The Hour of the Fox

by Kurt Palka

  Aileen saw her and came over. “Do you want some help with that?”

  “You could hold this while I’m hammering. Thanks.” The nails were so small they were hard to hold with cold fingers and strike with the hammer. The second time she hammered her thumb and forefinger, Aileen said, “What’s the matter? You’re all fidgety.”

  And so she told her about the minister.

  * * *

  —

  That evening and night she finished the draft agreement for Hong Kong, and in the morning to save time she took it directly to the courier office in Bridgewater. When she returned she was hardly out of the car when Aileen came hurrying, waving her arms.

  “Margaret! Margaret! Wait! You won’t believe what happened. The police took Danny’s boat. It’s over at Telford’s yard.”

  “So get in the car. Quick. Where’s Danny?”

  “He’s with them.”

  At the boatyard Telford and Sullivan and Danny stood in the open by the shed, and inside the shed the boat was up on a cradle and a man in a lab coat was working with a spray pump and a hand-held light that had a violet hue. A uniformed policeman stood guard at the ladder.

  “In case you’re wondering,” Sully said to her, “the inspector has launched a new initiative to check on people with the right boats and the right skills, so Danny isn’t the only one. I asked him if he agreed to a search of his boat, to eliminate it from a list of possibles, and he said yes.”

  “What right skills, Sergeant?”

  “Finding their way in the dark, for one thing.”

  She looked over at Danny. “And you agreed. Is that right?” “If it doesn’t take too long. I don’t mind. So they’ll finally leave me alone.”

  She motioned for him to follow her to her car. She and Danny sat in the back and Aileen in the front.

  “Danny, they are using a chemical called Luminol to search for blood. Blood is almost impossible to clean up completely, and under a special light even faint traces of it give off a bright glow. Are they going to find any blood in your boat?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You never rinsed out any blood?”

  “No, I didn’t. Well, for sure fish blood when I was still fishing.”

  “I am talking about human blood. They’ll be able to tell the difference.”

  He shook his head.

  “What about John Patrick? After he used your boat, did it ever look like it had been rinsed out?”

  “It’s a boat. It gets wet.”

  “Danny, this is serious.”

  “I know it is, and I have nothing to hide and I want to get it over with.”

  For a while she sat in silence. Aileen sat hunched in the passenger seat. She’d arranged the mirror so she could see them both in the back. Margaret could see her eyes and the worry in them.

  She thought a while longer, then reached for the door handle.

  “Wait,” said Aileen. “I’ve been trying to keep quiet, but what about the other night, Danny? When you had that cut on your hand. Show it to Margaret.”

  “Mom, that was nothing. I wish you’d stop butt’n in.” But he showed it to her and explained.

  They walked back to the boat shed, and as soon as he saw them Sullivan came up and said that blood had been found in two places in the wheelhouse.

  “Danny,” she said. “Tell him.”

  And Danny showed the sergeant his hand and described the storm damage at the Brewers’ property and how he’d cut himself taking out pieces of glass.

  “All right,” said Sullivan. “We’ll check it out. And first thing tomorrow we’ll need your blood sample. Have it done at the hospital and tell the nurse to call the police station for instructions. In the meantime we’ll continue the search, and you can’t use the boat. No one can. This is a suspect vessel now and it’s got to stay put.”

  Sullivan turned to the constable. “I see there’s a hasp on the door, so go over there and ask Mr. Herman if he has a padlock for it. If not, go and buy one. And when we’re done, you stay here and you guard this situation. We’ll spell you at the end of your shift.”

  * * *

  —

  At some point that night when she could not sleep, she went into Andrew’s room again and turned on the ceiling light and sat in his driftwood chair. The silver Mother’s Cross on the wall. His bucket full of lead.

  She sat a while longer and tried to consider the possibility of turning the room into a guest room. Give away his clothes and the old chifforobe and the bed. Get modern furniture. A cheerful new rug. Pictures and new curtains. But it was unthinkable.

  She turned out the light and went downstairs.

  In the kitchen she made herself a cup of hot chocolate with real cocoa, milk, and sugar, something she had learned from Aileen, and then for a while she stood in the open back door. The trees darker than the night sky. By now she knew them from their outlines. White pine, red pine, tamarack, white spruce and the slimmer black spruce, a hemlock over there, a few cedars. And then the hardwoods, their leaves turning quickly now and beginning to fall.

  Twenty-Two

  ONE EVENING AT THÉRÈSE’S retirement residence in the South of France, five months after Andrew’s death, there had been the outlines of trees against the sky as well, trees of a different kind. Palm trees, with pale light in the sky and pale light on the Mediterranean.

  Over the years she and Thérèse had kept in touch and become friends, and that night they were sitting in canvas chairs on the patio, talking. Thérèse had a wool blanket over her knees even though it was May. She said she was often cold.

  Thérèse was even thinner now, with a calm expression on her face nearly always. Her inner smile, as she’d once explained it to Margaret. Something she had taught herself. An inner smile through which to filter the world. What to allow in, what to keep out.

