Lauchlin of the Bad Heart

by D. R. MacDonald

  Across the road, the fish van had turned up the driveway to the MacLean house. His mother would be pleased, she was in one of her dark moods today and he might pull her out of it. She always perked up when she saw his truck arriving once a week or so, fish fresh or frozen and none of it cheap, but she often bought haddock if he had it or halibut. Johanna never liked turning him down, she’d buy what she could. She loved swordfish, Have you any swordfish today, Mr. MacTavish? she’d say, and it would have to be No, Mrs. MacLean, they’re small these days anyhow, the big swordfish are gone from the ocean. They’d go back and forth, for fun, and she’d tell him about the swordfish they used to harpoon off the coast of Cape Breton, the steaks you’d get from them, too big for a frying pan, you’d have to cut them up. They’d have a good chat, he was never in a rush with her. She could tell him local things he wouldn’t otherwise know, being from away as he was, out west, and he would give her some gossip he’d picked up. He had an easy way with older people, Lauchlin liked that about him, that he’d spend time with them.

  But what about his wife? What was Tena doing at home? Was she outdoors much? He was curious how she moved through a day, if her trip to this store had changed anything.

  Shane came in with Effie’s money. The day was warm and he wore a black T-shirt underneath his motorcycle vest, because he made sure his shirt was on when Johanna came down. Lauchlin had had to persuade her to take him on despite his black buzz cut, and the single ring in his earlobe and forearm tattoos, which disgusted his girlfriend, and because he was local and Johanna knew his family, and because the earring was small and the tattoos muted, she had hired him. Today he had a bruise near his eye.

  “You look worn around the edges, boy,” Malcolm said.

  “You have to pay the fiddler, eh? We had some awful smooth ‘shine.”

  “How’s Jenna Marie?” Lauchlin said.

  “I don’t know, Lauch. Every time she leaves for college, she comes home different.”

  Lauchlin had seen Jenna Marie grow up, coming in and out of the store different until she didn’t come in at all. She was smart in school and liked to read and told him at an early age she wanted to be a writer. But Lauchlin, as she matured, was not spared her critical eye. She came to disdain gossip and small talk, that currency of a country store, and Lauchlin wanted to tell her that he too might welcome something more stimulating but that such talk was a ritual, a simple bond, a well-worn path that led them all reliably and politely home, and there were days when mutual banalities were a blessing, your mind without wit or spark or purpose, yes, please, let’s just do the weather—today’s, tomorrow’s, last summer’s, or that awful July of 1987, share our knowledge and remembrance of this particular spot on earth. But he never had the right chance to explain this to Jenna Marie, fast at work becoming an intellectual. What would a storekeeper on her own road, a man once a boxer, have to say that she needed to know?

  “Women go through stages, Shane, you’ll have to get used to that,” Lauchlin said. “Did you hit something or did it hit you?”

  “This? A little fracas, that’s all.”

  “The Blue Skies got a bit stormy Saturday night?”

  “You know what that place is like, somebody’s always wanting to get in your face.”

  “I’d say he got into yours. It helps if you duck.”

  “He suckered me, Lauch. Just a goddamn bodybuilder, not a fighter anyway. You have to be a little bit nuts to be a good boxer. Right?”

  “But you can’t fight nuts. You get mad maybe the first time or two you’re hit, that’s natural, but you get over it. If you don’t, you’ll never make it in the ring. You can fight behind a dance hall, in a bar, go off like a fuse, those fights are over quick anyway.”

  “Show me some stuff, Lauch. I’d like to learn.”

  They used to want a flash lesson—acquaintances, customers, sometimes a kid. Show me a right cross, Lauchie, Hey Lauch, what was your best punch? Let’s see it, you throw a hook like this or like this? But he wouldn’t do it for entertainment, forget it, that clowning, and after a while they didn’t ask him anymore. There was a glimmer of promise in Shane, but then again he might just be fooling around.

  “Maybe some day, after hours.”

  “You riding your motorbike like that, with your head full of booze?” Malcolm said.

  “You ever try it, Malk?”

  “Try what? Acting stupid? I used to be an expert.”

  “Don’t let Johanna get wind of that, Shane.” Lauchlin hoped he didn’t sound like a teacher, and who paid attention anyway? Not Shane’s crowd.

