The Big Why

by Michael Winter

We decided to make it into an adventure. The family, in a chain of hands, walked over the Pomeroy fields to Bunker’s Hill and built a cairn. The stones had a streak of quartz in them like a salt lick. I stood on the cairn. This is our naked man, I said. We have climbed the highest unclimbed peak in the world.

  Rocky: Uppy uppy.

  Me: Okay downy downy.

  When we ate the sandwiches, I opened Kathleen’s sandwich and sprinkled salt on her tomato. We both love salt. I did not know she was watching me. But then I saw her lift the bread off mine and rub her fingers above my slice of tomato. Salt. Yes, it was things like this that made me love her. And perhaps I looked at her in a way that made her feel I was promising things. And when you promise someone and they love you, they will trust you.

  She ambled off into some bushes, and I watched her. She had on a sage top and a dusky blue skirt. She was camouflaged. All you could see was the sunlight catching a stream of her urine, arcing down behind her. She was only partly crouched. I said, You look like a caribou. Then she stuck her arms out in front of her, still peeing. A pregnant caribou.

  The courtroom was the telegraph office, the very place the offence had happened. The Pomeroys and the Bartlett sisters, Tom Dobie, my supporters. People had brought their own kitchen chairs. Then Prowse entered and sat on the desk. Mr Rockwell Kent — he pointed at me — you are accused of physically assaulting James Hearn.

  Hearn: And threatening me, your Honour.

  Let me read the charges, Hearn. What do you plead, Mr Kent?

  I plead rowdyism. I plead a temporary bout of insanity. I will admit to a headlock, and I admit to calling Hearn a misbegotten viper and a hell-born stygian monster.

  Prowse ordered Hearn to the stand.

  Hearn: He near tore off my head, your Honour. I still got a crink. He threatened me and was entirely unusual.

  Prowse: Less theatrics please, Hearn.

  Why are you calling me Hearn and him Mr Kent?

  Shut up, Hearn.

  While Hearn was testifying I drew a cartoon of him. I strained my eyes at him until he looked at me, then I furiously drew his figure.

  I whispered that his fly was down. He buttoned up, turned red, and sat down.

  Kent, less out of you too. Now, your defence?

  I admit to a little wrestling, your Honour. I admit to wanting to pull every tooth from Hearn’s head. I confess generously to many desires, but I state emphatically that nothing unusual occurred. Except a good fright.

  He threatened to kill me.

  I did bark at him.

  You barked at him.

  And I meowed at him.

  Did you say you wanted to kill Mr Hearn?

  Yes.

  And I paused. There was muttering amongst the crowd.

  And then I said I wanted to cook him. And eat him.

  That got a laugh.

  Prowse: Mr Kent, are you rolling your eyes at the plaintiff?

  Me: No, your Honour. I’m just rolling my eyes.

  Prowse: And where did the offence take place.

  Hearn: By the wicket, sir.

  Hearn pointed at the wicket. This confused the judge.

  Prowse: How far was this wicket from, say, the front door.

  We all looked at Judge Prowse. Then Prowse realized that this very room was the scene of the incident. But even with this realization he refused to bend his mind over to considering the room a fair enough model to indicate the action of the crime. He tried not to look at the wicket. As if the hearing could be unbiased only as long as the setting remained theoretical and the incident summoned only through language. But now we were all looking at where I stood and where Hearn had been when I choked him.

  Prowse: Never mind. I’d say there’s a good fifteen feet between —

  And he waved at the wicket and the door.

  And that’s when he attacked you?

  Hearn: That’s when he went savage.

  Prowse: Dont be childish, Hearn. He put you in a headlock.

  Hearn: He went aboard me. That man is a disgrace to the artistic profession.

  Me: That’s not fair, your Honour. I would be a disgrace to any profession, and I’d like to point out that —

  Be steady, Mr Kent, we won’t be needing a lecture from you.

  Me: And you won’t be hearing one. I get paid for my lectures.

  This made him nod his head.

  Prowse: The entire affair, I rule, has been in the nature of a practical joke. I find the defendant guilty and fine you five dollars. Or thirty days in jail. Now let’s get some partridge hunting in, shall we.

