The Hour of the Fox

by Kurt Palka

—

  An hour later she and Franklin sat in Aileen’s kitchen, and Aileen had made coffee for them. The window was open a crack because the entire house smelled strongly of the fermenting blueberry wine.

  “How’s the new batch coming?” said Margaret. “It’s rich enough in here to get high on just the fumes.”

  “I know. I keep them covered like babes and I’m airing the place out as often as I can. It’ll be up to twelve or thirteen per cent now. Usually it finishes around sixteen. The flavour is great then but it’s pretty dry, and so when it stops working it’s siphoned off and we add a bit of sugar. In the bottle it keeps getting better all the time.”

  Out the window against the dark of rocks and evergreens, small snowflakes were drifting by.

  “You see that?” said Franklin. “So early. Is Danny out on his rounds?”

  “He is. I did tell him to keep his head down and not to take any chances with the boat. To stay away from John Patrick.”

  Just then a police car pulled up, and Sullivan climbed out and put on his uniform cap.

  “Oh-oh,” said Aileen. “I don’t like seeing that boy show up like that.”

  He came up the stoop and walked past the kitchen window. The door opened and then from the little hallway he called, “Hello? Mrs. McInnis?”

  “In the kitchen, Sergeant.”

  He came in with his cap off, and he looked at them in their chairs with their mugs on the table. He raised his nose to the alcohol fumes but said nothing.

  “Take a seat, Sergeant,” said Aileen. “Want some coffee?”

  He shook his head and remained standing. He looked away from Aileen, over at Margaret.

  “Mrs. Bradley, I have an urgent message for you. I went to your house first but there was no one there. Inspector Sorensen wants you to know that the parents of the dead kids have come forward. The inspector wants you to stop everything you’re doing in connection with the case. Every last thing, ma’am. Right away. And he’s asking you to be ready to take his phone call at noon today at your number.”

  * * *

  —

  She stood in her bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet and took out the pills. She uncapped the bottles and slid out one of the antianxiety pills and one of the new stronger codeines. She held them ready in her fingers but then put them down on the glass shelf.

  He called at exactly twelve o’clock.

  “I heard,” she said. “You found the parents. Of both of them?”

  “There’s only one set of parents. The kids were brother and sister.”

  “Brother and sister.”

  “Yes. That’s one test we didn’t do. The truth is, I didn’t think of it. Anyway, they are here now. Somebody, I think a teacher, saw the posted pictures at a police station in Mexico and recognized them. The parents speak English quite well. I understand you’ve had the bodies picked up. Where are they now, so the parents can go and view them?”

  “But it’s too late for that! They’ve been cremated.”

  There was silence on the line.

  “Already,” he said then. “That’s very unfortunate. They wanted to take them home.”

  She felt dizzy for a moment. “Well, I…there were public health regulations. Once they were out of refrigeration. The funeral is on Tuesday.”

  “Maybe not. You may need to cancel it. Can you come into the city and talk to the parents? Tell them how it happened. Your part in it. Explain about the funeral. Do you have the ashes?”

  She heard what he was saying but she was far away, pressing her fingers to her eyebrow.

  “Mrs. Bradley?”

  “Can I call you back on this? I’ll call you back…”

  She put the receiver down on the table and walked into the bathroom and put both pills in her mouth. Bit on them and moved the crumbs under her tongue and then walked into the living room and sat down on the sofa, leaning forward with her eyes closed and her face in her cupped hands.

  At some point she could hear sounds in the kitchen, and when she turned there was Aileen walking her way with a folded damp cloth.

  “I called but there was always just the busy signal,” said Aileen. “So I came over. Lean back and let’s put this on your forehead. Let me help you, Margaret.”

  * * *

  —

  Three hours later she felt better. She was in her car, driving into the city. Rather than the highway, she took the old coastal route through the small towns. Chester, East River, and the peninsular route from there, the ocean always to her right, through Blandford and Bayswater and Fox Point and Black Point and Upper Tantallon, and on to the city.

  She checked into the Westin and sat for a while on the side of the bed with her hands in her lap. It was six-thirty on Saturday evening. Out the window it was getting dark. She could see the reflection of the room, the bed and the lamp on the side table. Herself sitting there, all in black except for the grey blouse. Lights coming on everywhere, pinpoints of light.

  When she’d made the decision, she took the elevator two floors up and walked along the hallway. In front of their door she raised her hand and knocked.

  Voices from inside, then the door was opened by a man in a black suit and tie. She said her name and the man nodded and motioned her into the room. She could see a woman lying on the bed, propped up by a pillow against the headboard. She wore a long black dress, and as Margaret stepped into the room the woman drew a black veil down over her head and face. On a small white plate on the side table next to the only chair in the room, a candle was burning.

  She had brought the framed drawings of the children, and she placed them on the bed and reached to touch the woman’s hand but the woman moved her hand away.

  The man said something softly to her in Spanish but the woman ignored him.

  They stood awkwardly for a moment, and then the man offered his hand and shook hers and pointed at the chair.

