Tell Anna She's Safe

by Brenda Missen

  Tim shifted the beam to the dock to illuminate the broken boards. I stepped back to the relative safety of the stairs.

  Out of the light, the unravelled rope ends in the water beside us transformed themselves back into Lucy’s hair.

  Tim stood before me, a black shadow on the rotting dock. I couldn’t stop staring at the dark mass in the water. “She could have come down here to write in her journal,” he was saying. “Do you remember seeing her journal in her bag? She took it everywhere with her.”

  I tried to remember what books I had held in my hand. I was sure I would have noticed if one of them had been her journal.

  Tim shone his flashlight into the water again, beyond the rope. “It’s so shallow here.”

  Could she have fallen in and not got out? I shuddered. It was my own worst nightmare. She could swim, Tim had said in the house. But how long would she last in the frigid water?

  We climbed back up the steps to the tracks.

  On the way back to the car, Tim swept the beam of light over the brush beside the shore and at the water’s edge.

  “It’s so shallow,” he said again.

  Beside his truck, he began to cry. I held him.

  Then I invited him to my house for tea.

  It hit me on the highway heading home, with his headlights blinding me in my rearview mirror. Who this man was. Where he had spent the last ten years of his life. Why.

  *

  SHE WAS IMMERSED IN HER thoughts and missed the arrival of the first witness of the day. Vaguely, she heard the clerk reciting her usual litany: “Do you swear to tell the truth….” But the answer came with the clarity of someone speaking directly in her ear: “I do.”

  She started and opened her eyes. She sat forward in her seat and tried to peer around the heads in front. She could barely see the back of the man sitting in the chair before the judges. But she could hear him, clearly, even before the lawyer asked him to speak up. It was the voice of someone she knew, someone she was, or had once been, intimately familiar with. She hadn’t caught his name. She knew she wouldn’t recognize it anyway.

  She sat back as if she were the court stenographer, recording the conversations the witness related to the court that he had had with the inmate Archie Crowe while he had been appealing his own sentence.

  “What prompted you to come forward?” Colin Fajber’s lawyer asked when the witness had finished. “Obviously it’s against the code to come forward. What prompted you?”

  “I was sitting in my cell one day just after supper,” the witness responded. “I had watched the local news, and I saw Mrs. Fajber speaking with the Prime Minister. The way she was talking to him—she was begging him to help her son and help her.

  “I thought to myself, well, inside it just made me feel a lot of empathy toward her. And sympathy. I thought to myself: if this lady has been hanging in there … that is what struck me. I thought to myself: If what I know is relevant to the situation, I would like to offer it up to help her.”

  Her pen stopped mid-page. She sat open-mouthed. Out of this stranger’s mouth had just come an exact echo of her own heart’s reasons for being here.

  The witness continued. “I thought about it for two or three months before I ever made a decision to do anything after that. But definitely the reason I got into it was because of how I felt about what she had been doing with it.”

  “Mr. Brennan, have you ever in your life met Colin Fajber?” the lawyer asked.

  “No, I don’t know the man. I never met him.”

  “Have you been offered anything whatsoever for coming forward? Is there anything in this for you?”

  “No. In fact, by doing this my life is about to change as of tonight. I’ve got two years left, and my life is going to seriously change from what it was yesterday by being here. I have given up a lot by being here. I am not asking for anything.”

  Again, his words hit home. It had taken courage for her to come here, too. But overcoming her own fears was nothing, she knew, compared with this man’s courage to sit where he was sitting and say the things he was saying, and as a result put his safety, maybe his very life, in jeopardy. Would she have been able to do what he was doing? The answer was painful, but not difficult. Sometimes, she could barely drive or walk down her own street without having to race back home, scurrying like a squirrel back to some illusory notion of safety. Yet, here was this man, who had spent most of his adult life in cloistered walls, who had had, it seemed, little access to the outside world all those years, and he had set aside his fears of the world and the people in it and, even more, his fears of those inside the prison walls who might threaten his life.

  The lawyer for Colin Fajber finished his friendly questioning, and then the inquisition began—first from the lawyer for Archie Crowe and then from the Counsel for the Manitoba Attorney General. Through it all—the insinuations, the attempts to discredit him—the witness kept his cool. Answering difficult questions about his past with devastating forthrightness and calm. She would never have been able to do that.

  She didn’t care what he had done in his past. What came through—shining through—was that his intentions for being here today were good. “In the life of the Spirit,” she quoted in her head, “you are always at the beginning.” One of her favourite lines from The Book of Runes.

  The Counsel for the Manitoba Attorney General finished his questions. There was a brief re-examination by the lawyer for Colin Fajber, and then the Chief Justice addressed Mr. Brennan: “You may go.”

  He made it sound so simple. As if the witness could just stand up and leave the room.

  Instead, the witness waited for a police guard to come and escort him down the main aisle. She craned her neck as he passed by her row. He looked straight ahead. He wasn’t handcuffed, but he was wearing prison greens. He wasn’t a tall man but there was a breadth to him. He walked with his shoulders set back. He walked with the presence of a man who knew he had done the right thing, the act of his doing it made greater by the risk to his safety that he had taken to come here, and the fact that few were going to thank him for it.

