Feeling the same sort of weary resignation he often had then he walked onwards and up the drive on mincing steps, searching through the row of Jack pines bracketing the gravelled lane on the left-most side and finding the house’s dark silhouette, scanning that for any sign that Evers might be waiting for him inside. Seeing nothing there and hearing nothing either except for the persistent murmur from the creek and the weather vane’s wobbling squeak until he’d reached the last Jack pine before the driveway turned towards the porch, stopping at the sight of a familiar metal triangle. It was a sign that had been hanging there since the morning of his third (or it could have been his fourth) Christmas on the farm, a present he himself had bought for his grandfather. It had been painted bright yellow and was a play on those highway hazard signs warning of a moose or deer crossing and instead had on it the silhouette of a chicken. He’d meant it as a gag but he would never see his grandfather more serious than when he’d nailed it to the Jack pine a few minutes after he’d opened it, all the while muttering under his breath, Maybe that’ll finally get them bastards to slow down!
The paint had long since peeled off of it and the metal had rusted and bent out of shape and there was nothing really about it that warranted a closer look but still it coaxed him forward. Three steps from being able to reach out and touch it, he stepped on a pine cone. It crunched underfoot and that was immediately followed by the low growl of a dog spinning him on a quick axis towards the house. The dog was standing at the top of the porch steps — a hulking shape big enough to be a Rottweiler.
It let out a snarling bark as it stalked down the steps, the rattle of its chain raking against wood hardly enough to stop Gerald’s hand from reaching for his knife. It made it halfway to the treeline before the chain snapped it back and stood there growling and barking as the porch light flared behind it, Gerald taking a step closer, holding his breath, waiting for Evers to appear.
But when the door opened it was an elderly woman who stepped out. She was wearing a white nightdress and shouldering a shotgun. Seeing that, Gerald dodged backwards scurrying for the cover of the cedars.
What is it Roxy? she called out in a thin and croaking voice. Is someone there? A brief pause then. Whoever it is, I’m warning you, you got to the count of five before I let her off her chain.
Gerald cowering amongst the cedars, telling himself,
Evers’ll be at the lake then. You knew he would be anyway.
The quickest route to get there was to take the path behind the barn but the dog would make that a dicey proposition at best.
He’d have to take the long way around after all.
44
Dawn found Gerald perched on a boulder overlooking Crique à Gros Orteil, what his grandfather had always called the cove on Beausilake’s southwestern shore where Hubert Beausoleil had built the cabins for himself and his wife and their six children.
The boulder was halfway up the lightly treed slope that encircled all but the lake’s heel. It was the size of a compact car, flat-topped and furred with a thick cushion of moss such that it made a more comfortable mattress than the one he’d slept on these past five years. But Gerald wasn’t tired enough to sleep. He’d never, in fact, been more awake in his whole life than he was peering through the finely feathered needles of a hemlock tree and finding ample evidence that someone — could very well have been Evers — was living in the middle cabin.
He could see the dark outlines of two towels strung on the porch’s rail and there was an ember glowing orange in the indentation that formed a bowl in the granite at the foot of the peninsula and which the Beausoleils had used for their campfires over the hundred or so years they’d been coming up to the lake. It was the lingering vestiges of the smoke from this that, when he’d crested the slope leading downwards into Crique à Gros Orteil, had steered him off the path, its once clearly delineated hard-pack of dirt and exposed granite overcome with ferns, horsetail, patches of trilliums and fallen trees but his feet nonetheless finding their way clear enough without any help from his eyes.
Catching a faint whiff of the smoke as he crested the rise, he’d ducked into the woods and stalked along the highlands until he’d come to a V made by two birch trees growing out of the same trunk. He cut down the slope and climbed onto the backside of the boulder, sitting on its frontside, letting his legs dangle over the four-foot drop, peering through the branches of the hemlock the same way he had when he’d stumbled upon it the very first time he’d followed his grandfather up to the lake.
