Brighten the Corner Where You Are

by Carol Bruneau

  I had seen this man drive by Ev’s countless times over that Christmas. Had seen him almost stop then keep driving, like some unseen hand prevented him from pulling over and going in. The man didn’t look like a preacher, for his lack of a pastor’s collar. But all through the holidays I had seen him coming and going, opening and locking up the little white church up towards the Valley where he preached.

  On this Saturday, the thirtieth of December, I saw him leave the church, get in his car, and head towards Marshalltown. He had the radio on. It was frosty, and I could see his breath as he sang along to that gospel song Hank Williams made famous. He tapped his fingers on the wheel, talking out loud to God, “Give me the strength to witness to your word, bring the Good News to the poor and downtrodden, and free those captive to sin.” Instead of gunning the engine in front of Ev’s, he slowed and turned in. Ev had the storm door propped open with the same old broomstick, never mind it was almost January. The preacher got out of his car, went up and knocked on my old door. You could still see the birds and flowers on it, though the paint was blistered and peeling. Still cursing, Ev set the jar down and cracked open the door.

  The preacher invited himself in.

  Now what is he up to? I wondered. I agreed with Ev that you couldn’t trust someone who boldly called himself a man of God. What was a man of God, anyway? This one handed Ev a pamphlet, which Ev took from him and threw on the floor. It was late in the day, the sun was low in the window. Ev said through a squint, “You’re looking for money in the wrong place.”

  The preacher wasn’t a tall man like Bradley Colpitts. He didn’t have to stoop, standing inside the doorway. He picked up the pamphlet, held onto it this time. “God loves you, like he loves every man, woman, and child.” When the preacher spoke you could see his breath.

  “Is that right.” Ev laughed into his fist, then launched into a coughing fit and rubbed at his chest. He was a sight, the poor fella, bundled up in his ragged old checked jacket and pants that hadn’t seen a washboard since well before I’d croaked, and they were crusty then!

  “The Lord’s not after your money. He wants you, he wants your heart, your soul.”

  I was sure Ev had been drinking—the good stuff, not his old cocktails—there were empty bottles of Hermit wine and Golden Glow piled round the room, along with six or more weeks’ worth of garbage to be burnt or tossed outside. But when he lowered himself to the chair, still rubbing where his ticker might be, I knew from the way he sat that he was sober, just not feeling one hundred per cent. He had aged since I’d been gone. Not a tooth left in his head, and the rattling cough he’d always had was a lot worse. I could hear phlegm rattling inside him when he breathed.

  “‘No one comes to the Father except by me.’ Those are the words of our Saviour, Everett.”

  Ev was sharp as a hawk. “How’d you know my name, you?” As he spoke he clutched at himself, as if safeguarding his heart. “So if you ain’t looking for money, what does a fancy fella the likes of you want from me?”

  “I don’t want a thing, Mr. Lewis. I am just here to tell you the Good News.”

  “Now what makes you think your news is good and that I want to hear it?”

  I expected Ev to raise his fist and tell the visitor to git. But he seemed too weary to, tuckered out by the effort of trying to open the jar. Instead, he said, “Take a load off, preacher man.” The preacher pulled up my old chair and sat. It was so wobbly and the seat so worn I feared he’d go through it.

  Ev rolled a smoke, all the while giving his guest the stink-eye, you might say. “Think you’re gonna get me into a church, you got another think coming.’” Ev’s eyes were rheumy and yellowed. But there was that twinkle, a glimmer of it. “I’d offer you a drink, preacher, but I’m off the sauce. Doctor’s orders. Not that pills are any prostitute for liquor.” The preacher smiled. That’s not the best word for substitute, I suppose he was thinking. Ev smirked back. For the first time since I’d landed up here, he had a captive audience. Heck, he didn’t even have a Joe for company, after the last Joe had got sick and he’d used his shotgun to put the dog out of its misery. I had heard the gunshot, saw Matilda’s granddaughter or maybe her great-granddaughter and her flock flap from the trees at the sound, as alarmed as if a great horned owl had descended.

