Broken Man on a Halifax Pier

by Choyce, Lesley;

“Joe, you and me go a long ways back,” Rolf said. “And you know I’ve never tried to steer you the wrong way. So now I’m saying you got to let this go.”

  “He sent my son to prison.”

  “Because your son was selling drugs that could have killed a horse.”

  “I would have straightened him out if I’d known what he was up to. It didn’t have to come to this.”

  “Joe, you couldn’t straighten Brody out. No one could. He got himself into it and he nearly killed dumb-ass Scooter.”

  And just then all the steam seemed to slip out of Joe. His shoulders slumped and he deposited himself into the old wooden chair at the table. “I need a drink,” he said.

  All I had was one of Ramona’s bottles of wine. So I set it on the table and went looking for a corkscrew.

  “What’s this?” Joe asked, like he’d never seen a bottle of wine before.

  “Apothic Red. 2014.”

  “I don’t drink wine.”

  “It’s all I got. Sorry.”

  “Well, then open the sucker. Let’s give it a taste.”

  What little wisdom I had left in my brain suggested that getting an angry drunken man drunker was not necessarily a good plan. And then too, Rolf was in attendance and apparently trying to stay sober for an extended period of time.

  Nonetheless, I located the corkscrew, popped the cork, and set the bottle down on the table. I turned to look for a glass, but Joe already had the bottle to his lips and took a big slug. A really big slug.

  “This tastes like shit,” he said and he plunked the bottle down on the table.

  “You’re supposed to let it breathe,” Rolf offered.

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  Rolf decided not to answer the question. Nor did I. We watched as Joe took another slug and then handed the bottle to Rolf. Rolf did a funny little salute to the bottle and then waved it away. Joe shoved it out at arm’s length in my direction. I accepted the toast and took a healthy swig.

  “I say we break Brody out of prison,” Joe said. He wasn’t serious, but it seemed like the appropriate thing for a loving stepdad to say when he was drunk.

  “I think it’s harder than it sounds,” Rolf said.

  “You got any better ideas?” He glared at Rolf and then at me.

  “I say we meet with Alan,” I said, “and push him hard to get the appeal going.”

  “The little weasel. What did we used to call him in school?”

  “Lettuce,” I said. “Like Romaine lettuce.”

  “Like fucking wilted lettuce,” Joe added. But no one was laughing.

  Joe kept at that Apothic with a fairly steady rhythm and then, after several successful attempts at setting the bottle down on the table, he finally missed. The bottle fell to the floor and rolled toward Rolf’s feet. Rolf picked it up and sniffed the top of it. “Jesus, that smells some good.”

  Just as Rolf said this, Joe pitched forward — with perfect aim for the table this time. And he was out for the night.

  “Think you boys can stay out of trouble if I slink on home for the night?”

  “I think we’ll be okay,” I said.

  Rolf left, I decided to let sleeping drunks sleep and I went to bed.

  In the morning, Beth Ann was knocking at my door. Joe was still hunched over at the kitchen table.

  “I just came to see if anyone got killed last night,” she said.

  “No,” I said. “We just had a little talk.”

  Beth Ann let out a big sigh. “Joe’s a good man, at heart. He just lets his emotions get the best of him. I’ll get him out of your hair.”

  “I thought you two broke up a long time ago.”

  “We did. We try to have as little to do with each other as we possibly can, but that’s not easy around here.” She was tapping him on the shoulder now. “C’mon, Joe, wake up.”

  Then Beth Ann turned to me. “Just because we hate each other’s guts, it doesn’t mean we don’t look out for each other.” Joe popped his head up but was having a hard time figuring out what was going on.

  “He threaten you?” she asked.

  “Sort of,” I said.

  “He’s all bluster, the goof.” Beth Ann was lifting him now. Joe let her get him on his feet. “Guess we’ll be going,” she said.

  Once she had him propped up along the door frame, she turned back to me. “Don’t blame yourself, Charles. You did what you had to do. If there’s anyone to blame, it’s me for not setting Brody straight a long time ago. No mother of the year award for me, I guess.”

  And they were gone. Beth Ann loaded Joe into her pickup and they drove off.

  On the morning of September 25, there was no wind at all. The air was heavy, humid, sticky. And as warm as it ever gets along the Shore here. It hadn’t rained for a while and, as I sat on the stones by the water, the land looked parched. Shore plants had died. Summer had killed them. I remembered what it was like to wake up on a September morning like this and get ready to go to school, my brain unwilling to accept that the joys of summer were all gone, memories of it quickly fading.

  I didn’t hate school, but I always felt out of place there, like I was playing some kind of game whose rules I did not understand. Even now, I still woke up on a September morning like this with a kind of dread that somehow the freedom of summer was over and the prison term of school had begun.

  Yes, it was a kind of metaphorical prison sentence. But not like the real thing as it was for Brody. I wondered if he made the connection. September. Going to school. September. Going to prison.

  I looked at the spot where I had burned my novel. The rocks were still black, even though the ash had all blown away. Words in the wind. Meaningless, charred words blown away on the sea breeze. And that asinine title: Purgatory Newsletter.

