The Retreat (18 page)

She thought about her father, who was sleeping alone. She thought about her mother’s red dress, which Lizzy had in her own bag back in the cabin. She’d taken it on a whim one night a while ago. She had imagined that Raymond would like the dress, like the shape of her long legs falling below the hem. She felt an urgency pressing down on her, which was perhaps what her mother had felt before she left; the sensation that danger or something necessary and calamitous lay just around the next corner and that action had to be taken. It was like walking into a clearing and understanding that of all the
numerous directions to take, only one could be chosen. She told Raymond this. She offered him the vision of the open space and the choices encountered while crossing that space.

Raymond said, “Maybe there’s only one path and that’s all. No choice. Ever think of that?”

“I don’t want to think. I want to feel and then act. Or maybe act and then feel. Thinking makes everything far too complicated. Like now, I’m thinking too much. Next time I won’t talk so much.” She laughed weakly and said, “You think there’ll be a next time?”

Over the following week she saw him almost every night. He picked her up, or she met him out on the highway, standing in the ditch until she saw the one headlight of his pickup approaching, and she felt as if she were moving into the outer dark, a new and exacting place where others might have gone before but no signposts had been left to guide her. They stopped one night in town for condoms. They had discussed who would go in and buy them, and grudgingly she agreed to because he said that everyone knew him in town and it would be too obvious. So she stood at the counter and an older man took her money and looked at her and then away and then studied her again with what seemed a slight smirk. She was wearing her mother’s red dress. She’d changed into it out near the road, slipping off her jeans and T-shirt and putting it on while she waited for Raymond. The brief act of being nearly naked in the ditch at the side of the road had left her giddy. The
dress was tight and the man behind the counter was looking at her breasts. Beyond the store window, in the darkness of the outside, she saw Raymond sitting in the cab of the pickup. He lit a cigarette; the brief flare of the match and then the glow. She bought a chocolate bar and a small tin of baby formula as well in order to appear wholesomely purposeful, or domestic, as if she’d stepped out of her own home and was running an errand. She blushed, took her change, and left the store.

They went up to the dump. Nelson worked there and Raymond had the key to the padlock that held the gate. It was north of town, up past narrow roads and clear-cut paths that the hydro workers had made, and down a rutted drive to a chain-link fence, seven feet high. Raymond got out of the pickup and unlocked the padlock, removed the chain, and swung the gate open. His outline, the thin shape of him, moved in and out of the beam from the headlight. There was a song on the radio by Pink Floyd, and the sound of it made Lizzy’s heart ache, and she knew that whatever she might want, she could get.

The road into the dump was rough and the pickup jolted and threw her about. Raymond stopped at the edge of the pit, which dropped down below them. The one light probed the darkness and fell onto the trees on the far side. Raymond killed the engine. He said, “Wanna hear something funny?” And then not waiting for her answer he said that his last year in high school his science teacher, Mr. Schneider, had hit him. One time he had forgotten his textbook and Schneider came at him with a ruler and hit him across the side of the head. “He said I would make an excellent garbage collector. That’s
what he said, and then he looked at the class and asked if he wasn’t right and some kids laughed, but nobody said anything. I thought of standing up and walking out, or maybe grabbing his ears and banging his head against the desk, because I’m bigger than Schneider and could’ve done that, but I didn’t and later I wondered why not, what stopped me.” He shrugged and said it was funny, because Schneider was right. Here he was, sitting by the garbage dump.

“So,” Lizzy said. “That doesn’t make him right. You should’ve clocked him.”

“Yeah, should’ve. And then I’d’ve been charged.”

“Was he charged for hitting you?”

Raymond laughed and looked over at her. “Come on,” he said, and he took her hand.

They walked down the path to where the Caterpillar was crouched. Raymond climbed onto the tread and then reached out his hand and said, “Here.” Her dress was too tight. She was wearing runners, so her feet were okay, but she couldn’t stretch her legs in any way. Finally, she hitched the dress up over her hips and stepped up onto the tread. She was wearing white underwear and she told Raymond not to look. The cab was small, with little room for two, so Lizzy sat on a side console while Raymond fired up the Cat. There was no steering wheel, just a number of sticks that Raymond moved back and forth. As they crawled down into the pit, the Cat’s spotlight fell onto the space before them to reveal the garbage and the movement of rats.

