The Big Why

by Michael Winter

  A long time ago, I said. In school.

  We have buried Fanny Price and Edmund Bertram. The modern world, he said, is Henry and Mary Crawford. I want to be a devil, Rufus said. We all do. I want everything, but to be a public man means one must do everything in private.

  I did not talk to Rufus about Kathleen. Marriage for Rufus was a domestic arrangement. He divorced the emotional life from his political one, and so in his presence I did the same. The private I disclosed to Gerald, it was the public I wished to discuss with Rufus Weeks. I wanted to organize men, to have free medicine. With Gerald I would say that Kathleen’s character was thoroughly consistent from the public through to the private. It was her consistency that drew me to her. She had no different disposition once the door was closed. I never noticed her change, except for an occasional surprise. I hardly ever caught her in a private moment that embarrassed her.

  I want to discuss labour issues, Rufus. I’m leaving for Newfoundland.

  Newfoundland? He lifted the peel of his orange, as if the pith contained an answer. I know a man in Newfoundland.

  I know the prime minister, I said.

  No, no, Rufus said. William Coaker’s your man. You must befriend him. He is a man for the people, and he can help you.

  Rufus Weeks would write me a letter of introduction.

  5

  I went ahead of Kathleen and the children. It was February, but a rare warm day. They walked me down to the train station. Kathleen threw on a coat over her nightdress. She was in her slippers. I liked how there was something in her dress that was still indoors. It made her more intimate while outside, as if she carried no veneer. I stared at her naked profile, and she leaned her eyes my way. Her eyes said, Dont let anything happen. Her eyes were alluding to my last trip to Newfoundland. When I’d met up with Jenny Starling, by accident, in Boston. Kathleen was refusing to smile or to tell me how much she loved me. But I knew I was loved. The meanness in me she forgave. Every five days or so I was floored by how generous she was to my small-mindedness. She made me better, I was a person whose fingernails were flecked with the glitter of her even temper. I kissed her and I kissed my children. I shook hands with my son, Rocky. He is such a polite boy. He was polite because of Kathleen. I sat on that train and thought how open my life was. I was mustering up the forces of goodwill, angling my choices towards the life I thought was an ideal. I believed in the existence of standards and in marshalling the drive to attain them.

  The train brought me to Halifax, and from there I took the Red Cross Line to St John’s. The ferry was rimed with ice, the hawsers stiff with frost. It was brutally cold. I had asked for steerage, but they gave me a private room. We wouldnt put you in there, sir. Steerage is just for shipwrecked Newfoundlanders and theyre filthy, just like animals. The steward was not aware he was being judgmental, only pointing out the obvious. And you’ll eat in the officers’ mess, he said. The kitchen was well designed, with roll bars to catch the pots and a metal basin to hold the soap.

  I wrote Kathleen a letter and I caught myself. I caught up with my true emotions — they rode over me just as the wake of a ferry comes abreast when the ferry slows down. I knew that I loved her. I had an urgent need to be with her.

  William Coaker was not in St John’s, and neither was my friend Bob Bartlett, but I did meet the prime minister. I dropped in, unannounced, at his office on Military Road. An American visitor could do that. Rockwell Kent, he said. Well, well.

  I had met Morris five years before. On my first trip to Newfoundland. I’m going to try it in Brigus this time.

  Well good luck to you, he said. And if there is anything I can be handy to, just shout. He offered me lunch. And then invited me to a hockey game. Halifax against St John’s. Any plans, he said, for an artists’ colony?

  Not this time, I said. Only my family. I am a family man.

  Why not stay here, he said. A bit more culture in St John’s. We’re even learning the tango.

  He was genuinely pleased to see me, though I could tell he was itching to ask what had happened with Burin. He had the class to refrain from inquiring.

