David

by Ray Robertson

  I had no way of knowing if either of the provincial inspectors in charge of keeping Chatham dry were aware of what was going on at Sophia’s, and I didn’t wait to find out. The meek might inherit the earth, but it’s the pushy who own it until then. The Planet regularly listed the names of individuals and businesses found guilty of Scott Act prosecutions, but mine and that of Sophia’s were never among them. The Reverend King always emphasized to new settlers the need to set aside a portion of their weekly earnings from working on the railroad or wherever else they were making their initial living for the purchase of land and equipment and seed, would ceaselessly counsel them to be wary of the danger of not seeing the forest for the trees. “A penny wise, a pound foolish,” he’d say. The weekly bribes I paid out to the police were less money in my pocket in the short term, but I was never fined and Sophia’s was never shut down.

  “Well, there’s little doubt about it now,” Meyers said, rattling his copy of the Planet.

  Because God is a merciful God, He gave the world newspapers so dull people would have something to say. Meyers waited, as usual, for someone else standing at the bar to ask him to elaborate; and because, as usual, no one did, he went ahead and explained himself anyway.

  “It says here that last night in Wallaceburg, McDougall’s stables were set on fire.” McDougall was the police magistrate and another leading local prohibitionist. For a change, what was coming out of Meyers’s mouth mattered.

  “Fires happen all the time,” I said from behind the bar.

  “Indeed, yes,” Meyers said, pushing his spectacles up his nose, “but it appears that this particular fire was not the result of simple carelessness. It says here—” Meyers lost his place, traced the page with a fat finger for where he’d left off reading. I took the paper from him.

  What must have been the world’s stupidest arsonist-forhire, a man by the unlikely name of Martin Martin, had been arrested before the fire had even been extinguished. Martin, it turned out, was married to the daughter of Will Aber, a Wallaceburg hotel-keeper, whom McDougall had fined for a Scott Act violation, and who had publicly threatened the magistrate that he was going to “burn out one of these days.” Martin had been spotted walking away from the McDougall farm carrying a half-empty can of kerosene. The article also reported that no arrests had yet been made in the case of the Cumming dynamiting. I handed Meyers his newspaper back.

  “The people, it appears, have spoken,” Meyers said. “At this rate, this damnable prohibition will be repealed before the year is over.” Nodding assent to his own declaration, “And not a bloody moment too soon, if you ask me.” When neither voices nor glasses were raised in immediate agreement, “Of course,” Meyers added, “one does have to take a dim view of the rounders who committed these heinous deeds. You do have to wonder, I mean, at the moral fibre of those behind all of this senseless violence.” Getting the same silent response, Meyers crawled back inside his glass.

  I went in the back to check on Waldo. I followed my usual routine when approaching him now that I’d finally coaxed him inside: slowly opened the door; used his name several times as I inched toward him; gingerly unfolded the butcher-paper-wrapped hunk of ham hock in my right hand. A single tail thump admitted me closer. Carefully bending down to offer him the hunk of meat, I could see that he was finally lying on the blanket I’d laid out for him. Dogs don’t lie. They might bark at you, they might chase you, they might even bite you, but a dog won’t lie to you. In dogs I trust.

  I was watching Waldo eat when the door opened—not slowly—and Burwell blocked most of what little light from the bar illuminated the backroom.

  “First an entrepreneur, now an animal enthusiast. I am impressed, David. You’ve come a long, long way, lad, from the stealing of dead bodies.”

  Waldo dropped the meat from his mouth mid-chew, snarled. When he let me hold him back by the loose skin around his neck, I knew he trusted me. “What do you want, Burwell? I told you, we’ve got nothing left to talk about.” I used my other hand to stroke Waldo’s head. I could feel vibrations of rage through his skull.

  “Perhaps I’m here for pleasure. Word has got around that yours is a very convivial spot to sample those refreshments which are temporarily illegal in our fair burg.”