  “Margaret,” she said. “Do you remember the time when you sent me that note about holding rights and the Yes and No boxes?”

  “Yes, of course I do.”

  “I thought so. At the time there was nothing more to be said about it, and it’s many years ago, but I want to talk about it now. Because in the time since, I have changed my mind. Now, at this stage in my life—you understand, the person I am now, not the one I was then—I would mark the Yes box as well.”

  “You would? What happened?”

  “Time happened. Now I would want to know. To be able to imagine him or her in later years. Mine would be fifty-four years old now. And it could be any woman or man out there. At the time I was in shock, Margaret. I despised that man, and I despised myself. I felt shamed. And I was so young. I knew nothing! The worst thing was that I blamed myself for the longest time.”

  “And yet you didn’t keep it a secret.”

  “I did for the first little while. But once I had my teaching certificate and I heard about École Olivier and its philosophy, and that they were looking for someone to help build it, I made the decision, and from then on I even used it as a kind of qualification. A badge of merit. And it worked.”

  For a while they sat in silence. They could hear traffic from the street beyond the trees. A car door closing.

  When Thérèse spoke again, she said that she had always liked Margaret’s story about choosing parents at Lakewood. There was method and resolve in it. “Did it work?” she said.

  “Mostly.”

  “And now?”

  “On days when I’m not too shaky, it’s still in a safe place.”

  Thérèse said she could understand that. Hers was in a safe place as well, and in some ways the entire episode had in the course of her life turned from a negative experience into a positive one, or at least an instructive one.

  What she meant, she said, was that it had taught her to forgive herself and to be unafraid. And never again to allow herself to be shamed. It had made her into who she was, she said. And who with any luck she was still becoming. If she lived long enough.

  Her hands were fingering the
edge of the blanket. Dry hands. Thin, the veins dark.

  “Other than that…” she said. “The saddest day of my life was when Philippe died. No, that’s not true. The days that followed all the next year were even sadder. But you know that. We’ve talked about it. And still, to this day. So you see, Margaret? I do understand about loss.”

  There was silence between them for a while. Up in the palm trees, a breeze. Voices from somewhere.

  * * *

  —

  “They’ll be calling for dinner any moment now,” Thérèse said. “The food’s quite good here, you’ll see. I’m so glad you came, Margaret. So very glad.”

  Thérèse had been at École Olivier for a total of nearly thirty years. She’d been there from the earliest stages and had helped build it into a fully academic finishing school, right up to the baccalaureate level.

  But then, more than ten years after Margaret’s time in France, two sets of parents made written complaints about Thérèse’s unorthodox teaching. One of the complaints specifically mentioned her Women’s Stories sessions. All too free and inappropriate, it said. Anti-Christian, anti-social, anti-family. At the very least, improper for girls that age.

  An investigation followed. No real fault was found, and perhaps it was a coincidence that the girls whose parents had complained were friends and one of them had failed her baccalaureate. But the parents threatened to go directly to the Ministry of Education, and because the school’s reputation mattered greatly in terms of its finances, Thérèse was asked to resign.

  The dismissal was a blow to her, but it also set her free to concentrate on her ideas around the inner self and fulfillment, and on her writing. She was fifty-five when she moved to furnished rooms and began helping in restaurant kitchens and serving at tables. She lived cheaply, like all the impoverished writers and poets in Paris, and set to work.

  Her third and most famous book, Between Me and Myself, or Entre moi et moi-même in the original French, foreshadowed the bold new feminism to come and a woman’s right, even obligation, to take full responsibility for herself and to make her own choices in all things related to her person. Reviewers called it absolutely scandalous, even shameless, and an affront to marriage and a woman’s role within her family, but within less than a year Between Me and Myself was an international success.

  * * *

  —

  In the dining room there were white tablecloths and flowers and good china and cutlery. Only subdued sounds came from the other tables in the room. Servers wore black skirts or trousers with long white aprons.

  Over dinner she confided to Thérèse that in her darkest moments, when she leaned close to her bathroom mirror, she hated the person in there. And she feared that she’d become a good lawyer at a very high price. The law, she said, was after all only words. Lots of words that could be studied and remembered, and she was fortunate in that she was able at times to see connections that others had missed. But while success in her profession was one thing, she feared that she had failed at other things that normal women understood with perfect ease. Understood intuitively. Like how to keep your children close and safe, never mind how not to endanger your marriage.

  Thérèse shook her head. “Give it time,” she said. “And a normal woman—what is that? The best I can say is, give it time.”

  After dinner they walked to the taxi that would take her back to the hotel. Thérèse walked slowly, with her left arm in Margaret’s. A more fragile arm now, and her hair nearly white, still perfectly groomed, still held up with combs. Black ones now.

  At the bottom of the steps leading from the entrance to the street, Thérèse stopped. She reached and in the dark put her hand to Margaret’s face and said, “About your sorrow, dear. There are no explanations, no reasons. And you know it. No one can take your sorrow away from you, or even lessen it for you. It is yours to bear, and after a while you will find that you can live with it. It will be a sweet pain close to your heart always, but in time that pain itself will become an important part of you. It is strange. It becomes almost something like a friend.”

