The Western Light (3 page)

4

THE PARKING LOT WAS ALREADY NOISY WITH CARS AND PEOPLE who had come to see the mad killer. Morley pulled up alongside a line of police cars and a van owned by the psychiatric hospital. Sprawled on the northeast hill above town, it was a secret world that refracted the town's rational mindset.

On the station platform, the final snow of the season had begun to fall. I could feel its icy dampness seep into my Oxford with its built-in heel. Now see here, Mouse, I told myself, Morley doesn't have on his galoshes and he expects you to ignore discomfort the same way he does. My father's hand was resting on my shoulder as if he knew I was getting cold and thought he should do something, but per usual he was distracted. His eyes kept turning to the wooded hill beyond the grain elevator, and the opening in the trees where the train would appear before its plunge to the station house.

By my elbow stood Ben Shulman who, like me, had dressed up to see the killers. Ben wore his new orange cowboy chaps and a gun belt with two six-guns that fired real caps. He also had on a baggy Toronto Maple Leafs hockey sweater that hung almost to his knees. Ben imagined the sweater made him look thin, but no sweater could disguise his soft, doughy-looking hands and chipmunk cheeks. His plump cheeks and hands were exactly like the cheeks and hands of his roly-poly father, Dr. Shulman, who bore the uneasy distinction of being the only Jewish man in our town, where everyone was either French-Canadian and Catholic or English-speaking and Protestant. To the right of Dr. Shulman stood John's mother, Mrs. Roy Pilkie, who wore an expensive-looking Persian lamb coat and matching pillbox hat, plus a pair of weird wrap-around sunglasses. Even though she was the mother of a killer, I guess she wanted to look nice for her son. As we stamped our feet to keep warm, she said, “My poor boy just has no luck. Does he, Doc Bradford?”

My father shook his head gravely, his eyes turning back again to the hill where John's train was expected to appear. On either side of Morley were Chief Doucette and the reporter Kelsey Farrow. Balancing on our tiptoes, Ben and I tried to read the small, spidery symbols scrawled across Kelsey's notepad, but neither Ben nor I understood shorthand, so we turned our attention back to my father.

“Is it cold enough for you, Joe?” Morley asked Chief Doucette.

“'Spozed to turn to sleet tonight,” Chief Doucette replied.

“We're in for it then,” Kelsey said without looking up from his notepad. In
The Chronicle
, Kelsey had reminded us that John Pilkie was a local boy who had played with the hockey team in Madoc's Landing as well as the Oshawa Colts before he went across the border to play defence for the Detroit Red Wings. According to Kelsey, John kept a photograph of the young Queen Elizabeth in his pocket for luck; he could rag the puck, which was another way of saying that no matter where he was on the rink, the puck stayed glued to the blade of his stick. His bodychecks, along with his hooks, trips, slashes, elbows, and punches made him a dangerous opponent, although off the ice he was known for holding the door open for his female fans. But there was no mention of my father in Kelsey's story and I wondered if Kelsey knew what Sal had told me that morning at breakfast. John Pilkie had been my father's patient.

According to Sal, my father had helped John Pilkie's father take out John's appendix when a November storm trapped the lightkeeper's family on their island in the middle of the Great Bay. Sal swore what happened at the Western Light was better than the Biblical tale of Abraham and Isaac; but she warned me not to breathe a word about it to anyone — especially not to Little Louie — because Morley disliked Sal discussing his patients with anyone.

Sal also said my father believed that a hockey concussion had turned John Pilkie violent, although nobody, including Sal, felt the same way.

FROM THE DIRECTION OF THE grain elevator came a low, hooting whistle. It was now snowing too hard to see the train, but all of us on the station platform could hear it coming down the hill. We heard the rasp of hissing steam as it pulled into the station. A conductor blew his whistle. Then there was the sound of a door opening, and John Pilkie stepped through a ghostly curtain of snow and stood before me. I recognized him from the newspaper photographs that Little Louie and I had seen that morning, but I was still surprised by how nice he looked. He had on a chocolate-brown fedora with an upturned brim, a striped chocolate-brown suit, and an unbuttoned raccoon coat that fell to the top of his fleece-lined galoshes. Three men along with the armed railway guard followed him as he trudged through the falling snow holding up a white Bristol board sign. In huge, block letters, it said: I AM INNOCENT. His companions were neatly dressed and clean-shaven, and they looked more concerned about getting out of the snow than escaping their jailer. I examined them in wonder. Did the boy in a toque really blast his mother to smithereens? The men were smiling and talking to the guard, as if their train ride was an ordinary Saturday outing.

