The Retreat

by David Bergen

  Raymond stumbled upwards and whispered, his voice rasping and fearful, “Did you kill him?”

  “I don’t know. He just fell onto the knife.” Nelson looked at his own chest. Blood had soaked his shirt and pants and was dripping down onto the floor. He walked to the sink and took a towel and held it to the wound, then tied a T-shirt around his chest. Raymond was standing over Hart. He was stooped slightly, looking down at the body as if he were teetering at the edge of a deep gorge and measuring its depth. “He’s breathing,” he said. He went down on his knees and touched the knife in the man’s chest.

  Nelson took a chair and sat down and observed the scene. The back of his brother’s head, the policeman’s foot twisted to the left, the blood on the floor. He sat, breathing with difficulty. Raymond came over to the table. “Now what?” he asked.

  “They’ll have tracker dogs and Christ knows what coming after me.” He held his palms to the ceiling as if imploring to a beneficent God. “I’m fucked.”

  “He tried to kill you,” Raymond said. “He did. Try.”

  Nelson said that he would have to pack clothes and food and water. He’d take the .22 and some shells. He said that Raymond should drop him off on the dump road. “I’ll hide out for the night and then find some place safer,” he said. “Don’t worry, I won’t get caught.” He said that it would be Raymond’s job to bring Hart to the hospital. No one would suspect him then. It wasn’t the best plan, but it was necessary. “We can’t have him dead. If they ask, and they will, tell them you had nothing to do with this. Can you do that?”

  “They won’t believe me.”

  “Just do it.”

  Raymond said that he wanted to help Nelson. “I’ll come back for you.”

  Nelson shook his head. “It’s better we separate. Like I said, you did nothing.”

  They sat and watched Hart breathe, the knife rising and sinking in his chest. Raymond said that he’d thought Nelson was a dead man. “And if you were dead, so was I.”

  Nelson stood and left the room, returning with a silver-coloured duffle bag into which he put canned goods and .22 shells and a sweater and socks and some fruit and bread. He filled several sealer jars with water, screwed on the lids, and put them in the bag. He called for Bull, and when she appeared he picked her up. She sniffed at his T-shirt and clawed his arm. He took the cat outside and pushed her into the bag. She fought and hissed but he zipped the bag shut and put it into the box of the pickup. When he came back Raymond was again bent over Hart.

  “He’s barely breathing now,” Raymond said.

  Together they carried Hart out to the pickup and placed him in the box, laying him down on the tarp that covered the supplies destined for the park. Hart groaned as they laid him out. Raymond climbed into the box and rearranged his position. He pushed toilet-paper rolls under his head as cushioning. He climbed out and they stood, looking down at the body.

  Nelson grunted with pain.

  Raymond carefully lifted his brother’s shirt, unwrapped the T-shirt he had tied around his chest, and studied the wound with the aid of a flashlight. The cut was deep and the wound was oozing blood. Raymond reapplied the T-shirt, tying it tighter this time. He went into the house and came back with a half-full bottle of whisky and handed it to Nelson. Then he got into the cab and turned the ignition.

  Nelson sat in the back of the pickup with Hart. His chest hurt. With every corner and every jolt he sucked air between his teeth and closed his eyes. When he opened them again he saw the stars in the black sky. There were multitudes and some he knew were already dead, which was a fact he had picked up in Mr. Zeiroth’s science class in grade nine. He knew too that everything inanimate was indifferent to his plight at that moment. The rocks, the trees, the stars themselves. Nothing was eternal. He had been baptized as a young teenager. He had done this willingly, believing in eternity. He had wanted to please his stepfather and he had succeeded, but his own pleasure had eventually dissipated. Nothing lasted. He looked down at Hart’s squat body and thought that the man would gladly have killed him. The desire had been there on his face and in his eyes.

  At the dirt road that led to the dump, Raymond stopped and Nelson climbed from the back of the pickup. He held the rifle under his arm, lifted the duffle bag from the box, and stood by the open driver’s window.

  Raymond lit a cigarette and gave the pack to Nelson, who slipped it into his jacket pocket.

  “You got fire?” Raymond asked.

  Nelson said yes.

  “You gonna just disappear?”

  Nelson shrugged, then he walked off.

  The last thing Raymond saw was the bag swinging back and forth like a poorly lit lamp, and then it too was gone.

  In the morning it was raining. Lizzy carried Fish down the path to the kitchen. She ran in bare feet and she carried an umbrella and Fish squealed and laughed and Lizzy felt his hot breath on her neck. She had not slept much, perhaps an hour or two. Images of Raymond on the swing beside his brother. And the police cruiser passing by. And her long walk back to the Retreat, arriving just before dawn. She had crawled into bed beside Fish, who had woken briefly and then fallen back to sleep. Lying beside him, she had registered his breathing and she had heard the movements of Everett and William. And then she had slept and woken to the sound of a waterfall and she had become conscious of the rain. She wondered where Raymond was.