  There was a roar and a heartiness. I asked, Does Hearn get any of the money?

  Prowse: Not a penny.

  Then, I said, I’ll pay the fine.

  I offered the bailiff the five dollars then and there. I made a show of it to the crowd. They were silent from the sight of so much money so easily handed over. Straight from my pocket. As Bartlett informed me later, a mistake.

  49

  Charles Daniel’s next letter included a cheque for sixty-five dollars. Not a hundred. He explained. The idea of shares in an artist, he said, is unheard of. The selling off of future work, it was a pyramid scheme. He preferred to stick with the monthly stipend, and I was still under contract. I am keeping, he wrote, the original share for its artistic merit. It is a rather beautiful piece of paper. But if I persisted, he would honour the scheme and print the two hundred shares. However, he would not like to invest. He wrote, Perhaps you need some time to change your own mind.

  This is how a conversation would go with my agent. In New York he would call on me and say, Did you paint today.

  Yes.

  Did you paint every day this week.

  Yes, every day, Charles.

  Every day.

  Yep.

  Every single day you painted.

  That’s right.

  Didnt miss a day.

  No, not a one.

  So if I said to a prospective buyer, Rockwell Kent paints every day of the week, I wouldnt be telling a lie.

  You’d be right on the ball.

  Every day.

  Okay, maybe not every day.

  Not every day?

  I might have missed a day.

  Oh, so one day you didnt paint.

  Correct.

  Wouldnt have been today.

  No, I painted today. Youre looking at me painting as we speak.

  But you didnt paint all week.

  Well, except for one day.

  Now that’s one day you didnt paint, right? Not one day you painted.

  I painted six out of the last seven goddamn days.

  But youre not consistent with that.

  That’s right.

  Though you did paint today.

  Christ yes look at me.

  I had been painting a portrait of the family. I wrote Charles Daniel back and thanked him for the money. Youre making a big mistake about the shares, I wrote. I wanted them printed. Gerald Thayer would see to it. Then I told him about compulsion. Because I was looking through Kathleen’s photos for an object to paint. This is new, this painting from photos. Usually I paint the rooms and light I live in. But I dont find these rooms, so far, paintable. I had done some landscapes, but nothing vivid. I wasnt ready for landscapes. So I came across this picture Kathleen had taken of us amongst the birch trees near the Bartletts’. Rockwell is leaning up to me, Kathleen has our little Kathleen in the air. There is joy here, and something edenic. I have spent maybe three days painting it. This is what I get out of painting. First, the cropping. The composition. I like figuring that out. For this painting I inserted the curtain of hills of Brigus. And the colour. I can spend a lot of time looking at the shadow falling on the ground and wonder what that colour is. I love isolating t
he colour from the rest of the scene and saying, Actually it’s a panel of blue and green with a speckle of orange. And then finding it in the oils. All of that, Charles, has little to do with art. It has more to do with my joy at mimicry. But tonight another thing crept in. I realized that I was in love with the family I was painting. I had fallen in love with them. I would do anything for them. I was so grateful that Rockwell was leaning up to me in the picture. I spent a long time on his shoulders. Getting the colour right on his back. There was light reflecting off his body. He was willing to let me help him. I had his trust. I was painting trust. Not only that, but the three days of painting our bodies embracing, those three days of devoting myself to that pagan image, it felt a bit like prayer. It felt that I was making trust come true. That I was honouring it. Strange, isnt it. I was painting my devotion to family, to Kathleen, to the town of Brigus, which was our home. I was painting what I loved.

  50

  The thing about Monhegan. Gerald Thayer pushed me to go there. And that is where Jenny was. Gerald said to me, I can’t do anything with Jenny. I promised my father I’d be good.

  Me: Your father? What about your goddamned wife.

  Gerald: What I mean is.

  But it’s true. He was more loyal to, or felt the honour of, Abbott Thayer. He did not want to let him down.

  We were drinking at the Green Dolphin with his father and Alma. I was on my way to Monhegan. There was live music. I said to Gerald: How come a big pool of beer keeps following you around?

