Sundowner Ubuntu

by Anthony Bidulka

  We chit-chatted a bit, ate some cheese, sipped some wine, gossiped a bit—especially about Errall and her sudden turn from dedicated single girl to wanton sleep-around (actually we used more colourful words than that), and her recent mysterious, late-night visitor. The wine was a lovely, dark garnet rather than purple—which meant it was a mature bottle—and tasted of licorice, tobacco, and fig.

  “We missed you at Sereena’s party over the weekend,” I ventured. “Alex was in town.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jared answered with a sincere look. “I heard Alex was here, and I would have loved to see him, but, well, you know, domestic disturbance takes priority over fundraising dinner parties.”

  A little bit of me froze over at the words “domestic disturbance.” Jared was telling me something, in no uncertain terms. There was trouble between him and Anthony. Over the months since Jared was attacked, I had sensed something was different between them, but I shrugged it off. Of course things would be different. Jared’s life had drastically changed, and, as his spouse, Anthony’s had to. But had something more serious transpired between the two men while I wasn’t looking? I hadn’t seen much of them—certainly much less than usual—as they were so often out of town, consulting specialists and undergoing surgeries and treatments, medical and other, and I had been busy focusing on renewing my relationship with Sereena.

  At the same time, I had also had my own, not inconsiderable, internal demons to battle. I had come close to being raped by the same maniac who’d disfigured Jared’s face. Thankfully, with a view to the grand scale of things and a healthy dose of the optimism that has always run amok in my blood, I was making good progress in putting that dreadful episode behind me. As horrible and debasing as it had been, there were people around me who had it worse. I was with one of them right now.

  “Are you okay?” I asked Jared.

  “Anthony doesn’t know I’m here.”

  That was odd, and an odd thing to say. I could feel my stomach tighten.

  “I want to ask for your help, Russell.”

  I placed my wineglass on the coffee table in front of us and turned in my spot next to Jared on the couch. Along with my full and undivided attention, I gave him my unequivocal answer. “Anything.” I would do anything for a friend.

  Or so I thought.

  “I want you to help me leave Anthony.”

  Chapter 6

  I’m sure there were words appropriate to the situation that I could have uttered about then, but I was finding it difficult to form letters with my bottom lip so near my chest.

  Sensing the sudden tension in the room, Barbra rose from her spot near (but not too near) the roaring fireplace and snuffled her cool, wet nose under my arm. She let out a soft whine that was her way of saying, “I’m feeling a little uncomfortable with things and need some reassurance.” I looked down into her dark eyes and gave her sweet head a pat. This seemed to suffice, and she returned to her place after giving her less sensitive brother, Brutus, a quick shank sniff.

  Jared was wearing a charcoal grey turtleneck, which he now pulled over his head, revealing a similarly coloured T and leaving his golden locks boyishly dishevelled. “Getting warm in here,” he commented, folding the sweater carefully—no doubt an Anthony thing—and setting it across the back of the sofa.

  “Can you repeat that?” I finally got out.

  He complied with little telltale emotion. “I want you to help me leave Anthony.”

  “B-b-but where are you going? What are you talking about?” I had the black sense that I already knew where this was going.

  Jared raised his hands and placed one on each side of his jaw as if setting his face forward for display. “Take a good look, Russell. This is it. It’s over. There is nothing else that can be done. What you see is what you get. I will always look like this, and, before you start, I don’t want to hear any of the polite stuff you think you should say about my face and how it doesn’t matter and all the rest of that.”

  He’d caught me. “But it’s true.”

  “Maybe. For you. For Anthony. But most definitely not for me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Russell, I am grotesque.”

  Before I could say another word, like a drawn sword, up came a finger into the air between us to silence my retort. “In my eyes. Okay? I’m not placing this critique in your mouth or Anthony’s mouth or my mother’s mouth or anyone else’s mouth, but to me, I-Am-Grotesque. But you know what? I am also a strong man. I have a strong will. I want to live and have a decent future. I can live with this, Russell. I can. I know I can.”

  “Then why…?”

