I shrugged. “We’ll see how it plays out.”
“Right.” Neil was standing with his arms folded, eyeing me, words piling up inside his head, unsaid for now.
6.
It was mid-December. Caddy hadn’t told me she was coming by and I was just as glad. No time for nervousness. No time for compulsive tidying, obsessive watching of the lane. I hadn’t seen her since our day in court, had happily stopped the memory-meandering.
She stood in the kitchen, a hand on her hip, looking around. “I’m trying to remember the place,” she said. “When I was in the CWL, we’d come here to check on poor old Charlie MacDougall. Make sure that he was eating.” In her free hand she had a plastic bag.
“I brought a little something,” she said, and put the bag on the table. “Fresh out of the oven.” She looked around some more. “You’re going to have to get a little Christmas spirit in this place.”
I laughed. “Hard to remember about Christmas, living by yourself.”
“Tell me about it,” she said.
“Let me take your coat,” I said, but she quickly slipped it off and dropped it over the back of a kitchen chair. She was wearing a mauve cashmere sweater with a loose turtleneck, some kind of heavy chain that dangled down her front, sculpting breasts I hadn’t noticed earlier. Jeans. She’s kept her shape, I thought, then felt ashamed.
“Well here you are,” she said. “You’d never know it was the same place. I think Charlie had a lounge over by the window, where he could watch the lane.”
“Got rid of it,” I said. “Charlie was on it for a few days before they found him.”
She laughed. “Poor Charlie. Sad way to go. But probably in his sleep. Did you know Charlie?”
“Just to see around.”
“Poor old fellow. No harm in Charlie. So you bought the place from who?”
“His sister and her husband. They lived in Boston. She worked at Harvard, in the library.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Can I make you tea, Caddy?”
“Well, I suppose. Just to see you do it.” She was teasing.
The tea was poured. She’d brought fresh biscuits that were still warm and so I offered her one. “I’ll just have the tea,” she said, and sipped. “Very good. You can’t go wrong with the orange pekoe.” Then: “Actually I’m here to ask a small favour.”
“Sure,” I said.
“I’m not sure if I told you, but I’m going to go away for Christmas, up to Windsor. I decided to spend Christmas with Rosalie and her family.”
“That makes sense,” I said, surprised by my disappointment.
“I thought it would just be too much, here alone for the first Christmas after Maymie. It was bad enough, just the two of us, after Jack. I don’t want to put myself through that, not this year. Not so soon. Does that make sense to you?”
“Perfect sense,” I said. I studied her face, fighting a sudden urge to go to her, stand her up, put both arms around her.
“It was the worst day of my life, when they came and told me …” Her eyes flooded but didn’t overflow. She had trouble speaking for a moment but didn’t look away, didn’t blink.
I took a deep breath. “You’d come back in the New Year?” She had a tissue then and blew her nose.
“No. I plan to be back before that. They’re going to Mexico for the New Year’s break. Giving themselves a treat, after everything. They were after me to go with them, but I drew the line at that. Mexico. Couldn’t see it myself.”
“So,” I said. “Whatever I can do.”
“I have someone in the car,” she said, and put her cup down. When I glanced out the kitchen window the car was empty. She saw the questions in my face.
“Just wait.”
Through the window I watched her walk to the far side of the car, open a back door, then bend. She seemed to be struggling and I stood, prepared to go to her assistance. But then she straightened and I could see that she was carrying the little dog, the one Maymie had called Birch.
“I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone,” she said. “You by yourself here over Christmas just didn’t seem right. And I could tell he took to you the day you met. Maybe he sensed something from when you had one of your own. What do you think? You wouldn’t mind looking after him for me, would you? He’s good company. A little walk now and then, mostly to let him do his business. I have his food in the car. And his special blanket. Actually an old coat that Jack used to wear in the shop.”
The dog was squirming now, and she put him down. He walked toward the door, sniffed the floor, then came back and sat between us, head cocked. I reached out. He sniffed my fingers, then licked them.