  He said, “My wife, Anna, the children’s mother, she is in very mourning. We both are.” He looked at the woman and again said a few words in Spanish.

  “She is in very mourning,” he said again to Margaret. “She requests to be excused because a large part of her is not here in this room.”

  He studied the small black bowtie in Margaret’s lapel and said something else to the woman. She whispered some words and held out her hand for the pictures, and the man passed them to her. He sat down on the side of the bed with his hands on his black trouser knees. They were strong, well-shaped hands, good hands, much like Jack’s.

  The woman looked at the pictures through her veil for a long time while no one spoke. Then she put them down by her side. For a while they could hear her weeping. She sat with her glasses in one hand and with the other using a tissue behind the veil.

  “Their names were Hugo and Carmensita,” said the man. “They were young, with so much still to learn about this world. Which is a treacherous world, unforgiving of mistakes and weakness. Even in the case of so much innocence.”

  “Yes, it is,” said Margaret. “I don’t know where to begin. The inspector has told you, yes? About the cremation and the planned funeral service?”

  The woman spoke some words in Spanish to the man, and he nodded slowly and looked at Margaret.

  He said, “Anna wants to know why you are wearing a brazal de luto.”

  “Mourning ribbon,” said the woman, and he repeated those words.

  Margaret put her hand to her lapel and said, “It is for my son. He died in January of this year. He was in training to become a military pilot.”

  “A soldier,” said the woman. “In which war?”

  “He died in a peacekeeping mission.”

  “A peacekeeping mission.”

  “Yes.”

  The man and the woman sat waiting for her to go on, but she did not. After a while the man stood up from the bed and went into the bathroom. He came back with a glass of water, and he raised it and wiped the bottom with his hand and then set it carefully on the low table next to M
argaret’s chair.

  He returned to the side of the bed and sat again with his hands on his knees. The woman now reached and folded up her veil. She had a strong, pale face and black hair pulled back and twisted forward over one shoulder.

  “Please tell us about our children,” she said. “The inspector said only what was in the police report. And that they found us too late, and that you were planning a funeral. Please tell us more. For example, why the cremación.”

  * * *

  —

  When she had described and explained as best she could, there was a lengthy silence. The woman had drawn the veil back down over her face, and again she held her glasses in one hand and with the other used a tissue.

  Margaret stood up and approached the woman on the bed and offered her hand again. The woman lifted the veil and put on her glasses and took Margaret’s hand. Then she leaned her head back against the pillow and closed her eyes. She reached blindly for the veil and lowered it again over her face. She spoke some words in Spanish to her husband and he nodded and stood up.

  “With your permission, Anna is asking for you please to excuse us now,” he said. “She is very sad today. I am also.”

  Twenty-Six

  IN THE MORNING she called them on the telephone and offered to take them to St. Mary’s Cathedral for mass. They agreed, and half an hour later they met in the hotel lobby. They shook hands, and the woman said formally that her name was Anna and her husband’s was Gustavo.

  Margaret said her name as well, and she told them that her husband Jack could not be here because he had to travel a great deal. He was a mining geologist.

  The man said, “Geólogo?” to the woman, and she nodded. To Margaret she said, “Gustavo and I are teachers. Carmensita was going to be as well. Hugo had not decided.”

  They were again clothed all in black, Anna in her long dress and a hat with a black veil. People in the hotel lobby stole glances at them.

  The church was one of the oldest on the coast. It had high vaults of stone and wood joinery and tall leaded windows, and all the woodwork and the very stone were steeped in incense for generations.

  At communion the parents went up to the rail and knelt. When the priest offered the mother the host, she raised her veil and he placed it on her tongue and she lowered the veil again and bowed her head. The father had the host put into his cupped hands.

  After the service she took them back to the hotel, and from her room she called the minister and explained. No ceremony at the urn wall, she said, because the parents would be taking the ashes home with them. Just the memorial service.

  The parents had not wanted breakfast and they would not eat lunch. But they sat with her at the table and spoke mostly English with each other for her benefit. They sipped water and told her about their children. They were much the same stories she might have told about Andrew. Sweet and adorable when they were small, more and more strong-willed and independent as they grew older. A fine closeness between brother and sister. Acts of rebellion from the boy. He ran away from home once when he was sixteen, but in the night threw pebbles at his sister’s window and let her know where he was. And in the morning she went there and persuaded him to come home.

  “And where was he?” Margaret asked.

  “In the small Santa María Chapel. Our bigger churches are locked at night now.”

  “In a chapel. Was he religious?”

  “Not really. But it was raining. And he’d been an altar boy in primary school. I sewed his sobrepelliz.” The mother ran her hands over her front. “All white, and a small cross here,” she said.

  She reached up and let the veil fall over her face. She opened her purse and took out a handkerchief and snapped shut the purse and sat back in her chair.

  * * *

  —

  In the afternoon they drove south to Sweetbarry. The parents were in the back seat. She took the coastal road again, the ocean always to their left, the small, solitary white houses like stranded lifeboats. She felt proud of it all, loved to hear them comment to each other and in her limited Spanish knew enough words to follow their exchanges.

