He must have taken up the axe and, with the back of it, tapped the twins on their heads soon after. That stopped them. He would have said, Forgive me. And the quiet crowded the room. Tom’s father had sat at the table and fed some wood to the fire. Then he fished the wood out again, to save it. The father took up the rifle and sat himself in the corner. He was going to destroy himself. He would have done it in the woods, but they needed the rifle and he did not want to risk their not finding it. He would have used a rope, but he did not want them to see him hanging. His grandfather had hanged himself in a stone barn in Brigus and Robert Dobie was the one who had discovered him.
35
After this story I walked back around the cove of Brigus and along the Pomeroy headland. It was dark. There was a pony hauling itself into the light of the Pomeroy shed, and then I saw Stan Pomeroy. I waved to him.
You need a light?
I’ll make it.
What, by feeling your way along? Let me get you a light.
I’ll be fine, I said.
Suit yourself.
The snow was dark blue. I could see the sweep of lighthouse light over the water, but not the lighthouse. It lit up, intermittently, the pile of stones they called the naked man. The house is cupped into the land, so not even the lighthouse could help me find it. The walk was long enough that the darkness had begun to sink into me. Black sky and a dark blue acre of snow slanting down to the water. The sense of vision diminished and all became a crunching surface under my feet. I could hear the rut of the shore. The cold, fresh air on my face. But I felt with my feet and I put out a hand to fend off a wayward branch or cliff face. I walked slower. It was stupid not to have lit a lamp. I heard the ocean and then the hollow sound of the brook. I saw the naked man. I was near the house. The mass of the house blanketed sound in front of me. But I could not see it. I made my way in the black until my hand was surprised by the side of the house. I felt my way around the corner of it. There was a window, but I could not find the door. I brushed the side of the house. The house was longer than I thought. There, a sill. And now the door. But where was the latch. The latch was missing. I did not know where I was. I was losing my memory. I focused on the present. Was I where I thought I was? And where did I think I was? Who was I? I flattened myself against the side of the house. I was against something flat. That was for sure. But the sense of a particular place drifted away from me and I could not remember any place, not even my childhood home. Then my fingers felt the latch, the door latch of the house in Brigus, and that entire house reappeared in my head.
36
In the land of no refrigeration, the salted pig is king. I missed grated carrot, slices of cucumber. I ached for lettuce and a ripe tomato.
Bartlett’s was the only home in Brigus with electricity. The power was a month old when I arrived. They had running water, and had a pump for a toilet. I had barrels of water and tins of kerosene and a woodstove and two fireplaces. I had a shallow outhouse and the iced-over brook four feet from the new corner of the house. The brook sounded different from month to month. Frozen over in March, like water rushing out of a bottle.
Each morning Tom Dobie walked the path through Pomeroy’s. I watched him throw a stick at the cows and stroll along the road towards my yard. It seemed the walk altered him, as if my house was a transition from a life he knew to one that offered a better opinion of himself. The only times he’d been over here were to pick berries or walk out to the lighthouse on a Sunday, perhaps with the boys. Berry picking, he said, meant time with a girl.
He assisted me with the front mullions. He kept remarking on the southern view, compared with the northerly he and most of Brigus had.
Brigus, I said, does not take advantage of the seascape. Youve got small windows in your houses.
We have to keep the saltbox warm. Lovely big windows make the draftiest of rooms.
But the view, Tom.
Why would we want to look at the salt water? When we’re out on it all day long and that’s enough of it.
This shut me up for a while.
37
Tom Dobie’s foot brought up solid in the snow of Pomeroy’s garden. He banged something free, a dark log. He tilted up the log and pushed snow and stiff grass from a face. We gouged soil from the eyes with our thumbs. A woman’s face. A grey, tarnished head and shoulders and sweet waist. Her torso was sawed at a slant, from spine to navel. A figurehead. She had pointed a schooner out of harbours, Tom said. Had leaned her way across water and directed men into port. I turned the wet figurehead over and asked for it. And Mrs Pomeroy said of course, without a thought to it.
We carted her back to the cottage. I left her, elevated, to dry slowly in the woodshed. Then scraped her with a rasp and sandpapered her and doused her with preservative. I painted her skin white, with blush in her cheeks. I dyed her hair black. I gave her a necklace and daubed her earlobes with gold fleck. It was silly, and the whole time, while my skill as a craftsman showed through, I laughed at the joke. I’ll set her up, I told Tom, where every man may look at her.
I let Tom varnish her once a day for three days.
We bolted her to the lintel over the front door.
Her breasts of hard wood, straining from the house. Shiny and wet. A bowl of goldfish and lava rock.
Tom: You know who she looks like?
I didnt.
Emily Edwards.
It was erotic. It was the first thing Tom had seen, the first artifact, that caused him to fall in love with made things. I could tell that he looked at a boat now and saw the work that went into making it sail. How a window let in light yet kept weather out and detoured the weight above it around the sills. I saw these notions revealed to him.
