The Retreat (31 page)

T
here had been the light, the haze of the thin clouds, and the sun pushing through and falling onto the ground. And the smell in the air that Wednesday morning had been the clean brisk smell of fall as Raymond and Vernon left the courthouse in Kenora where the judge had set Raymond’s bail at ten thousand dollars. The judge said that the severity of the attack on Constable Hart, to which Raymond had confessed, warranted a large bail, and whether it was self-defence or not was yet to be determined. He warned him that his brother was still a wanted man, and whether he was guilty or not, Nelson had fled the scene. “You’d do well not to hide any information about your brother, Mr. Seymour.”

Raymond had been conscious of the uniformed policemen in the room and he’d wondered briefly if his brother Marcel might be willing to be his lawyer. He didn’t understand how any of this worked. He’d spent a number of nights in prison and the experience had left him frightened. The first night he’d been woken by a banging on his cell wall and his neighbour chanting. Then a voice had called out that he was a fucking hero, a cop killer, and someone else had cheered and soon everyone was joining in and Raymond had covered his ears, wondering about Hart. In the morning he asked one of
the guards if Hart was dead, and the guard looked at him and said, “You wishing, Seymour?” That afternoon, in the exercise area outside, a man came up beside Raymond and said, “Bassett wants you.”

Raymond looked at the man, who had a pair of dice tattooed on his left temple. He had heard of Bassett, that he was a prisoner to be wary of.

The man had whispered something incomprehensible, and then said, “If Bassett tells you to eat shit, you eat it. You understand?” He turned and walked away. Raymond looked about, trying to determine which one Bassett might be, but he found nothing in the expressions of any of the men around him. That night he slept poorly, and at some point he heard someone call out and then he heard the sound of crying. The next morning, a guard stood by his cell door and said, “You a faggot, Seymour?” Then he said that today was court day and that the judge was waiting on him.

Vernon had taken him by cruiser to the courthouse. As he drove, he talked at the windshield. He said that Hart had been released from the hospital, and for that Raymond should be thankful.

The courtroom was tiny and Raymond’s boots echoed on the hard floor. The judge told him to look him in the eyes when he was talking to him, and when Raymond looked up, he saw the darkness of the judge’s face and he found no pity there. On the way back to the prison, Vernon said, “Why are you lying, Seymour? You aren’t capable of violence. Least I didn’t figure that.” He looked in the rear-view mirror and said,
“If you know your brother’s whereabouts, you better say. They’re going to find out anyway, so there’s no point trying to protect him.” Raymond was silent. Vernon shook his head, sighed, patted his front pocket, and said that he needed cigarettes. He slowed the vehicle and pulled in at the Shell station on Second Street. Through the window Raymond saw the marquee on the Paramount.
Chinatown
was showing. He shifted and said, “You wouldn’t let me use the washroom, would you, Vernon?”

“No way, Seymour, not on my watch.”

“Look at me, Vernon. You’re twice my size. Anyway, I don’t
want
to run.”

Vernon shook his head and got out and walked into the service area where he stood for a time, talking to the girl at the counter. The girl was laughing. She ducked her head shyly and then looked up and smiled and Vernon leaned forward onto the counter and then glanced back at his cruiser. A woman walked by in high black boots. The traffic passed. Vernon came outside, lit a cigarette, and stood eyeing the cruiser and then looking back at the girl. Finally, he walked to the cruiser, opened the rear door, and told Raymond to get out. When Raymond was standing alongside the cruiser, Vernon made a big show of unlocking his handcuffs. “Go take your crap,” he said, and he pushed Raymond forward. They walked, Raymond ahead of Vernon, past the front window and the girl inside, who was watching. The door to the bathroom was along the outside east wall of the building. A single toilet with no window. Raymond turned on the tap and let the water run
for a long time, and then he bent forward and drank. When he straightened, he saw himself in the mirror and began to shake. He closed his eyes and he talked to himself. He said that it was okay and then he said his own name and, again, that it was okay. Opening the bathroom door, he saw Vernon standing over by the cruiser, talking on his radio. Then he stepped outside and ran.

