The Fortunate Brother

by Donna Morrissey

  “He was up to no good, is why. He was on our wharf. Likely he tried the door.”

  “Was it locked?”

  “No. It’s never locked.”

  “Then why didn’t he go in?”

  “Maybe he seen through the window I wasn’t there. What the hell do I know?”

  “Clar Gillard already punched you in the jaw. Why would he be waiting at your door for you to return?”

  “You’re asking me why Clar Gillard would do something? He was nuts. Maybe he wanted to clock me agin. Maybe he thought I was dicking his girlfriend.”

  “Maybe he thought your father was?”

  “Even Clar Gillard knows the difference. Tell you what. If any of them secrets come to mind, I’ll give you a call. Right now I got nothing you don’t already know. Mind if I leave now? There’s cement waiting to be poured and I’ll not say no more till I got a lawyer. Unless you’re going to charge me with murder, I’ll be on my way.”

  It was instinct, not balls, that made him say that. If they thought it was him, they wouldn’t be wasting their time questioning him about others. He went for the door. He waited for MacDuff to order him back, half wishing he would. He twisted the knob, went out, and started down the hall. No footsteps came after him, no one hollered for him to come back. He took the wrong hallway, walked past a receptionist behind a glass partition and two scrawny teens sitting outside, sneer-like smiles as they waited for roll call. Another short hall and he was in the foyer and then outside, legs trembling, hands dug into his pockets, shoulders hunched against a chilled wind.

  EIGHT

  He crossed the highway and stuck out his thumb, heading west towards Corner Brook. Sylvanus would still be there, sitting with his mother, and he needed his father, he needed bad to see him.

  A green Chevy drove past, heading east towards Hampden. It honked, pulled over, and the window lowered. Ambrose Rice, Ben’s father. Kyle hopped back across the highway and ran towards the car. A dark grizzled head poked through the passenger side window. Suze, Ben’s mother.

  “Recognize that muck of hair anywhere,” she called out. “Just like your father.”

  “How’s she going, Suze? What’re you up to, buddy?” he asked Ambrose, lowering his head to better see him.

  “Get in,” said Suze, “we gives you a ride. Your mother would have a copper kitten if she knows you’re hitchhiking.”

  “Thanks, but I’m on my way to Corner Brook.”

  “Then we’ll drive back to Corner Brook. We were just visiting with your mother. Imagine that now, she keeping all this to herself and your poor old father going along with it.”

  “Yeah, I gotta go see him, you guys go on, now.”

  “Your father’s on his way out,” said Ambrose. “Said he had to check on you and the boys with the cement.”

  “He’s on his way out? You’re sure?” Kyle straightened, looking back down the highway.

  “That’s what he said then—might already be ahead of us. Had to pick up some things for Addie in the drugstore.”

  “I’ll take a ride home, then.” Kyle squeezed into the back seat amidst a pile of stuffed grocery bags and tried to focus on Suze’s yakking as Ambrose hauled them back onto the highway behind an eighteen-wheeler screaming past.

  “…he got some lot on his mind now, your father do. Hardly spoke all while we were there and that’s not like Syllie, hey Am? And to think, not one of you calling me about your mother. But that’s Addie—always to herself. Never knew a thing till Roger Nichols showed up from Corner Brook yesterday, looking for a box of crab legs. And I blames you, too,” she said, twisting sideways, grey eyes snapping back at Kyle.

  He mumbled something apologetically and Ambrose winked at him in the rearview mirror and he kept seeing his father opening the house door that night, Clar Gillard’s blood on the doorknob.

  “…and what’s Bonnie Gillard doing there? Motioning me outside your mother’s room and telling me to say nothing about your house being taped off and all that. Like I was going to barge into Addie’s room and bring it up. Near bit me tongue off. It’s Bonnie Gillard herself what’s worrying me. All that stuff going on and she acting like she don’t have a care in the world. They says she done it. That’s the word down home. I hope she’s not bringing her troubles onto your mother because that crowd can suck blood from a turnip, they can. Drains the energy right outta me just looking at the mess around her father’s doorplace. Jack Verge. Not fit. And he the first one up every morning, then, with the smoke coming from his chimney so’s everyone thinks how hard-working he is. Stun thing. Most likely he’s not gone to bed yet. Still sitting and drinking at the breakfast table. And your poor father! Sitting by your mother’s bedside and holding her hand like she was his young sweetheart…”

  …next morning his father wouldn’t drink, had thrown that bottle of booze out through the truck window…

  “And that Kate what’s her name—you know her, Kylie? Sidling off down the hospital hall with Bonnie Gillard—”

  “Kate was there?”

