Punishment

by Linden MacIntyre

  “His lawyer wants me to talk to him. I said no at first. But you know how lawyers are.”

  There was a long silence on the other end of the line.

  “It’s pretty serious,” I said. “A young woman was found dead in the place where he’s been living and it looks like they’ll go for second-degree murder.”

  “Second degree? Wow.”

  “He’s definitely looking at criminal negligence. He wants to see me. I could use your advice.”

  “God, Tony. I don’t know what to tell you. What were the circumstances?”

  “It isn’t clear yet. She was missing for five days. She was probably there all the time. He was gone when they found her, which looked bad. Looked like he was running away.”

  “I can’t imagine Dwayne mixed up in anything violent. He’ll probably say that he was gone when she died. Have they come up with a time of death?”

  “Not that I’ve heard.”

  “The cause?”

  “Drug overdose. It seems he’s been dealing serious drugs around the place. Maybe it’s a mistake for me to talk to him. People here are pretty stirred up about it. I know the victim’s family pretty well.”

  “You’ll have to be the judge of that because you know the way they are down there,” she said. “But he always looked up to you.”

  “That was then,” I said. “When he was inside and I was part of the system, part of his survival.”

  “Say hello from me if you see him,” she said. “But you know what?”

  “What.”

  “I’d be very careful. It’s bound to get messy.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “How are you otherwise?”

  “I was thinking about you the other morning,” I said. “Just lying in the old bed, remembering.”

  Silence on the other end.

  “It sounds stupid, but I can’t help wondering how life would be if I could just push pause and rewind. Go back to where the story got confused, where I lost the thread.”

  “So how far would you rewind it, if you could?”

  “Good question.”

  “Tony, I should tell you, you’ll hear it anyway—I’m involved with someone.”

  “That’s great,” I said. “I’m glad.”

  “Are you?”

  “I suppose that depends.”

  “Depends on what?”

  “I think I’m going to hang up now.”

  “Tony, before you do. About Dwayne, he’ll probably remind you that you were partly responsible for the fix he got himself into at Millhaven, over that Italian. Surely you can’t forget that. It’s probably why he’d turn to you now.”

  “Thanks for that,” I said. And I put the phone down.

  ——

  Looking back, the third encounter with Strickland was inevitable. Sophie was the catalyst for that one too. She was nervous when she called. “Someone needs to talk to you,” she said.

  When I got there, Strickland was sitting in her office smoking a cigarette, something he only did when he was under pressure. He liked to run, was worried about his body.

  I acted surprised to see him. I made myself sound hostile, impatient. “What’s up?” Pretended to be reading something in a file.

  He looked at me, head slightly angled, eyes on mine, a smile threatening. “I think you know.”

  “You’re here to tell me about Vito?”

  “I need to make a deal.”

  “Let’s not play games. What kind of a deal?”

  “I need to get out of here.”

  I laughed. “That’ll happen, eventually. What’s your rush?”

  “Two goofs come up to me in the yard, an hour ago. One gets right up in my face. I could smell what he ate for breakfast. ‘There’s a rat,’ he says. ‘About Vito. And we’re real close to him now.’ His forehead is almost up against mine. What am I supposed to think he means? ‘Great,’ I say. ‘Keep me posted.’ And he says, ‘Ooooohhh yeah. You’ll be one of the first to know.’ ”

  “Who was that?”

  “Can you get me out of here?”

  “Doesn’t sound like you’re in any position to negotiate. Who are you afraid of?”

  He hesitated, looked toward Sophie helplessly, spread his hands in resignation.

  “Were they the guys who did the Italian? The guys who threatened you?”

  “I can’t say. I didn’t see.”

  “Okay. Who made the threat?”

  “They call him the Horse. The asshole right up in my face was Jimmy Driscoll.”

  “Have you been talking to anybody?”

  “Only you.” The look and the tone were accusing. “Only you, Tony. Who you been talkin’ to?”

