ONE

SEPTEMBER TO OCTOBER 1980

Leland King was back in town. He hadn’t yet figured out what to make of that.

He’d arrived on the bus in the midafternoon on Labour Day, and had gone directly to a bachelor apartment that Pastor Barry had arranged for him. The apartment was above a variety store at the bottom of Union Street, near the south end of the town’s lakefront. Across the street was the back of an A&P grocery. Beside the variety store, past a patch of grass, was a fence around a small scrapyard.

All of Lee’s earthly possessions amounted to the clothes on his back and one suitcase and a wallet and cigarettes and a plastic lighter. The apartment contained some furniture abandoned by the outgoing tenant. A swivel chair. A pullout couch. A lamp with an anchor motif on the shade. There were pale patches on the walls where pictures had hung, and from the bathroom came a steady hiss. Nothing was square or level.

The variety store owner was also the landlord. His name was Mr. Yoon and he was one of Pastor Barry’s congregants. Mr. Yoon curtly told Lee a few of the rules, how he didn’t want loud noises or trouble. He wanted to know if Lee had a job.

—I have a job, said Lee. I’m a carpenter. Cabinets, counters, doors, windows, trim. All kinds of joining, you name it. I got my trade, boss. Barry got me working with a guy here in town. I start on Thursday.

Lee paid his month’s rent in cash and Mr. Yoon gave him a new-cut key.

Thirty minutes later, Lee took a taxicab out to his sister Donna’s house. He had a return address torn off an envelope. She’d not written often, and in the last few years almost not at all. It was Pastor Barry who’d done most of the writing.

The taxi driver had the radio on. Between songs, there was a news break recapping the events of the long weekend. The top story was an interview with that kid from out west … Near the end of the day, the kid was saying, eighteen miles, I was coughing and choking, had pain in my neck and my chest …

—You know who that is? said the taxi driver.

—Who?

—It’s that one-legged kid who tried to run acrost the country. What’s his name, Fox. Terry or what-have-you. He’s been all over the news.

The kid on the radio: All I can say is, if there’s any way I can get out there again and finish it, I will …

—What a crazy bastard, said the taxi driver. Trying to run acrost the country with one leg. Sounds like they’re pulling him off the road.

—Sounds like it, said Lee.

The taxi driver droned on about other things, the weather, politics. Lee wasn’t paying him much attention. What he was remembering of these parts was how August could be cold or September could be hot, as it was now, even when the leaves showed a silver edge that heralded the coming autumn. They passed a drying cornfield and a line of hydro towers. On the edge of the road was the crushed hull of a snapping turtle. It looked like someone had swerved to hit it.

The hometown to which Lee had returned was situated on the edge of Lake Kissinaw. Half an hour to the east was a smaller body of water called Indian Lake. The Indian River flowed back west from the smaller lake, pouring into Kissinaw, and dividing the town in half. Eighteen thousand people lived in Lee’s hometown, and made their livings in manufacturing and farming and summer tourism. On the northwest edge of town was a CIL chemical factory that had produced munitions during the war years. Lee sometimes wondered what he might have ended up doing with himself, had he remained here. Coming back now, at this time in his life, was stirring up a lot of strange feelings.

The taxi driver was talking about hockey, what did Lee think of this season’s trades. Lee had a vague notion to lean up between the seats and tell the driver that he sounded like a goof, talking all this bullshit. Instead he just muttered a noncommittal response.

Half a mile later they came to the house. It stood on two acres of shaggy lawn. It was sided in white vinyl with three wooden butterflies fixed to the front wall. The driver tallied a charge of six dollars. Lee opened his wallet. His cash felt desperately precious. He paid six dollars precisely. The driver gave him a strange look, expectant. The engine idled. Lee’s mouth felt dry.

—Well, said Lee. Maybe that one-legged kid will get back on the road.

The driver just shook his head. Lee got out and the taxi moved forward and turned around and headed back the way they’d come. The buzz of a cicada rose and peaked.

As Lee made his way up the walk, the front door opened, but it wasn’t Donna who came out. It was his mother, Irene. She came onto the stoop, pushing on a rubber-footed cane, and took the first steps down with great care. Lee could hear her long and shallow breathing. She stopped once to look at him. He arrived at the base of the stoop and they came together. She was panting for breath and her eyes were wet.

—Here you are.

—Hello, Ma.

She put her frail arms around him.

Behind her, Donna appeared on the stoop. Donna was thin and knobby-kneed in a pair of canvas shorts and a cotton shirt. Irene released him and stood back.

—I don’t know what to say.

—Don’t say nothing at all.

—You’re working too hard, Mom, said Donna. You shouldn’t of done the stairs.

Lee nodded and said: Donna’s right, Ma.

—Come in, said Irene. It’s too hot.

Lee led Irene up the stoop. At the top, Donna did not meet his eye. In a small voice, she said: It’s good to see you.

And then, abruptly, she embraced him. She smelled of soap. Lee felt the fabric of her shirt over her shoulder bones.

As Donna helped Irene into the house, Lee looked at a wooden plaque on the front door: AS FOR MY HOUSE, WE SHALL SERVE THE LORD.

What he first saw in the living room were three different crosses. One was a simple rood. One was a framed needlepoint depiction of Golgotha. Finally, there was a cross of macaroni glued onto a paper plate, hung over the entranceway into the kitchen.

Two young boys, maybe seven or eight, hurtled into the living room, one chasing the other. They stormed past Lee, shouting, and angled down the basement stairs. Donna paled. She leaned over the banister and yelled after them: Boys, what are you doing? Don’t run in the house. You’ll upset Grandma’s tubes.

She cast a helpless look at Lee and Irene. Lee badly wanted a cigarette but he’d heard you didn’t smoke in people’s homes any more unless they invited you to.

Irene struggled into an easy chair. Beside her was an oxygen cylinder on a slender dolly, with a nasal tube at the end of a hose. Lee went over and picked up the tube and held it. He felt stupid, holding the unfamiliar equipment. Almost immediately Donna came and took it from him.

—She’s okay, Lee. She just shouldn’t of done the stairs.

And then Pastor Barry came into the room. He was wearing corduroy trousers and a cotton T-shirt and tennis shoes. He was ten inches shorter than Donna. He spread his arms.

—Leland. Welcome.

—Good to see you, Barry.

Barry embraced him. Lee looked down at the top of Barry’s head. Barry stood back.

—I’m afraid I don’t have beer.

—No problem. You know I’m dry.

—I do. And it makes me happy to hear it. Was everything in good shape with Mr. Yoon? I had him leave some things in the apartment. I thought they might make you a little more comfortable. It’s a simple place, but simple never harmed anybody. I can think of one guy in particular who didn’t mind a simple bed.

—Simple as can be, said Lee.

Lee was given a glass of lemonade. Desperate for a cigarette, he went out onto a deck overlooking the backyard. There was a swing set and a sandbox and a wood-line on the far edge of the property. He wandered down to the grass. He put the lemonade down beside him and lit a cigarette. For the moment, he was alone. He took off his shoes. His big toe poked through a hole in his sock. He looked around and then he stripped off the socks and flexed his feet in the grass. He picked up his lemonade and walked down to the wood-line. He wondered how much he’d expected them to look different, his mother and Donna. To be different. Or had he expected them to be the same, somehow? What had he expected at all? Along the wood-line, the trees were pine and the smell of sap was strong, cut pleasantly by the cigarette smoke. Needles blanketed the ground. A chipmunk stuttered past and branches creaked and insects whined and a hawk circled overhead.

Coming back up the yard ten minutes later, Lee saw that his mother and Barry were out on the deck, his mother sitting with her oxygen cylinder beside her, Barry starting the barbecue. Lee also saw a young man napping in a lawn chair beside the house. Lee put his socks and shoes back on his feet. He went up the steps.

—Would you like one sausage or two? said Barry. Never mind. I’ll make two for you anyhow.

Barry closed the lid on the barbecue. He turned to Irene. She was watching them intently and wearing the nasal tube. There was something obscene about it.

—Did you need anything, Mother?

—I’m fine, Barry.

Barry squeezed her hand. He went into the house.

—I can’t believe you’re home, said Irene.

—Me either, said Lee.

—Look at all those grey hairs you sprouted. But you’re still skinny as a beanpole.

—Not so much any more, said Lee, patting the small pad of belly fat he’d grown.

A quiet moment passed.

—Don’t be cross with Donna, said Irene. All this has almost turned her on her head.

—I didn’t have to come for dinner.

—Everyone is glad to see you, Leland. Of course you had to come. We’re your family.

—I know, said Lee.

A hornet buzzed around the rim of Lee’s lemonade glass. He waved it away.

—I seen a kid snoozing around the side of the house, said Lee. I’d say that’s Peter. I wouldn’t of known him from the pictures you sent me.

—I sent those snapshots years ago.

—Is he a good kid?

—Yes. He disappointed me when he quit going to church and school both, but yes, he’s a good fellow.

—He quit school?

—Yes. All he does is work at the gas station. Works and works. He left here at five o’clock this morning, and only got back here an hour ago. I can’t guess what he wants.

—Maybe he doesn’t know himself.

Lee drank down the lemonade. He crunched the ice cube between his back teeth and said: And I don’t guess he knows about any of the other business?

His mother looked out over the backyard. A long moment passed.

—Leland, said Irene, quietly, there’s no reason to stir up any of that old upset. Upset is all it would be.

Do you remember writing Christmas cards to your Uncle Lee? asked Donna.

The two boys did not respond. The elder was frowning at the tablecloth. The younger stared at Lee. Their names were Luke and John.

—Close your mouth, John, said Barry.

The boy managed to close his mouth for a short time and then it fell open again. From the other side of the table, Peter, older than his half-brothers by ten years, watched with amusement.

—They’re afraid of outsiders, said Peter. That happens when you home-school.

—Peter, said Donna.

The two young boys looked like Donna and Barry, with Donna’s high cheekbones and Barry’s black hair and blue eyes. Peter had brown eyes and thin blond hair. He had Donna’s high cheekbones but no other obvious suggestion of his parentage.

Luke finally spoke up.

—I remember you wrote some letters to us. You spelled happy wrong.

—Luke, said Donna.

—He put an e after the p.

—That’s enough, said Barry.

—I’m sorry, Lee, said Donna.

—It’s okay, said Lee. See, Luke, I didn’t pay attention in school like you guys, so you’d think I’m a dummy if you read my letters. But I always liked to get them cards from you.

John stared at Lee. The boy’s jaw remained unhinged. Finally, he said: Didn’t they teach you to read and write in jail?

Donna clapped her knife and fork down.

—Maybe we shouldn’t of done this.

—Mom said you had school in jail, said John.

—John …

Lee turned his plate with his thumbs. The meal was potato salad and two overdone bratwurst sausages.

—You’re right, said Lee. There was school in jail. There was school for reading and writing, but that’s not what I learned. Because reading and writing is more for you guys, who can be anything you want when you grow up. A guy like me isn’t going to be a doctor or nothing like that, so I decided to learn something I was okay at, which was carpentry.

—You boys know what a carpenter is, said Barry.

—It’s a guy who builds things, said Luke.

—That’s right. That’s what Jesus was. So Uncle Lee learned a pretty good thing. What do we say about school?

The two brothers responded in unison: The Bible says it’s important to gain wisdom.

—Good, said Barry.

Lee nodded.

—You boys go to school right here at home? You’re lucky. You don’t have to wait for the school bus or nothing.

They chewed on through their meal and some quiet minutes passed. Finally, Barry said: Lee, Clifton Murray will be waiting for you on Thursday morning. He’s going to be real busy right through the fall. You boys remember Mr. Murray from church?

—Yes, Daddy.

—He’s given Uncle Lee a job as a carpenter.

—We’re very proud, said Irene.

The boys kept looking at him between bites. John had not closed his hanging mouth.

—I can give you a lift, said Peter. I have a car.

—Say again?

—I’m guessing you don’t have a car yet. I’ll give you a lift on Thursday. I have an early start that day anyway.

—Well, thanks, Peter. You know where I live?

—Yeah. I saw it. Keeping the lamp was my idea.

After supper Luke and John went into the living room and sat on the floor in front of the couch. They swatted at each other when they thought nobody was looking. Barry had disappeared somewhere. Peter helped his grandmother over to her easy chair.

Lee watched all of this from the kitchen doorway, and then he turned back to Donna, who’d started the dishes.

—Should I go?

—You can stay for a bit, said Donna. They’re going to do their after-supper thing.

—What, do they play Monopoly?

—No. Barry does a bible study with them. After that I think he’s going to the church. He’ll give you a ride back into town.

Barry reappeared carrying a cloth-bound study bible. He sat on the couch in front of the boys. Peter was leaning against the wall. He saw Lee watching him and he shrugged.

—Tonight we’re going to talk about Jonah and the whale, said Barry.

Lee pulled a dishtowel off a hook above the oven. He started drying a plate. He saw Donna glance at him out of the corner of her eye.

—They do this every night?

—He’s a good dad, Lee.

—I never meant nothing. He’s been real good to me, sister. It was him who came to see me when I was in the city.

—I had the boys to look after. Mama too. It would of been pretty hard for me to go to the city.

—Look. I don’t mean nothing. Anyhow, it can’t hurt to learn about the Bible. I read it a couple times. I have questions about it, but you know me. The questions I have are probably for the experts.

He helped with the drying for a few minutes more. Then Pete was standing beside him.

—I can take over.

—I can do it, Peter, said Lee. Or do they call you Pete?

—Sure, I like that better, said Pete. Anyway, the dishes aren’t any trouble. Usually I dry them. It’s that or the bible study.

—You’d rather be in here?

—Yeah.

Lee handed him the dishtowel and moved over to the doorway. He looked at the boys and at Barry addressing them:

—It wouldn’t take long for you or me to get real uncomfortable in a whale’s belly. But not Brother Jonah. He just kept on praying and giving thanks. Saying his hallelujahs till the third day. So what does the Lord do? He tells that whale to let Jonah out of his belly. That’s not the end, either. Jonah goes on to Nineveh, just like he was supposed to. This time he isn’t afraid to preach the Word. He goes and tells those unbelievers what’s what. And this time? The people listen to him. So I want you to think about being a brave Christian. About going out to spread the good Word. That’s one of your jobs, boys. That’s something the Lord expects in exchange for all the great things He’s done for you.

By the time the lesson was done, Irene’s eyes were closed. Lee went over and took her hand. Barry smiled at him and said: Come on, Brother Lee. I have to swing by the church. I’ll drop you off at your new place.

