Minister Without Portfolio

by Michael Winter

  It was spring now and it rained for eight days straight, killing all the snow. The roof leaked. Everything should be made of plastic, including the birds and animals. The cows were calving.

  John had arrived, home from Alberta. Still operating a mile underground. He came up to Renews to see how Henry was doing at the house. He was cooking sausages on a barbecue in the rain.

  John: What I love about that liquor store in the Goulds is how the woman at the cash she takes the neck of a whiskey bottle and tips it upside down, flaps open a narrow paper bag, and slides the bottle in.

  He paused to indicate the erotic nature of this act.

  Henry: I love driving a car on the shore road. There’s no anxiety. Gas. Wiper fluid. Radio. Knowing where I’m to go.

  Everyone wakes up at three in the morning, Henry. No one forgets the small hours. War is just the small hours and no bigger hours.

  It’s always three am in the army.

  Go ahead be sarcastic. I enjoy being disturbed. It makes me alive.

  Henry: Are you saying everyone is at war?

  Not everyone is wearing a three-point chin strap but they’re still at war. They are, in fact, more vulnerable.

  Because they think they’re behind the front lines.

  Now you’re talking. Minister without portfolio right there. Don’t fucking call me that.

  John was hurt.

  It’s disparaging, Henry said.

  You don’t even know what it means.

  It means I have no purpose and no moral compass.

  It means you’re so capable you’re to oversee everything. Tender was judging me.

  He judged you to the good.

  The rain made the sausages sizzle. Baxter came over and said he needed a hand. If you have a couple of minutes. Henry got some bread and mustard and made three sausage sandwiches but Baxter wouldn’t take one so they followed him in the rain to the barn. He said his cow had been labouring all yesterday and last night he went to bed, convinced she wouldn’t give birth, but in the morning the calf was hanging half out of the mother.

  John: You left her there with the calf half out of her all night?

  Baxter: I should have stayed up. We pulled the calf out and it was dead so I got her in the back of the truck here.

  There was a shape under a canvas tarp.

  The barn was dark inside. The cow lying down in the corner.

  She lost power in the back legs.

  They finished their sandwiches and ducked into the low door. There was a man at the rail and he had hooks for hands. This was Colleen’s father, Emerson Grandy. Henry remembered the story Rick told of him losing his hands. You heard, loudly, the rain on the roof. The wood rails and walls for the pens had a polished oily sheen as if many animals have brushed up against this wood over the past century. The lack of electricity made it feel like you were walking into a timeless zone. The rafters were dry and clear and the floor was dirt and Emerson Grandy was sucking on a cigarette and staring at the cow with no affection. The cow was sitting on the ground. She won’t get up, Baxter said. I’m afraid she’s after cutting off the circulation. We got to move her over but she’s heavy.

  John walked around the cow. Have you milked her?

  Didn’t think to, Baxter said. John knelt down and lifted the hind leg away and the udder was swollen and sore.

  Her milk is in, so that’s painful.

  He started milking the cow. The milk sprayed seven feet out towards the men standing at the rail. Get me a bucket, John said. Baxter left the barn and came in with an empty riblet pail from the house. Emerson kept smoking and not looking at what was going on in front of him. His cigarette and the riblet pail were the only modern things. John held the pail and aimed the teat at it. The cow was interested for a second and then returned to staring straight ahead. John pushed on the udder and pulled the teat in and out and got the milk flowing and filled up the pail and that got Emerson’s attention.

  Let’s try lifting the side of her, John said. Henry came in the pen with him and they knelt and John said to Emerson, Take her head. Emerson spat out his cigarette and took her head with his elbows and Henry and John lifted and Henry could feel the man’s elbows near his head and he thought of how he’d lost his hands with that five-ton cement pipe coming down onto his wrists, the hands must have sat by themselves somewhere like a pair of gloves.

  The cow repositioned her front feet and lowered her nose. Let’s try the other side, John said. The trouble was the long hind leg splayed out like that and you couldn’t lift her without it acting like a lever against them.

