Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul

by David Adams Richards

  He didn’t know why that mattered anymore.

  Samantha and he maybe even got married because of that—because of it all—because they wanted to prove to each other they could love each other. And they did, but at least for them, not in the way they needed to.

  He went back to his car. He took out his makings and put them on his lap, took out a paper and rolled himself a cigarette carefully, so the tobacco wouldn’t be too tight. Then he snapped a match and lit it, and sat there and smoked, listening to Hank Williams sing about a cheatin’ heart.

  Yes, he thought, we all have one.

  A few days later, Samantha called Markus back about the X-rays.

  “It is not good, Markus, love,” she said. “It is not at all good. You have spots on both lungs. I want you back here tonight. I want to schedule biopsies in Saint John.”

  “I cannot do it yet,” he said. “I will be in—I promise.”

  “Why the hell did you smoke?” she said, suddenly starting to cry. “Why in Christ did you smoke?”

  “I don’t know, Sam. Why be Irish if you can’t be stupid?”

  “You stop—you stop what you are doing and get in here—now—or I’ll have you arrested!”

  “Sure, love, sure.”

  He hung up. Then his cell phone rang. It was her, but when he went to answer it he accidentally pushed the wrong something or other, something he had never figured out, and cut her off.

  “Christ she’ll be angry at me now.”

  He went in three days later, sheepish for having hung up on her. It was a cold day, and he sat in the small examination room off the outpatient ward, shivering, and she asked how his trip was.

  “Fine,” he said. “I bought you a present.”

  “Good. Where is it?”

  “I left it on the bus at Little Bighorn.”

  She looked at him a second.

  “I want you to have your left lung looked at in Saint John,” Sam said to him. She had the stethoscope on his chest, just above the tattooed Sky. She was looking above his forehead to somewhere. “I want you to see a Dr. Moses—he is a cancer specialist.” She took the stethoscope away and, folding it, said: “There are things we can do now. I think your right lung is okay—it’s the left lung I’m worried about.”

  “When?”

  “Today.”

  “Today?”

  “Do you want to live?”

  He put his T-shirt back on and picked up his jacket.

  “I can’t go today. I have budgies to feed.”

  “Cancer rates here are higher than anywhere in the province,” Sam told him. “They are twice as high here as a lot of places in Canada.”

  He told her he would quit smoking, but lit one in the parking lot. It was the urge.

  The trouble was that Markus knew police officers. They were as susceptible to rumour and ego as everyone else. They would get a lead in a case, and each new piece of information they would try to fit together, like the puzzles Amos used to do, so it would form into what they already believed to be true. Rumours in the office helped as well.

  So suddenly the man who was too scared to come out of his house was the man they wanted. But the trouble was, the prosecution couldn’t charge Roger and the police begged off—and finally, in 1987, allowed the case to die. So when Amos went to them with all his information, they did not want to look at it again.

  The case had been dead now twenty years.

  Markus went back to his apartment and lay down. He listened to “Unchain My Heart” by Joe Cocker. He liked milkshakes and so he had bought himself a strawberry on the way home. Sometimes he would buy vanilla. He had bought them in Texas too, and Arizona, but liked the ones he got at the Kingsway restaurant on the King George Highway in Newcastle best of all. One day long ago he and Sky had gone to a sock hop and shared a milkshake from the Kingsway and he had been going there ever since, thinking that she would come there just once more to get a milkshake too. She was so innocent then, and so was he, and in love, too, he supposed, for that moment in time.

  Today he had no choice. He had to go take care of George Morrissey’s budgies. So he would take care of the budgies.

  “What are the names of those birds?” Markus had asked George during the last visit in his quiet Micmac voice.

  “They are called Number One and Number Two.”

  “Good. Are they easy to tell apart?”

  “No, pretty confusing. And you have to clean the cage.”

  “Good.”

  “And they like their heads patted.”

  “Good.”

  “But they aren’t half the budgies I had before.”

  “I see.”

  “Those were good budgies … You take care of the budgies and I will give you the envelope.”

  Markus looked at him. “Thank you.”

  “I was going to burn it . but that might not be right.”

  4

  MARKUS WENT DOWN TO SAINT JOHN AND RENTED A ROOM near the hospital, and for the next while he came and went through the lanes without meeting many people. He went to the malls, and sat alone in the big common below the library, or wandered through the streets looking at the buildings, or sat near the wharf entertained by seagulls.

  This is where his own ancestors came from, those before the Micmac some thirty-five hundred years ago—the Paint. And he thought of this, too.

  He had brought the budgies with him, in the big pockets of his coat. Dr. Moses, who was an Iraqi, gave him a series of tests and scheduled a biopsy.

  “We will find out how long you have.”

  “Good. There is no expiration date stamped on my big toe,” Markus said.

  “When did you start smoking?” Dr. Moses asked.

  Strange that this question had become incessantly bothersome to Markus now. That is, here he was trying to quit and this Iraqi was trying to remind him when he had started.

  “I was three,” he said.

  “Pardon me—you were thirty?”

  “No sir, I was not thirty—I was smart enough by thirty to try to quit. I was three.”

  “How could you smoke at three?”

