by Kurt Palka
* * *
—
Next morning on the way to church there was dense fog, and wet leaves covered the ground. She drove with the flashers going and the low beams on.
At the church Franklin in his wool suit served as a greeter, and he shook their hands and the hands of the parents and showed them to the front pew, where Aileen and Danny were already seated. People leaned forward to see the parents, and then the first few began to file out of their pews and line up before the father and the mother in her veil. They bowed their heads and murmured condolences, and before long the entire centre aisle was filled with people waiting to do the same.
The urns stood on the Lord’s Table, which was a long slab of stone on rough-hewn trestles, covered with a white cloth. A small upright wooden crucifix and six lit candles were the only other objects on the table. The urns were burnished metal containers with screw tops.
When the people had stopped coming forward, the mother raised her veil and walked up to the urns. The father followed, but then he stood back. She put her hands on the urns and then picked them up one at a time and held them to her cheeks. She stood with each urn for a long moment and then set it back on the table.
When the parents had returned to their pew, Reverend McMurtry climbed the steps to the pulpit. He held up his hands and let them fall. He said that the congregation had come together that day to say farewell to Hugo and Carmensita, two young people who had died here among them. And that they were gathered here also to give support and warmth as a community to the bereaved parents.
He spoke about God’s open arms and about the end of life on earth also being a new beginning, and when he had stepped down from the pulpit, old Mr. Thompson, who normally on a weekday would be pumping gas at the co-op, walked up to the Bible stand and found his page and began to read.
“Teach us to number our days,” he read, “that we may gain a heart of wisdom…”
At one point the main door must have been opened and kept open for a while, because in the church they could suddenly smell the ocean and the cold salt air, and on the Lord’s Table the candle flames twisted and smoked and then stood straight again.
Up in the loft Miss Belvedere began to play the mother’s lament that Margaret had asked her to play, from Gustav Mahler’s Songs upon the Death of Children. And with the second line of music, Joan Hendricks by her side began to sing.
* * *
—
The parents spent the rest of the day in their room. Margaret brought them lunch and then tea and candles and matches. She brought in a third chair and sat with them in the late afternoon gloom by the light of a single candle.
For a while they talked about their children, but soon they fell silent. She tried to think of more things to say that might help them and help her, but there was nothing. Nothing beyond the good words the father had spoken during the car ride down about human journeys and allowing children to make their own mistakes, and two days later even those words seemed to miss the point.
Behind their thoughts, if they could slow them enough, they could feel this moment passing into this, and then this and this. They could hear the water and the rocks. They could hear seabirds and the wind in the trees, and in the last grey light of day they could hear the fox. Four, five sharp barks close by, and the last one the rising note, like no other sound anywhere. When they heard it, the parents raised their heads and looked at each other and then at her, and Margaret explained about the mother fox and her cubs, and that they were denning not far away.
The father looked confused.
“Es un zorro,” Anna explained to him. “En realidad una zorra, con dos cachorros. Viven aquí.”
“Una zorra,” he said. His face relaxed, then he nodded and looked over at Margaret and smiled.
Not long thereafter she asked them down to dinner. Aileen had brought over a tureen with a lobster dish and left it on the kitchen table with a note to them. Margaret made a little green salad and opened a bottle of white wine, and then they sat down, the three of them around one corner of the table. Out the window it was night now. There was some silver still in the sky to the west, and the trees were darker than the sky. A half moon behind the white pine by her driveway.
* * *
—
In the morning it was raining and blowing hard. They were about to climb into the car for the drive to the airport when Anna paused and straightened and turned to Margaret. For a moment they stood with their hands on their hats and the wind tearing at their clothes.
“I saw the cruz de plata, of course,” said Anna. “The mother’s medal they gave you. And yesterday I suddenly understood completely why this funeral, and why the cremación. I do not know why not sooner. I do not know.”
She let go of her hat with one hand and gave Margaret a one-armed embrace. “We will be friends,” she said. “You will see.”
Twenty-Seven
AT THE AIRPORT she stood at a payphone, and with two stacks of dimes and quarters in front of her dialled the number of the trailer camp in British Columbia. Someone picked up and she asked for Jack Bradley, and moments later there was his voice.
“Can you talk for a minute, Jack?”
“Yes. Of course.”
She told him about the parents. That they had just left and she missed them both already. Their closeness, she said. The way they stood together as one. It had helped her in ways she had yet to understand completely. She described the funeral service, the people lining up in the aisle to meet them.
She kept feeding coins into the machine and went on to describe how she’d sat with them up in Andrew’s room. How after a while the silence had become peace.
She said, “I’d like to stay here until Thanksgiving. I haven’t told Hugh yet, but I think he’ll let me. Do you think you could come out for that? Can I ask you that? Please? I don’t know your work situation right now, but could we have a few quiet days together, Jack?”
There was a silence on the line. And a change of mood, she felt. She brought the receiver closer to her ear. “Jack?”
“I’m here. When is Thanksgiving?”
“Not this Monday, but the next.”
“I can find out, Maggie. I’ll let you know.”