“My brother and I sometimes come up here to shoot raccoons,” Raymond yelled. “It’s easy at night. Sitting ducks, eh?”

He taught her to operate the Cat. Let her sit between the sticks and showed her how to advance, reverse, and turn. She rolled the Cat up out of the pit and stopped just before the pickup, which appeared toylike in front of them. Later, back in the pickup, the dim light of the dashboard reflecting his face, she saw his teeth appear and then disappear, and she was struck by the brief image of something animal-like and feral in him. She pressed a hand against his mouth.

He said that they should go into town for a drink. Then they could go up to the cabin, later. Nelson had gone to Winnipeg, so they would be alone.

“You don’t drink,” she said.

“True. But that can change. For tonight.”

Lizzy said fine, if he wanted. She leaned back and said that she liked it when he liked her. That he wanted to be seen in public with her. “Who do you want to show me to?” she asked. Then she said that it went both ways. She wanted to show him off too. With her index finger she touched his forehead and said, “I love this,” and then she touched his chin and his jaw and she said, “And this, and this.” He stopped at a bar on Main Street. Parked down by the wharf and they walked up past a patio full of people and then around to the front door. They sat in a corner booth, looking out at the crowd. Lizzy ordered a beer and Raymond a whisky neat. Lizzy looked at him when he ordered and she raised her eyebrows.

There was a band playing country music and Lizzy asked Raymond to dance.

He shook his head.

Lizzy grinned. She tugged at Raymond’s left hand. “Come on.”

“When I’m drunk,” he said.

“You’re embarrassed.”

They sat and watched the crowd, and the people dancing, and Lizzy took Raymond’s hand and played with his fingers until he laced them into hers. She said her mother used to play this game with her, when she was younger, where she would fold her hands together and ask Lizzy to close her eyes and count her fingers to see if she could find all ten. Sometimes she got nine, sometimes eleven, rarely ten. “I couldn’t do it.” She paused and said, “She went away. She’s done this before. We wake up and she’s gone. She doesn’t leave a note, doesn’t come and say goodbye. It’s like she doesn’t have children. I’m okay, but I feel sorry for my brothers, they’re too young to understand.”

Raymond watched her, and then he said, “You still have a dad.”

Lizzy smiled, and then began to laugh. She said, “Stupid me.” Then she said, “I like you.”

A girl in a tam walked past their booth, looked at Raymond, and stopped.

“Hi, Raymond,” she said.

Raymond lifted his head and said her name, “Alice.”

Alice looked at Lizzy and then back at Raymond. She smiled and in the smile Lizzy sensed a possible threat.

“How’ve you been?” Alice asked. She was wearing tight jeans that went wide below the knee and she wore a vest over
a plaid shirt. She looked like a cowgirl. Her mouth and eyes were small.

“Okay,” Raymond said.

Alice nodded. She didn’t say anything more, but she made no move to leave. Finally, she said that it had been a long time.

“I guess so,” Raymond said.

Then Alice stuck out her hand at Lizzy and said, “My name’s Alice. Alice Hart.”

Her grasp was poor and slightly off-centre and Lizzy thought then that this might be a girl that Raymond had known quite well. She said her own name and took her hand back.

“You’re not from here,” Alice said.

“The Retreat,” Lizzy said. “That’s where.”

Alice nodded and then her eyes brightened and she said, “Uncle Earl told me about you. Your family. It was your little brother who got lost, right?” She seemed happy to have situated Lizzy in this way. She said that her uncle Earl had been the policeman in charge of the search. She didn’t look at Raymond as she said this, but she turned at some point and faced him and said that she was getting married. Maybe next month.

“Really,” Raymond said. “That’s fine.”

“’Course it’s fine. Aren’t you going to congratulate me?”

“I guess that depends,” Raymond said.

“On what?”

“On who you’re marrying.”

“Vernon.” The corners of her small mouth lifted. “He’s here, you know,” and she looked over her shoulder, then
turned back to
Lizzy.
“Ray and I knew each other in high school. Didn’t we, Ray? Very good friends.” She waited, as if there were more to add. Then she told Lizzy that Vernon was a constable on the police force. Just like her uncle. “But then you know that. Vernon helped look for your brother, right?”