  I spent the afternoon walking around the city. St John’s was dirty with soot, the houses small and ill built. It had not changed since the first time I’d been there. That ill-fated journey to Burin. I was the only one, it seemed, who wanted to be in St John’s. I stayed the night at the Prescott Hotel and then boarded the train to Brigus. I’d decided to move right into Bob Bartlett’s backyard of Brigus. He had a man there, a Robert Dobie, who was to show me a house. Brigus was a merchant town that had been the headquarters for the annual seal hunt. A rich town on the decline. I wanted to see the hunt. Plan: Fix up the Dobie house, take in the hunt, and then call up my family. I will make love to my wife and paint hard and build a garden. This here land is my outpost, and from here I’ll make my name. We’ll visit New York as a treat, and blend into Newfoundland life. I’d be a people’s painter. Yes, I wanted to raise a brood of Newfoundlanders and honour my wife.

  I say this, but I am incorrigible. It’s true I did not think of Jenny Starling, but on the trip up I’d stayed in a Halifax hotel and flirted with the manager’s daughter. I coaxed her down the hall to my room and sketched her sitting by my window. I left the door open, but I used my position as an artist to hold her shoulders, to move her hands in her lap, to tuck her hair around an ear. I held her earlobe and I bent down and kissed her. I felt her waist under her arm. I traded this drawing of the daughter for room and board. When the manager saw it he loved it. He reached into his pocket. You have to take this. Real money. I did the same thing in St John’s — but this time a young widow. I did not try to kiss her, but I enjoyed moving the weight of her chest into the light. The woman took the painting without even a thank you. I mention this because at first I judged it a sign of the Newfoundlander’s lack of gratitude. It was only later when I realized that the Nova Scotian does not like to be beholden to favours. He wants to pay for things and be paid. A Newfoundlander expects neither. He gives a hand and he gets a hand, and hardly a nod of the head to either.

  Yes, St John’s looked defeated, with squat wooden houses rammed together in the snow. Parts of it still burnt down from a tremendous fire years before. Charred wood covered in ice. I felt embarrassed for it. It was a city that would always be burning down. It had rivalled New York a century ago, but the systems of economy and climate had caused it to grow like a plant in the dark. Strength here lay in the rural.

  6

  Before I left New York I got a call from Gerald Thayer. He was drunk and it was late. His wife, Alma, had left him. He said, I need you to help me.

  How.

  Well, (a) you have to say you love me. So that’s (a).

  Me: What’s (b)?

  Could you please answer (a).

  Gerald I love you. I’m crazy about you. Youre a swell guy. Youre my best friend and I’d do —

  Okay, that’s good. I thank you for that, Kent. Now. I’m gonna fill you in. Somewhere there is a glasses case. And until then the whole house is slithering. Pact: I’m there for you, Kent. And until . . .

  Me: Until what.

  The truth of the fact is, Kent. Is (c). Okay, if Alma wants to fuck some bizarre someone, that’s for her to, that’s. Kent, what do you want from me.

  Me: I dont want anything, Gerald.

  Gerald: I dont know what you want from me, I have no idea. But on an artistic level. I completely believe in you, and I’m there for you, and you and I are on a narrow path, a complicated path only few can negotiate, and youre coming to an opening and I’m there for you. Youre my friend and I deeply need you, and New York is a city of concrete monstrosities. I deeply need. There are so few things I need, but youre one of them.

  There is a pause. He wanted to say that he needed me in New York, but he knew he’d spent a long time telling me to go.

  Gerald: Should I throw up? I came into the kitchen sober. I was looking for my glasses and I ended up drinking a whole bottle of
whisky. Kent I am wildly drunk. And I have to get up with a three-year-old. I gotta describe to you. I’m leaning over the sink in the kitchen. My wife’s off with some mechanical engineer. It’s not her fault. I told her I was in love with someone else. And she thinks now that maybe all men are assholes.

  What does vulnerability mean to you, Gerald.

  It’s a good thing. You can change only when youre vulnerable. You can’t become vulnerable, you have to be ready for vulnerability to descend upon you.

  You think that about everything. Whenever I say what do you think about x or y, you say you cannot become x or y. You have to be ready for x or y to be bestowed.

  Maybe. Life is so insubstantial. In a way I thought children. I need your advice, Kent.

