The Fortunate Brother (24 page)

He went to the edge of the platform, searching through the woods, listening. Facing east and just beyond a thin ridge of trees was the dropoff over the cliff face below, the inlet that had cradled Clar Gillard's body. He could hear the tide, full in and scraping sluggishly against the cliff. He cupped his hands to his mouth.

“Just wanted to have a beer, is all!” he yelled. He walked back up the path to the truck. He cruised the rest of the way down Bottom Hill and cut onto the gravel flat. Kate's car was parked by her door. Clar's dog trotted from behind the cabin, barking in warning, neck fur bristling.

“Hang 'er tough, buddy,” he snapped. Didn't like that fucking dog. “Kate!” he hollered. “You home, Kate?”

Her door was ajar. He hopped onto the step and tapped lightly. It drifted open and he stood back. “Kate?”

He poked his head inside. Her guitar stood on a mat, leaning against a wooden rocker. Bread sliced on the table, a jar of mayo and a chunk of cheese. He looked towards the coffee pot on the stove and saw that it was full, a mug beside it with a hungry mouth. A door led to a bedroom.

“Kate?”

He turned back, looking about the gravel flat and to the wooded west-side hills shadowing black on a flat sea beneath a pearly sky. The river rumbled beyond the old ruins, songbirds twittering through the nearby alders. He looked to the coffee pot again, took a quick step across the room and touched it. Still warm. The dog's muffled growls grew into excited yips. Kyle went outside, rounded the cabin. The dog's rump was in the air, his head down, front paws digging furiously through the burdock and sow thistle that choked the base of the cabin. He'd been digging for some time, had an opening big enough for his snout to reach inside. He drew back as Kyle approached, black eyes burning with urgency, tongue lolling. He held his head high, barked, and then resumed his frantic clawing at the ground. Kyle turned to leave but stopped as the dog wheeled towards him with an excited whine, eyes fevered, and dove its snout back inside the hole. He emerged with a piece of dirtied cloth between his teeth, dropped it to the ground and then circled it, whining and howling. Kyle looked closer. His scarf. It was his scarf. His cashmere scarf that he'd lent his mother the morning she went to Corner Brook with Bonnie Gillard. He bent to pick it up and the dog yapped at him.

“Batter to hell,” he muttered and snatched the scarf from the ground. He held it before him; it was shrunken and clumped
together in parts. Blood. Dried black blood. Jesus. Oh, Jesus. He dropped to his knees, the scarf laid across his hands like a bloodied infant. He closed his eyes and saw it folded soft around his mother's nape that morning. He had impulsively kissed her there once when he was a boy, surprising her as she knelt in the doorway, tying his laces before shooing him outside for school. He'd been surprised himself by the strength of her scent suffusing his face. Oh, Mother, Mother, the world had felt so big outside and she so strong, kneeling there in that doorway. How safely he had grown in the pools of light filtering through her, the terror of dreams banished by warm milk at her morning table. He held the scarf aloft like a penitence and he an unworthy penitent.
I should've fought harder, made them cuff me.

The dog circled him, tail between its legs. It was scared and he was scared, too. He started rocking with the scarf in his hands, picturing her coming out of their house through the effusion of yellow from the overhead light, the scarf shawled around her shoulders against the minted cool of that fog-shrouded night. He saw Bonnie running towards her from the bottom end of the wharf and the fog thickened in his brain and he saw no more and understood nothing of how her scarf became bloodied when it was Clar who was killed. He heard only her voice, whispering to Bonnie,
It's all right, you never have to be afraid again
…

The dog pricked its ears towards the river and a flock of gulls rose, squawking, their wings lit by slanting rays of the evening sun breaking through cloud. A grey head topped a rise on the far side of the river. Kate. Kyle rose. She didn't see him, and the river was probably too loud to hear the yapping dog. He ran to his uncle Manny's truck and stuffed the scarf underneath the seat. He closed the truck door and stood with his back to it. Kate's head was down as she picked her path across the thinning part of the river,
now strewn with boulders. He opened the truck door and took the scarf back out to make sure it was what he'd seen and the sight of the blood made him crazy and he circled the truck holding it, seeing again his mother coming through the house door with the scarf around her neck and Bonnie running towards her from the bottom of the wharf and Clar—where was Clar? And where had she found his knife? He couldn't remember it being in the house, it was always in the shed, and why was the scarf bloodied when it was Clar who'd been stabbed.