Just after sunset, he walked out of the bush, stood on the highway about eight miles from Kenora, faced the oncoming traffic, and put out his thumb. A young man heading up to Sioux Narrows picked him up. The man said he framed houses for his uncle and that he’d put a nail through his palm with a power nailer just that morning and then driven himself to the hospital. He held up his left hand, which was wrapped in thick gauze. As they approached the entrance to the Rushing River Campground, Raymond pointed and asked the man to stop and let him off.

“You camping up here?” the man asked.

Raymond said that he was visiting some friends who were camping.

“You have a nice night then, eh?” the man said.

“Sure. You bet. Thanks.” Raymond got out and stood for a moment on the shoulder and heard the sound of the rapids. He walked into the campground and up to the north beach where he sat on a picnic table and looked out across the water to the campfires on the other side of the channel. Children’s voices drifted through the air.

He looked down at his boots and considered the many possible roads that would have led him to this particular place in his life, but he couldn’t get a firm grasp of any of the roads. The day before, he’d heard someone in the jail say that the occupation of the park might be ending, that the protestors would be giving up their weapons and walking out of the park. He did not understand how something that important could be ended so quickly, with so little excitement, and he wondered if he had been mistaken to be a part of it. He did not know what purpose it had served. Maybe Nelson had been right when he’d said that Raymond was too trusting. Even when they were younger and still lived together, Nelson was the one who had been sure of himself. Raymond had admired his brother’s confidence, and though he had tried to be like Nelson, he always felt he had failed.

That night Raymond built a fire with leftover wood gathered from abandoned campsites. The campground was half empty. He slept and he dreamed of his grandmother, who was burning grass in a small glass bowl, and she was washing herself with the smoke, and she looked right at him and her mouth moved, but he could not hear what she said. And then Nelson was in his dream and he was bleeding from his chest and holding out his arms and Raymond, though he was fearful of the blood, held his brother. He woke, breathless, and he saw the darkness and the stars above him, and he knew that he was in the kind of trouble there would be no escape from.

He could not sleep again and he built up the fire and watched the sun come up. He dozed off and woke later to a
thunderstorm that forced him to find shelter in the nearby showers. When the sun had reappeared, he walked back out to the highway and caught a ride with someone from Minnesota who was running a truck full of sausage up to Winnipeg. He got out of the truck on the highway west of Kenora, and, keeping off the roads, he wound his way through the bush towards the Retreat.

By late afternoon he was sitting in the trees above the pond. He could see Fish and William swim and then run back in towards Lizzy, who towelled them dry. He saw Everett and the man in the wheelchair and he saw a tail of smoke rising from the kitchen at the Retreat. He had never seen Lizzy in a bathing suit. She appeared to be smaller, as if she’d been diminished by the last few days. He listened for her voice, but he could not hear her when she spoke and at some point Lizzy was holding her brothers and whispering in their ears. Raymond’s heart ached, and he imagined stepping down towards the pond to be with them.

A while later, they stood and gathered their towels and walked up the trail towards the clearing, Everett walking backwards and pulling the wheelchair over the rough path, and then they were gone and there was the sound of a bell, which meant that they would soon be going to the building where they ate. He remembered the first time he’d come for a meal at the Retreat. It had been the year before, and the group had stood around the table and held hands and sung and he’d not known what to do with his mouth, and so he’d looked down at the plate in front of him. The act of holding hands had
surprised him, and the singing had been full and strong, and the food had been good. He realized he was hungry. He sat and waited. The sun dropped in the sky and then set. The air grew colder. The stars appeared. And still, he waited.

T
hat night, Lizzy woke to a persistent sound, a voice or a tapping sound, a soft knocking, as if the wind were moving and banging a loose door. She saw the shadows of the beds across the room and the shapes of her brothers as they slept. She sat up, swung her feet off the bed, found her jeans, and put them on. Bending over, she felt for her runners and slipped them on over her bare feet. She went to the door and stepped outside onto the front stairs.

She saw Raymond at the edge of the clearing. He came forward and as he did so she went down the stairs. She said his name, “Ray,” and he held her as she said his name again and again. Then she pushed away and looked at him and led him to the empty cabin Franz used to stay in. Inside, it smelled of must and the air was thick. In the darkness she fumbled with the windows and opened the one that faced the bush to the west. A soft breeze blew in. Raymond moved back the curtain on the front window slightly, peered out, and said, “There’s a light on in one of the cabins.”