“He likes you,” Caddy said. “Dogs have a sense about people. Jack would always say that. Let a good dog be the judge of people, he’d say. What do you say, Birch Bark?”
The little dog yapped once then curled up on the floor, chin resting on his paws.
“The other thing,” said Caddy. “You’re going to have to break down and get a television set. Unless you have one upstairs.”
I shook my head. “I was never much for watching TV.”
“Well let me tell you,” she said. “You’re going to find on those long winter nights that in spite of all the crap that’s on it, the TV will be good company. At least it’ll let you stay on top of the news.”
I was smiling. “We’ll see.”
“Never mind with the ‘we’ll see,’ ” she said. “I want to see a nice big TV in here when I get back. And if you’re wise you’ll also get a generator. We’ll get a big power failure here probably in January and you’ll end up talking to yourself. You’ll end up like poor old Charlie.”
“And will I be able to count on you to see that I get fed?” I asked.
“You’ll be able to count on me for anything you need,” she said. She picked up her coat, smiled, then looked away, some private thought unsaid.
And after she was gone I tried to remember the angry letter that I wrote way back, the one I never sent to her, full of wounded vitriol and speculation. I remember it was autumn when I heard the reason for her sudden flight to Windsor. But the letter and the memory are mostly a blank space now, details in a larger washed-out tapestry. But I do remember one thing: before I tore the letter up, I had signed it Tony Breau, the MacMillan gone for good.
Why did she have to mention Charlie? I’ve owned the place for at least ten years. Actually twelve, but it will never in my lifetime belong to me. An old house remains the property of the departed, and until I’m gone I know that I will live in Charlie’s place. Fair enough. Some young couple will one day bring up a family at Tony’s.
Anna would have talked me out of it for sure, but I bought it before I met her. It felt right to me even though people made wisecracks about Charlie and how the place was haunted by his spirit, never mind the cheesy musk of his decaying corpse. But Charlie, for all his loneliness and poverty, had a priceless view. Hills to the east, a long meadow that slopes to the west where on a clear day you can see the bulge of sea pressing up against a pale abstract horizon. Sunsets are memorable, even in the winter when the light seems just as hard and still as frozen water.
I bought Charlie’s when I sold the old MacMillan place on the mountain road after Ma went off to her reward. No ambiguity of title there. It had always been MacMillans. Four generations, big teeming families, mostly bound for emigration or self-destruction, common destinies in these parts, until my father came along. Barren Duncan inherited the place. Of course they blamed his wife for the lack of children, as was the tendency. Eventually, they went to the Little Flower orphanage and picked me, a kid already five years old, the way you’d go into the woods, cut down hardwood for warmth. And because I’ve never been a MacMillan, not in the real sense that is so essential and all-defining here, when the title passed to me I had no qualms about selling the old farm to a couple of dreamy young Americans.
I’d never liked it up there and I haven’t driven
up that road in years. I always had a trapped feeling and the deer flies in the summer—godawful. The old man would say: they perch in the trees, then swoop down, take a piece out of you and fly back up and sit there eating, just to piss you off. He said so little in his lifetime, Duncan, that I think I remember every word.
I wish I had a clearer memory of Charlie. That way I could more easily dismiss the creepiness I get at nights when I feel his presence, or hear the disembodied sounds that still persist in spite of all the changes I’ve made. But how can a sound be disembodied? How can absence make a sound, or make a presence felt? On second thought, I feel a lot of absences.
Charlie sure as hell was disembodied when they got through with him. The relatives in Boston ordered up cremation in spite of Father MacIsaac’s feeble protests about the inevitable Judgement on the Final Day, the bodily resurrection. They dumped Charlie’s ashes down in Graham’s Cove, not far from the pioneer cemetery, near where he’d once worked in a lobster cannery, a fact remembered only by a few old-timers among whom, I guess, I now am numbered.
Caddy phoned before she left for Windsor. Just curious, she said: How were we getting along, the dog and I?