  “Like thieves they were. You wonders what’s so important they stole off like that, having their chat and your poor mother watching after them, right concerned.”

  “What were they talking about?”

  “I never heard—they kept far enough to themselves, whispering like two crooks. Where we taking you, my love? You can’t go home. How long they going to keep your house sealed off? And where’s your mother going to go when she gets out of the hospital—and Sylvie?”

  “Don’t know. We’ll figure it out.” He shut out Suze’s prattling and stared out the window at the passing belt of green. The clouds parted, a shaft of sun striking gold through the trees. Winter finally ending and yet here he sat, paining like an arthritic limb before the mother of all storms about to descend. And for the first he could remember he felt like something adrift, no pier to tether himself to.

  “Look. Look there,” Suze cried out. Sitting on the guardrail beside the junction turnoff to Hampden and Jackson’s Arm, arms wrapped around himself for warmth, was Trapp. Skinny as old fuck and with ruffs of tawny hair clinging to a gaunt, pointy face. He rose as Ambrose braked, turning off the highway onto the Hampden Road, and came towards the car. Glassy green eyes staring into Kyle’s with such intensity that Kyle drew back.

  “Don’t you stop, don’t you stop!” Suze was shrieking at Ambrose. “We’re not giving him a ride, he can rot on that stump before I ever gives him another handout. Don’t you stop, Am.”

  “You gone silly?” yelled Ambrose as Suze grabbed at the wheel. He sped up, pushing her aside, and Kyle looked back, watching Trapp staring after them. The same slump to his shoulders that he’d worn the second last time he’d seen him, sitting on the bank outside the bar and talking with Ben. Or, listening. Trapp hadn’t been talking. Just slumped there, head hanging as though it were too heavy to hold up, and Ben, his arm wrapped around Trapp’s shoulders, hugging him, hugging and talking hard and Trapp kept slumping further inside himself.

  Suze’s voice was rising unbearably. “He’s heard Ben’s coming home, that’s why he’s poking around now. He got poor Benji drove crazy, he have. Too bad it wasn’t he that got shot and not his dog—”

  “Sufferin’ Jesus.”

  “I means it, yes, I do mean it, Am.” She looked back at Kyle. “That’s how it started, back when Trapp’s dog bit Benji. And Benji always felt bad when that sick father of Trapp’s shot the dog. He’s still making up for it. And I don’t care if Benji was teasing the dog—you can tease a dog and not have your leg bit off. And he was strange, Trapp was. And he’s who caused your poor brother’s death, too. Poor Chris. Don’t shush me, Am. Benji told us enough. Trapp wasn’t doing his job properly on the rig, too busy fighting with everybody, and then when he seen the rig about to blow—”

  “Shut up!” yelled Ambrose. “Bloody well shut up. She don’t know no such thing, Kyle.”

  “Benji told me straight.”

  “Ben was drinking
and shouldn’t been talking.”

  “And that’s when the truth comes out, when liquor got your tongue.”

  “By Jesus, the devil must have yours, then. Blaming a man for something like that just because you don’t like him.”

  “And what’s the reason I don’t like him? Because he’s so nice? You must be foolish, my son, because the reason I don’t like him is because he’s an arse. Just like Benji said.”

  “Ben treats him like a brother.”

  “Brothers hate each other. Ask Cain.” She twisted around back to Kyle again. “And your poor sister, wonder she never got killed, too. She was there, seen it all, she did. First one to his side, she was.”

  Kyle was opening his car door now. “Pull over, Am. Pull over.” They’d just driven past Bayside and were coming upon Bottom Hill.

  “I never meant to say anything. Oh, my, Kyle. He never suffered, it was too fast and he never suffered. Oh my, what have I got done now?”

