Minister Without Portfolio

by Michael Winter

  19

  He phoned Martha and told her about the girl in the stairs. It felt like a reaction to the incinerator. Somehow this small ghost in the stairs in the dark was a retreating wave from the high tide of the incinerator. Martha absorbed this. She did not like the idea of a ghost. She walked around with the thought for a few hours and then called him back, cheerfully, you need to have a party. You need to invite people. Invoke a residency. Establish your identity. Make noise. Keep all the lights burning!

  He phoned Emerson Grandy and a man answered. Henry asked if it was him.

  Who wants to know.

  It’s the fellow you pulled out of the incinerator.

  Oh, Henry, he said. We thought you were a goner.

  He explained about the party.

  No, Emerson said, that’s all right. And if it’s all the same to you don’t call here again.

  Which astounded him.

  When Martha arrived he told her Emerson’s reaction.

  He’s shy, she said.

  Trust me, that man is okay in the spotlight.

  But they had the party anyway. They invited John and Silvia and Larry Noyce and Colleen and Leonard King and the Poole brothers and the people of Renews. Henry mixed three jugs of watermelon rum. The wiring in the house was well used and the corners of the rooms were inhabited with life and something about the mix of ages reminded Henry of the parties they’d had at the base in Kandahar. John Hynes was telling them of a man down the road selling firewood but it was just old boards for sale.

  Board is no good, John said. You can’t stack it to get air through it. Do you need board?

  Jesus no, Henry said. I got boards coming out of my ass.

  They drank the watermelon rum.

  Colleen: I shy away from Pepsi.

  I got to keep my pants on, John said, or that rum will go right through me.

  Silvia: It’s the caffeine gives you the hangover.

  Henry: That’s why I drink with juices.

  John: I’m after putting on some weight with the White Russians.

  Henry felt the warmth of his friends. He was grateful that the one closed paragraph of his life—pouring out of a jeep in the morning, Henry holding Tender Morris’s Sig Sauer when the shit hit the fan—was beginning to slacken. The heat had melted the wax seal on that and now he was back in the fresh air of the world with the scar of the event he had never really told Martha about. How could he, when John was saying aloud right now that he was putting on the song that he’d lost his virginity to. He’s asking Martha now what was her song.

  Song? Martha says. You mean album.

  Great laughter.

  The truth is I don’t have the guts to say it, Henry thought. Have I ever had the guts to say anything that was awkward and makes me guilty? When they were teenagers they stole things from a hardware store and John’s father questioned them and they could have lied, Henry was prepared to lie, but instead John told his father the truth. He told him, Henry realized, because I was watching.

  John: Quit mocking me, inwardly.

  They drank and danced and ate a paella of crab and shellfish that Colleen Grandy had made. There’s three pounds of crab in it, Colleen said. And lobster. And shrimp. But it’s the crab. It’s loaded with crab. There must be I’m not lying there’s three pounds of crab meat.

  Henry asked Colleen about her father. Why he didn’t come. He hauled me out of that incinerator and he asked me not to call again.

  Dad’s an alcoholic, Colleen said. If mother hears he was there with a bottle of Lamb’s she’ll leave him.

  This stunned Henry. A man’s heroism not to be celebrated because of a weakness.

  Larry Noyce came over and commended Henry on all the renovations. It’s hard to get a skilled man to do any work for you, Larry said. They’re all working their tails off in Alberta pulling seventy-hour weeks.

  Henry: And when they do come home they do not look for work.

  No, Larry said. They jump on their quads and hunt or pull two kitchen chairs into the sheds with the barn doors open, staring down a hundred feet of straight paved driveway to the main road.

  He doesn’t know, Henry thought, there’s been an embargo placed on him.

  Wilson Noel came in and Henry remembered the garbage in Kingmans Cove. He hated to rat on Leonard but Henry could be blamed, it was his garbage. He explained to Wilson what happened and Wilson was puzzled. I told him to fill in the old gulleys, Wilson said. He’ll cover the garbage with good fill, don’t worry about it. Did he charge you?

