Lauchlin of the Bad Heart

by D. R. MacDonald

  “That news took a damn good while to work its way here,” he said, straightening unneccessarily cans of soup on a shelf behind the counter. “When did she die?”

  “Must be a couple weeks anyway.”

  “How?”

  “They found her in her back field, near the cliff edge. Took a stroke or something. That’s how it is you get to be eighty.”

  “If you live alone, nobody looking after you. Someone should’ve known she was in the field. She liked to wander down there, by the cliff, look out at sea. Toward England, she said. Came over as an orphan, just ten.”

  “She was looking in the wrong direction then, but a well-liked woman she was. Dougal said so.”

  “Dougal doesn’t know the half of her.”

  “How did Tena MacTavish get blind anyway?”

  “A benign tumour behind her eyes. So Lorna Matheson said. I didn’t ask, she offered it.”

  Two cyclists veered in past the pumps and leaned their bikes against the wall below the window, young men wearing the latest gear, panting, their helmets off, hair bright with sweat. They were seeking pure fruit juice but settled for Lauchlin’s orange drink, passing a bottle between them, gulping it down. One of them gave Lauchlin a coy grin.

  “Are you Lauchlin MacLean? You were a teacher?”

  “Maybe.”

  “My dad had you in high school, for English. He said you ran a store out here. He told my mother you were a bit of a lady’s man.”

  “Was I?” He had never thought of himself as a lady’s man. That had a dandified air to it. He didn’t bother to ask what the father’s name was. “Didn’t impress your mother much, I guess.”

  “You were tough but fair, my dad said.”

  “I suppose I was fair enough, at everything. That was a long time ago.”

  Once in a while a former student would come in, usually by chance, though less and less as he left his teaching years further behind. Most were unaware that this is where he came from or where he’d ended up, he’d never been a teacher who shared his personal life, even though that put him at odds with the times, with pedagogical trends that urged you to open yourself up to students, get down there on the rug with them, so to speak. In the store, depending on what sort of experience they’d had with him and how long ago, they might be pleased to see Mr. MacLean behind the counter (he had never let them call him Lauchlin or urged on them any recollections of the ring), telling him, in that sincerely insincere way that some of them could master, Oh, we enjoyed your classes so much. Whether it was true or not didn’t matter, to him or to them. They smiled, he smiled, the ritual was over. Others who happened by the store might pretend they didn’t know him at all, easy enough if they hadn’t liked him anyway, easier yet if he them. It was always quietly embarrassing to bump into a student who’d disrespected him because they both felt, by now, sheepish about it, that mutual failure.

  “Nobody this side of the island has a bicycle but kids,” Shane said, sitting on the cooler, looking them over.

  Malcolm lifted his gouty foot off the stool slowly as if it might detonate. “Take your life in your hands riding on this road, not much shoulder for a bike, and those ditches are backhoed deep.”

  “Not a bad road really,” the shorter cyclist said, retying his blond ponytail. “The grades are easy. Aren’t they, Mel?”

  “We’re circling the island, then heading north,” Mel said, “Cabot Trail. St. Aubin’s kind of a side trip.”

  “Yes,” Lauchlin said. “It is.”

  Sometimes on summer weekends cyclists would pass, crouched seriously into expensive equipment, skin-tight clothing, neck to shoes. Lauchlin let them fill their water bottles in back and use the toilet. Curious, they might ask about the big leather bag hanging in the backroom, but Lauchlin would point vaguely to the framed photos of Cape Breton boxers on the wall. It’s just a souvenir, he’d say. Old times.

  “Not hard going on this island, sure,” Malcolm said, “young men like yourselves. But see that mountain across the channel there? That’ll wake your hearts up.” They had pumped over worse than that, Mel said, steeper, higher, and you could tell by their legs they had, their bodies were lean and their thighs powerful. Shane followed them outside and chatted with them as they readied their bikes, pointing at the gears, the seat, then at his well-chromed black Honda raked and ready under the big poplar tree. The cyclists bounced their tires and smiled, then mounted their bikes and eased into the pedals, cutting smoothly onto the road and away, leaning into that languid physical confidence that Lauchlin remembered, when death was the fate only of the old and the unlucky.

