The Fortunate Brother (17 page)

“Where's your car?” he asked Wade.

“Ask Lyman. He rear-ended a feller on the highway. Just past Deer Lake.”

“
Rear-ended
somebody on the highway? How'd you manage that?”

“Don't know. He was three car lengths in front of me and I looked at something on the dash, and then I was up his arse. Cops took my licence.”

“What for?”

“Said the car wouldn't safe.”

Jaysus.

“Should start our own company,” said Wade. He was standing next to Kyle, looking back over the freshly poured footings. “One
side left and she'll be finished. Get the floor poured tomorrow if the rain holds. Not bad work, hey? What do you say, Ky? Start our own company? WK Contracting.”

“Kinda like just the K.”

“Right. Pours his first load and thinks he's boss.” He thumped Kyle's shoulder and mock-kicked his brother's butt.

“Like the old man, always up to no good,” Lyman complained. They strolled off the site and up the road through the Beaches. None of the youngsters were in sight. A few minutes after they passed the last house, Harry Saunders, with his wife and boys and two mutts all crowded inside the cab of his truck, pulled over. Kyle climbed in the back, his cousins beside him, and after he smacked the roof of the cab Harry drove them up the road. Two light poles before the government wharf in Hampden, Harry half rolled to a stop, the cousins jumping out. Kyle clung to a spare tire as the truck started forward. He looked back at his cousins walking up the hill towards a stand of birch and the weather-beaten hovel they lived in. This past winter had taken a nasty swipe at the dwelling, scarcely a piece of felt left on the tar-blackened roof. He watched his cousins go through the doorway and then look back, lifting a final hand of farewell towards him, and he felt the heart beating strong inside that hovel. He could tether himself to its portal in any storm.

At the crest of Bottom Hill he thumped on the cab, hollering his thanks to Harry, and jumped out. No sign of his father's truck. He cut through the roadside entanglement of dead knapweed and thistle and half slipped, half strolled his way down the muddied shortcut through the woods, holding his breath as he always did whilst passing the rotting sawdust and fire-charred remnants of the Trapps' sawmill. Hated that fucking beam hanging and creaking.

Coming down to the back of his house, he stopped. The dog. He was sitting by the gump, string of drool hanging from his mouth. He flapped his tail like a beaver and whined. Eyes wide and hopeful. It was hungry.

“Nobody looking after you?” he asked irritably. He peered around the corner of the house. Crept up to the front, looking down the road. He saw no cops or anybody about and went to the back, crawling in through Sylvie's bedroom window. Expected to see his father sitting at the table. No one there.

He keyed open two cans of corned beef and emptied them onto the cutting board. Forking one, he threw it out the window and the dog was on its feet, chomping it full before it hit the wharf. Jaysus. He tossed out half the contents of the other can along with a heel of bread and then closed the window. He sliced the remaining bully beef over two thick slices of bread, slathered it with mustard, threw in a couple of pickles, and bit into it whilst stripping off his clothes for a shower. After towelling himself dry, he crawled into his bed for a nap. He'd go look for his father later. Perhaps he was drunk agin. He fell into a fatigued sleep, thanking the Almighty for the opium of work.

H
is dreams plagued him. But it was still early evening when he woke up and dressed. He checked his father's room. No sign of Sylvanus. He dragged out the phone book from beneath the coffee table and called the bar, then Hooker. No one had seen him. Perhaps he should call Corner Brook, he thought, but that might get his mother worked up. Must be on the booze agin, guaranteed.

He climbed out the back window, cut up through the woods to Bottom Hill, and then circled back down the road and onto the gravel flat. Kate's car was parked by her door. A light was on behind her closed blinds. He strolled down to the beach, teased a fire out of a swatch of dried seaweed, and teepeed it with driftwood from the supply Kate was forever gathering in her morning forages around the riverbank. Ten, fifteen minutes later, she opened her door. Hair battened down by a toque, grey braid trailing, fingerless mitts. No guitar. First time he'd ever seen her coming across the flat without her guitar. She raised her hand in greeting and sat on a half-burnt log and gave a tepid smile. He looked through her fire-blazed lenses to the green of her eyes and saw no light there. He saw nothing of that sense of expectancy she always held out for
him. He saw only sadness. Her face drawn like shrunken hide.

“What's up, Kate?”

“The moon, Kyle. Always the moon. How's your mom?”

“Doing fine. Guess you already know that.”

“Matter of fact, I did poke my head in this morning. You don't mind, do you?”

“Why would you ask that?”