  Whatever he wanted, he wasn’t going to get it that way. I was surprised: Burwell hadn’t done his homework. If he had, he would have known that my dutiful bribing had made me immune to that particular strain of blackmail. I felt the way I did the first time I beat Mr. Rapier, my teacher at Buxton, at chess.

  “Say whatever’s on your mind, Burwell. I’m getting tired of holding this dog back.” With every sentence Burwell spoke, I could feel Waldo pull a little bit harder; it was as if Burwell’s voice had a uniquely enraging effect on him. I let Waldo pull an inch—no more—closer, and it did the job, made Burwell take a step back. I patted Waldo’s pulsing head.

  Seeing me see him recoil, however slightly, Burwell gave up whatever idea he’d had of intimidating me and said what he’d come to say. “I think we should be in business together, David. Not as employer and employee this time. As partners.”

  “I don’t need a partner. I’m managing just fine on my own.”

  “You don’t need a partner now, perhaps, but in the event of unforeseen difficulties it’s very advantageous, believe me, to have someone one can count on to help lighten the load of increased responsibilities and new, less than pleasant obligations.”

  I felt relieved, emboldened even. If that was Burwell’s best shot, it wasn’t enough even to nick me, let alone leave me wounded as intended and begging for his help. In spite of my hand pinching his flesh, Waldo strained a little farther Burwell’s way. It was like he wanted to kill Burwell’s voice.

  “You know that I know that Ferguson is standing outside that door somewhere,” I said. “Now I want you to know something. If you don’t turn around and leave the same way you two came in as soon as I stop talking, I’m going to let this animal do what he’s wanted to do ever since you walked in this room.”

  Burwell lingered only long enough to look at my eyes, to see if I was telling the truth. He turned around and walked behind the bar and then toward the exit. He didn’t need to tell Ferguson to follow. I told Waldo he was a good boy and closed the door behind me.

  Before Burwell got to the stairs, “Next time I’ll make sure he gets what he wants,” I said.

  Burwell stopped briefly and smirked like he was amused at how things had played out, but he smiled too wide, looked precisely like what he was, a man not so much frightened as embarrassed he didn’t get what he’d thought was already his.

  “They seemed like nice-enough chaps,” Meyers said. “Although the big fellow, he’s not much for conversation, is he? Friends of yours, I take it?”

  “I’ve never seen them before,” I said. “And they won’t be coming back.”

  Thompson came up to the bar with his empty glass, a rarity for him. Thompson enjoyed being waited on. That and being listened to when he couldn’t stop talking were his only real patronly needs.

  “I’m afraid I have a confession to make,” he said.

  Not today, Thompson, please not today; and not with Meyers, Meyers of all people, standing right beside you.

  “When I sold you Sophia’s,” he said, “I’m afraid I didn’t disclose everything I should have.”

  I refilled his glass, waited. It wasn’t until I picked up the bottle that I realized my hand was slightly shaking.

  “The reason this place was for sale for so long and why the owner was so eager to sell was because it had—it had an unsavoury past.”

  “Please don’t speak in riddles, Thompson, I’m in no mood.”

  Thompson nodded into his glass; lifted it, emptied it. “There used to be dogfights held here, in the basement, where we’re standing right now, in fact. Absolutely beastly spectacles from what I understand. Not that I ever attended such a revolting event, of course. But the point is that I knew about them when
I was showing you the house. And I’m afraid I let my desire for the commission from the sale compromise my professional candour. You see, I was having some financial difficulties at the time, and, well . . .” Thompson drifted off with his sentence.

  “Bloody hell,” Meyers said, for once absolutely right.

  Now I knew where the bloodstains on the floor I couldn’t remove came from. And why Waldo had been lingering around the rear lot of the house. He’d lost an ear, an eye, and hunks of his own flesh, but it was where he used to be fed, probably the only place he ever knew to call home.

  I poured myself a shot; shot it. I refilled Meyers’ glass and carried the bottle to Thompson’s table and did the same with his.

  “It’s all right,” I said.

  “David, let me just say—”

  “It’s all right, Thompson.”