  “I am not who I was when Anthony and I first met. I know our relationship went far beyond the physical. But it was a factor, there is no denying that. Anthony is a very handsome man. Do you know that most people refer t…referred to us as ‘that handsome couple’ or ‘the best looking men we know’? People were always defining us by how we looked together. My God, Russell, I had a career based on how I looked. But I don’t fit in that life anymore, not the career, and not the couple.”

  “Anthony does not care about that, and you know it,” I told him, my cheeks sizzling from the fire, from the wine, from the inflammatory words I was hearing.

  “Anthony is too busy playing the role of martyr and caregiver t—”

  “That is not fair!” I shouted. “You make it sound as if everything he’s done he’s done for himself! That’s not the way it is. He’s done it for you, Jared!”

  “No, no, you’re right,” Jared quickly recanted. “I didn’t mean it that way. All I meant to say is that Anthony is too busy to realize that he is in a relationship with someone who no longer exists. All I am to him anymore, all I can ever be is this…” and again he grabbed at his scarred face with his hands, “…this mask. I am wearing a mask I can never take off! Never!” He reached for his wine and downed a couple of ounces as if it were water.

  Now both dogs—even Brutus—looked up at us, uneasy with the unfamiliar tones in our voices, knowing something was amiss and frustrated they did not know what to do about it.

  “He’ll always be waiting for it to come off,” Jared continued, his voice settling to normal. “And he’ll feel guilty for wanting it to, and I’ll feel guilty that it can’t. I love him too much to put him through that.”

  Now he’d really lost me. “How can you say that? I think what you’re doing, what you’re asking of me, of Anthony, is the most selfish thing I have ever heard from you.”

  Jared looked at me as if I’d just struck him, his eyes flashing with the pain of it.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I just don’t know what’s going on here.”

  “I want a new life,” Jared attempted an explanation. “And that life has to start with who I am now. Looking like this, I may never find anyone to love me, to be with me, but at least that’s honest. Staying with Anthony is a charade. Can you understand that? I have to leave.”

  “Leave? Leave!” I was suddenly incredulous and angry and sad and scared and so many other things I could not define. “So where are you going to go? Are you just going to run away and hide like Kelly!” Kelly had been my best friend and Errall’s lover for several years. A few years earlier she’d gotten cancer, lost a breast, and eventually decided to break off the long relationship with Errall and move to Toronto. None of us had heard from her since. The similarity to what was happening now with Jared was eerie.

  Jared was quiet, and both dogs continued to stare at us with anxious eyes. Brutus looked as if he might bark.

  “I’ve thought a lot about Kelly recently,” Jared admitted in a low voice. “About how she just left her problems behind, sloughed them off like a snake does its skin. She just let it all go, forgot about it, started a new life somewhere. How invigorating that must have been, what a relief.”

  I called bullshit. “Invigorating, my ass. She also left behind a lot of hurt people and unfinished business.” I could feel permanent ridges fo
rming on my brow, just about where a dull headache was beginning to build.

  “Russell, you can’t understand.” His face carried a look I’d never seen there before; his voice was that of a stranger. “You haven’t gone through what we’ve gone through.”

  Maybe not. I crossed my arms over my chest and regarded this man on whom I’d once harboured a secret crush. Right then all I wanted to do was shake him until some sense dropped into his head.

  What followed was an uncomfortable silence, both of us unwavering in our stances, and at the same time hurting inside because of this chasm that was opening up between us, right before our eyes, a chasm that threatened our friendship. Which was deeper? Where could we go from here? What could either of us say or do? Jared sipped at the dregs of his wine, his face wincing as if the alcohol had gone sour. I stared into the licking flames of fire.

  Finally I could take it no longer. Saying something, anything, was better than this anguished silence. “So what are you asking me to do?” I asked him. “Exactly?”

  His golden-green tiger eyes latched onto mine. “I’m asking you to try to understand, and to help me convince Anthony that it is time we parted ways. Maybe not forever, but for now.”

  I averted my eyes once more towards the roaring fire, and I may have even let out a “humph.”

  “Will you help me?” he asked plainly.

  In a voice so quiet I wasn’t even sure he could hear it, I answered, “No.”

  He nodded solemnly. “I think I should go.”