  This was my purgatory. Some kind of in-between state. A static, pointless waiting room between what was and what will be. Only, I didn’t really see any kind of future. Construction had ceased on the house. Ramona was gone. I had not heard from her. I had not tried to contact her or find her. I didn’t seem to have much of a will to do anything in particular. If you asked me outright, I would have told you I didn’t really much care what happened to me next. I had no opinions about living or dying. A man just taking up space in a meaningless universe, wasting good oxygen in his lungs. I didn’t really even feel sorry for myself. I didn’t have that much gumption.

  And it was on that day, September 25, that I heard the news when I went down to the wharf to check on the boat. I heard it first from Brian Deacon. He was talking to one of the Henderson brothers, Mickey. Brody was dead, Brian said. Drug overdose or something. Found in his cell and it was too late to do anything about it.

  40

  I went and sat down on the boat. I just sat there for a really long time. The gas tank was full. I could go far from there. Maybe not far enough. But far. I could do like father like son. But I didn’t have that kind of courage. There was a gun still hidden on the boat as well. There was always that. Go far out to sea, put a bullet in my head. One little squeeze of the trigger. No wonder cowards did it that way. I could join the club.

  But I didn’t have the strength, the will, or even a whiff of courage to end my life. Easier to just go home and lie there in my bed, wait for Joe to get drunk or get sober or whatever he needed and come to do the deed he so wanted to do before.

  Ramona returned that afternoon.

  “I heard about it on the radio,” she said. “I decided to come back.”

  I stood silently, not knowing what to say.

  “Actually, it was my father who urged me to come back. I thought I’d already brought you enough grief. But he convinced me.”

  Ramona put her arms around me and I leaned into her. I was no longer alone. That’s all I could think of.

  We held each other silently for a long time.

  And then she made coffee. Black. Strong. Good.

  “What did they say on the news?” I asked.

&nb
sp; “They said there was a known drug problem in the prison. Something even stronger than fentanyl was being smuggled in. Even the tiniest amount could get someone high or even killed. They suspect it was being smuggled in under inmates’ fingernails.”

  “What else? I mean was it intentional or an accident?”

  “They don’t know. Brody was alone at the time. His heart just stopped. It was too late to inject Naloxone when they found him. There’ll be an investigation.”

  “We should probably leave here,” I said. “Go back to the city.”

  “No,” Ramona said. “I think we should stay.”

  “I’m not sure it’s safe.”

  “I don’t care. When I left here I felt the same way as when I left you after the deer. I felt lost, like I’d given up on something important. Both times I abandoned you.”

  “For good reason.”

  “Both times I felt empty and hopeless.”

  “I know the feeling. But here you are with the guy who can’t do anything but bring hurt into the world.”

  “I don’t see it that way. I see someone trying to do the right thing.”

  But those words didn’t ring true for me. “And what’s the right thing for me to do now?”

  “Stay. Do something good for people here. Even the ones who might hate you.”

  “What could I do that would have any meaning to Joe or Beth Ann after this?”

  “I don’t know. Just don’t run away. If you stay, I’ll stay with you.”

  “I can’t ask you to do that.”

  “You’re not asking. I’m saying. I’m not leaving.”

  The young guy at the general store just glared at us this time when we showed up to buy food and supplies. My guess is he’d bought goods from Brody. He might even have been Brody’s friend. The look he gave me said it all. Some people around there really did hate me now.

  Joe didn’t show up with a temper or a weapon. I saw him a couple of days after Brody’s death sitting on a fish crate at the wharf, crying in front of his fellow fishermen, who stood around looking embarrassed.

  I didn’t walk over to try and console him. I watched another broken man trying to make sense of a senseless existence. And I watched as he stood up, those men still staring at him. He looked old and defeated as he stumbled away.

  As the days passed by, Ramona and I became more like brother and sister than a pair of lovers. We had been changed by the events and I wondered if we would ever recover what we had lost.

  There was a small memorial service at the old United Church on the mainland. I hadn’t been in there since I was a kid. Back then we only went to church on Christmas and Easter. I didn’t think it was a good idea to go, but Ramona insisted. We sat in the back and listened to a eulogy by a minister who had probably never had any personal contact with Brody. He made Brody out to be a saint. He was portrayed as someone who had made mistakes and was ready to make amends. But he wasn’t given a chance.

  Beth Ann and Joe sat up front. Neither one got up to speak during the service. Mackenzie was sitting by herself farther back in the church. She was crying. The minister was the sole person to speak at the service. There was no coffin. Brody had been cremated. There were a few photos of him as a boy on a display. A couple of him in his twenties but nothing more. I remembered my first impression of Brody. He had been like a big kid who had never grown up. And that would be how he was remembered.

  The service was short. There were hymns sung, but I didn’t join the small congregation who seemed to know the words by heart. I remember the last song of the service was “Abide with Me,” an old Christian standard. The words came back from childhood:

  Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;

  The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide.

  When other helpers fail and comforts flee,

  Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me.

  Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;

  Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away;

  Change and decay in all around I see;

  O Thou who changest not, abide with me.