  “Strictly on the side, Lauch, just partying like, now and then.”

  “Don’t make an arse of yourself, driving the road at night. There’s others to consider besides yourself,” Malcolm said.

  “Clement MacTavish’s wife, for instance,” Lauchlin said. He glanced out the big window. “The woman is blind. She walks the road sometimes.”

  “I’ve seen her. I’m careful, at night on this road for sure. Over there,” he nodded toward the mountain, “it’s suicide. A couple kids almost went over the road last week, up high, past where it’s supposed to be closed.”

  “The Slios,” Lauchlin said.

  “Drunk, that’s what saved them. They tried to turn around and backed halfway over the edge. Car’s hanging on by the undercarriage, you know? Scared the hell out of them.”

  “It’s a long fall on that stretch,” Malcolm said.

  “Lauch, could you spare me a couple Aspirin?”

  “Bathroom, over the sink.”

  From the backroom came the smack of leather, a pause, then more, rapidly.

  “Shane, he can’t pass that thing without giving it a lick,” Malcolm said, “I think the boy’s up for training.”

  The heavy bag hung where Lauchlin could see it when he was behind the counter, like a side of meat in the recesses of the backroom, its maroon hide scuffed and stained from the sweaty pummellings it had taken in the gym, shoved and shouldered and butted. He never worked the bag unless he was alone in the store. He had bought it for ten bucks when a gym shut down, when boxers just weren’t coming up the way they had been when young men all over the towns were training or waiting for a fight. For Lauchlin, the bag was all that was left of that time, his time, and when he was in a certain mood, he’d pull on the old pair of gloves and knead his hands for a couple minutes to get the blood into them, punch his palms. Then he would crouch slightly at the bag, bobbing his head, feinting before he delivered a few soft jabs, pap pap pap, just to get the bag swinging, wake it up, then punch harder with both hands until he felt the pop and sting in his knuckles. He would try a hard right as the bag swung lazily toward him, fump, stop it dead, he’d wanted that to be his best punch, a clean right cross like Blair Richardson’s, his legs behind it, it had some juice, he could rock you, snap your head back, see the flash of hurt in your eyes. But when the man was too quick or clever, could slip punches well, Lauchlin had no big weapon to fall back on, his left hook was just getting good toward the end, and maybe he’d watched too many British boxers on TV, he liked that stand-up style, crisp and orthodox, efficient, if you were good. He had never cared for the brawlers, winging wild hooks, messy fighters, pawing and wrestling, he had preferred clean distance, the classic stance where the skill of your punching, feinting, countering, fending off was fluid and sharp, where it all came together—footwork, movement, rhythm, detecting your opponent’s weaknesses, exploiting them. It took intelligence to marshal your skills, and to disguise what you lacked. Take a punch to return a better one, harder, sharper, the economy of the good boxer, no wasted punches, score, sting, hurt, and suddenly an opening, wham. Stagger him, then follow up, not wild but carefully, cleanly, on target. Like chopping down a tree, blow by blow, each cut weakens until it falls. He’d met fighters who would not let him box that way, of course, who forced him to fight as crudely as they did. But sometimes just moving around with the bag, sliding his feet with a touch of that ol
d nimbleness, dancing with it, seemed to break him free for a little while, to lift him beyond the confines of the store until he could feel the sweat gathering under his shirt, the heat of his exertion, hear his breath saying you’re alive, you’re alive.

  Malcolm raised himself slowly out of the chair and peered into the backroom.

  “You’re just arm punching, Shane. You won’t put much hurt on a man like that.”

  “What am I supposed to punch with, my legs?”

  “Exactly right. Look at him, Lauchie, he’s winded already. You couldn’t last one round in a gym, young as you are, you’d suck all the air out.”

  “I need some serious time at it, that’s all. I’d like to box.”

  “You need to get seriously in shape, that’s what you need,” Lauchlin said. “You can’t work out with hangovers, a waste of time. Your reflexes are shot.”

  “I’ll be okay. It’s not like I’m a boozer.”

  “Burn it off first. Then we’ll see how serious you are.”

  “Come on, Lauch, give me a couple minutes. Nobody’s around. I know there’s tricks to it, you don’t just bash away.”