It was five weeks after he’d moved onto the farm, a trial-some five weeks to say the least, and a time Gerald had pushed to the farthest reaches of his mind, ashamed of the way he’d treated his grandfather, though he knew the old man never cast the blame back upon him. He’d overheard him say as much to the social worker from the children’s aid who’d visited the farm once a week during his first year living on Stull and then once a month for the two years after. Mostly she wanted to talk to Gerald but one morning when she’d knocked on the door Gerald had heard her tell his grandfather that she’d like to speak to him for a few moments alone.
Come on out to the barn, he’d told her, I’ve got to milk the cows anyway.
Gerald was eating breakfast in the kitchen and had waited for the front door to click shut before slipping out the back. He’d hid around the rear corner of the house, sneaking quick peeks at the barn, seeing his grandfather disappearing inside and the woman from the children’s aid holding up at the door, seemingly reluctant to follow.
I can get you a pair of boots if you don’t want to get your shoes dirty, his grandfather had called back to her after a moment.
She was wearing high heels and a grey pinstriped pantsuit. It was what she wore whenever she visited and was also about the only thing he remembered about her except that she talked in a chalky near-whisper and always brought him a pack of Life Savers, asking in exchange only that he save her a green one.
She’d answered his grandfather that it was okay, she’d manage. She’d stepped delicately over the doorstop and Gerald had run across the yard, circling around behind the barn where his grandfather kept his Holsteins and pressing his ear against a hole left by a knot in one of the wooden slats.
It’s been a trial all right, his grandfather was saying.
The social worker said something too low for Gerald to hear and to which his grandfather replied in the same gruff voice he always used when someone was telling him something he already knew.
I know it’s not his fault, he said. A pause, then: Of course he thinks about his ma. I think maybe it’s all he ever thinks about. After what he’s been through … His voice trailing off and shortly replaced by the metallic thrum of milk squirting against the bucket’s galvanized steel.
Relating as he worked the udders how Gerald would go all of a sudden quiet and freeze at whatever he was doing. He’d be like that for maybe a few seconds and then his shoulders would give out a sudden twitch, which his grandfather likened to the sputter of a plane’s engine the moment before it went into a tailspin. His mood would spiral downwards from there into an explosion of rage and the old man took its brunt, in curses and kicks, as he tried to bring the boy back towards reason. Relating then how, one morning after five weeks of suffering through that, he was sitting at breakfast and saw the boy’s hand stall mid-air with a spoonful of cereal, knowing he couldn’t, he just couldn’t, deal with one of the boy’s fits today, not after yesterday when he’d come at him with a stick of firewood.
So I says to myself, Let him wreck the goddamn house, for all I care.
Gerald had a clear memory of that moment watching his grandfather pushing himself up from the table, a look of bitter resignation hardening his face.
I’ll see you in a few hours, he’d said to Gerald on his way out of the kitchen, calling then back over his shoulder as he came to the front door: Careful to mind the farm while I’m gone!
The social worker expressed a similar concern.
You left him alone!
It was the first time she’d raised her voice loud enough for Gerald to hear what she was saying and her tone was one of genuine alarm.
I was pretty sure he’d follow me, his grandfather had countered. And, sure enough, I wasn’t but halfway to the lake before I heard the crackle of leaves from somewhere to the left of the path and I knew the boy was tracking after me through the bush.
It was only a few moments later that Gerald had discovered the moss-furred boulder and had sat there watching from undercover of the hemlock as his grandfather slid his old aluminum canoe onto the lake and clambered in after it.
If you were going fishing, the social worker had asked at this point in the telling, why didn’t you just invite Gerald to go along with you?
I figured it best if he made up his own mind about that, he answered, and that seemed to satisfy the social worker enough that her voice was softened somewhat when she asked, So what happened next?