She shrugged. “You've been protective. I understand that. Hear you got pulled in by the police again.”

“They were more curious about you this time. I'm getting jealous.”

“Wanting to know what I was wearing, right?”

“Right.”

“Right. Already told them. And what you were wearing too. And your father.”

“What the fuck's that all about.”

“Don't know.”

“That alibi you cooked up. If not for it, I think I'd be in the slammer now.”

“They're fishing in the dark. They don't know who killed him.”

“How'd you know I'd need an alibi?”

“I didn't. Just something Hooker and I came up with, that's all.”

“It gives you an alibi too, Kate.”

“Sure does.” She smiled. “Thinking I killed him, Kyle?”

“Thinking you might know some things I don't. Cops said you were driving Bonnie Gillard around that evening.”

“I was.”

“Mind if I ask you about it?”

“Don't know if she'd want me talking about her stuff.”

“She's already told me things.” He hesitated. “I came across her car by accident in by the river. She told me about Clar trying to drown her. She tell you that?”

Kate nodded. “It was a rough night for Bonnie.”

“Got a lot rougher for Clar.”

“It did.”

“So, what's up, Kate. What was she doing with you?”

“Not a whole lot to tell.” She picked up a stick, idly stoking the fire. “I was getting some things from the car and thought I heard something. In the bushes. Thought it might be a fox. Heard it again. And a sound, like a cry. I went looking and there she was.” She drew an unpleasant face. “She was looking pretty bad, crouching in the bushes. Her clothes were muddied. She was shaking, scared. Looking up at me like a little girl, scared her momma was going to smack her for being dirty. I took her hand, and I led her inside my house.”

“Scared of her momma? Shouldn't she be scared of him?”

“Sometimes we got to change things up, Kyle. So's we can live with them.”

“Everyone thinks she killed him.”

“She didn't.”

“How do you know that?”

“She would never kill him.”

“
Never
—? Jaysus. Am I missing something here? At the hospital she looked like she was grieving. He's been torturing her for years. I don't get it. He tried to drown her and she's grieving him? She sick in the head?”

“You're sounding mad, Kyle.”

“Yeah I'm fucking mad. He tried to kill her and she got us all mixed up in her shit and, what, they're best friends now?”

“You said it. That's just who they were, best friends.”

Kyle's mouth opened but no words came out. He was like a barrister, staring with contempt at his own guilty client.

“Takes a bit of figuring out, Ky. She was Jack Verge's daughter. She had nothing but poverty. It smelled off her. Nobody chose her
for a best friend. She might've played the same games with everybody else in the schoolyard, but she was always the last one standing. Nobody ever picked her. Then he picked her.”

“Sad fucking day for her.”

“Wasn't back then.”

“She's not a bony arse kid on a swing no more. She got money, a new car.”

“Don't matter what she got. In her head she'll always be poor. Like she'll always be poor in
your
head. Perhaps she'd get over it if everybody else would and stopped blaming her for it. If there's one thing worse than being poor as a youngster, it's having everyone believing it's your fault.” Her words were sharp but without hostility. Kyle felt himself flush. He felt something else, too. Felt like she'd just given him a piece of herself.
A stranger walks into town…shares nothing of herself…

“We all have our songs, Kyle.”

“Sing me yours.”

She looked away, mouth closed.

“That bad?” he asked.

“Felt like it at the time.” She looked at him, firelight flickering shadows across her face. “Suppose it wasn't too unlike Bonnie's. I grew up poor, too much drinking. Not that I knew we were poor. There were only four or five of us families living in that cove, everyone the same social standing, so to speak. We were always fed, warm clothes. Then we moved to a bigger outport and I can hear the whispers now.
She's some poor, dirt poor, not a pot to piss in.
Funny. I didn't know what poor meant. I asked my mother one day.” Kate smiled, “
It ain't poor if it's a thing you choose.
That's what Mama said. I went back to school feeling shame for them that mocked me. That's the strength of a mother's love, Ky. 'Course, that can turn too.” Her face knotted. She rooted at the
fire. “Love keeps us going, my friend. Even what Clar Gillard offered as love.”

“Didn't take Bonnie far.”

“Perhaps that's all she felt she had, that and hope. Hope that he'd be nicer. You never think things are going to get worse. And then when they do, well—you keeps thinking they'll get better soon. Hope's a powerful thing. It's what takes us into the next world, hopes of a better life. I've written songs about hope. Shadows of hope, promise of hope.”

He was reminded of his mother, her tireless fortitude. Kate, seemingly aware of his having shifted, touched his knee, pulling him back.