  Kyle was out of the car before Ambrose rolled to a stop. “Go on now, thanks for the lift. Don’t worry,” he said to Suze. “Go on now and we’ll see you when Ben gets back.” He started walking. Walking fast down Wharf Road. Walking fast from Suze—your poor sister, seen it all, first one to his side…

  He hopped the yellow ribbon cordoning off his house and then went up to the door and stopped, staring in through the window. He saw them there, his mother, father, Chris, Sylvie—all of them. Their faces hung like ghosts around the empty kitchen. The yellow plastic ribbon tic-ticced in the gusting. He clasped his hands behind his head and walked in circles like a mangy dog. His father, he needed to see his father.

  The tide was just starting in. He hopped off the wharf onto the scrap of beach and started climbing around the outcropping, grasping onto the cold granite rock, short-cutting it to Hampden. He came to the ragged inlet that had cradled Clar. He wondered at the innocence of wavelets splashing and playing where Clar’s sightless eyes had stared up at him. Then he sat, cupping his knees in his hands and seeing Chris’s warm brown eyes full of light. He watched the seaweed floating on the water, watched again as it settled onto the vacant eyes of Clar Gillard, and wondered if light had ever entered those dark orbs or if he’d been a darkness even unto himself. Doing as he, Kyle, was doing. Fleeing down side roads and detours and never stopping to think that yesterday can never be fled, that its ills and thrills work hand in hand in shaping the morning’s path.

  The water started swelling into the inlet, the wavelets lapping a little too hard at his boots. He pushed himslef up from the rocks to leave and paused. Peered more closely towards the rugged back wall of the inlet. About six feet up, just above eye level. A little star within the crevice of a rock. Sunlight bouncing off steel. He found footing on a ledge and hoisted himself closer. He saw the handle of a knife, its blade buried. A knife used to fillet cod in the fish plants. His heart kicked with knowing—the knife that had ended Clar’s life. Sure as hell, it was the knife. He leaned closer and his heart kicked harder and kept kicking, near rupturing his rib cage. It was his knife. Kyle’s. The knife that his father always used. Nicked in the handle from where he, Kyle, had pinged his axe off it once.

  Blood pounded in his ears. The water lapped harder at his boots. He looked madly around the inlet for somewhere to hide the knife. Why hadn’t the cops found it? It was right there, easily seen. How hadn’t they seen it?

  Because it couldn’t have been there. Couldn’t. They would have seen it. Someone put it there. After the cops had finished searching, someone had returned and stuck in the knife. There hadn’t been a storm. No wave could have flung the thing ashore and wedged it this high onto the rock. He looked up. It was a thirty-foot drop from the top of the cliff.

  He pressed his hand against his still kicking heart. He extracted the knife and slid it down the inside of his coat sleeve, crooking his elbow to keep it in place. He climbed around the outcropping and onto the grey pebbly beach girdling Hampden, looking up at the houses against the wind-blown sky. A revved chainsaw ripped through the air, smell of cut birch. A missus hanging a mat over her clothesline. Another coming out of her basement with a load of splits. They both stopped, looking down at him, watched.

  He bent his head, took a scuffed path through the weeds and up onto the road, coming face to face with the old fellow with the hitched-up pants and glasses. Dobey Randall. His eyes cut stark clear through his lenses at Kyle. They were poignant with knowing, as if he’d seen everything that had just happened. Kyle walked away from him, his step quickening with panic. He kept himself from breaking into a trot past a gathering of men and young boys on the wharf near Clar’s ribboned-off truck. Their voices lowered as he passed. Felt like he was in a movie scene and all eyes were on him; the director would yell Cut any second now, everyone would break into chatter, all would be normal again. A rough voice called out.

  “Your father working today, then?”

  “He’s in Corner Brook. How’s she going, Pete, b’y?”

  “Not bad. Your mother’s good, then?”

  “Yeah, she’s good. You sees Father, tell him I’m down Beaches.”

  “Needing a hand down there?” asked Stan Hurley.

  “Naw. Got the boys with me, Lyman and Wade.”

  “Give you a ride, I suppose.”

  “Naw, be someone along soon enough.”