After an hour or so his grandfather had returned to shore. He’d dragged the canoe to the middle cabin and leaned it up against a side wall, hanging his oar on two nails above it. He was just starting up the path, homewards bound, when he called out loud enough to make Gerald suspect that the boulder wasn’t nearly as well hidden as he’d thought, Oh Gawd, I shore hope he ain’t wrecked the place while I been gone!
Gerald had run all the way home and when his grandfather had come into the yard he was standing on the porch steps with his grandfather’s spare rod raised at a drastic angle in his hand. The lure was snagged on a clump of scrub grass twenty feet from the house and Gerald was pulling on the rod like he might as well have been trying to reel in a shark.
Thereafter, whenever he’d see his grandson’s sudden shudder he’d call out to him, See you in a few hours. Careful to mind the farm while I’m gone! Every time, without fail, he’d hear the crackle of leaves off to the side of the path as he had before except that they’d be moving through the woods at a hard run. And when he’d get to the lake Gerald would already be there, driving the canoe on a quick line away from shore, doing his best to ignore his grandfather setting his tackle box on what Millie would later come to call the birthday rock.
The lake only had one island, a small outcropping of granite clustered with stunted pines in the middle of what would have been the foot’s arch, and it was from there that Gerald would most often fish. He’d tie the canoe off to a tree and circle the island in stages, casting his line. By the time he’d got back to the canoe he’d have caught two or three walleye, which some people called pickerel but never his grandfather, who’d often said the latter was an inferior fish, though he could never explain exactly why. These he’d drag, still alive on a hooked chain, behind the canoe on his return trip. His grandfather would be waiting on shore. Whatever he’d caught he’d have thrown back, but still when Gerald fetched his fish he’d say, Looks like you had all the luck in the world. I couldn’t have caught so much as a cold.
Together they’d drag the canoe up beside the middle cabin and Gerald wouldn’t think twice about walking back home alongside the old man.
The years passed and it got to be that whenever he felt his own mood souring, Gerald would simply grab his rod and tackle box.
I’ll see you in a few hours, he’d tell his grandfather on the way out. Careful to mind the farm while I’m gone!
The old man would pretend to ignore him but without fail, whenever Gerald returned he’d be sitting on the rocking chair on the porch, casting his own line into their yard, the hook most often caught in the scrub grass and the old man pulling on it like he was in a life-and-death struggle and it’d either be the fish or him. Gerald would unsnag the lure and as he reeled in the line his grandfather would say, Shoot, I thought I had that one fer shore. Then seeing his grandson’s catch, he’d say, Looks like you had all the luck in the world. I couldn’t have caught so much as a cold today.
Not so lucky after all, Gerald would counter. All I could catch was these damn pickerel. Don’t know where all them walleye have gone.
Gerald would gut and fry up what he’d caught in butter with a pinch of salt and a little dill, which is how his grandfather preferred it. They’d eat together, often watching the news on their only channel, the old man shaking his head and grumbling all the while until he’d picked his fish clean. Then he’d click the TV off with an almost terminal resign and sometimes add, Gawd, it’s goin’ to take a miracle to fetch the world out of this mess.
* * *
That miracle had obviously never come and here was Gerald now waiting on another, no less divine.
Strains of light were leaking through the trees at his back, nudging at the dark and crystallizing the lake’s opacity into a finely rendered mirror reflecting the clear blue sky as a cold steel-grey ringed with the inverted spires of the trees along its shore so that the water appeared to conceal an almost unfathomable depth. A strand of light had struck upon the middle cabin’s front window before he’d seen a shade of movement from below: two hands drawing apart the window’s drapes, punctuated with a sudden bang! — the front door slamming open.
A boy, couldn’t have been older than five, burst onto the porch, hustling towards the steps. He had a mess of dark brown hair curled upwards into what almost looked like horns and was wearing a T-shirt like a rainbow had been melted over it. There was a fishing rod propped over his one shoulder and he was carrying a tackle box in the other hand. He hurried down to the peninsula, oblivious to the sharp censure of a woman’s voice calling to him from inside, Zack, what did I tell you about slamming the door!