  “You need to learn the right way to hit that. No tricks. Concentration, hard work.” He tapped his temple. “Some smarts don’t hurt either. Here, slip on these gloves.” Under the ceiling bulb, Lauchlin called up what teacher he had left in him and gave the bag a shove. “Like this.” The chain squealed and he dropped into the stance, fists up, head slightly bobbing. Just taking this posture brought so much back, put him where he was when it all ended, thinking what the next step might have been. Foolish, so easy to get lost in it, to shut out everything else. “Go to it.”

  Shane went at the bag in a determined crouch, jaw set. He followed instructions for a couple minutes, then, as it swung toward him, gleefully attacked it with wild hooks.

  “Shane, you just love to wing it, don’t you? That the way you fight at dances?”

  “Afraid it is, Lauch.” He stood grinning, breathing hard. “I decked him.”

  “You’re wide open. A half-decent boxer would’ve hit you three times before you laid a knuckle on him. Try it again. And don’t let the bag box you, slide toward it and back, slide and glide, don’t stomp around like Frankenstein, and don’t nail your feet to the floor, move. You’re going to punch your opponent into submission, cleanly, bit by bit, you’re not going to cleave him in two with a claymore. Okay, that’s better. Yeah, I know the dances. That’s how it was in my day, there were fellas sometimes who’d go after our fiddler, so we had to protect him, hang around in front of him while he played. I got suckerpunched too one night just standing there, someone just hauled off on my blind side. God, was my jaw sore the next day, swollen like a melon. He paid for it though.”

  “You ever get knocked out, Lauch?”

  “In the ring? I got knocked down, I…”

  A horn sounded. “Gas customer, Lauchie!” Malcolm yelled.

  “Okay, Shane, let’s go to work, you’re winded anyway. If they don’t want diesel, tell them we’re out of gasoline.”

  When Lauchlin returned to the counter, Clement’s fish van was gone. Did he talk to Johanna about his wife? She never mentioned that he did.

  THE STORE WAS RARELY BUSY by city standards, but there were spurts of afternoon customers, if no angry drivers spewing smoke. There wasn’t much to a small store like this. You put stuff on the shelves and waited. Johanna could have expanded its merchandise but over the years she seemed to let it fall back, and the store had less stock than it did when her husband ran it. Lauchlin told her once, Ma, you don’t have a store down there so much as an idea of a store, are you keeping it up in Dad’s memory or what? It’s a living, she said.

  A weekender came in looking for videos and cigarettes, two big items Lauchlin’s mother refused to stock regardless of the constant requests from the cottage folks down beyond the old ferry wharf. They’d argued about it more than once, People do smoke around here, Ma, in case you haven’t noticed, and they’ll just get them at the gas station up on the Trans-Canada. But she hated smoking and wouldn’t relent. As for videos, she believed them mostly trash, violence and murder and mush. And besides, she said, I don’t want the business of lending things out, you’d be forever chasing them down. But the day went on. A young woman was seeking garden gloves for her mother and was satisfied with the white cloth ones in stock, which pleased Lauchlin too because he was long wearied of crestfallen customers who expected the same items they could find in a town. Do you have maxipads? No, sorry. Coriander? No, salt and pepper and chili powder is about it. Bok choy? Surely you have fresh parsley? No, we have what you see there, potatoes, carrots and turnips. Mineral oil? No. There’s a kind of rye cracker we get at home? No rye crackers at all? Nope. Triscuits. Saltines. Marine varnish? No. Two cans of porch paint, one green, one red. A set of dice? We need another set for liar’s dice, it’s rained for three days. No, sorry. Frozen blueberry waffles? Sorry, no frozen items like that. Cordovan shoe polish? Just black or brown. Any soy milk? Soy what? Sauce we have. Sometimes they made him feel like the cheese shop proprietor in the English TV comedy who seemed to have in stock no requested kind of cheese whatsoever. Now and then his assuring them that he did not carry what they sought only set them to a stubborn inspection of his shelves, peering myopically at labels as if he were concealing the true contents for the hell of it or holding the item back for someone else. He did have some merchandise that no one called for, ever, but that had languished on the shelves for years because Johanna, sentimental about its connection to his father and the old-timers he had stocked it for, could not bring herself to remove the stove blacking or pumice or a few bars of Fels-Naptha soap or a few six-volt headlight bulbs, though an American passing through did buy the last can of separator oil, price unadjusted for inflation. Locals knew of course just what they could get from MacLean’s and what not, but for most of them what they got was something not for sale—an exchange of mutual concerns and common interests, a connection. Stores like this had always been the centre of settlements like St. Aubin, not a village as such anyway but the remnants of a run of small farms laid out down a long road. And today the store did not even have gasoline, just diesel with a dollop of gas in it, and Lauchlin turned away two customers on their way back to Sydney, sent them up to the Trans-Canada.

