TWO

OCTOBER TO NOVEMBER 1980

Thanksgiving came with a cold snap. Stan was invited to Frank and Mary’s house for turkey dinner. He drove over on Sunday afternoon, bringing Cassius along with him. After he got to the house and said hello, he walked Louise up to the park so she could collect leaves for a school project. The dog went with them. Louise dug through the leaves on the ground at the park and brought her findings for Stan to inspect.

—What do you think, Grandpa?

—I’d say that one’s a beech. It’s just a couple inches. There’s not so many of the little edges on it.

—They call those teeth, said Louise.

—That’s right.

—Beech, said Louise.

She took a small plastic bag out of her jacket pocket. She’d already collected a maple leaf and an oak leaf. She put the beech leaf in and added a check mark to her notebook. Stan sat on a park bench and watched her. Cassius was over sniffing the base of a tree. After Louise had found a birch leaf, she told Stan she’d collected enough and now they could go.

Back at the house, they saw an older-model red Camaro parked at the curb. Emily was standing alongside it, speaking to the driver. Louise hung close to Stan as they came into the driveway. They weren’t close enough to hear whatever was being said, but they caught sight of a boy behind the wheel. He had a look of raw pain on his face.

—Do Grandpa a favour and take Cassius around back, said Stan. Make sure the gate is latched. We don’t need him running down the street.

Louise went with the dog and Stan started up the front walk. Emily came over and kissed him on the cheek.

—Hi, Grandpa. I’ll be inside soon.

Emily went back to the Camaro and Stan caught a few words: I’m sorry if this doesn’t make sense to you. And the boy saying: Hey, baby, please.

Inside the house Frank was watching from the front window.

—I was about to go outside.

—I think she’s got it in hand, said Stan.

—Goddammit. Look at the hair on him.

Stan went into the kitchen. The smell of roasting turkey brought juices to his mouth. Mary was drinking a glass of wine and studying her mother’s recipe book. It occurred to Stan that it had been a long time since he’d seen the book. He saw Edna’s neat cursive—Gravies etc.—on the page and he looked away.

—The turkey is huge, said Mary. We’ll have leftovers for a week. I’ll send a bunch of it home with you.

—Sounds good to me, said Stan.

—You seem distracted, Dad.

—I’m just woolgathering.

—Okay …

—When you were Louise’s age there was only the one public school in town, said Stan. Do you remember?

—River Street P.S. Sure, I remember.

—And do you remember if your school friends knew who I was?

—What made you think of this now?

—Nothing.

—There weren’t as many cops in town back then, so yes, my friends knew what my dad did. But I don’t think it ever really came up in public school. High school was a bit different. I started to hear more about you. There was an old phys. ed. teacher who coached girls’ field hockey. Mr. Pritchard. I remember, after he figured out who I was, he would talk to me about your boxing days. Endlessly. He’d say, Maitland, come here! It didn’t matter how practice was going or what the other girls were doing. He’d go on and on. He talked a lot about Windsor, some guy you fought. Sharkey?

—Sharkey, said Stan. He was a heavyweight from the States. He had quite a good run, had the title for awhile. When we fought, I didn’t beat him. I drawed. I was lucky to do that, even. That was one of my only real big fights. Ha, Pritchard wasn’t even there.

—He talked about it like he was. He must have told me that Windsor story a hundred times. I was only in grade nine or grade ten when I played field hockey. After that, I was more aware of it if I heard things about you. They always said you were a fair cop. They said you didn’t do things by the book but that you were really fair to everybody. That’s not Frank’s way.

—Frank’s a good policeman, Mary. He knows his job inside and out.

—He’s got a lot of ambition for his career.

—Good on him. I never wanted that responsibility. I never thought I was up to it. Anyhow, was it hard for you if there were folks that weren’t so happy about things I’d done?

—Everybody knew about the man that got hung, if that’s what you mean. But nobody talked about it much. Was I even born when that happened?

—You weren’t much more than a baby.

—What makes you think of this now, Dad?

—That family, in particular, had a lot of hard times. Anyhow, never mind. I never wanted to expose you or your mother to any of that.

Mary laughed.

—Oh God. You and Frank, you’ve got that in common.

—What’s that?

—This idea that the women in your life need to be protected all the time.

Stan wandered back into the living room, thinking maybe he’d have a nap. Emily was in the vestibule untying her shoes. Frank hovered around her, trying to make light of whoever it was in the car.

—You should have brought him in for supper, said Frank.

—It’s completely not an issue any more, Dad.

—I’m sorry to hear it. Hey, if you’ve got to insist on dating, how about you get yourself a guy with a better haircut?

—Actually, I’ve got an idea, said Emily. I’m sure I could get one of your rookies to take me out. That one that drove you home yesterday is really cute.

—Hey, said Frank. Listen …

Stan sat down in the recliner next to the cabinet stereo. He brought the footrest up and stretched his legs out. He didn’t want Emily or Frank to see the smile he was wearing. How close he was, suddenly, to laughing outright. He let his head settle back and he closed his eyes.

He snoozed for an hour and was gradual about waking up. By then, the whole house was filled with the deep smell of the roasting turkey. Emily was sitting at the Clarendon upright.

—I hope I didn’t wake you, Grandpa.

—I don’t think you did.

—You were snoring like mad.

—Gentlemen like me don’t snore.

Stan got up from the recliner. He wasn’t sure if she’d been practising or not while he napped, but she put her hands to the keys and began to play “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” In the kitchen, Mary and Louise were preparing the vegetables.

Frank picked at the turkey stuffing. When he saw Stan, he offered him a beer, and the two of them went and sat down in the screened-in porch at the back of the house. Cassius was loping around the yard, sniffing at the bird bath.

—Who was the boy in the car? said Stan.

—Bobby or Billy or something. He’s been around a little bit, but he’s nobody now. Just as well.

—She’s got a good head, Frank. If she’s going to university next year, you’ll have to trust her.

—She’d be young. Just eighteen. It’s still under discussion.

Stan stood up and watched his dog in the backyard. The dog dug under the cedar hedge at the back of the property until Stan called for him to cut it out.

—Stan, said Frank, I want to talk to you about Judy Lacroix. I want to know why you’ve got the interest in her.

—I’m the one who found her, Frank.

—She isn’t the first dead girl you ever found.

—No.

—Stan, I know you might have had a look at the toxicology. I’m not going to make a big deal about it, but I have an idea of who might have showed you. That same person might just have put it back in the wrong place when Len Gleber went to file it. You know you don’t have any official capacity.

—I don’t need to be reminded.

—I know that. I suppose I’m just putting it out there.

—You don’t think Judy was in any kind of situation that was over her head? There was a boyfriend, I heard.

—Yes, said Frank. Gleber interviewed him, the boyfriend. He’s a low-life, Stan. A nobody. And I don’t think he was quite the boyfriend she let on he was. I think he was taking advantage of a girl who didn’t know any better, whenever he felt the need … Matter of fact, though, it surprises me and exasperates me a little that you know about the boyfriend too. How much more do you know?

—That business about the boyfriend is about all of it.

The patio door slid open and Louise came out. She said: Hi Dad, hi Grandpa.

—Grandpa and I are having a discussion, said Frank.

—Supper will be ready in five minutes.

—That’s fine, said Frank. Be sure to knock first next time, you understand?

—Yes, Dad.

Louise went back into the house.

—Judy Lacroix killed herself, said Frank. She was a sad girl who should have been properly looked after, and she wasn’t, and when she couldn’t handle some of the ugliness this world has a way of dumping on people, she went and took her own life.

Stan nodded. He finished his beer. He looked to see what the dog was doing.

—It’s a damn shame that you had to be the one to find her, said Frank. But you did find her and then you made sure the right people were in the right place. Thinking about it that way, I wish anytime a body turns up to the public, it’s a retired cop who finds it. But now you don’t have to worry about it any further.

—I’m not worried, said Stan.

—I hope not. Now come on. You know Mary doesn’t like supper to be kept waiting. She’s just like her mother in that way.

—Yes, said Stan.

Frank got up and opened the patio door and went inside the house. Stan followed.

Stan tried to put the conversation with Frank out of his head, but a few days after Thanksgiving his telephone rang. A woman’s voice was on the other end.

—Is this Mr. Maitland?

—Yes, this is Stan Maitland here.

—Mr. Maitland, this is Ellie Lacroix calling. I wondered if you’d still want to speak with me.

He met with her at one o’clock that afternoon. They went to the Owl Café and sat in a booth halfway to the back. He had a roast beef sandwich and a cup of tea, and Eleanor Lacroix had a bowl of the day’s soup. She just moved her spoon around in it.

—I apologize, Mr. Maitland.

—Call me Stan, and I don’t know what you’re apologizing for.

—How I spoke to you when you came to see me.

He put his sandwich on the plate and sat back.

—I know this has been a real upset to you, Ellie, but I also know that that’s not why you weren’t so quick to chat with me.

—That’s true.

—I knew your family for a long time. It’s only been the last twenty years or so, which at your age would seem a lot longer to you than it does to me, that I haven’t had much of an eye on you.

—I don’t know how old we were, said Eleanor. Maybe six or seven. You and another cop arrested my dad one night. We, me and Judy, we didn’t even know what to think about that. We thought you were taking him to jail but when we got up the next morning he was there at the breakfast table. He looked like he hadn’t slept all night.

—Your dad didn’t sleep that night, you’re right about that. He had a long walk back from where we dropped him off.

—Why would you do something like that, Mr. Maitland?

—Your dad, Aurel, he liked to have a drink, didn’t he.

—He drank. But he never laid a finger on Judy or me.

—You can’t say the same about how he was with your mother, can you.

Eleanor had the soup spoon closed in her fist. She lifted it in a strange way, as though to emphasize something, and then she put it on the table.

—I … No, I can’t say that.

—That particular night he got very rough with your mother, said Stan. I don’t know how much of this you might of known about or not, mind, but the neighbours called us. It was me and Dick Shannon who went over to your place. Ellie, I was a cop for a long time. I did things, I don’t know now if I was right or wrong or what-all, but I did things in a certain way that I thought was right. I didn’t always care to see a man go to jail when I thought I could maybe help him come around to a better way of seeing things.

—So you hauled my dad out to some back road and kicked the hell out of him.

—No, Ellie. I never once had any kind of a battle with your dad. All I did was, I had a long talk with him and then gave him a good walk home to think it over. Do you remember him getting rough with your mother after that night?

—No, said Eleanor. I don’t. Look, Mr. Maitland—Stan. My dad had a lot of problems. He used to have nightmares, from the war, I guess, although that was something he never talked about. I know he got shelled pretty bad and there were some scars on his leg. Anyway, he drank too much. He had a lot of trouble keeping a job. I know. I know. But the first thing I remember in my whole life, me and Judy are sitting on my dad’s knee, and he’s telling us the story of Baptiste and the Devil, my favourite. He could tell it better than anybody else. He talked French so fast you could barely understand him. I loved my dad.

Eleanor looked out the window. Stan took a bite of his sandwich.

—I never had much reason to come see your dad after that night. Which is why I didn’t see you or your sister grow up.

—You want to talk about my sister, is that right?

—Yes.

—Don’t you think I’ve answered all the questions the police had for me?

—Well, the only person’s behalf I’m asking on is my own.

She nodded and said: Okay. But I want to know some things first, Stan. I want to hear your side. My dad used to say you had it out for our whole family.

—Is that what he said?

—He told me what happened with his older brothers. What do you have to say?

Stan put his hands together under the table. He thought how to weigh his response, then it came to him how they were in the wrong place for it altogether.

—It’s a nice day, Ellie. A little bit chilly but not so bad if you’re moving. Would you care to go for a walk?

At the corner of Bayview Street and Chippewa Avenue was a three-storey brown-brick. Stan and Eleanor stood across the street. He pointed to the row of windows along the second floor.

—I had a boxing clubhouse up there. The parish priest, this was Father O’Leary, signed a lease on the room. Me and him, we both thought if we could give the boys from town some better things to do it would keep them out of trouble. I was twenty-four years old and I’d just finished my own boxing career and I came back here and I got hired as a constable pretty quick. When I wasn’t being a cop, I was up there with O’Leary, who’d been a decent welterweight in the seminary. I was up there with him teaching boys from around town how to box. I don’t know how it works for girls, but I think with a boy, he pretty near can’t help it— when he’s changing from boy to man, he’s got a certain taste for breaking things. If you show him how to do it right, then it’s a good way for him and his chums to have a couple go-rounds in the ring and get all that out of them, instead of later on that same night busting chairs or bottles over each other’s heads. You see?

She looked speculative, said: Maybe. I don’t remember me or Judy ever wanting to break bottles on people’s heads.

—That’s why I don’t know how it is for girls. Anyhow, your uncle Darien was one of the best natural fighters I ever saw. Your uncle Remi was good too, but Darien was something. He was just barely a middleweight. They didn’t have a whole lot to eat out at your grandmother’s place, and your uncles never filled out right, but Darien still classed as a middleweight. He could throw these hooks like a machine gun. A lot of the other boys in the club quit sparring with him.

—I never met my uncles.

—I know you didn’t. They’ve been gone a long time. Would you walk a ways with me? I guess you’re not working at the bank today.

—No. Not today.

Stan took a last look at the windows where he’d trained local boys in the art of boxing. Then he and Eleanor walked along Chippewa in the direction of the river.

—I thought Darien had the makings of a professional fighter. He’d of been, oh, maybe seventeen at the time. Those were pretty lean years. Your uncle made a bit of a name for himself. The men on relief, they had a lot of love for a kid like Darien who came from nothing. They’d come out by the dozens, fifty of them, a hundred, to see him fight. We couldn’t fit them in the clubhouse any more. Anyway, we got going so as I was coach and trainer and Father O’Leary was the manager. We brought on my old cut-man. For a little while things were pretty good. Pretty good. Then there was this fight at the Orangemen’s Hall in Orillia.

—Orillia, said Eleanor. Yes. My dad talked about that a little bit.

—Jack Watts, said Stan. He wasn’t any kind of goddamn middleweight but he made the weigh-in for it. He had this haymaker he’d throw. I should of known better. It got to the fourth round and your uncle Darien was on the ropes and he dropped his guard. Just for a second. Watts hit him so hard he … well, that was the fight. The trouble was, your uncle got hit a lot harder than any of us knew at the time. He was never really right after that. I should of known better, Ellie. But I was thinking about winning. I guess maybe I wished it was me in the ring again.

They’d turned onto River Street and were passing Victory Appliances. On the other side of the street was the library. It was a squat building, with walls of thick limestone blocks and deeply recessed windows. A plaque describing the building’s history was fixed to the wall beside the entryway. They crossed over and Stan led them up the stone steps and through the doors. The interior of the library smelled like dusty books. A directory was mounted on a pedestal just past the front doors. Stan consulted it, squinting, tracing his finger along it. He led Eleanor down a flight of stairs. They came into a room with filing cabinets and a row of microfiche viewers. He brought them as far as a door marked STAFF ONLY.

—We used to have our offices on the other side of this door. The holding cells were just past that.

They went back up to the main floor and found a reading room behind the fiction stacks. There was a window looking out of the back of the building. A short downslope to the river. He told her how there used to be a yard enclosed by a block wall out there. At one time it had been stables and then the yard was converted to a vehicle compound for the patrol cars.

—They used that yard, said Stan.

—What do you mean?

—For your uncle.

—When he died. And you were there.

—I didn’t kill your uncles, Eleanor, I didn’t. There were some hard years. The boxing clubhouse didn’t last long after that fight in Orillia. Father O’Leary moved to a different parish and the man who replaced him didn’t have any interest in boxing. I don’t think we were two more months at it after that. The farm where your dad lived, your grandmother, your aunts, Darien, Remi, they couldn’t afford to keep it going. They were in some money trouble. There was this one night Darien and Remi got into a fight with some boys at a dance. I brought them in. They came with me easy enough because they knew me. They got locked up in the holding cells. I was on the beat that night so I went back out. What ended up happening here was some kind of dust-up. Your uncles got out, and Darien, he shot the cop who was on duty. Charlie Rayfield was his name. Darien shot him with his own pistol. I don’t know how much of this you might know.

—Some, she said. I know some of it. But this is different. Hearing it from you.

—Well, Darien shot this policeman and he and Remi walked right out the door. Pretty quick it was two boys who were in a hell of a lot more trouble than they’d thought of. It wasn’t much more than a day or so before a half-dozen Provincial cops were up here from the city. They took over from us town cops. They hired on a bunch of local boys—men I knew, friends of mine—to help them track down Darien and Remi. There was one thing that the inspector figured out. Charlie Rayfield had a little .22 pistol he wore on his ankle and he’d fired a few shots off. The Provincial inspector, he figured maybe Remi or Darien had gotten shot on the way out, and if that was the case, maybe they didn’t get so far as everybody thought.

—My dad used to say it was you.

—I know what your dad would of said. Thing was, I knew your uncles pretty well. I didn’t want it to end in more shooting, and I figured with the Provincials looking for them, that’s what would happen. So I went over to an old bootlegger’s place I knew of, where your uncles used to like to go to have a drink. And sure enough, that’s where they were. The inspector was right, Remi was shot. He was in bad shape, Ellie. He had a .22 bullet in his stomach.

—What did you do?

—What I did was I talked them into turning themselves over to me. They were scared. Remi was sick. But while this was happening, Charlie Rayfield died in the hospital. So the charge became murder. The way it turned out …

—Please. I want to hear it.