Lizzy nodded and said that she remembered him.

Alice went pensive and leaned towards Raymond and asked him if he had a joint. Even half a joint. Or some crumbs. “You got some?” she asked.

He said he didn’t. He said she should ask policeman Vernon. He probably had lots of prime confiscated shit.

Alice’s mouth drew into a neat pucker. “You don’t have to make fun.” And she turned and walked away, disappearing through the crowd on the dance floor.

Lizzy watched Raymond. “She calls you Ray,” she said.

“True.” He drank the remainder of whisky and when the waitress passed by he asked for another. He studied Lizzy.

Lizzy smiled briefly.

Raymond’s shot glass arrived. He drank it in one go, grimaced, and set the glass down.

“She was your girlfriend?” Lizzy asked.

Raymond seemed to ponder this question, as if he wasn’t sure of the answer. Then he said, “For a while. Last fall.”

Lizzy touched Raymond’s fingers. “Your hands. They’re shaking.”

He stood and reached into his jeans’ pocket and took out some cash and laid it on the table. He walked out and Lizzy followed him down the hill to the pickup, stumbling slightly in her shoes, unable to keep up.

“Hey,” she called.

Raymond didn’t answer. He got in the pickup and sat there. Even after Lizzy had climbed in he made no move to start the engine. Just sat and looked out the windshield at the harbour in front of them. The float planes, the slips of the dock, the barrels of fuel.

“What’s going on?” Lizzy said. “Was it Alice?”

He started the engine and drove up the hill, past the bar, and down Second Street. They crossed over the intersection near the baseball diamond. Up past the prison and down onto the flat stretch towards Raymond’s turnoff. Lizzy said that she didn’t know what had happened back there in the bar, but she didn’t care about Alice. Not one bit. Anyway, Alice was getting married and she didn’t seem that smart and what frightened her, she said, was that Raymond might not know the difference between her and Alice. “You know? What do you see when you look at me? A white girl? Because if that’s all you see, then there’s a problem.”

“That’s not all.” He said that Alice had been his girlfriend in high school. “Her father wasn’t happy with this, but I didn’t give a shit. Alice was this girl who had pointed her finger at Raymond Seymour. I wasn’t very bright back then.” He poked around in his shirt pocket for his cigarettes. “Wanna?” he asked Lizzy. She took one and waited. He struck a match and held out a shaky hand. She held his hand as she bent to the light.

“Hart told me to stay away from Alice,” he said. “I tried, but she kept coming back. And I wasn’t interested in sending
her away. And then one night Hart found us. Put us in his police car and dropped Alice off at home. I was in the back of the car. I got into the car, see, and once I was in, I couldn’t get out.” He opened his window and ashed the cigarette. He didn’t speak for a long time and Lizzy thought that this might be the end of his story. She wanted to ask questions, but she didn’t. She saw that this was a sad and private story and she felt her own sorrow, which she experienced as pity.

Raymond said, “So Hart takes me out to my boat, and he puts me in my boat. He gets in and I get in. Just like that. Maybe I’m thinking we’re just going for a ride and he’s going to talk to me. Huh.”

And he was silent again. And again, Lizzy waited. Only this time Raymond didn’t continue. He tossed the cigarette. The truck was crawling now. The tunnel of trees, the corners around which there was the promise of something, and then nothing except another tunnel and more trees and one more corner.

“He put me on an island,” Raymond said. “And he left, and for nine days I waited on that island until finally a barge passed by. I remember thinking that I couldn’t let myself go crazy. By the end, I was walking in circles and talking to myself, to my brothers, my grandma. I knew I couldn’t last much longer on a small island where there was no food or shelter. I
was
going crazy. The thing is, I climbed from the boat and put myself on the island and I let Hart take off. That was the worst thing. I didn’t fight back.”

“You didn’t
let
him put you there.”

“No?”

“You reported this,” she said.

“Oh, yeah. Sure did. I walked into the police station and made my report and then they arrested Constable Earl Hart and had a big trial and he’s still in prison. Even as we speak. You don’t get it. There’re two kinds of laws, one for your people, one for mine.”