  The knife slid down his arm, the tip pricking into his wrist. He gripped the cuff of his sleeve and straightened his arm. Heard a car coming down Hampden Hill. The shiny four-door manual Chevy, straight off the lot, bucked like a rabbit and choked to a stop alongside of him. Julia. Driving her father’s new car. The passenger window rolled down. She lowered her head, staring scantways at him. Clear blue eyes, hair clamped in a messy bun, stray feathery strands tickling her face.

  “Chance a ride?” she asked.

  He got in, the knife sagging to the back of his sleeve. He dug his hand into his pocket and closed the door.

  “Going down Beaches?” she asked.

  “Yup. Yup, I am. How far you going?”

  “All the way if you’d like.”

  He forced a smile to his stiff jaws. He held on to the door handle as she started the engine, rode the clutch too hard, stalled her.

  “Self-taught?”

  “Yup.” Another twist at the ignition and the car vaulted forward, grinding first gear into a nub and then jumping into second and much too soon into third and they were bucking down the road. “Dad sees this, he’ll kill me.” She laughed. “But that’s how he done it—stole his father’s standard and learned on a hillside.”

  “We’re riding a stolen car?”

  “Borrowed. Not like he don’t know by now. Half the outport’s harping on the phone by now. She stalled her going downhill, b’y. Can’t think what she’ll do going uphill.” She laughed again. Her mouth the prettiest pink he’d ever seen. “You always so serious?” she asked him.

  “What? No. No. Just busy, is all. Nice day, eh?”

  “How’s your mother?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “Glad to hear that. Nice woman, your mother. We always chat at the post office or in the store.”

  “Yeah. We like her, too.”

  “Right. Anyway, she’s interesting. Quiet without being quiet, you know what I mean.”

  “I do.”

  She gave him a contrite look. “We all knows about her operation.”

  “Figures.”

  “That bothers you?”

  “No. No, I don’t mind.”

  “She does?”

  “She’s like that.”

  “You Nows. Floated up the bay all those years ago and you’re still strangers.”

  “Jaysus. That bad?”

  “Your sister hardly talked to any of us going to school.”

  “She’s shy.”

  “And you?”

  “Me? Uh, no. Nope. Hell, I’m about. You’re the one who’s gone.”

  “Changing that soon enough.”
r />   “How’s that?”

  “Not quite figured, yet. Everybody’s beating a path to Toronto or Alberta or Saskatchewan. Not me. I’m the one who’s gonna make it here.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Figure something.”

  “Your folks’ll like that.”

  “Right. The old man pales whenever I mentions it. Wants me making it big in da big city, like Mary Tyler Moore.”

  He smiled.

  “You? What’s your plan?”

  “Still figuring it.”

  “There it is. Closed-mouthed Nows.”

  “Takes after Mother.”

  “Yup. She don’t hand out invites, either.”

  “I’ll tell her to invite you for tea.”

  She laughed. “Roses said you were daft.”

  “Roses is a thorny bitch.”

  “She can laugh, though. Don’t think I’ve ever seen you laugh.”

  “Huh, maybe later.” He grabbed the door handle to keep me from jolting forward as she yanked the gear stick from fifth down to third, starting up Fox Point, tires biting into the dirt.

  “Oops, forgot fourth,” she said and laughed at the concerned look on his face and he wanted to touch the creamy taut column of her throat as she tossed back her head, laughing harder. “Why are you so serious?” she asked, turning to him.

  He smiled. Couldn’t help himself. Felt like he’d slipped through a crack from gloomy skies into liquid sunshine.

  “Stop chewing your nails.”

  Jaysus. He dug his hand into his pocket.

  “An ouroboros moment?” she asked.

  “A what?”

  “The snake. Feeding off its own tail while growing a better one.”

  “Yeah, that’s it—regrowing myself. In bits.”

  “Well, you starts with your head. Then the rest takes care of itself.”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps you just lose your head.”

  “How many headless gurus do you know?”

  There was an undertone to her banter. He lowered his window, too stuffy to breathe. “Cripes, slow down, here.” They were driving through the Beaches and a dozen youngsters flew out onto the road in front of them, hollering and yodelling. Bath towels tied around their throats, hanging cape-like down their backs. Bandanas with cut-out eyes around their heads.