“The Doctor’s,” Lizzy said. “Don’t worry, his light is always on late at night.” They sat on the bed in the darkness and she held his hand and said that Vernon was looking for him. He was definitely not safe here.

He said that he wasn’t going to stay long. He’d just wanted to see her.

“Tell me what happened. Are you in the clear? This is bad, Raymond, really bad.” She had trouble catching her breath.

He was silent for a moment, and then he said, “Hart would have killed Nelson and me. He pulled a knife on Nelson and I jumped him and he fell and the next thing he’s got a knife in his chest. It was self-defence, but for sure one of us will be blamed. Or both.” He said that he didn’t know where Nelson was now. “He wanted me to leave him at the dump. That he’d figure out where to go from there. He could be anywhere by now.” Then he said that he had taken Hart to the hospital and turned himself in and he had confessed to stabbing Hart. “That’s the story I gave. And now it’s the truth.”

“Jesus, Raymond.”

Raymond took out a cigarette and lit it. The match flared and Lizzy panicked and said, “Someone’ll see.” She went to the window and lifted a corner of the curtain. The Doctor’s light was out, the clearing was dark. She stepped back, breathless, and whispered, “You have to go. Now.”

His face was revealed briefly by the glow from the cigarette. He said that he had nowhere to go. He said that he had never been in a place like this prison before. It scared him. Maybe he’d run up north. Before morning, he said, he would start walking.

Lizzy was still standing by the window and she felt that the space between her and Raymond, the distance from the window to the bed, had become a vast chasm. She did not really know if he was telling the truth. He seemed different
from the boy she had gotten to know that summer. She wanted to go to him but she didn’t know how to cross that wide space. She lifted a hand, then let it drop. “I’m afraid for you, Raymond. I’m really afraid.”

He grunted, as if in agreement, and then he began to speak and it was as if the darkness in the room and the darkness outside had freed him. He said that when he was nine his brother Nelson had been taken away. “There was a man and there was a woman, and they came to my grandma’s house looking for Nelson and me. Only I wasn’t home. So they just took Nelson.” He said that for the longest time he had waited for Nelson to come back. And then at some point he began to forget about his brother. Not all day, or every day, but there were times, like when he was playing, or when he was in school, when he’d suddenly realize he hadn’t been thinking about Nelson being gone, or coming back, and he’d felt guilty because Nelson had been the one to be taken away. But then the guilt went away as well, and life became usual. There were times when his grandmother would tell stories about Nelson, and she’d laugh then, and he would wonder if someone would have been telling stories about him if he had been the one taken. He said, “It’s like Nelson has lived a bigger life than me. You know? But I always feel like there’s something I have to make up to him.” He was quiet, and then he said, “Nobody stopped them.”

Raymond fell silent. Lizzy, still standing by the window, did not move. She understood that what he was telling her had always been real, but now, as he spoke the words, it had become
truer: because she was there, and because, even though he could not see her, he knew that she was listening.

She heard him exhale. He said that he was tired. And hungry. He was going to sleep for a bit, and then maybe they could get him some food from the kitchen. And then he would go.

In the darkness she heard him cross one boot over the other and very soon she heard the sound of his steady breathing. She stood, alert to the sounds coming from the open window. The wind in the trees, and faintly, from the highway, the sound of a truck gearing down. She stood there watching while Raymond slept. He was on his back and his breath caught with each intake so that he startled, but not enough to wake himself.

She felt alone, but with this came a strange elation, as if she herself were safe from danger. She did not know, nor would she ever truly know, Raymond Seymour. She had explored his body as if it were some sacred site, but that was just skin and blood and bones. The shell of the body. She didn’t know what he believed, not really, she didn’t know how he saw the world, or how he saw her. About all of this, she did not know. Just as she did not know that in the autumn to follow, she would despair the heartlessness of the world and her inability to consume her own sadness. That, with the passing of time, what was precise and unbearable would eventually dim and gather a layer of longing, and as she would grow older and try to recall the details of the events of this summer, she would fail, and she would always lament that failure.