Thomas takes to watching his wife leave. He feigns sleep when she rises, listens to her move about the kitchen beneath him, then hurries to the window in time to watch her emerge from the back door. She walks slowly down the lane, her gait languorous, a maddening lilt and sway. Waltzing Mathilda, one of the packers at the slaughterhouse used to sing. Thomas’s eyes follow her fine heels like dogs.
It’s not normal. She’s his wife, dammit, and every night she turns rubbery and cold, like a white length of tripe in their bed.
Take her. The thought speaks aloud. It’s your right.
Suddenly he feels warm, a little feverish. Then clammy. He steps back shakily from the pane.
If only she’d eat a little meat. Flesh feeds flesh, fires up the blood, gives the body its mortal heat. Just think of those Eskimos—nothing but seal and whale and bear, and look at them, the buggers live in snow houses, they’re little furnaces, every one.
He’ll have to work on it, keep at her—nothing forceful, just a gentle, relentless push. After all, it’s nearly three months now, and he’s had nothing but a dry kiss on the cheek.
Three months makes an anniversary of sorts, their first quarter-year. He could make dinner, insist on doing everything himself—close the shop early, lay out candles and wine. He flushes warmly at the thought of serving her. She’s relaxed, maybe even a little tipsy. You’re spoiling me, she purrs, smiling like a huntress and digging in.
He’ll make something really special, impossible to resist. Crown roast. Lamb? No, even better—veal. He grins wildly. He’ll make a real show of it. Pile up the potatoes and call her his queen.
Castor’s vision of the housekeeper’s niece is fleeting, his eye resting only briefly in a green-swirl aggie lost in the grass. It’s night, and she’s down on her knees in the lane behind her husband’s shop, arranging sticks and dried leaves in a little pyre. She sets a match to it, making herself lovely in its sudden licking glow. Castor’s pulse quickens at the light on her throat. He feels a terrible urge to gather her red hair in his hands and preserve it from the threat of the flame.
He returns unwillingly to his body, sprawled in its armchair beside a badly smoking lamp. It’s eerie, the way his eye so often seeks a fire. As though it too remembers, and is determined he should never forget.
The Roseville house was an old clapboard tower half a mile outside town, far from his daddy’s white family on the hill. John Wylie had lost both legs from the knees down out East on the ships before coming home to Manitoba to marry the girl he’d always loved. The fact that Mary Lariviere was the finest looking woman in Roseville did nothing to change the purity of her blood. Squawfucker. Some said it to Wylie’s face, others behind his back out of respect to his stumps.
The bedrooms in that old house were on the second floor, Wylie having insisted that was where bedrooms belonged. As soon as he was big enough, Castor helped his mother carry her crippled husband up the narrow stairs.
Castor was fifteen the night it happened, old enough to have hauled Wylie up to bed on his own. The engine was what woke him. By the time he’d shaken the sleep from his head and stumbled to the open window, three men were dragging a large wooden box from the bed of a truck. They hunkered down around it and there came a flickering, as though all three were lighting cigarettes at once. As Castor turned to go wake his parents, a terrible squealing arose from below. He spun back to the casement, saw the men stagger backwards as the crate burst open in flames.
Fire shot in all directions, running crazy zigzags through the grass. At first Castor thought they were gas trails, but then one of the burning strips leapt into the air, showing itself to be alive. Several of the flaming creatures—weasels?—tore into the dead lilacs that were crumpled like newspaper around the house. Castor’s feet took root. He covered his eyes. Heard drunken laughter and spinning tires, the growl of the truck’s escape.
The door flew open behind him. His mother was wearing one of Wylie’s undershirts and nothing else. Already Castor could see smoke curling up behind her, hear a devouring rush from below.
“Jump!” she yelled. “Jump for the tree!” And she disappeared into the thickening smoke. He stood motionless, whimpering. She was back in a heartbeat, the baby in her arms. “Jump, Castor!” She rushed at him.
“But what about—”
“Jump!” she screamed. “NOW!”
He scrambled up onto the sill, felt her palm at the small of his back, and sprang. The elm was like a giant leaf pile laced with sticks. It cut and battered him as it broke his fall.
“Castor!” His mother stood above him at the window, backlit by the terrible blaze. Her face was savage. She held the baby out like a gift, and Castor struggled to his feet, extending his bloodied arms. He braced himself. And then she did it—shut her eyes and let her month-old baby fall.
He took the shock of it into his body, staggering forward on impact, twisting violently to put himself between little Renny and the ground. He hit hard, his head bouncing so the world around him wavered and went dark.