More passengers came spilling out the coach doors, carrying their bags. The guard asked the crowd to step back so the prisoners could pose for Kelsey's camera. While they huddled together, a man in a hunting cap tried to snatch the sign out of John Pilkie's hand. “Go back where you came from, killer!” the man cried. A police officer quickly pushed the man off the platform, and the crowd shuffled closer for a better view. John Pilkie waited for the crowd to grow quiet; then he fished a harmonica out of his pocket and played a tune that Ben and I knew from school: “Hail, hail, the gang's all here. Never mind the weather. Here we are together. Sure we're glad that you're here too.”

He pointed up at the snow drifting down from the heavens. And, like sheep, we looked up, too, expressions of awe and fear on our faces, although some people had started to laugh. One or two men clapped. John Pilkie took off his brown fedora and held it out as if he expected people to drop money in it. “Stand back! Let us pass!” The guard shouted and began herding his prisoners in our direction. Next to me, Morley stirred. My father rarely exerted himself, because he saved his energy for his patients; but, kicking the freshly fallen snow off his wingtips, Morley shuffled forward. “Hello, John!” Morley boomed.

Mid-stride, John Pilkie stopped. “Hullo, Doc Bradford!” he cried and shook my father's hand.

“This is my late wife's sister, Louisa,” Morley said. “And my daughter, Mary.”

“Why, you girls are shivering!” John Pilkie smiled at my aunt, who lowered her eyes and didn't smile back. “Would you like to share my coat?” He opened it so wide we could see its dappled silk lining.

“We're fine,” Little Louie replied, her cheeks reddening.

“I can see that.” He shook Little Louie's hand, then reached down and shook mine.

“John, it's been a while,” Morley remarked, shushing Joe and Mairzy, who had started to growl.

“A coon's age,” John Pilkie agreed, turning towards some noise in the parking lot. There were wild shouts and a gang of boys raced across the platform throwing snowballs at the prisoners, who ducked or covered their faces. It was Sam Mahoney and the Bug House kids. At school, I was known as a Bug House kid too, because we lived in “the doctor's house,” which had stood on hospital property until one of its owners subdivided the lot. Sam let another snowball fly. John Pilkie stood his ground. What came next felt like a movie camera had tripped its switch to slow motion, so each second lasted a lifetime. Sam's snowball hit John on the side of his head and knocked off his hat. He didn't move. Two more snowballs smashed against his shoulder. He made a playful half-lunge in the air, while we held our breath and waited for him to demonstrate the murderous side of his character. A final snowball hit him in the middle of his chest, near his heart. Instead of knocking over the railway guard and running after the boys, he carefully brushed the snow off his raccoon coat.

“Aim low and you hit something, eh, Doc Bradford?” John Pilkie said.

My father grinned. “See you around, son.”

As the crowd watched, Morley clapped the hockey killer on the back and then Morley lumbered off with Little Louie, our spaniels racing ahead, their ears flapping. The sight of my father sent the boys clattering down the station stairs and into the crowd by the Dock Lunch stand.

My fingers still tingling from his touch, I watched John Pilkie climb aboard the hospital's van, and I imagined his broad, dimpled face smiling at me through the window before the van disappeared into a cloud of whirling snow. Behind me came a series of sharp, crackling pops and the smell of burning cap-gun paper. Ben shoved his smoking six guns into their holsters. “Let me feel where he touched you, Mouse,” he whispered. Giddy with pride, I extended my right hand and Ben's stubby fingers pressed my skinny ones in wonderment. Somewhere in the crowd my father was calling my name.

“Ben, I have to go.” I yanked away my hand. Dropping my eyes so I couldn't see people staring, I trudged after Morley. I was used to people looking, although I didn't exactly limp. I walked with a slight roll, like a sailor, because my weight sank down onto my good foot, especially if I was tired. That day my roll was jerkier than usual because I was trying to step into Morley's footprints where the snow had been beaten down. He was too far ahead to notice, and that made me go faster although the space between his footprints felt a mile wide. Down by the last coach, my grandmother had spotted me. Big Louie waved excitedly, one hand on her hat to keep it from being blown off. “Mouse! Over here, Dearie!” I waved back and shuffled forward, the freezing wind whipping my hair into my eyes, my fingers turning to ice in my pockets.

5

MY MOTHER'S FAMILY WAS GOOD AT PRODUCING POWERFUL women and Big Louie was our second matriarch this side of the border. The first was my great-great aunt, Louisa Vidal, or Old Louie, as she was known inside our family, who, at the age of 74, followed my Yankee great-grandfather to southwestern Ontario to keep house for him. My grandmother Big Louie was my great-grandfather's daughter and, like my own father, my grandmother stood out in the crowd. It wasn't just her jolly patrician face, but her clothes, which she ordered from New York designers. That afternoon, she wore an orange sack coat with a collar of fox heads, and a matching orange hat spouting upside-down pigeon feathers. My grandmother's extravagance was a sore spot with Sal, who sewed her own outfits.