  Sometimes when his hands were lying idle on the counter, his father came to mind, a man who did want to keep a store and had kept a good one. The night he died Lauchlin had described to people over the years, one of those boyhood memories that never diminished, though he knew that he recounted it a little differently each time, the words were not the same, the images, the sentences, depending on his mood, on what emotions that incident called up. But always there was, through the store window, that sight of his father laid out on the counter as if it were a gurney, his shirt collar unbuttoned, someone bent low near his face, another man on the wall phone, a dark automobile parked aslant, its door wide open as if the driver had leapt out of it, the motor running. He was fascinated by his dad’s peculiar immobility, there on his back, the counter cleared of its common objects, face peaceful, eyes closed, as if it were a joke he were going along with, a prank—nothing like the way he grabbed a nap on the kitchen daybed, something terrible about him there on his own counter, this bustling, energetic man laid out like a corpse, his glasses off and folded neatly on the top of the register. Your dad’s taken a turn, Lauchlin, Johanna said behind him, appearing suddenly, her voice calm but strained, go up to the house and stay out of the way here. Frank was at high school in Sydney, so Lauchlin watched from the parlour window alone as two men carried their father to the car and set him down carefully in the backseat. The car was a shiny black Meteor with whitewall tires, and he saw his mother look it out of sight before she went into the store his dad had left for good.

  Jamie Campbell came in wearing his skimpy running shorts and cradling in his arms a box of wild mushrooms the colour of scrambled eggs. A wiry
young man always scouring the woods for possible merchandise, Jamie had discovered they were full of chanterelles and there was a market for them. He proposed that he and Lauchlin serve it. He had taken up long-distance running and could be seen padding along at all hours. Jamie had trouble keeping a job, he was highstrung and sooner or later he had to get back to the country and into the woods, it seemed, but the running had calmed his manic bouts, as if it assured him he was indeed going somewhere of his own choosing. While he talked he pumped his legs in place.

  “Come on, Lauchlin. You have to take a chance with something new. Right?”

  “But who’d buy them, Jamie? Nobody I know eats mushrooms like these.”

  “Time they did. These are choice, Lauch, they’re not toadstools. You know what they sell for in stores? Twenty bucks a pound. The French love them.”

  “That wouldn’t recommend them necessarily,” Malcolm said.

  “All right,” Lauchlin said, “what do you want me to do, take the box on trial? Listen, if anyone dies, I’m coming after you.”

  “Never happen, Lauchlin. Safe as blueberries.” He smiled. “Safe as St. Aubin.” And he was away out the door, down the steps in a bound, a frail, determined figure breaking into a run.

  “Well, you made him happy,” Malcolm said.

  “He’s a good kid. He’s found a way to use his body to help his mind. It can work, I know. Wasn’t your cousin Dougal a good runner?”

  “Dougal was, and he was down from Judique just yesterday. He was telling me that Nell MacSween died. She’s Morag’s auntie, isn’t she?”

  “Indeed she is.” Lauchlin turned away quickly, his face hot. Morag should have told him, called him from Boston or wherever she was and let him know. They had not exchanged a word since she’d left two summers ago, they used all their words up anyway, it seemed, by the end of every summer they were through with each other, tired out again, ready to part. But Jesus, he had liked her Auntie Nell, more her mother than an aunt, and Nell liked him too, from the start. So you’re the boxing boy, are you? she said the first time Morag took him home, I’ve got some fresh venison for you, that’s what you need, good red meat. Aunt Nell had been there those early years when he loved Morag with a passion it pained him to recall, when he was a coiled and savvy fighter on the way up, and it hurt that Morag had left him out of Nell’s death.