When he came to, Renny was squalling on his chest amid a shower of sparks. Behind them, the house let out a deafening roar. Stunned as he was, Castor knew what he had to do. Keep hold of his baby brother, get up on his feet, and run.
Mathilda’s inky eyes have sunk deep into her skull in search of sleep. She’s been up all night, trying everything she could think of to rid herself of the little red book. After endless aborted attempts at ripping it page from page, she stole out to drown it in the back ditch. Unable to bring herself to submerge it, she built a small fire and let the book dangle, crying out at the last second and snatching it back.
It nestles in its customary corner of her bosom now, as once again she brings up the rear of the confession line. She shuffles forward like a sleepwalker, sinking heavily to the kneeler when it’s finally her turn. Bowing her head, she remains silent for as long as it takes the last few penitents to leave, then unearths the book, rattles her matchbox like a fetish and begins slowly to read.
“ ‘Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun—’ “She pauses for as long as the flame will allow. “ ‘—and terrible as an army with banners?’ ”
She moves quickly in the sudden gloom. Pries out the moulding, finds the two screw heads with her fingers and twists. Vera had it right—in moments the screws bounce off the kneeler and roll away. Mathilda lifts out the screen. She can just make him out, drawn back in terror to the corner of his box. Her fingers move methodically, slipping buttons from holes, reaching back to release hooks from their eyes. She scratches a match to life and gives him a good long look. When the light dies, she lifts her bare breast and holds it to the open frame. At first nothing but the faintest of scrambling sounds. Then his mouth. It fumbles for a moment, discovers her budding nipple, and latches on.
It never occurs to Thomas, not once, not even a knock on the back door of his brain. The thin-lipped, high-stepping priest? A stick man. An old man really, too intent, too particular for his years. Thomas feels sorry for him—another faggot rolled up in the cloth.
No, if anything it’s the Church. Moderation is best in all things, and in religion most of all. It gives him the willies, truth be told, all that smoke and mirrors, and the poor sap rambling on in some old girl’s nightie. The building, too. Those gory windows, the way it hulks over its dead end, looking down on all the sinners of the town.
St. Mary Immaculate. Mathilda turned woman there, with nobody to guide her but a spinster aunt. Before that a gaggle of nuns. Thomas shakes his head. No wonder she doesn’t know what she’s about.
He has the table laid out fine—a snowy cloth, the good dishes, even a fistful of flowers from the back lane. The wine is icy. He’s read how you can get away with white when it’s veal—not that either of them would know the difference. Still, he’d flinched at the thought of serving red.
She’s late getting home. “How dirty can the place get?” he mutters, then turns to the oven to fret over his masterpiece. It’s looking a little dry. He lowers the dial to warm and turns again to the window, debating whether he should baste it again.
She’s coming. Even dragging her heels in the dust, Mathilda manages a slim-hipped sway. Thomas runs to the stove, transfers serving dishes to the table, lifts the dripping crown roast onto its white and waiting plate. Her hard shoes on the back stairs. His heart pounds. He sits. Then stands. She walks in to find him somewhere in between.
“Mathilda.” It’s all he can think of to say.
“Hello, Thomas.” Her eyes widen as they move over the table. “What—?”
“Three months,” he blurts. “It’s our anniversary, a quarter of a year.”
“Oh.” She stares at the gleaming wineglasses, the fat bottle, then fixes on the meaty crown, its blunt-boned petals splayed. “I—” She blanches suddenly, alarmingly, as though someone’s pulled the plug on her blood. “I don’t feel well, Thomas. I think I need to lie down.”
He should say something, he knows, offer to help as she teeters up the stairs, ask if she needs anything, perhaps an Aspirin or a cup of tea. But he can’t. He sits down heavily in his chair. Hears the bedsprings moan and fall quiet, a smothering quiet, so it’s all he can do to draw a breath.
His hands reach out for the roast. Slowly, ceremoniously, they lift it high and bestow it sizzling upon his head. Hot grease trickles down his temples. He stands carefully and takes a few mincing steps, like a charm school student balancing a stack of books. A few more steps make a circle, and from there he progresses to a series of figure eights. Dignity, he tells himself. It’s tricky, all right, but he never once reaches up to hold it on.
On his knees in the cramped office, August weeps uncontrollably, begging forgiveness before an oily depiction of the Sermon on the Mount. When he finally manages to lift his gaze, it fixes not on the Saviour, but on the light that surrounds Him, yolky gold bleeding off into white.
Halo?
No, that’s just the head. There’s a term for it, August knows, this glow a sacred body gives off. He distracts himself with the search, moves his mouth to try and shape it, follows its trail through the shadows of his brain. In the end he has to give up. For the life of him, he simply cannot come up with the word.