Savage Gerry

by John Jantunen

  Gerald kicked hard at the wood slat directly below Clayton, striking it three feet up with the sole of his shoe. He heard the wood crack and kicked out again. The board split in two, the top edge of it buckling downwards and Gerald grabbing that, wrenching the board loose from its nails. Its splintered end was as sharp as a spade and he clutched it like a spear, jabbing it through the hole and striking something both hard and soft, hearing the dog yelp and knowing his aim had been true. Clayton was then tumbling over the fence, his body twisting as it dropped and his feet somehow finding the ground. One of the scant few apples he had left from his harvest tumbled out of his pant leg and rolled into the tall grass as he propped his back against the wood, gasping in great heaves, trying to catch his breath.

  It would be a moment yet.

  Loosing a vicious snarl, the dog’s snout appeared between the gap, barking and snapping its teeth. It was a German shepherd and the slats on either side of the hole were bulging against the force of the dog’s shoulders as it tried to bully its way through.

  Clayton cried, Shit! and dodged away, tripping over a fallen tree before he’d gone two steps and sprawling into the dark even as Gerald strode towards the dog, sidestepping the snap of its teeth and driving the sharp end of the board into the hackles sprouting at the base of the dog’s head. The dog let out a feeble whimper and there was a terrible crack, maybe the splintered end of the slat snapping off in the dog’s neck or maybe the neck itself snapping as it was driven down onto the fence’s crossbeam. Either way, the dog slumped limp, its eyes become quivering globes and its tongue lolling out of its mouth, a lone canine now parting its maw, stuck to its top lip. Its chest gave out a heave and Gerald raised the board again, waiting on the dog to make another move though it was clearly dead.

  Almost took off my damn leg!

  Clayton was back on his feet. He was bent over and tugging delicately beneath the tatters of his pant leg, wincing as his fingers prodded at the gash oozing blood beneath.

  Setting a dog on us over a few apples. What in the hell’s the world coming to?!

  Peering then over at Gerald. He was kicking at the wooden slat beside the hole, breaking it in half and widening the gap, and Clayton’s expression paled as if he thought maybe Gerald was about to make good on the malice he himself felt.

  But Gerald had plans other than revenge.

  He was grabbing the dog by its collar, yanking it clear of the hole.

  What are you doing? Clayton asked.

  Standing upright, Gerald wiped the dog’s blood off his hands on his pants.

  You’re still hungry, ain’t ya?

  10

  We ain’t going to eat it raw, is we?

  Clayton had led them along a path that snaked through the patch of woods to the west of where Gilwood Park Drive turned southwards, away from the water. After a five-minute walk the trail opened into a small clearing where, he’d said, the six inmates and the two guards on the cleaning detail had eaten their lunch. He’d found a plastic Coke bottle in the garbage can beside the trail’s head and had filled it from one of the muddied pools collecting in the hollows along the path, meagre remains from the last rain. He drained the rest of it now with the bracing swig of a drunk seeking one final ounce of courage before heading home from the bar.

  No, Gerald answered, I got a match.

  He’d carried the dog slung over his shoulder and was now setting it on the ground beside the bench in the middle of the clearing. He stood for a moment, solemn and grave, peering down at it as if he was saying a prayer for the dead, though that wasn’t what was on his mind. He was remembering how, not more than a few hours ago, he’d told Jules that his killing days were long past and here now was the proof right in front of him that they clearly weren’t.

  It’s just a dog, he reminded himself but that didn’t do much to ease his conscience.

  There was a dribble of blood draining over the tongue lolling out of its mouth and he couldn’t help but think of Chuckles, the boxer his grandfather had given to him as a pup for his fourteenth birthday. Gerald had counted him as the best friend he’d had growing up, really more like a brother than a pet. When Chuckles was five, he had died coughing up blood on the porch after, Gerald suspected, that son of a bitch Ellis Wilkes had fed him a steak laced with iron filings. He’d been devastated then and felt a sudden shame now for murdering someone else’s dog, a creature whose only crime had been trying to protect its family.