  “Come on,” I said. “What was there to talk about?”

  “There’s this fuckin rumour in the unit that you and I are related. People making jokes. Then the IPSOs comin’ around,” he said. “Assholes, those guys. Comin’ right up and talking to me in front of everybody. You told them.”

  “I told them nothing.”

  “Someone talked to them because they’ve been all over me.”

  “And you told them …?”

  “What I told you … just fuck right off. But there’s talk around the unit, people looking at me funny. Tony, just get me the fuck out of here. You owe me, man.”

  Sophie was nodding in agreement, face downcast, her expression almost accusing.

  By the next morning he was on his way to Kingston Pen.

  The call to Anna made for a long sleepless night. When she had asked, Depends on what? I might have answered: Depends on when you started seeing someone. Depends on whom. Depends on what you mean by “involved.” The mental math and lurid speculation were inevitable. By two in the morning I’d drifted off but then the nightly roar of traffic to the shore had started up, the ATVs on the nearby gravel road sounding like they were passing through my living room.

  It hadn’t occurred to me that I might have been too hasty in my rush to assume the full burden of blame and the hangover of guilt when our marriage hit the rocks. What if she’d had someone waiting in the wings? For sure it would explain how quickly she’d accommodated our new reality, and how efficiently she removed me from her life. Involved with someone else—a gentle phrase, evasive substitute for real disclosure. How about: Fucking someone else. Let’s try that on for size. Sounds of distant engines filtered through the pillow on my head. What if Anna … but then the images of Anna as I knew her intervened, Anna when everything between us was new and vivid. It was probably merciful that the roaring came closer then, the nocturnal ATVs. Tonight they’re early, I said aloud. There was rumbling and revving as they paused outside my kitchen door, it seemed. In my fantasy I had a rifle pointed out the upstairs window. Like nutty what’s-his-name out west. Ludwig Wiebo or whoever. And I thought of Pittman then, and something else I should have said: I don’t owe Strickland anything.

  Finally I got up and switched on a light. After another moment I could hear them roar away, wheels spinning in the gravel, the crack of stone bouncing off my car.

  4.

  I was technically impaired, driving in my exhausted state. The regional correction centre was about two hours away and I had to make two stops for coffee. It was raining, the autumn leaves collecting in the ditches and the fields. Winter wasn’t far away and I was dreading it, remembering the dreariness of childhood. Of course the isolation wasn’t only caused by weather but the winter climate was a factor, for sure. I should buy cross-country skis, I thought.

  I turned on the car radio. Another American talking about weapons of mass destruction. I clicked it off. Every morning at the store it seemed Neil would be front and centre, holding court, delivering the latest propaganda from the Bush cartel. Saddam this, al-Qaida that and nine-eleven, mixed up in a crock of speculation. More than once I’d come close to saying exactly that—it’s all a crock. A few years back I would have wiped the floor with Neil using logic, humour, facts, but now I just ignored him,
even when he tried to draw me in. In the rearview mirror I could see the eyes of a sad old man who’d lost his appetite for conflict. What would Sophie think if she could see me now?

  At the top of Kelly’s Mountain the rain briefly turned to sleet.

  Sophie was standing in my doorway, arms folded, something clearly on her mind. Strickland had been in Kingston for nearly nine months by then and was complaining to anyone who’d listen. Obviously Sophie had been listening more sympathetically than I had been.

  “I’ll be recommending reclassification for Dwayne,” she said.

  “That’s nice,” I said. “So he’s ‘Dwayne’ now, is he?”

  She ignored that. “If I have my way he’d be in minimum. But I could use some help from you.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “He doesn’t belong here, Tony. They’re fucking him around.”

  Her face was pink. She never used obscenity. People commented on that, her calmness.

  “Come on,” I said.

  “He’s been here for more than eight months. He was in the hole for three of them. He doesn’t belong here, Tony. It’s having a bad effect on him.”