  So it was on purpose, everyone knows that garbage is fill. Only Henry feels it’s an outrage. He said to Wilson that Leonard wouldn’t take a dime.

  Finally Baxter Penney arrived. This party is for you, Henry said, quietly. I didn’t know about Emerson. Colleen just told me.

  Baxter: I’ve been a lot of places with that man. He gets up in the morning and sits in the woods waiting for it to get light out. He wants to get further away from Fermeuse, out into the ponds of Butterpot. Someone told me he has land out there. But Emerson doesn’t let you know everything. He keeps some things to himself.

  He allowed Henry to pour him a rum and said I guess you heard what happened to Nellie Morris.

  20

  Henry found Martha. Let’s go outside, he said. Just for a minute. People can look after themselves here.

  They left the house and walked down the road and turned to look back at the party as if they were rowing away from the house and they heard the music and laughter and the light in all the rooms shining out these bright crisp rectangles. Then he told her what he’d just heard about Nellie Morris.

  Not to be cruel or anything, Henry said, but at least that settles the house and who owns it.

  We’ve made this house come alive, Martha said.

  It’s come alive on the day Nellie Morris passed away. Here’s to you, Nellie. And thank you for your house.

  They walked back into their own celebration which felt now like the passing of a torch.

  John was remembering to drink sparkling water and elderberry juice. He was not happy to be leaving his family again for work in Alberta. But he was also eager to do it. Embrace the suck, is what they say in the army, and the truth is both compulsions exist in us: to stay and to leave. It’s for the family, John said, which makes leaving some kind of commitment to stay. It’s not easy, we all know, to keep things going. To make a living.

  21

  They buried her in Renews, right next to Tender Morris, on that road into Kingmans Cove. The most surprising part was to see Baxter Penney in a suit—and to finally meet his wife. All this time and Henry had never met her. Hello Mrs Penney, he said.

  Call me Sarah.

  After the funeral Henry dug the garden where Leonard had dumped the potato soil. He was moved by what had happened. He had been forcing himself to adopt this life, much like this garden had been transplanted here. That’s what I am, a transplant. Though I’ve been baptized by fire, he thought. And I’ve delivered electricity to this place. A baby is coming don’t forget and I’ve passed the ashes of my own life. Those ashes were a girl on the stairs and I stand here now with a rusted spade once used by Melvin Careen and perhaps Aubrey Morris. To plant potatoes late in the season. To watch a new thing grow. To eat it.

  The Poole brothers came by. Wayne said their grandmother told him about Nellie Morris. The last thing Nellie said was Mrs Poole, call an ambulance. Put the milk in the fridge, get my pills, I’ll see you later, Mrs Poole.

  Nellie left on a stretcher. She knew Mrs Poole would get an ambulance and the nursing staff may not. Her brain was ticking over.

  He built a cold frame from wood and plastic and dug out the grass. Rocks, shards of glass and heels of slippers. John came over with his curiosity. He was scratching his armpit with a car key. I feel like I’m living next to a civil war arrangement, he said. Man returns to marry dead brother’s wife.

  If I was to make a period movie, a civil war movie, of what people did in the
past? I’d have them washing their bodies with no running water, walk in slippers just to discard them, break bottles in the corners of their gardens. I’d fling coils of ancient wiring around and empty vienna sausage tins. You’re growing a beard?

  They went inside and Henry made them stiff, cold drinks and John shook the paper cup into his mouth, rattling the ice cubes against his teeth.

  When you’re young you should meet old people, he said.

  I woke up to a knocking, Henry said. It was a woodpecker. Big round hole in the clapboard.

  That’s your northern flicker.

  It was Nellie Morris, knocking on my head.

  Don’t let her build a nest in here or she’ll never leave.

  John couldn’t stop himself from stroking his chin. When you have a beard, he said, you have to eat more carefully.

  A beard makes you fussy.

