The Fortunate Brother

by Donna Morrissey

  Canning flicked a look to MacDuff and Kyle kicked himself.

  “When did she get to the hospital?” asked Wheaton.

  “I dunno.”

  “What time did you see her?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Were you there when she showed up in your mother’s room?”

  “Yes.”

  “Around what time was that?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Why don’t you know?”

  “Cuz I was taking care of my mother. Cuz I didn’t give a fuck about Bonnie Gillard or the time.”

  “You don’t give a fuck about Bonnie Gillard,” said Canning, “and yet she sits with your mother during this private time?”

  “What’s your question?”

  “Why don’t you like Bonnie Gillard?”

  “I neither like nor dislike Bonnie Gillard. She’s my mother’s friend.”

  “Is she your father’s friend?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see your father with Bonnie Gillard the night of the murder?”

  “No. Why don’t you ask Bonnie Gillard where she was? Why don’t you ask her sister where she was? Ask anybody in the whole fucking town where she was. Somebody always knows something. You haven’t got that figured out yet?” Christ but he was mad, mad at the whole fucking works of them, and Canning and Wheaton kept bearing down on him like dogs, barking out questions they’d already asked and he snapping back answers, Yes, I seen Father earlier that night, we does what we always does, drives around for a bit—I drives and he drinks. Yes he was drunk and passed out. Yes I parked the truck behind the club. Yes, he was passed out and it’s what he does, he drinks and passes out and we’d gotten hard news about Mother that night and he was drunk, stoned drunk, and he should’ve been home with Mother and that’s what you should be nailing him with, getting drunk when he should’ve been home, and not following some shit story like—like…He faltered, his throat raw, his heart pounding, his face on fire. Gawd-damn. His mother all hacked up in the hospital and they hunting up some story about his father and Bonnie Gillard. He should tell them about the car, about her bawling in his mother’s house, but now he couldn’t tell them nothing about that because they’d want to know when he found the car and where his father was when he found the car and they’d know he wasn’t with his father like he said he was and smothering Jesus, he had himself all sewn into his own lie. He stopped talking. He simply stopped talking and stared at the cops. They stared back. They were waiting. Waiting for what? Him to break like some arsehole scene from some arsehole cop show? “We done here?”

  MacDuff flipped back through his pages, tutting like an old woman, sweat gathering on his brow like he was coming down with something. He put down his pencil and gave a tired smile.

  “We’re sorry about the timing, Kyle. We put off talking to you earlier out of respect for your mother’s hospital procedure.”

  “Yeah? You’re touching my heart. Who’s driving me home?”

  “This way, sir,” said Canning. Kyle pushed past MacDuff, who was looking sadder than a lost cow, and followed Canning down the hall to the door.

  “We’ll be calling soon,” said Canning, showing Kyle out. “Evening, now.”

  “What—you kidding me? No one’s driving me home?”

  “Sorry, sir. We don’t taxi people.”

  “Taxi? You haul me forty miles from home and I’m to walk back?”

  “There’s a bus in the morning, sir.”

  “You got a bed for me somewhere? Oh, right, you’re not a hotel service, either.” He went outside, kicked at the door closing behind him, hurt his foot. Bastards! He limped to the highway and looked west towards Corner Brook—there was lots of traffic; it’d be easier to hitch a ride and spend the night in the hospital sitting room. But he had to see his father. What the hell had they done to his father this morning with their arsehole questions?

  He stuck out his thumb pointing east. Ten, fifteen minutes passed and a scattering of cars. He was shaking from the cold and shaking from rage. A trucker swept past, nearly blowing him off the road. Jaysus. He walked half a mile west to a gas station and lucked into a ride with a closed-mouthed old fellow from Jackson’s Arm. Eb Langford. Second cousin to some uncle on his father’s side. They rode in silence—Kyle too tired to talk and Eb having never strung two sentences together in his life. They took the cut at Hampden Junction and ten miles later came to a split in the road: one leading another twenty-five miles to Jackson’s Arm, the other leading ten miles to Hampden. It was dark, darker than old jeezes, and more bears around these parts than gulls snatching at roadkill. When Eb pulled over to let him out, Kyle offered him twenty bucks for the extra ten-minute drive to Hampden. He was met with the same stony eyes as Wheaton and Canning’s.