  “I’d offer you a cuppa tea but I got none.” Ev crossed his arms tight, swayed a little in the cold. Was he in pain, or what? If so, his visitor didn’t notice. The preacher smiled and blew into his hands to warm them. “I am not here to take from you, sir, only to offer you—well, show you what the Lord is offering. His cup of everlasting life. The water of eternal—”

  “I wouldn’t mind a cup of everlasting TNT, Reverend.” Ev’s grin was sly and tough, and I realized that living without me hadn’t changed the person inside. “Wouldn’t mind a bite to eat neither, a slab of bread and a chop or a mess of stew.”

  “Ah.” The preacher considered this. “But ‘man does not live by bread alone,’ you must’ve heard this at some point in time. About the special power of—”

  “Can’t say as I have.” Ev scowled, his eyes on the preacher as he picked up the jar. He held it on his lap, hands wrapped around it. “Think your special power might get the lid off this bugger without smashin’ it?” The setting sun tinted Ev’s face orange. His look signalled that he’d had enough already and whoever tested him had best retreat from the line of fire. Talk-fire, that is. “What outfit you say you’re from, preacher? Bothering a fella in his home at suppertime.”

  Instead of answering, the visitor reached into his coat and pulled out a Pal-o-mine bar. The sight of its yellow-gold-and-red wrapper made me miss your world. He laid it on the table, the one spot free of empty cans filled with butts, dirty old papers, and junk. “You like sweets, Everett? You got a sweet tooth at all? Sorry I don’t have something more substantial.”

  There was nothing about Ev that cried sweet or sour. But he eyed that candy bar like it was a turkey dinner such as Olive had fed us. “Now what about that water you’re talking about? That ‘everlasting’ water.” Ev’s voice was a sneer.

  “Drink of it and you shall not thirst.”

  At this Ev was seized by another coughing jag. As he crumpled over on his chair, I thought, Come on, man of God, leave the poor fella alone. For I had a stark feeling Ev’s days were short and getting riled up might cut them shorter. “If you want to see another year, I’d quit drinking if I were you,” the doctor had warned. If I’d had hands, I would have shown the preacher the door.

  But then Ev’s shoulders started shaking, shaking like a little poplar tree in a harsh wind, and he was making a noise the likes of which I’d never heard him or any man make before. Next, it was like all the sound had been sucked out of the room and out of Digby County and maybe all of Nova Scotia. Suddenly there was no wind. No crows calling from any trees, no cars racing past in the growing twilight, not even the hiss and spit of the dying fire. There was only the sound of Everett Lewis crying.

  The preacher got up off my chair and laid his hand on Ev’s shoulder, whispered something in Ev’s ear as he kept his hand there. In the sun’s dying glow, a tear streaked Ev’s cheek. His one hand on Ev’s shoulder, the preacher raised his other hand like I imagined either of the Hanks would do, Snow or Williams, saluting fans at the Grand Ole Opry. Eyes closed, the preacher mumbled softly, his voice slow and urgent. He said Ev had a choice to make, which he could act on then and there. That he could accept the Lord as his saviour or spend the rest of his days in misery.

  “You’ve got a choice here, Everett—you don’t mind me calling you Everett.”

  Ev’s nose was running. A mix of snot, tears, and spit spluttered out: “You tell me what I have to do, then if you bugger off, I’ll think about it.” The preacher moved his hand to the top of Ev’s head and raised his eyes to the ceiling where smoke from the stovepipe made a veil.

  “You don’t have
to do anything. The Lord knows you need His love and grace. You just have to say yes.”

  Hovering, I waited. Listened to the wind slowly come to life outdoors and start blowing round the house again, through the trees and over Seeley’s Brook and out onto the bay. It got so gusty I almost missed Ev’s reply.

  “Reckon you can sign me up then, to whatever it is you’re sellin’. Long as it don’t cost.” I could tell by Ev’s sigh that he was relieved, sure that by being agreeable he could send the preacher packing.

  “Now you’ve seen the light, brother—Mr. Lewis. The Lord won’t forsake those who call on Him, those born anew unto Him. Feel the air in the room? Doesn’t it feel different?”

  “Oh yeah. I sure as fuck do. It sure as fuck does.”

  “You’ve got a place in heaven, Everett. Don’t ever doubt it.”

