Minister Without Portfolio

by Michael Winter

  He drove down into Kingmans Cove to see if he could help. The fire had chewed a black carpet through the valley over the old cellar and punched a charred line deep into the hill of trees, smoke coming up off the more mature trees. That was a lot of trouble. The boy Keith was down there watching the fire eat into the woods. Colleen Grandy was with him. Henry felt responsible for the fire, that somehow he had taken a spark from the incinerator with him, nursed it and let it loose in this field.

  Run!

  Henry turned and it was Justin King standing tall on his trike, shouting into the valley.

  Then a plane. A slow yellow plane with fat pontoons on the wingtips and four propellers. This plane was all belly. It came in straight over the fire and then banked out onto the sea taking the sound of its propellers that sort of chopped at the air. It did one complete arc above the smoking valley just to point a wing at the fire. It drove itself inland searching for a pond big enough to land on, then turned again, sharply, on a wing and doubled back and sank below the trees. Henry heard it through the woods. It would be on Butterpot Pond now, its vast cargo hold gathering water and those young Noels would have a great view of it. The yellow plane returned to the sky and Colleen Grandy took Keith’s hand for they must have been nervous and they stared up as the plane flew low and the gates beneath the plane opened suddenly and it looked like paper flew out, a confetti drop that turned immediately into a curled fabric that straightened in the air and Justin bellowed out to them again, RUN.

  It was as if a message was being floated down and the air inflated the message as it descended. Colleen and Keith stood there, too late to move. The water hit them both and flattened them to the ground and the water drilled the ground as if it had gone through their bodies and broke into pieces that flashed up against Keith’s chest and the sound of it trickled off and he looked at Colleen Grandy as the water continued to fall on him like something tall that had fallen and the water drenched six acres of land and the silver trees beside them, the tree limbs sheared off and branches split wide open, taking sleeves of black bark from the trees and the wide plane was almost down in the trees now, dipping into the hollow of the marsh. It continued on and never came back. Colleen Grandy holding Keith close and Justin King turned them both over and said are you okay is anything broken can you talk to me, talk to me.

  Henry Hayward drove down into the valley just as Justin King reached them. It was Justin’s voice and shape in front of the sun and Keith Noyce who said he could not get up and Colleen Grandy could not or would not let go of him.

  Jesus, she finally said, when Henry got there. That was fucking amazing.

  He understood, at that moment, everything of the relationship between Colleen Grandy and Keith Noyce.

  31

  Keith got out of the idling car outside Wilson Noel’s house in Aquaforte. Wilson Noel once had a bonfire on the family land in Kingmans Cove that went into the night and, as they roasted hotdogs, Wilson Noel took a spinning rod and flung a red and white lure deep into the dark night. You heard the lure hit the water and he waited a few seconds for it to sink then he reeled it in and the rod bent over and he fought hard and caught a herring. The herring flapping in the firelight as he thrust his thumb and finger into its eyes.

  Wilson Noel opened the screen door and listened to Keith’s apology. It was the first time Keith had ever seen Wilson Noel serious. Even when he’d found them shooting into the snow of the King cabin he had a sense of humour in his face. But here he was listening to Keith without any pretense of collusion. We’re going to replant, Mr Noel, Keith was saying. Every tree you lost we’ll—

  I didn’t lose a tree. You crazy sons of bitches burnt them down.

  Keith’s father, sitting in the car, heard the outburst. The screen door was creaking as Wilson Noel held it open. He did not invite the boy in and he did not use the little sliding lever to keep the piston on the door ajar.

  I’m sorry for that, Mr Noel, Keith said. Here’s a map of the area that my father drew up and you can see where the fir are going to go around the family garden you had planned.

  I want pine, he said. White pine, and birch, and I don’t want them in rows.

  He took out a pen and held Keith’s map in his hand. He scratched out some of the markings and made others, here and here and here. He was deliberate in dirtying up the map.