He opened the truck door and shoved the scarf back beneath the seat and then closed the door and saw Kate balancing herself with her arms as she teetered across the narrow, rotting footbridge. He cut across the flat and walked alongside the muddied ridge by the river, waiting by the concrete ruins as Kate stepped off the footbridge and clambered up a small incline of banked beach rocks. She looked surprised to see him standing there and looked anxiously past him towards her cabin.

“Thought I heard a dog barking.”

“Clar's dog. That fucking thing got a name? You left your door open.”

“He never needed calling, was Clar's shadow. I've been feeding him. I better get back there, close the door.”

“I already closed it.” He stood before her and she stood back, appearing calm and yet unable to keep from darting glances towards her cabin.

“Some things I need to ask you, Kate.”

She nodded, glanced towards the cabin again. “Can we talk another day, Kyle? Tomorrow?”

He touched his pocket where the bloodied scarf still burned like a phantom limb and shook his head. She lowered her eyes from his and with great effort sat on the ridge of beach rocks. Her
hair was loose, feathery about her shoulders. She gathered it in a handful and tucked it beneath her jacket collar like a scarf against the cold and her mouth drooped with sadness as she stared into the fattened river.

He sat beside her. “What do you know about my mother?”

“That I wish she was mine.”

“I thought you loved your mother.”

“Love has many shapes, Kyle. Some of them can get pretty warped.” She rubbed her throat as though her words pained her.

“Starting to feel like a stranger, Kate.”

“That worked for a while, not knowing anyone. Gives a person time to hunt one's self down.”

“You running?”

She shook her head. “I tried to once. The past shadows us like those birds up there. Cheats our every triumph, and I expect I'm starting to sound tiring here.”

“More like Kate writing a song.”

She gave a self-deprecating shrug. “Turning days into words. You said that once, and I like that. Guess some days can never be sung.”

He jiggled his foot impatiently and she reached out her hand as though reaching for more time.

“It's not a terribly interesting story, or original. My father used to be decent till the moonshine rotted his brain. Started knocking us around like yard ornaments. I cut out.”

“Sounds about right.”

“Yeah. Except I left Verny behind.” She paused. “Vernon. I was fourteen when I had him. His father wasn't much older than me, and he never knew. I was hidden inside the house for most of it. Hidden beneath heavy coats when I went out. He was born early March; my mother took him for hers. Some of our own
knew it, but it was never talked about.” She looked at him with a twisted smile and he made a move to silence her, to ask only after his mother, but she raised a hand, silencing him.

“Verny was six when I left. He knew me as his sister. And he cried when I was saying goodbye. I always stood between him and my father. I promised I'd come back for him, but I didn't. I married a nice man, and I stopped wanting to go back home. And that is my cross.”

“Your husband, where is he now?”

“He was older, much older. He died.”

“Sorry, Kate. Guess we all have our cross. Where is he now, your son?”

She shrugged. “I don't know.”

“Sorry.”

“Yeah, we're all sorry. And I expect you want to know why I'm sneaking into your mother's room at the hospital.” She was still gazing into the river, elbows resting on her knees. She was crying when she looked back at him. She took off her glasses, wiping her eyes, and then stood, relieved by the sound of a car coming down the road. “It's your father.”

“Can we keep talking, here? What's up with you and my mother?”

“Somebody behind him, they're stopping.” She said impatiently, “I need to see what's going on. Who's that behind him?”

He twisted sideways, looking towards the road. His father was pulling over, Manny following. “It's Uncle Manny,” he said. “Driving Aunt Melita's car.” Manny was getting out of the car and heading towards his truck parked by Kate's. The truck with his mother's bloodied scarf tucked beneath the seat. He was on his feet and running. The dog was squatting on his haunches by the truck door when he got there, ears back, tail down, growling at Manny.

“Watch him. Watch him, Uncle Manny!” Kyle stood breathless beside his uncle. Sylvanus was tooting his horn from across the road, rolling down his window.

