Minister Without Portfolio

by Michael Winter

  Henry helped drag the boat back up under the trees and they were too exhausted now to swim and they peeled off their wetsuits and got back in the car and drove home. They pulled into their garden and saw John Hynes walking happily over the field that separated their summer houses, he wanted to hear of their nice swim. They told him what occurred. It was later that they found out who the man was they’d tried to help and it was that afternoon when they’d first laid eyes on the American from down the road, Larry Noyce.

  10

  Henry didn’t realize it until Baxter Penney told him. Baxter was walking backwards out of his barn with two sticks of lumber he’d cut himself and was drying in the sun. It was like he’d cut down one tree, limbed it, seasoned it, run it through a sawmill, burned the slabs for kindling and was left with these two dressed timbers.

  Henry: They don’t make them like they used to.

  Baxter: Well they might, but I haven’t run into any.

  Baxter said the yellow house is opened up and the man from the States who owns it, he was up. Picked out of the water today, he said. Heard about it from Aquaforte.

  Henry brightened. We were there, he said. I can tell you all about it.

  Baxter was very interested to hear how it all looked from the shore. Between them, all angles were pored over.

  The American is up for the summer, Baxter said. To join his son. What I heard is there was trouble with the man’s wife at home and that’s what brought the son here.

  The boy’s been here since the winter.

  Yes that’s right. You know him.

  Henry realized, as they talked about Keith Noyce, that Baxter must have a story about him and Martha. Baxter must visit Aquaforte and lean on a fence someplace and tell a man at a convenience store about the fellow who bought the house across the road. What does he say about me to people? Took over a house belonging to his buddy who died in Afghanistan and he shits in a sawdust toilet and washes in the river. He sleeps with the widow when she visits. Henry knew that people lived with lots of complications. As long as you don’t smear it in their faces.

  He filled the kettle with water from the blue container. Martha was outside talking to Leonard King who was sitting in his idling flatbed truck, one bundle of clapboard aboard. Baxter could tell they were enjoying these days without running water, for he knew they would soon be over and another form of living would occur here. The second-hand fridge had waited patiently for electricity to arrive. Henry swung the door open and appreciated the cheery interior. It’s a stint you’ve signed on for, Baxter said, this time without water.

  When Baxter left, it turned cold. The wind from the north, from off the bay. The light receded over a hill. Martha was pulling on a sweater. Henry zipped on a windbreaker. They took the dirt road out to the lighthouse.

  What did Leonard want?

  He can get us some rock for the bottom of the well.

  The little yellow house had its lights on, a figure inside at a table having supper. This is Larry Noyce. A car parked outside, a rental. The silhouette of the American stood up from the table and waved. Then the dark shape came to the door and opened it and said hello.

  11

  They stepped over the rope gate that was on the driveway and took the steps and the dark outline receded. Colour arrived to the face and shirt and they shook the American’s hand. Larry Noyce. He had beads around his neck and a loose silver watch on his wrist. There was the smell of sage burning.

  We’ve slept in the same bed, Henry said.

  That puzzled the American.

  Henry explained his room at John and Silvia’s in town— the room Larry had used all those years ago when he was stranded in Newfoundland. That’s a strange way of putting it, the American said.

  You’re a spiritual man, Martha said. These are spiritual connections.

  Henry said they’d seen him in the water, and Larry Noyce was rubbing the back of his neck, making the beads jump and the watch slip down his hairy forearm. I didn’t know I’d caused such a commotion. It takes a while to get any depth, you have to go in a long ways. I was in the brook and that’s a lot warmer. I was paddling out there and didn’t even notice the tide at all it was so calm but I felt okay I just couldn’t get back in to shore.

  Keith his son was out at the Copper Kettle with Justin King. They removed their shoes and Henry stared at a large poster of a magnificent hilly region of South America. The name at the bottom was Machu Picchu.

  I met your son, Henry said.

  You’re the man who picks him up.

  Did he tell you about his gas can?

  It’s right here in the porch.

  They saw how neat it was in the house. There was not much of anything but clean and simple. A light wooden vase. A small fire going. Sage was burning in an abalone shell. Books open on the kitchen table.

  It’s cozy in here, Martha said.

  That’s my love for humanity, Martha: electricity and steam. Chekhov wrote that. He was reacting against Tolstoy and you, Henry, are looking a little Tolstoyan. Have either of you read Spinoza?

  I don’t read, Henry said.

  He doesn’t read philosophy or fiction, Martha said.

  My son Keith, Larry said, I had him on a bet. I bet against God. I bet against pessimism. I pushed all my chips in on him. And now I’m just praying he gets to twenty. He doesn’t ever have to like me, he just has to live while I’m buried in paperwork and nostalgia.

  The way he spoke so aggressively about his son, it was the same manner in which he left his kitchen table, opened the front door and beckoned them in. Enthusiasm and truth. Larry Noyce looked at Henry and asked him if he ever thought of having children. All the time, Henry said. I’ve been avoiding having one my entire adult life.

