As friendly a fellow as Gerald had ever met and no doubt he still was but that didn’t stop Gerald from stiffening at the sight of him. Rudy had seen him too and was also standing statuesque, holding a hot dog halfway to a bun and staring at him with lips slightly ajar and quivering. Except that he used to have a few streaks of black in his beard and it was now all white, he didn’t seem to have aged much since Gerald had seen him last, on the day he’d come by to pick up his weekly allotment of a dozen eggs and a roasting hen, not two days before Millie had been shot.
The person in front of him had shuffled off to the side carrying four hot dogs and two hamburgers stacked in a pyramid and there was nothing between Gerald and Rudy except the table. Rudy’s gape had since relented into a tenuous smile, veiled and secretive. It struck Gerald as only slightly less foreboding and he turned to one of the women. She was short and plump with a powdery white face and was wearing a bright red smear of lipstick and so much perfume he could smell it over the simmer of meat. It was the latter more than anything that clued him in that she was Rudy’s wife, he couldn’t remember her name. If she recognized him she made no sign, offering him a sprightly if somewhat haggard smile as she asked, What can I get for you?
All of a sudden Gerald seemed to have forgotten what he was here for, and when he opened his mouth he was at a loss of what to say.
Do you want a hamburger or a hot dog? she prompted and that snapped Gerald back to task.
If it’s all the same to you, he answered, I’ll have one of both.
* * *
He ate his food leaning against the concrete barrier at the rear end of the parking lot, biding his time watching the minnow races they’d set up a few feet away.
The track was resting on another of the folding tables and fashioned out of six ten-foot lengths of PVC pipe halved lengthwise and filled with water, exactly the same rig they’d used for the races they’d held every year during Capreol Days when he was a kid. The first year he’d lived with his grandfather he’d won a fishing rod after coming in second out of a field of twenty-two with a minnow he’d caught in the creek that bordered their property, and his grandfather had made a pretty big deal out of that. Here the kids could choose from a selection of minnows swimming about in clear plastic cups occupying a second fold-out table. As far as he could tell, the only thing the kids could stand to gain was the winning fish itself, the paucity of the reward hardly dampening the participants’ enthusiasm one bit.
There were two other men leaning against the barrier, both with tall cans of Keith’s India Pale Ale, chatting idly in between sips and cheering on their kids, a couple of three-or four-year-olds who never seemed to grow tired of waiting in line to have another go.
Have you been up to the rail museum? the one was asking. He was dressed in the standard summer garb of your average local — khaki shorts and a faded T-shirt — and had a beard almost as full as Gerald’s, though it was comprised of black curls to Gerald’s red.
The other man shook his head. He was clean shaven and wearing tan slacks and a blue golf shirt and his perfectly coiffed hair — chestnut — made him out to be some sort of professional, a doctor or maybe a teacher.
The lineup was too long, he answered.
It always is on Capreol Days. Though, of course, we’ve never had one quite as busy as this.
It’s my first.
You don’t say. How long you been in town?
Just a couple of months.
And you’re coming from where?
Guelph.
Well, you picked a helluva time to make the move. Lucky, is what I’m saying.
You don’t have to tell me.
They say there’s enough food in them trains to last us at least the winter.
How many do they have now?
Three. But one of them is five kilometres long so it might as well be two all by itself.
I sure wish they’d find some diapers.
You got a baby?
Twins.
Ooooh, the local groaned. At least we got lots of beer.
Cheers to that.
They were clinking cans at the exact moment Gerald was taking the last bite of his burger and thinking, An ice-cold beer sure would hit the spot right about now.
Hey daddy, look what I won!
The local’s son was standing in front of his father. He was holding up a Ziploc bag with a minnow thrashing about within and beaming with the pride of an Olympic gold medallist.
It’s a fish, the boy’s father said.
No. It’s a minnow.
A minnow’s a kind of fish, ain’t it?
The boy scrunched his face, unsure of how he might reply to that.
I’m going to put it in the river, he finally said. Come on!
Grabbing his father’s hand and pulling him away, the man making out like he was being dragged along behind a horse at a hard gallop, barely able to keep up.
Nice talking to you, he said over his shoulder to the man from Guelph, who responded by raising his can, bidding him a silent adieu.
Say mister, Gerald asked after the man had another sip, could you tell me where you got that beer?
The man raised his hand, pointing, and Gerald followed his finger to a freight container sitting on a narrow strip of grass across Bloor Street from the church on this side of the tracks. It was white and had an air conditioning unit on its rear end, under which someone had spray painted in five-foot letters COLD BEER.
But he might as well have been pointing at the two men standing right in front of it.
Both were clad in the blues of the Sudbury Police Service, the younger of the two bare-headed with a military crewcut, wearing shorts and a collared T-shirt, the older wearing a cap and in long sleeves and slacks and glassing over the crowd with a pair of binoculars. They passed over Gerald by an inch and then backtracked, fixing him in their lens.