  There’s no use brooding about that now, he told himself and looked over at Clayton. He was stooped over at the bench, arranging his remaining apples in a line on its seat. There were six in all.

  There’s a birch tree a ways back, Gerald told him. Its bark’ll do for tinder. Fetch me three or four good strips. And that dead spruce’ll do for kindling. He motioned with his head at the skeletal remains of a tree on the far side of the clearing. After you fetch the birch bark, break me off as many branches as you can reach of that.

  We just going to cook it whole, fur and all? Clayton asked.

  You let me worry about that.

  He watched after Clayton until he’d hobbled back down the path and out of sight. Only then did he unzip his jumpsuit, feeling beneath his undershirt for the picture of his son hung around his neck on the shoelace. Even thinking about it in prison had only served to prove the truth of what his old cellmate had said about times of joy recalled in times of misery and he hadn’t passed more than a chastening glance at it in years. It was too dark to see more than an outline of Evers standing on the birthday rock and as he gazed down upon it he wasn’t thinking so much of the day Millie had taken it but of its rightful place on the mantel in their living room along with all the rest.

  How the photograph had come to be in Charlie Wilkes’s possession he could only guess.

  The Wilkes family had lived in the last house on Stull before the road switched from asphalt to the kilometre of gravel dead-ending at the Vermilion River. It was on the banks of this that Gerald’s great-grandfather, Hubert Beausoleil, had built his brick two-storey house and a barn. Before then, he’d been a trapper for the CN and the story his grandfather had told Gerald was that he’d gone off to war and what he’d seen overseas had struck the killing mood right out of him. Capreol had been founded as a CN rail town and after he’d hung up his traps, he’d bought fifteen acres along the Vermilion from his old employer. He’d built a house and a barn and the only concession he’d given to his past life was to hang his old bear trap inside the front door of the latter, telling anyone who’d listen that it had always given him luck where every horse he’d ever owned had only caused him grief.

  Somewhere along the way he’d fallen in love with Harriet Batiste, a young woman from the Wahnapitae reserve and Gerald’s great-grandmother. Together they’d raised a brood of six kids and a hundred years later Gerald’s grandfather would retire there following the death of his brother, his last remaining sibling.

  The Wilkes family had moved to town a year after Gerald had come to live with him. Mrs. Wilkes must have seen the sign for Fresh Eggs & Roasting Hens Gerald’s grandfather had posted on the community board at the Foodland in town because one Saturday morning she walked up their driveway and left a few minutes later with two dozen eggs and a chicken from the freezer. The next Saturday she’d brought her son along with her and that was how Gerald would first meet Ellis Wilkes, who he’d shoot dead twenty-six years later for the sin of killing Millie, before fleeing into the northern wilds with Evers.

  Ellis was the same age as Gerald but that’s where any and all similarity between them ended. At the time Ellis had been a frail little boy with skin like onion paper so that the first thing Gerald noticed about him was the veins running in blue tendrils up his neck and his arms. Mrs. Wilkes had placed an order for a fresh roasting hen the week previous and Gerald’s grandfather was blanching the Wilkeses’ headless chicken in boiling water, which he always did
before plucking it. He sent Gerald off to fetch their eggs and Mrs. Wilkes asked if maybe Ellis might be able to help.

  He can hold the pitchfork, Gerald had replied after some thought.

  You collect eggs with a pitchfork? Ellis had asked when they’d come to the annex at the back of the barn where they kept their chickens and Gerald was reaching for the tool in question hanging between two nails beside the door.

  It’s for Max, Gerald replied, handing it over.

  Max?

  Our rooster. He can be right mean.

  Gerald was unlatching the door and opening it enough to take a look-see.

  He’s over by the far wall, he whispered.

  Then turning back to Ellis with the seriousness of a general commanding his troops into battle:

  When I open the door, you’ll go in first. Keep the prongs of the pitchfork between you and him at all times and whatever you do, don’t never turn your back on him. You got that?

  Ellis nodded though the quiver to his hands on the pitchfork’s handle told an entirely different story.

  All right, get ready, get set …

  He’d then kicked the door open without saying Go! and ushered the other boy through, the pitchfork levered before him like a knight’s lance.