  It was these words that rang out. Oh my, had the vow “till death do us part” been just a fancy hook, a lie to make marriage easier, shining a light at the end of a very long tunnel? As unlikely as it seemed, the thought of bumping into Ev up here was sobering—and when eternal peace had finally come knocking on my invisible door and found me oddly reconciled to its sugarless, quiet if windy state. For I had seen the light, oh yes, the light that’s everywhere, though it struck me that perhaps I had always seen it, the light that reaches down even at night and didn’t only shine through my window to fill my head when I was painting, but shone regardless of anything.

  Who knows what the preacher was thinking, beaming ear to ear as he patted Ev’s shoulder, or what Ev was thinking, glued to his chair? He looked like a deer that got hit by a car but had managed to lope off either to die or lick its wounds. Just because I can see folks on the outside never meant I could see them on the inside, too. You can’t know the heart or mind of someone else, not even from here.

  The preacher shook Ev’s hand. “Well, I’ll leave you be, Mr. Lewis. I thank you for inviting me into your home. The Lord helps those who help themselves, don’t forget, and He listens to all who obey His call. You have a happy new year, now, you hear?”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” said Ev, standing up, bolting the door in his visitor’s wake.

  The preacher hummed Hank Williams’s tune getting into his car. “I Saw the Light” was so hurtin’ and true it would make a believer of anyone, I figured, at least for as long as the song took to play through on the radio. When it came to hurtin’, at last I understood the benefit of being here. It’s not knowing what lurks in others’ hearts and minds, the freedom from sharing their worries and woes.

  I never did catch the preacher’s name, I’m not sure Ev did either. By the time the Reverend So-and-So drove off, poor Ev had wolfed down the Pal-o-mine bar and tossed the wrapper into the fire’s dregs. A single piddly flame devoured it.

  “Happy frigging new year!” Ev yelled to the range and his righteous newly born self.

  Then he picked up the jar and jingled the loot inside. No matter how he pried at its rusted lid, no special power would budge it. Oh yes, the only way to free that ring and those coins would be to take a piece of firewood, say, and give the jar a whack and bash it to pieces. But, having a good stash of pills and money upstairs, he wasn’t anywhere near that desperate, and besides, the woodbox was empty. So he kicked aside the mat—the roses’ red beaten right out of them, sunken into their black background—and pried up that loose board. Reaching down, he lowered the jar through the hole. It clinked as it landed, the ground underneath was froze so solid. At least the hole was ready to receive it.

  By now the gloaming gave way to dark, and he was too winded and weary to traipse to the woodpile and back. Forget what I said about others’ woes, if I’d had hands I would have gone and got wood and banked a toasty fire to last Ev through the night and longer—but regret is neither here nor there, nothing but a drafty enemy to peace and calm. Only, if the house had stayed warm, he might have fared better. At least he mightn’t have suffered so.

  Like I’ve said, time flies up here even as it stands still. Imagine standing on a bridge looking down on a river: just because you see the current doesn’t mean there’s a damned thing you can do to stop its flow, even if you wanted to.

  If Ev did not deserve the way he entered the world, he surely did not deserve the way he exited it. Maybe, like most of us, he truly did not see the end coming. If I could have saved him I would have. See? Here lies the regret about lacking hands, any hands, even messed-up, fisted, lobster-claw hands, to work any sort of trick.

  Without hands, what good is there to an all-seeing view? Too bad Constable Colpitts did not have this kind of view, though. If he had, he mightn’t have stopped and gone in somewhere for a doughnut when he ought to have stayed in the cruiser, cruising around on patrol. Parked and sipping a coffee, maybe he was just waiting for his shift to end so he could go home to Darlene and the kids—oh, those two lovebirds had been married going on nine years, by now they had two kids. A girl and a boy that would make any parent proud. Plus Bradley Colpitts had more company at work. The RCMP had taken over the town police and brought in some new officers. Maybe Constable Colpitts’s nose was a little out of joint at having to share a car? I suppose he saw no need to visit Ev now that Ev mostly stayed home and had grown too old and sick to cause trouble.