  She didn’t stop to think. She found herself on her feet, pushing past the bony knees and blank faces in her row, walking as fast as decorum would allow, down the aisle, through the anteroom, and out into the cold marble hall.

  She ran down a corridor she was not supposed to go down, away from the main staircase. No one stopped her. There, at a set of elevator doors, stood Mr. Brennan with his police guard, and Mrs. Fajber.

  She waited until Mrs. Fajber had finished thanking him and then she approached, out of breath. “Excuse me.”

  He was holding out his hands to be cuffed. He didn’t immediately turn around.

  “Excuse me,” she said again.

  The guard gave her a stern look. “What are you doing down here?”

  “I wanted to speak to Mr. Brennan.”

  At her words, the prisoner started and turned. He looked younger than his voice had sounded, and his mouth turned down naturally at the corners, giving him an even younger look. But it was the eyes that held hers. They were the eyes of an ancient friend and lover, in the face of a stranger.

  His eyes gave her courage.

  But then he glanced at the notebook in her hand, and his receptivity changed to a stranger’s hostile stare.

  She almost lost her nerve. And then she realized: he thought she was a journalist, here to expose him.

  She spoke quickly, still out of breath. “I think what you did today was very brave.”

  His mouth turned up at the corners. “Thank you.”

  “I was wondering….” She started again. “My name is Lucy Stockman. I’d like to write to you. To thank you for what you’ve done for Colin Fajber.” She barely knew what she was saying. She only knew she couldn’t let him disappear without
making a connection. She could only look at him, willing him to look in her eyes and see her. She wanted him to recognize her, the way she recognized him.

  The guards were leading Brennan through the elevator doors. She was an annoying fly they were trying to brush away.

  Inside the elevator, Brennan turned and faced her. “I’m at Collins Bay,” he said. He punctuated his words with a smile that reached into his eyes.

  The doors closed between them. Brennan went back to prison. And, with a new lightness of heart, she went back to hers.

  3.

  I HAD MET TIM ONLY twice before, but I knew a lot more about him than two brief meetings would reveal. Not just because Lucy had talked about him, but because she had also shared his letters with me. Letters he had written from prison before they’d graduated to phone calls and visits. She’d wanted me to understand who he was. The letters, she’d said, during one of my visits, would explain him better than she could. I could take them home, read them at my leisure.

  I didn’t want to take the letters home. It seemed like taking Tim home. But I looked up from my end of her small couch to see Lucy looking at me. There was a shy pleading in her eyes. I relented. “Sure,” I smiled. “I could read them.”

  I waited until Marc was out of the house. I didn’t want to jeopardize our recent return to harmony. It felt too fragile. We had called a truce. He had stopped expecting me to paddle with him. I had stopped asking him to come for a bike ride or listen to CBC. We were affectionate with each other again. That was what I had been missing the most. It was heaven to wake up to find his warm, ropey, paddler’s arms around me. I didn’t know how he did it, but when I was in Marc’s arms, I felt I’d come home. It was worth curbing my tongue to be at “home” again.

  I took the letters to the couch with a cup of tea. They were written on lined foolscap, three-hole punched. The finest in prison stationery. I unfolded the first.

  He thanked Lucy for writing. He was sorry he hadn’t replied to her first letter. There were a lot of kooks out there….

  I could imagine Lucy enjoying the fact that he had a sense of humour.

  Seriously, he said, he didn’t trust too many people. He guessed she’d heard that in court.

  I am writing to you from Warkworth Institution, where I was transferred. In testifying they promised not to use my name. But what do I hear on the radio on the way back, but my full name. I was pretty upset about that. I lodged a formal complaint, but my life has pretty well been in jepardy since then. They took me out of the general population. Then they transferred me here. Warkworth is a lot more civilized than Collins Bay. Your treated with more respect here. But I’m waiting for the threats on my life to begin here also which it will when word gets out. I have no regrets whatsoever about testafying on behalf of an innocent man. I did it for his mother too, the way she stood by him. I understand you share that personal view from the things you said in your letter.

  I didn’t grow up in a fancy home like you. We lived on a farm past Renfrew area. A place called Brudenell. You probably never heard of it. Its not worth knowing. Our fields were full of rocks, hard to grow stuff. I hardly remember my old man. My mom managed the farm and the lot of us. She didn’t treat me good. Like yours didn’t. You used some big words in your letter: tyranny. There was tyranny in my home too. You wouldn’t want to hear the things done to me. I probably deserved them. I ran away when I was 15. What else do you do on the street but lie and steal? A person has to eat.

  His letters were an odd combination of an unnatural formality and poor spelling and grammar. I turned the page over.

  He’d ended up arrested and sent to reform school a year later, an experience he didn’t really want to talk about, he said, except that it did have the surprising result of getting him to finish high school and into university on a bursary. He’d completed first year.

  I would have been all right. I was even married at the time. It was my misfortune that some of my old friends located me. And it wasn’t affordable living on my own. I was in need of money. And I guess you heard the rest in court.