—Your uncle Remi died from blood poisoning. Darien got charged with murder. The murder of a policeman was a serious thing. He went to the penitentiary for a few years. Then in 1944, when your dad was serving in France, they brought Darien back here to town. Right back home. And just out there, where the yard used to be, that’s where they did it.

—Where they executed him.

—Yes. He was the last person in the county to be put to death. I spoke to him, your uncle, the night before. He was scared, but not so scared as he could of been. Mostly he wished his ma would of come to see him. But things were different for her. She didn’t have the farm any more. I was there the next day when Darien was hanged. And I was a cop for another almost thirty years after that but there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of that morning. Of your uncle up there on the platform. Every day, Ellie.

She was quiet for awhile.

—I don’t know what to say, Stan. I knew some of this but I didn’t know it. I guess I think for all my dad was or wasn’t, how could he have two brothers who ended up like that?

Outside the window where the vehicle compound and the wall used to be, they’d landscaped a couple of footpaths overlooking the river. A man in coveralls came into view, raking leaves under a red maple. There were some odd characters who hung around the library in the afternoon. A man in a plaid jacket was snoring quietly in a study carrel. A man with mole eyes behind mended glasses was sitting at a table close by, bent over an anatomical textbook, looking at images of the female reproductive organs.

—It was all a long time ago, said Stan.

They stayed at the library for awhile and Eleanor held her end of their agreement. She moved into the telling as if it were something that lifted a burden from her. That she and her sister were twins did not give her any great insight.

—You can know someone better than anybody else knows her, and still you don’t know her at all. How is it that everything went bad for her, but not me?

Nobody gave Judy’s ailment a name for many years. Troubles with their father, Aurel, were enough. What had no name warranted no sympathy. It wasn’t when their father died but when Eleanor went to college in the city that Judy suffered the most. Telling this to Stan, Eleanor had to pause between her words and look away. She said she felt guilty about that.

A doctor paid a visit and made a referral. The psychiatrist to whom Judy was referred gave her condition a name.

While Eleanor went to college, Judy went to a hospital east of the city, where she lived in a residence with some other girls. They were ex-junkies, they were girls with scars in their arms, they didn’t eat right, they didn’t say the right things. But Judy herself got along at the hospital after her first few months. There was a farm on the grounds. There was a new gymnasium. There were things to do with your hands and with your time.

Eleanor visited when she could. She was going to college and she was not far away. Some of these girls at the hospital were suicidal. They slugged through their time under a constant state of scrutiny.

—But Judy, said Eleanor, bad as she might get, she wasn’t ever, like, she wasn’t the kind to kill herself. That wasn’t part of it. So that’s why, Stan, that’s why …

Judy was admitted to hospital again after their mother died. Eleanor, back home between terms, started going with Tommy Spencer. He was a local boy, his dad did roadwork contracting. Then the doctors at the hospital started releasing a lot of the patients to reintegrate them with the community. Judy was discharged two years ago, the same time Eleanor started at the National Trust. Judy and Eleanor moved together into their parents’ old house, the house they’d grown up in. Eleanor’s benefits covered a prescription for amitriptyline.

The pill was called Elavil and it kept Judy level. She put on some weight, but not much, and before that she was really too skinny anyway. She slept a lot. But for once she was even-tempered.

Still, Eleanor considered that Judy might grow bored. One thing about the hospital was that they kept you occupied. So Eleanor talked to Alda Shipley at Busy Beaver Janitorial, who’d had the cleaning contract at the National Trust for a long time, and for the first time in her life, Judy had a job. Busy Beaver was a bonded local outfit. They’d arrive in the afternoon before the branch closed and they’d clean until eight o’clock at night. The bathrooms, the carpets, the wastebaskets. Alda reported back to Eleanor that Judy didn’t have much to say but she usually smiled faintly and she worked steadily and didn’t object to any of the tasks.

Then Eleanor told Stan about the man who’d come into Judy’s life. Around May or June, Judy started getting agitated. She was quick to put you off if you asked her anything. She would say, I’m fine, why do you want to know? It wasn’t any kind of agitation Eleanor had seen in her before. Eleanor was already guessing what it might be.

And why not? Judy wasn’t unattractive, and since the medication had taken the swings out of her mood, she was good company. She wasn’t forthright about whoever the man might be and Ellie didn’t press her, but then she happened to meet him at the bank one day in the summer. The Busy Beaver crew had started their work in the late afternoon. Eleanor had a dentist’s appointment and was given leave fifteen minutes early. She went down the rear corridor and said goodbye to her sister and went out through the back door. She was halfway across the parking lot behind the bank when a man got out of a car and said: Hey, Judy.

This man was kind of singing an old song, It’s Judy’s turn to cry, it’s Judy’s turn to cry. Judy’s smile was so mean, sang the man.

Eleanor guessed it took her coming closer, twenty feet or so, for the man to realize she wasn’t her sister. They looked enough alike until you got up close.

—You’ve got to be Ellie, said the man. I’m sorry to have mixed you up.

Eleanor said it was okay, it happened from time to time. She let on that she knew about this man in Judy’s life, that he wasn’t something she’d only guessed at. So that was probably why he didn’t tell her his name. Eleanor couldn’t exactly say what he looked like. He wore jeans and a T-shirt, she remembered. Good for the weather but not like he’d come from an office or anything. He had sunglasses on, the kind with mirrored lenses. The car he was leaning up against wasn’t anything special. He was older than Judy, maybe even ten years older, but otherwise he just looked like anybody.

He was nice enough. He seemed easy to talk to. He asked how Ellie liked working at National Trust and how she liked living in town. He smiled. Eleanor might have been late for her dentist appointment if Judy hadn’t come out the back door just then. She was surprised. She chewed at her bottom lip and spoke in singular phrases, and the three of them—Eleanor, Judy and the man—made the points of a triangle as they stood talking to each other. So Eleanor, laughing a little, pleased for her sister, took her leave. As she was going she heard him sing it again, Judy’s smile was sooo mean. And Eleanor heard her sister laugh.

That weekend they had a barbecue over at Tommy Spencer’s house. Judy didn’t bring the man and didn’t make any mention of him. But then Eleanor got Judy to herself for awhile in the lawn chairs at the back of the yard. They watched Tommy horsing around with his brother’s kids.

—So when were you going to tell me? said Eleanor.

—Tell you about what? said Judy, not meeting her sister’s eyes.

It took a bit of pressing but Judy eventually told her. Once she got talking about him, she had a hard time stopping. The last six weeks or so, since the weather got nice, Judy had started walking to work every day. This was a big thing for her, a twenty-five-minute walk, but it was good exercise that was managing the weight the Elavil wanted to put on her frame. The midpoint of the walk was a little joint called Donut Line, and she’d started stopping there for an early meal before work. And this is where she’d met him.

Eleanor told Stan she could imagine it. Her sister at a table by herself. Bowl of soup, sandwich, day-old tabloid. There’s this seasonal labourer who comes in around the same time every day for a coffee. This guy with the nice smile passes Judy at her table, the first time just saying hello, the next time asking how are you, and the day after that asking if this seat’s taken.

The man’s name was Colin.

It wasn’t clear how long it had taken Judy to go on a date with him. Judy told Eleanor they went to the A&W mostly. They just talked. Colin was a good listener. He didn’t ask a lot of questions, like how she was feeling that day, was it an up day or a down day. Judy would tell him all about how she liked riding on the train, like when she’d gone to and from the city, or how she’d loved it when her dad used to take them to the drive-in before he died. You couldn’t go to the drive-in any more, of course, since it had burned down.

Eleanor wanted to ask Judy about the other dimension to it, but was embarrassed. Even now, telling Stan, she blushed fiercely. What else might be going on, other than chats in the A&W parking lot? But she made herself ask, and Judy stood up and said: Oh my God, Ellie. I’m twenty-eight years old. I know what I’m doing.

Eleanor only saw Colin once or twice more. Both times he was dropping Judy off at the National Trust. It seemed like a sign that maybe their lives were moving forward.

But then, around the third week of August, something happened. At work one afternoon, Eleanor didn’t see her sister. Alda hadn’t seen her either. Eleanor hurried home, found her sister in her bedroom, pale, haggard, as bad as she’d been in a very long time. She was unwashed and the room was musky.

It was Colin. Eleanor couldn’t draw the particulars out of her sister but they didn’t really matter. He’d been around for awhile and then he’d broken it off. He’d been casual about it.

Judy stopped eating, quit showing up for work. She quit taking her pills. She spent entire days inside with the blinds drawn and the television on. Eleanor called the doctor but he said little of substance. Judy wasn’t aggressive or volatile. She was her own custodian as far as the law was concerned. Nobody could force her to medicate. They could only watch her. She’d been worse in the past, and she’d come out of that.

Eleanor told Stan that she didn’t really think she could hold Colin to hard judgment for what became of Judy. Her sister had no prior experience with men. If a man wanted to take advantage of her, or just tell her this and that to keep her around for sex, she wouldn’t know any better. And even if Colin didn’t intentionally misguide her, Judy had probably made it a certain way in her mind and her heart that wasn’t the same as reality. So Eleanor couldn’t judge him too harshly.

Eleanor spent as much time as she could with her sister. She and Tommy cancelled a camping trip they’d planned for Labour Day. Then, the Tuesday after the long weekend, Eleanor came home from work and saw a dent in the front bumper of their mother’s old car. Some bad scratches were raked into the paint. She found Judy on the back porch. Judy was different from how she’d been for the past ten days. She was smiling again. She looked half asleep. She looked like she’d resumed her medication.

Eleanor asked about the car. Judy told her sister a little bit about what she’d done, how she’d gone to a roadhouse where Colin liked to hang out. But this was the middle of the afternoon and he wasn’t there. So she went to another place, a place he’d taken her a few times. A nice quiet place out at Indian Lake, twenty-five minutes east of town, where he lived in a motorhome, the kind you wish you could drive across the country in. Judy told Eleanor that she’d parked the car and gotten out and walked up the driveway. It was a long driveway. She’d come in sight of the motorhome. Outside, there was some s-l-u-t suntanning in a chair. Asleep, Judy guessed, because then when she heard Colin’s voice calling this girl from inside the motorhome, calling her baby, calling, Hey, baby, come on inside, the girl in the chair didn’t even move.

—You could tell just by looking at her what a tart she was, said Judy.

Judy turned around and walked down the long driveway and got back in the car and drove back to town. She cried the whole way. She hit a mailbox at one point but didn’t care. She just wanted to go home.

Some real s-l-u-t, Judy told Eleanor. The flat way she said it, she might have been commenting on how the fall was right around the corner. She was feeling better now, she said. She had half a mind to get in the car and drive back out there and rain on the little party they were probably having.

—But you won’t go, Judy, will you.

—No, Ellie. I’m staying right here.

—I keep thinking about how I shouldn’t have left her for one minute, said Eleanor. But I’d made plans with Tommy that night to make up for the trip we’d cancelled. I thought Judy was okay because she was on her pills again, and would probably fall asleep early, and we’d be able to talk about it more in the morning …

Eleanor had been sitting at the table in the reading room with her cheek propped on her fist for quite awhile. No tears had been shed. She just looked tired.

—You couldn’t of known, said Stan.

He didn’t believe that. He could see Eleanor’s lapse in judgment for what it was and he knew she would carry that with her for a long time to come.

—Do you remember what time it was you found her?

—Oh, said Stan. Had to of been ten o’clock.

—Three hours after the last time I ever saw her.

There wasn’t much else to the story. Judy had left a note on the dashboard of the car. All it said was I’m sorrey & I love you. Ellie. Eleanor answered questions for the police and went through Judy’s personal effects. She received cards in the mail. The women at the bank brought casseroles. If Eleanor never had another casserole again, she said, she’d be happy.

Stan walked with Eleanor back to where she’d parked at the Owl Café. She was driving Tommy’s car. She’d gotten rid of the car Judy died in.

—What will you do now, Stan?

—I don’t know, Ellie. First, I’ll have a word with a couple friends of mine.

—Maybe there’s nothing to know. Really. Maybe you shouldn’t even trouble yourself.

—It’s no trouble for an old guy with nothing much to do.

She opened her car door and said: Thanks for hearing me out, Stan.

—No. Thank you.

—I loved my dad, said Eleanor. I loved my dad, but he was wrong about you.

In the morning, Clifton took Lee with him to pick up building materials. The heavy labour at the cottage where they were working was wrapping up, Clifton said. He didn’t know how much longer he’d need Bud or Lee on the site. Lee nodded, frowning.

—You’re not losing heart, are you? said Clifton.

—I guess I liked the way things were going out at the big place.

—You’re just supposed to keep heart as always. Think about your Matthew. If you have faith as small as this mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, move from there to there, and it will be so. 17:20.

—Faith I got, Mr. Murray. A job is what I need to keep.

—Well, it so happens that I got the bid for another place. We’ll be starting there soon enough, and I’ll have enough work for you and Bud straight to Christmas if we’re lucky.

Lee looked at Clifton. He was driving his truck very fast, weaving between other vehicles on the road. He was perched forward on the seat. Lee had never spent so much time alone with him.

At a little after nine o’clock, they pulled into the parking lot in front of Heron Lumber.

—I’ll go in and give them the order, said Clifton. You go on into the yard and I’ll meet you there.

Lee got out of the truck and went into the lumberyard adjacent to the store, lighting a smoke as he went. October was cold if you were just standing around. A kid in a Heron Lumber shirt came by and asked Lee if he was waiting on anything. Lee had just opened his mouth to answer when he heard his name being shouted. He looked, expecting to see Clifton. Instead, a wiry man was briskly coming his way. The man’s hair had thinned and he had a burn-scar on the side of his face. He shouted Lee’s name again.

—Speedy, said Lee. I’ll be damned.

Speedy Simmons stopped short and scrubbed his hand across the front of his chinos and then offered it for Lee to shake. He said: Jesus Christ. I was in the parking lot and I thought that’s Leland goddamn King. You’ve got grey hair, but. Hey, I didn’t even know you were getting out. How long you been home?

—Six weeks or so, said Lee.

—Say, Lee, good for you.

Speedy was a face from the distant past. They’d run with the same crowd when they were teenagers, had spent a night or two sharing the drunk tank. Now they made small talk for five minutes. Lee told him about his place downtown and about working for Clifton Murray. It wasn’t clear where Speedy was working. He’d been at Heron Lumber to buy tools, he said, when he saw Lee in the parking lot. Then Clifton’s truck appeared behind them. Clifton leaned out the driver-side window, looked at Lee and clapped his hand against the door.

—I better get going, said Lee.

Speedy offered his hand again. He said: You bet, Lee. Say, it was really something to see you. I’ll come look you up sometime soon, we’ll play a game of pool or euchre or what-have-you.

Clifton fretted over an invoice while Lee loaded materials into the back of the truck. Among the materials was a selection of oak and maple with which the kitchen cabinets were going to be made. Lee ran his hands over the wood. He could picture the cabinets as they took shape and came together. He knew that feeling of satisfaction.

When they were loaded, they got back into the truck and drove out of the lumberyard. Clifton was in a talkative mood: There’s a tailor I got to stop at quick. Next month, my niece is getting married. A wedding in November—some of the gals say it’s nice, some can’t figure it out. I don’t know. This is my brother Irving’s daughter. Were you ever married?

—No.

—Oh.

A few minutes later Clifton broke the quiet again: So you know a thing or two about cabinetmaking?

—Say again? said Lee.

—Isn’t that what you told me?

—Yes, that’s true. When I was living in the St. Leonard’s house in the city I was working at a shop that built office furniture. All the woodworking stuff, that was mine to do. I built a lot of desks—

—Desks aren’t the same as cabinets. And what was this Saint—Saint who?

—St. Leonard’s Society. They ran the halfway house where I was living.

—St. Leonard. Was this some kind of Catholic outfit?

—It wasn’t Catholic. It was just named for him. For Saint Leonard. If I remember right, he was a guy from the old times, a monk, like, who freed a number of prisoners and took them to live with him out in the woods away from people. Taught them things and so forth, taught them how to be productive.

—Hmm. Long as you keep in mind the real way to salvation.

—I do, boss. Every day.

They drove in silence for some minutes more, until Clifton abruptly said: But I’ll admit, mister man, you are a hard worker.

That afternoon, Bud was lively. He wanted to know had Lee seen the Maple Leafs kick the heck out of Buffalo the night before. They were cutting and packing fibreglass insulation into the exterior walls. Lee’s skin was itchy. He and Bud both had bandanas wrapped over their mouths and noses. His eyes were stinging.

He turned back from the wall to cut a new piece of insulation. Clifton had given them a kitchen carving knife to use. The fibreglass dulled the blade quickly and they had to sharpen the knife frequently.

—You want to watch a game, you let me know, said Bud. We’ll go to my friend’s place. He’s got a big colour TV.

Lee nodded. He was thinking about Speedy Simmons, thinking about the old days. His youth, what there was of it. There was Speedy, there was Jim Robichaud, Terry Lachlan, some others. None of them came from much, and nobody in town thought they had much ahead of them either. They battled constantly with kids of better means. At age twenty or twenty-one, Jim Robichaud had the idea that they should start an outlaw motorcycle club—he’d seen The Wild One a few too many times—but none of them, as far as Lee knew, ever actually ended up with a bike. Not in those days, anyway, even if they tried to dress the part. But there were lots of good times with those boys. They worked what straight jobs they could get, not ever really worrying about whether or not they kept the job for long, and whenever money was really scarce, they stole cars for a man two towns away who bought them at a good premium, or they moved crates of stolen liquor and counterfeit cigarettes for some people Speedy knew. They drank hard and fought hard and looked out for each other, and anyone who wasn’t a cop did not fuck with them. For the most part.