  Mr Noel was without humour because of his sons who had come home from being hit with seven tons of water while swimming in the brook that ran into Butterpot Pond. They could have been drowned and then burnt as the entire brook and all the cabins deep into the wilderness area were vulnerable and who knows where that fire would have eventually gone if the wind wasn’t a prevailing wind and had blown it to the marsh.

  32

  Henry knocked down the chimney in one day and carried it out in buckets. Martha painted a dresser in the back garden.

  You shouldn’t be doing that, he said.

  I’m wearing a mask. I’m outdoors. I’m being careful.

  It’s not Larry Noyce she’s seeing, he said.

  Martha: How do you know anything is going on.

  It’s going on.

  What did you see.

  The way they held each other. That wasn’t the first time they’ve been together.

  The bricks were not good enough to build a new chimney with. They sort of fell away as he worked first on the roof and then down through the roofline and the bricks were hardly cemented together but merely standing like children’s blocks one upon another. He could not open the windows otherwise he would have thrown them out that way or used a rope to lower the buckets down. He’d done that before in the early days of working with John Hynes and Rick Tobin. These windows were painted shut.

  When he was through he shovelled the mortar into a wheelbarrow and filled the barrow seven times with heavy green powder which was what remained of the lime mortar. The work allowed him to think. And what he thought was conspiracy. Baxter and Emerson were at the dump conspiring. Baxter and Emerson have a history with Rick Tobin.

  The chimney foundation was ten big flat boulders stacked into a mound. He lifted these out of the hole in the centre of the floor as the house and crib would need to slide over this ground.

  Larry Noyce stopped by and asked if he was going to rebuild the chimney. Henry told him about moving the house.

  I have bricks, Larry said. In my cellar. From when they tore down the old lighthouse.

  You salvaged them?

  The house we have is the lightkeeper’s house. His family lived there. I feel some responsibility for the old lighthouse—I kept the best of the bricks.

  They opened the cellar and shone a flashlight and the bricks sat in a quiet heavy stack. It looked like they were hibernating. They were a warm colour, like ruddy bullion. There was a two-litre plastic juice bottle sitting on the bricks.

  My god they are beautiful.

  I only kept the good ones, Larry said again.

  It can be an interior chimney. The weather won’t get at it.

  Henry asked him about the juice.

  It’s the root, Larry said. The medicine for the ceremony. It needs a cool dry place.

  Your fridge not working?

  It’s a little illegal to have possession of it, Larry said.

  How did you get it here?

  Federal Express.

  As he closed up the cellar Henry told him about the mine in Fort McMurray, the event with Jamie Kirby. It’s like you have the jewellery box of Kingmans Cove, Henry said.

  33

  A transport truck arrived with four wooden utility poles that had been standing along a railway spur near Witless Bay for twenty-five years. Leonard King was renting the poles from the Used Lumber yard up on the main road. Six men arrived in the back of a pickup truck and they jumped over the tailgate and helped guide the winch that lifted the poles onto the ground. They used pulp mill hooks to drag the poles along to each corner of the house.

  Henry picked his way through the
new land and moved an old piece of fencing and used a lever bar to roll several rocks away from the path that Leonard was to take. As he did this the men used two hydraulic jacks from Hughie Decker’s garage and began lifting up a corner of the house. They rolled the creosoted end of a pole under the corner of the house and then jacked up the other corner. They did this methodically around the house until the poles were under and then they jacked up the house again corner by corner and proceeded to bind the poles together with strapping and chains and long poles that went under the floor beams and tied and nailed these to the poles. This elevation was done slowly and the creaks of the house guided them to how fast they should go. Leonard did not want them to break a pane of glass.