  Getting up at five a.m. is not my favourite thing to do, but do it I did, and I was on the road with a full thermos of coffee, bottle of water, two pears, and a map, and heading for Estevan by six. It was still dark out and frosty, but the radio weatherman was promising a sunny albeit cool day in the single digits. My route took me south through Dundurn, Hanley, Davidson, then on through Moose Jaw, Milestone, Weyburn, and finally into Estevan, clocking in at a little closer to four-and-a-half hours than five.

  It was a long drive, but it gave me time to chew on my discussion with Jared the night before. We’d left things at an uncomfortable point. I needed the time to think about my reaction to what he’d been asking me to do: to help him convince Anthony to end their relationship. Was I being short-sighted? Insensitive? Inflexible? Bullheaded? Should I have agreed to help him? But as lengthy as my trip and as strong as the coffee I drank were, my distaste for Jared’s request never left my mouth. It just wasn’t right.

  Estevan, about ten minutes north of the North Dakota border, is nicknamed the Energy City, with 11,000 citizens and a bustling economy heavy on coal, oil and gas, farming, and ranching. I found the Comprehensive School easily enough and was told I’d have to wait until noon to meet with the principal, as he was busy teaching a class. So I drove around town and generally twiddled my thumbs until it was time to return to the school and meet with Mr. Thorson. I already knew from a cellphone call made on the road that Matthew Moxley was no longer a teacher at the school, and that was certainly frustrating, but I was convinced my next clue regarding his whereabouts was somewhere in Estevan.

  “I’m sorry you came all this way for nothing,” Principal Thorson said after the requisite handshakes and “let’s have a seat in my office” and “can I get you something to drink?” were done with.

  “Well, I’m hoping it wasn’t for nothing. It would be a great help if you could tell me a little more about Mr. Moxley, like when he left Estevan and where he might have gone.”

  The principal scrunched his round face into a sphere of flesh-coloured Plasticine as he tried to recall facts. He would have been a drab-looking guy in a drab-looking suit were it not for the life in his eyes; it was a look I’d seen before in people who were teachers (some, not all). He loved his job. The drabness was either due to bad taste or, more likely, long, thankless hours. “His last term was, oh, let’s see now, five years ago last fall? Yeah, I think that’s right. He was an excellent teacher; the students loved him. They were very sorry to see him leave. We all were.”

  “Why did he leave?”

  “Love,” he said simply.

  I stared at the other man, surprised by his answer.

  “Mr. Moxley, Matt, was really quite an extraordinary man. Every summer during school break he did the same thing. While most of us were putting up our feet at the lake or golfing every day, Matt would pack a knapsack and fly off to some Third World country to do volunteer work. It was his passion. Oh, he enjoyed teaching well enough and was damn good at it too, but he liked nothing better than to be out there in the world, experiencing other cultures, using his skills to help others. You’d see it in his face each fall when he returned for the new school year. He was like a man who’d spent the summer falling in love. The look would fade as the year progressed,” he added thoughtfully, “but then June would come around again and off he’d go. I think he even spent a couple of Christmas breaks overseas as well.”

  I listened in appreciative silence, and my mind went to Clara Ridge and how proud she would be to meet this new son, so different from the truant, troubled teen he’d once been: a kind, giving man she did not yet know.

  “Everyone benefitted,” Mr. Thorson continued. “Matt brought his experiences back here to Estevan, to share with the kids, the teachers, the church, the community. He’d host slide shows and make speeches to the Chamber of Commerce; he always carried around pictures of the places he’d been and the people he’d worked with, and he wasn’t shy about showing them to anyone or talking up the great need for aid and assistance, even from a small city like ours. He taught us that even we could make a difference. I would make a bet with you, Mr. Quant, that half the people in this city who sponsor kids or various building projects around the world do so because of Matt’s influence on them.”

  “So what happened? Did he just not come back one year?”

  “Oh no, he’d never do that, leave us in a lurch like that. But you’re right, that is where he ended up. In his last few years with us, his favourite place to go was Africa. It really…well, something about that continent really seemed to affect him deeply. Eventually he decided that that was where he was meant to be, and helping those people was what he was meant to do. He announced one fall that it would be his last year with us and that he would be leaving for Africa the following summer, for good this time. Of course we were sad to see him go, but really, it was inevitable. We all knew it was the right decision for him.”

