and I are old buddies.”

“That’s right, you know him, Daddy! He sings in the men and boys’ choir.”

As young as he was, Richard was quite a character, with a mischievous sense of humour, and he could do a very passable impersonation of our choirmaster behind the master’s back. Of course Brennan knew all about it, having caught him at it several times. Didn’t faze him in the least; in fact, Richard was one of his favourite students. But — I tried to think — wasn’t there something about the mother? I couldn’t remember. Anyway, Normie and I hooked a ride with Brennan and headed for the party. I was the navigator, charged with locating 152 The Olde Carriageway, in a subdivision that hadn’t existed two weeks ago, west of the city.

It didn’t take long before I remembered what it was about the mother. Seeing her severe geometrical haircut and equally severe facial expression brought it all back. I had witnessed more than one encounter between her and Father Burke, during which she expressed her disapproval of whatever it was the choir school was doing or not doing at the moment. Mrs. Robertson met us in front of her monster house on The Olde Carriageway. The place was festooned with numerous ill-proportioned gables and fake-Palladian windows; but the most notable feature of the building was the enormous double garage that was stuck on to the front of the house and nearly blotted out the sight of the front entrance. One of the garage doors was open, displaying a huge collection of, well, stuff. A BMW, a snow blower, several kayaks and canoes, camping gear, electronics. Was it just coincidence that the brand names were all displayed facing forward?

Mrs. Robertson greeted everyone with a tight smile, told us to call her Lois, and urged us to make ourselves at home. We all trooped into the house and dutifully wiped our feet. A couple of dozen guests were already there, perched on fussy-looking chairs and loveseats with teacups in their hands. The furniture looked as if it had all been bought the same day, as if someone had said: “Fill my house with furniture,” and that’s what was done. There was flowered paper on the walls, a contrasting paper border around the room, and another contrasting pattern above that. Magazines were artfully displayed on gleaming coffee tables. There wasn’t a book, or a dirty glass, let alone a toy or an old pair of sneakers, in sight. Something that sounded like elevator music was playing in the room, elevatoresque in content and in the quality of the sound. I realized it was coming from a giant stereo system built into a pricey-looking set of oak cabinets and shelves.

Richard came skidding into the room from outside, in a pair of khaki shorts with grass stains across the butt. His hair was a mess and there were a couple of twigs in it. “Sorry I’m late, but there was this really big —”

“Hey, Richard, your hair’s all sproinked out all over your head!” one of the little boys exclaimed. “Where were you?”

“What do you say, Richard?” his mother demanded.

“I saw something crawling under a pipe . . .”

“Richard.”

“Uh, oh yeah. Good evening, everyone. Sorry to be late.”

“Very well. Now go clean yourself up, change your clothes, and present yourself back in here, fit for company, in five minutes.”

“Okay.”

I spent a few seconds thinking Richard must have inherited his sense of fun from his father. But I was disabused of that notion when the father arrived. If they had said to the furniture salesman “Fill ’er up,” they had said to the purveyor of pricey, trendy casual clothing “Dress me!” The earthy tones of Robertson’s ensemble were an uncanny match for those of his wife. The man’s face was red, and his eyes were bulging.

“Sorry I’m late! I don’t know if anybody has had to do business with the local BMW dealership recently. They’re so busy you have to stand in line.”

“It’s a tough cruel world,” Brennan said with just enough volume for me to hear.

“The stresses of a two-Beemer family,” I muttered back.

Mrs. Robertson spoke to the assembled group. “This is my husband, Murdoch. I don’t know everybody’s name, so maybe you could all introduce yourselves.” Introductions were made around the room.

One name struck a chord with Murdoch Robertson. “Reverend Burke, you’re the director of the school, am I right?”

Burke nodded.

“Great school.”

“Thank you.”

“At least for music and literature, history, math, science, all that.” The man paused. “But it could be more forward-looking. Know what I mean?”

“No.”

“You don’t teach economics, right?”

Burke looked at him as if he were speaking a foreign tongue.

“Economics,” Robertson tried again.

“The dismal science,” Burke replied. “No.”

“I’m an economist by training,” Robertson said.

“Ah.”