  You got a rope, John said.

  Baxter searched his head for rope.

  They looked around in the barn, into the rafters, looking for ten feet of rope. I’ll check my shed, John said.

  They walked across the road to John’s. The shed was full of tools from when John worked construction. His sledgehammer at the door—what Rick called John’s persuader. He’s got nothing over there, John said.

  What do you mean.

  That barn, there’s not even a stick of wood. They’re poor people.

  Baxter gave me a kerosene heater.

  That’s the last thing he had.

  They tied a pulley under a beam and threaded a rope through and used a come-along to winch up the cow around the midriff. Henry and John under one of the haunches and they’d convinced Emerson Grandy to push in the extended hind leg as the cow was raised. At first the rope sort of tightened and was collected through the come-along to no appreciable movement. Then the cow was lifted. Baxter yanked the cow’s tail. They had the cow half up but she still wasn’t on her feet and the winch rope was tied into her gut. The cow’s eyes were bulging with shock as she teetered, her hindquarters high in the air with no purchase. Boys you’re busting her up, Baxter said, and it was true, John had to let her down but at least she was sitting now on her other leg. She looked like she knew what she was doing.

  I’m going to have to kill her, Baxter said. He was disgusted with himself for having slept through the night.

  You can’t shoot an animal that still eats and drinks, John said. A hundred-dollar fine.

  Emerson: I lost a horse once in a barn. Had to tear the wall out to get the horse through.

  Baxter: And they won’t use her for beef. Have to bury her in Aquaforte. You’re not allowed to bury her on your property.

  Feed is twenty dollars a sack, Emerson said. Seven sacks all winter I fed the goat. Now they want me to give it away.

  Baxter: Nothing’s no good no more. You can’t make a living in animals.

  He threw an armload of hay at the cow’s head and she started munching. As they left the barn John stopped and turned and rubbed the bridge of his broken nose and launched himself once more at the cow. He slid on his knees into the soiled hay and slammed his face into the cow. With a tremendous heave he lifted the cow up singlehandedly onto her feet. She staggered and fell against the back wall and righted herself and shook John off her legs and steadied her bearing. John’s face was purple, his chest hoovering air. He held the rail and caught his breath. His fingers were trembling. Emerson Grandy laughed and shook his head. That was something, he said.

  Henry took John by the arm and walked him out of the barn. At Baxter’s truck he stopped to gather himself. He laid his wrists over the side of the truck bed, exhausted, and his fingers grazed the blue tarpaulin and Henry saw that something stirred. He flipped over the tarpaulin they had laid over the dead calf. The calf’s clear open eye.

  John, look at this.

  This animal is alive.

  Baxter: What’s that?

  Get this calf some milk. Get that beef bucket over here.

  In a week, both the cow and calf were walking along the hill into Kingmans Cove.

  34

  Henry stripped the house to studs, then wired and insulated it and stapled in a six-millimetre vapour barrier. He left the walls open so an electrician could inspect the work. He printed off his bank balance an
d realized he needed work. He emailed Rick in Alberta. You got your class one heavy truck? I drove the bobtail for you didn’t I, Henry said. You can drive a dump for Wilson Noel.

  It was one of the trucks Rick Tobin had shipped back from Alberta. Rick had a piece of Wilson Noel’s operation. It came with a grey credit card in a pouch on the windshield for fuel. The one advisory Wilson gave was don’t go shooting shotguns inside the truck.

  Henry sat there while Leonard King operated a front-end loader and dug out a basement and filled his tandem. Leonard adjusted the gears and steering while flipping a white beard up and over his free hand. Henry had an order sheet for customers looking for fill along the shore and, while he waited for Leonard, he arranged the deliveries to avoid a dead head. At four o’clock Henry drove the empty truck back to Wilson Noel’s and got in his car and headed to Tender’s house.

