Water Dogs (19 page)

They stepped inside, the dry heat warming their faces, and saw a long hallway, golden light coming from a small overhead globe. The wood floors were clean, freshly varnished, and the walls were unadorned. They turned in to the first room, a kitchen, immaculate and foodless—Bennie checked the ancient refrigerator and it was not only empty but spotless. The place felt solemn and well cared for, alive, and all Bennie could say was “This wasn’t what I was expecting.” Helen ran her hand along the steel countertops, well worn and polished. The kitchen was connected to the main room of the Grange—the meeting hall—which had three podiums near the back, each draped with purple velvet, fringed with gold tassels. Otherwise, the place was empty. The size of a small basketball gymnasium, the room had tall windows, but the radiators along the walls kept the room warm, almost hot. They shed their jackets and stood in silence in the room, smelling the varnish.

Then Bennie put his arm around Helen again and they headed back to the kitchen. Beyond the counters and the old gas stove there was a small door, which took some effort to open—the doorknob was loose—but once the latch clicked free, they walked inside. It was a tiny room with a single window and a little bed. There was no radiator so it was cooler, but they kept the door open to the kitchen.

The dark blue light from the snowstorm had filled the room, and Helen and Bennie sat down on the bed. For the first few seconds all they heard was the quiet sound of their breath. Out the small window the spruce boughs were heavy with snow. He pulled her closer, then he shut his eyes to the little room, to its simple and spare perfection, to the waning light of the afternoon. After a few seconds he felt her turn toward him, and when he opened his eyes he saw that she was looking at him in a casual, familiar way. At first this made him feel uneasy—to know that she was in Tavis Falls for him, to help him, even though he himself didn’t know exactly why they’d come—but this feeling passed, and he gave in to the warmth of her body and her wet-looking eyes and he thought to himself,
This is it, it’s happening, my life
.

They watched as the daylight faded. He no longer felt hidden from Helen; he knew she could see him as clearly as she ever would. Since falling into the quarry, the world had been flooding into him, unfil-tered. He felt more awake, as though the brightness of the world had intensified, and despite the trouble with his brother, and with Vin, all he could feel was gratitude. His leg was still healing, but he was thankful for his arms, his hands, his fingers—where his skin touched Helen’s it was very warm, and the heat from the kitchen was now coming in through the doorway, but there was a small crack in one of the win-dowpanes, so when the wind picked up outside, swirling, rushing through the nearby trees, there was a thin draft on their faces.

Helen said, “Maybe we shouldn’t ever go back to the island,” and while he knew she didn’t really mean it, he thought about the possibility.

Then they saw stark white light spread on the trees outside. A car. Helen’s face was flushed and her eyes were shining as they stepped into the kitchen. Arthur Page and a woman who appeared to be his wife were knocking their boots on the steps outside the door. They entered the kitchen, both wearing blue knit wool hats pulled down over their ears, both smiling as though the snowstorm was too exciting to bear. They were carrying large trays covered in tinfoil, wearing oven mitts.

“Ellen! Bennie!” cried Arthur. “Fantastic!”

“Helen,” said Bennie, nodding his head in her direction.

“Helen, of course,” Arthur said, setting the tray down on the counter. “This means a lot to me, that you found your way here.”

He introduced them to his wife, Nancy Page, who said an almost whispered hi to them, and after Arthur put the two racks of lasagna into the oven, all four of them walked into the main room to set up chairs and tables. They made space for fifty people. “Who knows how many will come,” said Arthur. “But it’s always best to be ready.” He was wearing a button-down blue oxford shirt tucked neatly into his jeans; Nancy, too, was wearing jeans and a light blue shirt, and though she didn’t speak, she was jittery with anticipation—you could see it in her eyes and her dry red cheeks and easy smile. Whenever Arthur made a comment, she would nod in agreement. When they’d finished setting up the chairs and tables, Arthur and Bennie and Helen sat down while Nancy went to the kitchen to check on the food.

Bennie asked Arthur if he knew Ray LaBrecque.

He said of course he knew him. He was a quiet kid, but even so, Tavis Falls was a small enough town. He asked how Bennie knew him, and he said he didn’t, really, he just knew LaBrecque had gotten work on one of the islands down near Meadow, and that now he seemed to be missing.

“Got a job on the coast? I don’t think so,” he said, laughing. “He goes to school with my son. They’re not exactly friends, but they play on the same basketball team.” He stood up and pushed a few chairs neatly against the tables.

