Minister Without Portfolio

by Michael Winter

  But the boy does not know enough about killing to kill his father. That was something the police would not know.

  Henry climbed down from the roof and John and Silvia were over. He asked them about it. He painted the picture as he saw it if everything all went perfectly wrong.

  I didn’t know you were the intervention type, John said.

  These are my hundred people.

  40

  On one of the last days before the birth he thought he’d take the dory out and then beach it on the main shore and get John to help him lug it home in his truck. Martha asked him to be careful. That made him think. He said to her, I’m being selfish. I’m buttoning up rooms and you’re about to give birth.

  On his way down to Kingmans Cove, he saw Colleen Grandy in her front garden. It was still summer but even before September comes you can feel fall in the air. The fall comes after a rain, she said. You can feel the cold in your feet in the evening when you walk around the garden. I have a garden here that is just white flowers because I have no lights out here and the white helps.

  Henry: The way to being selfish in a good way is not to be lonely.

  Colleen: No, the way to be selfish is to be happy.

  And he knew that if he did nothing, he might not see her again. He knew, from Afghanistan, that high spirits can lead to death. Keith in prison while Colleen’s own father is responsible. A remote chance but could he make it even more remote. She would stop answering the phone. A year might go by—he and Martha busy with the baby. Rick arrives and puts a call in for Leonard King. The front-end loader rumbling down the road. Rick zips through the picture window with a chainsaw. Leonard guiding the bucket of his loader into the house and the men step through the open side of the house while a slow ambulance arrives without a siren. An hour later the bucket of the loader is removed, and sitting in the bucket is a very big woman wearing a white bedsheet torn in the centre like a poncho. They manage to lift her into the back of the ambulance. Colleen Grandy.

  Henry had to make this possibility even more unlikely.

  I’m just going out for one last row, he said to Colleen. Before we head into town.

  Oh my god the new arrival!

  He rowed out and heard the whales. He searched for a black arch, a bump that rides over the surface like black thread sewing the fabric of the sea. There was a lot of krill too, these tiny crustaceans the whales use their baleen to sieve. When the tide pushes in to shore the outward lip of a wave shovels billions of little shelled insects up onto the dark beaches. This was probably what made the whales stay so late. The seasons are all out of kilter now, Silvia had told them. The northern ice was melting early and plenty of icebergs were calving from Greenland, including a large peninsula of ice that was almost a country of its own, and that too collapsed into great chunks of icebergs this summer that no one had seen before—long, flat bergs that floated past the harbour. The rest of the country reported scorching temperatures that blew off all previous records and cooked wheat in the fields and dried up shallow reservoirs in northern inland provinces, but this coast grew colder and the sea surges from hurricanes tore out the slipways that had stood for a generation.

  Silvia knew about this environmental change. It was what she worked at on a computer in a lab. She had told them once at dinner about the winter that had snapped into this cove early and trapped the whales. This entire cove had frozen over in a thin sheet of ice and an ice breaker had to be called. Whales, Clem had told them, used to walk on land and then thought better of it and returned to the oceans. It was in one of his illustrated books. And here they were, trapped by the very forces they had rescinded. Henry was a mammal who had chosen the land side and was imagining them imprisoned in a sea he had once called Pakistan, as passive as evolution is, even though people dramatize evolution as a force when really it is as unemotive as water flowing downstream. A beaver under a frozen brook. Evolution is a force as conscious as gravity.

  I am not beholden to evolution. He stood up in the boat. Look at me, I volunteered to be in a family. To adopt, adapt and improve. And look at me. He sat down again. He turned the boat around. He had to get to Martha.

  He heard the snort of a whale and a plume above the water. A whale heading for him. He knelt in the bottom of the boat, unaware that people from small places will romanticize their virtues and begin stories to one another about rural events like whales that have difficulty with ice. We’re all very modern people though, so let us push through this difficult thing as simply as possible.

  The whale was still beneath him. The long white pectoral fin that looks like an arm. It rose to meet him and hit the side of the boat. The boat rose and lurched sideways and Henry caught himself from falling in. He grabbed the oars. A bad smell and then the dorsal fin sliding past. The whale looked shocked. There was an eye.

  He rowed quickly to the main beach where John and Martha were waiting with the truck. Then he slowed down and gathered his breath, three hundred feet from shore. Had they seen that. Yes, they had. John was making arm gestures. That was something.

  The swell as the sea narrowed to the main beach. The waves curling and breaking in long trails. He stood up again in the boat. To look at these waves. What John was doing was telling him not to come in.

  He sat down again and rowed in. He felt a swell beneath him and rode over it. The boat sank into a trough. A wave gathered itself together behind the dory and he timed it and the dory rose and he paddled through the wave and the wave surfed him in and he kept the dory straight. The speed he achieved, he heard the sizzle of surf beneath him, and then the wave passed through him and he was low and up above the transom a wave mustered itself high and treacherous. Instead of running under the dory and bulling him, it rained down into the boat. It twisted the boat sideways and Henry was in the water. He was under. And he swam further to avoid hitting an oarlock.