  He hadn’t done much upstairs. There were still bags of garbage beside the bed Nellie Morris had used. He looked into one and there was a religious book—a study guide to scripture. In the book a small photograph, an old studio shot of two men in military outfits. One man sitting and the other standing beside him.

  Brothers.

  Henry couldn’t tell but the style suggested an era from eighty years ago, or during world war one. Impulsively he searched the garbage bags. It was mostly clothing and bathing products— shampoo and soap and shower curtains, all of which seemed strange for a house with no running water. There was a magnifying glass with a compass embedded in its handle. The compass was so small you needed a magnifying glass to see it. Which created a problem he thought about for some time.

  In a small leather pouch was the photo of a girl. She was about five years old, standing outside at the corner of a house. Henry recognized the framing of the window as the type used in Tender’s house. So he walked to that window. He stood where the girl had stood and felt a bend in his dimensions. The girl Nellie Morris had. The one out of wedlock that died of consumption.

  He used a wooden ammunition box to keep anything that seemed valuable and threw out the rest. He was going to use Wilson Noel’s dump to haul this all to the incinerator.

  EACH NIGHT HE TURNED off Baxter’s kerosene heater and walked over the field and ate his dinner in John and Silvia’s electrically heated house. Meat and liquor, come ahead. He played crib solitaire. They played a lot of crib in Afghanistan and he remembered Tender with his head of red hair and the Russian vodka they drank. He drank to the men, to Tender. If he had the energy he walked out to the abandoned community of Kingmans Cove and stood in his root cellar. The roof of slate covered in grass sod, so it was like a Viking house. Wilson Noel had told him he planned to put a vegetable garden out here—he owned family land on the hill that was all trees now. The trees he had skidooed through. It would have to be cleared. Henry stepped down into the cellar that pointed out to sea. My secret place, Henry said aloud—so it wasn’t a secret that he kept from the land. He wanted the land to know.

  35

  Wilson Noel, after work, was leading a volunteer group to help foster sports within the municipality. The Poole brothers would be there—they’re the ones who pass wiring. In Afghanistan they had power and water within seventy-two hours of occupation. And here Henry had gone two months without electricity.

  He said he had a bit of time.

  He got to the arena early and watched a goalie tug on his skates. This was Wayne Poole. The man’s son was with him, studying his father’s accurate hands on the thick white laces. Wayne Poole had pulled on blue hockey pants and the wide shoulder pads and chest protector. A black canvas bag of gear he was donning, and his son rocking on his heels, his belly sticking out, his hands under his armpits, resting.

  You’re in Nellie Morris’s old house, Wayne said. He stood up and, in his skates, looked about seven feet tall. We got a call from Martha.

  His son handed him his goalie stick.

  The house belonged to a goalie, Henry said.

  We know Tender Morris, Wayne said.

  Henry asked about passing code. Don’t worry, Wayne said, we can wire your house. You’re a friend of Rick’s.

  I got it wired, Henry said. I just need the panel hooked up and the connections in the boxes.

  You need an okay from a licensed contractor—Rick told us.

  The son was running back to the door in the boards and Wayne Poole, in his goalie skates, tiptoed after him. Henry followed them. The zamboni honked as he curled the machine out of a corner. That’s my brother, Wayne said.

  It looked like it was powered by steam and Henry had forgotten a zamboni had a horn. But the driver saw the boy—his nephew—and his manners were the polite ones we think workers had back in the days of steam power.

  Wayne was adjusting his white helmet with its plastic-coated visor cage. He stepped onto the ice and stumbled and caught himself on his arms, the goalie stick slapping against the ice. His son was shocked at his father’s slip.