“I’d be happy to come in and teach a few lessons in the subject. In fact, we could start a ‘young entrepreneurs’ group at the school. Give the kids early exposure to a business world view.”

Burke stared at him blankly.

“So,” Robertson said then, “how is my son doing in school?”

It dawned on me then that this was the first time Richard’s father had met Burke, despite the fact that Richard had been in the school for at least two years.

“Richard is doing brilliantly. He has the voice of an angel, and his written work is excellent. A sly wit, has Richard, and we all enjoy his sense of humour.”

Mrs. Robertson leaned forward in her chair. “Class clown is not the goal we have in mind for our son. Richard has to become more focused. We have a tutor for him in French. A virtual necessity, given the job market in this country. He’s not doing very well in that, do you think?”

“He sounds better than I do in French, I can tell you that much!” Burke replied. “I wouldn’t be too concerned about Richard getting a job. He’s a long way from that, and he’ll do fine wherever he winds up.”

“I think not. Richard doesn’t take things seriously. He has a personal coach, but even there he doesn’t seem to meet expectations. We’ll have to step up our efforts, obviously.”

I sat there wondering what the hell she was on about. A personal coach? What on earth . . .

Richard came bounding in at that point, with his hair slicked down and the arse of his pants wet where he had tried to scrub off the grass stains.

“Richard!” his mother began, but the boy interrupted.

“Psst!” He crooked his finger at my daughter, who was playing a board game with the other kids. “Normie! Where’s Kim at?”

“She’s supposed to be here! Maybe she couldn’t find your house!”

“Okay. Come on downstairs. I got something to show you. Ian, you too. Monty, you come too, and Father Burke.”

“Richard! You’re not taking people down there! You have guests, and we are hoping for a little recital from you.”

“Yeah, okay, after. Please, Mum? Come on, you guys.”

Normie and Ian followed him from the room. Burke gave me the eye, and we got up.

“Oh, Reverend! You won’t want to go down there . . .”

“Sure it will be fine.”

We both made our escape. Whatever Richard wanted to show us downstairs, whether it was a busted pipe or a web full of spiders, would be better than spending one more minute in that stifling living room. Burke and I went through the kitchen, where I noticed an array of appliances and gadgets I could not even begin to identify. We found the basement stairs and saw the kids ahead of us. Richard said to his companions: “I hope Brrrennan O’Burrrke comes to see this. It will freak him right out of his collar!” I recalled Richard’s humorously rolled Rs, which had started when Burke took him to task for his failure, despite his Scottish name, to roll them sufficiently when required in singing.

“Brrrennan O’Burrrke is right behind you, laddie,” Brennan replied, and Richard turned around and blushed from his neck to his eyebrows.

“Sorry, Father. I was just, you know . . .”

“Te absolvo, my son. Go and sin no more.”

When we got to the basement, we heard the voice of Neil Young coming from behind a closed door. “That’s my uncle’s room,” Richard explained.

He led us to a wooden crate in the corner of the basement. He pried the lid off carefully.

“Ooh!” Normie squealed. “Can it get out of there?”

“Cool!” Ian exclaimed. “Where did you get it?”

It was a snake of some sort, brown with a pattern on it, about two feet long, writhing around in a makeshift pen.

Burke shuddered at the sight of it, and Richard grinned. “They don’t have snakes in Ireland ’cause of St. Patrick, right, Father?”

“Patrick must have done an exemplary job because this is the first time in my long and eventful life I’ve ever had the misfortune to see a serpent of any kind.”

“Hey, man!”

We heard the voice and turned towards it. At the same time, I thought I detected a faint odour of cannabis. The closed door had opened, and standing there was a youngish man with John Lennon glasses and long shaggy curly hair; he wore a pair of cut-off shorts and a T-shirt that showed a heart bleeding all over the white fabric. He looked vaguely familiar.

“How ya doin’?” he said to us all.

“Hey! You guys, this is my uncle, Dad’s brother, but I just call him Gordo. And this is Father Burke from school, and Ian and Normie and her dad, Mr. Collins.”

“Monty,” I said, and we shook hands.

“Gordo’s living with us for a while. Until he gets his own place.”

“Oh, yeah?” I asked. “How long have you been living here, Gordo?”

“What is it now, Dickie? Five, six years, something like that?”