  Fucking Langfords. Low-life fucking Langfords. Wouldn’t give you a rhubarb stalk if it was rotting in their yard. He got out of the car and started walking. The woods bordering the roadside were black, the road a greyish hue before him. His blood was pumping hard, motoring his step and keeping other stuff from creeping in—like the shadows of darker things up ahead against the already darkened skyline. Another thirty minutes and there’d be stars and a rind of moon. He pricked his ears for bears and the night pressed around him like a great, smothering blanket. And silence. Fucking silence. Where the saints reside. Where God is. A blessed thing. A scary thing, a thing of peace. He hated silence. Nothing made more noise than silence, hovering before your face like a pent-up scream. Dead people. That’s who were silent, dead people. Stillness. That’s what he remembered most about Chris, his stillness in that coffin. His sealed mouth and sealed eyes. And the stillness of his face, no matter all that sobbing and suffering going on around him. Except for Sylvie. She wasn’t sobbing. She was as silent as Chris. Her face the same pallor. He’d wanted to touch her, but couldn’t. She must’ve felt him thinking of her for she looked up at that instant, meeting his eyes, and he closed his. Closed her out. Couldn’t look. Couldn’t bear what her eyes might tell him. Christ, there he was again, stuck inside his head and thinking about things, all those things his mother and sister were wont to talk about and he would have nothing to do with. He picked up his step and hurried as he always did from Sylvie, from silence, from the whispers wriggling like insects through his ears, forever driving him out the door and down the road to the bar where there was noise and people whose loud chatter shushed his tiresome whispers and tiresome thinking about things. He walked harder, pushing through the dark, pushing through the night, pushing through the rest of this day where so much had happened and was happening still.

  The throbbing of a truck sounded from behind, yellow headlights sweeping over him. Dougie Gale. Getting back from his cabin down Rushy Pond and with his wife and youngsters in the cab with him. Kyle shook with relief, climbed aboard the back, and roared out “The bar!” Ten minutes later he was kicking at the tire of his father’s truck parked outside. Hooker’s car was next to it. He went in. He needed a drink—gawd-damn, he needed a drink.

  The bar was almost empty. Curses from the corner where the old-timers jabbed pegs into a crib board, air blue with smoke from their homemade rollies. Julia leaned over the pool table, ponytail coiling like silken rope onto the green felt. Fellow from Bayside chalking up his stick beside her. She missed her shot and cursed. A few of the boys from Sop’s Arm were sitting at the back of the bar and Hooker was sitting amongst them. He shoved back his chair upon seeing Kyle and Kyle rapped the bar for the bartender who was feeding quarters into the flashing face of a one-armed bandit. He scooped a handful of nuts from a bowl sitting on the table and shucked them into his mouth, near choking as Julia appeared before him. White T-shirt, low-hung jeans. She tucked her foot between his on the rung of his stool, cue stick staffed beside her.

  “How’s everything, Ky?”

  “Holding your cue too tight,” he told her, brushing nut crumbs off his mouth.

  “You think?”

  “Cue jerks when yo
u holds it too tight. Screws up your aim.”

  “You giving lessons?” Her smile was saucy. Her eyes lazy as she scanned his face. Big grey eyes, clean and healthy.

  “Your break, doll,” called her pool chum and she winked at Kyle and turned, her ponytail sweeping his face with scent. He scooped another handful of nuts into his mouth, salty and crunchy. He finished off the bowl.

  “What’s up?” said Hooker, taking the stool beside him. “Couple of whiskies,” he called to the bartender who was still sitting and feeding the bandit, “when you’re not too busy, that is. Arse.” He turned to Kyle. “How’s she going, bud?”

  “See the old man?”

  “He went off awhile ago. Tried getting him to Father’s place for the night, but hell, when Syllie gets like that.”

  “Figures.”

  “I tried to keep him here.”

  “Yeah, don’t worry, I knows where he is.”

  “He come in for one, and then walked away from it. Whaddya think of that? Had it poured and stared at it and then walked away. I followed after him, but he faced me down. Swear to jeezes, he would’ve clocked me if I took another step. Sorry, bud.”

  “Did he say anything? About what the cops asked him?”

  “Nothing. Not a word. But he was dark around the gills. He was after going through something.” Hooker paused, looking worried. Hooker always looked worried.