—Smoke? said Bud. It’s the hour.

—Yeah. Good idea.

They went outside and pulled their bandanas down and lit their cigarettes. Lee leaned against the wall and set to sharpening the knife they were using to cut the insulation. They watched Sylvain. He had begun work on a path that would lead down to the lake. He was crouched on a bed of gravel, eyeballing a string-line down the centre of the path. He’d brought on a kid from town to work with him. The kid was moving the string in slight increments side to side.

Bud puffed out smoke. He said: That insulation makes me feel like I got the clap. But all over instead of just my privates. Actually, that reminds me of a good one. This mom, she finds her kids playing doctor on the back porch, and she says to them, When Daddy gets home you’re going to get a good licking! Which is what—Oh, wait. Damn.

—I’m going to get you a joke book or something, said Lee.

—I know so many good ones but I frig them up every time.

Sylvain barked at the town kid: Were you born like this or what?

Then he stood up from the string-line and started walking towards his truck. As he passed Lee and Bud, he said: Another smoke break, eh, boys?

—I see you got yourself a helper, said Lee.

—I’d hire you two if I wanted to lose money till next summer.

The familiar feeling overtook Lee quickly. He pushed away from the wall and flung his cigarette down in one motion. He turned the carving knife, held it up, and then pitched it into the ground a pace away from Sylvain’s boots. The blade didn’t catch the dirt and the knife bounced aside.

—Do you have a fucking problem with me?

—Lee, said Bud.

—Shut up.

But Sylvain just clicked his tongue against his teeth. He took on a slow smile. He reached out and clapped Lee on the arm: Mon frère, a long time I was worried about you. Now, I don’t worry.

He carried on towards his truck, laughing. Bud skirted around Lee and picked the carving knife up from the ground. Lee balled his hands into fists and squeezed them and then let them go slowly. He took a long breath and held it in the pit of his stomach and then released it. It had been a long time since the anger had taken hold of him like it just had. He tried not to think about that too much.

—Oh boy, said Bud. Oh boy. Okay. I guess we can do more work now.

—I’m going to have another smoke.

—It’s … you know, one an hour.

—I’m going to have another smoke. Do you want one?

He offered his pack and Bud took one.

When Sylvain came back from the truck he tipped Lee a wink as he passed them by, and then he yelled at the hired kid to quit screwing around.

That evening Lee took Helen to the Chateau Royale steakhouse on the other side of the town docks. As they went inside, she was smiling at him over her shoulder. His fingertips were in the small of her back. They were greeted with smells of searing meat, and they were shown to a table towards the rear of the dining room. Helen looked at the table and looked at the back of the restaurant and she voiced a faint, thoughtful sound, as if something were on her mind. Whatever it was, she didn’t say it.

Lee hung his jean jacket on the back of his chair and sat down. The steakhouse’s red interior walls were hung with paintings of castles, pastoral scenes, bullfighters. Just above their table was a picture of a lone parapet on a hill.

—I’ve never been here, said Helen.

—Me neither. I walked by it a couple times. I thought it looked like a good place.

A waitress came and asked what they would have to drink. Helen asked for a white wine. Lee asked for a Coca-Cola. The waitress left them.

—You could have a glass of wine with me. White wine is like not drinking at all.

—That’s okay. I’ll stick with the cola.

—Look at where we are.

—Where we are?

—Look at where we’re sitting. I mean, really.

—This place is alright. It’s nice. They got all the right smells for me.

The waitress came with their drinks on a tray. Helen gestured for Lee to order first. He asked for a striploin well done and a baked potato. Helen ordered the surf ‘n’ turf. She winked at him, told him sometimes you just had to spoil yourself. They lit cigarettes after the waitress had gone again.

—How was work? said Helen.

—We put up insulation all day. I had to have a cold shower for the itch to go away.

She nodded, drank her wine.

—I saw a guy I knew, said Lee. A long time ago. Before I went up. He didn’t look much different. We talked a bit. I don’t know what he’s doing. Probably got hitched and had some kids.

—Do you wish that was you?

—What?

—Do you wish you’d gotten hitched and had a couple kids?

—I don’t know, said Lee. It’s an idea I never gave any thought to. Who’d want me as their old man?

—Parents, well, it takes a certain kind, doesn’t it. Look, Brown Eyes, if you’re meant to have a family, you will. Everything happens for a reason. Karma.

—My sister and her kids, I don’t know, it seems like a lot of craziness to have kids tearing around all the time. But I guess I don’t mind it, either. It’s kind of what you’re supposed to do. Some of the cons I was in with, they had their wives and their kids come to visit them and whatnot. It would have been good to have that … Anyhow, look, I’m not saying I’m dying to have a family. All I’m saying was I saw that guy. His life went one way and mine went the other.

The waitress came with their suppers on wooden cutting boards. Helen asked for another glass of wine. Lee broke open his potato and started to pile it onto the steak. He piled the vegetables on as well and drowned it all in A1 sauce.

—Oh, said Helen. Really.

He looked up at her. The cutting board before her was loaded with steamed vegetables, an eight-ounce steak, and four shrimp. She’d cut off a chunk of the steak and was holding it up for him to look at.

—Does that look rare to you?

—It’s pink, said Lee.

The waitress returned with Helen’s wine.

—This is not rare, said Helen. I asked for rare.

The waitress set the wine down.

—I’m real sorry about that. I’ll get it taken care of.

The waitress took Helen’s meal and went back in the direction of the kitchen. Lee sat for a moment and then put his knife and fork down.

—You may as well go ahead, said Helen. You must be hungry. Doesn’t look like they messed yours up too bad.

Lee started into his supper. He talked around mouthfuls of food: My sister and her husband said they want to meet you. They want to meet this gal I told them about.

—This gal, is that right? Anyway, I see you haven’t given up on the idea that somebody might try to snatch your food. Look at that, you’re halfway through already.

—I was hungry.

He felt her foot against his leg.

—I can see that. So do your sister and her husband drink? Or are they straight-arrows like you?

—Straight-arrows, huh. No, they don’t drink either. I thought I told you, he’s a pastor. He preaches at, what’s it called, Galilee Tabernacle.

When Helen’s supper came back she made the waitress wait till she’d checked the meat for rareness. Then she ordered another glass of wine.

She was barely starting her meal as Lee was finishing his.

—That was good, said Lee.

—You eat everything. You eat the fat.

—Hey, you take a look at what they fed me for seventeen years. You’d eat everything too. I’d eat that damn bone if I could. How’s yours?

—It’s alright. Annoying to have to take two tries, but anyway.

—Well, take your time.

Lee looked around the half-empty restaurant, looked at the picture of the parapet. He sipped his Coca-Cola.

—You never gave much thought to a family?

—Wasn’t what the universe had planned for me, said Helen.

—I see. Did you want dessert?

—Oh my God, no. I had a doughnut at lunch.

When Helen was finished the waitress came back to collect the cutting boards.

—Was there anything else I could get for you folks?

—I don’t think so, said Helen.

—I’m really sorry about that steak.

Helen looked up at her and smiled, said: Do you think I don’t know how this works, hun? You take people like me and my gent here and you sit us right back by the restrooms. I know how this works.

—Ma’am, I’m sorry. I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.

—How about just getting us the cheque.

—Right away, said the waitress.

She returned with the bill and was gone again. Helen tapped out a cigarette. Lee took the bill and looked at it and hoped nothing showed on his face.

—You don’t understand, said Helen. It’s okay. I keep remembering how things are different for you—you haven’t had the chance to see how so many people treat each other disrespectfully and all that. You want to go straight to your place?

—What else did you have in mind?

—Getting out of this snob-hole for starters. Get a drink at the Shamrock maybe.

He clapped his hand down on the tabletop: I’m not going to have a goddamn drink!

—Okay, Brown Eyes, said Helen.

People were looking at them. Lee lowered his face, stared at the tablecloth.

—Look, should we get going?

—I have to powder my nose, said Helen. I hope you don’t leave her a tip.

She got up and headed to the ladies’ room. Lee attended to the bill with cash from his wallet, conscious as ever of how much money he was spending. Then he looked over. He had a straight line of sight down the rear passageway where the washrooms were located. Helen had her head halfway out of the ladies’ room door. She was gesturing emphatically for Lee to come.

He got up from the table and headed her way, said: What’s the problem?

She pulled him in and closed the door. She was on him like a predator. Nails, teeth, tongue, taste of wine on her breath. The washroom was a space for individual use. Small and cramped, pink, the sink mounted to the wall. It smelled like cheap deodorizer.

—Somebody’s going to know we’re in here.

—I don’t care. I wouldn’t come back here. Snobs. Pricks.

She turned around and held the edge of the sink in one hand and balled her skirt up in her other hand. Her underpants were down around her ankles.

—Come on, said Helen.

—Bend over a little more.

—Careful where you stick that thing.

She reached around behind her and took firm hold of him and guided him in. She bent over farther and the angle was better. For a moment he did nothing. Then he grasped her shoulder. He took her roughly, one knee into the back of her leg as if he might trip her. He could see the sink threatening to come loose from the wall. Her nails pierced hard into the bare flesh at the tops of his legs. Afterwards, she preceded him out of the washroom, recomposing her hair as she went. He was certain all eyes in the dining room would be on them, but no one paid them any attention. He gathered his jacket from the back of the chair.

Outside all she said was: I’ll sleep tonight.

She took his arm and they walked down the street. At one point she stumbled on the curb and dropped her purse. He squatted down to retrieve it and there in the street light he saw a drop of semen on her cowboy boot, like a crude pearl inlaid in the synthetic leather.

It was one of the few evenings Pete spent at home. He was sitting on his bed reading a paperback but he was unable to concentrate on it. His thoughts kept finding their way back to Emily. The last time he’d seen her was the morning after the party two weeks ago. He thought of Billy disappearing with her into a bedroom somewhere.

—Shit, said Pete.

—I heard that.

Pete’s half-brother Luke was at the door.

—You heard that? said Pete. Well, if you snitch on me I’ll cut your head off and hang it from the wall as a warning to other snitches. Come in. Close the door. What do you want?

—What’s a Jew?

—What’s a Jew? You know what a Jew is.

—Jesus was a Jew. But the other Jews killed him. We learned about how all the Jews are guilty of it.

—Look, said Pete. You know that store in town where we bought your sneakers? Remember the guy that worked there?

Mr. Gold?

—Yes. He had glasses.

—That’s right. Anyway, Mr. Gold’s a Jew.

—He is?

—Yes. Mr. Gold. Do you think Mr. Gold personally killed Jesus?

—I don’t know.

—Yes you do. You’re not using your head, Luke. What do you really think? Did Mr. Gold at the shoe store personally kill Jesus?

—No. But Mrs. Adams said all the Jews are guilty of it. Pete sat back in his chair. A nasty feeling went through him.

—Mrs. Adams, said Pete.

—My Sunday School teacher.

—When did Mrs. Adams become your Sunday School teacher?

—When we started this year.

—Well, Luke, it’s possible that your Sunday School teacher is full of shit. You have to be careful. Not all grown-ups are right just because they’re grown-ups. Or because they’re Sunday School teachers. Would God give you a brain if he didn’t want you to use it?

—No …

—No is right.

The boy loafed about, frowning at the carpet and at Pete when it seemed Pete was looking elsewhere.

—What’s on your mind, Luke? Really?

—How come Uncle Lee went to jail?

Pete straightened up: Well, Uncle Lee did a pretty bad thing.

—What did he do?

—I don’t know for sure, but it was really bad.

—Peter …

—You want to know, Luke, because you’re eight and when you’re eight you want to know everything. But—and you’re going to be mad at me saying this—you’re too young to know, Luke. I don’t even know. But it was a really long time ago and Uncle Lee’s different now.

—He’s a good guy?

—Yes. Is there anything else on your mind?

—No.

—Good. Now get out or I’ll sell you to the gypsies. I wouldn’t even get two bucks but I’ll sell you anyway.

Luke slouched out of the bedroom. Pete sat on his bed and chewed through another ten pages of the paperback. By nine-thirty the house was quiet. Pete rose from the bed and opened his wallet and counted out twenty-five dollars in rent money. He went out of his bedroom. His grandmother was in her chair in the living room, beside the radio. She often listened to evangelical cassettes that she got through the tabernacle library but now she was asleep.

Barry was in his office with his study bible open on his desk. He had a yellow legal pad he wrote his sermons on. Pete could see Barry’s tight handscript, almost glyphic, words and sentences, bible references written in bold. Pete tapped the door frame.

—Peter, said Barry.

Pete gave him that week’s twenty-five dollars. Barry took the money and counted it and put it in a little strongbox inside his desk.

—I’m grateful as always, said Barry.

—What’s the sermon about? said Pete.

—Think of your Romans. 12:16. That we should not think of high things but of keeping company with the humble. It’s the kind of thing that makes me think of Lee.

—You think Lee thinks of high things?

—What? Oh no. I think Lee is a lesson in how we ought to interact with each other as servants of Christ. Serving Lee has helped me learn a great deal.

—Serving Lee.

—Was there anything else, Peter? I’ve got a lot of work to do.

—One thing. Mrs. Adams. She teaches Sunday School.

Barry pressed his hands together: Sheila Adams, yes. I’ve got a lot of work to do.

—Do you … I mean … Did she get some kind of training before she got to be a Sunday School teacher?

—Peter, would you speak plain?

—Oh, ask Luke. I’m going to bed.

The next day was quiet at the Texaco. At half past three, Pete stocked up the jugs of washer fluid on the service island. Duane was in town for a doctor’s appointment.

It was the kind of workday when the hours went by slowly but when Pete got home he would wonder where it had all gone. Once, when he was new, a customer had driven away from the pumps with the gas nozzle still in the filler neck at the back of the car. The hose pulled off the pump and flapped like an obscene rubber tail. Gasoline sprayed everywhere. A woman walking by just stopped and stared. She was smoking a cigarette. It was an hour or two before the customer returned, whipped into a rage. He went on about how they all would be held financially liable for the damage to his car. Even then, new as he was, Pete guessed you couldn’t go long here before you were a veteran.

After he’d restocked the washer fluid, Pete went to change the trash bags in the washroom. He put on a pair of dish gloves they kept along with the other maintenance supplies. The gloves were pink and felt clammy inside. Pete was just stepping out with the bag of trash. He didn’t even see Billy.

—Hey, man.

—Jesus Christ, Billy, you scared the hell out of me.

Billy was leaning against the back wall of the store.

—What are you doing out this way? said Pete.

—I got my brother’s car. I kind of felt like driving around.

Billy spat out a little wad of saliva. He looked away at the bracken on the far side of the property: Emily, man. I don’t even know.

—What happened?

—Oh, what does it even matter.

Billy spat again. He kicked at the gravel. Pete felt an instinct to reach out, put a hand on the shoulder. He was halfway to doing this before he recalled that he was still wearing the pink dish gloves. Instead, he said: I’m sorry to hear that, Bill.

Even as he said it, he felt the lie for what it was. He was sorry that his friend was hurting, but he could not even pretend to feel bad that Emily had broken it off. He wondered what this meant, what this told him about himself. He cleared his throat and looked at the sky, looked anywhere but at Billy.

—Everything happens for a reason and all that other shit my brother’s wife always says, right? said Billy.

—I’m working tomorrow but not the next day. If you want we can get drunk.

—Yeah, maybe. You know what? Maybe when you skip town I’ll come with you. Fuck it.

—You bet.

No, Stanley, said Dick. Like I said before, this Gilmore, he’s not anybody at all. He told Len Gleber that the work he had was groundskeeping around EZ Acres down the highway. His story checked out fine. He told Gleber when it got cold he might head down to the city.

They were sitting in the front of the unmarked patrol car, rubbing the chill out of their hands in front of the heater. Stan’s truck stood alongside the unmarked car and both vehicles were parked outside of Western Autobody. A cold autumn storm was brewing.

Dick went on: As far as it looks, all this guy did wrong was have another gal on the go. I’m glad Eleanor talked to you. Not just because of her sister but because of all the rest of it. Aurel and the brothers.

—I’m glad she let me tell my side. I think she’s had a lot of sadness in her life.

Dick had a cup of coffee he’d brought with him from the garage. He tasted the coffee and then he cracked open the driver side door and poured it onto the wet pavement.

—One thing Eleanor said was how ordinary he was, said Stan. She said he didn’t look like he worked in an office or anything like that but otherwise he was just ordinary.

—Ordinary, said Dick.

—They never look like anyone in particular, not like in the movies.

—You remember back when Fran and me were living in the city, said Dick. I never loved it at that time and I don’t miss it one goddamn bit. But you remember I was on the Metro force. I was doing prisoner transfers from the provincial courthouse downtown out to wherever those sons of bitches ended up. There’s not so much I care to remember, because when your job is to drive those kinds of men around, those men who rape or steal or harm children or kill for money, you’re best to not pay them much mind. They don’t deserve it. But I do remember one from all the men I transported, I remember one above all the others. Because he didn’t have none of that desperation about him. He was just ordinary.

—Who was this?