The Pomeroy cows kept us company. Their brown-and-white faces smudging the windows. I wanted a fence up for Kathleen’s arrival, I said, and a gateway arched over with the rib of a boat.
We could put up a garden rod fence, he said.
I want pickets and posts. I want you and Stan Pomeroy to cut me a fence.
Tom witnessed my certainty and could not fully articulate the delight in his skin.
38
Lonely. I met Kathleen Whiting when Abbott Thayer was giving a talk on art. She entered the theatre late, as I had done. She was with Gerald Thayer. I was leaning against the acoustic wall and I saw them arrive. She stood at the open doors as we waited for Abbott Thayer to finish taking questions, the doors closing behind her on their pistoned hinges, her hands flat against the doors, slowing their progress. I want, Abbott Thayer said, everyone to get down on their stomachs. Please. I want you to approximate the viewpoint of a predator.
Some of us lay down.
Kathleen stared at the floor, shy, ears listening to Abbott Thayer, her hands flat in front of her as if in some eastern prayer. It was that consideration and grace.
Later, Gerald introduced us. She was his cousin. Abbott Thayer’s niece.
Kathleen said, I like to think of people afterwards.
What do you mean.
You can admire them as youre with them. That’s one thing. But then you can reflect on them. How people do things. Their consideration.
Me: I like realizing good deeds.
Kathleen: But also funny things. For instance, I heard this woman just now saying that this lecture was like the play the other night. And what she meant was that they were sitting in the back then too.
I didnt get it.
It wasnt the content, it was the environment.
39
We had a feed of bread and molasses, or loaf and lassey, as Tom Dobie called it. We sat on the front step under the figurehead and ploughed into it.
Captain Bob’s clock, Tom Dobie said. You seen that?
The one with grouse nesting on top.
Tom: I saw it come in aboard the Morrissey. I was tying her up. Didnt know what it was, I was only four or five. Did a cleat hitch with the painter while the men carried it off. The clock come in a shipping crate, and when it hit th
e gangplank I thought a coffin. I tried to think who was missing, who could fit such a box. Then the crew tilted the coffin on end and a bell chimed and I realized its true nature. Even so, something of the coffin is still in the clock.
Me: There’s something dead in the telling of time.
40
We dug out what Tom called the dung sink by the kitchen door. I was frightened to think that my children would have to live in this cold. Cool air had brought in the pack ice. You couldnt see the ice, but you felt it on your breath in the mornings. I wrote Kathleen, You’d better wait. Wait another month.
I woke up at dawn and punished the fireplaces and made coffee. I slopped the pot liquor from the night before into the dung sink and walked along the hill above the cottage with my portable easel, my box of paints, and a square of canvas. I looked at Brigus from the hill. The boys had pushed slub ice under the bridge and that allowed the surface to catch over smooth. Then they let her wait to mature like they were waiting for a crop to grow.
I painted a picture for the joy of painting.
The pans of ice in the harbour knit together. Now they could skate under the bridge and out into the bay. It was healthy ice. One boy skated with a chair. Pushing the chair along.
They skated past the spars of the sunken Bartlett collier. The spars stood out of the ice and one boy climbed up into the rigging. The boat was still carrying four hundred tons of coal on the bottom of the harbour. The spars sticking up out of the ice as though two different dimensions were merging into one, some kind of collage gone wrong.
Farther out the boys unlaced their skates and copied on the loose pans. When I say copy I mean they leapt from ice pan to ice pan in a game called steppy cock. Until they were in the strain of the Head, near the edge of what Tom called the blue drop, or open water. The ice cakes were big enough to hold one boy. They ran and hopped, sinking and tilting the pans until their feet were soaked. There were no seals here, the seals were thirty miles out, on fields of ice, and while most steamers were congregating in St John’s, Tom Dobie was promised a berth on the Southern Cross, which would take on crew in St John’s and then dip into Brigus before returning to the Gulf strait. Tom wanted the berth, but Rachel Dobie said she disapproved and I was urging him now to stay with me. They could sell the berth, she said. And Tom could work for that fine young American. Me.
The boys would lean their wet rubbers up behind the stove, the toes of the boots filled with hot dried green peas. And in the morning they’d be dry.
I delivered my worn boots to Marten Edwards. He thought they could be salvaged. And I want, I said, you to make a pair of seaboots for Tom Dobie.
It’d be easier, he said, to order a set from Bud Chafe.
I agreed to that. And also picked out a sealskin coat. For myself.
41
The last night I had with my wife. I did not want to make love and Kathleen said, I love you. She asked, Do you love me?
You shouldnt ask that, I said. You should just let me say it.
You can’t even say you love me.
Those were my last words to her that night. And in the morning she rinsed the coffee cups with that firm mouth and this was before the children rose and I was thinning out my father’s suitcase. I had an urge to tell her then. Just to melt the firmness. I wanted to take her shoulder and turn her to me, to lead her to the bed. I felt the urge in my chest, but I was late with packing and could not make the urge compelling enough.