  Twenty-Three

  SHE STILL ALWAYS DRESSED in skirt, blouse, and jacket to work at her desk in the boathouse, and several times a day she dealt with couriers and spoke on the telephone with Jenny and at least once a day with Hugh Templeton. Hugh was pleased that the Chicago deal had gone through, and he’d signed off on the draft agreement for the Hong Kong corporation transfer.

  On Wednesday from her desk she heard the sound of hammering and of workmen calling to one another. She picked up the pager and stepped into her boots and walked over to Aileen’s to see what was going on.

  “Cedar shingles,” Aileen said with a big smile. “Can you believe it? Danny’s early Christmas present to me. I had no idea he was planning on that. No idea at all. He’s out in the truck right now since he doesn’t have the boat.”

  Margaret called Inspector Sorensen to find out when the boat would be released, but the duty officer said the inspector was in Yarmouth on a case and might not be able to call back for a day or two.

  Just before lunch she put on the coverall and walked over to Aileen’s again, to help with the cleanup of the old shingles that had been stripped from the roof. They raked the broken pieces into piles on tarpaulins and the men dragged those across the rock to the truck and hoisted them up into the bed. For lunch Aileen served the workmen soft drinks and fish and chips and coleslaw at the picnic bench.

  “Eat, boys. Eat,” she kept urging them. For dessert, she brought a tub of ice cream and spoons and cups.

  * * *

  —

  In Margaret’s kitchen the light on the answering machine was blinking. It was Dr. Snell at the morgue, asking her to call back.

  “Good news,” said the doctor. “I have permission to release the bodies into your care. I’ll need the name of the funeral home, and then you can come and sign some papers. Once the bodies are out of refrigeration they’ll have to be cremated or buried within twenty-four hours. That’s a public health requirement. Cremated, usually, because of the time constraint. When can you come?”

  “Twenty-four hours. Wait, wait! I didn’t know that. I’ll have to make arrangements. Don’t take them out just yet. Let me call you back.”

  She showered and then put on city clothes and a coat and drove to the church.

  This time the minister did not even ask her to sit.

  He stood listening to her, and when she had finished he shook his head. “I haven’t changed my mind, Margaret. I think about these things carefully and then I decide. I have decided. I’m sorry, but the answer is still no.”

  “But why, Reverend?”

  “I’ve told you why.”

  “But have you considered how good it would be for the community to come together for this cause? Have you spoken to people, had anyone’s input? Or is it just your own opinion, your possibly quite stubborn opinion, if I may say so?”

  He opened his mouth to say something, but she went on. “Bonnie and Clyde graves indeed. And what if? Would that be so bad? Reverend, I am asking you to reconsider. A church service. No coffins and open graves, just two urns, as it turns out. And let’s say a small memorial plaque on the urn wall, which I’ll pay for.”

  She tried to calm herself, to smile at him.

  “Please, Reverend. May I remind you of how much my family, especially my grandmother, has done for this community and this church? The town hall in her name, AJ Hall, and the fund she set up for its maintenance.”

  “The grandmother who is not laid to rest here among us. Nor is her husband, nor your father. And neither, I imagine, will you be.”

  “Reverend, please think about it a bit more.”

  She waited for him to say something but he just shook his head. He raised a hand and waved at his desk. “I have work to do, Mrs. Bradley. But thank you for your visit.”

  On the way home she made a detour past the boatyard. Down at the shed the same constable was back, guarding th
e door. He sat with his collar up and his hands in his armpits for warmth, on a kitchen chair with a brick under each front leg to make it even. When he saw her he stood up.

  “Ma’am,” he said.

  “Constable. Any news in the case? About Danny’s blood test? Do you know?”

  “No, ma’am. You’d have to speak with the inspector about that. And ma’am, what if a storm hits while I’m out here? Do you think I could move inside somewhere? Maybe that shed down there. Would that be all right?”

  “Seems reasonable to me, Constable. But you better check with the sergeant.”

  From the house she called Sorensen again and left another message. She called the station and asked for Sergeant Sullivan and was told by the desk officer that the sergeant was out as well.

  * * *

  —

  Up in Andrew’s room she opened the window wide. She propped the door open and walked across the landing into the other room and opened that window and then kept the door open also. She stood in the draft, feeling it.

  In his closet she reached and pushed his clothes to the far right on the rod. There weren’t many of them. Two pairs of dress pants, jeans, a sports jacket, and some shirts. The brick-red linen one that he’d liked best. His jean jacket. The drawers were nearly empty as well. A shirt she didn’t recognize. Some socks. She stripped his bed and stood up the two mattress segments and leaned them against each other. She picked up the sheets and pillowcases and carried them down to the washing machine. The solenoid clicked and warm water rushed in, and when the soap powder was dissolved she put in the sheets and closed the lid.

  Throughout all this she kept talking to him. Hoping he would not mind, would understand. It was only when she was back at the kitchen table that she realized she was crying. At the sink she threw water on her face and dabbed it dry with a paper towel and sat down again at the table with her hands in her lap.