  Letting yourself go means you become, in time, more prim.

  John looked exhausted. Are you sure you know what you’re getting into, John said, with this relationship business?

  If you know more than me let me know.

  We just fought for three days, John said. Thank god we made up. We were sick of each other. Silvia took that healing workshop with buddy down the road. She and Colleen took it. At the community centre, the one for the dead hockey player. Her laptop was in the back seat in the sun. I must have lost my mind. I opened the door and flung the laptop down the hill. Why I couldn’t tell you but I was furious. That’ll teach her something, is all I said. I was supposed to get Clem’s plastic suitcase that has a deck of cards in it for playing coddoddo.

  I’ve played coddoddo with Clem.

  He invented it.

  He’s going to become something.

  I had the kids on the road on their knees pushing pieces of wood. The sun was over the cove and two kayakers were paddling out to sit in the sea and listen to an Ojibway elder at an outdoor microphone discuss abuse, abandonment, federal treaties, sexuality. Anyway we’ve been miserable for three days. She’s been doing yoga and reading a book Colleen loaned her by Halfass Ramadan or something but it’s pushing her further away from being cheerful is all I can say. And here I am prancing around telling jokes and cooking meals and taking care of the kids. She hauls herself out of this mood and she’s met with what.

  With cold resentment, Henry said.

  I saw it, John said. Saw my own liquid iron sink into her.

  There’s a medicine for that, John.

  I once had a prescription and it was the same medicine my father overdosed on. Fuck medicine is what I say. I’ll take my chances with cancer and depression. But look this is what I know deep in my heart: if Silvia had kept up being sad for a fourth day I would have rolled up my socks and worked on all fronts to keep the family rolling. Such is the chemistry of my temperament.

  You’re not worried about Larry Noyce, are you.

  You mean am I worried the way Rick should be worried? I think not.

  Rick should come home more often.

  John took, from his wallet, a photo of his dead father. He keeps his wallet in his left back pocket, because his father was left-handed and kept it there.

  The sun, John said, was shining on those kayakers, still hopeful for a cosmic change in their lives. You could see them silently slipping their paddles into the sea. Cars on the hill with their magnificent braking systems slowing dramatically as they noticed my children on all fours playing on the road.

  And when Silvia got home she said where is my computer. You must have left it in the car, I said. The car doors were open. Someone stole my computer. In this town, someone took it. Jesus what am I going to do.

  And she got lost in this passion, Henry. I tell you I could have nailed her to a wall and fucked the bejesus out of her. Then Clem shows up walking briskly, in that manner he has. Carrying Silvia’s laptop. Clem found two kids with it. They said they found it in a field.

  Silvia: It was stolen from the car.

  I believe they found it in the field, I said.

  It doesn’t work. It looks like it was thrown.

  You can get your work off the hard drive.

  John opened a beer and looked at Henry. I’m such a bastard.

  22

  Rick Tobin arrived with a fourteen-foot dory roped expertly into his blue Toyota pickup. He jumped out of the truck and marched directly to Henry and hugged him. He was upset and he was hurting Henry the way he held him. It was the incinerator, of course. Henry kept forgetting that other people were living his event for the first time.

  You can have this dory, he said. It was built in a shed with one electric light by my father. He built it for Tender Morris, Rick said. At least Tender ordered it and paid for it, so I guess she’s yours now.

  Baxter Penney was on his way into the Goulds but stopped his truck and came over immediately to look the boat over and said, You can tell she wasn’t built around here. The lift in the bow. When Rick told him it was from Conception Bay he understood and was satisfied. Rick doesn’t belong here, Baxter said, so why should his boat.

  It was brand new but built traditional, the type of boat that had prosecuted the cod fishery: a banking schooner dory. Baxter was delighted to have his hands on it.

  We’ll leave it in the truck and find a place to launch it, Rick said.

  Kingmans Cove is your best bet, Baxter said.