  “I didn’t inhale until I was eight,” Markus said, as a compromise of some sort.

  A blizzard had come in from the bay.

  He walked back to his room, with his jean jacket on. No one would ever know by looking at him that he was an RCMP officer who had been a bodyguard to Prince Edward, or that he could stifle the attack of five men in fifteen seconds. In fact he rarely thought of that himself.

  He lay down in the dark, in the half grey of a Saint John blizzard. He didn’t feel sick. He felt stronger now than ever. He wanted to get back to work and solve it all. But he had to go for the biopsy, and that wouldn’t be for a while.

  Markus was now very sorry he had once knocked Joel Ginnish out. Ginnish had wanted to prove something after he lost all his money. He had said he was going to turn pro.

  He remembered how Ginnish had slapped some boys around when they were trying to be brave. Perhaps this is what he remembered most. And Markus had finally stepped into the ring with him.

  “You’re in my office now,” Ginnish said.

  Markus moved his head and hit him once and knocked him out. And now he was sorry he had done this.

  Ginnish had started saying he was going to murder everyone on the reserve after the money was gone. Markus couldn’t bring himself to arrest him and sent a white officer instead.

  Ginnish had smiled and shrugged.

  “They all betrayed me,” he had said. “That Markus especially—he betrays everyone.”

  Markus had looked at the pictures of Roger’s old house, and he knew what had happened. Joel Ginnish had wanted to hit the propane tank, or the sign Roger had planted in defiance. He couldn’t fire straight. Markus knew that. Joel Ginnish never hit a thing on the first shot. And he had fired high and to the right just as Little Joe was running toward the house.

  This is what Markus had suspected since September, whe
n he had sighted in his .306.

  “Someday you will figure it all out,” Amos had said. For he himself, as an old man, had already done so.

  Both had sighted enough rifles to know.

  Old George had not opened the envelope. He was too frightened. But he did not destroy it either. He was too frightened.

  Brice still sent George free birdseed for his budgies.

  “Why?” asked Markus.

  “Well, first of all he likes budgies, and second, I am his mother’s brother—and was the one who cared for him.”

  George Morrissey could not bring himself to turn this envelope over to the police. But since both Brice and Morrissey always believed that Roger had killed Little Joe Barnaby, why open this letter and put others in trouble? So the letter, which was never supposed to be in Markus’s possession when Brice was alive, came into his possession now.

  In his room in Saint John, Markus had nine hours without a cigarette, and began to pace the floor. He paced the floor for a long time, until his cell phone rang. It was Sam Dulse, who had promised to phone him every night to see if he was smoking, and to come down to visit him on the weekend.

  He didn’t pick it up.

  “One more cigarette more or less won’t kill me,” he said instead.

  He lit a cigarette and lay back on the couch and watched the hockey game on the small black-and-white TV provided. He knew poor Sam had been having an affair long before he and she had broken up. He was never home, he supposed—and the Savage case had consumed most of his life without his knowing. He had heard from friends about this fellow doctor whom she drove back and forth to work with. This self-aggrandizing doctor who believed those in his care were in his control.

  Markus shrugged and said to himself, “Forget it.”

  It had taken him six months to mention it to her. They were in the living room, and she had just come home from work. He remembered it was raining, in July, just before they were to go on vacation. He stared at the flowers out in the box as rain came and laced the window.

  He simply mentioned the man’s name. She jumped up from the couch and ran to the bathroom and locked the door. It was as if he had hit her—although he never would.

  He left the next day, with a little suitcase, and found the apartment near his reserve. She tried to make it up.

  “It was over long ago,” she kept saying. “He never mattered to me. You do. It was a mistake!”

  “Mistakes happen, for sure,” Markus said. At any rate he did not go home.

  Everyone goes away.

  He was supposed to go to a support group about his smoking. Samantha had registered him. It was held in the palliative care unit in Saint John Regional Hospital. He didn’t get around to it.

  George had given him the letter—if he promised to feed the budgies. So what else could he do?

  5

  FOR THE LAST YEAR MARKUS HAD KNOWN WHERE DORAN lived, in a small house in a hardscrabble part of lower Saint John.

  Markus had brought a book from his own bookshelf down to Saint John for Doran to read. He had searched for the book for a long while, and discovered it at the very end of the third row on one of his bookshelves just before leaving for the hospital.

  And so in November 2006 he brought the little odd book down to give to Doran, along with Brice’s envelope, of course.

  But after he had arrived in Saint John, Markus discovered something else about Doran: he had a disabled daughter and lived with her alone. His wife had left him and the child some years ago, though she would come back to visit with great excitement and concern every year or so.

  Each day Doran worked at a call centre. Then he would go home at night by bus from Union Street, through the gloom of the city, and pick his child up from a caregiver on Manawagonish Road.

  Years ago, Little Joe and Sky had spent all day making a blueberry pie for Max Doran, the man who had come to help them, they believed. Little Joe was the taster and walked about the kitchen wearing big yellow oven mitts. It was Sky’s first pie. Then they left it at Doran’s door.

  If this envelope was opened, thought Markus, what would become of Doran now?