  And it was. Because Waldo and I were both home now. Home for real. You can only build the house you live in, not the earth it rests upon.

  “I shouldn’t have said anything, I suppose, I shouldn’t even have opened my big mouth. If it hadn’t been for that Boswell person, I wouldn’t even—”

  “Thompson, it’s all right.” I doubled up his drink. Thompson thanked me by not saying anything else.

  Halfway back to the bar, I stopped. “What Boswell person?” I said.

  Thompson set down his drink. “That man who just left. The one with the rather large companion.”

  Burwell, he meant. “What about him?”

  Thompson motioned me over. Voice lowered, leaning across his table, “Rumour has it that Boswell was the organizer of the dogfights. Quite a lot of money to be made, apparently, by that sort of thing. Barbaric as it is. It’s none of my business, you know, but I’m not sure that Boswell and his kind are the sort you want hanging about Sophia’s. I say, David, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, and took my place back behind the bar. After making sure everyone who needed a drink had one, I looked in on Waldo, lying on his new blanket in the backroom. He was fine too.

  *

  Bartenders don’t make house calls, but here I am.

  It’s been a couple of weeks since Thompson completed his perfect suicide note, and because he wasn’t at his usual table at Sophia’s tonight, I let Tom close up while Henry and I go looking for 164 Scoyne Street, the room and board where Thompson’s been staying ever since the bank took away his house. I know the address because it’s only a few doors down from the building that Loretta wants me to buy as an investment property. Loretta is always on the lookout for a fresh foreclosure, someone else’s misery someone else’s potential good fortune.

  The mud tracks that Henry and I shed behind us lie undisturbed, will stay that way until the pounding rain fills them in and smooths them over and no one will even know we were here. At three o’clock in the morning, it’s possible to pretend that your dog and you are the world’s only living animals. Tonight’s not the kind of night I want to pretend. The bottle under my arm is for Thompson if he’s still alive, for me if he’s not. I could have come right over when it became clear he wasn’t going to show up tonight, but I’m here now—here, instead of at home in bed next to Loretta. And here’s 164 Scoyne Street.

  I’m in luck. The entire house is dark except for a single window on the second storey on the east side. The weak yellow glow has to belong to Thompson. Whether he’s up there in spirit as well as in the flesh isn’t so certain. I let Henry nose around for someplace new and compelling to pee while I look for a rock not too big but not too small. I find one and aim and smack the windowpane almost precisely in the middle. Henry looks up at the click of rock meeting glass while lifting his leg. We both wait.

  A silhouette looking at us looking at it; then the reluctant tug of damp wood against damp wood and the window groans open. Thompson sticks his head out, looks down. “You shouldn’t be here, David.”

  Believe me, I want to say, the thought has crossed my mind too. Instead, “We missed you tonight,” I say.

  “No one missed me tonight.”

  Limp literalism: the surest symptom of the long-gone melancholic. I try to think of something sufficiently straightforward to say, but Thompson beats me to it.

  “You thought I did it, didn’t you?”

  “Can I come in?” I say, holding up the bottle.

  “There’s no point. Go home, David.”

  In lieu of a sound counter-argument, I watch Henry finish the dump he’s decided to add to his various urinal markings. A dog with a full bowel and bladder is a dog never lacking in purpose and direction. Lucky dogs.

  “Let’s have a drink,” I say.

  “I’m not thirsty.”

  “Since when has that had anything to do with it?”

  I think I can see Thompson smile. Hope yet.

  “Just one quick one,” I say. “I promise. I don’t want to leave Henry out here too long.”

  The window goes empty and I know that Thompson is coming down to let me in. I leave Henry sitting beside a thin sapling bending in the wet wind like a furious driver’s lash. I scratch him between the ears. “I’ll be right back, pal, we’re going home soon.” I avoid his eyes as I walk around to the front of the house. No matter how many times you’ve left a dog, no matter how many times you’ve always returned, always the same look of bewildered abandonment seared into its eyes. And knowing that you know you’ll be right back never helps. Every goodbye a fresh test of faith.