“I think so. I was just little when you moved in.”

“Yeah. Good times, eh?”

“Yeah!”

Gordo looked at me and Burke. “I can’t move till I get some legal matters settled. I buy a house, the sheriff moves in, takes it all. You know what I mean.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Come on in, have a seat.”

We entered Gordo’s room. My imagination presented me with delightful images of Mrs. Robertson coming in for a gab with her guest. The room could have been a film set, labelled “The Freeloading Brother-in-Law.”

He turned down Neil Young, who would no doubt appreciate the fact that he was being played in vinyl on an ancient turntable, and invited us to sit on a saggy chesterfield covered with a worn grey army blanket with a red stripe.

“You promised Ellie you were going to get a new blanket, Gordo. Ellie’s his girlfriend,” Richard explained.

“Yeah, I asked at the Salvation Army counter the other day; they still don’t have anything in. Maybe I’ll try Frenchy’s,” he said to Richard. Then, to us: “I don’t buy anything retail.”

“Makes sense,” I agreed.

His room was decorated with rock band posters and protest signs bearing slogans such as “Resist!” and “Make Brownies Not War.” One wall was dedicated to the campaign posters of the Cannabis Garden Party.

That’s why he was familiar. “You’re the U.S. invasion guy!”

“That’s me,” he agreed. “Defence critic for the Cannabis Garden Party.”

Any time the defence minister or a military spokesman made a public appearance in Halifax, Gordo showed up to needle him on the country’s inadequate defence spending. But where other defence critics, on the right, took the government to task for failing to anticipate an attack from rogue leftist states or terrorists, Gordo railed about the dangers of an invasion from the south. Which he considered imminent.

“And never has it been more urgent that I get my message out.” He lay back on a pile of Indian-print pillows, and retrieved a home-rolled cigarette that was burning in an ashtray. He took a leisurely drag. His posture bespoke anything but urgency. But then he roused himself to give a stump speech.

“It could happen at any time. People don’t realize that. We do anything to really piss the Yanks off, they’re over the border in minutes. We’re a bunch of unreliable commies, far as they’re concerned. The only reason they tolerate us is that we lie down for them and enjoy it. The minute we stop playing that role, the minute, say, the NDP gets in and tries to curb foreign takeovers of our industry, bingo! We’re Guatemala, United Fruit Company is pissed, and the democratically elected government of Canada is overthrown. Think Iran 1953, think Guatemala 1954, think Chile 1973, and all the other legitimate governments that were overthrown and replaced with torture states friendly to the U.S. of A. The list goes on and on. But here’s the difference: it won’t be the usual American practice of engineering a coup and installing a friendly puppet.”

Gordo made his hands and feet jerk up and down spasmodically as if on strings, to the delight of his young audience. “Yes, sir, Billy Bob, we’ll mow down those protesters in the name of freedom. No, sir, Bobby Joe, we won’t nationalize Kentucky Fried Chicken.” Then the puppet collapsed on the bed.

He roused himself again and said: “No, they won’t stop at that with us. It will be the tanks rolling in, it will be an invasion, an occupation, and they’ll never leave. We’ll simply be annexed as part of the U.S.A. Canada will cease to exist as a country. I’ve got my ticket to the Netherlands for the day they move in. How about you guys?”

The kids were staring at him, wide-eyed.

We heard heels tapping smartly on tile, and looked up to see Mrs. Robertson, who was nearly frantic as she surveyed the party in her brother-in-law’s den.

“Gordon! Richard has responsibilities upstairs this evening. Reverend! Mr. Collins! Don’t let my husband’s . . . sibling detain you here in this . . . this . . . My heavens! We’re serving pad Thai upstairs. Please join us. It’s the newest thing!”

“Ah, we’re grand here, Mrs. Robertson,” Burke replied. “No worries. We’ll be joining you anon.”

“I don’t believe this!” she wailed as she turned away.

“Are you enjoying your time here, Gordo?” I asked when she had stalked up the stairs.

“I enjoy my time everywhere, Monty. And I certainly enjoy the company of young Dickie here.”

“I hope you stay forever, Gordo!”

“I hope so, too,” Brennan muttered just loud enough for me to hear. I concurred.