  For a good while after he quit fighting he would, when alone, fall into throwing punches, ducking, weaving, bobbing, not intensely, not the headshaking shoulderjumping craziness you got worked up into in a gym, in the sweat and stink and that pounding energy that came from every corner, now more like a little dance his body asked for, his mind needed, it loosened him up—a peculiar way of moving in the world that had once set him apart, like an animal in the woods. But he did not want to be seen at it anymore. Punch-drunk, they’d say, look at him, he’s gone foolish, they get that way, you know.

  IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON when Lauchlin remarked that he hadn’t seen Slide MacIvor’s car go by again, he hoped it hadn’t quit on him way up at the Head where he paid calls on a certain woman. It doesn’t take him as long as it used to, Malcolm said. Isn’t he a little old for that? Shane said. Listen to him, Lauchlin said, I’d better hang it up. But it wasn’t Slide at all who showed up near suppertime but a new pickup with a metallic green paint job, and it came up to the pumps badly, backfiring. Lauchlin didn’t recognize the driver at first as he sulked in the cab for a good minute revving the rough engine. Then he jumped out, stopping to sniff the gas pump nozzle. He reamed his finger around in it and sniffed that too.

  Shane laughed, sliding off the cooler. “He planning to get high on that or what?” He was down the steps quickly but stopped short after the man said something to him Lauchlin couldn’t hear. Shane shrugged and the man pushed past him. Seeing his face, Lauchlin checked himself and stayed behind the counter.

  “What kind of gas have you got in that pump out there?” He let the screen door slam behind him.

  “Irving regular is what it says. The tanker filled it just this morning, ” Lauchlin said. “Should be fresh.” He had been prepared to apologize, but now he stiffened. He had met Clement’s milling partner only once and hadn’t cared for his strange aloofness, standing away from you, taking you in.

  “Fresh diesel, sure. What are you pulling here? Eight gallons of that sitting in my tank and I’m to get over the mountain home?”

  There was some odd thing about his eyes, Lauchlin would tell his mother later, there’s no life in them, like a cod’s on ice. Shane had slipped quietly through the door and stood by the stove.

  “You’re sure it’s the fuel?” Lauchlin said, placing his hands flat on the counter. He still had that instinct for sizing a man up, how his build might be neutralized, used against him if he had no boxing skills, just height and weight, if there were latent speed in how he moved or stood, because even if he swung with a loaded fist, he’d have to hit you square or you could counter him, come back on him quick and hard. Malcolm was inconspicuously straightening himself up in his chair. “Maybe your timing’s off. Bad plugs.”

  “Listen,” he said, his voice tight but calm. “That truck’s new and I want clean gas in it. I paid the kid cash, he pumped it in.”

  “Maybe he thought you said diesel.”

  “Are you being cute? It came out of your goddamn gas pump.”

  “Should we call the Mounties? I mean, if you’re sure I sold you diesel for gas, intentionally, on purpose.”

  He took a step back as if to see Lauchlin more clearly. His eyes moved deliberately over Lauchlin’s face, down to his hands, then to the shelves behind him as if he were assessing, appraising not just him but the setting. He did not raise his voice. “What kind of
game are you playing here?”

  “I’m just a storekeeper. No games.” There had been the odd time in the store when he’d had to set a man straight, a customer who didn’t know him and took in only his scant hair and his quiet demeanour, having never seen him crouched behind a pair of gloves. And yet he’d been almost willing to let that side of him slide from view, the real fighting that his body had failed him at. Should he not be subdued, cautious, prudent? Who would expect him to step into a donnybrook now? Lauchlin of the Bad Heart. But still it was in his wiring, certain movements would make him flinch, not enough to notice, the barest beginning, a tensing, a tightening, his hands closing inconspicuously into fists. And here was this man, whose name Lauchlin had just remembered. Cooper. Ged Cooper. They stared at each other and something came into Cooper’s expression, a slight squint as his eyes rose from Lauchlin to the small framed photo of a boxer on the wall. Cooper smiled thinly, a man proud of never being fooled.