Gerald already knew who the latter man was but it wasn’t until he’d lowered the binoculars, revealing the pasty white of his skin and the glare of piercing hate in his eyes, that Gerald was willing to acknowledge his name.
Charlie Wilkes, he thought and that bringing the taste of bile into his mouth.
Until this moment he’d never even considered what he’d do if ever again he saw the man who was standing not thirty paces away from him now. He still didn’t exactly know but his right hand seemed to have a clue, for it had just then settled in a death-grip on the hilt of his knife. His eyes too had a pretty good idea and had narrowed to slits. There must have been some sort of challenge inherent in them for Charlie Wilkes’s hand too had sought out the butt of the sidearm in the holster at his belt. The younger cop, who might well have been another of his sons — he’d had two others besides the two Gerald had shot — was clutching at his arm and saying something into his ear. It could very well have been, This isn’t the time or the place, even as Gerald was thinking that it was as good a time or a place as any, heedless of the fact both cops were armed with guns and him with only a knife.
To any reasonable man it would have seemed an unfair fight but seeing Charlie Wilkes hadn’t put Gerald in much of a reasonable mood. It seemed plenty fair enough to him and after all he’d been through, he was giving himself better-than-even odds that he’d be the one coming out on top. Maybe the younger cop had got a sense of this from the way Gerald was advancing through the crowd on such a resolute course that the people were seemingly parting before him and how his hand was gripped at his belt, clutching at something, could very well have been a gun, he was still too far away for them to be able to tell with any certainty. Or maybe he simply didn’t want to spoil the festivities by shooting a man down in the street.
Either way, his opinion must have carried some weight for as Gerald came to the edge of the parking lot, Charlie was letting himself be pulled backwards, telegraphing one last hateful glare at Gerald bef
ore he was swallowed into the throng of people shuffling to and fro across the tracks.
43
Here now Gerald stands with a beer in his hand, watching the band.
It was made up of two men and two women, the former comprising the guitarist and drummer and both wearing garish cowboy shirts and the singer and bassist wearing no less colourful knee-long dresses embellished with a lasso design. What they lacked in finesse they made up for in enthusiasm and the crowd responded in equal measure, bobbing and bouncing and most of them screaming out along with the singer, testifying with an almost evangelical zeal every time she came to the refrain that it had indeed been a hard day’s night.
They’d given out the tall cans in four packs. He’d already drunk three and had just fetched his last from the ground at his feet, telling himself that when he was done with that, he ought to be heading home. He hadn’t seen Charlie Wilkes again nor the other officer but he had no doubt there was someone, none too far away, keeping an eye on him. And whenever his thoughts wandered to his house at the end of Stull, he imagined Charlie Wilkes along with his two remaining sons and a posse of six or eight of his friends hiding in the bushes, awaiting his return.
Let ’em wait! he thought with a rueful scowl as he cracked the tab on his fourth tall can, drinking that in parsimonious sips as if hoping that if he drank it slow enough the night might never end.
After they were finished with “A Hard Day’s Night,” the singer said they’d be taking a little refreshment break, adding with a good-natured wink, Don’t y’all go anywhere now, ya hear.
Still, the crowd began to disperse, most of them heading back towards the tracks, no doubt to get a little more refreshment themselves. The man standing directly in front of Gerald was turning along with them but was stopped before he’d made more than a step by a woman holding up a four-pack of the tall cans. She was in her early twenties, same as the man, but that’s about where any similarities between them ended. He was well over six feet and built like a linebacker and she was no more than five-foot-six with a waist about the same width as one of his arms.
I brought you some more beer, she said.
Golden, he replied and that earned him a wide grin from the girl.
He cracked open one of the cans without bothering to pull it from its plastic wrap, upending the four of them and draining the beer in one long gulping swig. The whole time the woman was watching him, her eyes were aglow as if she was witnessing a feat of derring-do the likes of which she’d never seen. When he was done he belched a deep rumble that foundered somewhere in his throat, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
You’re Shelley, right? he asked, cracking another beer.
She nodded exuberantly.
And you’re Chris.
I sure am.
He took a sip from the can and it was clear to Gerald from the way he was glancing about that he was already looking for a way out of the conversation.
Well Shelley, he said, I got to (burp) take a piss. Maybe I’ll see you around sometime.
Gerald had almost no memory of the night Millie had followed him home from the Legion. He couldn’t exactly say how they’d met but it might as well have happened just like that. The first thing he did remember about her was coming into his kitchen the next morning — drawn by the smell of eggs and the burble of coffee percolating on the stove — and finding a strange woman at the sink, washing his dishes. His grandfather had never been overly meticulous about keeping a clean house and in the year since he’d died Gerald had rarely so much as touched the broom. But the floor had been freshly swept and the table wiped and on one side of the sink there was a full rack of clean plates and bowls, though they still paled in comparison to the mountain of dirties on the other side. He’d stood at the kitchen door, not exactly sure what he felt — a little irritated maybe that his morning routine would be thus disturbed — and after a while she’d turned to him, giving him the glimmer of a smile, too weak to hide her obvious chagrin.
