Redhead

by Jason McIntyre

  Except for Sean.

  4.

  I came down the back stairs at about quarter past ten. I’d forgotten to tell Sean he needed to specify the back door so Farrah, the Highliner’s delivery gal, would likely bring our order to the front. I’d let Sean know so he wasn’t standing at the back while our breakfast got cold at the front.

  When I came through the back doors of the pub by the public men’s room, Farrah was already here. She stood holding out the two big paper bags, stapled at the top with another takeout menu. Sean was with her already up front by the bar. The morning sun spilled in from the open door and Johnny was cleaning. At the bar’s foot on his cushion was Johnny’s big malamute.

  Sean said, “Good to see you, Farrah. Still working for Dabney?”

  “Yes sir, Mr. Ketwood,” the girl said. She had a bobbing pony and must have been fifteen or sixteen that year. Maybe as young as fourteen. Another detail that don’t matter from spit. “Mr. Saum gives me shifts that work around school.”

  Sean smiled and pretended to check his watch, even though he wasn’t wearing one. Farrah blushed, likely noticing Sean’s bare arms and chest, both tanned and smooth. Farrah got the hint. “I’m in advanced math and I get a spare in the third period so I do lunch deliveries across the street to the offices like Union and the tourism board. One-offs like yours too,” she said, gesturing to the big bags now sporting a few splotches of grease bleeding through from inside.

  Sean pulled a crumpled dollar bill from his jeans pocket and palmed it for Farrah. “Well, put this in your college fund. Thanks for the quick run over here.”

  Farrah beamed at the tip. “Thanks, Mr. Ketwood!” She shot him a wide smile. That girl was going to be a heartbreaker—if she wasn’t already. Off she went and I saw a glimpse of her on the sidewalk giving a toe to her bike’s kick stand.

  My stomach gurgled at the breakfast Farrah brought. If it was what Sean had in mind when he woke up this morning it would be eggs, bacon, hash browns, two oversized pancakes and juice. I needed to top up some serious lost calories. I would see if Johnny had made coffee yet. About to ask, I stopped dead about half way through the pub to the front.

  “You moving in or what?” Johnny asked, throwing his rag down and clinking some shot glasses with the motion.

  Calmly, clutching the two bags from the Highliner in one hand, Sean turned to him as he pocketed his old leather wallet. “No,” he said. “Not in the cards at all.”

  “Well, it sure looks like you are.”

  “Mind your bee’s wax,” Sean said. He wasn’t mad. I could see that from here. When he said it, he gave a sideways smile, a sly one that looked sarcastic.

  Johnny started to come around the bar. I can’t be sure but it looked like he was puffing out his chest like a red-breasted bird. And he was making an effort to square off his shoulders. He was smaller than Sean but not by a lot.

  Their stand off was interrupted by Duke. The big mix breed malamute, the nicest, mildest animal I’d ever met, had stood up from his dirty cushion and was growling at them both. The men stopped and looked at the dog. Duke’s growling got louder. He was centring on Sean now, inching towards him. The growling gave way to low barking. The dog moved in like a predator. Sean set the bags on the bar and reached down with an open hand at the dog. I’d never seen Duke get angry with anyone.

  Amid his barking, Duke leapt forward and snapped at Sean’s splayed hand. Sean pulled back. Though he did it automatically. He didn’t even look startled. He simply reached for the bags, picked them up and turned. Johnny was yelling at Duke. “Duke! Boy! Settle, y’hear?”

  But Duke didn’t settle. Duke kept on barking at Sean and followed him down the aisle between the banquette tables toward me. “Let’s eat,” he said in passing me. I saw that his hand was bleeding and the blood bloomed dark maroon on the brown paper of the Highliner takeout bag. He grinned. But his dark eyes didn’t. Duke went on barking.

  5.

  Upstairs in my room, I opened both windows and put on the fan. Friday, this was, and it was going to be another scorcher in our extended summer—our Indian summer, the radio DJs from the mainland liked to proclaim.