  Kyle spat out a bit of nail from where he was chewing on his thumb. “What’s everybody saying?”

  “That it’s weird Clar was on your wharf. But they thinks Bonnie Gillard done it. Except they don’t know how she’d get the strength to knife down Clar if they were in a fight. Unless she surprised him with the knife.”

  “Who else the cops questioning?”

  “Everyone they sees on the road.”

  “They take anybody else in?”

  “Don’t think. Nobody knows where Bonnie is.”

  “The cops knows now. I’m after telling them she’s at the hospital.”

  “That’s where she’s at, with your mother? Good one. Never thought of that. By the way, word’s out about your mother’s operation. And it weren’t me or Skeemo, you got that?”

  “Yeah. Sorry.”

  “Arse.”

  “Me today, you tomorrow.”

  “Yeah. Always somebody wagging their chin. Joanie Jenkins was in visiting her mother and seen Andrew Stride in there. He works in X-rays or something. You can’t keep nothing here, bud.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s it now.”

  “Anyway, buddy, listen. I got something to tell you, all right? Fuck.” Hooker blew out a hot breath of air. He reached for the shot of whisky that wasn’t there. “Anybody working in this hole?” he yelled at the bartender.

  “Calm ’er down, bud. What’s going on?”

  Hooker fixed his eyes on the drink the bartender was pouring. He reached for it as the bartender landed it none too gently before him. He took a gulp, calling for two more.

  Kyle’s mouth went dry. “What’s the matter? What’s going on?”

  Hooker took another gulp. Something softer than a spring leaf touched Kyle’s hand. Julia. Touching his hand goodbye as she was passing with her pool chum. Her eyes the glistening grey of wet beach rocks.

  “I haven’t told one cock-sucking soul about this,” said Hooker. He leaned towards Kyle, speaking quietly. “The second I tells you, it’s gone, got it? Out the window. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Good, then. The night of the killing, I found Syl down on Hampden Wharf in his truck, parked next to Clar’s. He was soaked from the waist down. He was in the water that night.”

  Kyle nodded. He remembered waking up on the wharf, his father standing there, his pants damp, stiff. “So? So, what? Perhaps he pissed himself. You think of that, he pissed himself?”

  “His boots were soaked. A horse couldn’t piss that much. He was in the water. It don’t mean nothing. He was drunk, staggered on the beach into the water or something.”

  “That’s what he done then—went for a piss and staggered. Fell into the water. Or perhaps he heard something and tried to see. It was foggy. Leaned too far and staggered—anything could’ve happened. I mean, did anybody see him?”

  “Haven’t heard nothing. Might be nobody seen him. She was thick, buddy, the fog was thick, but she was thinning in spots. I drove down, could see a bit with the fog lights on.”

  “How come you were there?”

  “Word circled the bar Clar punched you out. I went looking and seen both trucks parked on the wharf. Syllie’s was running—likely he was trying to dry off. He was out of it. Empty forty-ouncer beside him. He never spoke, his eyes were open, but it was like he was comatose. Can’t figure how he drove, drunk as he was. Unless he got drunk while he was there. I parked my truck and got in his and drove him up to the gravel flat hoping Kate had her fire going and you’d be there. Kate said you’d just left. I had a beer with her and left Syllie sleeping in the truck. Kate said she’d keep an eye on him.” Hooker opened his mouth to say more, hesitated.

  “What?”

  “I ain’t never going to say this agin, you got that?”

  “Just say it.”

  “He said something about Clar being dead.”

  “Jesus.”

  “He didn’t do it.”

  “Jesus. Jesus, fuck.”

  “It don’t mean nothing. Syllie ain’t got it in him. I’m only telling you because you should know that, and it don’t mean dick, but I thought you should know it.”

  “What, then? What the fuck, then?”

  “Think about it. Clar was on your wharf. If Syl done it, he wouldn’t have got aboard his truck and drove down to Hampden Wharf and parked by Clar’s. Unless he was wanting to get caught. In which case he would’ve just phoned the cops himself. Said it was self-defence or something. And if he followed him along the beach and done it, he wouldn’t have come back to his truck and passed out there. Not if you killed somebody. Naw!” Hooker was shaking his head. “Syl wouldn’t knife nobody. He hasn’t got it in him. And it don’t matter dick what I seen because I just forgot it. If anybody else seen, they’d be yakking before now. All right, buddy? We got it forgot, all right?”