* * *
—
In the car driving back to Sweetbarry, she thought how some nights in dreams she still put a hand to his face and kissed him on the lips. They were always so much younger in the dreams. So light and with so much unlived life before them, and viewed in this way, it was true that experience was not a gain, but a loss. A long time ago Manssourian had written that line on the blackboard as a topic for discussion.
She drove with the ocean blue and vast to her left. St. Margaret’s Bay, Hubbards, East River, the detour through Gold River. The Martin’s River bridge. The soft-sprung Buick leaning into the turns. Hold on, Maggie, her father had liked to say to her. And grinned proudly. It’s like racing a couch. But so much power when you need it. Want to see?
In places, fog had rolled in, then a mile later the view was clear again and the afternoon sun turned the ocean a dark blue with a band of turquoise on the horizon.
* * *
—
That night there was another storm. Not very bad, but bad enough to remind her it was time to board up the seaside window. There were fitted plywood sections in the boathouse, four of them for this purpose, and in the morning she dragged them out and hoisted them up by the handles and set them into the rests and spun the wing nuts. She could do only three boards before the wind picked up and the fourth board nearly carried her away like a sail. She dropped it and went in search of Franklin.
Already it was blowing so hard she had to hold on to trees and bushes as she walked. Then it began to rain.
* * *
—
An hour later the three of them in foul-weather gear had fixed the remaining window board, and now they were at work on the fall trusses. Franklin was in the house, up in the attic crawl space, and he
reached out through the special hatches in the gable peaks and snapped the hooks into the eyes of the spine bolt that doubled the ridge beam from end to end. He dropped the steel cables to the ground, and she and Aileen shackled them and fed them out and hooked them into the four anchors cemented into rock a distance from the house.
Franklin came back down and then they set the levers into the turnbuckle frames and then watched Aileen, who stood leaning into the wind and rain, giving hand signals as they took turns putting tension into the opposing cables until they were tight enough to hum at the same frequency in the storm.
* * *
—
Over at Aileen’s house they did the same, window boards and cables and turnbuckles, and before very long their little houses stood firm and square, snugged down with the wires humming. It was darker inside, but they were ready for the real weather that would be coming any day now.
Overnight it calmed and the rain stopped, but the next day brought more heavy clouds and high winds. Aileen was in her Vauxhall, in the pick-up lane at the Save-Easy, when she saw Danny’s truck. Danny was behind the wheel, and a man in the passenger seat was busy wiping the mist off the window with his hands. She was about to get out and wave when she recognized the man. It was John Patrick Croft. They drove past as she waited for her groceries, and then the truck swung toward the exit and the brake lights flashed once and they were gone.
All the way home she drove gripping the steering wheel hard while the car was being battered by gusts of wind. In places where the wind came straight onshore, waves leapt so high she could see daylight through water thin and green like glass. Bits of seaweed rained down on the car.
She was upset about Danny still having anything to do with John Patrick, after all that had passed with the police and the boat. That night she lay listening for him to come home, and she could not sleep. At one time when she heard the screen door over at Margaret’s, she got out of bed and put on a slicker and boots and a wool hat, and gripped the flashlight.
She called out to Margaret and then followed the yellow beam of her light among rocks and bushes.
“Is everything all right?” Margaret shouted.
“No, it’s not!” she shouted back, and when she was near she said, “I saw Danny today, and guess who was in the truck with him.”
“Who?”
“John Patrick Croft.”
“Was he. Is that so bad?”
They stood holding on to trees, Margaret with the safety glasses on and the old baseball cap.
“Well, yes, it is bad,” said Aileen. “After all that’s happened with those criminals asking for him and the police cautions and all? Would you please talk to Danny once more? I don’t want to go on harping at him, and he won’t listen to me anyway. He’ll listen to you before anyone else. Just one more time, Margaret.”
“Talk to him and say what?”
“Something about finding someone other than John Patrick to help him. About the police. About not losing our boat. Common sense.”
“I can try, Aileen. I’ll think about it.”
Twenty-Eight
BECAUSE OF THE WEATHER and the constant possibility of some sort of emergency, she no longer dressed up for work at her desk. Now it was usually an old wool skirt and a sweater under the jacket she’d found in the work room, and boots loosely laced to step into and out of.
In the morning after her office phone calls the storm had lessened, and she was in the forest again, tacking the last name signs to trees. On one of the white pines a large branch about fifteen feet up had cracked and was hanging down. She brought half the extension ladder and the handsaw, and wrangled the ladder up against the tree and climbed it. Not until she was up there did she realize that this was not something she should be doing, standing fifteen feet up on an unsteady ladder with no one holding it, sawing away at a branch.
Earlier, on the phone, Hugh had been testy, and he’d asked when she was finally coming back.
“I think you’ve been gone long enough, Margaret,” he’d said. “I want you back in person here with us, okay? Attending meetings, answering your bloody phone, not a thousand miles away, but with your ass, if you’ll pardon the expression, in your chair behind your desk. Is that clear? So when? I want a firm date.”