“Maybe we’re not talking about the same Ray,” said Bennie.

Arthur sat back down and put his hands on his thighs. “Ray LaBrecque. His parents live up the hill, on the other side of the falls?”

“I think the Ray I’m talking about was raised by his uncle,” Bennie said, straightening chairs on the other side of the table.

Arthur didn’t seem to be listening—he said the LaBrecques were a good family, and that he wouldn’t be surprised if they showed up for the program at the Grange that night.

Helen stood up and walked to the kitchen to check how Nancy was doing. Bennie asked Arthur what the “program” was, exactly, and he said Bennie and Helen would enjoy it—it would involve talk of peace and humanity and spirituality and destiny.

“Wow,” Bennie said, nodding.

“Thanks for backing me up, son,” he said. “I don’t suppose you could help hold a placard or two during my presentation? It’d be nice to have someone on the ‘outside’ assisting me.”

“A placard? Like a sign?”

“Thank you, son. Wonderful,” he said.

Two young couples entered the hall, and Arthur leapt up to welcome them. The two men looked as though they’d spent the day sleeping in a ditch. They were probably brothers—both were wide-chested and wore canvas pants with lashes of oil and dirt at the cuffs, and their red beards were the same hue. At first glance the young women accompanying them looked alike, too. All four were crimson-cheeked from the cold. One of the men said, quietly, “This where the free dinner is at?”

“Sure is. I’m Arthur Page.” He extended his hand and the two men extended theirs reluctantly in turn, and the two women nodded with gentle smiles. None of the four said another word—they didn’t introduce themselves and just stood in the back, waiting.

Just as Bennie was resigning himself to an awkward evening with the two ditch-sleepers and their wives, listening to Arthur prattle about world peace in this pristine wooden hall in the middle of the Maine
woods, the doors opened and the crowd arrived. He looked for Martha, a desperate scan from face to face in the sea of new bodies. The throngs entering the Grange must have inspired confidence in Arthur, although nobody seemed to know why they were there. Bennie couldn’t wait to hear Arthur’s opening pitch. There were other “insiders”—earnest-looking, bright-eyed, well-groomed men and women carrying more trays of food—but most of the assembled crowd weren’t a part of Arthur’s organization. They looked hungry, tired, and drunk. The divide was easy to notice. There was Arthur and his wife and his well-scrubbed friends. Everyone else was forming into smaller groups, and most of them looked like those first two: unshaven, large, and hungry. Helen and Bennie camped near one of the radiators.

Arthur approached. He appeared less jolly and self-assured. He said, “I think we will probably have enough food.”

Helen asked, “You must have advertised?”

“I put a small announcement in the paper. And I put up a few signs at the rec center. And at the sawmill.” He looked around. “Looks like word spread at the sawmill best.”

Behind Arthur was a man in a green baseball cap with a case of beer under his arm. He’d ripped a hole in one end of the cardboard and was passing the cans around.

An eager line formed for food. Arthur’s wife had driven into town to pick up a dozen pizzas, and she returned just in time; all the lasagna was gone, and the loud line curled out the kitchen and well into the hall. People who’d made it through the kitchen were starting to sit down. Helen and Bennie brought their plates to a table with two older men. The guy on their left had short-cropped hair and a long gray beard. They were playing cribbage and drinking cans of Busch.

When they sat down, Bennie asked, “How’s the grub?”

They didn’t respond, but when the man with the long beard finished moving his pegs, he said, “Sorry, what?”

“I was just asking how the food was.”

“Quite good,” he said. “Not as good as the beer, but quite, quite good.”

“Kind of weird to be eating lasagna on Saint Paddy’s Day, but it’s free,” said the man sitting directly across from them. He raised his beer and said, “Cheers,” then tipped it back, finishing it. Skinny and oddly tan, he had two packs of Marlboros in the breast pocket of his blue flannel shirt. He reached down into the red cooler at the base of the table and brought out four more cans, sliding two across the table for Helen and Bennie.

“Thanks,” she said.

It was a fast-paced game; they didn’t study their cards and they didn’t look at the board when they moved the pegs. Bennie agreed with the man with the long gray beard: the beer was good.

When the deal switched, Bennie asked, “Ray LaBrecque—you know him?” The words came out of his mouth more quickly than he’d wanted them to, but the two men didn’t seem to mind.

The bearded man smirked and peered across at his opponent. They both started laughing. Bennie joined in, just a low chuckle.