“Monty Collins!” Gordo exclaimed. “I just realized who you are. You represented Beau Delaney. Good job, congratulations! Beau’s my lawyer, has been for years. I was entangled in some nasty legal proceedings; he represented me.”

“What was the trouble?”

“I used to own a house, and there was an oil spill. Actually, years of leakage that I didn’t know about. And it contaminated the neighbours’ properties, and there was a hundred thousand dollars in clean-up costs, and the neighbours sued me, and I sued the oil company and the distributor, and I had to sue my own insurance company. It went on for years. I lost my house, and there were judgments against me. Hence my inability to become a responsible property owner again. None of this was Beau’s fault. The cards were stacked against us. He got me out of some other scrapes, no problem. Great guy, great lawyer.

“Except the time he left me stranded. It was after the oil spill litigation, and all the parties were fighting over legal costs. I stood to lose, big time. Again. We were in Beau’s office getting ready for the hearing. But he forgot about an appointment he had in Toronto. A conference. He remembered quick enough when his secretary came in. ‘Dr. Brayer’s office on the line for you, Beau.’ Beau looked as if he’d got caught coming out of the shitter with his pants down. He must have thought I knew who this guy was, the doctor. Well-known, I guess, on the subject of psychopaths. Shows up every once in a while apparently as a talking head with Mansbridge on CBC. But I’d never heard of him. So Delaney had to fly out on the next flight, and I had to go to court on my own. He told me to get an adjournment till he came back, but I decided to wing it. Bad idea. I got nailed for contempt of court when I called the judge a tool of the insurance industry and a lackey for big oil. I ended up in jail for two nights. What the hell, it happens. I rag Beau about it whenever I see him, but it’s my fault, not his. And he did appeal the costs ruling, so it wasn’t as bad as it was going to be.

“But enough about that, eh, Dick? Time to dip into the news files?”

“Yeah!”

“What’ll it be today? How about ‘Wedding cake icing protruding from buttocks our first clue, police say, after arrest of man in fairy-tale wedding fiasco’? Or ‘Granny gulps her dentures’?”

“Granny and the false teeth! Read that one. You guys are going to love this,” Richard said to Normie and Ian.

Gordo reached down behind his bed and pulled up a binder. He opened it and displayed a collection of news items. “Here we go: Granny gulps her dentures in whoopee cushion scare. By Crandall McIntosh, the Halifax Daily News.

An eight-year-old prankster’s practical joke nearly turned into tragedy when he placed a whoopee cushion beneath the padding of his great-grandmother’s rocking chair, then watched in stunned horror as the shocked eighty-two-year-old woman swallowed the upper plate of her dentures, nearly choking to death. “We thought it would be a riot to put a whoopee cushion on Granny’s chair,” says the boy’s father, thirty-seven-year-old Jeffrey Berg. “She’s pulled many a practical joke on us in her time, so we figured turnabout was fair play. We never dreamed she’d be so startled that she’d swallow her choppers.”

It wasn’t just the kids who enjoyed a good laugh over the story.

“Now I see where Richard gets his sense of the absurd,” I said to Gordo.

“What would he do without me?”

Gordo said it lightly, but the eyes behind the rimless glasses radiated a shrewd intelligence. He had his shtick and he knew exactly what he was doing — as a rabble-rouser, and as an uncle.

Burke and I left him to it. We went upstairs and endured the remainder of the party with the other guests. Murdoch Robertson had excused himself shortly after his arrival, saying he had work to do. When it was time to go, Lois decreed that Richard was to stand at the door and shake hands with everyone as they went out.

“Ask yer man to come see me about teaching a class or two at the school,” Brennan said to him.

“My dad?”

“Your uncle.”

Richard blinked. “Really?”

“Sure. A couple of history classes is what I have in mind.”

“But I thought all that stuff was, you know, just Gordo’s stories.”

“Sadly, no. It’s the history of our times. Oh, and tell him not to arrive at the school with a big, fat spliff in his mouth.”

“Uh . . .” Richard’s face turned pink.

“Can you arrange that for me?”

“Yeah! For sure!” The little boy beamed as his mother, unaware, scowled from the sidelines.

Brennan gave Richard a little salute, I collected Normie, and we took our leave of The Olde Carriageway.