“There's always hope, Kyle.”

“Where's Bonnie's, now that he's gone?”

“She'll find it again. She's just got to grieve it first, her lost hope.”

“You grieving too, Kate? That why you moved here?”

Her reply, if she would've given one, was interrupted by a truck rumbling down the road and turning onto the gravel flat, two dulled beams of light bouncing and tilting towards them.

“I'm off,” said Kate, rising. “Take care, Kyle.”

A young fellow from Bayside was driving the truck, a bunch of his friends in the back, laughing, hooting, looking for a party.

“Hey, Ky, your old man's house on fire?” one of them called. “He near ran us off the road back there.”

“Back where?”

“Going up Bottom Hill.”

“Horse to the barn, b'y.” Kyle waved them goodnight and started walking across the lot. He hesitated as he got to the road, looking right towards Bottom Hill, then turning left down Wharf Road, not giving a damn who saw him. The lights were out in the house, and he'd expected that—but not to find the door
locked. Jaysus. He hadn't known that door
could
lock, or that there was even a key.

He rapped on the door and peered through the window. His father wasn't to be seen. He started towards the back of the house and Clar's dog rose from beside the gump with a sharp yap. “Jesus, b'y.” His legs had weakened with fright, near toppling him over the wharf.

“Get home,” he snapped. “Get the fuck home.” He raised the window, hoisted himself across the window bench and teetered, falling face first into his father's boots. He cursed, got to his feet, and went down the hall, pausing at his father's room door. “Dad? Dad, you in there? You home?”

He cocked his ear to the door, heard the bedsprings creaking like bad ball joints on a worn-out clunker. “What, you in bed already?” He listened. No snoring. His father never slept without rattling the rafters. “Dad?”

Christ. He rested his head with weariness against the doorjamb and then went to his own room. He hauled off his clothes and got into bed and listened to a lone gull lamenting the night. He drifted, maybe slept, and was jarred awake by the shrill yap of the dog. A voice. Low, mumbling. He lifted his head off the pillow, heard nothing. Lay back down. Kept listening, silence scratching at his consciousness like a burr against a naked shin. Kicking aside the bedclothes, he hauled his pants back on, wrapped a blanket around his shoulders, and went to the kitchen. The light was on over the door. He went outside, chilly night air running like ladders up his arms. The shaft of the overhead light fell across the dark shape of his father's legs as he sat by the side of the house in Chris's old spot, his feet lodged against the base of the gump and the dog sprawled out beside him. He couldn't see his father's face, just his legs and his hand stroking the sleek black head of the Lab.

“What, you got a mutt now? Where the fuck you been?”

“Muffler fell off the truck,” said Sylvanus, his voice tired, guttural tired. “Waited with your mother while they fixed it.”

“You could've called.”

“I did. Ten times.”

“Yeah. Well, that's it now. I was working all day. Me and the boys poured the footings. We done the mixing in the wheelbarrow. Grunt all you wants now, she looks good.” He bent down on one knee, trying to see his father's face. Saw nothing but the glint of an eye. Smelled the whisky-free air. Felt his fatigue. The weighted hand stroking the dog's head.

He drew the blanket more closely around himself and sat down beside him. “How come you never said nothing about Bonnie Gillard then, in the truck with you the other night?”

His father shifted, shrugged. “Nothing to tell, I suppose.”

“Nothing to tell?”

“She was walking in the road. I gave her a ride.”

“To Clar's house. He tried to drown her just before. She tell you that?”

“She told your mother.”

“He near reamed her car in the river, with her in it. And she goes to his place after. That make sense to you?”

“As much as any of it. Go on to bed now, Kylie. Get some sleep.”

“Sleep! Jesus. How you going to sleep with all this going on?” He hesitated. “I was talking to Hooker. He found you on the wharf that night, parked next to Clar Gillard's truck. You remember that?” Sylvanus didn't speak. “He said you were pretty drunk. He drove you up to the bar and parked behind it. He—he said you were in the water that night. When he found you on the wharf, you were wet. He said you knew Clar was dead.”

The gnarled hand stilled upon the dog's skull.

“So, how did you know?” asked Kyle.

“When did Hooker tell you that?”

“Last evening.”

“How come you said nothing till now, then?”

Kyle fell silent and turned his head away.

Sylvanus grunted, shifted his face into the light, and then his eyes widened with disbelief. “My son, my son.” His big hands, all weathered and chapped from hand-lining cod and chopping wood, gripped Kyle's shoulders, then softened into a caress. “You thought I did it? Kylie, you thought I did it?”