Sometime after midnight, Lee woke from the same dream he’d been having for as long as he could remember. In the dream he was a boy again, venturing down into the basement of the boarding house in town where he and Donna grew up. The basement had brick walls and a dirt floor and towards the back was a coal furnace. A set of octopus pipes stretched up from the firebox and transmitted strange sounds through the house at night.

In Lee’s dream, none of the dimensions were quite right and it seemed as if he approached the furnace slowly, over a great distance. He’d hear a sound and turn to see a crippled caretaker, bearing a spadeshovel full of coal, taking shape out of the dark. The caretaker always looked like he was about to say something but he never did. Lee would try to run, but would find his feet fixed to the floor, and with the certainty of dreams he knew the spadeshovel was meant for him, to lift him whole or in pieces and carry him over to the furnace and load him onto the burning coals.

The dream had come frequently to Lee through much of his childhood, through his years in prison. It troubled him. It always had.

A little later, he gave up on the idea of sleep. He got up from the pullout couch and walked around the apartment. Eventually he put on his jeans and undershirt, and he went outside and stood on the sidewalk. The street was deserted. A stoplight blinked overhead. Nothing was quite believable yet.

Judy Lacroix was dead inside a car, parked on the gravel patch where the drive-in cinema had burned down. When Stan Maitland found her, he had a feeling of all his long years as a cop dilating on him. He knew who Judy was. He knew her family. This was a particular burden he held entirely to himself. That it was he who should find the girl dead in the car was proof of what could not be outstripped by the passing of time alone.

Earlier that evening, Stan had been fishing with his granddaughter Louise. They’d taken Stan’s boat north across Lake Kissinaw to a shoal in one of the back bays. Stan had brought along a carton of earthworms. Louise sat on the skiff’s middle seat. Her rubber boots did not touch the floor.

They conferred between long stretches of affable quiet. He loved how she would ply him with questions as to the nature of things.

—Grandpa, what do the fish do when the ice comes?

—Different fish do different things under the ice. I don’t know all of them, but bass—I told you how to tell which ones are bass—slow down and don’t do much. They just kind of hang around till it gets warm again. Sometimes my friends and I used to ice-fish, and on a nicer day we might think we could catch bass, but we never could.

Over an hour and a half they caught two pickerel and a small-mouth bass. When it was time to go he pulled the stringer of catch up into the skiff. In his tackle box he had a hatchet-handle, which he used to crack each fish across the skull. Louise sat primly, studying his every motion. Stan laid the dead fish on the bottom of the boat and rinsed his hands in the lake water. He stood, feeling his back pop, and heaved the pull-cord on the motor.

It was two days past the new moon, and by the time they returned to Echo Point the dark had fully settled. He’d left a light on in the front window of the house.

A dark form appeared on the dock while Stan was tying up. It was Cassius coming to greet them. Stan pushed the old black dog’s muzzle away from the fish. Louise trailed her hand along Cassius’s back.

—Can I see you clean the fish?

—I have to take you home now. It’s getting on to bedtime.

—Grandpa …

He knelt down beside her.

—You’ll get Grandpa in trouble, said Stan. Come on, let’s get your things. You can ride in the middle seat.

Stan told Cassius to stay in the yard. Louise climbed up into the cab of Stan’s pickup and Stan got into the driver’s seat and drove them out along Echo Point Road.

They talked about Louise’s first day of grade three. She wanted to know if he remembered when he’d been in grade three. He told her it had been in a one-room schoolhouse. He’d had to light the woodstove in winter. The building was gone now, long gone. It had been on the edge of the piece of land where the town had put up a golf course fifteen years ago.

Stan drove them out of the bush and they passed through open country. Ahead of them dust rose in the headlights. Then they were coming up to the drive-in. A screen stood out against the horizon. The box office and the concession stand and one of the other screens had burned down the year before. Some people around town whispered about a collection on insurance. Stan had been able to see the glow of the fire from the second floor of his house. He’d gone in his truck. The town fire department and the volunteer firefighters had already had the burning screen and the concession stand cordoned off when he arrived, but he’d come ahead of the police. The cops, when they finally showed up, were young. He hadn’t recognized them and they didn’t know who he was.

Now, passing the drive-in with Louise beside him, Stan saw how the thin new moon shone on the windshield of a car. The car was parked halfway to where the burned movie screen stood in deeper black against the stars. The car was dark. He thought about it and did not think about it.

Then the drive-in disappeared behind them.

Before long he merged onto the highway. The lights of town lay ahead. Louise put her head on Stan’s arm.

Mary and Frank Casey had a modern split-level house east of downtown. The windows were lit. Parked in the driveway were Mary’s Volvo and a provincial patrol car. Mary opened the front door as Stan came up the walk, carrying Louise, who had fallen asleep.

He took her upstairs and put her into her bed, and then he stood back and spent a moment looking at her. He wondered, vaguely, how many more years he would get to see her grow up.

He followed Mary back down to the living room.

—I hope I didn’t get her home too late.

—No, Dad, it’s fine. Thanks. She loves it.

Mary sat in the loveseat and Stan sat down on the couch. Next to it, against the wall, was a Clarendon upright piano. Stan put his hand out and dallied his fingers over the keys but did not press them. Frank came out of the kitchen. He was wearing a grey T-shirt and his uniform trousers.

—Thanks for taking Louise, Stan.

—It’s never any trouble. Where’s Emily?

Frank sat on the arm of the loveseat and said: She’s seventeen. You can guess where she’s at.

—A new boyfriend?

—A boy. I don’t know that I’d call him more than that. With her, it’s the stray cats.

—She has good sense, Frank, said Mary, putting her hand on his knee.

—How’s the detachment? said Stan.

—Labour Day is over. All the kids are back in school, let’s put it that way. That makes me happy.

—Fall was always a quiet time, said Stan. A lot of people were too busy on the farms to mess around.

—Well, if things didn’t change like they do, I wouldn’t need half the cops I have now, fall or not. But that’s how it goes.

—That’s how it goes, said Stan.

Stan was back on the road a short while later. He was only eight years retired from the local detachment, despite what it had meant for his pension. At one time he’d known every street in town. He turned off the highway and five minutes later he passed the drive-in again. His headlights caught the same car he’d seen earlier.

Stan drove by. Then he pulled off to the side of the road. Gravel snarled against the underside of his truck as he moved from the hardtop to the shoulder. He brought the vehicle to a stop and sat holding the steering wheel. Then he got out of the truck and took out a D-cell flashlight that he kept under the seat. He didn’t turn it on just yet. There was enough light from the stars and the moon to bring everything out in halftones. He walked into the drive-in lot.

The silhouette of the car resolved itself. Stan looked to see whether it was rocking and he listened for the creaking of springs. He sniffed the air for dope smoke. This would be better, he thought, if Cassius was with him.

He turned on the flashlight, at first pointing it at the ground. He waited for something to happen and when nothing did he brought the flashlight up and shone it on the windshield. He moved the light along the side of the car.

One of the back windows was rolled down a few inches. The space at the top had been stuffed with a towel. Stan could see a garden hose tucked through. The hose was looped down through the wheel well and around to the rear of the car. He moved up.

The flashlight cast a yellow glow into the back seat. The girl’s face was slack, dismayed. Her eyes were marbled.

Stan stepped backward. He looked at the dark shapes of the drive-in, black against the stars and the frame of the old screen. When he looked again he knew who she was. Her name was Judy Lacroix. Recognition was a hand pulling at his shirt sleeve.

Not that he’d ever forgotten it, how it was his arrest and testimony that had hanged the dead girl’s uncle.

At six o’clock in the morning on Thursday, Lee went into a diner called the Owl Café, a block away from his apartment. He took a stool at the counter. He was wearing his new work boots, carrying his new tool belt. These he’d purchased the day before. He’d also purchased a measuring tape and a hammer and a retractable knife and a small collection of pencils, which he’d carefully sharpened. He put the tool belt on the stool beside him. There was a colour television behind the counter playing a morning news broadcast. The picture was coming in and out. A waitress passing the set reached up and adjusted the antenna before she came over to Lee. Her face was warm and the name Helen was embroidered on her shirt. Her hips and breasts were round and full.

—Morning, hon.

—Morning yourself, said Lee.

—Anything catch your eye?

—You mean on the menu?

She grinned: Come on. You just got here.

He ordered eggs and home fries and extra bacon. She brought him a cup of coffee and then she moved away and passed his order through a wicket into a steaming kitchen. Lee lit a cigarette. Seated around him were a few other patrons. He didn’t think he recognized any of them. There were a couple of truckers and a nurse along the counter, and four old men in a booth. A man with long dark hair and sharp features, wearing a down-filled vest and sitting near the window, might have been studying Lee if he allowed himself to think so. Lee tapped his cigarette into an ashtray. He flexed his toes inside his new work boots.

Helen came with his breakfast and refilled his coffee.

—Enjoy, Brown Eyes.

He slathered ketchup on his food and he hunched forward and dug into his breakfast. He sensed that Helen was watching him, amused. He looked at her.

—I don’t know where you usually eat, said Helen, but nobody’s going to steal your food here.

Before Lee could reply, she went back down the counter to take someone else’s order. The man in the down-filled vest raised a hand at her, snapped his fingers, but Helen ignored him. It was a different waitress who went to refill the man’s coffee.

Lee finished his breakfast. He got up and collected his tool belt and went into the washroom. When he came out, he saw Pete in a small car outside. The long-haired man with the sharp features was gone. Helen came over and Lee asked what he owed. After he’d paid, Helen said she hoped he’d come again.

He left the diner, feeling good and loose-limbed. Pete popped the trunk open and Lee dropped his tool belt beside the spare tire. He closed the trunk and got into the car.

—Morning, said Pete.

—Top of the morning to you.

—Ready for your first day?

—You bet, buck.

—I asked Barry to ask Clifton Murray where we’re going, said Pete. It’s out at the lake. Where all the new places are going up. My mom packed you a lunch. It’s on the back seat.

They went south out of town and followed a road along the bottom edge of Lake Kissinaw. Lee remembered the geography of it, the aspect of the trees, a certain house. A sign advertised a lakeside subdivision to be built in the next year.

—I hear you don’t go to school no more, said Lee.

—I … No, that’s true. I quit.

—Wasn’t to your liking?

—You could say that. I don’t know how to explain it.

—So you work at a gas station all the time?

—Pretty much, said Pete. I’m saving some money. Before Grandma got sick, I was planning to leave.

—Is that right? Where were you going to go?

—West, said Pete. Out to the ocean. I thought I would figure it out from there. For now I just have to keep focused.

Lee felt an immense sense of strangeness with Pete, now that he’d met him and put a face to the name. It was not entirely comfortable but it was not as bad as Lee had expected it might be. Overall, it was just hard to believe that they were sitting side by side in a car all these years later.

—Was it sort of the same way for you? said Pete.

—Say what?

The kid was giving him a sidelong look, trying mostly to keep his eyes on the road as he drove.

—Staying focused. When you were … inside.

Lee thought about the question, and about the strange feeling he had sitting next to this kid. Nobody had ever asked him how he’d kept focused in prison. After a moment, he said: Well, there was this and that, I guess. The first couple of years it was all the wrong things. But later on I started looking in different places. I thought the Bible was okay. All that talk about lands of milk and honey sounded good. Create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit in me. That’s one of the Psalms.

—Yeah, I think I’ve heard that one, said Pete.

—I also had some dirty magazines. Those helped too.

They both laughed.

—There really wasn’t all that much, said Lee. You’ve got to get along with what you have. There was TV, which a lot of guys looked at, but I never cared for it. I thought a lot of the programs were bullshit.

—They mostly are.

Lee studied Pete’s profile. He never would have believed it, but this was alright, riding along with Donna’s son. This was alright. He had a fondness for the kid already.

—I haven’t known you real long, said Lee. But I can see you’re one of the good guys.

The job site was on the south shore of the lake, which was screened by a long, rocky point from the town waterfront. An orchard used to grow here and some of the apple trees remained yet, untended and straggling. A large cottage, four thousand square feet, was being built on the property. When Pete and Lee arrived, the building was just the framing and the roof and some sheathing. The ground was trampled mud. There were stacks of building material and a tall heap of half-inch crushed stone. A BobCat and two cars and two pickup trucks all stood in the driveway. Lee counted five men unloading tools. A wooden sign read MURRAY CUSTOM BLDG, CALL FOR ESTIMATE’S.

Pete parked behind the trucks. Lee got out and retrieved his tool belt from the trunk. From the back seat he took the lunch pail Donna had packed for him. Pete watched him.

—Do you know when you’ll be done?

—No, said Lee. Anyhow I’ll see if someone here can give me a lift back into town. Don’t sweat it.

—Okay. Have a good day, Uncle Lee.

Lee’s face quirked.

—Something wrong? said Pete.

Lee laughed. He said: How about, I’ll call you Pete, and you call me Lee. There’s no need for formal shit between the good guys.

—Okay. Lee.

Lee thumped his fist on the roof of the car. Pete gave him a little salute, rolled up his window, and drove away. Lee headed over to a man tying his bootlaces beside a truck.

—Are you Mr. Murray?

The man pointed to someone else, twenty feet away. He said: That’s Clifton.

Clifton Murray was short and bowlegged, with curly red hair going grey. He held a pencil in his mouth and was frowning over an invoice. Lee crossed over and Clifton looked up, fixed him with a gnomish squint.

—Morning, Mr. Murray, said Lee. I’m Leland King.

Lee offered his hand. Clifton shook it once. He took the pencil, chamfered and moist, out of his mouth and said: Oh. Right.

—Thank you for the job. I’ve been looking forward to it since Barry told me.

—That’s good. Pastor Barry might of told you this one: You will eat the labour of your hands, and happy will you be. So if hard work is something you like …

The man who’d been tying his bootlaces ambled by and said: Morning, Clifton.

—Good day, Jeff, said Clifton.

—Anyhow, said Lee. I got my trade. Cabinets, doors, all kinds of joining. You name it.

—Well, you can give Bud a hand getting the shingles up to the roof. I got 150 bundles that have to go up.

Fifty feet away was a gangly chap perhaps five years older than Pete. His hair was cut in a severe crewcut. He was hoisting a bundle of shingles from a stack onto his shoulder.

Clifton squinted at Lee.

—There a problem, mister man?

—No, said Lee. Just thought you needed a carpenter is all.