I pretended to be hearty. Famously, I told her. He really was great company. I didn’t tell her that for a day he’d been lying in the middle of the kitchen floor, on Jack’s old coat, snout resting on his paws following my every movement with his eyes. If I left his field of vision, the eyes would close and he’d sleep. I considered it substantial progress when, the next morning, I found him sleeping on my couch. But when I sat beside him and spoke to him, he seemed surprised, jumped down and returned to the coat. I didn’t tell her how the presence of another living creature, man’s best friend allegedly, actually made old Charlie’s place feel lonelier.
Late that afternoon I realized that I was talking to the dog a lot. I heard myself say: “Birch, old buddy. If we’re going to be living here together, we’re going to have to establish some form of communication.”
He stood up, whined softly, walked to the door, then looked back at me.
“I know that you’re depressed,” I said. “Tell me about depression! I could write a book about it. Anything you want to know, just ask. Pills? You want pills and all their side effects?” He barked once.
“A walk,” I said. “Of course. Let’s go get some fresh air.”
Caddy had brought a leash but I left it hanging in the porch. I thought he’d settled in. My mistake. The moment we were outside, Birch raced off up the lane and promptly vanished. I shouted after him but he was gone.
“Ah, for Chrissake,” I said. Then went back inside to get my car keys.
He wasn’t hard to find. He was shivering on the back deck at Caddy’s. When I walked around the corner he whined briefly, then trotted toward me, his sorrow instantly dispelled by a familiar face. And somewhere near my heart, I felt a surge.
“Let’s go home, Birch Bark.”
He yapped in the affirmative.
I didn’t know there was so much choice in television sets. Cathode ray and liquid crystal, flat screens of all sizes, some bigger than a picture window. RCA, Toshiba, Sony. I can’t remember what I bought in 1991, after Anna and I got our first place together. It was mostly for watching movies but for a while we were, like everybody else it seemed, addicted to news of that other Gulf war. Saddam. Bush. Baker. April Glaspie. Kuwait. Oil. Everyone at work an instant expert, everyone a hawk, officers and inmates alike, cheers for carnage caused by smart bombs.
But mostly I remember a hotel room on a summer evening. I am on the bed, remote in hand watching the long columns of American soldiers in a desert, flashes like lightning in a distant sky. And charred wreckage on a highway, blackened shrivelled bodies; a reporter breathless, face distorted by a too-close camera lens in a too-small room somewhere in Baghdad. Turning to Anna: Do you believe this? Anna nodding: Someone had to do it. Look at what he was doing to his own people. And then what he did to Kuwait. All those dead babies.
I remember it so clearly: that hotel room in Montreal during le Festival de Jazz. She was just out of the shower, her hair still wet. And I said: Speaking of babies. And the towel falling to the floor.
We can talk about our babies some other time, she said, walking toward me slowly. But just us, for now.
And the TV screen in sudden darkness, ghost images of death decaying.
The appliance store was busy with the Christmas shopping surge. Couples murmuring in front of stereo equipment, dishwashers and refrigerators. “They’re still working out the bugs in the flat screens,” the salesman said. “This one here’s a tried and true. All you’ll need. And we can have it down there this afternoon. There’s a truck going out in a couple of hours.”
The satellite man came the next morning and in spite of myself I felt a mild elation as I studied the impenetrable instruction book. Even the dog seemed interested.
“I hate to admit it, Birch, but this sucker is going to transform our lives.”
——
I hadn’t been to the store in days and knew there would be a backlog of papers there, and questions. People around here notice absence, alteration in routine, which is probably a good thing. Charlie didn’t have a routine anyone could follow and so he died alone, quietly decomposing until he was discovered thanks to someone else’s routine—some good neighbour looking in, making sure that he was eating. Only to find he definitely wasn’t. “We gotta stop thinking about Charlie,” I said as I snapped the leash on. I removed it once we were inside the car, engine running. He sat up straight in the front seat. Briefly I wondered about the seat belt, then secured it just to stop the nagging buckle-up alarm. Birch’s mouth was open, smiling I imagined, as he watched the passing landscape.