  But if Markus did not open this letter—minding that the letter actually said something—what would that mean for Amos, or more importantly, for Roger? Could Markus change that—could he even attempt to?

  And Brice Peel: What would become of that thin, harmless man with the stooped gait who worked in a pet store in Saint John, in one of those terrible malls, endless in Canada, that have no light or mercy or freedom from anything? Brice with his beloved rabbits and hares? These were the things—the rabbits and hares—that had cured his seizures. Would opening this letter bring attention to him as a person who had said nothing, who had helped hide a crime? Even his age at that time would be no guarantee of immunity from blame. Would this letter he wanted opened only when he was dead put him into the glare again? Yes, it would. And would that bring the seizures back?

  Markus took time to find Brice. And when he found him, he saw that Brice was obsequious and adrift—a vagabond who showered kids with stories about the rabbits and turtles in his care, and had hauled his sleeves down over wrists that he had cut, the stitches leaving a grey, obtrusive gash.

  More than anything, watching Brice, Markus wondered what would be the use.

  Brice had used an envelope with the address of the pet store on it. It was not the brightest thing to do, but it was in some way comforting to Markus to know Brice was still that gullible—which probably meant he never in his life intended harm to anyone at all. His attempted suicide had not worked, and he had asked George for the letter back. But George could neither send it back nor destroy it.

  Markus bought a birdcage from Brice, but Brice did not know who he was.

  It was as if in the struggle for Markus’s own life, the places where the answers would be given about his past life would soon be made available.

  For he was now being told what to do by everyone.

  Don’t smoke; don’t drink; eat vegetables.

  But just when they thought he was in his bed for the night—just when Sam said she would drive down in the morning and be with him—Markus disappeared.

  He went to the oldest part of the west side of Saint John, through small, broken-up streets, past little shabby houses, carrying a birdcage, and with two budgies in his pockets.

  Doran was surprised to see him—or maybe not.

  “I have a present for your daughter,” Markus said, “budgie birds—”

  He thought: “What a thing to bring after twenty-one years. Yes, he just might take me to be completely insane.”

  But he stood at the door with the cage and the birds in his hand, and Number One hopped back and forth and Number Two sat silent. Doran after all these years was hard to recognize, and he didn’t recognize Markus instantly either. Then he said: “Oh, my God—good to see you!”

  It was as if the gulf of years had suddenly been closed, like the closing of a time warp in some exaggerated story of the universe.

  Max Doran, too, was very ill, with his heart. His little girl did not know. But Markus did. He smiled at the man, and stepped in with his little birds.

  When he went in, a little girl looked at him. There was a smell of enclosed space, and the rooms were very small—smaller than any Markus had grown up in. There were a few mementoes on the wall. There was a bundle of laundry in the hall, an old vacuum cleaner. Doran had been cleaning the house.

  Markus had brought the girl a milkshake and the budgies. Her name was Heidi. When he entered the house, she was sitting in the middle of the hallway in her wheelchair, watching him intently. She wheeled forward slightly, then stopped, her little face one of mysterious charm. Then came forward again. Markus saw that, to her, her wheelchair seemed as natural as his walk did to him. She knew who he was—her daddy had spoken of him, as being from that reserve up north and having become famous. Markus followed her to her room, and he put the cage up and placed some bird food in th
e dish.

  There were pictures in the room of the girl and her daddy at the Atlantic Exhibition. Doran was holding her up on the merry-go-round. They were both waving at the camera. Yes, Markus told her, he knew her dad.

  Heidi’s favourite hockey player was Sydney Crosby. She had his picture in a scrapbook. She showed Markus her goldfish and guppies and let him feed them as well. The water was cloudy. But Markus told her that he knew someone who knew all about fish and turtles and birds and filters for tanks and had healed pigeons when he was young. “Do you want him to come here and help you set up the tanks, and teach you about the budgies?”

  “Yes—sure!” the girl said with an open gaze.

  Doran listened to this at the door to Heidi’s room, and watched Markus without comment. In the long corridor were the photos he had taken that long-ago day—the eagle, the two Parrish girls hugging, Little Joe making a face at the camera, the stop sign at the end of the road.

  Doran had lost weight. Gone was the straw hat. Like Markus, he still smoked. Those little cigarillos that he’d always liked. He offered Markus one.

  “Well, it can’t hurt,” Markus said.

  “You’ve become famous—travelling with the Governor General, Prince Edward and all of that. I keep up with you.” Doran smiled. “I keep up with Gordon Young, too—a real journalist. That story with the navy he did—nothing in Canada better last year—and now reporting from Afghanistan!”

  Quien es? Markus thought. Doran could have been as great a journalist as any. “Mary Cyr is on her third husband,” he commented. “I think one—that cabinet minister—used to beat her up.”

  “Yes, I know too many ghosts,” Doran said.

  Then Markus began to talk of things seemingly inconsequential. Of the little adobe village in Chile, of raw blubber he had eaten at a ceremony in the North, of the site of Custer’s last stand. He stayed for a long time, talking of this and that. He learned that Doran was on three kinds of medication, that he was worried about the child. “We should quit smoking, you and I,” Markus said.