  The old-timers in the corner scraped back their chairs, their cards a mess on the table, hollering to the bartender to tally up.

  “Right, buddy?”

  Kyle nodded.

  “Right, then. Let’s do some figuring.” He inched his stool closer to Kyle. “Clar parked on Hampden Wharf. He’s figuring nobody can see because of the fog. He climbed around the cliff to your wharf—for what? What was he up to? This was after punching you out. Must be Syllie he was after. Why else would he go to your wharf?”

  Bonnie Gillard. He was after Bonnie Gillard, not his father. Kyle opened his mouth but closed it again. They weren’t his words to speak. They were his mother’s.

  “Your mother—did she see anything?”

  “She got too much going on.”

  “Yeah, sorry. She’s all right, is she?”

  “Yeah. She’s going to be fine. Look, I gotta go. See to the old man.”

  “I’ll give you a ride.”

  “Appreciate it, but I’ll walk. One thing: Kate coming up with an alibi for all of us that night. Was that your doing?”

  “We both come up with it. Next morning I was up to your house before the cops came. And you and Syl were already gone. I talked to Kate—didn’t tell her about Syl being on the wharf or anything. Just that he was drunk behind the wheel and we both come up with the story. She said she was going down Beaches for a drive and would fill you in. Which was good because the cops showed up right after I left, talking to her. Then they hauled me over by the post office—picking up a parcel for Mom—and I seen Kate driving past. On her way to tell ye what we worked out.” Hooker grinned, proud of himself.

  “Lying to the police. You don’t need that kinda trouble, Hooker.”

  “None coming. Syl was
drunk and passed out behind the bar. I drove him home.”

  “Right. And Kate—why’s she lying? Why’s everybody lying to the cops about the old man?”

  “Because Syllie got enough going on. He don’t need extra shit. And we understands what the cops won’t.” His voice dropped. The old-timers were shuffling to the bar now, arguing about who owned the last round.

  “What’s ye hooligans cahootin’ now?” one of them asked.

  “Mind your own beeswax,” snipped Hooker.

  “I’ll be going,” said Kyle. “See you later, bud.”

  “Sure. Hey, Ky?”

  “What’s up?”

  Hooker took on a pained look, then shook his head. “Nothing. Go on.”

  “Let it out.”

  “It’s stupid. Too fucking stupid.”

  “Can handle something stupid right now.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Spit it out, b’y, what’s going on?”

  Hooker shrugged, wiped at his mouth. “Fucking Roses.”

  “What about her. What, I gotta choke it outta you?”

  “I think she likes you.”

  Kyle sank back on his stool.

  “I knows you’re not after her, man—don’t get me wrong—aw, told you this was stupid. It’s just—I dunno. The way she was fawning over you at the dance.”

  “You nuts? You fucking nuts?”

  “Yeah, I’m nuts.”

  “She’s playing you, fool!”

  “Yeah, I know. I know. Aw, hell, this is bad.”

  “Yeah, it’s bad. You’re getting soft, all right? Soft in the head.”

  “I hates my head. Hates my fucking head.”

  Kyle slapped Hooker’s shoulder. “It’s all right, buddy. Women does that to you. All right? I gotta go.”

  “Sure, you go. See to your old man. You knows where I am, right?”

  “Take ’er easy, hey.”

  “I loves you, man.”

  Kyle thumped Hooker’s back and followed the last of the old-timers out the door. The moon was out and a smattering of stars. He looked over at his father’s truck. He was soaked. He was in the water. He knew Clar was dead. He started walking. End of the road he turned left up Bottom Hill and crested the top and started down the other side. He was tired, bone tired. The moon offered scant light on the underbrush crowding the roadside and he judged from habit the opening to the shortcut and started down the choked path, to hell with squeamish fears. A smell of rot and he more felt than saw the ground sinking away to his right and the charred flooring of the Trapps’ burned-out sawmill, the smut-blackened skeleton of a corner post rising like a crucifix over some apocalyptic ruin. A loose piece of wood dangled from a half-collapsed beam like a charred effigy, its creaking in the stirred air sending chills down his neck. The path steepened, trees walling each side. He grasped at prickly branches, easing his way down, and was soon breaking through the woods behind his house.