  “Is that your mug up there?” he said.

  No, Lauchlin might have said, that’s Blair Richardson’s, a man who would have made ten of you. Me, I’m hanging in the backroom behind the heavy bag, along with the rest of them, though I don’t belong with them really, they were champions, and it’s a young me, my hair thick and short, my face framed between raised gloves, resolute, barely marked, Be confident in your skills, my trainer told me, let the other fella strut, acting up saps your energy. “My mug’s right here in front of you. That will have to do.”

  He nodded. Lauchlin could tell that he had shifted slightly in Cooper’s mind.

  “I used to box,” Cooper said, matter-of-factly, as if this were a neutral statement that might, for that moment, put them on common ground.

  “Is that right? Any good?”

  “Good enough. Light heavy.” He seemed on the verge of pursuing this subject, it tapped something in him.

  “Amateur? Pro?”

  “Seven pro. Mostly amateur. Not here. Saskatchewan.”

  “They’d give you a run for your money here.”

  “Would they? I’m ready.” He seemed to relax a bit, a slight smile passed over his face.

  “I’ll see if I can get you a match,” Lauchlin said. “Indoors or out?”

  “Outdoors for me. I like the outdoors.”

  “Weather?”

  “Rain or shine.”

  “Well, I’ve always wanted to be a promoter.”

  “Better that than what you’re doing.” What had brought him in the door took hold of him again. “If I don’t make it across the bridge and over that mountain, you’ll be seeing me.”

  “I hope you make it over the mountain, good boxer like you. Jesus, I do.”

  The man backed away another step. “Either way, I’ll be back.”

  “I’ll be here. I don’t travel much.”

  Malcolm got to his feet and leaned on his cane, watching Cooper through the window exchanging words with Shane, then with George Morrison who had just pulled up to the pumps in his old Ford. George was shrugging, holding his hands out helplessly.

  “I’ve seen constipated cats with better dispositions,” Malcolm said. “I’d keep an eye on him.”

  Lauchlin had. “I’d rather not. I’d prefer to see him disappear. How the hell does Clement work with that?”

  Shane came in, shaking his head. “Man, I’d like to pop that guy.”

  “He’d like to do the same to you, so let’s stay calm about him. You can go ahead home now, Shane, we’ll see you in the morning.”

  “If there’s any action, give me a shout, Lauch.”

  “You’ve got all the action, boy, there’s none to be had here.”

  He and Malcolm watched him buckle on his helmet and zip himself into a heavy leather jacket. He sat astride his motorcycle, revving it up, then blasted away down the road.

  “That’s a mean set of pipes,” Lauchlin said. “His age, I preferred to go by on the quiet. I didn’t want that kind of attention.”

  “Attention’s what it’s all about. Don’t you remember?”

  “I remember feeling so damn good I thought I could do anything. My mind was sharp, I took in new things every day. I could run five miles before breakfast.”

  “You’re still fit, boy. You look good.”

  “Fit for what?”

  “For that fella anyway.”

  “Don’t put money on it.”

  After Malcolm hobbled away home, Lauchlin swept the floor, tidied shelves and racks just to move around. He’d always been slow to anger, he was proud of that, short-fuse fighters didn’t last long in a ring. But Clement’s partner had left him tight, hard to work it out right now, confined as he was. He didn’t like a bastard like that thinking he might be an easy mark, that Cooper had nothing physical to fear from him. When Lauchlin was young, just to be known as a good boxer was usually enough to keep him out of hassles, though after he went pro someone was always eager to take him on and he’d had to walk away from mouths he dearly wanted to shut because his fists were lethal weapons and he was liable for the harm they could inflict. A professional just didn’t street fight anyway, there was no class to that. His first trainer Johnny Cechetto told him that if he ever fought anyone outside the gym, that was it, done, he wouldn’t waste his time on him. But that was long behind him. Now, with an obnoxious man in his face? Well, he would still have to back off, if not for the same reasons. Sometimes he used to think, what would Blair Richardson have done? Stayed calm and cool no doubt, from what he knew about him as a man, if talking to a bad character, reasoning with him didn’t work, he’d have had no trouble walking away. Blair had been a clean fighter, that match with Joe DeNucci from Boston, low blows again and again and the crowd yelling for Blair to give DeNucci a dose of the same, but he didn’t, it wasn’t in him, and he still won.