  At breakfast she ate across from the Doctor and his wife. Several people had already left the Retreat, Ian and Jill among them. They had had “fantastic” plans to go down to California to work on a collective farm. “A commune on a grander scale,” Ian had said, and Jill had held his hand and grinned. Stupid people, Lizzy had thought at the time. But now she saw that stupidity could arrive in many different ways. Lizzy had learned that Emma and Franz were leaving as well, driving down to Toronto and then flying to Berlin and then to Tanzania. Harris was not a part of their plans. He would stay on, as would the Byrds, and they would close the Retreat together with the Doctor and his family.

  Lizzy wondered if her father felt a sense of collapse, that all the good intentions at the beginning of the summer had been mislaid. It made her heart ache because she could tell that her father was still convinced that her mother would return before everyone left.

  Fish sat beside her and looked forlornly at his scrambled eggs. He asked for syrup.

  “No more syrup,” Lizzy said. “Just eat.”

  “But syrup,” Fish said, looking up with round, clear eyes.

  Everett came in, wheeling Harris. Lizzy, watching, felt that Harris had been humiliated once too often, though he did not seem troubled by the fact that his wife was going to leave soon. She looked away and tended to Fish, who had pushed his plate into the middle of the table. “Here,” she said, and put a dollop of strawberry jam on the eggs and guided the plate back under his nose. He began to cry. She gave him a piece of toast and tea. Warily, he dunked the toast into the tea.

  Everett parked Harris at the table and fixed him a plate of eggs and toast, a mug of coffee, and placed both before him. He sat down next to Lizzy and said, “There’s a policeman talking to Dad. They’re standing in the rain. I thought it might be about Mum, but it’s not.”

  Lizzy went to the window and looked out to where her father was leaning into the door of the police car, seemingly oblivious to the rain that fell. William was with him, huddling close, as usual these days. Her father righted himself and sprinted towards the dining hall, William running to keep up. When they came inside, Lewis approached her, concern showing on his face.

  Her father drove her to the police station, and during the drive her father talked. He said that she should tell the truth. He didn’t know what the truth was, and he certainly didn’t know what had happened the night before, but she shouldn’t shy from the truth, whatever part of it she might know. His voice was quiet, but he was obviously worried and Lizzy told him that he had nothing to worry about, she hadn’t done anything. He said that all of this, this mess,
was his own fault. He should have taken the children home once her mother had left. He said he hadn’t been paying attention, that he’d been selfish, too much inside his own troubles. When they arrived at the station, Lewis asked if Lizzy wanted him with her during the interview but Lizzy said no, she would do this herself.

  The woman who questioned Lizzy was a detective, but she didn’t wear a uniform and she didn’t have a gun. She wore a skirt and a white blouse with a blue flower embroidered at the back, just below the collar. She spoke slowly and softly, but she never smiled. She wanted to know where Lizzy had been the day before, and who she had been with. She wanted every detail: the times, the places, what was said. There was a tape recorder and it was running.

  The woman’s name was Thibault. At first Lizzy thought she had said “T. Bone,” but later she understood that it was a French name and she had spelled it in her head. When they’d entered the room, Thibault had indicated one chair and taken the other and then bent to write something on a piece of paper. Lizzy saw that she was going grey. There were strands of hair that were completely white and they sat next to the more plentiful, black hairs, but it was the white hairs that intrigued Lizzy, as if they were a sign of softness.

  Thibault looked up and asked, “Do you know why you’re here?”

  Lizzy swallowed and shook her head.

  Thibault nodded. She asked how well Lizzy knew Raymond Seymour.

  Lizzy said that she knew him. They were friends. “Why? Did something happen to him? Is he hurt?”

  Thibault said, “Tell me what happened yesterday. Where were you?”

  Lizzy’s hands were shaking. “We were going out for a drive, and then on the way back, a police car pulled us over. It was that policeman. Hart. He was angry and Raymond panicked and knocked him over with the door. Later, he threw his gun in the ditch. He was scared. He didn’t take the gun. And then we went to his cabin.”

  “Raymond Seymour’s cabin?”

  Lizzy nodded. She asked again if Raymond was hurt.

  Thibault looked up from her notebook. “Why would he be hurt?”

  “Something happened.” She looked around the room. “Why am I here?”

  Thibault leaned forward and touched Lizzy’s arm. “Constable Hart was hurt. Late last night. There was a fight at the cabin. With a knife. You were there as well.”

  “No. No. I left the cabin. When the policeman saw me, that was the afternoon.”

  “You didn’t see Constable Hart up at the cabin?”

  “No. I did not. Raymond was afraid the policeman might come after him. He didn’t like Raymond. Last year he left him on an island to die, so Raymond had reason to be afraid. Raymond wouldn’t hurt anyone.” She started to cry.

  “Really? And yet you say he knocked Constable Hart out and threw his gun into the ditch.”

  “Over. He knocked him over with the pickup door. It was by accident.” She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “The man, Constable Hart, he was angry. There was no reason to be.”

  “How is that?”

  “Raymond didn’t do anything.”

  “But he did.”

  “Before. There was no reason before for the policeman to stop us.”