  By the time Leonard arrived with his front-end loader the men had stopped for a break and drank thermoses of tea and plastic bottles of cola and sandwiches and cellophane-wrapped confections. They threw their garbage in the grass. Leonard must have been thinking about the project in his sleep for he did not hesitate and rammed the loader into the small alders and rotated his machine until he was on the east side of the house and ready to pull the house with the bucket of the loader. The men had heavy ropes slung around the house and tied with a pulley and connected the ropes to the bucket and Henry joined the men on the house corners as Leonard pulled with the bucket. Heave, heave came the call and the house cracked itself out of the shale footing and smeared the flat slate out in front of the utility poles and dug into the grass and then found the surface of the earth and then, very neatly, slipped greasily over the garden. Leonard had a spotter behind him who agreed with the direction and who told Leonard how to back up as he pulled the house along.

  The house made progress across the old field. The roof of the house broke the horizon and it looked confident on this new land. Could you turn the house a little, Henry said, so it faces the sea. Just nudge a corner about three feet.

  Leonard opened the door to the loader and stepped out and looked around. You’ve got a good view from up here as it is, he said. Climb up and you’ll see what you have from upstairs.

  Just turn the house a little.

  He had moved into Tender’s house and now he was moving that house away from the cemetery. The dead don’t move but houses do.

  A couple of men shouted out that they’d found rock in front of the house. They were picking up flat plates of slate to show Leonard. There’s a foundation here, they said. Underneath the matted yellow grass was the distinct border of a house. Leonard quickly paced it off. Well, he said, lucky you.

  By the early evening, the house sat on the old foundation.

  You said a morning, Henry said. They were drinking beers now in behind the new house placement. Staring at the hill that jutted up and levelled off that reminded Henry of the widow’s hill in Kabul. He’d forgotten its real name.

  It could have been done by one o’clock but you’d have had to move the kettle off the stove.

  Leonard looked around the land and pointed with his beard to the bottom of the garden. I’ll come by next week, he said, and dig you another well.

  34

  You could see the whole cove now in this new position that was, in fact, where the old house used to stand. Henry was being a slave to origins. The past was forcing him to live the way it wanted him to live. But he was open to it. Soon, Martha said, you’ll be refusing booster shots and brushing your teeth with a twig.

  The chimney took a week to build, for you had to let the cement cure in stages. John Hynes showed him how to pin four plumb lines to the corners of the chimney to keep it straight and Henry mixed cement in a wheelbarrow and slathered the mortar on a course of bricks.

  Martha: Are you going to put a light on top?

  When he was tired and dirty they walked out to Kingmans Cove and fished in the dory. It was on the water he enjoyed himself. They put on their boots and coats and he carried a bucket with the jigger and they walked down the road. They fished with the tide to make the rowing easier and he did not go out so far that they were vulnerable to the weather or a change in sea. He hid the oars up in the long grass of the hill so he did not have to carry them home.

  On the last weekend of the fishery they got to the cove and there was no dory. Henry ran down the hill and checked the grass. The oars were not there. Someone had found the oars and taken the Happy Adventure out.

  We were in it yesterday.

  So they’re in it now.

  They checked the sea. They walked back home and Henry said he’d search the marina down in Bay Bulls. Hughie Decker was there winching up a trap skiff. He hadn’t seen a dory come or go. Henry drove home and stopped in to Baxter’s. Martha was already talking to him and Baxter was excited.

  I heard someone say Justin King was at the Copper Kettle, Baxter said, talking about forty fish he caught last night and I thought to myself what boat has Justin got to go fishing.

  Justin King took my boat?

  Now where would Justin put that boat is the question.

  Henry said he checked the marina.

  Everyone knows your little dory. Rick Tobin’s father built that. What he’s done is he’s tucked it away. You go around to the point in Fermeuse with a pair of binoculars and check the coves between here and the lighthouse—you’ll find your dory.

  You mean it’s beached someplace along here?

  Take my moose binoculars. Go around the point.

  Henry drove to Fermeuse. What Baxter meant is you can check the cove pretty easily from the north side looking back over the water. He took the lane into Emerson Grandy’s. He was out of the car before the engine stopped. Emerson was feeding the horse at a rail. He could tell something was on the go.