“Hello there, favourite grandchild!” Big Louie hugged me to her bosom and I took a grateful sniff of Ode to Joy. She applied her favourite perfume so lavishly I could smell it on her egg salad sandwiches. When nobody reacted, Big Louie poked my father in the ribs. “Get it, Morley? Mouse is my only grandchild!”

Morley smiled faintly.

“This is for your composition, Mouse,” Big Louie said, thrusting a book into my hand. It was a beat-up leather history book of southwestern Ontario.

“Say ‘thank you,' Mary,” my father told me.

“Hold your horses. I haven't finished.” My grandmother pointed to a bundle of papers sticking out of her purse. “I brought up dad's picture and some of his early letters for Mary to quote in her essay.”

My grandmother bent towards me, exuding more Ode to Joy, and I took the small tintype she handed me. It was dated “Oil Springs, Ontario, 1864,” and the clean-shaven young man standing by a wooden oil derrick was my Yankee ancestor.

“I wouldn't kick him out of bed, would you, Mouse?” Big Louie said, lighting up a Camel.

“Mom, what a thing to say!” Little Louie giggled like anything. I giggled, too.

“It's a nice photo, Big Louie,” I mumbled. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.” I placed the tintype inside my grandmother's history of southwestern Ontario.

“By the way, I've invited the prisoners and their guards for tea,” Morley said as we strolled across the parking lot. “The water main froze at the hospital.”

“Did I hear you right, Morley?” Lifting up the veil on her hat, Big Louie puffed angrily on her cigarette.

“I told Dr. Shulman there would be hot drinks at our house.”

Big Louie gave me a shocked look as she slipped into the front seat of Morley's convertible. Morley climbed in next to her and I slid into the backseat with Little Louie and our spaniels, keeping one eye peeled for the van and its cargo of killers. We had never entertained insane murderers before, although we were used to mental patients. In the forties, the hospital gave art classes to its patients in our home, and some of their weird oil paintings still hung in our upstairs hall. By “weird,” I mean that none of the people in the paintings by the hospital's mental patients had eyes or mouths.

I should also point out that a slight stigma was attached to anyone associated with the Bug House; at school this shadow fell across me. It didn't help that Morley supported Dr. Shulman's liberal practices and made Sal and me hand out prizes at the hospital's embarrassing track and field contests.

In the years before Dr. Shulman, there had been a good relationship between the Bug House and the town. For instance, it had been common once for some of the harmless patients to shovel snow off the walks of homes near the hospital grounds. Dr. Shulman had put a stop to using patients as free labour, although Archie Beauchamp, who was the second cousin of Sal's father, still raked our leaves, and sometimes Sal sat down with Archie and had a cup of cocoa with him.

6

MORLEY'S OLDSMOBILE CONVERTIBLE BEGAN ITS CLIMB UP BUG House hill and we quickly left behind the town, whose mix of French and English neighbourhoods I'd noted in
M.B.'s Book of True Facts
.

Sal herself came from French Town, the overgrown tract of land behind Bug House hill. Its winding streets had been built on old Indian trails, and its roads and old log homes were hidden in the same stand of maple forest that shielded the psychiatric hospital from Madoc's Landing. Sal and her friends enjoyed gossiping about what went on there. In French Town, people could live the way they had a hundred years before and not be criticized for it. Old cars and furniture sat outside rotting, people ran booze cans in their houses, and bootleggers plied their trade. A call to Thompson's taxi, where Sal's father worked, would get you illegal beer or a bottle of cheap wine called “Zing.” Madoc's Landing was dry in the fifties; in the wet towns nearby, liquor board salesmen kept a list of how much you drank, and refused to serve you if you went over the limit. So citizens up and down Brebeuf County went to French Town for their liquor.

We lived in the English section; its leafy streets were lined with red brick houses and bungalows with aluminum siding. The English section, with its neatly mown grass boulevards and maple trees, ended at the harbour near the Dollartown Arena, our most important public building, more venerable than our Protestant churches or the Catholic cathedral with its twin spires. Every winter the Madoc's Landing Muskrats played hockey under its dome roof, and every spring the Rats lost another season and broke my father's heart.

Morley coached the Rats. He loved hockey more than anything, like most of the men in Madoc's Landing — and some of the women, too. Hockey had been a family passion for the Bradfords, who lived ninety miles north of Madoc's Landing, near the French River, where Morley's relatives fished Georgian Bay and logged its trees. Their grim faces in old sepia-tinted photographs suggested they had a hard go of things, and hockey was how they entertained themselves. Hockey wasn't important to the Vidals, who lived in Petrolia, once the oil capital of North America. The town was still prosperous when my mother had been a girl, so families like the Vidals went to Atlantic City or California if they wanted a good time.