  “So, he’s innocent.”

  Lizzy didn’t want to cry again, because she knew that that would make her seem weak, but she began to cry anyway. She shook her head resolutely and turned away. She saw Raymond’s face as he told her to stay in the truck. His eyes had been so cold and certain. She looked at Thibault now and said that she was afraid.

  “Of course you are.” Then Thibault asked what time she had left the cabin.

  “Just after dark.”

  “You drove home?”

  “Walked. I walked.”

  “And you didn’t see Constable Hart after the incident on the highway?”

  She shook her head.

  There was a long pause during which Thibault wrote in her notebook. Voices, muted and unintelligible, passed by in the hallway.

  “Can I see him?” Lizzy asked.

  “No, you can’t.”

  Lizzy bit her lip. “Has he asked about me?”

  Thibault did not answer. Her pencil moved across the page and then she looked up finally. “Did he have sex with you? Raymond Seymour?”

  Lizzy lifted her chin. “Why? Why is that important?”

  “Did he?”

  Lizzy nodded.

  “How many times?”

  Lizzy closed her eyes and opened them. Thibault was still there. “Two. Three times.”

  “Penetration?”

  “Isn’t that what sex is?” She felt that by saying that Raymond had had sex with her, it was as if she were lifting a stone and revealing what was crawling underneath. The question appeared to make perfect sense to this woman, and for Lizzy, in the confines of the room, each question seemed to require the truth. She was very tired and she had to pee but she felt if she admitted this it would be one more shameful thing. “We both wanted to. We agreed.” Her voice sounded to herself slightly panicky.

  Thibault nodded, wrote something down again, and Lizzy knew that the word penetration was wrong. A leap in logic would be made: if Raymond had penetrated her, he could have penetrated Hart with the knife. This policewoman would not know the difference. She was about to protest, when Thibault spoke.

  “Did Nelson Seymour ever try to have sex with you?”

  Lizzy felt frightened. “What are you trying to say?”

  “Just what I asked.”

  “No,” Lizzy said. “No. Nothing like that.”

  “Did anybody else in your family spend time with Raymond or Nelson?”

  “No, just me,” she said, and in saying this, she felt she had breached some high wall that had stood in the distance, a wall that had been impassable but was now behind her, and she knew that Everett was safe. She looked at Thibault and said she had to go to the bathroom. Could she?

  “Of course,” Thibault said. She led Lizzy into a corridor and together they walked down a flight of stairs, Thibault slightly ahead of her so that the blue flower at the back of her shirt was directly in Lizzy’s eyesight. And then across a second hallway and up three steps into a cavernous bathroom that smelled of disinfectant. Lizzy went into one of the stalls and locked the door. She pulled down her jeans and underwear and she sat, but for the longest time she could not urinate. She sensed Thibault beyond the door of the stall, and she realized that she would hear the pee hitting the water in the bowl and this made peeing impossible. Her stomach hurt. She listened for the rain outside, but she was deep in the core of the building and nothing from the outside world reached her.

  And then Thibault said, “Here.” Her voice echoed in the tiled bathroom and she turned on one of the taps at the sink, and as the water descended from the faucet, Lizzy began to pee. She went for a long time, aware of the release, aware of her hands on her bare knees.

  Her father gathered her up as she came into the main area of the police station. He did not speak, just took her out to the pickup and placed her in the passenger’s seat. Then he got in and asked if she was okay.

  She nodded and looked out at the grey sky. The rain had stopped.

  Her father drove slowly up Main Street and then left onto Second and past the Kenricia Hotel and the movie theatre and then past the prison where Lizzy imagined Raymond would be. She told him what Thibault had told her, that Hart had been stabbed by Raymond and Nelson. She said that she didn’t believe it was true. She had been with Raymond in the afternoon, and she’d been up at the cabin afterwards, and she knew that there might be trouble, but not like this. She said that she’d walked home. “Raymond didn’t force me to do anything,” she said.

  “You walked home? All that way in the dark? Why didn’t Raymond drive you?”

  Lizzy shook her head. “He asked, but I wouldn’t let him. He was in trouble.”

  Her father had that perplexed, simple look he sometimes took on. “I don’t understand how this happened, Lizzy
. I believe you, but I don’t understand.”

  She knew that there might be something she could say to comfort her father, but she could not find the words. She turned to look out her window and remembered that when she was younger, for a summer, her father had operated a tractor trailer out of Calgary, hauling scrap metal up to Vancouver, and Lizzy had joined him on several trips. She had loved the night driving, the high headlights of the semi spilling onto the road before them and pushing away the darkness, and at each sharp turn she had imagined animals lying in wait in the middle of the road. But always, there was only the road and the trucks with their running lights passing in the opposite direction, and her father with his big hands on the wheel, staring straight ahead, talking to her, telling her long-winded stories about nothing really, and she had never felt so safe, so special, away from her brothers and her mother, by herself with her father. Now, that feeling of safety was gone, and with it the certainty and comfort. She thought about who she was now and who she had been and she felt longing for what could never be recovered.