  It was a lovely story, but suddenly my insides felt hollow as I realized what it meant: the bottom had just fallen out of my case. If Matt Moxley was in Africa, well, that was one big-ass continent to find someone in. “Do you keep in touch with him?” I asked, dangling from a thin thread of hope.

  He shook his head as I was afraid he might, and then: “But the minister from his church might.”

  Calvin Hershell was the minister of a local United Church and had been instrumental in arranging Matthew Moxley’s early forays into the Third World through church-sponsored programs and other charitable foundations. Principal Thorson had contacted the man, and he responded graciously by inviting me to his home for a talk. By one-thirty we were seated at a simple kitchen table in his simple but comfortable home, eating simple but delicious bologna sandwiches. Reverend Hershell, in his fifties, was a pleasant-looking fellow (as ministers tend to be for some reason—must be all that communing with God) with light, sandy hair that was barely thick enough to disguise a balding pate, and rimless eyewear with well-fingerprinted lenses.

  “Sorry for the food,” he apologized in a soft, gentle, minister-like voice. “But I actually prefer bologna to other sandwich meats.”

  I grinned between tasty bites. “Actually, so do I.” I felt like one of those shadowy silhouettes behind the curtain on a Frosted Flakes commercial, too embarrassed to publicly admit that they think the cereal taaaaaaaaastes grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat!

  We chewed in companionable silence for a moment, then launched into it.

  “Aga
in, I want to thank you for seeing me today, and on such short notice.”

  He nodded as he swallowed a mouthful. “So you’re looking for Matt, are you?”

  “Yes, on behalf of his mother.”

  “That’s wonderful. I have to tell you though, I’m a little surprised. Matt never spoke about any family. I assumed they were dead.”

  “They’ve been estranged for many years. And even now, his mother doesn’t want him to know she’s looking for him. She just wants to know where he is and how he’s doing.”

  “That’s lovely,” he declared with an approving nod. More chewing, a sip of instant coffee. “Well, I hope I can help, but I’m not sure I can.”

  Drat! Well, I thought, might as well go for the gold. “Do you know where Matt is?”

  He gave me a thin-lipped smile, unaware of a crumb of white bread precariously perched on his chin. “In theory.”

  Theories are okay. Detectives can work with theories. Theories, speculation, good guesses, gut instinct, all part of the game. “Oh?” I urged him on.

  “I am in intermittent contact with Matt, perhaps once a year. But I haven’t actually spoken with him since he left Estevan, and, dear me, now that I come to think about it, the last time I had word from him was Christmas before last.”

  Eww boy. “So you have a phone number or…?”

  “No, no phone. I have an e-mail and street address for him. I’ve gotten the sense that Matt moves around a fair deal, going where he’s needed or where he needs to be, if you know what I mean. But the address I have seems to have been a bit of a home base for him, so perhaps that might be a good start? It’s in Cape Town.”

  I nodded, feeling a bit numb. Matthew Ridge/Moxley was in South Africa. Not exactly a road trip away.

  The trek back to Saskatoon from Estevan—as with almost any trip over an hour—seemed longer than the one going to Estevan from Saskatoon. After a short session of radio singalong, I used the first couple of hours to think through what I’d learned. Both Principal Thorson and Reverend Hershell had been very helpful in painting an even clearer picture of the man my missing person had become since his days as a troubled and rebellious teen. They moved me considerably further along the timeline of his life, which I’d slowly been uncovering over the past few days. Unfortunately the news was not good. Although it told me—and my client, Clara Ridge—roughly where her son was, that was about it. No one had actually spoken to him in over a year or knew exactly what he was doing in Africa. With only a temporary home base in Cape Town that I knew about, his exact whereabouts could only be imagined. This would be a disappointment for Mrs. Ridge. Despite what she’d told me, I guessed that her true intention was actually to meet her son again, face to face, and try for some sort of reconciliation. That didn’t seem very likely now. There was little more I could do. I’ve travelled before on a client’s dime, but this was something altogether different; my quarry had run so far away, he’d ended up in another hemisphere. There was no hopping into my car or on a short-haul Air Canada flight to check this out.