  This, Kent, is the reason right here why I quit liquor. Because if I get to the next level shit will happen.

  He was looking over at his wife, Alma, flirting with Abbott Thayer.

  What has she got, he said, for paunchy, pretentious, bespectacled men?

  She’s working on a whole new morality, Gerald. It’s not based on appearance, attitude, or perfect vision. It’s bigger than both of us.

  Gerald: I asked my wife if she’d ever sleep with you. Alma said no and I said why not, youre such a good lay.

  Me: If I thought we could still be friends, I’d sleep with her.

  Gerald: If I thought you could adore me, I’d sleep with you.

  Me: I’m not happy that your father’s gone to the bar.

  He’s singing “Lakes Be a Bunch of Trees” to Alma.

  He’s singing “Lakes of the Pontchartrain.” But yes, he’s singing it to Alma.

  Neither of us brought up the issue of her having slept with Gerald’s father.

  Gerald: I’m miserable. And I’m too embarrassed to get up and go home. You can’t hear anything for that brass section in the corner.

  Me: Sit closer.

  Gerald: All this laughter, and nothing’s funny.

  We slugged down our drinks.

  Kent, I would tell you the meaning of life, but it would take forty-three books to write it all down.

  Forty-three books, you figure. Tell me, Gerald, did Jesus ever ask for help?

  He asked the disciples to pray with him.

  I mean did he ever ask anyone to make him a sandwich or let someone know he needed a hand.

  Gerald shook his head. We were looking at Alma’s bright legs moving from Abbott Thayer to the band.

  That gesture doesnt look like an equal and opposite attraction.

  Shut up.

  Gerald: Unlike my wife I dont do that end of town.

  Me: Your father’s the sexiest man here, and I’m going home with him.

  Coming from you, Kent, that’s okay, I can handle that.

  Alma came over. I just saw the most beautifulest band.

  Gerald: Youre drunk.

  Oh fuck off. I mean, I love you, baby.

  Dont be calling me baby.

  Me: Gerald, dont be nasty.

  Alma: There was a tuba and a tumpet.

  God you smell.

  Me: Gerald.

  Did I say tumpet. Maybe there was. There was a tumping thing. Kent, she said, tell me about my husband. I have no idea what he’s like.

  51

  There’s a telegram, George Browiny said. He’d come into Chafe’s with it. Bud Chafe read it. Charlie’s coming home, Bud said. Bob Bartlett has him aboard the Morrissey. They’ll be here tomorrow afternoon.

  There was a time in Charlie Chafe’s honour. The men filled their clay pipes and poured rum and Bartlett’s mother had a barking pot made spotless. The daughters cooked up a scoff of ham and hard tack out on the garden. The guests climbed the eleven stairs to Bartlett’s Hawthorne Cottage and filled the house and spilled into the gardens. We waited for the Morrissey to come. Outside, three tables were joined together, with tablecloths extending to the kitchen window. White china and the silver placings. Emily Edwards played bright piano in the parlour. The small children were arranged on the front steps by Rupert, each holding a bunch of wildflowers, while Kathleen took their picture. For once it wasnt a sad homecoming: Bartlett was bringing Charlie Chafe home.

  Tom Dobie: If you want to see an ornament, come look.

  The Morrissey rounded the rocks of Red Head. Bob Bartlett at the wheel in a fedora and a raglan. Rupert keeping some-thing at bay in the hold. They skimmed into port with Charlie Chafe waving. They anchored off Molly’s Island.

  Tom: He’s got a water bear aboard.

  They anchored there, and Tom Dobie and I prepared a skiff.

  We’re coming aboard, Bud Chafe said.

  We rowed Bud and Alice out to the island. Charlie had been gone two years. As we came alongside Charlie jumped down into the skiff and Bud Chafe put his hand on Charlie’s forehead. Then we got aboard and saw what the Bartletts had in the hold: a polar bear. Bob was wrestling near the neck of the polar bear. It wore a collar and a hundred feet of chain. He had a pole to its neck as it climbed out of the hatch. The pole had a hook attached to the collar. We pushed the bear over the side. The bear tumbled in the water and whipped its head up to the surface. Buoyant. It shook its head. Bartlett prodded it with the pole.