  Henry trained the binoculars on the far shore and the first thing he saw was the stern of the Happy Adventure glinting in the evening sun.

  She was beached on a cove halfway to the lighthouse. Just sitting there five hundred feet from his house, the first thing those binoculars picked out, like it was a cartoon show and the dory was painted on the lenses of the binoculars. He told Emerson what had happened.

  You lie in wait tonight, Emerson said, they’ll come back out on a quad.

  You mean they’re still using the boat?

  They’ll use it till it sinks.

  But why wouldn’t they hide it further along the shore or somewhere out of sight?

  Thieves, Emerson Grandy said, don’t like to work.

  35

  Martha begged him not to go but he said he’d be careful. He wouldn’t get into a physical altercation—he just wanted to know who was using his boat.

  Baxter said he wanted to help, in case of trouble. But Henry said he could handle it alone. He walked on out to the lighthouse and then veered off the trail in the long grass where you could see someone had climbed through to get down to a small cove. The grass went both ways as they had come back and gone down at least once. Evidence. He saw the dory. They would come back again tonight on a quad and then jump down here and use his dory and get their fish then beach her like they’ve done, just tied up to an old log of driftwood, look at the side of her and she’s got her sternpost all beat up and the transom is cracked and one oar is fucking missing.

  But what is the use of waiting now. Justin King will know as half the cove will have heard now that Emerson Grandy knows. They wouldn’t be coming out now.

  He heard voices.

  Laughter.

  It was, impossibly, a woman’s voice. The feet leaving the trail, silent in the long grass. Now over the slope and roll of stone as they found their way to the beach.

  He got his flashlight handy. He stepped out from the wall of rock and shone the light upon the dory, and to the hands balancing it. The faces. It was Keith Noyce and Colleen Grandy. Colleen’s face was at the height of exhilaration—as the flashlight hit her, the features fell into the shock of knowing she was doing something wrong.

  It’s me, he said, Henry Hayward.

  Oh my god, Henry, she said. I’m so sorry I’m so so
rry.

  There was damage here and Colleen knew it. She tried to explain but then they all heard the quad.

  Colleen and Keith scrabbled over the rocks to hide. Baxter was looking over the embankment and Henry shook his head so only Emerson came over and down the hill to the boat. Colleen and Keith were hiding around the cove of rock.

  You going to wait it out?

  Henry told him his thinking.

  Well let’s get her around back to the cove.

  There’s only one oar.

  No matter we can get her around on that.

  Emerson jumped aboard and Henry put one foot in and pushed them off and Emerson took the oar and guided them around a sunker and, gripping the oar with both hooks, paddled them along into Kingmans Cove. Henry shone the flashlight on the rocks. Emerson was in the front of the dory but he used the oar the way a gondola oarsman would handle it, high and long. The strength came from Emerson’s wrists and forearms, strength that poured in from his feet. Baxter was waiting for them at the beach on his idling quad. Its headlight shining right on them.

  36

  Leonard King was down there with a sump pump all morning arranging the footing out of flat rocks so that a twelve-foot length of thirty-six-inch polyethylene tube could sit on it. Okay, Leonard said, time for a favour. My nephew is a good boy. You can leave your shed door open and he’ll borrow a tool and it will come back. He wouldn’t take no one’s boat in the middle of the night.

  He’d like Henry to stop whatever rumour was going around that Justin King had stolen a boat. Justin has a job with Wilson Noel and he’s already after burning down his land so he don’t need to hear he’s a thief too.

  I’ll go over and apologize to him.

  Although he knew now, from Keith, that it had been him and Justin who had taken the dory the night before. They’d gone to try fishing at ten at night and got greedy and the weather turned on them and they had to ditch the boat early. Anywhere they could find shore. They did their best to tie the boat on and then they hauled their fish home on the trike. Keith had wanted to bring the dory back to the cove and then he thought it would be fun to do it with Colleen. She had no idea what he had in mind. Until they hit the shore.