  I don’t have excuses for the things I done. Only that there in my past now. I’m looking forward to getting out of here and into therapy. I am aware that I need therapy. Like what you talked about. What they give you here is micky mouse. Its nothing like what you talked about. What you said about wounds that need healing, I never heard anyone talk in words like that before. Here they talk about behaviour that needs fixing. But it strikes me, one don’t come without the other.

  Lucy, I thought, would have completely identified with this. It would have been a magnetic draw—communicating with someone who “got” it—or at least wanted to get it.

  He was, he wrote, overdue for release. The system had screwed up its calculations. But why would anyone listen to him? He wanted more than anything to have a normal life, a steady job, a wife to share a home with. His marriage had been a disaster, he’d been too young, hadn’t understood women’s needs.

  But I’m scared too. I am not too ashamed to admit it. I’m scared of what’s out there. I don’t have much experience out of this joint. It was never my expectation that anyone would write from outside. I’m sorry I didn’t answer your first letter. I figured you must want something from me. I don’t know what. I don’t have a thing anyone would want. But everyone has always tried to screw me around. Besides, do you know how intimadating it is to write to a writer when you know your spelling is bad? (I’d say atroshus, but I don’t know how to spell it.) I hope that you will overlook all the errors you find in this letter. And I hope you will write again, if you would care to I would very much look forward to hearing from you again. Maybe yu cood help me with mi speling.

  I couldn’t help smiling at the last line. Clearly, the year he’d spent at university had done little for his spelling and grammar. I was sure they would have bothered Lucy. But his own awareness (and humour) about them would have helped her to look past them. She had obviously been able to look past his non-intellectual exterior to the similar interior life they seemed to share. I almost admired her for that.

  Letter by letter, Tim revealed the past that had shaped him. I couldn’t believe he had grown up in this century, let alone in my own province. He had been raised on a farm with no running water, no television, no phone. He was the oldest of six children, the only son. His father had left after fathering five children, returned long enough to impregnate his mother with the sixth, and left again, for good. His mother had relied on Tim to be the “man of the house.”

  At that point, the topic of his letters abruptly changed from his relationship to his mother to things he’d done outdoors. He wrote of hunting and fishing with an uncle, helping to build a hunt cabin from logs they’d cut in the bush, of sleeping on a camp bed in the cold cabin, listening to wolves howl on the next ridge.

  We lived off the land when I was a kid. We were always selfsuficient. The opposite of what I am here. You know what I mean?

  I imagined Lucy did. She had spoken to me of wanting to live off the land. And she had told me often how lucky I was to have a capable carpenter boyfriend. She would have been excited by Tim’s skills—wood cutting, hunting, fishing, house-building, farming. Here was someone not only voicing her own dream but entirely capable of making it a reality.

  But he wasn’t just a practical male. He obviously shared her esoteric interests. He, too, he wrote, was into astrology and dream analysis. In one note, he thanked her for the Miles Davis tape she’d sent. How had she known Davis was his favourite jazz artist?

  After April his letters became more sporadic. They would have been interspersed with phone calls and visits by then. But they also became more intimate. In July he wrote:

  Its only right you should be getting more from Curtis than he is giving you. Its not selfish, like you say. If its not being presumptive, I would give anything to be in his shoes, in your hous
e, your world. If I could I would give you everything. I would never hurt you or yell at you or abandon you like Curtis. If we got mad at each other we would hang on to each other. We would work it out. I can’t do much from this joint, but if its worth anything I offer you my love, no strings attached, it is here for you. (And me too.)

  That was the last letter. I folded it up, secured the elastic around the packet and put it back in my knapsack to return to Lucy. Love with no strings attached. What was that? I will love you even if you keep taking off to go paddling and can’t talk about anything else? Was that unconditional love? Or denial? And who was Curtis? He was mentioned in the present tense. It sounded like Lucy had been seeing someone else when she’d met Tim. There was a lot she hadn’t told me. But she had given me these. She wanted me to understand the connection she felt. I could, I thought, give her the benefit of the doubt. As long as I didn’t have to actually deal with Tim. Marc really didn’t have to worry on that score.

  Tim’s headlights lit up the interior of my car as he pulled into the drive behind me. I wished Marc were home. And was glad he wasn’t. I could rebuke myself without his help. Anyway I had the dogs.

  Beau and Belle wagged their tails and made a fuss over Tim—the way I was doing—without fear. If he were dangerous, wouldn’t our ears be laid back? Wouldn’t we be growling in our throats, pacing in our uneasiness?

  We weren’t uneasy, not about Tim. Not yet. I made a pot of mint tea. I hoped it would stop us both from shaking.

  “I have this hungry feeling inside,” said Tim. He put his hand on his stomach. “I’ve felt it all day. It’s like an emptiness inside. I eat, but it doesn’t go away. I miss Lucy. I missed her as soon as she left the house. I never been alone without her for so long.”

  It bothered me, that gnawing emptiness even though he’d eaten. He was equating an empty, lonely feeling with hunger. He asked if he could use the phone. “I need to call my psychologist. I talked to him earlier today. He told me to call if I heard anything.”