—I don’t have any memory of his name, though I suppose I read it a time or two on the paperwork or in the newspapers or on the radio, because his name was around for a little while. He was just a man with a plain face. We were taking him to Kingston. He’d worked in an Italian restaurant. He was a cook in the kitchen. He lived with his wife in the east part of the city. And one day this ordinary man, well, he goes into work, into the kitchen, and gets the biggest carving knife he can find and goes on into the manager’s office and he sticks that carving knife into the manager’s throat and cuts it wide open. Just like that, this manager sitting at his desk with his head, you know, hanging backwards just by the bones. Anyhow, the man went home on the streetcar and when he got home he got another carving knife from his own kitchen and tried to do the same to his wife. He would of, too, if he didn’t cut her arm open first. They said he slipped in her blood and hit his head on a chair when he went down. The gal got herself out of there. God knows what she must of thought of the turn of events. I never even heard him raise his voice, is what she said at the trial, and that was all the witness she ever beared against him. Anyhow when the city cops—boys I knew, some of them—got to the house, the man didn’t resist at all. They found him, they said, holding a towel full of ice to the back of his head. You know what he said on trial? He said the manager just talked too much. He said the gal talked too much too. He said he couldn’t stand everybody talking all the time. On the day we moved him to Kingston, this cook, he just sat there quiet as you like and watched out the window. It was around Cobourg or so, and I remember we were slowed right to a stop with some roadwork. Bill Finley, the chap riding shotgun, was dead asleep. So I catch myself looking at the cook in the mirror, just how goddamn ordinary he was. I must of looked away for a minute and then I looked back again and the bugger was looking right at me. Right at me. He says what we’re doing is a good thing. I should of paid him no attention, but him looking at me, it caught me off guard, and I says to him, Why is that? And he smiles and he says because he’s not ever going to stop. He says there’s too much talk in the world and he’s not going to stop till he cuts every tongue out of every head he finds. Right around then, Finley waked up and he saw this man was talking so he slammed the cage with his hand and told him to keep his goddamn mouth shut. Which is what I should of done in the first place. Or just paid him no mind at all.

Dick was looking out over the dashboard. A leafless privet hedge was moving in the wind in front of them.

—I don’t believe there are too many of them out there, said Stan. Or at least I don’t want to believe it. I think like you say, most of them get rabid because of desperate times. Thirty-eight years and I don’t remember but maybe one or two times I dealt with a person that had it that way right down to the core. The couple times I did think I saw it in somebody I always came away thinking I didn’t have the real makings to do much about it. I was always afraid of that.

—The only time I thought I was looking it in the eye was that cook in the rear-view mirror. I shouldn’t of even paid him any heed at all.

—Listen to us. We’re a couple of miserable old bastards. Anyhow, the vet said he’d be done with Cassius at three.

—Hold up, old man. I’m not done with you yet. I can tell you one thing maybe you’ll find interesting. Len Gleber thought Judy’s boyfriend might be hard to track down. So Gleber went over to EZ Acres. The manager had to radio for him, walkie-talkie, but the boyfriend came after five or ten minutes. The boyfriend told Gleber he was real sorry about Judy but he thought she’d made more of it than he had. Said he hadn’t seen her in a couple weeks. He didn’t think he’d go to the funeral because he didn’t want to cause any more upset to Eleanor, but would Gleber pass on a couple words of sorry. They looked into him after that and they didn’t come up with anything. He’d been working at EZ Acres for about three months, according to the manager, mostly part time.

—You’re going to a lot of work to tell me what you’ve already told me, said Stan.

—Well, look here. Gleber happened to see the boyfriend getting into a car after he interviewed him. Gleber didn’t see the driver, and it wasn’t a minute before the car was gone, but Gleber had a rookie he was training and he thought he’d get the kid to run the plates. So the kid runs the plates on the car and what he gets for the registration is Alec Reynolds.

—Alec Reynolds, said Stan. I remember the name …

—He’s been in long-term care a few years. Dementia, all the rest of it.

—The car’s hot?

—No. Alec’s only living next-of-kin is a niece. Arlene Reynolds. The girl’s name was registered on the insurance. When I got Gleber to talk about it last week, and I had to be careful about how I was asking these questions, he mentioned this girl’s name. I did a bit of looking on my own. She lived in Montreal for most of the last ten years and came back here in the spring. But that’s all. She doesn’t have a record or anything. Maybe she’s the other girl Judy saw.

—Didn’t Alec Reynolds have a place on Indian Lake?

—The marina in the north end, said Dick. Far as I know the bank hasn’t foreclosed on it yet but that can’t be long off. The store’s been closed up for six years, easy, as long as Alec’s been in hospital.

—Eleanor talked about a place her sister had gone to try to track down the boyfriend. A motorhome was what she said.

—Motorhome—could be EZ Acres, where he was working.

—Could be.

—Goddammit, Stanley, what do you have in mind here?

—I don’t know. I suppose I just want to meet him. Have some words with him. I want to see what there is to see about him. Anyhow, Frank gave me a warning at Thanksgiving. I don’t want you to do anything to run foul of him.

—Oh, he suspects I’ve been poking around. But he hasn’t come right out and said anything.

—Still.

—What’s the worst he could do, fire me? I’d be away hunting moose so goddamn fast your head would spin off. I’ll give you a ring, Stanley. Fran says she’d like to have you over for supper.

—I’ll see you soon, Dick.

Stan got out of the unmarked car and the rain came down on him. He climbed into his truck and started the ignition and the heater. Nothing made his joints ache like cold rain. His knuckles, his hips. He sat cursing while the truck warmed up.

After Stan got up the next morning, he went down and did half a dozen rounds on the heavy-bag. It took some time to work the stiffness out of his joints. He’d spoken on the telephone to his sister in the evening after he’d brought Cassius home from the veterinarian. She was his only living sibling, seven years his senior. She lived out west and he’d last seen her when she came out for Edna’s funeral. They talked about the weather and health and grandchildren. She asked about the house and he told her he thought Frank and Mary might buy it from him. They agreed it would be nice to keep it in the family.

After Stan had cleaned up from his exercises, he lifted up Cassius’s ears and put in the drops that the veterinarian had prescribed. Cassius bore the indignity without complaint. Stan got a chunk of cold steak out of the refrigerator and gave it to the dog.

He left Cassius at the house and ran some errands in town. By midafternoon he had parked his truck near a marshy inlet on the northwest side of Indian Lake. He got out and walked up onto a pressure-treated birdwatching platform framed over the cattails. He had with him a pair of Bushnell 10x42 field glasses. He steadied his elbows on the rail and looked through the field glasses, north, to the bay at the top of the lake.

A rocky shore. One or two cottages closed for the winter. If Stan was correct, Alec Reynolds’s property was marked by an eroded concrete pier at the base of a high feature. There’d been a gas pump up there. Stan could make out part of what had been a small store and restaurant behind where the pump had been. The windows were boarded over and much of the building was lost from sight by a growth of spruce. Where the land climbed up behind the building, Stan could just discern the roof of a storage shed or barn.

He got back in his truck and drove around the gravel township roads north of the lake. He kept driving until he saw what he thought was the same roof he’d seen from the lake, the storage shed or the barn. It was a hundred yards south of the road, with bush intervening. Stan drove slowly until he came to a possibly corresponding driveway. It wound out of sight through the trees. He stopped the truck for a moment’s consideration.

A short distance back the way he’d come, the township road passed over a culvert. There were no other driveways between there and the one he reckoned led to the marina. Just past the culvert, a small clearing had been cleft into the bush. It was a good enough place to park. He got out of his truck and walked into the bush. Everything was still wet from yesterday’s rainfall but the trees were not as thick as they had looked from the road. Up ahead, a creek was curving tightly through the trees and beyond that was the abrupt face of a rocky rise. Stan made his way over the fallen leaves. He came to the creek, which was wider than it looked, but he managed to cross it without any trouble. He went up the rise and when he came to the top he was breathing hard and the stiffness was back in his hips. He leaned on a tree to get his breath.

At the top of the rise was a thin treeline. Beyond the treeline, fifty yards of open ground led to the building he’d been seeking. It looked like a large shed for wintering boats, and on the far side of the shed he could make out half of a camper. Farther down, the roof of the store was just visible where the high feature dropped back to the lake. Stan unslung the field glasses from his neck and scanned the property. Nothing moved.

At last he trekked into the open field. The uncut grass hissed as he came to the back of the storage shed. The wall was windowless. He moved to the corner and peered around. The driveway from the township road came out of the trees and into a widened terminus between the storage shed and not one but two campers. One camper was a thirty-foot silver Airstream. The other was a battered Prowler, no more than nineteen feet long. The windows in both campers were dark.

Stan went to the door of the Prowler and knocked on it. Waited, knocked again. He went to the Airstream and knocked on the door. There was a window set in the door but a curtain was drawn behind the glass. He knocked again. After some minutes had passed and nothing happened, he tried the Airstream door and found it locked fast. He went back to the Prowler and found it locked as well.

Across from the campers there was a man-door in the side of the storage shed. Stan crossed the driveway. The man-door, at least, was unlocked. He went in. There wasn’t much to see in the wan and dusty light. An empty interior. Hard-packed dirt for the floor. Two walls had been framed out of the back corner of the shed to make a large locker, crooked with age. The locker was perhaps eight feet by eight feet. There was a hasp for a padlock fixed to the locker door-frame but no lock was in place. Stan opened the door. The dark inner hollow could be illuminated by a forty-watt bulb overhead—you just had to turn the bulb in its socket. The yellow light it threw brought out the cobwebs and made eerie shadows, but the locker was empty. He darkened the bulb again.

Outside, Stan went down the slope to the back of the store. He felt certain he had some memories of this place when it was operational, summertime, kids with ice cream cones. The rear windows of the store were boarded over and No Trespassing was spray-painted on the plywood. The back door was locked. He did a circle of the building. The spruce on the headland had not been thinned in some time and grew close to the walls. Out front, Stan came to the pad where the gas pump had been. The wide panorama of Indian Lake lay beyond. The water licked against the short concrete pier below the pad. One front window of the store was unboarded. He cupped his hands around his face and looked through the glass into the darkness, saw the shape of a counter, a table with chairs stacked on it.

Stan crossed back through the property and walked the driveway through the trees to the township road. By the time he reached his truck he’d worked up a thin sweat. Sitting behind the steering wheel he tried to decide how he felt. Absurdity hovered close but there was more to it—what Eleanor had said her sister had told her about a place by the lake, and how that fell into place with the property he’d just wandered about. The vague signs of life around the mobiles and the storage shed. In his mind, he’d made a picture of the man, Colin Gilmore, who’d come and gone from Judy’s life. And he thought how he was mocked by this, his own undertaking, when the pieces didn’t even hint at a whole. Edna occurred to him again, what she would say about this. But behind Edna came an image of Judy Lacroix dead in the back of a car and, years ago, her uncle Darien turning at the bottom of the hangman’s rope.

Perhaps he couldn’t put it all into words—for Dick, for Frank, for the ghost of his wife—but he was gripped by it all the same. He was not going to stop now.

I’ll be goddamned.

Speedy had said that a few times, each time shaking his head. He was driving them south out of town along the highway for a short stretch. His car was a Mercury Monarch, a wreck on four wheels. The springs were pushing through the upholstery. Between I’ll-be-goddamneds, Speedy talked at a rapid rate about the woman he lived with, who he said was half wagon-burner and was therefore prone to going on drinking benders where she’d find herself in another town altogether. Lee smoked and listened. He had a low throb in his back and his shoulders from work that day. They were finished at the lakeside cottage and had spent the day cleaning up the job site.

—But I’ll be goddamned, Lee. When was the last time we drove anywheres like this?

Before long, Speedy brought them to a truck stop off the highway. Down the other end of the lot was a concrete roadhouse that a neon sign advertised as THE NORTH STAR. The parking lot was perhaps half full.

—This is a good old place, said Speedy.

Lee took in the sight of the roadhouse through the windshield. He was quickly agitated. He said: Speedy. I can’t be around here. I don’t drink at all. I’ve been sober going on four years. When you came by you just said there was a place you wanted me to take a look at.

—A place to look at?

—That’s what you said. I figured you meant a job site or a house that needed to get fixed up. I didn’t think you meant nothing like this.

Speedy looked incredulous in the dashboard lights.

—Well, shit, Lee, I didn’t know about the soberness. Listen. Let’s just pop in for a minute then. Usually they got a band going. Plus, I got some buddies out here.

—I don’t know.

—Lee, you crazy old bugger. Come on, ten minutes. Have a 7UP, see some music. You probably need to just get loose.

Speedy was already getting out of his car. Lee opened his mouth to summon Speedy back but he ended up saying nothing. He got out of the car and they went across the parking lot. There was a doorman who knew Speedy by name and he showed them into the roadhouse. The inside of the place was bigger than it had looked. A row of booths lined the far wall and tables were arranged around a riser. They’d stood jack-o’-lanterns around the stage and hung some dejected rubber bats from the ceiling. A lone man with an electric guitar and an amplifier was doing a decent cover of “Sundown.” There were townies and truckers, and someone Lee recognized from the lumberyard. Speedy stopped briefly at the bar. There was a girl pouring some drinks and a man whom Speedy called Mike. Speedy ordered a draft of Molson and Lee ordered a Coke and then they sat down in a booth and watched the musician.

—Speedy, said Lee.

Before Speedy could reply, the girl came from the bar with their drinks on a tray. She had blond hair and a sexy sway.

—Always good to see Speedy, said the girl.

—Arlene, this is my pal, Lee.

She smiled, offered her hand for Lee to shake. When she left them, they watched her go until she was behind the bar again.

Speedy leaned over to Lee: What would I give to put the cock to her.

—Speedy, do you know what my parole officer would do if he knew I was here?

—Well, you don’t see him nowhere, do you?

—No, but.

The Coca-Cola had come in a sleeve-glass with scoured sides. Speedy picked up a salt shaker from the other side of the booth and tapped salt into his draft.

—And the music’s not half bad, said Speedy.

—No. Christ. It’s not that.

—We won’t stay real long. If I finish this beer and I haven’t seen my friends, we’ll get going, what do you say? There’s a topless place other side of Animosh.

—Who are these friends of yours?

—Just some ordinary old boys.

They sat back, watched the musician for a few minutes. When they were eighteen or nineteen, Lee and Speedy and Terry Lachlan had broken into the office of a man who owned and operated a quarry southeast of town. The quarry-man was a European immigrant named Szabo, and it was rumoured that he was a Nazi war criminal on the run, but even that was a pretty thin pretense for robbing him. Rather, if Lee remembered correctly, they’d heard from Szabo’s son, who was not on good terms with his father, that the quarry-man kept a substantial amount of cash in a safe in his office. So Speedy, Lee and Terry Lachlan had gone at night, kicked the door open, found the safe, wheeled it out on a furniture dolly, loaded it into a borrowed pickup truck, and driven away. The whole affair had taken fifteen or twenty minutes, which Lee later figured was way too slow, had anyone been observing them and called the cops.

As it was, the break-in went unreported, whether because Szabo was actually a Nazi war criminal fleeing justice, or, more likely, because the cash kept in the safe was income he hadn’t claimed the taxes on. Either way, after Lee and Speedy and Terry had finally pried the safe open, they found themselves each three hundred dollars richer. Lee didn’t think he’d done anything more serious before breaking into the quarry-man’s office. The stolen cars and counterfeit cigarettes all started after that.

Now he needed to find or do something to take his mind off both the past, and where he was in the present. He thought maybe conversation would work. He turned his glass on the tabletop and said: Anyhow, what’ve you been doing? You got a trade?

Speedy touched the burn on the side of his face: No. I’m on disability.

—For what?

—For awhile I had a bit in a welding shop. This one time I was cutting up a steel I-beam with a burning bar. You ever see one of them cocksuckers, a burning bar? They’ll burn through anything, Lee. Steel, concrete, any fucking thing just like that. Some of the slag got blown back on my face. But here’s the beauty, Lee. The foreman and the manager got their asses chewed because I wasn’t wearing a mask when I got burned. The court settled pretty sweet for me.

—Jesus. You could of got blinded.

—Sure, but I didn’t. Anyway it’s no trouble no more. I got some various business interests. I never liked having to answer to a buck or a foreman.

When the conversation lapsed, Lee was aware of how unsettled he’d become. He could feel a pulse in his eyes. Speedy was about halfway through his draft. The musician wrapped up a song and told the room thanks.

Then a big man was standing beside their table. His head was bald but he had a thick beard and he was wearing glasses that were an odd contrast to the rest of his appearance. The big man leaned his fists on the tabletop.

—How’s she going, Maurice? said Speedy.

Speedy and the big man shook hands.

—This is my pal, Lee, said Speedy.

—So this is Lee, said Maurice.

They shook hands.

—You say it like you know me, said Lee.

—Speedy told me a little about you. All good things. You’re among friends. Come on, let’s go to the back. You want a beer, Lee?

—I’m okay.

Maurice led them to a passageway on the far side of the riser, past a door marked Ladies, a door marked Men, and finally to a knobless door at the back marked Offi e. He pushed the door open and led the way into a small room. Against one wall stood metal shelves bellied under the weight of potato sacks and tins of cooking oil and boxes of empty liquor bottles. Beer kegs were stacked in a corner and there were two windows set high in the wall. There was no desk but there was a Formica table and a mismatched collection of chairs. At the table a man was tapping a pen on a crossword puzzle torn from a newspaper. He didn’t have any particular look about him, but somehow he seemed at odds with the townies and the blue-collar hang-abouts out in the main room. Before him in a tumbler was a mixed drink, and when he saw them coming he smiled brightly.

—Well. How are you, Speedy?

Speedy said hello and introduced the man at the table as Colin Gilmore. He stood up to shake hands with Lee.

—All is well, Lee, said Gilmore. Any friend of Speedy’s is a friend of mine. Speedy, what do you say you visit with Arlene, get your glass filled back up.

Maurice let Speedy out and then he closed the door and leaned against the wall. Lee again felt the pulse in his eyes. He sat. Gilmore offered up a pack of Camel cigarettes. Lee withdrew one and Gilmore lit it for him.