  I had seen the young fella hitching rides now and then, travelling back and forth on the highway out by Deep Brook to Marshalltown. A few times I saw one of Colpitts’s partners in crime pick him up and give him a ride this way. I heard the partner ask the young fella’s name—can’t fully put a finger on it now, except that it made me think of Emery Allen, not Emery himself but where Emery came from, one of them Woods Harbours. By this I mean the name the fella gave sounded like a buzz saw sawing wood. Once, the officer had dropped him off just past the almshouse, long abandoned though it’d be another fifteen, sixteen years before vandals torched it. Now I’m not suggesting this young fella had a hand in that, only that he spent a fair bit of time visiting the trailer that was handy, a trailer that was a lot bigger than my old one. I guess the young fella had a friend living there. Only one person I knew of—I still won’t call her a friend in the way Matilda was a friend—had a trailer that big, as I had yet to find out.

  That December afternoon the preacher called on Ev, Buzzy—I’ll call him Buzzy—was just down the road watching his friend make a New Years’ rappie pie, a task best undertaken, I guess, with company over drinks. That’s how it looked through the trailer’s kitchen window: a few young fellas and a gal or two swigging the old dynamite juice, watching water being squeezed from potatoes—it must’ve been like watching ten paintings dry. Maybe they were all promised a slab of the finished product slathered with molasses come New Year’s Eve. Maybe this made Buzzy hungry, maybe he had a headache and wanted fresh air.

  Next, I saw him stumbling along the road. His jacket looked like one Roy Rogers the Singing Cowboy would wear, fringes swaying as he went. He had something in his pocket. He was awful close to the pavement, hardly seemed to notice the cars whizzing past in the dark, not even after a driver or two laid on their horns. He looked too young to be hard of hearing but he must’ve been, or he was a bit of a stunned arse. It was a few hours since Ev’s visit from the preacher and it was dark. But the sky was full of stars and it was too early for Buzzy to call it a night and thumb a ride home, where his mama would be wondering where he was and how drunk he would be stumbling in, interrupting her and her boyfriend watching TV. They might be having a few drinks, too, warming up for tomorrow night’s party to ring in the new year.

  Buzzy’s father was dead. I’d seen his mother going into Frenchys and visiting the tavern in Digby, where it used to be only men were allowed. I’d also seen carloads of young fellas who’d had a few drinks slow to a crawl passing Ev’s place, wondering, I suppose, if Ev was inside. I have no doubt it was Bradley Colpitts who spread the rumour that Ev had money hidden all through the house. And Carmelita
Twohig or someone like her pretending to be helpful, who told anyone who would listen that any cash Ev had once kept in the bank was buried out back in jars.

  There wasn’t a thing I could do to warn Ev—if there had been, he wouldn’t have listened anyhow. You mind your beeswax and I’ll mind mine. I can look after myself, always have, always will. For you were no help, I imagined him saying, making no bones about it a-tall.

  Yet folks wondered, as I did, where all the money we made off my paintings got to. The money Ev made off me. He sure as heck hadn’t spent it all, not so anyone would notice, not before I died or since. But I remember Secretary getting after me: “You’re bringing in the dough. Get Ev to spend some on you. Get him to buy you some batteries. Sure, they cost, but if you’re not running the radio day and night, they’ll last you. Have him hire a plumber to build you a loo. It’s the least he could do, spend a bit to make your life easier.” It was along the same drift that Constable Colpitts took up later. My friend and secretary had a point. So did I, saying, “I’m all right.”

  But I did worry that without me to do Ev’s reading and writing for him, there were human coyotes just watching for the chance to close in and take advantage. I wondered whether that jar he had stowed under the floor with my wedding ring in it was safe, and how many other jars with cash inside might be stowed with it. I could flit over the rooftops of the Bank of Nova Scotia and the Royal Bank but I could not see inside their vaults, let alone inside the canvas bags they kept bills in. Forget what I said before about seeing everything from up here: seeing is as seeing does. There are things I won’t watch and things I refuse to see.

  Who knows but someone hadn’t spied Ev that fall, digging that jar up out of the dirt? And who knows but that someone saw him roust up others stuffed with folded-up twos, fives, tens, and twenties. I always knew without letting on that Ev had more planted back there than flowers and root vegetables, more jars planted than you could shake a stick at. Ever since he’d hauled out that money at the hospital, the roll of bills steeped in mud.