  Halfway there, the mother said, “Tell us about your son, please.”

  And she found it a welcome relief to tell them all that was on her mind while they sat in the back seat, listening.

  She told them about Andrew’s schooling to become an engineer, and about his dream to become a military pilot; about the last time she saw him, hoisting his duffel bag, so eager to get on that bus. The grinning faces in the windows, boys going off on their big adventure. She saw that last happy moment so often, she said. And she would tell herself, Remember that. Remember that. So very often. As if she could still not believe it. As if by recalling it, she might be able to make it real again and then undo it. Change the outcome.

  They drove on. At some point the father cleared his throat and then spoke for the first time, unprompted and at length. He spoke with great formality.

  “Señora Bradley,” he said. “With your permission. Anna and I always said that we must allow our children to make their own mistakes, small mistakes, and learn from them. Some of their own decisions. We never imagined that any outcome could be so unforgiving. You speak of your son leaving you that day on the bus, but perhaps it was not you he was leaving. Perhaps men, young and old, embark on adventures to discover themselves, as the storybooks tell. And to pry themselves loose from the familiar, the safe. The predictable.

  “We cannot change our children’s nature, we can only hope to guide them somewhat. Anna and I, we talk about this, and we very much want to think that this is true. That they set out on the necessary journey, a journey of which they cannot know the ending, but at the time of setting out, the ending is not important. It is the journey that matters. And endings such as that of your son and our children, how can they be foreseen? They cannot. They are unknowable.”

  Anna said something to him in Spanish, and he replied gently in English that it was true and that it was important.

  “Señora Bradley,” he said, “our son loved his sister, but this adventure was surely his idea. The newspapers are writing of other students doing it. It is new but already quite common. An act of independence and a thrill, and as much as four thousand American dollars in cash per carrier. In many places in our country you can buy a house for that. And it is all prepared and organized like a guided tour, and always they come back safe. Until now. But you see the temptation for the young? The attraction?

  “We cannot know what happened on that island. Perhaps he fought a man and tried to protect his sister. And she had come along perhaps to protect him. You see? We cannot know. The only thing that is certain is that their mother and I will always love them and we will be sad for a long time, perhaps always.”

  They drove on in silence. Through Marriott’s Cove, through Western Shore. When she could see the steeple of St. Peter’s in the distance she slowed the car and pointed it out to them. That was where the service would be held on Tuesday, she said.

  In the rear-view mirror she could see them sitting close together. Anna was not wearing the veil now. She had her glasses off and was dabbing at her eyes with a tissue.

  They sat with their heads and shoulders so close together that not one sliver of daylight could be seen between them.

  * * *

  —

  At the house she put them up in Andrew’s room. She levelled the mattresses and put fresh linens on the bed. She carried away the lead bucket and the driftwood chair and brought in chairs from the other bedrooms. Then she let them rest for a while.

  She put a note for them on the kitchen table and then drove down to the Outrigger. The restaurant was busy. Warm and cosy inside, with burning candles on the tables. Windows overlooking the wooden dock with yellow light bulbs on wires and two deep-sea fishing boats tied to wooden bollards. She stood inside the door and motioned to Tammy.

  “What’s up, Margaret?” Tammy said. “This morning the minister told us about
the service for the dead kids on Tuesday. Brother and sister they were, he said. Oh my God. That’s so sad!”

  “Isn’t it.”

  “We’ll surely all be there on Tuesday.”

  “Good. Listen, I’ve got the parents staying with me. They haven’t eaten all day and I want to serve them a nice dinner. What’s on tonight?”

  “Ah. The special is fresh-caught haddock. The Mary-Beth came in just a few hours ago. You can serve it with yellow beans and parsley potatoes from the valley. Maybe take those cooked and heat them and take the fish raw. Do the fillets pan-fried in butter. A bit of salt and pepper on it. They’ll love it, Margaret. Don’t overcook the fish. No more than a minute or so on each side.”

  * * *

  —

  The next day the parents went for a long walk in borrowed slickers over their black clothes, down the shore path to the lighthouse and the sentinel rocks, and back through town.

  They rested in their room, and then Margaret served them tea and sat with them for a time. For dinner she cooked a ham, and Aileen made the side dishes. With Aileen, Franklin, and Danny present they were six around the table. They sat with their heads bowed while the father said grace in Spanish.

  “Bendícenos, Señor, bendice estos alimentos que por tu bondad vamos a recibir…”

  During the meal he asked about Jack, and she said that Jack was a few thousand miles away, at a silver mine on the other side of the country. The father said he taught geography and the earth’s history and Anna taught English and Spanish literature. Aileen tried to engage Anna in conversation but Anna hardly spoke at all. Before long she excused herself and never came back to the table. The father went to look after her, and when he came back downstairs he too asked to be excused.

  “With your permission,” he said. “Anna, my wife, is very sad. And she is tired. I will be with her now. Thank you for everything. You are very kind.”

  He inclined his head to the group around the table.