—I know Roland Poirier, said Gilmore. You’d remember Rollie, wouldn’t you?

—Yeah, I knew Rollie, said Lee. But that’s a few … that’s more than a few years ago.

—Rollie’s been having a hard time lately. He got in some trouble out in New Brunswick.

—I heard something like that, said Lee. Gambling or cards or something.

—Yes, cards, gambling. All the vices. But he put in a pretty good word for you. I said, Roland, when you were a guest of the Queen, did you know a fellow named Lee King? He did, he said. He said you helped him out when he had some trouble with a couple of boys inside. Also over a card game, I understand.

—That’s twelve goddamn years ago.

—Never mind how he can’t gamble for shit, Roland’s a good judge of character. He said you were a reliable kind of guy. Serious. That’s what I like in a friend.

—In a friend, said Lee.

—Speedy says you’re looking for work.

—Well, Speedy told you wrong. I got a job.

Something passed between Gilmore and Maurice, wherever Maurice was. Behind Lee.

—Sure you do, said Gilmore. That isn’t to say you might not be enterprising.

Lee wanted to turn around and look behind his chair. To see wherever that big man was. He remained looking straight-on, but not without effort.

—Look, buck. Me and Speedy. I haven’t seen him in seventeen years.

Gilmore was exuding sympathy, a joke shared between them. He said: Speedy’s a busybody, pal, you know? Right now he’s almost at his full potential. I say almost because Speedy has a set of skills that make up for everything else he got shortchanged. It’s not quite the same with you, Lee. You’re your own set of skills. From what Roland Poirier told me and, to be honest, from what I can see from meeting you.

—I don’t know what you’re talking about.

—I can make it clearer, said Gilmore.

—Here’s the thing, buck. I got a job, I got a place, I got a girl on the go. Opportunity and all the rest of it, I don’t have any interest.

Gilmore grinned a salesman’s grin. He sipped from his mixed drink.

—I think I’ll get out of your way now, said Lee.

He got out of the chair. Maurice hadn’t moved. He was still leaning against the door. He had his glasses off and he was rubbing one of the lenses with a Kleenex.

—Hope we’ll see you again, said Gilmore.

—Sure, said Lee.

Maurice put his glasses back on and opened the door. He said: Take care.

—Yeah, said Lee. So long.

In the passageway, Lee pitched the butt of the Camel cigarette to the floor. Speedy was at the bar talking to the bartender, that girl Arlene they’d been served by earlier. Lee saw Speedy turning to look at him as he went by but he crossed the floor and went into the vestibule. The doorman was telling a couple of kids that they couldn’t come in. There was a bank of pay telephones. Lee picked up a receiver and pushed a dime into the slot and dialed Helen’s number. It rang a dozen times before he put the receiver back in the cradle.

Speedy had appeared in the vestibule, carrying a refilled glass of beer.

—Lee, come on. Let’s go back inside and run us down a couple chicks.

He reached out to take Lee by the sleeve. Lee shoved him hard against the wall. The doorman turned to see and the kids went wide-eyed.

—Speedy, you dumb motherfucker.

—Lee …

Lee moved past the doorman. The kids made way for him and he hustled down the front steps. He didn’t know if Speedy was following him or not but he went quickly across the big parking lot. Some distance away, the lights of a rig were moving onto the pavement from the highway. A row of overnighted tractor-trailers stood like dormant beasts. Lee turned and Speedy had not come out of the roadhouse. The neon sign above was crude against the night sky.

All that was past the trucks was a store with sundries and a counter of day-old doughnuts. Lee bought a cup of coffee and went back out. He made his way back up the highway, putting his thumb out whenever headlights appeared behind him, and about half a mile along, a man in a Buick stopped. The man said he didn’t mind giving a fella a lift, but that he had a twelve-inch length of iron pipe under his seat, if Lee was the kind of person who didn’t have the right idea of how far charity extends.

Even after Lee was back in town, he didn’t uncoil. The windows at the Owl Café were dark. He went to the Corner Pocket and got a table and played a couple of games by himself. He’d been there about forty-five minutes when he put his cue down and went over to the counter and asked for a Coke. The barman popped open a can and filled up a glass for him.

—Good to have you back again, said the barman.

—Yeah.

A man came up and returned a rack of balls, paid off his table. Lee drank the Coke and set the glass down.

—Another?

—Yes.

The barman popped open the can. Lee pressed the heels of his hands into his forehead. His eyes were pulsing again. The glass was just half full when Lee told the barman to stop pouring. The barman looked at him.

—I was thinking, said Lee. Maybe you could put a couple splashes of rye in there?

Halloween came a week later, falling on a Friday. From street light to street light went the children in their costumes, carrying shopping bags full of take. Lee and Helen went to the liquor store and filled out a selection card and came out with a couple of bottles of whisky. Lee felt like a big man. He’d spent a few days fretting over Speedy and their trip to the roadhouse, but by the same token he was pleased with himself. Anybody who said he couldn’t go straight, well, they could fuck off, now more than ever.

He and Helen walked along Princess Street. They passed one of the bottles between them, whisky mixed with cola, hidden inside a paper bag. Lee took a swig. If he could stand his ground with some serious men like Speedy’s friends, then he didn’t think he’d have any problem handling a drink a two. He felt like he was actually in control of what was happening around him, what was happening to him. And he was proud of that.

Three kids in monster costumes went running past them. When Lee himself was a little kid, he’d dressed for Halloween as the Lone Ranger, year after year. A mask and a gun, which, thinking on it now, made him laugh. He’d been out to Barry and Donna’s house for supper the night before, and Barry had told him that he and Donna weren’t letting Luke and John go trick-or-treating for Halloween, because they didn’t think a festival celebrating the devil was something you wanted to have your kids take part in. Instead, they were going to a sleepover at Galilee Tabernacle, where each child came dressed as a biblical character and there was a contest for the best costume. Pete, who was also there for supper, suggested that the boys go to the sleepover dressed as Cain and Abel, with Abel murdered and the Mark of God on Cain’s forehead. Lee laughed, but Barry just changed the subject.

Lee and Helen made their way back to Lee’s place. She made popcorn on the hot plate and he mixed them some drinks and they watched a Hitchcock film—The Birds—on his TV. As they sat together, he looked at her from time to time, wondering what she’d been like as a young child.

Monday came and Lee was swinging his hammer. He was destroying the kitchen in a solitary island residence on Lake Kissinaw. The cupboards and counters were to be torn out. The bathrooms would go next. They would rip up the floor tiles and carpeting. The building and the island had sold for $60,000 to a man named Forsythe and his wife, who were said to live in New York State for most of the year. Clifton had gotten the bid for the renovations they wanted. Lee swung his hammer, caught the edge of a shelf, tore it out. A few feet away, Bud was working a crowbar on the kitchen counter.

At seven-thirty that morning they’d left in Clifton’s barge from the public landing. Clifton called his watercraft a barge but it wasn’t much of one. It was a dented twenty-foot steel push-boat with a flat bottom. The drop-gate in the bow didn’t work properly and was welded shut. It took them half an hour to cross the lake. Salvaged planks had been retrofitted in the barge as seats, and it was Lee, Bud and a man Lee hadn’t met yet riding along. Clifton helmed the barge, which plodded along, weighed down with lumber, a covered stack of pine, and a portable Monarch cement mixer. Lee didn’t want the others to take notice of how he was hunched forward with his fists pursed together. Moving over open water was chilling him to the bone. A T-shirt and work-shirt underneath his jean jacket were not going to be enough against the weather much longer. He craved a cigarette.

The barge tracked along a narrow hogback and then hooked into a calm back bay. The biggest island in the bay was sixty yards end to end, covered by white pines. The side of a boathouse was visible where the island tapered down to a rocky shore. Clifton guided them to a dock. On the shore, a material delivery had preceded them by a day or two: a couple of yards of gravel and three tons of Sakrete dry cement mix in forty-pound bags. Once they were tied up, Lee hopped out and got the blood moving in his limbs. He lit himself a cigarette and offered one to Bud, who shook his head and hustled past him onto dry land. Clifton mugged at Lee but didn’t say anything. A short path led past the boathouse to the cottage that Forsythe had purchased. It was a dejected storey-and-a-half structure, once whitewashed. A deck attached to the side of the house was severely out of level.

Clifton looked at Lee, striding along the path beside him. He said: Forsythe’s wife said she dreamed about this place. What do you make of that, mister man?

—Long as it keeps us going through the winter, boss, anybody can dream anything they want.

Lee didn’t know why Clifton was asking for his judgment. And the man was roused, more than usual. It wasn’t half past eight before Clifton invoked words of God and idleness and loosed Bud and Lee on the kitchen.

The new man who’d come out with them was named Wally. After one of the counters had been torn free of the kitchen wall, Wally appeared with a tape measure to take some measurements. He jotted numbers down on the exposed wallboard where the counter had been. Then he left the kitchen, taking Bud with him. Ten minutes later they came back from the barge with a table saw. Lee saw them setting it up in the living room.

At lunchtime they sat around the fireplace. The flue whistled and moaned.

—So you’re a cabinetmaker? said Lee.

—That’s right, said Wally.

—Lee’s a carpenter too, said Bud. He got his trade. He could do up some beauty cabinets. For sure.

—Hot dog, said Wally. Where did you apprentice?

They were looking at Lee.

—Go on, Leland King, said Clifton. You shouldn’t hide nothing.

—Say, never mind, said Wally.

—Prison, said Lee.

—Oh.

—That’s where I got my trade. Anyhow.

—Tell me what you think, said Wally.

He handed Lee a manila file folder. Inside was a set of plans for the kitchen. The cabinetry was all to be face-framed and constructed from the pine they’d brought.

—It looks good, said Lee. What do they call it … modern.

—If they stain the pine right it will come up nice.

—Sure it will, said Lee.

—Not quite like whacking together some desks, said Clifton.

—I guess not.

—Lee has come a real long way, Wally. Words and deeds and prayer, every day. Right, Lee?

—Every day, said Lee.

—We might even see you at Galilee Pentecostal one of these days, said Clifton. You too, Bud. Even you, Wally.

Wally took the plans back from Lee. He said: My wife and I like the United Church just fine, thanks.

Clifton was getting into it. His posture was erect: The United Church, that’s where—

—Clifton, said Wally, I’m thinking about something my dad used to say. All things in moderation. Religion too. You go all you want to your church and I’ll go to mine. In the meantime we’ll talk about hockey.

Wally stood up to stretch. He took a few strides across the living room floor and went outside through the kitchen door.

Clifton shook his head.

—A lot of guys just don’t want to hear the truth.

By mid-week, a great deal of scrap material had been culled out of the house. They cast the fibreboard and wiring and pipes into a midden they had dug on the back of the island. All the scrap lumber was brought down to a rocky flat along the shore. They primed the scrap with gasoline and set it alight. Bud tended the fire. He poked it with a shovel and hopped around like some kind of one-man pagan ceremony. Lee remained in the house, either helping Wally feed pine through the table saw or keeping the sawdust swept up and the tools organized. His own tool belt stayed folded neatly in a corner where he could keep an eye on it. Even Clifton was working. He was in the bathroom, putting solder on the new copper pipes.

At the end of each day when the light was fading, they took their things down and stood with Bud on the point. The coal bed gave off tremendous heat and the idea of barging out across the cold lake was a dismal prospect. Maybe even Clifton thought so, because they would stand around for awhile, instead of leaving. Nobody said anything. They just watched the red patterns shifting in the coals.

When Saturday came, Lee had a late breakfast at the Owl Café. Helen said she was going to be doing a tarot reading with some girlfriends that night but could see him the next day. If he wanted, of course. Lee walked breakfast off by going to the Woolworths around the corner from the National Trust. He tried on a Carhartt jacket. It was stiff denim lined with quilted flannel and it was so warm that it brought sweat out of his skin as he looked at himself in the store mirror. He moved the zipper up and down. He looked at the price tag and looked away, and then he carried the jacket and a wool toque and a pair of lined work gloves up to the cashier.

Your jacket, said Irene. It looks sharp. Don’t you think, Barry?

—It looks warm, Brother Lee.

They were at the hospital Saturday afternoon. The cancer ward was small and smelled new. They sat in a waiting area not far from the radiotherapy suite, Lee and Barry and Irene, and despite how warm the new jacket was making him, Lee was somehow reluctant to remove it. He was getting the feel of it on his body.

A nurse came and told Irene they were ready to see her. The nurse helped her to stand up. Lee stood with her, holding her by the arm. The nurse gave him a bland smile.

—No worries, said Barry. These gals know what they’re doing.

Lee lowered himself into his chair: I’ll be here, Ma.

The nurse showed Irene out of the waiting area. Barry watched them go and then turned to Lee.

—I arranged a little time with her doctor if you want to meet him.

The oncologist was a small brown man whom Barry introduced as Dr. Vijay. His manner was prim and dignified and he did not shake hands. He offered them seats in his office.

—You are Mrs. King’s son?

—That’s right, said Lee.

—Thanks for seeing us on a Saturday, said Barry.

Dr. Vijay lifted his hand in the air and moved it side to side. He was looking at notes on a clipboard.

—Since the ward opened there are three thousand people in this region who come here for care. So I do not have much in the way of a weekend. But I am happy, Mr. King, to tell you a few words about your mother’s illness. Carcinoma, do you know this?

—Lung cancer, said Lee. Same as that one-legged kid who tried to run across the country.

—That one-legged kid, as you say, said Dr. Vijay, he suffers from osteosarcoma. A cancer that has spread from his leg to different parts of his body, including his lungs. What your mother has, Mr. King, is carcinoma. A cancer that has formed directly in her lungs. Your mother was a heavy smoker, yes?

—She smoked. Same as anybody else.

—The tumours in her lungs are almost certainly a result of heavy smoking. I am not making any recommendations to you, Mr. King, but you might want to give that some thought if you are also a smoker.

Lee was unsure how to respond. He looked to Barry for any sign of comradeship but Barry had his plain face on. Lee shifted his jaw. Dr. Vijay flipped a page on the clipboard.

—As it is, your mother’s treatment seems to be progressing as well as can be expected. The third stage of the sickness, which she was diagnosed with in August, did your family explain this to you?

—They said she has a year to live, said Lee.

—Yes, that’s the estimate. I don’t want to give you any false hope. Still, she is responding well to the radiotherapy.

—She’s got this faith, said Barry abruptly. She knows Whose Hands she’s in.

—Yes, said Dr. Vijay, and he cleared his throat.

Faith was a funny thing for Lee. He’d been told how faith was shaped and what it looked like and how he could resolve himself to it. One time the prison chaplain drew from Revelations, how when a child of God walks away from the Lord, the Lord will yet reach to call him home. The chaplain said how when the call came it was faith by which it was heard. How faith was like a telephone. Lee had heard how the call was to come into your heart and thus deliver you.

After the visit to the hospital Lee went back to Union Street. He got supper at a small diner he hadn’t visited before and then, walking home, he saw Speedy cruising that part of town in his wreck of a car on God knows what kind of errand. Speedy saw him and stopped the car and said it was good to see him, never mind the way they’d parted at the North Star. Speedy wanted to know what Lee was up to that night. They went to the Corner Pocket from there. The conversation with Dr. Vijay stayed in Lee’s head but after a couple of drinks he felt alright.

He’d been a drinker through much of his prison sentence. There were cons who made a wicked homebrew out of fruit scraps and whatever else they could get their hands on, sometimes potatoes. If it was a bad brew, it could blind you, or worse. But if it was a good brew, and it was generally alright, it could help you forget where you were for a little while. It could help you feel big if you needed to. He’d sobered up later, after he’d been working steadily in the woodshop for a few years and the possibility of an early parole had started to take shape. Writing back and forth with Barry had helped. His sobriety put him in good stead with the parole board once his time to be heard came around, but they did not impose it on him as a condition. Maybe they’d thought he could go straight. Maybe they’d seen that in him, even before he’d seen it in himself.

—Lucky to run into you this aft, said Speedy.

Lee chalked the tip of his cue and drank his rye and cola. He broke the balls on the table and studied where they’d moved to.

Speedy talked about the latest spree his woman had gotten involved in. Across the poolroom was that sharp-featured man again, shooting pool with a buddy. When Lee saw the man, he felt a niggling pull of familiarity.

—So how’s this gal of yours?

—What?

—Your lady friend, said Speedy.

—She’s good. She’s doing some kind of card game with her girlfriends tonight. They read cards that tell you this or that about a person. Their fate.

—There’s just all kinds of crazy nonsense out there.

Lee deftly beat Speedy. They had some more drinks and played a few more games. Speedy maundered on about other topics. He asked Lee how work was going. Lee told him about the island where they’d torn out the kitchen.

Speedy did not remain much longer. He stayed only long enough that Lee wondered if it had been deliberate that they’d met up in the first place. Lee was a little bit drunk, loosened up. But he could feel clearly that Speedy was up to something.

—Say, Lee, how’s about we go run us down some better action than here.

—I don’t know what kind of better action you got in mind.

—Some of them friends of mine.

—What, those boys I met?

—Sure. On a Saturday they like to have a bash out there. What do you say.

Lee bent over his cue and tried a bank shot but he scratched it.

—I guess I’d just as soon stay around here, said Lee. You know.

—Sure, Speedy said after a moment. Well, you know where we’re all at. If you want to steal a car and come on out. I’m only kidding you.