  Thompson says nothing as he unlocks the door, just leaves it open for me and trudges back up the stairs through the darkness. I close the door behind me and follow him. It’s the same thing once we get to the second floor. Thompson stands in the middle of his small room with crossed arms and a lank of greasy hair stuck to his forehead. That he hasn’t bathed or slept or probably even eaten recently is obvious.

  “Have you got two glasses?” I don’t bother asking for a towel to dry off.

  “No,” he says.

  A quick examination of the room tells me he’s not just trying to get rid of me sooner rather than later. Aside from the neatly made bed, a mirrored bureau, and a single wooden chair, there’s little to suggest that the room has recently been occupied. There are not even any pictures or keepsakes or books. I suppose I’d imagined drunken disarray. There’s no sign of the perfect suicide note either.

  “Where are all your books?” I say. Get him talking about his books. Thompson can’t not talk about books.

  “You have them. I sold them all to you.”

  Thompson just stands there, waits for me to contradict him. I pull the cork out of the bottle of Wild Turkey I lifted from my own private stock instead. “You don’t need glasses when the liquor is this good,” I say, lifting the whiskey to my lips. I offer the bottle to Thompson. He looks at it, then at me, like the sourest prohibitionist. Accordingly, I take another, longer swig. Incredible: angry insolence even while on a suicide watch. The thought of which makes me even angrier, this time at myself, so I swallow a third time.

  “Now you’ve had your drink,” Thompson says, uncrossing his arms and going to the door.

  I stay where I am. “Yours and mine both.”

  “Yours and mine both.” He’s got his hand on the glass knob now.

  “So. This not-drinking business. Is it temporary or permanent?” It’s not what I’d planned to say, but, considering I had nothing else planned, it seems as sound a strategy as any.

  “Both,” Thompson says, looking pleased with his answer. Private jokes irritate me, even those coming from a man who has absolutely nothing to joke about.

  “Impressive,” I say. “You’ve managed to transcend time. Just like your dear old Uncle Walt.”

  Thompson takes his hand off the doorknob. “Don’t,” he says.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t talk about things you don’t understand.”

  I sit down on the edge of the bed. It’s hard—hard as a newly cut piece of plywood. “Well, you’re right about that, a
nyway. I’ve never understood how a grown man could swallow any of that ‘What I shall assume, you shall assume’ nonsense. But I suppose the human mind will believe whatever it wants to believe. Needs to believe.” I raise the bottle and drink, wipe my whiskey-wet lips on the arm of my coat.

  Thompson’s face turns a decent approximation of a healthy shade of red, rage and indignation managing to accomplish what health and happiness haven’t. He opens his mouth to speak but stops himself before anything comes out. In a determinedly calm voice: “It won’t work,” he says.

  I shake my head, offer over two upturned hands.

  Thompson sighs like he’s weary of talking to a particularly slow child. “Making me angry enough that I’ll forget myself. Forget myself and what it is you came here to find out if I’d done. Which I should have done if I’d had the courage to do it.”

  “Don’t call it courage.”

  “Integrity.”

  “That either.”

  “What would you call it, then?”

  “I’d call it a mistake.”

  “That’s because you’re not in possession of all of the facts.”

  “Which facts?”

  “The facts that are my life.”

  “I’m acquainted with those facts,” I say. “I’ve seen far worse facts.”

  “That’s because you’re not in possession of all of them.”

  I stand up from the bed and go to the window to check on Henry, take the bottle with me. He’s still there, sitting in the darkness and the rain, waiting for me to come back. I take a long drink before I speak.

  “Fact: you’re a white man in a white man’s world. Fact: you’re an educated man in an ignorant world. Fact: you’re free to be as happy or as miserable as you choose to be.” I take another drink.

  “You don’t believe that,” Thompson says.

  “Of course I do. How could I not?” Too much whiskey too soon gangs up on me, makes me feel nauseous and dizzy at the same time. I sit back down on the edge of the bed carefully, like it’s my idea.