  Henry watched a bit of the game. The zamboni driver, Mark Poole, came over with Wilson Noel—they were eating hamburgers cooked in a truck near the skating rink. Henry waited for Wilson Noel to tell him what to do. They were unrolling the winter tennis court out over the soccer field, heaters forcing in air, stuffing the giant tent like a turkey. Wilson gave him a big maroon-hooded coat. It takes three hours, Wilson said, for the roof of the tennis bubble to teeter into the night air. The floodlights came on. The roof staggered up and the work crew affixed the doors. Heavy steel doors with locks but no windows. The doors were the only substantial thing about the tennis bubble. You need a password to unlock the door, a metal door you could not break through and yet a lazy person with a kitchen knife could carve out a door at the far end and play tennis at the other end without any deflation during his game. I guess they think people only use doors to get in and out of places, Henry thought, but the locked door of a winter tennis bubble is a hilarious fact daring you to be creative. As he stepped back to make sure the bubble was fully inflated he realized this tent type was the kind they used in Afghanistan. He had come around in a bubble like this after the jeep blew up, and he shuddered at the memory which ambushed him.

  36

  He worked hard for Wilson Noel for a couple of weeks and appreciated the coastline when he took a break and, instead of eating his lunch in the truck, drove into the Goulds to have a meal cooked in that restaurant with the painting of Venice as a window. He met Martha here and they both laughed that they were going on dates. Thanks for taking me to Italy, she said. I don’t mind splashing out, he said.

  Then she drove back into town to deal with a patient recovering from injury to her pelvic floor. Henry picked up supplies and hand tools and materials and food and ice and beer and bandaids and fresh water. He knew little of this shore. Driving back from the Goulds you passed through some pretty towns along the road and, unfortunately, the first thing you saw when you hit Renews was a memorial centre with no windows for a young bright hockey player who died early and the funeral home with gaudy brick pillars and chainlink fencing, the home that Tender had been laid out in.

  Then, one day, Martha’s car pulled up. Unexpected.

  She opened the trunk and took out a box of garbage bags and a jug of detergent and a squeeze mop and a red ten-gallon plastic bucket.

  Another car arrived and parked behind her, a two-door Fiesta. There was an electrical mast hanging out of the open passenger window. It was the Poole brothers from the Goulds.

  I called a few people, she said, and bumped us up on the electrical list.

  You could have told me and saved me from volunteering.

  Both Pooles climbed out of the car on the driver’s side, unbuckling their knees that were cramped in the pushed-forward front seats. They had a reciprocating saw on the back seat and coils of wire. When they got out of the car they brushed themselves off, they might have had sawdust on them.

  Have you got power, Mark said.

  You mean electricity?

  Just a litt
le bit to run the saw.

  You make it sound like a little bit of electricity can exist where large amounts do not.

  There’s an existing service.

  Henry told them the power was cut off eight years ago.

  Well now we’re up to speed, aren’t we.

  We may be slow but eventually we catch up.

  They were careful pulling the mast arm over arm out of the car window, then they lugged it to the corner of the house and propped it up in the crook of the front porch where the old service was. They were both looking around to see what they had there. It looked like they were still half hoping there’d be hydro stored somehow in the non-conforming wire. Have you got an extension cord?

  Boys I got nothing electrical, Henry said. Nothing in that line of business whatsoever.

  He’s got no power, Mark.

  He’s waiting for the power, Wayne. Before he moves into the investment of electrical wares.

  That’s why he haven’t been by the shop.

  He might be better off staying—what do you call it.

  Off the grid, Wayne said.

  We shouldn’t bother him on a commitment to electricity.

  Tempt him you mean.

  He might get used to it.

  Run up a bill.

  Who’s next on our list?

  Martha stepped in. Guys, we really appreciate you being here.

  They were into it now. He and Martha were pursuing Tender’s ambition. It astonished him and made him feel guilty. That he was enjoying her. He was supposed to be bearing a cross but this was an ambush of joy. Seeing her, realizing she had drive and could lead manoeuvres better than himself. One of the Pooles was staring at the roof of Baxter Penney’s house across the road and the other pointed with his forehead over at John and Silvia’s. Their porch light was still on from the last time John was out. The yellow bulb shone in the daylight, betraying a house packed with electrical potential.

  Go over and ask if they have an extension cord. And string it over the field.