  “He’s considered a rat,” I said. “It’s for his own good he’s here. Any other place would be a risk. You know that.”

  “I want him in Warkworth. He wants to be in Warkworth. They have decent programs there. And please—this rat business. You know better.”

  “I know what?”

  “You know the circumstances.”

  “I know that circumstances don’t cut it in that world. A rat’s a rat.”

  “Circumstances matter, Tony, more than anything. Come on.”

  I shoved my chair back from the desk and stared at her for a while. I suppressed a resentful comment, and said instead, “You’re sticking your neck out, don’t you think?”

  “It’s what we have to do sometimes,” she said. “I’m a bit surprised by your attitude. I’d have thought …”

  “It’s the world we live in. It’s reality.”

  “Reality,” she said, obviously holding back her anger. “Reality can change. It’s up to us …”

  “I think you should stick to your knitting,” I said. “You want to go out on a limb for this fellow …”

  “ ‘Stick to my knitting’?” she said. “An interesting analogy.” She walked away.

  I studied the empty doorway, surprised by a deep, deep sense of disappointment.

  An hour later I called her to apologize and to ask if I could buy her lunch.

  She surprised me and said, “I understand Strickland isn’t your problem and it was unfair of me, trying to draw you in just because of personal history. You don’t have to buy me lunch.”

  “I’d like to,” I said. “I’d like to have lunch. What do you think?”

  “Pick a day,” she said.

  Lunch with Sophie was near the waterfront. A small hotel dining room fashionably cluttered with large antiques that created little nooks for privacy. She accepted a glass of wine but didn’t touch it for a while, holding the stem of the glass between her fingers, twirling it slightly, deep in thought.

  Finally she spoke. “I met someone a while back who said he knew you when you were just starting out. Lou something.”

  Lou was long gone, burned out. “Where did you run into him?”

  “In a liquor store,” she said and chuckled. “He lives near us, retired. But he mentioned you. And he talked about how some of you came in with such great intentions. You were going to turn the system inside out. Full of progressive ideals.”

  I drank from my glass, tried not to squirm. Shrugged and looked out the window.

  “What happens to idealism, Tony? That’s a real question. I see it all the time. People losing their ideals.”

  “I suspect you know the answer,” I said. “You’re the psychologist.”

  “Strickland doesn’t belong in max,” she said.

  “Where would you put him?”

  “Medium for sure. Probably Warkworth. Maybe minimum, Bath or Archambault. He grew up on a farm, didn’t he?” She sipped her wine now, staring intently into my eyes.

  And by the end of lunch I’d told her that I had already agreed to put in a good word for Strickland, to help him on his way to Warkworth. She reached across and grasped my hand. I remember the expression, the smile, the eye-warmth.

  “Thank you, Tony. You won’t regret this.”

  Two weeks later Sophie called me. “My turn to buy lunch,” she said.

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “I’ve just come out of a meeting,” she said. “Dwayne Strickland will be moving to Warkworth any day now.”

  In Strickland’s final weeks in Kingston Pen, while Sophie worked the system to get him out of there, he and I established a rapport of sorts, talking about the place we knew as home—whatever that means—and “normal” people that we knew.

  “Maybe we could change your name to MacInnis,” I told him. I was trying to be helpful.

  “Nah,” he said. “Why would I do that?”

  “Word will be out in the system, you ratted out the Horse and Driscoll.”

  “I didn’t fuckin rat out anybody.” His face was flushed. So much for anger management.

  There had been no formal charges in the death of the Italian as the only evidence was circumstantial. So corrections punished the suspects as best we could. Mess up their miserable lives a bit more. “Fuck them up,” was how we put it in our private justice system.

  “They’re being shipped out,” I’d informed him. “One to the Special Handling Unit at Ste-Anne-des-Plaines, one to the max in Renous. Let’s just say life is gonna be a bit more complicated now. Their families are back here, Ste-Anne is infested with bikers, and Renous is in the middle of nowhere. They’ll know there’s a reason for the change and they’ll know what the reason is. You’ll get the blame, just based on the rumours.”