There’s coffee, she’d said curtly. And eggs.
Gerald had wandered off towards the stove, trying not to get in her way as he fished a clean plate and cup from the pile on the counter. He’d loaded the plate up with scrambled eggs and poured himself a steaming cup of the coffee, dosing that with fresh cream from a mason jar he kept in the fridge.
She wouldn’t speak again until he was sitting at the table and was raising a fork to his mouth, about to take his first bite.
I don’t know how a person can live like this, she’d said, the acrimony clear in her voice and the loud clatter of plates providing perfect punctuation. It’s disgusting. Only an animal would live like this.
Millie had never been one to mince words and always spoke straight from her liver, as his grandfather might have said, meaning that as a compliment. And he knew exactly what she’d have said if she was standing there right now, watching him getting drunk when he should have been out there looking for their son, the acrimony in her tone as plain as the scowl that would be crimping her face.
And so, as he drained the last of his beer, it was her voice he heard once again ringing in his head.
Goddamnit Gerald, she said, get your fucking ass home!
* * *
At long last he was stumbling down Stull Street.
As far as he could see, it had since been paved all the way to the river and on the right-hand side the sparsely treed meadow that turned into a swamp every spring when the creek flooded had also been paved over and filled with row after row of townhouses, the last of which bordered the line of cedar trees at the edge of his property. It was late, must have been past midnight, and the houses were mostly dark except for lights shining over front porches, their warm and yellow clashing against the harsh glow of the streetlights illuminating perfectly manicured yards and glinting off the lacquered sheen of the two or three cars parked in every driveway. As he crested the hill leading down into the river valley the sight had come as such a shock to Gerald that his gaze went instinctively to the street sign at the first intersection, even though he knew exactly where he was.
God, gramps really would be rolling over in his grave if he’d lived to see this.
That sounded a little odd for reasons he couldn’t quite grasp and he stumbled on, passing by the two-storey house where Charlie Wilkes had once lived at the corner of Stull and Lloyd and hocking a spit into the driveway to mark that, though he knew the Wilkes family had been one of the first to buy a house in the subdivision off Ormsby. Searching ahead then for any sign that Charlie and his gang might be hiding in the bushes up ahead.
If they were they’d have to be on the left, crouching in the thin fringe of trees — mostly aspen and poplar — between the road and the mesh wire fence behind them. It was eight feet tall and topped with rusted loops of razor wire and encircled an area some twenty acres in all. It had always been a mystery to Gerald why someone would go to such lengths to guard what, ever since he could remember, had amounted to nothing more than an abandoned warehouse about the size of a football stadium looming over a vacant lot. There were train tracks running right up to the warehouse’s loading dock and someone had since put those to good use. A line of freight cars spilled along them through the back gate. An excavator about the same size as the one he’d seen at the prison but equipped with a chain laced through its bucket’s teeth was lifting the container off one of the cars, swinging the box over the heads of two men wearing bright yellow vests. One of them was motioning it forward with his hands and, when it had come abreast of another container, he held them both up to signal, Stop! The container lowered with a thudding clank and the two men immediately converged on it, prying open its doors even as a crane with a ball and hook picked up the container beside it. It swung on a hard left and motored off towards the stacks of freight containers piled in blocks, five and six high, now filling the lot’s twenty acres.
Scanning past t
hose, searching for any hint of movement that might tell him that someone was hiding in the shadows on the side of the road. Seeing nothing but the outlines of trees and hearing only the grumble of the crane’s engine above the rustle of poplar leaves agitating against a slight breeze. Just beyond the last townhouse the asphalt did indeed give way to dirt. It hadn’t been graded for some time and was studded with the rippling pockmarks that so often had him and his grandfather making a game of letting their jaws go slack for the last kilometre before reaching their driveway, the road’s corrugation finding perfect expression in the fitful chattering of their teeth.
The equally familiar line of cedar trees still buffered the edge of the property and he could hear the creek gurgling through the culvert on either side of the road though the latter, he saw as he approached, wasn’t really a creek anymore but a cement channel drawing the overflow away from the townhouse complex. As he came to the edge of his driveway, there arose the faint creak of the weather vane on the barn’s roof vacillating in the wind and that more than anything telling him he was home.
How many times had he stumbled drunkenly back from the Legion, turning into the driveway and seeing the metal rooster cast against the night sky? He’d come to name it Max and he’d always call out to it as he lumbered towards the house, Thanks Max!, by which he’d meant for watching over the place while he was gone.
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