—I’ve got a carpenter. A darn good one. I subcontract out to him when I need to. Now what I need is those shingles on the roof.

—Okay.

Clifton spread his hands: Not five minutes you’re here. I’m taking you on Pastor Barry’s good word but I don’t need any headache.

—No, sir. I’ll get them shingles moving double-quick.

—That’s better. Now. I don’t allow profane language or idleness on my job site. You can smoke once an hour. Lunch is at noontime.

—Okay, Mr. Murray.

Lee started in the direction of the stack of shingles.

—Leland King!

Lee turned.

—A good thing to think about, said Clifton. Redeeming yourself doesn’t happen all at once. One day at a time. Deeds, thoughts, prayer. That’s from Pastor Barry and I believe it, every word.

Lee looked at the mud on the ground. He fingered the buckle of the tool belt on his shoulder. He found himself coming up against a depth of religious faith that he’d not expected. Clifton now, but also with his mother and with Barry and Donna. He should have expected it, he knew, given the letters Barry had written to him over the years. But knowing it from written letters, and finding it now in the world of free men, were two different things and he couldn’t yet figure out what that difference might mean. There had been religion in prison, and it was on Barry’s urging that Lee had sought guidance from the chaplain and had taken up reading the Bible. The chaplain, in turn, had spoken on Lee’s behalf when his parole hearings eventually came around. But behind the cinder-block walls and the iron bars, the ideas of spiritual deliverance and a Kingdom of God had a much more basic appeal. Out here, it seemed somehow different. Less tangible. His mind coursed through a number of the bible verses he’d learned, but he couldn’t seem to fix on one that might fit as a response to Clifton’s comments. Clifton, for his part, had already gone back to examining the invoice.

Over at the stack of shingles, the gofer Clifton had indicated saw Lee coming. He flopped the bundle off his shoulder back onto the stack and he swaggered over to meet Lee halfway.

—I’m Bud, said the gofer.

—Hi, Bud. I’m Lee.

—I got to get these f-ing shingles up on the roof.

—I know. I’m here to help.

—F-ing A. Let’s do this.

Bud had a small beer gut and lean muscles in his arms. He re-hoisted his bundle and carried it over to the building. An extendable ladder stood against the facer board along the edge of the roof. Lee looked around. He saw a big man gassing up the BobCat. Coming from inside the building were the hollow sounds of hammer-falls. Lee held his tool belt in his hands, considering it. Then he hid it between the top and bottom boarding of the skid beneath the stack of shingles.

He’d never done any kind of roof work. He lifted a bundle of shingles onto his shoulder and set out across the site. The mud sucked at his boots. He regarded the ladder dubiously. Overhead, Bud had disappeared onto the roof. Lee was nervous to climb the ladder with the shingles weighing heavily on his shoulder, but no other way was obvious, and Clifton was watching him, so he put his boots on the bottom rung and started up. The ladder flexed at the middle. He didn’t like that much. Then Bud reappeared at the facer board to help him over the top and direct him to where he could lay the bundle across the peak of the roof. The roof was broad and pale, naked plywood, smooth enough that if the pitch were deeper it would be dangerous. Lee didn’t care for it. He’d never even envied the guards in the penitentiary towers.

As the morning went on, bundle after bundle of shingles scraped Lee’s shoulders raw. At one point, coming across the yard, he cut into the path of the BobCat. He heard the engine shift into neutral. The big man driving it leaned out of the housing and yelled: Anytime you want to get out of the way, okay?

Lee set his eyes forward and took another bundle up the ladder. Bud was there again, helping him over the top. Lee put the shingles down and stretched.

—Smoke break time, said Bud. You want a smoke?

—I’d have one, yeah.

Bud offered Lee a cigarette.

—Clifton doesn’t like smoking, said Bud. He doesn’t like drinking. Rick Flynn came to work hungover too many times and Clifton sacked him. You ask me, Clifton probably doesn’t even like sex.

—Well, he’s the boss. Long as he’s got work for me, he doesn’t have to like anything.

Lee passed smoke through his nose. Everything looked huge. The roof, the lake, the property around the building. The sky. The leaves on the trees had just started to change colour, but even this early contrast was vivid to his eyes. A flock of geese was traversing the sky out over the lake. All of this space, the colours, the autumn scent on the air. He closed his eyes and told himself the walls and bars were gone.

—Where you from, anyways? said Bud. Around here?

—I grew up here, yeah. Actually, when I was a kid I remember all this was just a bay. Me and a couple buddies used to catch steelhead out of season down here. There were some cabins out this way—you could rent them and whatnot—but there weren’t any big motherfuckers like this one.

Bud darted a glance around and said: Clifton doesn’t like swearing.

—Right. I forgot.

Bud grinned lewdly. He lowered his voice and said: Here’s a good one. So the dick says to the rubber, Cover me, I’m going in!

—What?

—Oh. I mean, what does the dick say to the rubber? I frigged it up.

Bud shook his head briskly, as if to clear it of the frigged-up joke. Lee chuckled dryly. They finished their cigarettes and got back to the shingles.

When they broke for lunch, Lee went over to the skid to verify that his tool belt was still hidden. It irritated him to think of the dirt collecting on it. He then joined Bud and the others, who’d assembled themselves near the trucks and were sitting on building materials while they ate. Clifton wasn’t around. Bud said he’d gone into town to see why a delivery was held up. Lee sat down and opened the lunch pail that Donna had packed. It contained a ham sandwich, an apple, a Thermos of tea, cookies wrapped in cellophane. He realized he had no idea what he would have eaten otherwise, and how he’d thought he could go the whole day on breakfast alone.

There were three men, not counting Clifton or Lee or Bud. Two of them looked much alike, brothers perhaps, maybe father and son. One of them was the man Jeff, whom Lee had seen tying his bootlace. He and his look-alike had a battery-powered radio sitting between them, and they had it set to a country station. Both of them were nodding to the music. Across from them, the BobCat driver was a big French guy. He was eating a chicken drumstick. If any of them knew who Lee was, they gave no sign of it. There wasn’t much talk at all. Lee ate his lunch in minutes. Then he massaged his shoulder where the shingles had scraped it.

—Okay, said the French guy. You can move the shingles pretty good. But that don’t mean you’re strong or fast.

—What do you mean by that, said Lee.

The French guy grinned at him and said: I mean nobody wants all the good men to be held up because of the slow guy.

Did she mention my name, sang the radio. Lee stood up. He closed his lunch pail.

—I’m just here to work. I won’t hold none of you up.

He carried off his lunch pail and found a tree at the edge of the property to urinate against. He was just bringing out his cigarettes when he saw a truck arriving, and then Clifton getting out.

Clifton clapped his hands and called out: Let’s go, boys. We can’t do it all in seven days, but we can try!

By two o’clock, Lee and Bud had moved most of the shingles up to the roof. They’d spaced them across the peak to distribute the weight. Then they heard someone hail them from below. They went over to the edge of the roof. Bud stood right at the drop, scratching his ass, and Lee hung back a few feet. It was the French guy calling to them.

They went down the ladder. The guy directed them to spread gravel into the driveway from the big mound of crush. Clifton was over measuring the foundation. He didn’t seem to take any issue with this other man giving orders. Wordlessly, Bud went to fetch a wheelbarrow and shovels.

They spent the rest of the afternoon at the gravel. Lee wasn’t aware quitting time had come until he looked around and saw the others packing up. Bud had gone off to piss somewhere.

Clifton waved to Lee and said: That’s a day, mister man.

Bud and Lee stowed the shovels and the wheelbarrow against the wall of the building. The shadows had grown long and blue. Lee recovered his tool belt from under the skid and put it over his shoulder. He picked up his lunch pail and went to where the men were congregating at the trucks. Nobody had anything to say about the work that had been done that day, and to look at the building and the yard around it—other than the shingles having been moved—it was hard to see any difference since morning. Lee figured maybe with a project this big, you didn’t see changes in the short term. You worked a day and then you worked the day after that, and only slowly did it all come together.

He cleared his throat and said: Could any of you give me a lift into town?

—Could always hitchhike, said the French guy.

—I suppose you don’t have a vehicle, said Clifton.

Clifton scratched his neck. The two men who looked alike were over by their truck. The French guy was annotating his day’s hours in a pocket notebook. All at once Lee felt helpless. Clifton squinted at him and looked like he was about to say something, but then Bud appeared, zipping up his fly.

He said: I’m goin’ to town. You want a lift?

That evening, Lee was very sore. He’d stopped at the variety store downstairs to buy himself some provisions, and when he came upstairs, he packed himself a lunch in the lunch pail.

He could not remember when he’d last packed a lunch. For a time he’d lived in a halfway house in the city, working in a furniture shop, and he’d eaten every day from a truck that came around and sold submarine sandwiches. But this wasn’t bad, packing a lunch. This was good. This seemed like the kind of thing you did when you had only yourself to look after and answer to.

Around eight o’clock there was a knock at his door. Mr. Yoon was in the hallway.

—How are you, said the landlord, flatly.

—I’m good, said Lee. Tired out. You know.

—You weren’t here today.

—I was working. First day.

Mr. Yoon nodded and said: Is everything working here?

—Everything’s working good.

—Okay.

After a moment Mr. Yoon nodded and left. Lee closed the door.

He got his tool belt and went back to the window, rubbing his sore shoulder. He sat there, watching the street. Indian summer evening—folks coming and going at the A&P across the way, a couple of high school kids acting like hoods on the street corner, boats out on the lake. While Lee watched, he cleaned the dirt from the tool-belt pouches and the hammer.

Bud had said he could drive him the next day as well, would pick him up in the morning. There was that. And it was good to be sore from a day of work, even if he couldn’t see the progress at Clifton’s job site the way he could see how a desk went together. It was good to not have much to think about at all.

Business was slow on Friday evening at the Texaco service station where Pete worked. The Texaco was on the highway bypass northeast of town. The sky above was turning dark and the night was going to be cool. Pete was sitting in a lawn chair, leaning back against the wall of the booth between the pumps, with a Louis L’Amour paperback—one of his Luke Short stories—open on his lap. A Ford Fairlane pulled in and drove over the bell-line and stopped at the pumps. Pete’s co-worker Duane was at the edge of the parking lot, engrossed in conversation with a shift worker from the chemical factory, so Pete put his book down and got up from the chair.

He went over to the Ford. A thin old man, bald-headed, got out of the car and stretched and regarded Pete wearily.

—What’ll it be, mister? said Pete.

—The unleaded, please. You folks have a washroom?

—Yes. Just go in the store and ask Caroline—she’s at the cash-out—for the key.

The old man went into the store. Pete lifted the nozzle off the pump and pushed it into the Ford’s gas tank. The smell of gasoline rose on the air.

—Working hard?

Pete was startled. He turned and saw a man of about forty who’d evidently been in the Ford’s passenger seat. The man standing there did not appear to be all put-together. He had a wide grin and vacant eyes and sweatpants drawn high over his waist. He was wearing a baseball cap, but it didn’t fully hide the edges of a scar near the top of his forehead. He was nodding his head in perpetual agreement.

—What can I say, said Pete. I’m keeping busy.

The man’s head bobbed up and down. He laughed.

—And you? said Pete. Plans for the weekend?

—Oh, not me! I take it easy.

The old man reappeared from the washroom.

—For godsake, Simon. Get in the car.

Simon shuffled back to the passenger seat. Over his shoulder he told Pete not to work too hard.

—I’m sorry, said the old man. Sometimes he wanders away. It’s frustrating.

—It’s no trouble.

The old man didn’t say anything. By way of something to break the quiet, Pete asked him if his car was the ‘79 Fairlane.

The old man blinked. He smiled, said: Yes, this is the ‘79. I was always a Ford man. I used to run a dealership. Do you have a car?

—I have a ‘73 Honda coupe I bought from my stepdad’s friend. It gets me around. But I always wanted a Mustang.

The tank finished filling. Pete hung the nozzle on the pump.

—It’ll be ten dollars.

The old man paid by credit card. As Pete took an imprint of the card, he caught sight of the man’s name: Arthur Grady. Pete brought out a receipt and Arthur Grady signed it. He didn’t leave immediately. He ran his hand along the roof of his car.

—I had a son who really loved the Thunderbird. The Bullet Bird, they called it. I bought him a 1961 brand new, the two-door with the hardtop and the 390. It was one of five I ever sold and I sold it to myself and I gave it to him when he turned eighteen. He’d made the first-round draft pick, see, and I didn’t care what that car would set me back.

—How long did he have it?

—Not six months.

—Oh …

Arthur Grady flexed his mouth. He looked at the bypass and said: My son isn’t with us any more. Anyhow, I apologize for taking up your time.

He got into the Fairlane. He pulled his door shut and started the ignition, but then he slid his window down and gestured to Pete. There was a smell of cigar smoke and leather upholstery. Simon, in the passenger seat, was fiddling with the radio. Without looking, the old man gently pushed Simon’s hand away from the buttons.

—This is for you, said the old man.

He gave Pete a one-dollar tip. Pete thanked him. Arthur Grady slid his window up and started his car and drove back onto the bypass.

One by one the lights over the pumps came on. Duane had come back and was tapping Skoal tobacco out of a tin he kept in his pocket. He plugged the tobacco under his lip. He did this expertly, one-handed.

—Pete, man, I’m proud of you. You actually worked today.

Pete brushed past Duane and went into the store. At the cash-out, Caroline was working on a crossword puzzle. She smiled when she saw him. He brought her Arthur Grady’s receipt and she put it in the ledger and then asked Pete if he wanted his paycheque. They went into the office. Caroline owned and managed the Texaco, and her office was small and neatly kept. She did not allow smoking. A geranium was potted on the windowsill. Caroline dug into the filing cabinet.

—That old man, said Pete. You know him?

—What old man?

—The bald guy that came in to get the key for the washroom.

—Him? I’ve seen him around, I think. Maybe. But I don’t know him. Why?

—Just … kind of weird. Looked at me funny. Told me about his dead son.

—You’ll hear all kinds of personal crap from people. Last week a woman in the store got real personal with me about her divorce. All the legal details and so forth. Sometimes people just need other people to hear them. Even if it’s just a stranger. You know?

Following his shift at the Texaco, Pete changed and got into his Honda. He picked up his friend Billy at a low-rise apartment building where Billy’s older brother lived. Billy had a two-four of Labatt, which he toted around to the back of the car and put in the trunk. Then he came to the passenger side and got in.

—How’s it hanging, Pete, said Billy. What time is it?