“My name’s Zander,” the man with the beard said. “I’m a cousin of the LaBrecques’. A distant one, thank God. This guy here”—he squinted, slowly and dramatically pointing at the skinny man in the blue flannel—“that’s my second cousin Ray LaBrecque. We call him Dog.” Dog nodded. “And that guy over there, the drunk guy with the green hat, he’s Ray LaBrecque, too. They call him Sid, for some reason. Why do they call him Sid?”

They all looked over in Sid’s direction, at the table beside them. Sid was laughing and drinking from a bottle of Dr. McGillicuddy’s Men-tholmint Schnapps. The tendons in his neck were strained.

“His dad’s name is Paul,” said Dog.

“Yeah,” said Zander.

“But everybody calls him Sid.”

Zander looked at Dog, waiting.

Dog shrugged. “Even though his name is Ray.”

“Anyway,” said Zander. “There are probably four or five Ray LaBrecques in town.”

“Seven,” said Dog, and he seemed pleased with this correction.

“Seven Ray LaBrecques,” said Zander, smiling, pulling on his beard.

Dog glanced at the cribbage board before looking up at Bennie and asking, “You wanted to know about Ray LaBrecque?”

“Oh,” Bennie said. “There was a guy named Ray LaBrecque from up this way, I think—anyway, he was down on the island a few weeks ago. Meadow Island. That’s where we’re from.”

“That’s Little Ray,” said Dog. “He’s Big Ray’s nephew. He’s been away for a few weeks.”

“Yeah, I heard that, too,” said Zander. “Some folks are looking for him. He’ll turn up, though. He’s a tough kid.”

“He ain’t lost,” said Dog. “He’s just off doing his thing.”

“Big kid. Strong and hardworking. Goes up to New Brunswick a lot.”

“They like him at that logging camp, seems so. He’s a big strong kid.”

“He’s bigger than Big Ray, ain’t he, Dog?”

“Ray Junior’s pretty big,” said Dog.

“Yup, Ray Junior might be bigger than Little Ray, probably. Fatter, anyway.”

Dog looked at them. “Fatter. Definitely.”

Zander asked, “What was he doing down there, anyway?”

“Sea urchins,” said Bennie. “He was looking for sea urchins.”

Zander told them he’d seen Ray a while back, during the cold snap in February, flushing out the radiator in his cousin’s truck. That’s when Ray had told Dog he planned to go to the coast for a fishing job.

Dog and Zander had more to say about Little Ray: he rode his motorcycle all year round, he went up to Canada often in the winter to trap marten, he’d been the hard-charging center for the hockey team—they recalled the game against Lewiston when he netted five goals—and
he dated a beautiful girl. They spoke in tones reserved for the kid you shake your head at, smiling, knowing you’ve never been quite so lucky.

“He got lost in the snow,” said Helen. “It was dark and snowing hard.”

“I’ve heard some people are worried.” Dog scratched his neck. “But I’ve got a feeling the big fella’s got everyone fooled.”

“Little Ray’s still got to be bigger than Ray Junior,” said Zander. “Even though Ray Junior is fat.”

“Ray Junior just sits around, listens to classical music, and collects disability,” said Zander.

“I’d take Little Ray over Ray Junior any day,” said Dog.

“Well, one thing’s decided. You’re the Ray LaBrecque who drinks the most beer,” said Zander. “You’re the drunkest Ray LaBrecque.”

“Not drunker than Sid,” said Dog, aiming his hand toward the table beside them.

“You’re the drunkest Ray LaBrecque who’s not an actual
drunk,”
said Zander.

“I guess so,” he said, raising his can of Busch. They both laughed.

“Little Ray, yeah, he’s a good kid,” said Zander. “Raised right. Both his parents died, but his uncle’s a good man.”

“Little Ray’s girlfriend—she’s here,” said Dog. “She’s right over there.” He pointed across the room.

“Martha,” said Zander.

“Sweet kid,” said Dog.

“Irish,” added Zander.

She was standing, collecting the paper plates from her table. “There she is, that’s her,” said Zander. She looked calm and easy in her movements, and Bennie watched as she dumped the pizza crusts from one of the plates into a teenage boy’s lap. She kept a straight face but everyone around her was laughing. She was wearing a Patriots T-shirt over a long-sleeved shirt, and black jeans. To see her there in the Tavis Falls Grange, looking like herself—the same black hair and thin face—amid
an assembly of strangers made Bennie feel like he was watching a movie. It made him feel old. Helen squeezed his arm. For her, seeing Martha must have felt more real—they’d never met.