“Whose dog? He your dog?” asked Manny.

“Naw, Clar's dog. Get! Get outta here,” he shouted at the dog. “Get! Been hanging around ever since the other night. We all been all feeding him.” The dog lowered its head and tail and then trotted after Kate, who'd come up behind Kyle and was now walking purposefully towards Sylvanus.

“Who's that?” asked Manny. “She that strange woman everyone's talking about?”

“Suppose, b'y.” Kyle opened the truck door and leaned inside, grabbing the scarf from beneath the seat and shoving it into his coat pocket. “Jaysus, lookie here.” He pulled back with a silly grin at his uncle and held up the keys. “Left them in the ignition. Thought I had them under the seat.”

“All good, my son. Go on, now. See your mother. She's in the truck, sharp as a tack. Bonnie Gillard's in there with her. She got all your mother's drugs and a nurse trained her about the other stuff. Go on, now, you got nothing to worry about.”

Kyle clapped his uncle's shoulder and was broadsided by his Aunt Melita coming towards him and stumbling beneath a bundle of coats and grocery bags in her arms.

“Swear be Jesus he lives by hisself,” she said, and thumped her bundle against Manny's chest. “Here, take something, quick, before I drops it.”

“Look at her, look at her stuff. Five minutes in the store and she empties their shelves. Why don't you leave it in the car?”

“Because I'm not going straight home, you are. And half of this goes in the fridge. Take it.” She dumped the load in Manny's arms, dimpled face ticking with annoyance, and then turned to
Kyle. “Come here, my love.” She patted his cheeks with soft hands. “Don't you worry about your mother now. She's going to be fine. I knows because I've bargained me soul with the devil over this one.”

“Thanks, Aunt Melita.” He saw Kate talking intently with his father and looking past him towards his mother. “I better get going.”

“You go on then. And I'll be back up tomorrow and make a batch of sweet bread. Hold on.” She grasped his coat sleeve. “You make sure she don't get out of bed. Bonnie got her drugs and other things sorted out and so there's nothing for you worry about. Except feed her and keep her off her feet. You hear that?”

“I hears you, Aunt Melita. Thanks.” He pecked her cheek and went over to Kate, who was now backing away from his father's truck.

“The police,” she said, seeing him, “the police are coming,” and she brushed past him, her hands to her mouth.

“What's with her?” he asked his father. “What's going on?”

“Get in the truck. Nothing you can do. Get in the back, we gets your mother home. Hurry up.”

The police. He rammed his hand into the pocket with the bloodied scarf. He heard his mother's voice, talking to him from the cab. She sounded faint, weak.

“You stupid?” yelled his father. “Get in the gawd-damned truck, we gets your mother home.”

He heard another vehicle coming down Bottom Hill. The police. The police were coming. He tightened his grip on the scarf with fright and leaped into the back of the truck. The dog trotted alongside as they drove, outstripping the truck as they pulled up to the wharf. Kyle jumped out of the back, his foot twisting beneath him. He cursed and limped on towards the shed in pain.

The truck door opened behind him, his mother's voice calling for him. He lurched into the dimly lit shed. Firewood stacked two tiers thick lined the walls. A chopping block sat in the centre, the axe resting against it. The car was motoring closer. His father belted out his name and he bent near the low end of a wood tier and crumpled the scarf beneath a junk of wood and went for the door. Then he looped back inside the shed. The police. The fucking police. First place they'd search would be the shed. He grabbed the scarf again, balled it in his hand, and bolted outside to the back of the shed. He looked up the wooded hillside and started towards a grouping of rocks beneath a rotting black spruce. The dog appeared sniffing and whining beside him and he spat in rage. The dog, the gawd-damned dog would dig it out.

“Kyle!”

He turned back to the shed, dove inside. The car had driven past and was parking on the other side of his father's truck. He heard the doors opening and nearly cried with relief upon hearing Sylvie singing out to their mother. And Ben, shouting something about suitcases. Sylvanus shouted back, his voice drawing near the shed. He stood there now, darkening the doorway. Kyle tucked the scarf beneath his coat and backed away.