—It’s seven, said Pete. A little after. What’s the plan?

—We’re going to church.

It must have been how Pete was looking at him. Billy grinned. He said: Music recital.

—What are you talking about?

—The girl I told you about, said Billy. Emily. She plays the piano.

Billy played piano across the dashboard.

—So we’re going to church, said Pete. Jesus. I thought after I quit all that craziness at my stepdad’s church that I wouldn’t have to go any more.

—I’m being supportive is what I’m doing. It’s what you have to do to keep the good ones.

—Okay … But if these people start talking in tongues, I’m leaving.

Pete had never been inside the United Church before. They parked across the street and they smoked a little bit of dope first. Then they went through a set of heavy oak doors and up a carpeted stairway into the church entryway. Pete was uncomfortably conscious of the hush around him. They found their way into the sanctuary and wandered between the empty pews. He did not quite know what to conclude about where he was. Galilee Pentecostal Tabernacle, where Barry preached, was an entirely modern building. The sanctuary at Galilee was almost like a concert hall or theatre. Here, in the church, the sanctuary was dimly lit and old-fashioned. It felt rigid, somehow.

Before long, a tight-browed woman in a beige pantsuit appeared behind them, wanting to know were they looking for somebody. They told her they’d come for the music recital. Billy added that they weren’t there to steal bibles or anything. She gave them a doubtful look but she led them out of the sanctuary, past some offices, and finally to a banquet hall in the basement. There were four dozen classroom chairs arranged in the hall, facing a riser where a microphone and a piano and a music stand were arranged. Billy poked Pete in the ribs and pointed at the piano. Around them, most of the seats were already taken up. Families. Pete saw a mother holding a wad of Kleenex to her child’s nose.

He and Billy took two of the seats at the rear.

—So where is she? said Pete.

—I don’t know, she’s here somewhere. She’s small, man.

The woman in the pantsuit stepped onto the riser. She tapped the microphone and the scattered conversations around the hall went quiet. She said she was happy to welcome them to the September recital. The young musicians they were about to hear were all just really terrific. The three adjudicators were members of the regional board of the Christian Musicians Association, whose mission, for those who didn’t know, is service to the Lord through good deeds, good words and musical talent. After the introductory remarks, an elderly woman in thick orthopaedic shoes came onto the riser and sat at the piano.

—So that’s your girl, said Pete.

A man a few seats up turned around and looked at them over the top of his glasses.

The first performer was a girl of about fourteen. To the pianist’s accompaniment, she played the flute—six or seven minutes of what they had been told was a concertino. She was very good. Next up was an adolescent boy who was indelicately carrying a violin and a bow. He was trembling and grinning frantically. The old pianist led him in with a slow piece. Pete thought he remembered it from the term of music class that he’d taken, but he couldn’t recollect the name. Something by Bach or Mozart or some other long-dead composer. The boy drew the bow across the violin strings and a dreadful squeal of sound came forth.

—Oh shit, said Billy.

The boy shook, struggling through the piece. Every note cut like glass. Heads about the room lowered and people studied the floor.

—If I had my .22 here, I’d put him out of his misery.

—Shut up, Billy.

When the boy finished, he held his violin in one hand and the bow in his other hand and bowed stiffly from the waist. People applauded politely. A fat woman in a paisley dress stood up and clapped with furious resolve and looked around grimly. The boy ran off the riser and took the seat next to her.

Billy poked Pete in the ribs. He was gesturing.

A girl was standing up from one of the seats near the front. She was small. Pete could see nothing of her face. She walked with her back straight and her dark hair in a simple cascade, catching the light, down her shoulders. She had to tap the old pianist on the shoulder. The pianist gaped at her, startled, and then exited the riser. The girl sat down on the bench.

—What do you think? said Billy.

—What do I think? I think she looks respectable.

—I know. Wait till you meet her.

The girl’s hands hovered over the keys for a moment, as if she was collecting herself, and then her hands moved down and she began to play. The tempo of the piece quickened, slackened, quickened again. She was playing from memory for there was no sheet music before her. Pete thought he could listen to the piece for a long time. Maybe it was the dope they’d smoked but maybe it was something more. He thought how not every feeling should be explained away. And when the girl had finally finished playing, and people were clapping, he was aware that it was over.

The girl traded off with the old pianist again. Two more acts followed, forgotten as soon as they finished, and then came the intermission.

They hung around the corridor outside the banquet hall and Billy told Pete about how he’d met the girl. There were three high schools in town. There was a small Catholic French high school called Sacré Coeur. There was Northside Secondary, where Pete had gone before he’d quit, and where most of the out-of-town kids came by bus. And there was Heron Heights, in town, where Billy said Emily had just started grade twelve. Billy had been at Heron Heights with the Northside lacrosse team, playing an exhibition game, the first of the season. He said he’d noticed Emily sitting with her friends in the stands nearby. After the game, Billy had thought she’d gone, but later, when he was coming out of the change room, he saw her in the corridor. He said he’d gone up and talked to her a little bit, and since then they’d been on a couple of dates. He was agreeable with just about everybody, but he was bold as well. Pete envied much about him.

—Hey, you.

They turned and saw her coming towards them. She walked with cool poise.

—That was great, said Billy. The piano playing. I didn’t have any idea you could do that.

—Thank you. I practised that one for a long time. I didn’t think you were coming. If I’d known you were here, I might have been nervous.

She reached out and took Billy’s hand, then asked if he was going to introduce her to his friend.

—This is Pete.

—Hey, Pete. I’m Emily Casey.

—Hey, said Pete. What kind of music was that?

—It was a waltz, said Emily. Chopin.

—Well whatever, said Billy. It was great as hell. Anyway, when you’re done here, you want to come with us? We’ve got a case of beer in the car.

—I can’t, said Emily. I’m here with my family. But I’ve got some time in the week. And next weekend my friend Nancy might have some people over.

They would have talked more but just then a man appeared in the corridor behind them, some distance away. He was a slim man. Collared shirt and tie. The man was simply standing there, not moving towards them, but all the same Pete felt himself scrutinized. He occupied himself by examining some outreach tracts in a rack on the wall.

—Emily, said the man.

She gave the man a little wave, turned back to Billy, and said: That’s my dad.

—The cop, said Billy, his voice low enough that Emily’s father couldn’t hear him.

—Yes. Anyway, call me.

She withdrew as coolly as she’d arrived, going through the doors of the banquet hall with them watching her, and her father watching them.

The case of Labatt made a full revolution of locations before it was opened. They ended up back at Billy’s brother’s apartment, where they smoked more dope and drank beer. Billy and his brother sat on the couch with their guitars and spent some time disagreeing over what song to play. Billy’s brother had married just out of high school. His wife was watching television and didn’t pay attention to Pete or Billy or even Billy’s brother.

The hours passed and the beers got fewer. Pete went out on the balcony to get some air. The lights of town winked up at him, unchanging. Pete thought about the old bald man, Grady—or was it Gardy?—who’d come to the gas station earlier that night, with his one idiot son in the car and his talk of his other son, lover of Thunderbirds, long dead. Pete thought also of Emily, cool and collected, seated at the piano in the silent instant before she played.

Stan’s cronies usually convened at Western Autobody & Glass a couple of times each week. The sign over the bay doors read Family Owned and Operated Since 1934. Huddy Phillips, who’d opened the garage himself, had signed it over to his son Bob five years ago, but Huddy and the other old-timers still got together in the adjoining office to swap their stories. They stood around, drinking coffee, talking at length, sometimes talking over each other, often repeating tales they’d all told many times before.

—… I say if all them sons of bitches want to go their own way they can take everything east of the Ottawa River and go, is what I say, you know I was chums with Black Jack Stewart when we were young lads, turns out that chap she was going with was a queer, and they can take Trudeau with them when they go …

—Nothing is the same as it used to be, by Christ, said Huddy.

He sat under an official photograph of the 1959 Royal Tour, the Queen and her husband walking along a path beside Lake Louise. The photograph hung slightly crooked, and Stan could not look at it without wondering if the Queen had ever seen the inside of a place like Western Autobody, and what she might think if she had.

Dick Shannon filled two cups from the coffee maker. He was fifty-six years old, which put him much younger than the others, but he’d been married thirty-five years to the youngest sister of Bill Norman, who was one of the other old-timers hanging around the garage. Dick had been partnered with Stan at the local detachment for many years. He did not have long to go before he retired, but today he was uniformed and a marked patrol car was parked outside.

Stan was leaning beside a window into the service bay, watching one of the mechanics pump transmission fluid into an import. There’d been talk about the dead girl. He knew that. The circumstances of the discovery had not been published in the newspaper when the story broke last week, but word had got out quickly as to who’d found her. Stan had heard that her body was only now coming back from the coroner, so that a funeral could be held.

Dick brought Stan one of the cups of coffee. They listened to the gossip around them.

—Ferris’s delivery truck, said Huddy.

—That old Chevy, said Bill.

—You don’t know anything. It was a goddamn Ford. Panel built on the passenger chassis.

—How’s the house? said Dick.

—It’s standing, said Stan. It always needs this or that but I’d say it’s got more winters to stand than I do.

—Word is that Frank and Mary might move out there.

—Maybe. Not just yet. I talked to them about taking it in a few years. It’s been in the family a long time.

—I’ll come out and visit soon.

—Anytime. I don’t hide the whisky bottles any more.

They drank their coffee in silence. Then Huddy reached up and tugged Stan’s sleeve. He said: Stanley, that gal.

—What gal.

—That gal they found out there, dead in her car. That gal was one of Aurel Lacroix’s daughters, wasn’t she?

Dick cleared his throat and examined his knuckles. Bill Norman and the other men in the office became quiet.

—Yes, said Stan. That’s right.

—Aurel Lacroix, Christ Almighty.

On the evening before the girl’s funeral, Stan went to the viewing. It was held at the unremarkable municipal mortuary. Light came from brass sconces on the wall and there were watercolours of nature scenes. He signed the guest book in the foyer. His good suit had been tailored of cashmere wool many years before. Now it was loose in the chest and shoulders. The last time he’d worn it was when his wife, Edna, died two years ago.

Judy Lacroix lay in a closed casket of varnished pine with autumn wildflowers arranged on the bier around her. There were twenty to twenty-five people in attendance, but Judy’s only living immediate relative was her twin sister, Eleanor, not quite thirty years old. Their mother and father were no longer living, and their father’s brothers had died before they’d had the chance to make any families of their own. Stan had never known a family more marked by loss. He saw Eleanor speaking to two well-wishers. It gave him an eerie sense to see Judy’s twin sister here in the room, living, speaking, when the last time he’d seen that identical face, it had been frozen in dismay in the back of a car.

He went up to the casket and stood by for a respectful pause and then he stepped back.

—Thank you for coming.

Stan turned and saw that Eleanor had come to him. Her hand was extended. He shook it.

—I knew your family, said Stan. I knew you when you were just little girls. I suppose you hear that all the time, about how somebody knew you when you were yay old.

Eleanor looked at him steadily. Her eyes were bloodshot.

—It’s the kind of thing you hear when you grow up.

He didn’t think she recognized him.

—I’m sorry for your loss, said Stan. Your sister was a fine young woman.

She nodded her thanks. Stan directed a final look at the casket. Then he went back into the corridor and out into the twilight.

Across from the mortuary was a small trucking company. Three rigs were parked beneath a bright spotlight. Stan got into his truck and put his hands on the steering wheel. He hoped that the visitation would be the end of it.

It was raining when Lee woke for work, and he was soaked by the time he got to the Owl Café. He took the stool at the end of the counter. Over the last two weeks, the stool had more or less become his place.

The time had gone by quickly. He’d seen his mother and Donna and Barry just once. He wanted to see them more, especially his mother, but it was hard to get out to where they lived—and for all he’d had to come home to help his mother, she seemed to be taken care of, as much as she could be.

And it was not as if Lee’s return did not cause his family some upset, especially Donna. He knew it. But given enough time, perhaps a month or two more, maybe he’d find his place with them. They just needed to see what he could do now, what he could make of himself.

Last week, he’d had a meeting with his parole officer, a foppish little man named Wade Larkin. They’d met in a room in the new municipal offices and all Larkin asked was how was work going and was Lee staying sober and had he had any run-ins with the police. Some girl in town had killed herself, right around the time Lee came back—the girl had made the news—and Larkin wanted to confirm that she was nobody Lee knew. She wasn’t, Lee told him. Larkin said that was good, and made a note of it, and that concluded their meeting. They wouldn’t have to meet again until next month. Larkin had given Lee his card with instructions to call right away if he got into any kind of trouble.

Helen came down along the counter with a mug of coffee and took his order.

—Give me your Thermos, Brown Eyes. I’ll fill it up.

She took his order to the wicket and she filled his Thermos from a coffee maker behind the counter. Lee was chilled from the wet. He lit a cigarette.

He had just finished his breakfast when he saw Bud’s car outside. The headlights were dense through the rainfall. Lee paid his bill.

—See you next time, said Helen.

Lee got up and took his lunch pail and tool belt. He went over to the door. Then he stopped. He went back to the counter. Helen looked at him and he gestured for her to come over.

—Something wrong?

—No, nothing’s wrong. Look. My name is Lee.

—Okay, Lee. But I might keep calling you Brown Eyes, because of your pretty brown peepers.

—Your name is Helen. It’s on your shirt there.

She smiled. Lee put his hand to the back of his neck.

—Anyways, I wondered if you’d want to get dinner.

—Sounds like a date you’re asking me on, said Helen.

—A date. Yeah.

—There’s a rule where I’m not supposed to go on dates with customers.

—Oh.

—But I don’t really care about rules. So yes, Brown Eyes Lee. I would love to have dinner with you. Meet me tonight. Seven-thirty at Aldo’s.

He was surprised that she’d named the place—wasn’t that his to figure out?—but he supposed it was just one more thing that had changed while he’d been away. He said: That’s the Italian place downtown?

—That’s right.

She smiled. Lee stood back from the counter.

—Okay, said Lee. Seven-thirty.

—Rain before seven quits before eleven, said Bud. Just you watch.

Bud was correct. The crew sat in their vehicles for an hour but by eight o’clock the rain had tapered down. The air was cold and damp and Lee was glad to start moving his body again.

The big cottage was assuming form. The shingles had all been laid. They’d done that through some sunny days when the tar was soft and the flashing was almost too hot to touch. The sheathing had been house-wrapped and taped. Lee had never met the owners. He’d only heard speculation on their wealth. He did not even know their names. The bathroom on the second floor was bigger than two cells in the penitentiary put together.