  I sat at my small, one-person table and ate like a champion race horse. Still, I couldn’t put much of a dent in my giant pancake. I had some leftover packets of maple syrup and Sean used all of those plus the ones that Farrah had brought. He stood at the counter going at his breakfast like he hadn’t eaten in three days. We talked about little stuff mostly. Finally, he forked in the last of his sunny-side eggs on toast and said, “Wife’s taking the kids over on the ferry today at noon. They get off on account of a staff meeting, I think. She’s going to see her parents til Sunday.”

  I perked up at this. I needed a coffee but after the standoff between Johnny and Sean downstairs, I’d let my question about coffee go out of my head. That was weird, how the dog had bitten Sean. He clutched a bunched napkin that was now stained with brown blood.

  I’d need a nap if I was going to start entertaining more gentlemen callers that evening. But this talk of the Ketwood brood heading off-island perked me up. Maybe even more than fresh coffee would have.

  I stood and went over to Sean at the counter. He was scraping his fork through the yolk on his paper plate and sopping up the last of it with one remaining inch of toast crust. He tossed a final bite of bacon in his mouth. “Lemme see that hand,” I said. He gave it to me, absently, while he looked out the window to a lamppost on Beacon. “Does it sting? Never seen Duke do that to any—” I didn’t even finish. Sean had opened his palm and I had pulled the dried brown napkin away from his grip. I couldn’t find a gash or a puncture anywhere. I turned his hand over and bent his wrist to see the whole works of it. Nothing. Not even a thin gash and no blood, none, only some that flaked away dry with my touch.

  “Where’d he get you—?” I said, speaking of Duke, my face likely opening up with surprise that there was no leavings from the big dog’s sizeable teeth. I reached his other hand, thinking I had gotten confused about which hand Duke had snapped. Still absent to my pawing at him, Sean put his fork down on the counter and let me have both hands. Neither was touched. No teeth marks, no punctures, no wounds of any kind.

  Sean looked down at his hands in mine, still chewing his last mouthful of egg and toast. His face showed only mild interest, like someone surprised to discover one of those rare paper cuts that don’t sting. You only notice them from the white flap of skin. I remember that look of his clearly. He wasn’t fussed when the dog reared up and snapped him. Nor was he that concerned about the mysterious, missing bite. “I heal pretty quick these days,” he said. And that was it. He turned and headed for the bed. At the foot, I had an old steamer trunk and from its lid, he retrieved his shirt and pulled it over his head. “So,” he said, giving me the playful look of a fool that I knew well, one that usually meant he wanted another romp.

  “Uh-uh!” I said. I tossed the dirty napkin in my rusted sink and put my hands on my hips. “No way, Mister!”

  He came back over to me, pulling me to him at the waist and hugging me close. “Come on, Dollars!” he said. “You don’t possibly want to turn me down. I’m basically a superhero.”

  I smiled. He was teasing me and I liked it. “Sean Ketwood. I’m exhausted. There’s no way on God’s green earth you’re getting me horizontal again. I don’t care if you’re Superman himself.” I gave him a playful smack across his chest. “Unless it’s to nap,” I added.

  He feigned resentment and trod over to the table by the door. “My kind madam!” he said in a fake southern accent. “I’m gravely offended!” He put on his aviator shades and gave me that big grin of his. “I’m not angling for another roll, Dollahs,” he said. Then he raised an eyebrow and gave me a cocky smile. “I thought we could go to the beach.”

  This notion tickled me!

  6.

  The blaring sun. The cold surf on my hot skin. The smell of the saltwater and some distant one of coconut oil. The glint off Se
an’s sunglasses. I can honestly say that this beach day was one of the clearest, cleanest memories of my entire time in Dovetail Cove. A lot of my days and nights on the island blurred together. But my time with Sean was some of the most beautiful and sharply focused. I remember it. It has remained detailed in my mind, even after all the difficulty, even after all the sadness that followed.