“Good boy,” I said, rubbing his neck when we stopped in front of the store. “You wait here.” But the moment I opened the car door, he was across me in a bound, and out, trotting down the road toward Caddy’s place. I watched him go, a mix of anger and resentment rising. Fidelity and dogs? A myth like everything I’ve ever heard about fidelity. Go and be damned, I said silently.
But at the door I looked down the road after him and to my surprise he was heading back toward me at a gallop. He arrived, panting, paused briefly at the bottom of the steps, head cocked, then as I opened the door he bounded up and followed me inside.
Collie’s business partner, Mary, was behind the counter. “Hey, look who’s here,” she cried.
“That’s Caddy’s dog,” said a man I recognized, the name Lester floating to the surface—Caddy’s brother. And I remembered the September courthouse scene, the struggle with the Mounties. “Lester?” I said.
And he nodded. “It’s been a while.”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s been a while.”
Then there was a long silence.
“I heard she went away,” said Mary.
“The daughter in Windsor,” Lester said. “Rosalie. Maymie’s mother.”
“How much do I owe you?” I asked Mary, as she loaded newspapers on the counter. It had been about five days since the last visit. “Thanks for saving them.”
“Noooo problem,” said Mary.
“That’s nice, you looking after Caddy’s dog,” said Neil. He’d been standing at the back of the store, almost out of sight, elbow propped on the chip rack. “You and Caddy used to be a number years ago I think.”
I laughed. “Christ, Neil. You keep saying that. It was another life altogether.”
“The dog was always with little Maymie,” Lester said. The silence returned, this time heavier. Then he asked, “What do you think will happen to Strickland?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know much about the case.”
“I’m betting he’s gonna walk,” said Neil. “Crooked lawyers will always find a way. Remember where you heard it first, guys. People like that know the system, know how to play it. You saw him in court. An ordinary person would have been shitting in his pants. But not that one. Cool as a cucumber was
that son-of-a-hoor.”
I knew I was being watched, commentary waited for. I studied the front page of the paper. Iraqi foreign minister saying something. Weapons inspections. Hans Blix skeptical. Considered diverting the conversation to Iraq. Second thoughts. Christmas coming.
“Caddy went away for Christmas,” I said. “I agreed to take care of the dog. He’s pretty low maintenance.”
“I’m surprised you aren’t going away yourself,” said Neil, tension suddenly evaporated. “Must be pretty quiet over around Charlie’s. It isn’t easy being alone at Christmas.”
I studied him, trying not to show surprise at hearing something close to empathy.
“It’s just another day for me,” I said.
Nods around, floor being studied. Thoughts unsaid. Always the loner, Tony was. Adopted, what would you expect. Never had any kids himself, even though he was married a dozen times, wasn’t he? Thick as thieves with Caddy years ago, until someone knocked her up. Someone not Tony. Suppressed smiles.
Mary said: “Let me get you a little treat, Birch Bark …” The dog barked. “That’s the boy.”
Lester squatted, scratched the dog’s head. “They were together all the time, Maymie and this here little guy.”
“You must have got to know that Strickland pretty well,” said Neil. “Seeing him every day, in the joint.”
“I didn’t see him every day, Neil. He was mostly in a different institution. It’s a pretty large population, as you know.”
“Not fuckin large enough,” Neil said to laughter. I laughed too.
“It looks like things are finally sorting themselves out in Iraq,” I said, holding up the paper. “Should take the pressure off Neil Archie and George W. to invade. Let them focus on the real enemy.” People glanced at Neil, expectantly.
“And who might that be?” Neil asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. Al-Qaida. Bin Laden. The people who blew up the towers.”
“They’re all one and the same,” said Neil. “As long as that fuckin Saddam is there, it’s just a matter of time. You wait and see.”
“What do you think, Birch?” Mary said. “I suspect your opinion is worth as much as anybody’s.”
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