Of late he was not having any dreams he could remember, and that was a relief. He would get up early and go to the café for breakfast and make small talk with Helen. Bud would pick him up and they’d head to the job site.

He was getting to know the crew. The two framers were father and son, Jeff and Jeff Junior. They would sing country standards, Buck Owens and Hank Snow tunes. They would work quickly to frame the walls and Lee and Bud would often have to trail behind them, moving studs a half-inch to the left or right before re-spiking them. The French guy’s name was Sylvain. He was a subcontracted landscaper who’d worked with Clifton many times before and he was there to grade the property. He behaved with a kind of jovial hostility, and he would grin and ask Lee and Bud if they were extra lazy today, boys, or what? Clifton himself would move around the site with the sole purpose, it seemed, of wringing his hands and looking at his watch. He would invoke larger forces or biblical passages when any of the men appeared to be dawdling: Idleness! You-know-who likes to take advantage of idleness. I’m telling you for your own good.

By late morning Lee and Bud were both black with muck. They were in the midst of digging a drainage ditch around the foundation. Their hourly cigarette break came. Bud straightened up and stretched.

—This is a good one. A guy goes to see a doctor because his dick is orange, and the doctor says has he been eating Cheezies, and … Wait. No. It’s what he tells the doctor. At the end. I frigged it up.

Bud gave his head the same brisk shake that Lee had seen the first time, and then shot him a hapless look. Lee just grinned, and they ground out the butts of their cigarettes and got back to work.

Clifton stayed for lunch that day. Conversation was usually muted when he was around. Clifton said that he hadn’t seen any of them out at Galilee Tabernacle yet. The doors were always open. They could take their time, of course, but they ought not to take too much time. This Clifton said happily. God’s patience runs out once you’re at the gates. Then he looked at Lee and said: And how about you?

—How about me?

—I haven’t seen you at Galilee. I figured you’d be front row centre, what with Pastor Barry being your brother-in-law and all that.

—Well, I’ll get out there one of these days.

Clifton nodded, said: I’ll be watching for you. You’re getting along in town?

—Yeah. Matter of fact, I got a date with a gal tonight.

Lee was immediately sorry he’d said it. He didn’t know why, except that it felt like he’d given something away. He looked at his hands.

—Is that so, said Clifton.

—Is she doing community service by going with you? said Sylvain.

Lee did not reply. He didn’t know what to make of Sylvain, whether or not the man was a prick by nature or was just laying track with him, or if he even had bad blood with Lee from the distant past. It was possible, more so than he cared to consider. All he could think to do was to ignore the man’s comments.

—Just you make sure you’re up and at it for work tomorrow, mister man, said Clifton, digging at his teeth with a toothpick.

Later that afternoon, while Lee and Bud were digging, Bud said: You were in jail, were you?

—Yeah. I was.

—A long time.

—That’s right.

Bud looked up from his shovel. He smiled.

—I knew. F-ing A. But you don’t have to talk about nothing if you don’t want to.

—I’m glad you say so.

Bud looked at him once more, then bent back to his work. It was okay. Lee liked Bud. Most of the time Bud stayed quiet. When they were on a smoke break or in the car he’d tell his jokes, or he’d talk about hockey or how he couldn’t get his wife to go to bed with him unless he gave her jewellery.

The dirt they were digging was heavy from the rain. There were roots they had to carve through, and in places the soil over the bedrock was not deep. He’d drive the shovel blade down with his boot and feel it stop hard against rock.

—You been out for long? said Bud.

—Not real long. I was in the city for six months. I was on day release at a St. Leonard’s Society house. I worked in a shop that built office furniture.

—And you’re back up here in town for your ma? She’s sick?

—She’s got lung cancer.

—That’s an f-ing drag. Same as that kid.

—Kid?

—That one-legged kid who tried to run across the country, Terry Fox.

—Oh yeah, said Lee. I heard of him.

—They say he’s got tumours this big.

Bud made circles with his thumbs and forefingers and put them on his chest.

—Can you imagine that?

—No, said Lee. I see what’s happening to my ma and I can’t imagine nothing.

—Me neither. Hey, it’s three o’clock. Let’s have a smoke.

That evening Peter came by to bring Lee some leftovers Donna had sent. When Lee told him he was going on a date, Pete stayed to help him dress for it.

—You don’t have anything other than jeans?

—No. I was at Woolworths on Saturday to get some new clothes. What you see in the closet. But I didn’t think to buy nothing fancy.

Lee stood in his bathroom with the door open. He was wearing his undershorts and undershirt and he was shaving. Aqua Velva hung in the air. Pete selected a clean pair of jeans and a collared shirt and laid the clothes on the armrest of the couch.

—So who is she? said Pete.

Lee came out of the bathroom, patting his face with a towel.

—Her name’s Helen. She works at the Owl Café. I see her most days when I go for breakfast. I’m taking her to the Italian joint up near the town hall.

—The town hall?

—The library. Used to be the town hall. I keep forgetting how they went and changed everything around. Anyhow, the Italian joint.

—Aldo’s.

—That’s the one.

Pete looked at the clothes again.

—Okay, well, I think you’ll be good in these. We’re not in Paris or anything.

Lee started to dress. He lit a cigarette.

—Do you smoke?

—No, said Pete. I never really took to it.

—Fair enough … You look like you got something on your mind, Pete.

—I was wondering something. But I don’t know how to ask it.

—Why don’t you just ask it straight? You don’t have to talk careful around me.

—Well, have you ever really had a girlfriend before?

—What makes you think I don’t have hundreds of girlfriends all over the place?

—I guess—

—Relax. I’m just hassling you. It’s a pretty fair question, a guy like me who’s been locked up forever. When I was a young buck there was a girl in town I went with pretty regular. We might of got more serious if I never went up. Then there was a lady who wrote me letters for awhile, maybe six, seven years ago. A church group put us in touch and for awhile she wrote to talk about God.

Lee was grinning.

—What happened with her? said Pete.

—I guess you’re not so young I can’t say this—this lady wrote to me about God at first, and then she started sending me snapshots of herself in her underpants. She was a big gal. She was a big big gal. She sent me these kinds of sexy snapshots for awhile, and then she stopped.

—Just like that?

—Just like that. It was another couple months before I heard from her again. It wasn’t real surprising. She’d met a guy and she said she felt like God wanted them to get married. So that’s what they did. I don’t hold nothing against her.

—You didn’t see anybody when you were living in the city?

—I was conditional in the city. I had to go back to the house every night. But there was a girl I’d go see sometimes, at lunch or maybe in the afternoon … Anyhow, that was kind of a business deal. You know?

—For sure.

Lee buckled his belt and said: How about you? Are you Sylvester the Cat?

—Not really. There was one I just met. She was pretty interesting. She goes to another high school, so I didn’t know her before I quit. She plays the piano.

—Go show her a good time.

—It’s not like that. She’s … a friend. Maybe. That’s what I think it is. It’s not a problem. I’m not sticking around here much longer anyway.

Lee went back into the bathroom and ran a comb through his hair. He slapped on some more of the Aqua Velva.

—Think I look okay?

—Sure you do, said Pete. I’ll give you a ride up.

—You don’t need to do that.

—I don’t mind. I like driving. I’m cut out for a long road trip.

Outside, the clouds had dissolved and there was a bright quarter-moon some distance above the horizon. They got into Pete’s car and drove up to the restaurant. Not far away, up River Street, the limestone face of the library was lit by floodlights on the lawn. This was new. Across the street, Lee could see where his father’s general store used to be. It looked like it had been turned into a place that sold household appliances.

—See that place? said Lee.

—What, the place where they have the washing machines in the window?

—Yeah. That was the place where your granddad used to have his store. Right there. I remember sweeping up and mopping the floor when I was a little kid.

—Grandma doesn’t ever talk about him, said Pete.

—No, he’s been dead a long time. Most of my life. He worked way too hard, was his problem. Now look at what they got there. Washing machines and vacuum cleaners and TVs. I’ll tell you what, Pete. One of these days I’m going to walk in there and buy myself a TV.

—I thought you didn’t like TV, said Pete.

—I don’t. But I sure as hell like the idea of being able to walk into a store and buy one. One of these days. Hey, I’ll see you soon, buck.

Lee got out of the car.

—Lee …, said Pete.

Pete was holding something out. Lee looked more closely and saw that it was forty dollars.

—What’s this?

—I figured you might not have a credit card and maybe you don’t have a lot of cash on you. This isn’t the cheapest place.

—I don’t need your money, Pete.

—It’s, like, a loan. Pay me back later. It’s no problem.

Lee set his teeth together, shifted them side to side. But he lifted his hand and took the kid’s money.

Helen was already inside the restaurant, sitting at the bar, having a cigarette. She was wearing a dark jacket, a short skirt. She smiled as Lee walked up to her. Her lips were painted vivid red and her hair was puffed up big.

—It’s the lady who’s supposed to be fashionably late.

—You’re right, said Lee. Goddammit. I’m sorry.

She laughed and tapped ash off her cigarette. He looked at how her legs showed in the skirt.

—Don’t worry about it, Brown Eyes. Let’s sit.

They took a table by the window. The interior of the restaurant was candlelit and only a few of the tables were occupied. A steward came to show them the wine list and to ask them about drinks.

—I’ll have a Tom Collins, said Helen.

—For yourself, sir?

—Do you have Coca-Cola? said Lee.

—Yes, sir. We have Coca-Cola.

—That’s what I’d like, boss.

The steward left them.

—I quit drinking, said Lee.

—So, you have some self-discipline, said Helen.

—Maybe I just wouldn’t know what kind of fancy drink you’d get here.

—Never mind these guys. It’s all for show. I’m sure I saw that same waiter at the mall in a pair of sweatpants.

They studied their menus. She made quiet hmms of consideration. Finally Lee put the menu down and pushed it away.

—What’re you smiling at?

—Nothing, said Lee.

—Tell me.

He felt something brush against his ankle. It took him a moment to conclude that it had been her foot.

—Well, I think I’m in over my head. This is a nice place. But I don’t know what the hell any of this stuff is.

She laughed loudly. She leaned over the tablecloth and touched his hand and said: You’re an interesting one, Lee.

When the waiter came, Lee figured he’d follow Helen’s lead. She opted for the prix fixe—a salad to start, a baked pasta with bacon and mushrooms for the main course, a slice of chocolate cake for dessert. The sequence seemed elaborate. Lee couldn’t predict what would happen if he asked for a cheeseburger or a fried steak. Helen looked across at him and told him he might like the ravioli. He told the waiter he’d have the ravioli.

—Everybody likes ravioli.

—I was twenty-five the first time I ever ate spaghetti, said Lee.

They had some cigarettes. She finished her drink and was moving the ice in the glass.

—Tell me about you, Brown Eyes. What do you do after I see you for breakie every morning?

—I’m a tradesman. Carpentry. Windows, doors. Cabinets. Joining. You name it.

—But you haven’t been doing that real long, have you? At least not here in town.

—What makes you say that?

—You’ve got a certain aura around you, said Helen. I’m good at sensing these things. I’m real spiritual. It’s what you get with a Pisces like me.

—Well, okay. But what about you? You got a story outside the café?

—Oh my. I’m just an old soul, Brown Eyes. I just keep on keeping on.

She laughed again.

Her salad came and she ordered another drink. Lee went to the washroom. It occurred to him that she might be gone by the time he returned, that certain truths were evident no matter what, and that she need only to wait for an opportunity to slip out undetected. But she was still there when he came back, and he started to feel good.

They were into their suppers. He liked the ravioli and he liked the way she was smiling. She talked in a rambling fashion and came round eventually to where she’d started out, which was a mid-sized town in the south part of the province. She’d done a year or two of college, had quit to travel with some Hare Krishnas, and had at last ended up back in the big city. Where the action was, the city.

—The city, said Lee. Yeah. I lived there for awhile too. Right up till the end of the summer. That’s a hell of a place. All kinds of action. Sirens all night long. I never thought of myself as ending up there, but I guess it’s funny how it goes. Where you end up. Anyhow, if you were down there, how’d you end up here?

—Oh, the way karma plans things for you, you know.

She’d had four drinks by the time the dessert arrived. Her face was flushed. She carved a piece of cake and offered it to him on her fork. The waiter brought the bill and it ate up all the money Peter had loaned Lee and five dollars from his wallet besides.

—Where to now, Brown-Eyed Lee?

—I don’t know. We could get a cup of coffee.

—Or you could show me where you live.

—Sure.

—You don’t sound sure.

—I am sure, said Lee.

—I know. But you don’t have a car.

—No …

She stood up from the table, weaving a little, and told the waiter to call them a taxi. Then she took Lee’s arm and led him out of the restaurant. The sidewalk outside was quiet. She put a cigarette in her mouth and Lee lit it for her.

—You were in prison, weren’t you, said Helen. You were a jailbirdie.

—How did you know?

—It’s your aura. It’s strong. I like it. Are you strong?

He smiled, still feeling good, and he rubbed at a spot on the pavement with the toe of his boot. He said: Am I strong? I don’t know. I guess I’m no slouch.

A taxi came. The same cabbie who’d driven Lee out to Donna’s house was behind the wheel. He ogled Helen. Lee told the cabbie where his place was. Helen pulled him into the back of the car and sat as close to him as she could. He could feel her nails on his thigh through his jeans. He put his arm around her and touched the big shape of her hair. She bit his ear and grinned.

When they got out at the variety store she came right out and asked him. He laughed.

—You don’t ask anybody what they did, said Lee. You just ask them how long they’re in for.

—Why is that?

—Because. It’s just how it is. Most guys didn’t do it, right? Like, they’ll run their mouths about a lot of other things they did, or things they could do, but whatever they’re in for, they didn’t do that.

—So how long were you in for?

—Twenty years was what I was supposed to do. I got out conditional after seventeen.

—And? Did you not do whatever they said you did?

—No, said Lee. I did exactly what they said I did. But that was a long time ago.

Upstairs in his apartment, he told her he didn’t have a drink to offer her.

—That’s fine. I’m going to powder my nose.

—Say what?

—I’m going to use your washroom, Brown Eyes.

She was in there for a minute and she came out smelling strongly of perfume and she was on him quickly. She pushed him down and lowered herself onto his lap. The short skirt was bunched up and he had his hands on her big thighs and on the elastic of her underpants. She pushed her tongue into his ear.