  He gripped the phone receiver so hard that I could hear the handle in his palm.

  There’s one inch of whisky in the bottle. What I’m doing now is sitting on the kitchen counter. I’m after pulling the cork out of the bottle. It’s a — did you hear that? A full glass.

  7

  His wife, Alma. She is five years older than Gerald. Alma Wollerman was a model for Gerald’s father, Abbott Thayer. That’s how Gerald met her. She was naked, perched on a stool with angel’s wings sprouting from her back, and Gerald stepped into his father’s studio and was transfixed. Had his father slept with her? It was something Gerald had never asked. Before he met Alma, Gerald was with a woman who was eighteen. Gerald felt eighteen was too young. But since then he’s seen her. She is twenty-four now and he can get along with her. I’ve heard, he said, that she’s great at sex and she isnt boring.

  Are those the things, I said. The three things to a great marriage.

  What.

  To get along, have great sex, and not be bored.

  Gerald: Yes those are the things. Youth is a good one too.

  So youth is a piggish fourth.

  Who’s counting. The thing is, Gerald said, I’ve loved younger women. And younger women, forgive me, are not as smart as older women. But Alma hung out with older, smarter men.

  Like your father.

  She’s older than me, and smarter than me because of her tastes.

  Alma Wollerman liked how hairless the back of Gerald’s neck was. It was the first thing she noticed about him: she was sitting beside him in a theatre — she was with his father — and Gerald leaned forward. There was that clean bit of neck to the shoulders, exposed.

  Gerald: Thing is, you have an idea about marriage. That having children will make you pull up your socks. You believe in the system of marriage.

  Me: Rather than.

  Gerald: The not framing of the experience. Letting it receive meaning after it’s lived. Right now you imagine living chunks of your life. Youre seeing them exist out there in front of you. There is an incipient promise.

  Me: This year, this one coming up in Newfoundland, I will have no commitments. I will have no promises to keep. No one to meet. It will be the first time in my life that no one expects me. There will be no expecting except the duties of marriage and children. I want, I said, to be a good husband. I want to focus on hard work and my family. I want to be faithful.

  Gerald: If you disappear up there no one will notice. And if it doesnt work out, if you come back to New York, this will be your last time in a disappeared state, so enjoy it.

  This has turned out to be true.

  8

  I boarded the train to Brigus and was again bumped up to first class. So far I had been good. I had been flirtatious, but nothing outrageous. The carriage was not half full. I had four seats to myself. I rode through the snow out of the life I was living. There is the life you lead, which contrasts with the desire for a higher conception. On that train to Brigus I thought I was heading towards a supreme excellence. I admire this goal. In my art too. That seems to have been my downfall.

  I was wondering all this on the slow train to Brigus. The corners of the houses packed with snow for extra insulation. I was excited but wondering. I was mediocre, true, but I was romantic as well. I was vainglorious, holier than thou, a king of pigs. I was all of that. But all of that was about to face a challenge. I sat in first class, happy in my aloneness until three boys ran in, wrestling one another and fighting for the window seat.

  We just sold our rabbits in St John’s, one said. And then, Who are you?

  I am Rockwell Kent.

  They were delighted to hear I was on my way to Brigus.

  We’re from Brigus, they said. Youre that American painter.

  They were Tony Loveys, Stan Pomeroy, and Tom Dobie.

  I was told, Tom Dobie said, to keep an eye on you.

  Who told you that.

  Rupert Bartlett.

  Oh yes, I said. And your name is Dobie. A Robert Dobie was to show me a house in Brigus.

  That’d be my father, Tom said.

  He’s gone now, Stan Pomeroy said. He’s dead.

  Tony Loveys: Look.

  He pointed out the window to some men in an open tilt, shoeing ponies.

  I’m sorry about your father.

  Tom Dobie chewed on his finger. He had fair hair and blue eyes.

  There were men hauling wood with fresh sleds made from the same wood. Their arms and backs bent to work.

  Was it recent.

  It was last year.

  Stan Pomeroy: It was down the Labrador.