When we met at that lecture of Abbott Thayer’s she was seventeen. I moved to Monhegan and wrote to her. I met Jenny Starling and started having an affair. Through the fall I wrote Kathleen. I wrote fifty-three persuasive letters and she wrote thirty-five encouraging ones back. At Christmas I convinced her to visit Gerald and Alma in Monhegan. But even then we were polite and shy and formal until the drinking began. Jenny was there — it was her birthday. There were several Monhegan artists there. I put my hand on Jenny’s waist. Kathleen saw the hand and walked out of the kitchen. Jenny has an outrageous waist. Gerald was loaded and upset because the dog was gone. Tiff’s gone, he said. He was reeling about the rooms in slow motion.
After blowing out her candles Jenny said, Thanks guys, for everything.
Speech, Gerald said. Say something.
Jenny, deadpan: Thanks, guys. For everything.
That repetition, said two different ways. She was saying, I’ve enjoyed fucking all of you.
We went out to the back porch to look for Tiff. Kathleen was not there. Jenny said to Gerald and Alma, I miss the sex. That’s the main thing about not being in a relationship.
Gerald: Not that one-night stands arent an option.
Jenny: No, but you dont want to live on only that.
Gerald leaned against me with his forearms.
Me: Youve got New York hands.
So what are we gonna do, Alma said, about the aching void in Kent?
Me: Why can’t anyone call me Rockwell?
Gerald: Because Rockwell sounds like a made-up name.
Rockwell is my secret name. It’s my father’s name. I will name my son Rockwell.
I wonder, Jenny said, if we should all be having illicit affairs.
She was talking about us. The thing we had was private and I could not promise her anything.
Gerald’s finger in the air: Let’s settle the question of Kent.
Me: I guess youre medics of the soul. Youre just gonna put your heads together.
Gerald laid his head on my chest. To me: She’s the prettiest thing to piss through a lock of hair.
Who.
That Jenny.
Jenny and Alma both heard this. It made Jenny put on her coat.
Jenny: Can someone walk up the hill with me?
We were all standing in the kitchen. Wondering now what to do.
Gerald: Just stick your tongue in my mouth and everything’ll be fine.
How long, Alma said, ignoring her husband, can Rockwell Kent go around idly having fun?
Gerald, slumped against my chest: Forever. I’ve seen guys —
But what’s the best. Arent you becoming interested in some woman?
I shook my head. I looked at Jenny. Kathleen was in the living room.
There’s no need, Gerald said, to be hasty.
He’s twenty-five, Gerald. Do you think anything he does now will be hasty?
Me: Thank you, Alma.
Gerald: Oh where’s my dog.
Tiff’s around, his wife said.
No. He’s run off. And now he’s gone.
Have you checked upstairs.
Mournfully: No.
Me: I’ll look.
Gerald had me pinned to the rail. Alma pried him off, but she couldnt hold him. A slump to the floor.
Get up, Gerald.
I’m comfortable. He said, I do not want to be medicalized.
He was gesturing to the ceiling like a Greek philosopher with a moral point. Only the tip of his finger sober.
Okay I’m leaving, I said. And as I walked down the hall Gerald tackled me. He lunged at my knees. I see the pinrails in the staircase fly past me. The floor smack me in the ear.
Okay, I said. Maybe I’ll stay for one more.
I decided to go upstairs to check on Tiff. Kathleen in the front room. She was listening to a student of Abbott Thayer’s. We have to find Tiff, I said.
Of course.
I held her hand and we took the stairs. Her hand was cold but confidently in my hand. The doors were all closed. She led me into a dark room. She hauled me into herself and shut the door with her foot. I can smell her now, the heat of her face. She said to me, Why is it that when you talk, people look over their shoulders.
Kathleen Whiting pulled the shoulders of her dress down. She tugged at my belt. I love my name, she says. My name is an old name. I like Levi as a name. Isnt that a sexy name, Mr Kent? I’m half tempted to steal. You have to get someone pregnant, Mr Kent.
Who.
Some youngster, I dont care.
> This shocked me into action. I lifted Kathleen Whiting’s dress and pushed her to the wall. I pressed my hand between her legs and her head leaned back. I had my hand on her. I sunk to my knees and buried my face in her. She opened her legs. Her hand on the back of my head. She pressed herself into me, using her head against the wall as purchase.
Where the hell is my dog.
Gerald had swung open the door. He slumped against the moulding. We saw, from the light in the hall, that there was a baby in the room. We were in the baby’s room. Gerald was careful getting to a chair. He was judging the air with his bent knees. He lit a cigarette.
Tiff sauntered in. Tiff old boy.
Then Gerald saw us for the first time. I stood up.
Kathleen was showing me to the bathroom.
Yeah.
We can’t leave you here.
Gerald: I’m okay.
You might fall on the baby.
Jesus I’m okay.
You should go lie down, Gerald.
Naw. Gonna do something here with old Tiff.
Kathleen: Youre falling into everything.
The Big Why Page 8