“How about right after Thanksgiving, Hughie. It’s only a week away.”
“Don’t Hughie me on this one. I want you back here.”
“Okay. But just another week, Hugh. Please. I promise. Absolutely.”
He’d grumbled a bit more, but in the end he’d agreed.
The saw kept binding and she had to pause often. Eventually the branch came off and crashed to the ground. Resin on her hands, scrapes, and a long sliver driven in just now from somewhere.
The branch was big, much bigger on the ground than it had looked up in the tree. She would have to drag it somewhere and chop it up, but she wasn’t ready to deal with that now.
She put away the ladder and then sat for a while in her favourite spot on the rock shelf, with her eyes closed and salt air blowing into her face.
One reason she was in no hurry to fly back to Toronto was that she was making progress here. Inner progress. The previous day in this very spot she had fully accepted for the first time that what had happened with Andrew could never be undone. Never changed. Never. That the only thing she could ever hope to change was how she saw it. If she found a way.
She stood up and walked back to the house and showered. She used a needle and tweezers on the sliver, then rubbing alcohol and a Band-Aid.
When she came out of the bathroom, the phone rang. It was the inspector telling her they had found the missing boat, and a salvage operation was underway. He told her where it was and said that Sullivan was already there.
She ate a bite of lunch and then changed into her coat and street shoes and got into the Buick. She took the highway south and followed the turnoff to Rag Bay and then the two-track, and before long she saw the cars and the tractor and a boat trailer. She pulled over in the weeds and climbed out. The trailer was half submerged and they were winching a Cape Islander onto it, and as it came up and met the rollers, water gushed from a great hole low in the starboard bow and from another hole closer to the stern.
She stood next to Sully, watching, and nearby the same diver was leaning against his van, pulling off his wetsuit legs.
“A birdwatcher saw the top of the antenna mast sticking out at low tide,” said Sully.
By mid-afternoon the boat was in Telford Herman’s yard, and Sully had run police tape around the shed. Sorensen had arrived, and now he and Sully were up in the boat, inspecting it with hand lights. No one else was allowed in the shed.
“That’s Fergie’s boat,” Telford said to her. “Pat Ferguson. The cops don’t want to say, but we know. We been keeping his engine running. It’s an old Volvo job. Cast iron. Lasts forever. Do you know him?”
“I do. When his wife was still alive I got my eggs from her. Good brown eggs.”
“Mrs. Herman got them there too. When Helen passed he tried to keep the egg business going, but he didn’t know the first thing about chickens or eggs. And he hasn’t been fishing in years, not since the licences became so hard to get. But he knows the water and where the wildlife is and the diving spots, and so he takes tourists out for his upkeep. In the winters we hauled and stored his boat for free eggs and then for nothing.”
Minutes later Sorensen came down the ladder.
“Any sign of him?” said Telford.
“Can’t say. What would cause that damage?”
“Rocks. Wave action against rocks, if the boat got away. I’d say it’s been on the bottom for some time. Not just a few days. From all the mud and silt. Many tides washing through it.”
“How long?” said Sorensen.
“Weeks.”
“That could be. Is it fixable?”
“Probably. Cost a bit, but it’s still a decent boat. A bit weird with that add-on cabin, but some people might li
ke that. I’d have to take a closer look. But just so you know, I don’t want it in my shed for too long because the shed makes money. We can get it out and up on a cradle in the back.”
“No, we can’t,” said Sorensen. “I need to bring in forensics, and they’ll take a very close look. We’ll pay you the same day rate we paid for Danny’s boat. You just call the office, Telford. For now the boat gets locked up and Sergeant Sullivan will post a guard.”
She followed Sorensen to his car. Daylight was fading. He opened the trunk and sat on the chrome bumper while he pulled off the rubber boots and put his leather shoes back on and tied the laces. He looked weary to her.
“It’s Pat Ferguson, isn’t it?” she said. “Telford recognized the boat.”
“Yes, it is. Do you know him?”
“Everybody knows him. He must have been on your list of right boats and right skills.”
“Yes, he was on our list. We just couldn’t find him. Or his boat.”
“Maybe they took it and then got rid of it.”
“I don’t think so. They weren’t sailors.”
“Maybe they threatened him. Forced him to take them out.”
“Possibly. Or promised him money.”
He finished with his shoes and stood up.
“Forensics will find even the smallest remaining trace of what went on. Signs of struggle. Blood. Bullet holes. In the meantime we’ll keep looking for him. But I think we all know what went on here.”
“Do we?”
He reached for his boots, set them in the trunk and closed the lid hard. He turned around to look at her. “Do you know John Patrick Croft, Mrs. Bradley?”
“I do.”
“Maybe go and talk to him. Tell him about today.”
Twenty-Nine
NEXT MORNING AFTER her office phone calls she drove into the city. She parked at the harbour wall, where she could look out the windshield onto the water and the sailing ships that were in, among them the Catalina and the Miss Elizabeth. Crews were busy on decks, and on the Miss Elizabeth a man in a bosun’s chair over the side was working with paint and brush.