They shook hands and Speedy gathered his jacket and left. Lee put his cue down on the felt and went over to the bar. He and the barman exchanged some words of conversation. Lee got another drink. He wondered briefly how it might be out at the roadhouse, he couldn’t deny that, but he was also relieved that Speedy was gone.

He went back to his table and racked himself a new game. Then the sharp-featured man and his buddy drifted over to him. The buddy had black grease lining his fingernails and was wearing a Penzoil jacket with a name tag on the breast that read Clark.

—How about a game? said the long-haired man.

—There’s two of you.

—We’ll take turns. Us and you.

—What, you want to stake some cash on it?

—Let’s play a friendly game first, said the man. Then we’ll see if we want to stake some cash on it.

They set the balls and Lee lined up his cue and broke. The sharp-featured man was studying him intently. Lee took a long drink and rubbed the back of his neck.

—Do I know you? Are you one of the subtrades that Clifton Murray brings around?

—I seen you around, said the man. Once at the Owl Café.

That was it. Plain as day—the long-haired man, down-filled vest, snapping his fingers to try to get Helen’s attention, the first day Lee had met her.

—Oh, said Lee. Okay.

They played halfway through a game. They were not bad but Lee was better. He was down to the last two stripes and the eight ball and there were still four solids on the table. The two townies finished their jug of beer and the man with the Clark name tag went over to the bar to get another.

—I seen you talking to Miss Helen at the café, said the sharp-featured man.

—Is that a problem?

—No. Why would you think that?

Clark returned with the jug of beer. Lee clipped the cue ball hard. He took a quick look around the poolroom.

—I think you’re by yourself, said the man. How is Helen treating you anyhow?

—Kind of my business, don’t you think?

—She was treating me pretty good for awhile.

—You’re starting to get on my nerves, buck.

—Well, I wouldn’t want to do that.

Lee breathed. Then all at once he dropped his pool cue on the tabletop. He said: Fuck this.

—Hey now, no reason to get like that.

The two townies were grinning. Lee walked over to the bar, feeling the pulse in his eyes. He sat on a stool and paid off the table and ordered another drink.

—You know them guys? said Lee.

—Who, said the barman. Over at the table you had?

—Yeah.

—I’ve seen them around, I suppose.

A man came up and asked the barman for something and Lee worked on his drink. After a few minutes he looked back over his shoulder. The sharp-featured man and his buddy were gone.

Lee left the Corner Pocket a little before eleven o’clock. He went out the back door and hopped over a concrete knee-wall and cut through the lot of Dutch’s Chevrolet Pontiac Buick, New And Used. He turned up the collar of his new jacket and it was only because he stopped to light a cigarette that he saw them coming for him.

Their motions were reflected dully in the flank of a used Skylark. They were coming quickly down the narrow space between the cars. He turned just in time to see the man with the Clark name patch bearing down in the lead, swinging something. Lee bobbed sideways and the thing Clark was swinging crashed into his clavicle. Pain flashed down through his body and his arm went numb and for just a second Clark and the sharp-featured man, crowding in behind him, looked like maybe they weren’t sure what they were doing. Then Clark took another step and just as he put his weight down, Lee swung his steel-toe boot into the side of the forward knee. Clark dropped and let go of what he’d swung. A long wool sock with a pool ball rolling out of it. The ball rolled to rest against the Skylark’s tire and the sharp-featured man gaped at it. Lee kicked him in the groin. He dropped noiselessly and Lee kicked him again, first in the ribs and then across the jaw. Lee was breathing heavily now and was acutely aware of the pain in his shoulder. He looked. Clark was kneeling on his good knee, groping for the pool ball. Lee stomped the man’s fingers against the pavement and bent over him and punched him a number of times in the face. The man fell over.

Lee slammed a dent into the Skylark with his boot. It seemed there wasn’t enough air he could pull in. The men on the ground were breathing but they weren’t making any motions to get up. Lee walked backwards until he was out of sight of them.

When he got home he turned on the lamp and looked at his hand. His knuckles were swollen but not opened up. His shoulder was tender where the pool ball had struck it. He took off his new jacket and laid it on the table and inspected it closely for damage to the fabric, for blood. There wasn’t any. He hung the jacket in the closet. He went to bed and lay awake for the rest of the night.

A few days later, after work when Lee was walking home with a bag of groceries, he became conscious of a vehicle tracking along beside him. At first he thought it was the police car again but then he saw it was a GMC Caballero. The vehicle angled to the curb beside him and the driver-side window came down. That big man with the glasses from the roadhouse. Maurice.

—Looks like you could use a lift.

—I’m okay. My place isn’t real far.

—If you say so.

A pause.

—I’ll see you, said Lee.

—Hold up, said Maurice. Word was you had some trouble on the weekend.

—Whose word is that?

—Doesn’t matter. Just thought you’d like to know there isn’t nobody going to be talking about it. Like so it would get back to the cops or your parole officer.

—I don’t have trouble with anyone.

—No, that’s true. You don’t. And if you did have trouble with anybody, say, a couple shithead town boys, then maybe you’d like to know these same shithead town boys have had certain things told to them.

—Okay, said Lee, not knowing what else to say.

—Shitty how them things happen to a guy from time to time, said Maurice. You sure you don’t want a ride?

—I’m okay.

—See you around, Lee.

EZ Acres was five miles down the highway south of town. The sign at the gate showed a cartoon fat-man snoozing in a hammock. The park had thirty-five campers sited on the shore of a circular catch-basin called Lake Albert. The office was one of three permanent buildings on the property. The park was seasonal and Stan didn’t know if anybody would still be around or not, but as he walked towards the office, a husky rose from the ground and barked twice.

A short woman with cropped grey hair came around from behind the office and told the dog to shut up. She had a splitting maul over her shoulder. She said: Can I help you?

—I guess you folks are closed up, said Stan.

—We open again on Victoria Day.

The husky trotted over and hung close to the woman’s leg.

—I thought you’d maybe be able to point me in the right direction, said Stan.

—What direction would that be?

—A friend of mine, he’s been in the hospital for awhile. He’s not in good shape. His doctor wanted to have a word with my friend’s niece who’s been keeping an eye on his property. It’s been hard to get a hold of her, the niece, but I heard she had a friend who worked here.

—Well, there’s nobody here now. Just me. We had two or three guys on seasonal but I let them go when we shut down after Thanksgiving. What was his name?

—I believe it’s Colin Gilmore, said Stan.

—Right, Ballin’ Colin. Last time I seen him was a week ago when I had a couple hours’ work in the hydro-cut. I don’t know if he’s still around or not, but up the highway there’s a truck stop where they got this roadhouse. The North Star. You know it? Colin was drinking there when he was around.

Stan thanked her and started to head back to his truck. He got on the highway and drove to the North Star. He knew of it but he’d never had reason to visit it before. He parked at the back of the lot and got out. A cool breeze was carrying small sharp granules of dirt across the asphalt. Stan went up to the front door of the roadhouse and went in. Past the entry, the interior was garishly lit by overhead lights. On the riser at the back, a man was plugging an electric guitar into an amplifier. The drone of the amplifier filled the whole room. Closer to the front door a man with his cuffs rolled up to his elbows was unstacking chairs at a table. The bar was shuttered. The man looked at Stan.

—Bar opens at seven. The band goes on at eight.

—Okay, said Stan.

—Which is to say we’ll see you then.

Stan went back into town and had supper at the Owl Café. He took his time reading the newspaper. The minutes were a long time passing. After seven o’clock he got up from the booth and went over to the counter to pay. The big-haired waitress was distracted, involved in some conversation with an angular man, wearing jeans and a Carhartt jacket, down at the end of the counter. The man she was talking to, there was something familiar about him. Stan had seen him before, but he couldn’t think where or when. The man noticed Stan looking at him and he said something to the waitress. She nodded and came over to collect Stan’s bill.

There was a pay phone at the back of the diner. Stan dialed Dick’s house and Fran answered. She said she was happy to hear from him, said how they would have him over for supper anytime.

—Dick’s not home, is he?

—I’m sorry, Stan. Dick’s down at the drill hall with Richard Junior. Brian’s getting sworn in to the Air Cadets tonight. Dick’s wearing his Europe medals for it. Do you want me to tell him you called?

—No, that’s fine, Fran. So long.

It was close to eight by the time Stan was back at the truck stop. There were some rigs pulled into the lot for the night and a dozen or so cars and pickups parked in front of the North Star. Inside, it was cigarette smoke and music from the jukebox. Thirty or thirty-five patrons. The band was clustered in discussion at the back of the riser. They were talking to the man with the rolled-back cuffs Stan had seen when he’d come in earlier.

For the first time it occurred to Stan that he had no idea what he’d say if he actually made Gilmore’s acquaintance. Maybe it was just a matter of knowing the face attached to the name. Stan took a stool at the bar. The sheer weirdness of this situation overcame his thoughts. A drunk barfly two stools down gave him a big friendly nod and offered a hand to shake.

—These boys put on a good show, said the barfly. Just you wait.

The bartender came down to Stan. She was young and had a streetwise comeliness to her. Stan could see how she lifted her eyebrows a little when she took him in.

—What will you have?

He ordered Coors in a bottle. Draft didn’t agree with him any more. She came back with a bottle and set it on a coaster in front of him. The barfly two stools down pushed a bowl of pretzels in Stan’s direction.

—Say, said Stan to the bartender. Does a fellow named Colin Gilmore hang around here?

She didn’t have to say anything. Her face gave it away.

—Maybe, said the bartender.

—I’m over from EZ Acres, just wanted to pass a message on to him from the manager.

—I don’t know if he’s here tonight.

—If he is, said Stan.

She nodded. She coasted back down to the other end of the bar.

A few minutes later, the front man of the band took his guitar and stood to the microphone. The jukebox cut out. The barfly leaned over and patted Stan on the arm and gave him a thumbs-up. The band launched into some rock ‘n’ roll piece. Stan nursed the beer he’d ordered. Speculating. The roadhouse was all possibility. But what was he really going to say?

The band had played through their first song when Stan became aware of a man who’d sat on the stool immediately to his right. The man was leaning back against the bar, one arm stretched along the bevelled edge. He had a slim build and a thick head of hair, jeans, engineer boots, a dark T-shirt, but otherwise he was as they’d said. He was anyone.

—If I happened to see one older gent like yourself in a bar or if I saw a hundred it would never look quite right to me. But maybe that’s my own kind of prejudice.

—You’d be Mr. Gilmore?

The man laughed a little: I’ll go with that. Mr. Gilmore.

He took his arm off the edge of the bar to shake Stan’s hand.

—I’m Bill, said Stan.

—How do you do, Bill. Are you enjoying the music?

—It’s a year or two after my time.

They shared a thin chuckle at that. Stan had put himself in a corner and he knew it. The last of his beer had gotten warm and he didn’t have much taste for it. He quarter-turned on the stool to better converse.

—Mr. Gilmore, I’m a friend of a family you might know.

—Okay. So you’re not from the trailer park.

—No. I’m friends with the Lacroixes. Would you have a word with me about Judy?

Stan wasn’t sure what effect forthrightness would bring, but Gilmore remained good-natured. He said: Wasn’t that a goddamn shock.

—Yes, said Stan. Nobody thought Judy would do that. But we guessed you might of been the last person to see her alive and we just wanted to know if you had any thoughts on it. On how she was acting.

—I’m sorry to say, Bill, but I didn’t see her for a couple of weeks. We kind of parted ways. I didn’t know about it till I heard around town. So sad.

—Yes.

—I have to use the men’s room. You think up some more questions if you want.

Gilmore patted Stan on the shoulder and got down from the stool. He went to a rear corridor past the riser. Ten minutes later he hadn’t come back. Stan looked around. He saw the girl behind the bar making a telephone call. She was looking right at him. When she was finished, she came to ask Stan if he wanted another beer. He told her no thanks and asked what he owed.

—A dollar-fifty, said the girl.

—You wouldn’t be related to Alec Reynolds by any chance, said Stan.

—He’s my uncle. Do you know him?

—Not well. I hear he’s in the hospital.

—Yes, said the girl. A long time now.

Stan nodded. He put some money on the bartop.

He went into the rear corridor and looked in the men’s washroom. There was a fat townie at one of the urinals. Stan went back into the corridor and went down to the door at the end with Offi e lettered on it. There was no knob on this side of the door and it didn’t move when he tried to push it.

—There’s a reason we keep the office locked.

The man with the rolled-back cuffs was in the corridor behind Stan. Stan apologized, said he was lost. He went past the man and back into the bar but the man followed him out and took his sleeve.

—How about I just show you out of here. Come on.

—How about you take your hand off my arm.

—Come on. Nobody wants any trouble.

He gave Stan’s sleeve a tug. Stan pulled his arm away and took handfuls of the man’s shirt and pressed him against the wall. Through his teeth, Stan said: I wouldn’t let the white hair fool you.

But then a big bearded man with a bald head and a pair of glasses appeared, moving fluidly for all his size. He wrapped his forearm around Stan’s neck from behind and jerked him backwards and at first Stan kept his grip on the man with the rolled-back cuffs and they all moved together. Then Stan let go of the man he was holding and clawed at the arm around his throat. The big man holding him wasn’t saying anything at all. Stan kicked out one leg and succeeded only in knocking over a table in front of them. A couple of drinks jumped off the tabletop and splashed down the front of his trousers. By now the band had quit. People were shouting and getting out of the way. The big man hauled Stan across the floor. Stan was spitting between his teeth and his vision was greying out.

A moment later, he was being moved out into the coolness of the night. The big man held onto him until he’d pulled him down the front steps. On the flat ground of the parking lot Stan was forcefully let go. He stumbled about, bent double, gagging air. He grasped hold of the side-view mirror on a pickup truck. When he was able to stand straight again, he saw the big man poised halfway up the steps to the roadhouse. The faces of a few townies were crowding out of the front door above.

—You son of a bitch, said Stan.

He took a step forward. He was so angry that he was grinding his teeth together. The wrath was all the worse for how his body wasn’t responding as it used to. But the man on the steps, the faces in the door, they weren’t looking at him. They were looking at something behind him. Stan turned.

Two cops, young, unknown to him, were coming across the parking lot.

For a full minute, Frank didn’t say anything. He was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. They’d called him in from home. Stan was the only one in the holding cell at the back of the detachment. They’d taken away his belt and his shoes and his keys and his wallet and his little penknife.

Frank turned to a constable standing beside him. He said: Open it up. Give him his things.

Frank’s office was at the back of the detachment. He kept it neat. There were school portraits of Emily and Louise and a candid photo of Mary. On one wall, Frank had framed letters of thanks from civic groups. He leaned forward on his desk.

—How often do you think the goddamn North Star calls us to send a car out, Stanley? Just how often do you think that happens?

—They called you, did they?

—They called us and said there was some old drunk making rude comments to the girl behind the bar.

—Whatever you want to say about it, Frank—

—I don’t even know what to say. Never mind what might have happened to you. Three years ago a man got kicked in the head out behind that shithole, they had to airlift him to Sunny-brook. He died a week later. So tonight the dispatcher gets a call from the North Star, sends a car, and by the time they get there who do they see getting launched out. Some old drunk.

—Do I look like some goddamn old drunk to you?

—First off, you smell like hundred-proof. And second, when the boys brought you in, they thought you’d peed yourself.

—What? A goddamn drink got spilled on me …

—Stanley, this is unbelievable.

—Don’t you see, Frank, the kind of people Judy Lacroix was tied up with? It seems to me you’re not paying attention to this.

—You’re absolutely right. I’m not paying attention. I’ve put more horsepower into it than it deserves and everything keeps coming up empty.

—This Gilmore—

—I don’t care, Stan. I don’t. I’m sorry to have to put it so blunt but you are not employed in the service of the law any more.

—I don’t know why you think you’ve got to remind me.

—I say again, you are not a police officer.

They’d kept the pitches of their voices reined in but there was colour in their faces. Frank leaned forward with his forearms spaced out on the desk. He said: Look. Think of the position you’re putting me in. And if that doesn’t mean anything to you, think of the position you’re putting Dick Shannon in, every time you ask him to get you something you don’t have any claim to any more.

—Dick’s got nothing to do with any of this.

—We have a good relationship. Don’t put any strain on it by talking to me like I’m stupid. I am not stupid, and I do not want to have this conversation again.

Stan felt ashamed and tired. There wasn’t anything about Frank’s position that was unclear. Still, Stan couldn’t say it. His silence would have to suffice as acquiescence.

—Go home, Stan. Your truck is outside.

Before Stan left, they agreed that nobody else in the family needed to know. Word would get around among the men they knew, but Mary and the girls didn’t need to know about it.

When he got home later that night, he couldn’t get any of it out of his head. For the first time, it felt like he was looking fully at his own desperation and foolishness and loneliness. He’d never felt more like an old man, long past his usefulness. The dense shadows in the room seemed to be crawling, seemed to be closing in on him. It was as long a night as he could remember.

Finally, he got up and turned on the light in the hallway and got back into bed.

—I’m sorry, he said. I don’t know what else I can do.

By Friday evening the weather had become cruel. Wind barrelled over the pavement behind the variety store. Pete had come from work. He parked his car and got out, carrying a shopping bag. He hustled upstairs and knocked on Lee’s door.

—What’s happenin’, Pete?

—Hey, Uncle Lee. Mom sent some leftover pot roast.

—Come in, buck.

Pete went into the crooked little apartment. The television was on and cigarette smoke was thick.

—I didn’t know you got a TV.

—I bought it awhile ago. I never used to like it. But I also never used to have any money to buy something like this. Who knows. Some of the shows I’ve seen are alright, and sometimes they have movies.