  Tom Dobie: He doesnt know his own mind, that bear dont. Or maybe he’s a her.

  Bartlett: I named her Maureen, after an old girlfriend of mine.

  Rupert was holding a cat. A survivor of the Karluk, he said. They left a seal carcass for the bear. They had three hundred pounds of walrus meat. Every bit of it good to eat, Bartlett said later. Ate the same thing myself. Then we all came ashore and we walked up to the Bartlett house.

  Charlie Chafe, mobbed by his two sisters.

  Charlie, youre older.

  He had gone through a severe anguish. A physical strain. A short-lived but terrific hardship that coats the youthful body with an arthritic veneer, a shell that protects the other life — that allows that other far different but certainly less distinguished life to emerge. Charlie Chafe laughed at it. I need to keel out for a spell, he said. And then flaked out on a daybed in the parlour. I’m like a busted wire, he sighed, like I been hit with electricity. We partied on.

  Bartlett got the bear off Greenland. The fellow who named Greenland, he said, must have been in the real estate business. First they’d noosed a male polar bear, madder than a march hare. It got away and beelined home to tell it all to the missus. Missus came out and that’s who we ended up with. A feisty one for sure, women usually are.

  52

  Charlie: I served the men their meals. I never served gentles before. I polished boots and fed sled dogs. I’m only twenty, he said. I’d never been out of Conception Bay. Me and Captain the only Newfoundlanders on board the Karluk, hey, Captain Bob.

  Bartlett: There was this cat. And a Newfoundland pony.

  Emily: I love the smell of horseshit.

  Charlie: Let’s hear James Murphy’s “Song of the Apples.”

  Emily sneezed.

  Me: You just wet my entire hand.

  At least no one’s said I’m loud
.

  Me: Been meaning to tell you, Emily. Youre wet and loud.

  She twisted herself on the piano stool. Come here, she said, and I’ll give you a smack between the eye and the ear where you can’t lick it.

  She stared with all of her youth into my bare eye.

  Dont tempt me.

  A shudder went through me, for I knew I was tempted. I went outside. I exhaled. I looked at the bear out on the island. A wild, white, chained element. I rubbed my arms. It was as if Emily’s vigour had splashed upon me. Rupert and Kathleen sitting on the bottom step. Rupert was pointing at something, their shoulders touched, and then she pointed at the same thing. I went back inside to the Artic Room. Charlie Chafe was holding forth.

  Charlie: We lived on a spit of land and we did not know how long Bartlett would be. We forked into three parties like Bartlett told us. We had nine dogs and the cat. In the third month a man shot himself from an episode of panic. The boys in one party died from the canned meat. Only Kuraluk had a good aim. Whenever we ate seal or walrus we felt better.

  Tony Loveys: You were gone so long we thought you learnt the huskimaw.

  Charlie: I was on the hand of it. I became pretty primitive, I got to say. I understand now the desire for raw meat.

  Bartlett: You relaxed into coarse mannerism.

  Boys, it was the most efficient manner to live by.

  Bartlett: I call them coarse now, but at the time you were refined to the predicament.

  I looked out the window just as Rupert and my wife went for a walk.

  Me: Yes, this is true of all time and place.

  On a hunt with the sled Charlie lost the trail and a storm picked up. He staggered about with the dogs all evening until he found one of the shelters he’d built in a pressure ridge two months previous. He huddled in this but did not sleep: I was afraid to sleep. My foot was frozen and my teeth were hackering. I watched myself wiggle the foot. I cursed myself for not paying attention to the foot. I packed the dogs around me.

  In the morning the storm continued and the dogs howled about the sled. He unleashed the dogs and let them go, except for one. He chained his wrist to this dog, it was the dog he trusted most. The dog pulled him through the snow. For six hours he staggered after the dog. By then he’d gone ice blind. It was like having sand in your eyes, he said. He prayed that the dog would catch a scent.