—Let’s see. Let’s see just how strong you are.

He tore at the blouse she was wearing and then turned her against the couch and took her.

Afterwards, they lay together on the pullout. She lifted one leg up and flexed the toes.

—Oh my oh my.

He considered what he could see of the ceiling. He lit two cigarettes, gave her one.

—In the city you lived downtown, said Helen.

—I did, yeah.

He wasn’t accustomed to talking about himself. What he was used to, for the most part, was the way people talked around what they wanted to know. But he told her what he had the words for. When he’d been conditionally paroled, he was moved into a halfway house on Sherbourne Street. From the outside you wouldn’t be able to tell anything about it. It was a big house. It had a board fence around it, and there was an intercom at the front, and the gate locked electronically. There were twelve beds in six rooms. It was run by the St. Leonard’s Society. The St. Leonard’s people got Lee fixed up with a job at a shop that made office furniture. Lee did the woodworking. The man that ran the place was also an ex-con, twelve years out. Clean and sober. He had given a lot of jobs to people like Lee and he’d seen more than a few of them fuck everything up.

Helen was quiet. Then she said, slowly: Do you like what you do?

—Yeah. That’s what I’m proud of. I make things. I see them come together.

A moment or two later, Helen was asleep. Her hand was on her chest and the cigarette she’d been smoking was burning down between her fingers. Lee took it carefully and dropped both hers and his into an empty cola bottle on the floor beside the couch.

He’d never been sure what he was going to do after his conditional release. He didn’t care for the city all that much but he’d been told he could stay on at the furniture shop if he kept straight. He’d figured that was about as good as it was going to get, but then in July Barry came down to the city to visit. He’d never actually met Barry until then, he’d just known him from the letters they’d written back and forth. Those last few years it was Barry who had written the most and in early July it was Barry who came down to the city to tell Lee that his mother was dying.

The St. Leonard’s people put in a recommendation to the parole board. The man who ran the furniture shop put in a good word. Barry found Lee work with Clifton Murray. And by Labour Day, Lee was on the bus going north. Homeward.

Lee felt good at the job site the next day. Just before noontime, Clifton called him over to his truck and gave him an envelope.

—There you go.

—What’s this? said Lee.

—It’s not a birthday card, Leland. It’s your paycheque.

—Oh.

He opened it and took it out and looked at it. There was the cheque itself and a balance sheet of statutory deductions. He studied the numbers.

—Were you thinking I’d pay under the table? said Clifton. Because I won’t. It’s just not worth the headache.

—Like in the Bible, right? You have to give to Caesar what’s his too.

—Well. It’s just not worth the headache to muck around.

—Good with me, Mr. Murray. Everything above-board. That kind of thing keeps my parole officer happy.

—Yes, well.

—I’ll get back to it, said Lee.

It rained that evening. Pete drove to the pizza joint over by the hospital. His work clothes were stuffed in a backpack in the trunk of his car beside a case of beer. He’d changed into jeans and a T-shirt and a jacket.

—There’s my main man, said Billy.

Billy and Emily had a booth inside the restaurant. With them was a girl Emily introduced as Nancy. Nancy did not have the same poise as Emily, but she had an appealing nature. She laughed a lot. She and Billy did most of the talking.

They had pizza and frosted glasses of root beer. Conversation at the table threaded frenetically with Billy and Emily on one side and Pete and Nancy sitting across from them. Nancy talked with her hands almost as much as she laughed. Pete caught Emily’s eye and she made a face at him. Billy’s arm hovered over her shoulders.

—Billy said you quit school, said Nancy.

—Yeah, said Pete. Last May.

—The system doesn’t trust guys like Pete, said Billy.

Nancy shook her head. She said how wild that was, Pete quitting school. Pete happened to catch Emily’s eye. Her expression was mild and neutral, but all the same he reached up and scratched the back of his neck. He said: I was thinking I might go to community college at some point. I don’t know.

He didn’t say anything about his plans to head out west.

They had the rest of the pizza and sent for the bill. Nancy’s folks were away for the weekend and she was having friends over to her house that night. She and Emily got up to go to the washroom and Billy winked at Pete as soon as they were alone.

—She’s nice, said Pete.

—Sure she is. You bet.

The bill came and Billy burrowed about for his wallet until Pete put the cash down. The girls returned. Nancy came back and slipped into the booth beside Pete.

—Are you going to come to my house? I think you should.

—She thinks you should, Pete, said Emily.

Pete might have guessed there’d be trouble if he and Billy went to Nancy’s house, school loyalty being what it was. By eleven o’clock, there were twenty people at the party, all of them from Heron Heights. Shortly after eleven a small group of guys arrived. They were all solidly built athletes. The biggest of them was six feet tall, and it wasn’t so much that he was good-looking—he just had presence in the room. When he took off his jacket, he was wearing a Heron Heights varsity lacrosse T-shirt underneath. The air got tense.

Until that point it wasn’t a bad scene. The house was nice—much bigger than the house where Pete lived—and there was lots to drink. He didn’t know any of these people, except for Billy and Nancy and Emily, and he was grateful just to take it all in. He spent a lot more time in Nancy’s company than he’d predicted he would, given how it usually seemed to go for him when it came to girls. He’d noticed a picture of her on the wall: an ice rink, a figure-skating pose for the camera, a glittery outfit, thick stage makeup. He asked her about the picture and saw how she lit up. They sat on a couch in the living room and she told him how she volunteered as a coach when she wasn’t training, how she’d gone to the nationals, was going again this spring. As she talked, Pete looked around. There were no crosses on the wall, and there was none of the medical equipment needed to keep an old woman alive. Nancy touched his leg. She asked him if he wanted another drink.

After a few more beers, Billy sat on the living room carpet with Nancy’s father’s Yamaha acoustic. He took requests. People sang. They opened the window and a joint made its way around. Emily sat beside Billy. She wasn’t singing but she was watching Billy, smiling.

That was when the lacrosse player and his boys arrived. They came into the house bearing a couple cases of beer.

—Oh, said Nancy. I didn’t know if you guys were coming.

—We got back from the tournament and heard you were having people over.

—Come in, then.

The athlete and his boys stood between the front door and the kitchen.

—Hey, Emily, said the lacrosse player.

Emily looked up at him. The guy smiled.

Pete guessed that the latecomers would put themselves in the living room, but they didn’t. They disappeared elsewhere in the house a few minutes after they’d come in. A short while later Billy took a break from the guitar. He stood up and helped Emily to her feet. He weaved over and whacked Pete’s arm.

—I’ve got to piss.

—No sense keeping it all bottled up, said Pete.

Billy went on his way. Emily approached.

—Are you having a good time, Pete?

—Sure, your friends are fun.

—Don’t pay any attention to those guys who just got here. The big guy, his name is Roger. I think he’s finding it hard to move on from certain things.

—It’s okay.

Then Emily was gone. Her perfume hung behind her. Pete went to the washroom. When he was coming out he happened to look down the hallway. He saw Emily leaning against the wall, Billy in front of her. Laughing, both of them, her with her hand to her mouth.

Pete went down the hallway away from them. Then someone hailed him from a small den. It was the lacrosse player and his boys and a couple of girls. They were sitting around drinking, shoes propped up on a coffee table. Pete stepped into the den. They looked at him.

—So who are you, anyways?

—I’m Pete. I’m a friend of Nancy’s.

The athlete put out his lower lip. He said: Pete, Pete. Pete Pete Pete. Okay.

Just then Pete heard the guitar strike up in the living room again. He heard voices starting to sing along.

—I’m going to have to talk to Emily, said the lacrosse player.

—I know you, said one of the others. You work at the gas station on the bypass.

The boys in the den laughed.

—I’m going to get a beer, said Pete.

He was trying to think of something to say, some sharp retort, but he couldn’t think of anything. He was sweating under his shirt. As he turned away from the doorway into the den, he heard the lacrosse player saying: What the fuck is she doing with these …

Pete went into the kitchen to get a beer from the fridge. Two girls were talking at the table. Liquor bottles stood on the counter and paper cups oozed bad mixes. Pete opened a beer and went back into the living room. Nancy was standing near the kitchen entryway. She smiled when she saw him. She was sweating a little bit and it gave a high clear edge to her perfume. Everybody was singing the chorus to “Hey Jude” while Billy played, and Emily was sitting beside him again. They came to the end of the song and Billy plucked a final note from the strings.

—You guys are great, said Billy.

But then the lacrosse player and one of his friends appeared at the edge of the crowd.

—Hey, Emily, said the athlete. I want to talk to you for a couple minutes.

Emily gave him a serene look, told him no thanks. He made an O-shape with his mouth. Under other circumstances, it might have looked funny.

—I want to talk to you.

—I don’t feel like talking right now, Roger.

—Emily.

—Hey, man, said Billy. She doesn’t feel like talking right now.

—Who asked you, asshole?

The situation got ugly in seconds. Pete found himself standing side by side with Billy in the middle of the living room. In some ways, he had already been resigned to it. Voices were rising, challenging, protesting. Billy and Roger were almost nose to nose, trading brisk shoves to each other’s chest. Then Roger’s friend came on the run. He leapt over the couch and landed in front of Pete and gave him a push. Pete stumbled on an ottoman behind him and went over backwards. He hit the floor with the ottoman between his knees, his vision wheeling sickeningly.

A sharp whistle cut through the noise. Emily had her fingers in her mouth. She took them out and said: This is so goddamn stupid.

Beside Emily, Nancy nodded fervently. Her eyes were wide. She looked a little frantic, while Emily looked stern and composed and beautiful.

Roger and Billy had hold of each other’s collar. Billy also had hold of the boy who’d pushed Pete over. Pete concentrated on the ceiling and then he sat up. His face felt hot and his head was spinning.

—What are you going to do, Emily? said Roger. Call your dad?

Emily lifted her hands: How did I know you’d say that. Really. How did I know.

—This is all bullshit, said Roger. You know we’re only kidding around.

He and Billy warily unlatched and stepped back. Roger offered a tentative smile and a handshake. He came over past Billy and pulled Pete up.

—All good, right, Pete?

He put out his hand and Pete shook it.

Then Roger and his friends got their jackets and their beer. They took their time leaving, hanging around the front yard, talking, looking at the house. Finally, they got into a wood-panelled station wagon and drove away.

—Here, Pete.

Billy had brought him another beer. Pete opened it and Billy slung an arm around him.

—What kind of bullshit was that? You okay?

—I’m fine.

Peter drank the beer quickly. He went into the washroom. The toilet seat stood upright and dry vomit scum caked the bowl. Pete gripped the sides of the counter, breathing slow. He balled his fist and drove it into the wall. Once, twice, three times, until the knuckles were stinging and the skin was broken. He stayed in the washroom for a long time, letting the anger and the humiliation subside. Then he held a hand towel under a stream of cold water. He cleaned his knuckles with it and tossed the towel into the bathtub.

He came back into the living room. Nancy was on the couch. She got up and blundered forward and put her hands on his arms.

—I am so sorry about those guys.

—If Billy and me knew we’d cause you any problems we probably wouldn’t have come.

—No, you’re more fun than them. I am so sorry.

Pete looked around. The house had mostly emptied and only four or five people remained. All around were cups and beer bottles and small spills. The pictures on the wall hung askew. He did not see Billy or Emily. His earlier anger was gone, and in its place was a bitter taste of jealousy. He tried to shake it away, wondering what was happening to him. He said: Your living room is a goddamn mess.

—I know, said Nancy. But whatever. I’ll make my little brother clean it up tomorrow. Come on.

—Where are we going?

—Just to talk, you know. Come on.

Nancy took him into her bedroom and closed the door behind them and turned on a bedside lamp. The room was many shades of pink and there were clothes strewn about and there was a rack of figure-skating trophies. Over the bed was a poster of Michael Jackson, and in the corner, she had a television. But then she had the light out again and she was groping at him and then he groped back and tasted the liquor in her mouth and the sweat on her breasts and her stomach. She sucked her breath in.

—I don’t want you to think I do this all the time …

—I know, said Pete.

It didn’t go very far. She was shirtless by the time they got into the bed, but after a few minutes of rolling around she seemed to slow down. Then she stopped responding entirely. He said her name. He touched her shoulder. She had passed out. Pete settled down beside her. It took him a little while to come down, to stop thinking about falling over the ottoman, to stop thinking of other things. He listened to the sounds of the house. He was listening for Billy and Emily and not hearing them.

In the early morning, Pete dressed in his work clothes. The light from outside was grey and cold. His knuckles were sore from striking the wall and his head hurt. He looked at Nancy. She was a stranger. She was snoring and was still wearing her jeans. Pete picked up her hand and put it down again. She did not stir. He shoved the clothes he’d worn the night before into his backpack.

He moved through the house. No one was around. He had no idea what room Billy and Emily might have ended up in, and he gritted his teeth against the idea of going door to door to find them. In the living room, he could smell burned carpet and spilled beer. It made his gorge rise. He went out the front door and down to his car and got his work jacket out of the trunk. It was a lined canvas jacket with his name stitched at the breast. He put it on and rubbed his hands together. He got into the car and started it. It was then that he saw Emily out on the front porch. She was wearing a cable-knit sweater and she had a steaming mug between her hands. She saw him and gave a little wave. He got out of the car and shuffled back to the porch.

—I was in the kitchen making tea, said Emily. I usually don’t sleep the whole night through. But I would have a nap every single afternoon if I could. Where are you going?

He found himself looking at Emily’s hair, looking for it to be askew, but it hung as dark and straight as the first time he’d seen her. At some point, she’d washed off her makeup, what little she had seemed to be wearing the night before, and though there were darker spots under her eyes, even in the early morning light she remained almost too pretty to look at.

—Well, some of us can’t sleep at night because they have a guilty conscience, said Pete. And some of us can’t sleep because they have to go to work.

—Guilty conscience?

—I’m teasing you.

—I know you are. You work at the gas station on the bypass, right?

—Yeah, that’s right.

—How long have you been doing that?

—Since May.

—And what else? said Emily.

—What else what?

—What else anything, Pete. What’s your story?

—Oh, said Pete. I don’t know. There’s not much to it. I was born in North Bay. We lived there until I was eight or so, then we moved back here, because this is my mom’s hometown, this is where she grew up. She’s married to a pastor now. I never met my dad.

—My mom teaches grade two, said Emily. My dad is a cop.

—And you play the piano better than anyone I ever heard.

—Thank you. My grandmother taught me. She could play like you wouldn’t believe.