Pete still didn’t understand Lee. For most of his life, Lee had seldom been mentioned. Irene had photos of him squirrelled away somewhere but his mother did not. She had Luke and John write to him at Christmas every year, but otherwise practically never mentioned him. Pete had had no idea what Lee looked like until they met in September, and even now he was a mystery. It was hard to imagine that they had any family connection at all, really, that they shared blood. There was no way Pete had found of putting himself in Lee’s shoes.

Part of it was that he didn’t know what Lee had done. It was serious, whatever it was, but the crime itself remained unknown. Rape? Murder? High treason? Whatever it was, and in spite of his curiosity, he did not want to think about it. He’d come to like Lee—this strange newcomer in his life, who was tough and hard, yet, at the same time, oddly soft-spoken.

Pete had thought he would deliver the leftovers and be on his way but he ended up staying to watch television for awhile. And then something unexpected occurred: Lee went to the refrigerator and came back with a couple of beers. He gave one to Pete and he had one for himself. Pete held the beer can he’d been given. He opened it, listened to the fizzle. Lee was watching the television. Pete took a drink. They watched Sanford. When it was finished Lee got them a couple more beers and said should they see about supper.

—Unless you have to go somewheres, Pete.

—I’m not in a hurry.

—Not going to see a girlfriend or nothing?

—No.

—Well, let’s have us some of this pot roast.

Lee heated the meat and the leftover vegetables on his hot plate. He brought a bottle of ketchup out of the fridge. They ate while they watched The Dukes of Hazzard. Lee was doubtful about the events of the show. He kept asking how the fuck that would work or why wouldn’t they just shoot the goof. Finally he looked at Pete and said: See? Bullshit.

—You bet, said Pete. Say, how about the lady you were going with?

—Helen? All good, as far as I can tell. She’s her own kind of gal. Sometimes we’ll get together maybe three or four days out of the week. Sometimes once. You can’t ever tell.

Pete wasn’t sure how it happened but they were into their third beers. The Dukes of Hazzard ended and a television movie came on.

—I heard you quit going to Barry’s church, said Lee.

—Yes. I did.

—Didn’t you go there your whole life?

—Just since I was eight, when mom met Barry. But since then? Almost ten years, every Sunday. We weren’t living in town when Mom met him. We lived in North Bay, actually, just Mom and me. I was born up there. But Grandma was still here, and a neighbour of hers had got her going to the church. Barry was a junior pastor back then, and he was single. I don’t know exactly how it worked—I was too young to figure it out, really—but Grandma got Mom talking to Barry, and before long Mom came back here and brought me with her. We lived in Grandma’s apartment for about a year. Man, that place was tiny. Then Mom and Barry got married, and they got the house where we are now, and all of us moved out there.

—Well, said Lee.

Lee didn’t prompt him further, but after two or three minutes, Peter said: Maybe you think I’m, you know, that I’m going to go to hell. Because I quit the church. Maybe you think Barry’s right about how people have to get born again and again. How Christians have to bring people in and convert them. So I’m sorry if this offends you but I don’t believe any of it. I didn’t go to church one Sunday, and I’ll tell you why, but hang on, and Barry gave me a look but he didn’t say much. Three weeks in a row I didn’t go and then he brought it up. At dinner one night. I said I didn’t want to talk about it. But Barry said spiritual things are what a family talks about with each other. Which is bullshit because we don’t talk about anything ninety percent of the time, but whatever. He pushed. So I came right out and said I didn’t plan to go any more. That I didn’t believe it. Barry got upset. He said, did I know what I was doing about my salvation? And I told him that’s not something he needs to worry about, but he said he would be and that he’d be praying for me. Mom had to get up and go into the kitchen.

—Pete, I wouldn’t ask you to spill nothing you don’t want to.

—Well, can you promise you’ll keep something between us? Lee put his hand out. Pete shook it.

—You talk about what you want to, Pete. I won’t break any trust with you.

—Okay, look. Sheila Adams, she teaches Sunday School. She’s ten years older than me. Last year, I was … you know, sleeping with her. She’s married. She wasn’t then, but she was engaged. I hadn’t ever slept with a woman before. But I’m getting ahead of myself. From the time I was eight till last spring I was at church, like I said. Every Sunday. But I think I knew for a long time that I didn’t belong. At the church, when the people get going, it’s what Barry calls the Baptism of Fire. They speak in tongues and put their hands in the air and act crazy. But you want to know something about it? It never once worked for me. I never had the Baptism of Fire. I wanted it, I really did, but I never had it. A few years ago, I even quit pretending, quit faking that I was having the Baptism just so I’d look like everybody else. We’d be there at church, and while everybody else was with the spirit, I’d just daydream. Sometimes I thought about girls from school. If I really had guts I would have faced the facts and quit a long time ago. But I didn’t. I kept thinking I just had to hold out, open myself to God, pray more and do this and do that and then I’d feel the grace. I did stuff with the youth group. Why not? I never had a lot of friends at school. The youth group, we’d do retreats, we’d do lockdowns at the church—

—Lockdowns?

—Yeah, said Pete. Lockdowns are sleepovers at the church. Not lockdowns like you’d think of from jail, I guess. Sorry. Anyway, stuff with the youth group was alright. It made it so things at home were easygoing.

Lee nodded.

Pete was past sober and loose-jawed. He went on: Last fall, Sheila Adams started helping out. She wasn’t the youth pastor. She was the coordinator. I think she made the title up. I think she was bored. The guy she was engaged to was an engineer at the chemical factory. He was away for awhile, down in Central America, on a mission to help people purify their water. It was with the International Pentecostal Church. Sheila was at home, bored, so she started coordinating with the youth group. I knew her from around. She was young, she was kind of foxy. But I also knew her because of how into all of it she was. Talking in tongues, moving around, the whole bit. Sometimes she’d cry in a service. Cry and laugh at the same time. Look. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. I don’t know why it was me that she picked. Maybe it’s because I was the oddball. Who knows what goes through women’s heads.

—You’d never had sex with a woman before?

—Never. Here’s how it went. I told you about those lockdowns? We did one for New Year’s Eve. It was all pop and chips and games. About eleven o’clock my friend Billy and a couple other guys came by outside. I got out a window and smoked some grass with them. Then I went back inside. After midnight I was a little weirded out so I went walking around the church to clear my head. Sheila was in the office. She had a key, I don’t know why. She called me in. I thought she knew I’d been smoking grass and she was going to let me have it, but … there wasn’t much talk. She closed the door and it just happened. Just like that. I was looking over at Barry’s desk the whole time, which was maybe five minutes. That was how it started. January. She’d need something, she’d need help over at her house. She’d give me a lift home from meetings. Once I skipped class and we did it in the afternoon. I thought I was in love with her but I guess I knew I wasn’t. Whenever we actually talked about anything, all she ever said was, that’s nice, or that’s interesting. And if it was something complicated, she’d say, look in the Bible. But she wanted to have sex all the time, and I was happy to give. It was all I could think about. But then in March, Sheila found out her fiancé was coming home a couple months early. He’d gotten sick down there. He’d lost a bunch of weight. She told me we had to stop seeing each other. She said she was grateful for all the times I’d helped her out around her house. In a way I think she didn’t believe any of it actually happened. Me, I was a mess. I didn’t know how to deal with it but I knew I couldn’t say anything. I knew if even one person had any idea, how fast it would get out. Church people love to talk. I knew if it got out what it would do to us. I didn’t really care … about Barry. But Mom and Grandma, Luke, John, I care about them.

—You did just right, said Lee. So you quit going to church on account of this girl?

—Not right away. Sheila quit coordinating the youth group. I quit going to events. Her fiancé came back from his mission and there was this big Welcome Home for him at the church. He was skinny and his skin was yellow. I was mad. I was so goddamn mad … But then we were at church this one Sunday in May. We were at church and everybody had the Baptism of Fire, hands in the air, talking in tongues. I saw Sheila, and she was right into it as usual. But the thing was, the face she was making, while she was blabbing out all these old languages, the face was the exact same as when she’d be having sex. Exact same. I don’t know why but I thought that was one of the funniest things I ever saw. I thought I was going to laugh my guts out right there in church. And then I knew. I knew how come I never had the Baptism of Fire. I didn’t go to church again. I quit school a couple weeks after that. It was the same there, Lee. Bullshit, all of it. I knew if I was going to head out west I was going to need to save some money. That’s all I’ve cared about ever since.

He’d halfway finished his beer. He was blinking against Lee’s cigarette smoke.

—Maybe I am passing up my chance for salvation. Maybe I’m going to hell. But I never chose to see through it all.

—I’m not sharp like you are, said Lee. I read the Bible a few times and I think there’s some real good stuff there. But they say God loves everybody. He cries if a bird dies. Sure. But then the same God would send somebody like you to hell forever? Just on account of you don’t get the call, same as some other people? I’m not sharp like you are, but I never got anybody, like a chaplain or a pastor, to work out that question so it made any sense.

—You don’t believe in hell?

—Sure I do. I seen it with my own eyes. It’s right here in the world where people make it for each other.

Lee didn’t know what advice he could give to Pete, if Pete was even looking for advice. Lee had known, of course, that Donna had left town to live somewhere else for several years, that Pete hadn’t been born here, but that was a different subject entirely.

They got a little drunker and they watched the television movie for awhile. Just a few beers remained. Pete said he didn’t think he could drive home until he sobered up.

—You’ll end up in the goddamn ditch, said Lee. Stay here.

Lee got a deck of cards and dealt it out onto a TV tray. He said he was going to teach Pete a kind of poker called Fishing Hole that he’d learned inside. You could play with as few as two players or as many as seven. Everybody would ante in and then the whole deck got dealt and each player’s cards got tallied up for points against whatever hands he might have been able to make. Sometimes a certain guy would book a regular game and would be able to rake a small profit. They played a few rounds. Pete felt like he’d been inducted into a secret order.

—Did you always do carpentry? said Pete. Like, before?

—No. I did a few building jobs here and there in town with some guys I knew, but when I went up, I wasn’t anything at all. I got my trade after I got there.

—Right away? said Pete.

—It wasn’t right away, no. I’d been in there almost ten years.

—Oh.

They played another round of Fishing Hole. They were using pennies and nickels and cigarettes to make their bets. Lee was winning, and he took one of the cigarettes he’d won and he lit it. He took a drag and let out a stream of smoke.

—Joe Holmes, a con I knew, he was in the woodshop. He sort of got me interested in it.

—He was, what, your cellmate?

—No, we weren’t two to a drum. Joe Holmes, I just knew him. When he was a kid he used to steal cars. He got sent to the reformatory, got out, stole cars again. After awhile the Crown got tired of him taking up space at the reformatory so they locked him up for good. But he wasn’t a serious guy. He wasn’t a fighter or a scrapper or nothing. He’d been in the woodshop for a few years when I knew him. Everybody thought working in the infirmary was where it was at because it was an easy go, but Joe liked the woodshop. He was kind of a trusty. The screws listened to him if he had something to say about the manning in the shop, and they didn’t give him much headache. And Joe, he just liked seeing things come together. That was all. He said he never knew that before he was inside.

—Do you still talk to him? Is he out?

—… No, said Lee. Say, did you know about the riot in 1971?

—I was a kid. It was just after Mom met Barry. Grandma got real upset when the riot was on the news. I don’t remember much more than that.

—The riot, right, I was there inside when it happened. There was this con named Dave Dempsey. He was a goof, Dempsey. He’d gotten sent up for kicking the shit out of his woman. She was a couple months pregnant when Dempsey had at her and she lost the kid. They nailed him hard for that. He was twenty years old, skinny, blond. To look at him when he got there—this was maybe 68 or 69—you’d think some old daddy would snap him up just as quick as can be, but Dempsey made himself useful. The real serious guys, they just put up with him. When they needed a guy to do something, Dempsey was who they used. And anyway … Dempsey and Joe Holmes …

Lee butted out the cigarette on the TV tray.

—You know what, buck, never mind.

Pete blinked sluggishly.

—What?

—None of that shit matters any more.

—I don’t know about that.

—I do, said Lee.

—So … Uh. I have to use your bathroom.

Pete went into the bathroom and closed the door and Lee could hear him dry-heaving and washing his face with cold water, and then Pete stumbled back into the living room.

He stayed the night at Lee’s. Lee set up the pullout bed and told Pete to sleep there. Pete was too drunk to argue. For himself, Lee aligned the couch cushions against the wall next to the television. But for a long time, while Pete groaned with the spins and tried to sleep, Lee sat at the window, watching the street. Remembering.

Nobody had bad blood with Joe Holmes, that was the hell of it. But the riot was a strange time. It brought out what was lurking in the hearts of a lot of men.

It lasted four days. By the end of it, the army had set up camp outside the penitentiary and had readied their machine guns. All they were waiting for was the order. Lee was up at the top of the dome, laying low. In the beginning he’d had a hell of a good time with everybody else, tearing it all apart, lighting fires. The best time in years. But then there were certain boys who wanted to talk about rights this and rights that. And there were other boys who wanted to hold court. What that meant was tying up all the rapists and perverts and snitches and going to work on them with fire and iron bars. One man who’d fondled some schoolkids had his eyeballs gouged out and his ears melted. Lee knew some of the boys holding court. Dave Dempsey was one of them.

When they were sure the end was near, boys in ones and twos and in groups were going out to give themselves up. Some were in bad shape. Hungry or beaten or dehydrated. About five in the morning on the fourth day, Lee came down to give himself up. He wasn’t interested in prisoners’ rights. He was even less interested in getting chewed up by a machine gun.

Down on the bottom tier it was dark and wet with piss and water. There were fires burning. There were some men who couldn’t move. Out of it there came Joe Holmes, huffing and puffing from the chronic lung trouble he had. He was making his way out.

And then out of nowhere, Dave Dempsey. What was he doing? It looked like he was hugging Joe Holmes from behind, hugging him, saying, How does that get you off, baby? Then he dropped something and in the firelight Lee saw it was a screwdriver red with blood, and Dempsey just turned and walked away same as if he was on the sidewalk doing his shopping.

Joe was down on his knees when Lee got to him. He was bleeding bad. He’d been stuck half a dozen times around where his kidneys were. His eyes rolled.

—Let’s get you out of here, Joe. Christ.

—It’s clear, said Joe.

—Come on with me.

—Can’t you see how clear it is?

After the riot Dave Dempsey and some of the others got packed off to the new super-max pen. If Dempsey ever had a reason for sticking Joe, he never said. Word got back to Lee that all Dempsey ever said was he should have stuck him in the neck. He laughed when he said it, Lee heard. Dempsey was a goof and full of shit. He got thrown off a tier a few years later, and was paralyzed.

Joe Holmes was in the hospital for a long time. Afterwards they had to commit him to a psych ward because he’d stopped talking. He just wandered around and never said anything. Joe Holmes who stole cars and went up and learned what it was to put something together with his hands. Joe Holmes who didn’t have bad blood with anybody.

You see that and you know for the first time what a thing of randomness is. You know how even if you have your affairs under control, there’s something else at work, something that’s aware of you. And it waits, until just the right time, and it steps out of the dark, just long enough to take shape and act and then disappear again.

In the early morning Peter drove them to the Owl Café for breakfast. Helen was not going to be working until later in the afternoon. Pete pushed his French toast around on his plate. He was in rough shape. At six-thirty, Bud’s car was outside. Lee clapped Pete on the shoulder, told him he’d see him again soon. He picked up his lunch pail and his tool belt and went outside.

Bud and Lee drove north to the public landing. Under a single street light, they could see Clifton waiting for them on the pier. He was not supposed to be at work with them today because of his niece’s wedding. Wally was nowhere to be seen.

They got out of Bud’s car. Bud locked it.

—Leland King, said Clifton. We have a problem.

Lee stiffened a little. Was this a problem with him? Did Clifton know, somehow, about Lee having some drinks again, or about the fight he’d gotten into outside of the poolroom? Warily, Lee said: What’s the problem, Mr. Murray?

—Our good pal Wally decided to forget what side of the bread is buttered. You hear?

—I’m not following you.

—Wally’s walked off the bloody job, Lee. You don’t just get paid to do odd jobs. You get paid to think.

Lee nodded. It was nothing to do with him, after all. He said: So you’re not going to the wedding.

—My faith can move mountains but there’s some things even out of my reach. This is your chance to make good on what you say you can do. I want the kitchen cabinets up before you leave today. Bud can do the piers. Understand?

—I understand. I’ll get them cabinets up. You’ll—

—At the end of the day I want the rest of the concrete mix and the mixer brought back. Jeff’ll be out here with a truck to pick it all up. You and Bud can help him.

—No trouble, Clifton.

—This is it, mister man. This is what I need from you. Get to it.

Bud had piloted the barge before, so Clifton gave him the keys. Bud perched himself behind the wheel. Then they were moving away from the pier while the sun rose behind murky clouds.

The island seemed particularly quiet with only Bud and Lee there. They got the generator going and started the cement mixer. They smoked with impunity. Bud disappeared under the building to work on the piers.

In the kitchen, the new counter was built but there were two cabinets that remained to go up. Lee found the cabinet plans and laid them open beside the table saw. It was cold but his palms were moist. He buckled on his tool belt and he took out his pencil and put it behind his ear.

Then he got going. He pulled sheets of pine and marked out lines and measurements. He measured twice. He labelled each piece. He set the fence on the table saw and then he threw the switch, listened to the blade spin up. He fed the first sheet through. The blade on the saw was new and the cuts it made were completely smooth. Lee cut out shelves and cut dadoes and rabbets for the joints.