  “So what help would that be, turning me into a MacInnis?”

  “Strickland kind of stands out. Why not make it easy on yourself?”

  “Thanks but no thanks. I always kind of got off on being who I really was.”

  “Suit yourself,” I said.

  Rat. How glibly I had used the word. I knew that I was taunting him, knowing every time how that simple word would get a rise, briefly knock his irritating cockiness aside. Dealing with them is a constant struggle for control.

  The rain was pounding down when I got to the corrections centre, and I ran from the parking lot to the reception area, folded newspaper over my head. Sullivan was waiting for me, impatiently, I sensed. He wasn’t what I had expected. He was tall with squared-off shoulders and maybe fifty years old. His face was smooth and tanned and his hair was prematurely silver. He had a white mustache, a crushing handshake.

  They put us in a tiny room with a small table and three chairs, a door with a wired window. We made small talk waiting for Strickland. I noticed from Sullivan’s ring that we had gone to the same university, at different times of course. But it turned out we knew a lot of the same teachers. I’d just mentioned that my ex was a lawyer, practicing in Kingston when the door opened.

  Strickland was wearing baggy prison green but he seemed relaxed, self-assured. He might have been holding court in a high-end hotel. His smile was unreserved and boyish. I felt a sudden pang of pity, but then I thought of Caddy and her sorrow and the pity turned to guilt.

  “Hey Bro’,” he said, reaching out to shake my hand.

  “I think ‘Mister Breau’ might be more appropriate,” said Sullivan.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s a little inside joke from Kingston Pen. The dark complexion, I guess.”

  “It’s a Cajun name, Breau?” said Sullivan.

  “Yes,” I said. “My biological background is Acadian.”

  “Biological?”

  “It’s a complicated story.”

  “The black guys started it,” Strickland said. “And of course it suited—this
was one of the rare human beings in the joint.”

  I felt the heat in my face.

  “It’s true,” said Strickland, sitting down. He folded his hands and studied me. It’s how they psych themselves, I thought—the facial calm, the bold assertions, the silences. They’re never in a hurry when in custody. Sullivan slid his chair back slightly.

  “I think you’ve lost weight,” Strickland said.

  “On the contrary.” I laughed. “I’ve been putting it on since I retired.”

  “So you’ve gone to pasture.”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “There was talk in Warkworth. Then someone said something about you being back in St. Ninian. I’d been meaning to look you up. You’re on the Shore Road too, the old MacDougall place. When did you get that?”

  “Years ago,” I said. “Fixed it up. Been there since late spring.”

  “And Anna. How is Anna?”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “She’s here with you?”

  “No. She’s still working in Kingston.”

  “That must be tough on both of you.”

  I studied his face for evidence of knowledge.

  He was nodding. “A loss for the system,” he said. “I’m not just saying that. What did it for you? Surely it wasn’t the Pittman thing … or was there just a point where you said …?”

  You never know how much they really know. I laced my fingers, rubbed my thumbs together. “Spur of the moment thing,” I said at last. “They were looking for new blood, new ideas. Offered a nice package. I had the numbers. It was time, when I thought it over.”

  “I seem to remember the last time we talked, maybe two years ago. I think it was about Billy Pittman …”

  I nodded. “Yes. I think so. But in the end it was the big picture.” I smiled.

  He went silent, and our eyes locked. Then he looked away, as if remembering his lawyer.

  “Pittman,” he said. “That was—fuck. Tragic.” Shook his head.

  Sullivan’s eyes shifted from me to Strickland, back to me, inquiring.

  “Long complicated story,” I said. “Irrelevant.”

  “Yeah,” Strickland said. “Probably.” He was studying his hands, face grave. Then he looked up. “I remember Anna saying how there were only a few guys like you left. Frustrated idealists, I think she said. Guys who went in during the early seventies, full of big ambitions. Then getting them beat out of you.”