  He surfaced and saw John and Martha and gave them a thumbs-up. He dragged himself ashore as John found the painter and pulled the submerged dory in.

  Martha: What were you thinking?

  And Henry embraced her.

  LATER, AT HOME, Henry: I noticed John didn’t dive in for me.

  When you went under, Martha said, he took out his wallet and handed it to me.

  He keeps it in his left pocket, Henry said. That’s where his dad kept it.

  Silvia said it was because you weren’t making any noise. It was probably a teenager, young and goofy, and you were just sitting out there. It couldn’t hear you.

  41

  She tucked her hair behind the back of her shirt, before bending over the bathroom sink.

  Martha: I was up at six.

  Henry: So was I.

  Martha: You were just turning over.

  The doctor said they should come into town. It could be any day.

  So they had driven in and were staying at Martha’s. They took walks around the hill and listened to a busker who had a green hat on the ground. City life. Henry put in a five, just to see how a piece of paper money falls into a hat.

  They ordered in food. There was still lots of evidence of Tender but it didn’t affect him as strongly as he thought. He had grown used to the company.

  He put a call in to Rick Tobin.

  He said Rick I know what’s going down. Rick said what do you mean. About Colleen. About what could happen.

  Henry you’re a good man but just keep your nose out of this and we can keep on being friends.

  Rick you know I can’t do that.

  Then that’s a problem for me, Henry. You’re causing me a problem.

  He hung up and turned to Martha. I don’t know what else to do.

  Go see him. Face to face.

  He’s in Alberta.

  Go today. Go right now.

  I’ll go later.

  Perhaps later is too late. Go for twelve hours. Hang the expense. Do all that you can, quickly, and get back here for me. Then you will have done your best.

  She was checking availabil
ity on all the major carriers. You’re in luck, she said.

  He phoned Rick again and told him he was flying out there.

  I don’t have time. I’m snowed under here. I don’t need to hear from you. This is not your area of expertise.

  We’re making it so.

  HE’D BE BACK AT FIVE in the morning. Silvia was coming over. And he flew, he hoped, for the last time in his life. It was a very expensive ticket. He settled in to enjoy it. He was going to have a child and a house and a woman and he needed the cove to be secure. Colleen has a point and Rick must hear it.

  He rented a car at Edmonton airport and drove straight to the work site in Fort McMurray. He hadn’t been there in six months. He talked to Ryan Allen on the gate and Ryan phoned in and got him a visitor’s sticker. He drove down a paved road that turned to mud and parked outside the trailers that were arranged in a star pattern. Rick’s head at a phone. That’s how he’d looked when Henry called him six hours ago.

  How’s Jamie Kirby?

  He’s driving a cement truck in Fredericton.

  So, Larry Noyce.

  You know it takes twenty minutes for me to think of what I feel or know about a thing. That man you’re asking after has to speak out loud for twenty minutes to get to his conclusive thought.

  I don’t think that’s your criticism of Larry Noyce.

  I’ve never tallied up a list of renovations on that guy.

  But you know some people might act on your behalf.

  No one’s going in without a written estimate.

  Some men do work for cash under the table. No taxes. No paperwork.

  I can’t talk to you now. Where are you staying.

  THEY MET AT MAZAJ on Franklin. This was where John’s team ate chicken and pizza. Henry, for some reason, wanted his shoulders to be seen. He called Martha. She was good. Silvia was with her. She felt fine.

  I love you, he said.

  Don’t miss that flight. Exert every ounce of will you have and then relinquish responsibility.

  I’m not entirely happy with how things might go down here, but I’ll be on the plane.

  Rick bounded in, his tool belt on and a meter in his hand, his phone was ringing. But he easily found Henry and slid into the booth.

  Sorry I’m late. We had to insert a build-up beam.

  I ordered you chicken.

  Good. That’s about all you’re ordering for me.

  This is not a question of honour, Rick.

  Honour is all I’ve got.

  You have to adapt, Rick. You have to change your way of thinking. Do you love Colleen.

  It has nothing to do with Colleen. I’ve thought that much.

  So it’s vanity.

  You’ve got some nerve, Henry. After all I’ve done for you.

  Why can’t you be on the other team?

  I thought about it. It was my first thought, Rick. And then I thought of a superior response. You see it all comes back to Tender. What is the most dangerous thing you can do to yourself right now. If Colleen runs off.

  Why can’t you let me do something shitty?

  Then Rick told him a marvellous story. About love. The ladder that love is. Love has a door quality to it, Henry. It pushes and pulls. It gives and gets. I know I’m not giving. I’m giving money but I’m not present. I don’t know why I can’t be present. You’ve decided to commit yourself to Martha.