Late morning, Lee went out to piss. It was still very cold. The house had been brought back to level by a collection of railroad ties and kickjacks while new concrete piers were poured. This was what Bud was doing. Underneath the house you couldn’t bend up higher than your waist and Lee didn’t envy Bud at all. He made sure Bud was okay for smokes and then he went back into the kitchen.

They had a quick lunch in the living room. Bud was surprised at Lee’s work. He said Wally or any of the other inside guys never moved that fast. Lee let the observation stand but he was secretly pleased.

After lunch he got going again. He put the carcasses together and put the shelves in. They fit smoothly. Wally had left a bottle of glue on the new counter. Lee took it and beaded glue where the shelves and panels fit together. He found a box of finishing nails and a punch. He tapped the finishing nails into the pine and then fingered putty into the holes.

The cabinets were to be hung on French cleats, which he ripped out from two-by-fours on the table saw. He fixed the first one up and checked it for square and levelled it. He stood back to look.

Joe Holmes was on Lee’s mind as he worked, Joe talking about things going together. Otherwise, Lee had little to think about. Not Helen, not his mother, not his sister, not money, not anything in his life that had brought him to this.

After Lee hung the second cabinet he realized it was past three already. The cedar in the yard was skittering against the kitchen window-glass. He put on his jacket and went outside onto the deck. The wind had picked up. He turned his back to it until he had a cigarette lit.

After three calls, Bud came out from under the building. He was crusted with raw earth and liquid concrete. Lee squatted and offered him a smoke through the boards.

—How’s the pier?

—Just about done. How’s the kitchen where it’s nice and warm?

—Second cabinet’s up.

—Not bad for a Saturday.

—Not bad for a Saturday.

Lee had to relight his cigarette. The wind was moving faster now, building up a great black reef of clouds. The evergreens were leaning. They were little more than an hour from dark. The light was pallid and the wind knifed through Lee’s clothes.

—I think we’re getting some mean weather.

Bud looked off to the northeast. He dug in his nostril with his thumb and said: You think so?

—That could be snow. We should pack up.

Bud licked his teeth.

—Okay. Let’s get going. That pier is nothing I can’t finish Monday.

—How many bags you got left? Bud glanced under the building.

—Maybe thirty of the bastards.

—Clifton wants the extra ones back at the shop tonight.

Bud kicked a stump and called Clifton a mean old bastard. Lee went into the kitchen and put away the tools and swept up. He ran his hands along the cabinets.

The weather was getting worse. Most material could stay on the island except the mixer and the remaining bags of Sakrete. There were twenty-eight bags and Lee and Bud piled them in the barge. They brought the mixer down and strapped it next to the console. They collected their pouches and lunch pails.

—A couple days ago I seen this chick in the grocery store, said Bud.

—You what?

—I seen this chick in the grocery store. A mother. She’s got these five little brats. All of them are running around, screaming, bumping into old ladies. Just tear-assing around. Finally the mother, she loses it, and she screams at them, screams, I knew it, I should have swallowed you all!

Lee looked at him for a long moment. Bud was able to contain it briefly and then he was laughing. Lee laughed with him.

—That’s the first one I ever heard you get right.

—That’s a good one, isn’t it?

Bud went to the console and turned on the motor. Lee untethered the barge and hopped in. There was no snow yet but the clouds had a smudged quality that troubled him. Bud navigated the barge in the direction of the hogback south of the islands. Their motion was ponderous with the weight of the concrete mix they were carrying. Bud pushed the throttle forward. Lee put his toque on and hunched inside his jacket. The late autumn treeline on the hogback was colourless but there were two glaring gaps where the foliage had been razed away from new lots. He could just make out the orange stakes of the property boundaries.

The barge angled around the hogback and into the open lake.

—Jesus Christ. Lookit it out here.

Outside the bay, the open water was breaking hard. It crashed at the steel hull. Lee turned his head to watch forward and his eyes filled with spray. They were five hundred yards off Echo Point to the east. From there it was another four hundred yards south to the public landing. There were lights scattered around the north shore but he could see nothing of town in the south.

Bud’s face was bright red and the concrete dust was running in veins off his head. They crossed a hundred yards out into the open water and the hogback became indistinguishable from the shore behind them. Bud grinned around his cigarette and gave Lee the finger. Just then, a plume of water broke over the starboard gunnels and doused Bud from head to crotch. It put the cigarette out. He stood there blinking, his middle finger still lifted. A second wave boomed against the side of the barge. Lee strained to see ahead of them.

The frigid wind was blowing harder, chopping the water. Whitecaps peaked around them. Lee looked back around and immediately he saw sheets of water coming in over the transom in the aft. Two or three inches of water were sloshing around his boots. A horrible feeling filled him. The barge slugged forward, water sluicing in on all sides. Lee dove onto the Sakrete bags. He took them up one at a time and threw them overboard, desperate to lighten the weight they were carrying, Clifton be goddamned. The bags were monstrously heavy. He stood with legs spread wide, trying to keep his balance, casting the Sakrete bags into the dark waves.

Bud shouted something. He pointed. A curtain of falling snow was sweeping across the whitecaps. They could see it closing in.

Lee lifted and threw as quickly as he could, feeling the strain in his forearms. Something pulled in his midsection. Half a dozen bags remained and then the snowfall was on them. It blanked out the shore in all directions, leaving them in a white netherworld. Lee threw the second-last and then the last bags overboard and stood mute until the barge lurched and he was thrown against the mixer. His shoulder blades smashed painfully into the rim of the drum.

A light resolved out of the snowfall to their front. Bud was bent at the console, his lips pulled back from his teeth and his hands clamped on the steering wheel. He angled the barge towards the light. The silhouettes of conifers began to take shape. It was Echo Point and they were coming up on it fast, no longer so weighted. The west face of the point was bare rock where the waves smashed up and sprayed apart.

Bud heaved the wheel hard right and Lee fell back into the cement mixer, feeling it shift against the tethers they’d tied it down with. Neither of them had seen the marker bouncing in the waves, marking a shoal. Bud had turned them right on top of it. The propeller and hull barked against rock, and the impact was tremendous. Lee cartwheeled overboard. The cold of the water struck his head like a hammer blow and there was water in his nose and his mouth and he was looking stupidly into the black. He could not determine up from down but his boots were drawing him in one particular direction. He pulled the opposite way.

When he broke through the surface of the lake there was no feeling in his hands or in his face. He could hear the motor revving some distance away through the eddying snow. He thrashed about, calling for Bud. Lee’s boots were touching the shoal below. He saw a grey beach south of the point, not far away at all, where the water was sheltered almost to stillness. The barge was raking towards the sand, propelled at an oblique angle by the damaged motor. He couldn’t see Bud.

Lee swam for it, clawing the water until he struck on sand. He hauled himself up onto the beach. He was shaking all over. He got to his knees, fell sideways, got back up. Up on the point was the profile of a building. A single window-light. Lee heard a dog barking. Sixty feet away in the other direction was the barge, resting partway out of the water. He could make out one upthrust leg of the mixer.

He moved haltingly down the sand, holding his hands in his armpits. He was frigid to the core. He called Bud’s name. He sloshed back out into the water to the depth of his knees and laid his unfeeling hands on the gunnels.

—Oh, Bud. Oh come on, man.

There were eight inches of water in the bottom of the barge. Bud was face down beside the console, pinned beneath the drum of the mixer.

—Bud, you dumb motherfucker.

The dog barked again. Lee looked back and saw a man and a dog resolving out of the snowfall. Lee leaned over the gunnels and jabbed the kill-switch on the console. He reached down and took hold of one of the legs of the mixer. He could not feel it and it wouldn’t move and Bud did not move beneath it.

Emily was napping in her grandfather’s house when the storm came up. She had come out in the early afternoon to help him stack firewood. For the last week there’d been some tension at home, something that had happened between Grandpa and her dad, but nobody was talking about it. In any case, the old man needed help around the house and was being too headstrong to ask, so Emily had come out on her own.

They’d stacked wood all morning. After a late lunch, with a fire in the woodstove and the house warm and dry, she’d gone into the front room, closed the door and lain down on the couch and fallen asleep. When she woke, it was near dark through the windows and the snow was blowing sideways on the wind.

Something had woken her. Maybe the dog barking. She sat up and stretched. There were photographs of her grandmother’s cousins, Margaret, Bette, Ida. She could remember her grandmother naming them. Telling their histories. Next to the cousins was a photograph of Great-aunt Rose, who was still alive, whom Emily and her mother would visit this year before Christmas.

The piano was in the front room. Emily remembered her grandmother placing her hands—she wasn’t yet five years old. C chord, D major, E major. Doesn’t that go together nice? The foot tapped along. Grandmother smelled like lavender. In her absence, the room smelled like dust.

There were books of music stacked on top of the piano. One was a United Church hymnal. On top of the stack was Erik Satie. Grandmother had liked Satie best. She said how he didn’t have so much to say in his music and what he did say was pretty simple. When you thought about that, wasn’t that good? More with less.

Emily held her hands above the keys for a moment and then she began to play. She played Satie and the snow fell against the window.

The piano music came from somewhere in the old man’s house, muted through the walls but plainly audible. Before the piano, there had been the sound of the old man’s voice speaking on the telephone on the other side of the kitchen. Then the old man had gone back outside.

Lee was hunched in front of the woodstove, clad in dry clothes the old man had given him. They were too big for his frame but too short for his arms and legs. He was wrapped in a wool blanket and the old man had had him put on a dry toque and clean wool socks. Lee listened to the piano. The tune was not anything he’d ever heard.

Stan came back into the kitchen, Cassius following. The dog was agitated and whiny until Stan stayed him with a gentle hand on his head. Stan took off his jacket and his gloves. Then he paused, listening to the music. He spoke quietly: She’s awake, then. My granddaughter was having a nap. If she’s up, I’d just as soon let her be. I don’t want to upset her.

Stan had brewed a pot of tea before he’d made the telephone call and gone back outside. He filled two mugs. He mixed three spoonfuls of sugar into the one he brought over to Lee. Stan sat down.

—There’s an ambulance on the way. It may take a little time to get out here. There’ve been a couple car accidents in town with the snow … I brought your friend up and covered him. There’s nothing more I can do. I am sorry.

Lee nodded. He couldn’t stop shaking.

—I told him we should leave the job site. I wanted to go before it got dark.

—Never mind that, said Stan. This isn’t anything you can hold yourself to.

—It was my idea to leave.

—Maybe, said Stan. And there’s nothing I can say but it was an accident. My name is Stan Maitland, by the way.

—I’m Lee.

Stan nodded. Even if Lee had been paying attention, Stan gave nothing away just then.

—What were you boys doing? said Stan.

—We were working. Bud was under the house making it level. I was in the kitchen doing the carpentry.

—Carpentry, said Stan.

—Doors, windows, joining. Cabinets. It’s my trade.

—I was never much of a carpenter myself. About every time I swing a hammer it’s my thumb I hit.

—What do you do? said Lee.

—Not much of anything any more. I try to keep this place from falling down.

—How long have you lived here?

—On and off my whole life. It was my brother’s house for awhile. My dad built it. That’s almost a hundred years ago. I lived here with my wife until she passed on.

Lee lifted his tea and drank. For once he did not want a cigarette at all.

—It’s real sugary, he said.

—You’ll need the extra kick to help you get warmed up.

Stan guessed Lee was at least mildly hypothermic, as well as in shock. Cassius lay down under the table. Neither Stan nor Lee took conscious note that the piano music had quit.

—It’s a business about getting old, said Stan. You start to wonder how long anything you leave behind will last after you’re gone. Like a house, say. Probably not all that long.

—It doesn’t matter. You go when you go and nothing you leave behind matters no more.

—I suppose maybe you’re right. Maybe there’s even some comfort in that.

—Sometimes it stops mattering even before you go.

—Well, I don’t think it’s any good if a man ever gets to that point.

Lee gathered the blanket around himself. He couldn’t seem to think straight, couldn’t set his mind to the events of the last hour. He liked Bud, Bud was okay. Now Bud was gone, but how could that be? He’d never been so confused in his life.

—Here’s something I want to know, said Lee.

—Yes?

—If everything I ever done, if this is what it brought me to, is it maybe that I never had a choice in it?

—I don’t know, said Stan. Do you think so?

—No. I don’t think so. No matter how I try, I can’t see how that would be so.

After Emily finished with the piano she went out of the front room and through the hallway. The door to the kitchen was closed. She used the washroom on the ground floor and when she was in there she could hear Grandpa talking to somebody in the kitchen. Their voices were pitched low. She couldn’t make out the words.

The washroom had a small window looking down through the trees to the little beach below the point. She was drying her hands when she noticed the barge out on the sand.

She came out of the washroom and almost went into the kitchen. Then, as she thought again of the barge, curiosity got the better of her. She got a blue afghan off the couch in the living room and wrapped it around herself and put on her shoes and slipped out the front door. She followed the path down through the trees. The snowfall was slowing down and the twilight was strange. The dark water against the beach was calm but out past the point she could see the whitecaps. In the grey sand was a confusing mix of tracks. Something looked to have been dragged. She went and looked in the barge. She looked at the water in the bottom. She saw how the toppled-over cement mixer had been moved aside. Snow collected on her hair and eyelashes.

—I remember you, said Stan.

—Do you.

—Yes. In truth I do. I was a cop for many years.

Lee didn’t say anything. Stan had given him a leftover grilled-cheese sandwich to eat and he’d managed a few bites of it.

—I’d heard that you’d come back, said Stan. I don’t know if you remember or not, but I was the man who drove you down to the provincial jail. You weren’t all that old—

—I was twenty-two.

—Yes. Well. I was old then but you weren’t. I thought about that at the time.

—I was old enough.

—How long has it been?

—You mean how long did I do? Seventeen years.

—It’s a long time, said Stan.

—The Crown wanted to hang me.

They were quiet for a full minute. Stan at the table, Lee as close to the woodstove as he could get. Just then the mud-room door opened and Cassius stood up. Emily came in from outside, wrapped in the afghan, with snow in her hair.

—Emily, said Stan.

—Grandpa. There’s a man down by the basement door. He’s under a tarp and he’s—I think he’s deceased, Grandpa.

She was so factual about it. Deceased, she’d said. She was concerned but not panicking. She looked like it was out of the range of what she could figure out. Cassius went over to her and she knelt down and embraced him.

—There was a bad accident, said Stan.

The man in the rocking chair, this man she did not recognize, who was wearing a toque and was draped in a blanket, whose posture and absurd appearance was telling her what Grandpa was not, this hard-looking man, she could see his hands shaking.

—Goddammit it, said Lee. I just can’t get warm. Not at all.

The weather cleared by late evening. Pete went in through the emergency doors of the hospital. He was hungover, still wearing the work clothes he’d slept in. The emergency room was sparsely filled. A woman was holding a towel against a cut on her forehead. She looked annoyed more than anything else. A boy with his father was coughing steadily. Pete went up to an orderly at a desk.

—Can I help you.

—I got a call from my mom.

—You got a call from your mom.

—My uncle was in some kind of a work accident. They brought him here. Leland King is his name.

—Yes, said the orderly. Wait here, please.

The orderly made a call. Pete sat down. The woman with the cut sighed loudly. Then a cop came into the emergency room and spoke to the orderly. The orderly gestured at Pete. The cop came over and Pete stood up.

—To confirm, said the cop. This is your uncle you’re here about.

—Yes, Officer.

There was something unreadable on the cop’s face. He said: Your uncle. Leland King. He was in a work-related accident this afternoon. He’s banged up. Has mild hypothermia. They’re going to keep him here overnight.

—Jesus, said Pete. Can I see him?

—You want to see him?

—Why wouldn’t I?

The cop shrugged.

—Well, you can’t see him, said the cop. The doctor said he’s resting now. He’s okay, your uncle. But the other guy …

—The other guy. Bud?

—What a situation they got themselves into. Of course, Leland King is the one to turn out okay. Funny how that goes.

The cop was almost grinning. He turned around and went back into the interior of the hospital. Pete watched him go. Then he went over to the orderly.

—Listen, can you tell me anything?

—I can’t let out any information other than to say they just want to keep him here under observation.

—Is there a phone I can use?

—Pete?

He turned from the orderly’s booth and Emily was standing there. He tried to make sense of her.

—Emily.

—I had no idea he’s your uncle. I just heard your name from one of the constables. It happened near my grandfather’s place. Oh my God, Pete. Your uncle’s friend died.

—Jesus Christ. This keeps getting worse.

Emily laced her fingers together and looked at the floor. When she looked at him she smiled wearily, said: My grandfather took care of most of it. I’m just tired at this point. I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired. The only thing I can think about is going to bed. Is that pretty terrible?

—No. I don’t think so.

—It’s good to see you, Pete.

—You too. Under the circumstances and all. I haven’t seen you in awhile.

A white-haired man, broad-shouldered despite his age, came into the emergency room. He was carrying a wool jacket. Emily introduced Pete to Stan. Stan nodded.

—Your uncle’s going to be fine. You don’t need to worry.

—So I hear.

Stan put his arm around Emily’s shoulders. She folded against him and yawned.

—I’ll take you home, said Stan. And you, Pete? Do you need a lift anywhere?

—No, I have a car here. I was going to see my uncle but they said to come back tomorrow.

—He’ll be alright.

Stan told Emily he would be in the truck and he shook Peter’s hand again and left. Emily hung back a moment.

—I have to go, Pete.

—I know.

—It would be nice to see you again soon.

Emily went out and Pete watched her go. Then the woman with the cut on her forehead called out that at some point she was going to need some goddamn assistance. Nobody was listening.