  Max was over by the exit door. He let out an ominous yowl that sounded more like a cat than a rooster and took a quick three steps forward, Ellis taking a step back and Gerald slipping past, hurrying to the boxed shelves where the chickens laid their eggs. The rooster was stalking back and forth along the far wall, uttering stuttered clucks that sounded like threats, and Ellis was trailing the pitchfork after it, struggling under its weight to keep the prongs between them.

  All right, let’s go, Gerald said when he’d emptied all the nests into his basket and was headed for the door.

  As Ellis backed after him, the rooster seemed to have admitted its defeat, taking a quick three-step and flapping its wings, striking aloft and coming to a perch on top of the boxes. Ellis craned his head, searching out the door. His eyes weren’t averted for more than a second before there was a fluster of wings and when he turned back Max was in full flight towards him, its eyes as grim as a crocodile’s and its claws become razor-sharp talons aiming straight for Ellis’s face. Gerald grabbed him by the shirt, yanking him roughly out and catapulting him over the stairs. He slammed the door shut and when he turned, Ellis was sitting on his ass gasping for breath and holding the pitchfork anchored into the ground, its prongs raised before him en garde against another attack.

  I told you not to turn your back on him, Gerald said as he reached down to help him up. The whole thing had struck him as rather comical and so he might have been smiling when he said it.

  But Ellis didn’t think it was funny at all.

  Blood was beading in three lines along his arm from where Max had slashed him and his lip was trembling. It looked like he was about to cry. He’d batted Gerald’s hand away and yelled, Keep your fucking hands off me!

  He’d then scurried to his feet and run back down the driveway, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand and his mother hurrying after him, calling out, What’s wrong? What happened? Honey, what’s wrong?

  For the next five years the only time Gerald would see Ellis was through the window of his grandfather’s pick-up truck when they drove past his house on the way to town. Then, one hot August morning, he was wading in the creek that bordered their property, fishing with a butterfly net for minnows to use as bait, and he’d felt the sharp sting of a rock striking him in the shoulder. When he looked back, Ellis was standing ten feet away at the edge of the creek. He’d grown tall in the meantime and towered over Gerald, who’d hardly grown an inch. He was with two other boys, both of them bigger still.

  If it ain’t Wee Gerry Nichols, Ellis said with a derisive scowl.

  He was walking forward and the other two were following at an even pace behind.

  You know, he said to the boy on his right, I heard his mother sucked cock for a living.

  Shit, I heard that too.

  That true, Wee Gerry? Your mother suck cock for a living?

  The other boys were chuckling a silent and mirthless laugh and Ellis was sneering at him, daring him to do something.

  What’s a matter, Wee Gerry? You look like you’re about to cry.

  And it was true, there was water beading at the corners of his eyes. Overcome then with a sudden rage, he’d snatched up a rock from the creek bed, throwing it with all his might and striking Ellis in the middle of the face. His nose erupted in a gusher of blood and he stumbled back, his lip trembling again. Gerald picked up a stick about as big as a bat and stormed towards Ellis. He broke his knee cap with the first blow, two of his ribs with the second, and his jaw with the third. A defiant snarl at the other boys was all it took to make them turn tail and run.

  It was later that day Gerald would first meet Charlie Wilkes, Ellis’s father and the man who’d bring him to justice some twenty-seven years later. He’d just finished his evening chores and had come out of the barn with a full pail of milk. There was a Sudbury Police cruiser parked in the driveway and a man in uniform was talking to his grandfather on the porch. All he heard of what they were saying was his grandfather’s voice raised in a menacing growl.

  If you think you’re goin’ to take that boy away from me, he was saying, well I’ll tell you one thing, I’da shore like to see you try!

  His hand had settled on the butt of the old Smith & Wesson slung on his belt and Gerald felt sick, thinking about all the grief he’d just made for him.

  Officer Wilkes had said something else and then turned, walking down the steps and catching sight of Gerald standing in the barn’s door. He was as pale-faced as his son, sickly even, and was glaring at Gerald with a look of such piercing hate that Gerald would never see its like until he was sitting in court listening to Charlie spinning his lies and glaring at him with the same look all over again.