  Women, Larry Noyce said.

  He said this with affection, with Martha obviously pregnant. There was no malice meant by this trouble with women.

  Colleen has mentioned you, Martha said.

  Colleen Grandy.

  She’s a friend of mine.

  I work with her husband, Henry said.

  Henry decided there could be something in what Leonard King was alluding to. Or, at least, he wanted to put the matter to rest.

  Colleen is terrific. She loves Peru. Have you ever been to Peru?

  Henry: I’ve just been. Through your poster here. I hear you’re taking Colleen.

  I wish I could go, Larry said. It’s a package she’s arranged with another outfit. But I’m having a ceremony here at the end of summer and a weekly meditation too.

  I like the idea of bringing Peru here.

  Larry: There is a character in a Kazantzakis book who knows the world without ever leaving Crete.

  They toasted his arrival—and survival—with sparkling water, and to the men from Aquaforte who picked him up. I don’t drink, Larry said, excusing the water.

  Martha: I don’t either.

  One of the men in the boat, Larry said, he had hooks for hands.

  Henry had to change his mind about what he’d seen. It wasn’t expandable wristbands but hooks. I know him, Henry said. He’s not from Aquaforte. He has a horse in Fermeuse. Emerson Grandy is his name.

  They turned to the dark windows and Henry said, You can see his horse from Kingmans Cove. I feel like that horse is my animal twin living a mirrored life over there.

  That’s a very Peruvian thought, Larry said.

  We all have had a spiritual crisis or two, Martha said. You don’t need to go to South America to resolve one.

  They put on their shoes and Larry Noyce said it was a pleasure to meet them both. They walked out into the twilight and at the rope gate Henry turned to catch Larry in the light of his own kitchen. He was cleaning up the dishes in his sink.

  He’s reeling out his own true behaviour, that one. He forgets how his bearing affects those around him.

  Martha: He has no training in covering his spiritual condition.

  What had happened to Larry’s wife? The story Keith had told him
in the car, of the dog and lover. Larry Noyce, studying the spirit, had not seen that his wife’s anger stemmed from hurt and isolation. Why couldn’t he have indulged her a little more. Henry shook his head—he was transferring his own feelings of Nora to the divorce of this man of spirit.

  They walked, with no flashlight, out to the cellar in Kingmans Cove. They talked out many words in sentences that formed themselves without intention: Larry Noyce is of the opinion that others should not be affected by him—it is their responsibility, not his. No, his spirit is of goodness and who should mind being affected by it? Though it’s daunting. That comment about women. He knows, everyone knows, something is going on with Colleen Grandy.

  12

  They found the dark hump of the cellar and looked out to sea. There was a flapping in the wind. A garbage bag. Someone had dumped garbage out here. Henry walked over to it. A dumptruck load strewn into the valley where a house once stood. The garbage looked familiar. The way the bags were knotted and panels of green wallboard and acoustic tiles. It was his garbage. Leonard King had taken it to Aquaforte.

  No of course he didn’t, Martha said. He’d have to pay a dumpage fee.

  I’ll tell Wilson in the morning.

  Don’t say anything.

  Leonard has to clean this up. You can’t dump garbage here, not my garbage.

  Wilson Noel would settle it. Wilson has a good heart—he’d told Henry that he’d found a small job for Keith Noyce—out here in fact. He forgot to tell Larry that.

  Well, that’s not the father’s business, Martha said.

  True. Let the boy surprise his father. It’ll be nice to see this hill with the old gardens again.

  It’s a south-facing hill.

  Potatoes, turnip, cabbage. And look at this desecration.

  Wilson will be livid.

  They stared at the sea and Henry said his prayers silently and the wind pushed tears from his eyes. Just because an experience is an old one—being affected by nature—doesn’t mean it shouldn’t affect the heart. He put his arm around Martha and she kissed him on the neck. Planting kisses. We live individual lives with the consciousness of death and awareness of the past. But the most important part of that sentence is the individual part. Let yourself be humbled by the experiences people have been having for thousands of years. And speak of it.

  Look over there, Martha said.

  It was Colleen Grandy steaming down the trail, her arms up by her chest, determined, as though pulling a thousand-pound trailer. Colleen’s great pace was impressive, on her way out to the lighthouse and back. Henry had seen soldiers in the army with the same fixed concentration and they were good at killing many enemy and recovering too from killing the innocent that were only driving suspiciously. They were supervising a convoy when a US helicopter opened up on a crowd of men in a square. Tender said they have a rocket-propelled grenade but they could be Afghan Army. The Americans said they weren’t A & A so it looked like they may have to entertain battle. In twelve minutes all the men were flattened and the Americans moved in and asked the Canadians to stand back. It was several days later Tender heard at the camp that the Afghan men did not have an RPG, but a camera with a telephoto lens.

  Colleen was thin, in a sleek track suit and her hair pulled up in a ponytail. Sole-minded. Henry told Martha that, during the day, she’d pass by and catch his eye and they both called out cheery greetings. He was delighted to be a neighbour.