  No, I didn’t suddenly get religion, find Jesus, repent of my sins, or ask God for forgiveness. But I did need saving and I knew the only person who could save me was sitting right beside me. Change and decay in all around I see. Ramona … please.

  Thank God there was no social function after. We were the first to leave the church. We drove back to the shack without speaking.

  That evening, Beth Ann’s truck pulled up in front. I opened the door. “You know,” Beth Ann said, “that house you were building. That was the first decent thing Brody got excited about in a long time. I was beginning to have some hope.” Then she held out a small wooden box, not much bigger than a box for stick matches. “Believe it or not, this was Joe’s idea. We kept most of the ashes. But this is your share.”

  It was the strangest thing to say. Why would Joe want me to have some of Brody’s ashes? My share? “Thank you,” I said. “Why?”

  “Because, Charles,” she said, now sounding downright angry, “we’re all in this together. Whatever the fuck this is.” She started to walk away and then she turned back. “And whatever you do, don’t dump his ashes in the ocean. Leave that to Joe and me.”

  And then she looked past me toward Ramona. “And Ramona, you and Charles here better finish that damn house. I don’t care what you do after that. But finish the bloody house. Do that for Brody.”

  And she left.

  41

  By mid-October the house was mostly weathertight. The inside had not been finished — the floor had been installed downstairs but there were still no finished walls. Nonetheless, the house had been wired and connected to the grid. On the outside, there were shingles on the roof, vinyl siding over the Tyvek. Big Carl and his two workers were quieter than before, shaken by the fate of Brody perhaps. A couple of windows and interior doors from my parents’ old house had been incorporated into the structure, and there were a few chairs, a kitchen table, and a sofa that my father had once given away, which had now found their way back to here. But there was a sadness about the place that I feared might never go away.

  No C-WAP women returned to write nasty things on the walls. Perhaps they were satisfied when Brody got sent to prison. I wondered what they thought when they heard about his death on the news.

  Ramona and I were living in the unfinished house now. We rather liked it that way. It always smelled of freshly cut wood, and when the outside was finished, we asked the work crew to take a break for a week or so. The head guy said he had some work to finish on the rafters in the attic, but that could wait if we wanted. I said yes. I think we wanted privacy more than anything right then, and we just wanted to enjoy the experience of living inside the rough shell of a house, before the insulation and wallboard went in. Like I say, it was just like indoor camping. And that felt just right.

  Ramona had wanted a fireplace. I had argued against it, saying it was too inefficient, but I gave in, of course. A fireplace was romantic, after all. We spent our evenings with the blow-up mattress on the floor in front of a blazing fire of wood scraps, even though the month was uncommonly warm.

  The death of Brody had so shaken us that I must admit our actual romance seemed permanently on hold. I’d written about tragedies many times as a reporter, but I’d always been able to keep my journalistic distance. It had always happened to them and not me. I’d felt the sting of the death of my own parents, of course, but, not having returned to Stewart Harbour, I kept that too, somehow at a safe distance from me. Looking back on it all, I realized that I had cultivated a powerful ability to shut off my emotions. A handy trick, I suppose, but I wondered now at what cost.

  There was a mantel over the fireplace made from a thick beam from the old house. On top of the mantel was the small wooden box of Brody’s ashes. Ramona placed it there one day. And it just stayed.

  “I don’t think I want them to finish the inside of the house. Ever,” Ramona sai
d one evening in front of the fire.

  “Gonna get damn cold without insulation,” I said, but I understood what she was saying. Something about living inside an unfinished house felt incredibly right.

  “But once it’s done, it’s done.”

  “I know what you mean. Unfinished house, unfinished lives.”

  “Well, I didn’t really mean that. But, yes, we’ll only live through this house-building phase once. And it’s something special.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “If you’ve got enough money, maybe we can build some more houses in other parts of the world and live in them too.”

  “I don’t want that,” Ramona said, suddenly sounding serious. “I want one house. One life. Back when I was acting, I thought I wanted to live in a number of places. The dream was to have a place in L.A., get some film work maybe in France or Australia. Do the jet set thing.”

  “Bet you never dreamed you’d end up in Stewart Harbour, shacked up with an unemployed writer.”

  “Wasn’t exactly on the agenda, no. But here we are. And here we stay. Speaking of unemployed writer, when are you going to get back to that novel?”

  I hadn’t told her. Shit. “Never,” I admitted. “While you were gone, I got frustrated and I burned it.”

  “The whole thing?”

  “All ninety thousand words. So long Purgatory Newsletter.”

  “Jesus. Why?”

  “Because,” I answered, just like a little kid would.

  My answer seemed to suffice. She didn’t say another word about it.

  “I want you to start a new one,” she said after a long silence as I put another piece of wood into the fire.

  We had a few lights so that we could read at night. Ramona and I each had a pile of books from the library and we spent many quiet hours reading. We’d given up on the cramped quarters of the fish shack for our haven of plywood floors, unfinished rooms, and wall-to-wall sunlight and moonlight. We had a big stove and a giant refrigerator that made its own ice and enough cooking utensils fit for a five-star restaurant. And Ramona was right. We really didn’t want to see the house finished. We liked it just the way it was.