  I was sunburned by the end, but it didn’t matter to me. By the time dusk swept over the beach and the night air came in off the cove to cool us, the wind worked its magic on my skin and made the heat of the day dissolve away. Besides, I was with Sean. And my cheeks hurt more from smiling than any other part of me. Even my work gear had gotten relaxed. We napped under the shade of an old tree that hung lazily over the edge of the sand. And by nightfall, we lit a bonfire with some dry wood we found. Someone else had likely stacked it up and didn’t burn it all during the summer. No worries, we took care of it.

  Sean had some old blankets in his truck so we laid those out and the ants didn’t bother us hardly at all. We had a good roll. It was the kind that I liked with Sean, the kind where he paid attention to my whole body. Not like most of my clients who would pick one of my three things and then hammer away at me until he was spent. Some had fetishes, but this wasn’t like that. This was slow and relaxed, like no one had money sitting on the bedside table.

  By the time darkness came and the twinkling stars shone down on us, I was ready for more. Sean was too. And it was the start of a two day marathon. Three, if you count our regular week-night session that ended with the dog bite and the sailor-sized breakfast in my rented room.

  Deciding not to bother lighting a cigarette, I rolled over close and looked up at Sean who was propped on his elbows and studying the sky.

  “Not a single cloud tonight,” he said. “Reminds me of being a kid. Out here with my dad.”

  “Yeah?” I said, nudging him to go on. I knew so little of him. Just that he was the only licensed and bonded electrician on the island, just that he had the two boys, just that he had lived his whole life here and married young. Very young.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Dad was like the ancient Greeks—”

  I laughed. “What?” I said.

  Sean looked at me and smiled. “I’m serious. He believed that all the wisdom held by a father—about a career, about the whole of society up to that point in history—should be passed to the son. It was a form of immortality. Course the old man, he had only a fourth grade education so he didn’t use words like wisdom or immortality. And he sure as hell didn’t know anything about Ancient Greece.”

  “And do you?” I asked him, running my hand up his bare thigh.

  “A little more than Dad,” he said. “And, God willing, my boys will know a little more than me.”

  “You going to teach them about sticking your finger in a light socket and getting zapped?”

  “Already started,” he said. He picked up a handful of sand and watched as some of it twinkled in moonlight flowing like liquid through his fingers. “That’s all any father wants, I think,” he said with utter sincerity. “To give his sons everything he has...then watch em go further than he could.”

  “Any parent,” I corrected him, realizing as I said it that I had hardly any right at all to correct him. I didn’t have kids. Nor did I want any.

  “Right,” he said. “Right, absolutely. I just meant—And, really,” he corrected himself. “If I’d been lucky enough to have daughters instead, it would be the same feeling, I bet. It’s just. There’s something between fathers and sons. And I know that now more than ever...”

  He trailed off.

  Not like most of the men who laid down with me, I wanted Sean to keep talking. I wanted to see the world as he did. I prodded him to go on. “Why now?” I asked. “Kind sir,” I added. We traded smiles at the little titles we’d anointed each other with.

  Sean looked at me. It was the same kind of studying gaze he had after I’d woken him early in the dark morning from his crying sleep. “Fan,” he said. “Would you come with me? I mean, if I wanted to show you something? Would you come with me and promise not to call the wagons from the looney bin? Actually, would you promise not to call the Chief?”

  I let out a laugh. “What? Chief Birksie? He wouldn’t take my call if I was ringing him to tell him his pants were on fire.”

  “Very funny. I’m serious. The cops can’t do anything about this—about what I’m going to show you. Hell, I’m not even sure you’ll be able to see it. And you sure as hell won’t believe me without setting your own sights on it.”

  I could see the excitement in his dark eyes. I could see the firelight and the stars reflected there too, all shiny and glossy, like deep wells. Whatever this was, it had him worked up. But there was something more. Something almost like dread in his look. He wanted to share the burden, I think. But maybe that’s just my own retrospect colouring the memory of this night on the beach.

  “Does this have anything to do with ‘the king’?” I ventured.

  “It does,” he said, getting up, shooing me off the mound of blankets and starting to shake the sand from one into the fire. “It has everything to do with him.”