—My grandma lives with us, said Pete.

He did not mention anything about his grandmother’s illness. For a moment he had a clear idea of how his story must sound to someone like Emily—his grandmother was dying, his uncle was an ex-con, he’d never met his father, and, as for himself, he was a dropout who worked at a gas station. Emily, meanwhile, had it good, and came from good people. At best, he thought, she might tolerate someone like him, as long as she was seeing his friend.

And yet, he was conscious of how he felt, standing here with her, watching her sip her tea. He said: Do you think you’ll go with Billy again?

She shrugged. The mug was in front of her mouth.

—You never know. If he continues to be a gentleman, maybe I’ll go with him again.

Pete rubbed the back of his neck: Yeah, Billy’s a good guy.

—He’s very good-looking, said Emily. He’s got beautiful hair. And my dad would absolutely hate him.

—I see.

—Maybe you can see Nancy again. We could go out, the four of us. That would be fun.

He agreed lamely that they should all meet again. Then he went down the steps and got in his car, wondering what it was like to have a place where you fit in.

He pulled onto the street and watched Emily in his rear-view mirror until he’d turned the corner and lost sight of her.

Stan had a bad night. When he slept he dreamed he was awake but was unable to move. And when he was awake he lay looking around. All the ordinary features of the bedroom had new dimensions in the darkness. In the morning his whole body ached. He put on a track suit in preparation for his exercises.

Cassius was sitting by the woodstove when Stan came down. The last two nights had been cold enough to warrant a small fire in the stove, which Stan had kept because it was as old as the house itself and because it appealed to him in a way that electric heat did not. Stan scratched the dog between the ears and they went outside. Edna’s garden was choked with weeds. The flowers were all dead. Stan and Cassius went down the embankment to the basement door under the house. Inside the basement, Stan kept a workbench and a selection of tools. Across from that was the exposed bedrock on which the house was built, coming up in one place to the bottoms of the joists. There was space for storage, extra siding, shingles, storm shutters, life jackets and fishing rods, a paint-spattered wooden ladder. In the opposite corner, an Everlast heavy-bag hung from the overhead beam.

He turned on an FM radio he kept on the workbench, tuned it to the news. He wrapped his hands and knuckles, aching as they were, and he put on a pair of old sixteen-ounce training gloves he’d had for many years. He shadowboxed for a few minutes and then he worked on the heavy-bag. In his youth, before his long tenure as a cop, he’d had four years as a professional boxer. His record was twenty-two fights, with seventeen wins, twelve of those by knockout. He’d been known as a good stylist and an outfighter, classing as a light heavyweight at a hundred and seventy pounds.

Stan had come back to exercising daily around the time he turned fifty and his doctor had given him some warnings about his blood pressure. So he’d quit smoking—which Edna had never cared for anyway—and had brought the fighting exercises back into his life. His knees and hips wouldn’t let him use the jump rope much any more, but he could still work combinations on the heavy-bag. It used to be his cross, thrown with his right hand, that would win him a fight, if the victory was to be by knockout. Stan would strike his opponent’s body until the guy let his hands and elbows down, and then he’d propel the cross from his hips and abdominals straight into the guy’s jaw or temple.

After four three-minute rounds he stopped punching the bag to listen to the news. His sweatshirt was damp right through and he felt older than ever. Cassius lay with his muzzle between his forepaws. As a puppy it had upset him to watch Stan work on the bag and he would bark and snap until Stan would have to get Edna to call Cassius out to her. Now the dog only watched through half-lidded eyes. Stan steadied the bag. The news broadcast finished. He stood looking out the yellowed window-glass over the workbench, down past the cedar trees to the western shore of the point, which endured the worst of the weather when the prevailing winds blew.

He had a list of chores he needed to attend to. The outboard motor needed servicing. The toilet was making erratic sounds. He went at the chores in a distracted fashion. After lunch, he set a ladder against the side of the house and climbed up to clean the eavestroughs. The sun was warm on his face and the colours of the leaves were vivid against the sky. Somewhere, the sound of a chainsaw was buzzing through the trees.

He had been at this for twenty minutes when he heard the dog barking and a vehicle in the turnaround. He looked down and saw Dick Shannon coming to the base of the ladder. Dick was uniformed, carrying his cap in one hand.

—That’s a long way up.

—I’ll put that dog on you, Dick.

—That’s fine. He could watch me all the way to my car.

Dick bent down and picked up a stick from the grass. He held it for Cassius to sniff and then he hurled it across the yard. Cassius trotted after it but stopped halfway and just looked. Dick shook his head and looked back up at Stan and said: I told you I owed you a visit. Them things you asked me about on the telephone a few days ago.

Stan came down. He got some beers from the fridge and carried two lawn chairs to the dock. They agreed there were not going to be many more days this year that they’d be able to sit by the lake and take in the sun.

—How’s town? said Stan.

—Same as ever. Say, do you remember that business with Simon and Charles Grady?

—Christ, that’s a lot of years ago. King, wasn’t that his name?

—Leland King, said Dick. Anyhow, he’s been paroled. He’s back in town.

—I remember driving Leland King down to the provincial jail when his trial started. I thought he looked just like a kid. Remember how his dad—I think his name was George—dropped stone dead in that store of his one morning?

—Only from hearing about it later, said Dick. I think I was still overseas when he died.

—That’s right. It would have been ‘44 or so. Anyway, it was better for him, I guess, to die long before he’d see what his son would make of himself.

—I expect Frank will pay a visit to Leland before long, said Dick. Tell him how things are.

—It was Frank who was first on the scene with the Gradys, if I remember right. Frank was new to town. Him and Mary hadn’t even had Emily yet.

—I see Arthur Grady sometimes, driving around, said Dick. He still looks after the living boy. Hell of a thing.

—Yes, said Stan. When it happened, it was the biggest goddamn news in the county for a whole year. As big as the Lacroixes were … And Charles Grady, he was one hell of a hockey player, but I always wondered if maybe there wasn’t a little more to the story than what came out at the trial. There were a whole lot of people not saying anything at all.

—Oh well, said Dick. I don’t think it matters much any more.

They drank their beers and watched a boat cut across the lake two hundred yards out. The change in the colours had reached the point where there was an equal distribution of green and yellow and red around the shore. Edna had liked spring best because that was when she planted her garden, but she’d always said fall was the prettiest time. She came into Stan’s head abruptly now, as she sometimes did, and just as abruptly he tried to push the thought of her away.

—So, do you still think you’ll retire next summer? said Stan.

—You better believe it. They won’t have any trouble getting me out the door.

—I was a few years past the thirty-five when I went. I lost money on my pension but I just didn’t know what I would do with myself. I still don’t.

—Is that what this is about? said Dick.

—What?

—We’ve known each other a long time, Stanley. I don’t know anything else that’s dogged your heels like the Lacroixes, and that was, Christ, I was a kid when that happened. Now this with Aurel’s daughter, you being the one to find her.

Stan rubbed at a knot in the dock planking with the heel of his boot and said: It wasn’t you on the investigation, was it.

—No, said Dick. It was Lenny Gleber.

—Look. I don’t know what I’m thinking, Dick. Maybe I just don’t have anything better to do.

—I don’t think you owe that family anything. I don’t think you ever did. Judy Lacroix was a pretty poor-off girl with her illness and all, anyhow.

—Did you get a look at the toxicology?

Dick took a folded paper out of his breast pocket. He held it out to Stan.

—You know what Frank would do, don’t you.

Stan took the paper and unfolded it. He was looking at a photocopy. The reporting toxicologist’s name was blotted out. Stan read the date of the test and the details. He looked at the drug notes, and he said: Look at this man’s handwriting. Okay, that’s carbon monoxide, just like how I found her. But, there’s this, amitrip … What’s this hen scratch here?

—Amitriptyline. I didn’t ask Gleber about it because I didn’t want word to get back to Frank. Gleber’s alright, but he’s a company man. So I rang up a pathologist I used to work with when I was down in the city. Anyhow it’s a drug for a girl like Judy. It would make her feel normal, if you can call it that. It—what did he say about it—it can make you feel nothing at all. He said it could get you into a kind of mood where you don’t give a fart if you’re hurting or sad or even if you live or die. Judy was on that for her illness.

—This is goddamn hard to read.

—Or you just need glasses, Stanley. But what you’re looking at is that she had close to four hundred milligrams of that stuff in her blood.

—She overdosed on it.

—No. It was the exhaust that killed her. Carbon monoxide. But four hundred milligrams of the amitriptyline is near three times the maximum dose for a full-grown man. With something like that, you might think all that work you had to do, putting the hose up from the tailpipe through the window, was just as easy as a Sunday drive.

—She left a note in the car, said Stan. I never got a chance to read it.

—There wasn’t much. She just told her sister she was sorry is all. But one thing Gleber did find out is that there was a boyfriend. You only asked about how the girl killed herself, but I thought you might like to know what else I found out.

—Yes, said Stan. Just for curiosity, let’s say.

Dick took out his notebook and flipped it open to a page he’d marked. He said: I knew I’d forget the boyfriend’s name so I wrote it down. Gilmore. Colin Gilmore. Seasonal worker, not too much on him. I guess Mr. Gilmore didn’t let on they were as serious as Judy thought they were. He said they’d stopped seeing each other a couple weeks before you found her.

—Maybe that had something to do with it?

—Maybe, said Dick. The gals that Judy worked with said she’d stopped showing up for work for a week or two. Her sister works at the National Trust downtown. She’d gotten Judy on with an after-hours cleaning crew.

Stan nodded. He drank his beer. Dick sat back in the lawn chair and rolled his cuffs up from his wrists. After a long moment, he said: People, when they take their own lives … You remember when we got called out to—What was his name?

—Templeton, said Stan. I knew him when I was a boy but I don’t remember his first name. But yes, I remember that call. You hadn’t been around real long.

—If he’d only had sense enough to put that .303 into his mouth instead of under his chin like he did. He must of lived forty-five minutes with his face like that. Between the two of us we could barely hold him in one place.

—Here’s a thing I’ll tell you about that call, said Stan. When we got back to the station that morning, Edna had left a message with the dispatcher. I was to go over to the butcher and pick up an order she’d put in before I came home. When I got to the butcher the order was a pound of ground beef. I took one look at it, and … Well, I made it outside around back before I was sick, but just. I just made it.

—That’s one you told me, Stanley. You weren’t sick at the scene. You didn’t even blink, but later when you got to the butcher.

—You’re lying. I never told anybody that.

—That’s one you told me a time or two. It was many years after that call, but you told me all the same.

—Well.

Dick was quiet for another moment. Then he said: I can see it, Stanley. I can see the flywheels working in your head. But the Lacroixes are all gone except for Judy’s sister. You don’t owe them anything.

—Another beer, Dick?

—Oh. I guess not. I better get back to town. I’ve got some stuff for that fat bastard of a J.P. to sign before the court closes.

Stan walked with Dick up to the patrol car in the turnaround. Cassius was sleeping nearby in a patch of sunlight.

—I appreciate it, said Stan.

—I know you do. But I don’t want you to work yourself too hard over questions that already got answers, sad as they are.

—It’s just something for me to think about. More than those eavestroughs up there, let’s put it that way.

—I’ll keep my ears open, said Dick.

The National Trust was on Confederation Avenue, south of the river, a few blocks up the hill from the lake. A little way up, on the other side of the street was the shabby face of the Shamrock Hotel. Woolworths was around the corner. Eleanor Lacroix had a photograph of her sister on her teller’s desk in the main room of the Trust. In the photograph, Judy was laughing, eyes closed. On Eleanor’s finger was an engagement ring.

At that hour the bank was not busy, so after Stan had asked her, Eleanor leaned over to one of her co-workers and said she’d be back in a minute. She came around and they went to some chairs by the front window. An old woman with a plastic kerchief over her hair was writing a cheque at a table close by and outside a fine rain was slanting through the air. Eleanor sat and composed herself.

—So, if this is about Judy, I don’t know why you haven’t received the full payment. I sent it last week.

—I’m sorry, I don’t understand.

—Aren’t you with the funeral home?

—No—

—Are you from the church? If you are, you can tell that priest that what he said about what happens when you take your own life, how nobody knows where Judy is now, how could anybody say that?

Stan could see that Eleanor was shaking, fighting to keep a quiet pitch to her voice.

—Miss Lacroix, I’m not here for the church or the funeral home or anything. I’m not here for anybody except myself.

—You said this was about my sister.

—That’s right. Maybe you’d go somewheres else to chat about this? If you’ve got a coffee break or when you’re done work?

—I already used up my break and I’ve got errands to run after work. I’ve got maybe five minutes to talk.

Stan looked around. The old woman had gone over to one of the tellers and there was no one immediately close to them.

—Well, I was the one who found your sister.

He could see how Eleanor was thinking about this. She sat back.

—It was me who found her, said Stan. There’s some things, some questions, like, maybe for your peace of mind, that I’d be in a good position to ask.

—Listen, whatever this is, I don’t even know who you are.

—My name is Stan Maitland, Miss Lacroix. Maybe you’d remember me.

One of the other tellers came by, close enough to get Eleanor’s attention, and said she wanted to go on her break in a minute.

—I’ll be there, said Eleanor. Sorry.

The teller moved on. Eleanor wasn’t looking at Stan. She seemed to be looking at a point over his shoulder.

—I thought I’d start with you, Miss Lacroix, said Stan.

—I know who you are, Mr. Maitland. Are you still with the police?

—No, I’m retired now. Like I say, I’m not here on anybody’s behalf but my own.

—Mr. Maitland, I know people used to talk about my family, how my dad was a drunk who couldn’t keep a job. But I also know how my dad lived his whole life picking up the pieces after you sent his brother to be executed. So yes, I know who you are. You talk about wanting to ask some questions, but is it really for my peace of mind?

—It’s not so straightforward as that.

Eleanor stood up. She wouldn’t look at him. She was shaking again.

It occurred to Stan what Edna would say about all of this. She would likely tell him to leave it be, that digging around in anybody’s fresh upset wasn’t going to resolve anything. She would tell him he was acting like an old man who was both bored and lonely.

—I have to get back to work, said Eleanor. This is the worst thing I’ve been through in a long time. I’d appreciate it if you’d give that some thought. Can I ask you that much?

—I … yes, said Stan. I’m sorry to bother you.

—Have a good day, Mr. Maitland.