  Of course it is, everything’s better in fucking Kingmans Cove. Why don’t we all still live there?

  What pissed Rick off was the comment that he didn’t belong here.

  Baxter drove off then, and would be happy to tell someone in the Goulds about this Conception Bay dory. Henry went in to get a couple of beers while Rick stared at the house without saying anything. He had passed it many a time, he finally said, but had he ever considered it? It was more a thing from the past than a dwelling to be inhabited now. He strode inside and drank his beer. He passed the chimney and pushed his finger into the soft lime mortar between the bricks.

  Martha should send someone out here to help you, he said. A representative to oversee her side of the investment.

  I might have overpaid by a hundred dollars, Henry said.

  If you got it for a song, Henry, then that song’s a dirge. It’s a song unfinished. A song that needs so much help you have to rewrite it. You are so outside of music on this here songsheet there is the possibility that you are deaf. Rick laughed and finished his beer and slapped the chimney. You can’t even get insurance, a shale foundation. And you own half of it!

  They walked to the back of the property where there was a brook. No well, Rick said. You could run a pump off that brook and bury the oil tank and use it for a septic system. There are cheap ways to have running water.

  Rick knew a guy in Alberta who had a pump that worked off no power, it had a flap to it and the brook, it has to run more than one mile an hour, pushes the flap and that flap pumps the water up the hose. A ram pump.

  THEY DROVE THE DORY, slowly, over the dirt road past little coves that looked too steep, out to Kingmans Cove. How did they get down to the water? Rick wasn’t from this place, Colleen was, so he did not know how people launched boats. Years ago they fished here in Kingmans Cove. They had wharves and ladders and slipways and stores all over the treacherous rock. But there was not a stick of that left here now.

  We could snake around this bank, Henry said.

  They reversed the truck and Henry wondered what they must look like from a distance. What would Baxter Penney think. They used an area where, in old photos, there had been a slipway and they carried and rolled the dory to the water and threw the oars in. There was a tongue of pebbled beach that fed up to a dry brook and Henry could pull it up there for shelter.

  Look at this, Rick said.

  An iron loop that had been hydraulically punched into the rock.

  You’re not the first one to leave a boat here.

  They left the dory and drove back. Rick had a red cooler full of T-bones from Alberta
. John Hynes came over—he had shaved—and they barbecued the steaks and ate them with a stack of boiled corn and a pound of butter and three dozen beer. There were no women around—they were all over at Larry Noyce’s, meditating.

  You have to give that dory a name, Rick said.

  John: How about the Happy Adventure.

  At five in the morning Henry awoke to the sound of a truck honking and it was Rick driving past the house with four hours to spare to catch the ferry back to the mainland and the long drive west over Canada. Henry did not, for one minute, see Colleen and Rick together.

  23

  All day he considered Colleen and Larry Noyce. Perhaps because he was staring in their direction as he worked. Was this part of my hundred people? After supper he carried the oars down the road, walking in the middle of the pavement. He had a jigger and reel and his rubber boots went up to his knee. He wore work gloves and an oiled cotton jacket and a trucker’s cap. That’s where he met Baxter Penney who was dumping garbage over the bank. What could you say to Baxter, please don’t dump garbage? Your people have lived here for four hundred years but now I’ve waltzed in and would prefer you to get involved in a costly recycling program.

  He asked Baxter where he might find fish.

  You don’t have to go out far, he said. You can catch them in there past the mouseholes.

  The mouseholes.

  You don’t know the mouseholes. Baxter shifted his feet to turn his body. When you see that white rock in the cliff.

  I’ve never noticed a white rock. In the cliff.

  It’s a rock it looks like a fish, Baxter said.

  He said it as though God had made the rock appear like a fish for these are the ways we give sign.

  How about Emerson Grandy’s horse.

  You want to take your bearings off a horse? Baxter thought about that and the type of man before him. Let’s consider the church, he said. You line up the cross over your shoulder and when you eyeball the lighthouse, that’s all you need to catch fish.