The woman emerged just as the boy was opening his tackle box at the foot of the birthday rock, though she was hardly a woman at all. She couldn’t have been older than sixteen and had two long braids of reddish hair draped over her chest that made her appear a fraction younger than that. She was wearing a summer dress almost as colourful as the boy’s shirt — a whirlpool of pinks and greens and oranges swirling around a blotch of grey centred at her navel. Her belly was swollen enough to be seven months pregnant and she had one hand propped under the bulge as she eased herself down the steps. In her other hand she was holding a silver metal coffee percolator, the same one that had sat on the potbellied stove in the middle cabin for as long as Gerald could remember.
When she’d got to the bottom of the steps, she called over her shoulder, Honeybear, can you bring me a lighter? I forgot.
She walked to the fire bowl at the foot of the peninsula and squatted there like she was about to take a pee, setting the coffeepot down on the iron barbecue grate Gerald himself had welded to four pieces of rebar some ten years earlier so he’d have a surface on which to cook. But Gerald wasn’t watching her anymore. His eyes were locked in a vice grip on the front door. Honeybear was what Millie had sometimes called him, a term of affection she reserved for when her sister had stopped by to pay a visit. He’d never really quite figured out why she only called him that then, and hearing the woman calling the same back into the cabin seemed like a pretty big coincidence, unless …
That unless … hanging in his mind as he held his breath, waiting, he was sure, for Evers to appear in the door. But when someone finally did appear it was another girl, younger than the first, ten or maybe eleven. She was a little chunky and wearing skin-tight jeans and a black blouse with a heart outlined in purple sequins. Her skin was the colour of molasses and her hair a vibrant yellow so it made perfect sense that someone would call her Honeybear.
But still …
Watching her tread down the stairs a
nd taking her time doing so, idly flicking the lighter in her hand.
I told you not to call me that anymore, she chided, padding barefoot over the pine needle–strewn ground with the delicate steps of someone walking on broken glass.
Call you what?
The pregnant girl had packed the bowl with crumples of birch bark and set over these smaller twigs, layering on top of them a lattice of split kindling taken from a pile stacked beside a dozen or so quartered logs just behind the pit.
Honeybear. I’m not a kid anymore, you know.
But you’ll always be my little Honeybear. Now where’s that lighter?
The younger girl clenched her hand and crossed her arms, staring back at the other with the wilful petulance of a spurned child.
Okay then, Angela, the pregnant girl conceded, drawing the name out with a smirk. Now can I please have the lighter?
She handed it over and stood again with her arms crossed, her face contorting to a grimace as she looked over at the lake.
Zack’s pissing in the lake again, she said.
The pregnant girl looked up and Gerald followed her gaze towards the boy. He was standing on the birthday rock with his back to them, peeing a long arcing stream into the water.
The pregnant woman opened her mouth, about to chastise him, but it wasn’t her voice Gerald heard but another: a man’s voice, deep and booming.
What’s this I hear about you not wantin’ to be called Honeybear no more!
Swivelling his head on a quick lateral, Gerald tracked it back to the cabin, left of centre. And there he was — it couldn’t have been anyone else: Evers stepping through the door, though he hardly looked anything at all like the boy Gerald had last seen. He stood just under six foot though the three inches of hair standing on end like a crown made him appear a shade taller. He was wearing only a pair of boxer briefs, exposing skin a deep shade of brown, his arms and legs gangly and long like his mother’s and his beard almost as full, and red, as his father’s. He had a slight paunch at his belly and he was picking at the downy channel of hair leading towards his pubis as he walked down the steps, carrying the same easy gait that Gerald himself had so often adopted coming out of the house and onto the porch, lazing down the stairs like he hadn’t a care in the world even when it felt like it was crashing down all around him.
Savage Gerry Page 26