  I didnt know what else to say. They were turned to the window. What are they preparing.

  Theyre in collar, Tom Dobie said.

  In collar?

  The men are sealers, Stan Pomeroy explained. Theyre cutting firewood and logs for spars and punts.

  The air was clear and the snow ten feet deep. Often there was nothing to see, the snow from the railroad’s right-of-way ploughed so high on either side. So then you were reduced to looking at the window itself. There was a bright green mould on a leather flange where the thick glass met the wood. A bead of condensation on which the mould drank. I can love even that. Back then objects were made from living things. Nothing was inert.

  The coachman came by. Are these boys causing a havoc?

  Not at all.

  To them: Youre not supposed to be up here.

  Neither am I, I said. And ordered tea for the four of us.

  I was five days away from my family now. It’s true that I had mixed feelings about my escape, but for the moment I was delighted. No event is simple, however, and I missed my family too. I have the skills to make friends anywhere, but I do get exhausted by the constant newness of solitary exploration. I was northeast of everything. Everything is all youve walked past and witnessed and smelled and touched. I was proud of the strong pigskin suitcase that rode in the baggage compartment. I felt good in a wool coat. It was a good coat — I had found my chest size.

  The tea arrived in two pots to share with the boys. It came on a wicker tray with the coat of arms of the country of Newfoundland — a caribou. The tea service was pewter and the milk rich and white.

  Some good to be drinking tea on a train.

  It’s a treat all right.

  Me: Apparently youre not used to treats.

  I had created delight. This milk has come straight from a cow, Tom Dobie said, and then chilled with a block of ice sawed from a lake. It’s as though products in the icebox, I said, grew cold from the fear of the ice block crushing them. The boys laughed at the novelty of that thought.

  9

  Tom Dobie: It’s beginning to snow a perfect smother.

  The train turned and sank and lifted and stopped to have drifts shovelled away.

  Is this the stop?

  You could see nothing but snow.

  Let’s have a look, Stan Pomeroy said. We got out: there was a white horse on the tracks. It was walking in front of the train, pure white. It was as if the horse was the source of the snow, the snow leader. A man ran after it, and the horse bolted ahead. Then the train moved, but it had to brake, for the horse had slowed down.

  What’ll we do about thi
s horse.

  Let’s dart in the woods, Tom said. We’ll go up ahead.

  He and Stan put on snowshoes and walked into the trees. They were gone a minute. Then they appeared in the distance, trudging up the grade out of the woods, ahead of the horse. They walked back down towards it. The horse hesitated. The train pushed the horse along, and Tom and Stan Pomeroy snagged the horse by the neck and led him off the tracks and down into the trees. The train passed and then the boys ran up and got back aboard. The horse watched.

  Good work, I said.

  It snowed harder then and you could feel the train ploughing through drifts. I ordered tea biscuits, and as I buttered one I saw the flash of my face in the polished steel of the butter knife. I was thirty-one, the age I had wanted to be all my life. It is an age when important work gets done. But now I was anxious that I wasnt doing the correct work and being praised. I was a smart, educated city boy used to riches who, through bad luck, had become poor but refused to appear impoverished. I supported labour unions. I read Darwin. I was a socialist. I did not, outwardly, believe in God. I believed that if He existed, He’d forgive me.

  I passed around the tea biscuits. With jam on.

  It’s funny but true that we always feel old, except in retrospect. I was very young, I realize, but I felt older than I wanted to be. My hair was thinning, but I kept it short and I prayed that it would thin in a graceful manner. I loved my wooden paintbox, which I had under my seat. I had pride and I was chuffed. This would be my time. I kept pressing my heel to the box and feeling proud of it.

  An hour later and the train shuddered to a halt.

  We all got out to have a look at the snow. There were about thirty people on board, all men. A vast hurl of snow. The stokers passed out shovels. Tom Dobie, as we dug out the choked wheels, pointed at the bright moving blur of a ginger fox. The stoker said okay and we got aboard again. The engine ran furiously, trying to grind through the snow. The drifts became worse. The driver jammed her into a field of powder.