  Lauchlin phoned the house to tell his mother he would close up, she needn’t relieve him, he wasn’t hungry. I’ve got your supper ready, she said, disgusted. But she was used to his whims, she’d put it aside.

  Nell MacSween was under the sod, and he hadn’t even gone to the wake. The store was empty and quiet. Clement might be home by now, with Tena. She’d been on the road again today, but not this far. How far would she go?

  Lauchlin slid off his stool, rolled his sleeves up. He’d squeeze in a little workout, get his blood going. The bag reeled slowly back from his first punch, swung obligingly forward as he stepped back, planted his feet and stopped its momentum with another blow. He stood there with his hands at his sides, skin reddened over the knuckles, his face flushed: already the heart was warning him, or maybe he was just tuned to any tremor of pain behind his breastbone. There had been days when he was reckless, when, bored with himself and the store and his life, he’d ripped into the bag as if daring to be struck down, to receive that final killing strike to the heart. Did it start that time in training when he went down on a solar plexus punch, his chest stunned, breath gone, and he blacked out briefly, or was the heart bad before that and just couldn’t take a hit that knocked it silly for a spell? Later, looking back, he knew he’d never been the same after that, though he’d hidden it successfully from everyone, including himself, as long as he could until the heart finally said no, enough, I’m shutting you down.

  He stepped back, the bag swinging slightly in a tight circle, and listened to his pulse, re-member, re-member, re-member. How did you go, Nell? What took you down? An orphan girl from England. The way you leave the world matters more than how you come into it, and you were a good woman all your life. He breathed deeply, flexing and fisting his hands, waiting for pain to rise in his chest like a hidden bruise, but it didn’t. Every now and then, when he had the bag going good and he was moving in that old rhythm, he would let himself believe that maybe he was all right now, maybe he could work up a lather like he used to, grunting and sniffing, that the old animal strength was still there, that he had healed somehow because he was after all still alive, still walking, talking, doing the chores of his life, d
ull though they were, he was a collection of habits as predictable as dawn. But of course it was not a healable thing and he had to say yes to that, again. It was scarred: when it should dance, it limped, and he would sit himself down again on his old stool and watch the bag come slowly to rest like his heart. But he had the bag on the run now, and when it swung toward him he danced back and stung it good, the shock of the punch satisfied him and, after a few more combinations, he retreated, breathing hard, his fingers on his ribcage, a reflex now, this little seismic check.

  The phone rang. Still breathing hard, he let it go for several rings before he picked it up.

  “Is this Lauchlin?”

  “It is.”

  “Tena MacTavish.”

  “Hello, Tena. How are you now?”

  “I’m good. I wasn’t sure you were open.”

  “I’m always open for you, Mrs. MacTavish.”

  “That’s very kind. If Clement stops by, would you ask him to bring me brown sugar? I’m baking and here I am, just a spoon of it left.”

  He did not want to tell her that the store too was out of brown sugar, or that Clement did not usually stop by in the evening. He was pleased to be linked in a small way to her domestic life.

  “I will tell him that, Tena, if he does come in. I heard you were out walking today.”

  “That would get around. Everything does here, doesn’t it? But I’m safe home now. Busy, lots of customers?”

  “A few, it’s quiet now.” He wanted to keep her talking, but not as Lauchlin the storekeeper. “I had a woodpecker hammering on my house this morning, early. That ever happen to you?”

  She laughed. “Do you live in a tree?”

  “We’re high on a hill and these woodpecker males, you see, compete with each other for mates. It’s sex, not insects. Whichever can hammer the loudest, the highest up, wins the woman.”