  Before she reached them Martha made their presence known so as not to alarm her. She crawled out of the cellar and waved and said hello. Colleen Grandy jiggled her hand just by her shoulder.

  Rick says he has a dory for you, Colleen said, and he’ll bring it over next time he’s home.

  She has a nervous quality in her jawbone, a caffeinated jerkiness, but combined with the exercise it makes her alive and open. They spoke briefly but Colleen had to keep her pace, she spoke to them while moving side to side. They watched her walk back and disappear into the hills and then they too began their return into Renews, slightly affected by her gait. The lights on Larry Noyce’s yellow cottage were off now except for a porch light to help the son home when he had bicycled back from the Copper Kettle.

  Henry: Do you think she’s in there?

  She wouldn’t be that stupid. Or more like it, Larry Noyce has discretion.

  What does he have to lose? What they knew of Larry Noyce Henry had picked up from Leonard King and Colleen Grandy. Involved with a medicinal plant from South America. Returning to the western world a manner and a magic that allowed one insight into the origins of life. And here was Colleen, proof of that communication. Silvia too, probably, the way John talks. Not that Silvia was sleeping with Larry Noyce. Just the spiritual element: women were drawn to this more than men. Are you drawn?

  Martha: Yes I think it’s fascinating.

  What I’m saying is not a negative judgment, Henry said.

  She laughed, Perhaps a negative judgment on men.

  The sheep were making their way down the hill to shelter in the trees for the night, their white smudges. The cows were sitting under the trees—the cow and calf John had saved. Clem and Sadie had taken to calling them Big John and Little John.

  As they walked home they noticed the light from their own house. John and Silvia were up and Clem had turned on all the lights. The bedroom window. Could you see into that window, a figure slipping on her bra? The window with a child’s handprint on it. Don’t lean on the glass. Let’s move over here. The dead are with us and the neighbours are watching. He rubbed his hands together and they sounded like sandpaper. They had made love and viewed the world from that window.

  The truth is, Henry knew, any time you try to nail down a truth about somebody, you come up on one side of them, left or right, that makes them worse than what they are, never better.

  13

  He pulled Martha’s juicer out of its cardboard box from the trunk of her car and clicked in the assembled parts. There was a lot of laughter on the radio, content not deserving the laughter. This would be the first time in a hundred years this house had ever heard a juicer. My god the laughter was ongoing.

  Do you always have to be cheerful, Henry said, to be a Newfoundlander?

  John Hynes is not cheerful, she said.

  John Hynes is the exception.

  That’s why you like him.

  Yes I collect exceptions.

  Do you have a shelf for them?

  I nail them to the outsides of sheds.

  Larry Noyce is cheerful and he’s not a Newfoundlander, she said.

  There is some logic you’re nearly getting. There’s a word for it.

  Tautological.

  I didn’t want to show you up.

  Don’t worry, she said, your eyes are condescending enough.

  You mean I betray my feelings through the lining of my eyes? My god you’re so easy to read.

  That’s why no one likes me.

  Everyone loves you, Henry.

  Listen, widow.

  Okay let’s not be mean.

  I’m sorry. I was playing.

  That was pushy.

  You know how I feel about it.

  I know. I just want you to be nice to me, but there’s a big guilt.

  He wanted to question Martha on the guilt. Was it guilt, or mixed feelings. But this would be a cold inquiry. He did not want to turn on the juicer as it made a lot of noise and the admissions they were getting to were sacred, old admissions that required ambient sound. He looked out the window and saw Keith Noyce bicycling down the road.

  The American, he said, is offering a spiritual path.

  It used to be a financial path and a path to good dental care.

  He thought about what she said.

  Newfoundland women marrying American servicemen. Isn’t that witty?

  Henry laughed. It was fast, not witty.

  I’d love to see your rankings. And your shelves full of exceptions.

  Henry: I nail them to posts and let
the crows clean them out.

  The American is divorced.

  He wanted to say something about a divorcé and a widow. Martha noticed his delay.

  You can be pushy. I’m prepared for it.

  No, I limit my pushy moments.

  So it requires restraint.

  Shit she’s all over me. A little shield fell over his eyes and prepared him. He turned on the juicer and fed it the vegetables. Noise. He stretched the back of his neck. She was seeing all of this and knew all of what it meant. She thought it best to pause and, when he turned off the juicer and they could hear the radio again, she reached out and held his wrist and said, Do you want to go upstairs?

  14

  We were a couple for a long time, Henry said. I packed a bag with the last of my things and slept for long stretches. I was lonely and my heart felt empty, he said, and I did not like being alone. My chest was thin and I had no desire to eat. He watched the shipyard cranes unload containers and stack them on the wharf apron and John Hynes did his best to tell every available woman that Henry was single and he slept with some women and felt the raw morning light walking home from narrow apartments.

  Oh great, Martha said.

  It made me laugh at my own plight but deep down I was even more alone.

  Poor poor you.

  Do you want to hear this.

  Go on I’m sorry. We always talk about Tender and never about Nora.