Lee liked to take walks, a weekend afternoon or a weekday evening if Helen wasn’t around. Walking, you could just go, give your head all the latitude it might want. Strangers’ houses interested him, what he’d glimpse in the yard or through the front window as he passed by. A man raking leaves, a woman setting out the dishes for supper. One time he stopped to watch some kids playing ball hockey on a side street. There were four of them, two goaltenders and two forwards, and they scrambled around each other and shouted and their sticks scraped on the roadtop. Lee leaned against a lamppost, taking in the game, until he realized the kids had stopped playing and were just looking at him. He gave them a little salute, and when none of them returned the gesture, he shrugged, pushed himself off the lamppost, and went on his way.

All things considered, he felt alright. He had the freedom to open his own door and go out walking for however long he wanted. He liked what he saw—the dinners being set out on tables, the kids playing ball hockey on the road—but he reckoned they were outside his reach. For now, at least. In the meantime, it was okay just to watch. And if it was evening when Lee went walking, he would go right to sleep when he came home.

A block away from Lee’s place was a poolroom called the Corner Pocket. He’d noticed it on a walk. One evening at the end of September, he went up the steps of the poolroom and went in. A layer of cigarette smoke hung below the lights, and he heard country music playing. There were six eight-ball tables and two snooker tables and two of the coin-operated decks, and four of the tables were in use. A couple of rummies perched at the bar. There was the sharp-featured man in a down-filled vest who Lee recognized, but could not remember where from. He was shooting pool by himself at one of the coin-op tables. Lee wandered between the tables and watched what games were going down until the man behind the bar asked if he could help him.

—No, said Lee. Sorry.

Lee went back to the door and opened it halfway. Then he turned and went back to the bar.

—Could I get a table?

The barman gave him a tray of balls and marked his start time on a chalkboard behind the counter.

—Are you thirsty, my friend?

—I could do with a Coke.

The barman popped open a can and filled a glass and handed it to Lee. Lee took the drink and the tray of balls over to a vacant table. The felt on the tabletop was worn dark and smooth in patches. Lee picked a straight cue and chalked the tip of it. He racked up the balls and broke them and studied where they’d moved to.

He’d played some as a kid, and they’d had a table at the halfway house in the city. The game pleased him, the variations of it, the precision, the interactions between players. He took on the parts of both opponents. Once when he looked up he found the sharp-faced man at the coin-op table looking back at him. Or so he believed. Lee bent down again to bank the nine ball into a pocket. Playing pool by himself was like the walks he took. His mind unfettered. Almost an hour went by. Then there were sirens outside and a flash of red lights against the windows. The sound of the sirens fell away but Lee had already replaced the balls on the tray. He carried the tray over to the bar.

—What do I owe you?

—Seventy-five cents for the table and the same for the Coke, said the barman.

Lee stacked a note and some coins on the bartop.

—Maybe I’ll come on back sometime.

—Make sure you do.

Lee passed by the sharp-featured man on his way to the front door.

—How are you? said Lee.

—… What? How am I? said the man. Never better is how I am.

—Hey, John.

—I’m Luke, said the boy.

—I knew that, said Lee. I was just checking to see how switched on you are.

Clifton’s crew had only worked until the early afternoon and Lee had hitched a ride with Jeff and Jeff Junior out to Donna’s house. The older of Lee’s two little nephews had come to the door when he knocked. Donna appeared behind her son. She was drying her hands on a dishtowel.

—Luke, who’s at—Oh, Lee.

—I thought I’d come visit you and Ma.

He set his lunch pail and tool belt down by the front door and followed Donna and Luke into the kitchen. Donna went to a cutting board on the counter and Luke went back to the table where his brother was sitting. They had notebooks in front of them. Irene was there as well, slumped on a chair where she could watch the room. She breathed heavily, rhythmically, and her clothes hung loosely from her. It had been only a week and a half since he’d last seen her, but even since then she’d lost handfuls of hair. What remained was as thin as mist.

She smiled when she saw him, said: You look like you came from work.

—Thought I’d come to visit.

—What a nice surprise.

Lee looked down at John’s notebook. He saw child’s writing in big, cumbersome characters. He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

—How’s your school work going, buck?

Before John could reply, Donna told them: Boys, you can take a break. Go on down to the basement. No horseplay.

Lee watched the boys charge out of the kitchen and disappear down the stairs. Only once they were gone did Donna ask if Lee would sit and have a cup of tea and a piece of rhubarb pie. He sat.

—How’s it going, Ma?

—I’ll see the doctor tomorrow. More treatments.

—You let me know if you need me to go with you.

—Barry takes her, said Donna.

Donna put a piece of pie before Lee. She poured tea for Lee and Irene and then she stood near the counter.

—Well, like I say, it’s what I’m here for, said Lee. I’ll help you out, Ma, any way I can. I didn’t move back up here to get rich and famous. Would you sit down, sister?

Donna scooted into the chair Luke had vacated. She examined what the boy had been writing in his notebook. Lee forked off a piece of the pie.

—To tell the truth, I don’t know so much about the treatments, Ma.

—The doctor says it’s going good, said Irene. He uses words I don’t understand, but. He’s foreign. Coloured.

—Chemotherapy and radiation, said Donna. They can’t just remove the tumour at her age. You want to know, you take one look at all the pills in the bathroom. And you see what the chemotherapy does?

Irene grinned and said: I won’t win the beauty pageant at the fall fair.

Donna looked hard at her son’s notebook.

—You got the same thing as that kid, said Lee.

—Kid?

—That one-legged kid who tried to run across the country. I’m betting on you, Ma. We’re a bunch of survivors is what we are.

He reached across the table and grasped her hand.

—How is work going?

—Couldn’t be better, said Lee. You should just see the size of this place going up out there. It’s bigger than the boarding house where we used to live.

—People with money are buying up and down the lake, said Donna.

—I’m starting to make a buck or two myself. Before long I’ll buy a big godda— a big G.D. place like that and we’ll all move out there.

—Listen to you.

—You and Barry can have the east wing. We’ll send the boys to private school. Is that—Ma, take a look—is that Donna cracking a smile?

—Oh quit, would you?

But Donna was smiling. It changed her whole face.

The next day, Lee went to see the boarding house where he and Donna had grown up. It was a Saturday and the fall air was crisp and the sky was off-white. He walked up Union Street breathing in the smell of creosote from the rail crossing. Cars passed him trailing radio sounds. At the Owl Café he stood at the window. He cupped his hands around the sides of his face to block the light. He looked inside until Helen spotted him, as did a number of the patrons. She gave him a little wave. He waved back and went on his way.

The boarding house was on Merritt Street, on the north side of the river, a half-hour’s walk from downtown. It was a timber-frame structure from the turn of the century, and it had been variously added to over the years. There had been six rooms to rent when they lived there. Tenants had to share the bathrooms. Now, while the house retained its old exterior look, it appeared to have been renovated for business interests. He read a sign for LUCKY TAILORING & DRY CLEANING in a main floor window and a sign for CHAPMAN SOLICITORS on the second floor.

Lee was only six when George King died. The boy had been confused by what was going on, and so he’d wandered away from the house, from the policemen who’d come, from his mother lifting her cigarette and trying to light it, asking over and over how she could be left like this, how he could do it, leave her alone with these two kids. George’s heart had seized fast in his chest in the early hours of the morning when he had gone to open the store. The driver of a delivery truck had found him. And by noon his widowed wife, Irene, sat demanding, first from the policemen, then from her meagre surroundings, how it could be so.

The boy could go anywhere, he knew, with his mother so distraught. He could go to the lumberyard or to the river. But he didn’t even end up going across the street. Instead, he went to the back of the house and down the basement steps. It was understood that the basement was not to be ventured into, particularly by the children of tenants. The boy went anyway, pushing at the solid wooden door and finding it unlocked and watching it swing open into a place he had lived above his whole life, yet never glimpsed.

The basement floor was packed dirt and the walls were brick, once whitewashed. Knob-and-tube wiring was tacked into the cavities between the overhead joists. The basement smelled of earth and wood-rot. Against one wall was a cabinet choked with items: pipefittings, light bulbs, copper fuses, an ankle boot with a busted heel. The boy picked up a ball-peen hammer from the cabinet and turned it and felt its weight in his small hand.

He was drawn to the furnace, to see what made the noises in the vents at night. He was curious about the sullen glow inside the firebox. But then he heard something. He saw the crippled caretaker coming from the direction of the coal bin, carrying a load in a spadeshovel, walking heavily on his bum leg, not saying anything. The boy turned and ran.

The general store his father had operated on River Street now had VICTORY HOME APPLIANCES on the front signboard. Much of the interior had been rearranged, walls knocked out, the space made bigger. Lee stood where the grocery counter had been. There was a display of used televisions almost exactly where his father had been found dead by the delivery man.

A salesman came around.

—You look like a man who’s thinking about how to improve his house.

—No, just looking around. I’ll get going.

—No need to run off. Looking’s always free.

Lee left the salesman and went out onto the street, but then, abruptly, he went back into the store and over to the televisions. The salesman rematerialized quickly. Lee scratched the back of his head and said: Look, what I was thinking about was a television.

—You’re in the right place, sir. We have good colour sets. Brand new. Here we’ve got a whole selection of used outfits. Great condition each one. Inspected. Really good bang for your buck. This one is a ‘72 Emerson, eighteen-inch. The colours are still bright as can be. Hundred thirty.

—Hundred thirty? I don’t know about that. Maybe I’ll come back again some other time, see what you got.

—I could go you a hundred. Cash. Right now.

—A hundred bucks.

—A hundred bucks and it’s yours. Delivery included.

As usual, Lee had a sense of the money he’d earned passing out of his hands. He only had the hundred dollars on him because he’d cashed his paycheque the day before. But for the first time he could think of, he could bear the cost. Before he left the store he shook the salesman’s hand.

—This used to be my dad’s place.

—Is that right?

—It was a general store. He sold all kinds of things. There was a grocery counter right here.

—Well, there you go. I do some business and learn a little history in the bargain. Our delivery van will come around by five o’clock.

Lee went down the hill and into the A&P to stock up on food. He was thinking about the television he’d just purchased, and he was thinking about his long-dead father, what he could remember of the man, and he was thinking about the boarding house where he’d grown up. He didn’t know why he’d waited a month, after moving back to town, to go see the house. It had felt a little like a confrontation, somehow, one that he’d been putting off. It seemed to him his last tangible memory of town, prior to going to jail, was the boarding house—even though he’d been at a friend’s place when the police tracked him down and arrested him. All the same, he realized he would have been bothered if the old boarding house, with the basement of his recurring dreams, had been demolished.

When he was coming out of the grocery store now, carrying a paper bag of groceries, he saw they’d come for him. One of them was a constable, young. The other was a sergeant. A thin man, precise. They were standing alongside a patrol car. Lee was aware of people stopping to watch.

The sergeant said: Mr. King. Thought we’d have a word.

—Word about what?

—Why don’t you come along with us. Just for a bit.

It had to be out front of the grocery store. It had to be the middle of the afternoon when people could watch. The constable took Lee’s grocery bag and put it on the front seat. Then he patted him down. Just for procedure, he said. They didn’t handcuff him, but they did seat him in the tightly caged back seat.

Lee looked out at the people standing around the front of the A&P, and a bitter flame, anger and humiliation, flared in his gut. The constable got behind the wheel and the sergeant got into the passenger seat, partly crushing the grocery bag beside him. The way the rear-view mirror was angled, the sergeant’s eyes were in it.

They drove through town and Lee didn’t say anything. It was the sergeant who finally spoke. —Your parole officer, what’s his name?

—Wade Larkin.

—That’s right. I know him. He’s a nice chap, Wade Larkin. He’s really a nice chap. How often do you see him?

—Once every six weeks.

—Once every six weeks. You see what a nice chap you got for a parole officer?

—Listen, boss, I get seen like this I could lose my job.

—What I can’t figure out is why you’re back in town at all. After they saw fit to cut you loose and set you up with a really nice chap like Wade Larkin, you came back here.

—My mother is sick with cancer.

Nothing was said in reply.

They drove for a short while until they were cruising past a long brick building with a curved roof. They rounded the corner and there was a baseball diamond, deserted except for some high school kids smoking at the bleachers. The kids saw the patrol car and got up and left. The car pulled around in front of the building and Lee saw the sign over the front doors: Charles Grady Memorial Community Centre – Home Of The Dynamite! He looked at the eyes looking at him in the rear-view mirror.

—Kind of funny, don’t you think?

—I don’t think it’s real funny, boss, said Lee.

—Myself, said the sergeant, I was just brand new here. I know that wasn’t my very first call but it was one of them. I was sick when I saw it. What you did. I was sick right there on the driveway. I don’t care what you think of that. If a man tells you he’s got the stomach for it, first time he sees something like that, he’s a goddamn liar. Maybe I was sick because the other boy was still alive.

—What do you want from me?

—I guess you get this idea, maybe, because there’re all kinds of people who will tell you just how misunderstood you were, how what you really needed was this and that, how you deserve good things same as anybody else, so I guess you get this idea that you can put mileage between then and now. But I know you.

—I told you, I’m here to work and look after my mother. I haven’t been bothering anybody. I don’t even drink.

The eyes in the rear-view mirror. The man hadn’t even raised his voice. He said: I know you and I know all about you, my friend. You remember that.

Then the sergeant told the constable to let Lee out of the car. The constable came around and opened the door. He gave Lee his bag of groceries and he grinned and said he hoped he’d see him again. The car pulled out of the parking lot and was gone.

Lee was breathing hard. His thoughts raced. He wasn’t surprised that they had come for him, but nevertheless it burned him, far more than he had thought it would. He’d gotten out of prison, but his life was still under the thumbs of men with badges and guns. He’d been foolish to think it might ever be otherwise.

He put the groceries down and found himself a cigarette. It seemed ridiculous that he’d bought a television an hour ago. That he’d presumed to buy it, had presumed to buy groceries, had presumed to visit the house where he’d grown up. That he’d presumed at all.

He picked up his grocery bag and held it at his midsection while he walked. The ash from his cigarette drifted down. He passed a chain-link fence and a mean-looking dog came at him, barking, gnashing its jaws, until it hit the end of its chain. It stood with its forelegs splayed. He looked at it.

A short distance later the grocery bag was getting heavy. He put it down on the curb, and thought again of the day his father died, thirty-five years ago, but the man was present now more than he had been in a long time. He thought of the basement, the caretaker with the shovel. How he’d fled. How the crippled caretaker never said anything to him, never called him out.