  “This the fella that wants your boys? ‘Commands’ you to ‘spread out?’” I said this a bit tongue in cheek but Sean’s response made me wish I’d used a different tone.

  Taking a momentary break from dousing the bonfire with sand, Sean leaned down into my face. He was flushed and serious. “Yes, Fan. But the king is no ‘fella’. He’s not one you or me or anyone should want to mess with. And he does want my boys. I know this makes no sense to you...but...I’ll explain more. It’ll come clear when you see the frogs.”

  7.

  Aretha Franklin was singing “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing” when Sean clicked on the radio in his truck. We drove without speaking for a while, just listening to the music, watching some dark clouds move in and cover up the stars. Dark navy blue became black and I saw flashes of sheet lightning. A few drops hit the buggy windshield when “Surfin U.S.A” came up. Sean was concentrating on the grid road but he started tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.

  He turned down the volume near the end and started telling me about the frogs. I teased him that he was not just the island electrical whiz but a bona fide science star too. He laughed but it was a bit of a formality. He really wanted to tell me about the frogs.

  “You know how the number and health of an ecosystem’s frog species can tell you whether the ecosystem is healthy...or on the upswing or downswing?”

  “No,” I said, “not really.” I smiled at him and he returned it.

  “Well, on the central and north east parts of the island, we have a whole colony of tree frog that is moving underground. They’ve gone under the power station and are living down there in the dark.”

  I flicked my cigarette out the window then rolled it up a bit. The rain drops were coming in sideways at me and stinging my hot skin with their cold. “That’s a bit weird,” I said. “I mean, ain’t it? I don’t know anything about frogs or anything. But a tree frog lives in the trees, right? Or at least, near trees?”

  “Right,” Sean said, taking us around a bend and kicking up some dust and gravel. This was a narrow stretch of road, one I’d never been on in my life. The headlights were dirty and old, and they only made a tunnel of a few dozen feet then turned to black.

  “Sort of,” he said. “They definitely don’t live underground. And they don’t even really like the water all that much. They like it cool and moist but they don’t live near ponds or anything. After the big mishap at the Power station, they shut it all down and they flooded it out to keep the reactor cores cool—I did some work down there with my dad when I was a kid—there’s been nothing down there but deep water for years. I certainly didn’t know all the tunnels when I was a kid. But there are a lot of them, Fan.”

  I offered him my pack of Exports but he waved a hand at me. Amused at how energetic he was getting, I pro
pped my arm on the veneer of the door and listened. “And I mean a lot of tunnels,” he said. “I’ve been using them a lot the last couple years. On and off. Whenever the king calls me. But back to the frogs. Pacific tree frogs. Living underground in epic vats of water. Mind boggling, because they lay their eggs in shallow water. They don’t even like deep water and certainly not salient. But the most mind boggling thing is that these thousands of tree frogs have changed over the last couple of seasons. I guess it’s a generational thing. Not exactly evolution, but adaptation in the short term.

  “They got huge. I mean massive. Some are the size of your head, Fan. And a good lot of them are bright colours. Like neon signs in Vegas. And they can—get this—glow in the dark. That’s how they’re living down there. I’ve never seen anything like it—”

  “Shouldn’t you be calling, I don’t know, Sean, maybe a scientist or a frog...guy?”

  “I would,” he said, without missing a beat. “But the king doesn’t want anybody to know about this stuff. He’s building something big out here and he...the frogs are just part of it. There are different things going on. The king doesn’t let just anyone come in for a look. That’s why I’ll be surprised if—”

  Sean slammed on his brakes and we skidded to a stop. I grabbed for Sean in the driver’s seat and let out a screech. My heart blatted in my chest and a rush of cold sweat hit my sunburned skin. There, in the middle of the road was a big tan-coloured animal. It was a dog. Standing on all fours with its head bowed. Our stop was just shy of his nose. He snuffled at us and then started to growl.

  I grabbed at my window crank and started to yank it all the way up. “Sean, oh my god, are you seeing this?”