  It began deliberately, Rick, but do you know what happened? I love her. That’s a ladder I climbed. And Rick, Colleen told me something. She said I had a hundred people. You’re one of my hundred people, Rick.

  And the boy?

  So you know about the boy.

  I have no stress on my foundation, Henry.

  Rick you’re the one who’ll live with it. An act like that is a triggering event. I’m living with it. I know what it’s like to live with that. I’m asking you not to make a mistake with your own life. Let go of the ladder.

  What are you talking about, Rick said. What kind of act do you have in your head? You’d think I’d get involved in a criminal matter? In violence?

  You’re allowing the line to remain undrawn.

  Henry I have one word for you, one word that will take care of that man: immigration. Importation of an illegal substance. Call me a rat—now I have to go. Guy on the crew is getting married. Been seeing his girlfriend for twelve years and he’s only twenty-five.

  42

  He flew home and turned around to look at the airplane and the tarmac. That was it for flying.

  He checked his messages and jumped in a cab to Martha’s. The house she shared with Tender. Silvia was on the couch, still asleep. He got in the covers with Martha. She stirred. It’s done, he said.

  In the morning Silvia made breakfast and got her coat and said if there was anything just ask. They had an appointment with the doctor in the afternoon. It’s funny, Martha said. To be a patient at the hospital where I work. All was well and stable. They just had to go home and wait.

  I know you’re not comfortable here in this house.

  It’s not that bad, he said.

  We could stay at a hotel and order room service and watch television and walk around the headland every day.

  No let’s stay here until the baby comes. This is where the baby should be.

  Martha: I want the baby in Renews.

  John and Silvia brought over dinner. And they walked. He made a call to Wilson Noel. Nothing seemed to bother Wilson Noel unless you burned down his land. Then on the third morning she said this is it. And they drove in and parked at extended parking and walked into the hospital and the nurse examined her and said she should come back in a couple of hours. They took the elevator back down to the parking lot. On the way to the car she said, I don’t care if they think this is early it hurts too much.

  She was in labour all day and he helped her in the bath. He rubbed her shoulders and, just as the sun was setting, the contractions became heavy and fast. Henry watched for movement and calmed her and used a face cloth to stroke her. He could see the shape arrive, that something was pushing out and before this shape there was a curtain of matter that bulged. He waited for this bulge to part and allow the baby through. The curtain stretched further and larger and was quite strange. He urged Martha, along with the nurse, to push and she did and this curve of orange matter ballooned out further as though it were the insides of Martha, she was being turned inside out. A ridge appeared in the curtain and then the most remarkable thing—the brow and hollow of a set of fiercely closed eyes, the bridge of a nose and a lip. The entire face, a shoulder. The little person was rotated by a set of hands and then she slipped out. The nurse had been replaced by a doctor who had wheeled in on a chair with an assistant carrying a lamp on a trolley and the doctor—his name was Dr Mahmoud—held the baby and attached an orange clip to the umbilical cord and the baby was placed on Martha’s belly. She held the little person and the baby was wrapped up in a pink and blue towel, the cord snipped and the baby transferred to a stainless steel area of scales. The weak neck and the eye drops and a preventative needle in the foot and the little face with red hair turning away while Martha had some stitches. Forms needed information.

  Do you have a name for the girl.

  Yes, Henry said. We certainly do.

  Martha and the baby stayed in the hospital overnight while he drove back to Martha’s. He bought a slice of pizza at Venice pizzeria which was just around the corner from his first apartment when he went to trade school with John Hynes and Tender Morris. He walked down to the house where the apartment used to be. They had removed it now and returned it to a full house. They had a family here, they needed the room. The little stove, the sole sink in the bathroom, all of the things he did for one person. He saluted this old life with the slice of pizza and turned back to Military Road.

  He followed the road as it bent down to the harbour and then found himself at the war memorial. He looked up at the men there, one with a telescope, one with a gun. One is a woodsman and
one a fisherman. I have been all these men, he thought. And yet, what is above them. He stepped back to stare and realized the fifth figure wasn’t a man at all, but a woman. She is holding a torch and a sword. A grateful people to honour its dead.

  HE LEARNED HOW TO wrap the baby in a blanket and place her in the car seat and they took the elevator down to the main lobby. They both felt it astonishing that they were being allowed to take this infant away from the machinery of the world and become responsible. Henry carried the baby through the automatic doors and out into a small ring of people standing just outside of the painted white line. A man in a wheelchair with a portable IV unit was smoking. They were all smoking. You could smell the cigarettes and instinctively Martha called out, Gangway—brand-new human being entering the world.

  They got in the car and turned onto the main road to the highway. They were on the arterial now back out to Tender Morris’s house with Tender Morris’s girlfriend and Tender Morris’s baby. There were cars ahead of him and behind him and passing him and in the distance he could see the ocean. He knew the ways of a foreign country better than he knew himself, he realized. He clicked on his indicator and slowed and turned off onto the gravel shoulder.