  He’d only seen him one more time after that.

  Six months into his sentence at Central North, he’d been told he had a visitor — his first — and when he’d come into his booth, it was none other than Charlie Wilkes on the other side of the Plexiglas. He’d aged considerably and facing the man who’d killed his son he didn’t look so much full of hate anymore as old and worn out, tired of the whole damn affair. He was wearing a navy-blue suit and a white shirt and red tie, and what was left of his greying hair was slicked back. To Gerald he looked like a sinner might on his way to church, and Gerald had never been more aware of how he himself must have appeared — his hillbilly beard and his mad flop of hair and his eyes like tadpoles darting about in a shallow pond making him out to be some kind of lunatic.

  Neither had said a word, nor made so much as a move to sit in their chairs, and after a moment Charlie had simply turned around and walked away. It would only be a few minutes later that Gerald would find out why he’d come at all. The guard who led him back to his unit gave him the photograph, saying only that his visitor had wanted him to have it.

  Over the next few months he’d have plenty of time to reflect upon why Charlie Wilkes might have brought it to him, contriving in his mind a host of scenarios, all of them starting with Charlie spying the photographs on the mantel, tracing along to the one Millie had taken on Evers’s fifth birthday and it speaking to him of something, maybe the same thing it had always spoken of to Gerald.

  How many times had he whispered, May he never lose that spirit?

  The last he’d heard, Evers had ended up in a foster home in Sudbury and Gerald knew enough about what happened to boys thrown into foster care to know that it would be a miracle if his spirit survived more than a few months.

  Charlie Wilkes must have known that too. He’d given him the picture as a last stab at revenge, a harsher punishment than any prison wall and — so Gerald told himself — a fitting penanc
e for the crime of forsaking his son in his hour of greatest need, though that wasn’t entirely the reason he wore it on a shoelace strung around his neck.

  On the day he’d come as a seven-year-old to live in the house on Stull, he’d ventured back downstairs after stowing his bag in the bedroom at the far end of the hall on the second floor, the one he’d been told was to become his. The stranger he’d been told was his grandfather was sitting at the kitchen table. In front of him there was a drawer, thin and wide, which Gerald would later find out was from the desk in the living room that served as a console for the TV.

  This here’s the accumulated wealth of the entire Beausoleil line, his grandfather had said, fanning his hands in a dramatic flourish over the drawer filled with a few dozen baubles and trinkets, most of them brass and all of them old and weathered so they’d looked more like junk than prized possessions. Gerald wasn’t yet used to his grandfather’s brand of humour and when the old man added, This is all going be yours one day but I don’t see any harm in you claiming a piece of your birthright a little early, he’d scrutinized the motley collection with solemn deliberation.

  You can take any two pieces, his grandfather added after it looked like his grandson might have been stumped.

  After careful consideration, Gerald chose a brass Zippo lighter engraved with a picture of a howling wolf’s head and a penknife with a handle made out of ivory and a blade that, he’d learn a few seconds later, had been sharpened to about half its original breadth.

  Ever since, Gerald had never felt whole unless he was carrying both a knife and a lighter. Having one of either at Central North was enough to get you a month in the hole. While Gerald had resolved to do his time as quietly as possible, he couldn’t resist the urge one evening, while manning a mop and bucket in the prison’s workshop, to pick up a small triangle of scrap metal discarded beneath a work bench, a leftover from when they’d replaced the ventilation ducts. It was only an inch and a half on its longest side and of a grade a trifle soft for a blade good and proper. But after he’d whetted its edge with a stone scrounged from the yard, it was sharp enough to slice a callous off his hand and he’d kept it hidden in a spare bar of soap he’d bought from the commissary. A lighter was out of the question but stick matches, also prohibited, were easy enough to procure. It wasn’t until Charlie Wilkes had given him the picture that he’d finally figured out a way to carry both about him at all times, the inconvenient truth that it would be his son who would make him feel whole again hardly lost on Gerald as he set about putting his plan into motion.