Punishment

by Linden MacIntyre

  It took a moment for the words to register. I laughed, a spontaneous reaction, then said, “Not funny, Dwayne.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be.”

  “You’re a sick fuck, Dwayne.”

  “Anna didn’t think so.”

  “And you’re a liar …”

  “Why don’t you ask her …”

  “I don’t talk to Anna.” I felt my face turning hot, scarlet.

  “Well ask her daddy, ask anybody …”

  “As if …”

  “Or ask yourself, Tony, how I managed to go straight from Warkworth to a halfway house.”

  “I thought it was because you were a fucking rat …”

  “Oh come on, Tony. Give your head a shake. Anna and her daddy made a deal. Dwayne goes to the street, Anna promises never to see that awful Dwayne again. Daddy writes to the parole board. I guess you didn’t know how Anna loves bad boys, did you, Tony. Everybody else did. It was win-win, man. It was over between us anyway. I don’t much fancy older women. Too complicated. She was only in it for the ride anyway. Didn’t give a shit about Dwayne. Typical old lady, not getting it at home.”

  Now he was standing. Graham, now behind me, said, “Move on Strickland. Time’s up.”

  “Man to man?” Now leaning, face practically against the screen, turned away slightly, “I felt shitty at first. Figured poor Tony’s lost his edge. Then I heard about you and the little shrink. The cute one, Sophie. It was the talk of Warkworth. And I just hadda laugh. ‘That old horn-dog Tony,’ I said.”

  And he was gone. I was on my feet. Slamming the phone receiver against the screen, then suddenly being wrestled away by Graham. “Hang on, Mr. Breau. Just give it time. The time will come …”

  two

  In the bottomless night my heart learns to ask: where is my friend?

  Through the sea of incense

  I hear the thunder of churchsong. Joy and threats.

  Your eyes look into me, grim and stubborn,

  inescapable.

  ANNA AKHMATOVA

  11.

  People who didn’t know my particular circumstances, or forgot them, would often comment on how much I resembled my adoptive father or some other MacMillan I’d never known. I had the MacMillan eyes or hairline or was tall, which had been a distinguishing feature of a prior generation of the Mountain MacMillans. Even the dark complexion, which was really a reminder of my Acadian heritage.

  It always seemed odd to me, even when I was very young, because it was no secret that the MacMillans weren’t my biological parents. It was no big deal at our place. We’d always exchange glances, a secret smile or wink at such careless observations. Once my father remarked to a visitor in a jolly way that I hadn’t been so much adopted as kidnapped, then told the story. I still find it very funny because it’s partly true that I was stolen from the orphanage, or at least borrowed and never given back.

  “Your dad will never be dead as long as you’re around.”

  I’ll never forget the words.

  It was late in an evening of cards with an older couple who had been regular visitors for tea and sometimes rum and games of auction. I took the words to mean that, not only did I look like him, but I also had his integrity and toughness. High praise to me, especially at that moment. My father had died in the autumn, suddenly, and I suppose we were all still in a state of shock. It was 1969. I was home for the Christmas break and sitting in for him with Ma at the card table. The woman who made the remark was a close friend of the family and knew the facts first hand. I was flattered and profoundly moved and briefly had to leave the table.

  Duncan MacMillan was a quiet man who never seemed to register the stress and disappointment of his daily struggle on the edge of a subsistence life. But from time to time he’d simply disappear for a day and a night or maybe two. We’d fret. Ma would spend a lot of time staring out the kitchen window, or sitting by the stove in her rocking chair, rosary in hand. The house would be very still.

  He’d come back bleary-eyed and rumpled, sometimes bruised, and head straight for bed. And invariably, afterwards, there would be a quiet conversation with Ma at the kitchen table, rare moments that excluded me. Once, I remember, the conversation at the table included the parish priest. Remembering that explosive aspect of his personality guided and restrained me in many potentially chaotic situations.

  After I left the regional jail I sat in the parking lot for a while rationally processing the significance of what Strickland had revealed to me. I imagined what Duncan would have done. I think that guard would have been somewhat less successful holding Duncan back.

  In the reeling emotional reaction to Strickland’s revelation, there was one idea that probably saved me from extreme behaviour and its consequences: We can’t be held accountable for what we feel, only what we do.

  Sophie, I thought, I would call you if I had your number with me. And I laughed, thinking how I’d tell her that while we were agonizing over poetry and responsibility and guilt, euthanizing something real and good …

  And then I felt the anger, whitely passionate. It was just as the poet had warned, the punishment of memory, a sudden rage that drove me to the verge of tears because tears have always been a cursed feature of my outrage. It was one of the reasons why I’d learned how to control my anger, hold it below the tearful threshold where my weakness is exposed. But sitting alone in the parking lot I let the tears flow freely, allowed myself to shout, You fucking prick. Then thought of the absurd significance of those worn-out words, here and now. Goddamn shit.

  I drove to a hotel and checked in. I ruled out the liquor store. Bad idea. But after sitting numbly in my room for what felt like hours, I found my way to the hotel bar. It wasn’t about you, Anna. Oh no, love, once again I’m kind of grateful for the insights gleaned from human failures. Your perversity is on such a scale that mine feels infantile, innocent. I suppose I felt at some dark masculine level a primitive humiliation: bigger, better, younger more attractive dick, and all that stuff. But overall and after long consideration, I felt sorry for you. This is what intimacy and knowledge do—enable empathy in the most extraordinary circumstances.

  It was Strickland I wanted to punish, and not for his sexual invasion of my life. These things happen out of human weakness. People rarely fuck your wife to hurt you. It’s more likely than not the opposite. They often do it in a state of sentimental warmth toward the betrayed. Okay, pity. Whoever knocked up Caddy—if he thought of me at all, it was probably with some faint sense of guilt. Something in the male psyche causes even the most remorseless of men to identify with the poor slob they’re cuckolding. Even twisted Strickland. But to throw it in my face like that? That was not a careless gesture. That was calculated to do damage.

  It was while sitting in that hotel bar that many forgotten details of my life on the Mountain Road started coming back to me—like when Duncan, overwhelmed, would disappear for a day or two, the way our dog did from time to time. The logic, I once figured out, was to consciously take himself from a bad emotional place to a worse one. Then returning to the normal situation at least felt like an improvement.

  I told the bartender to just keep bringing doubles and I’d tell him when to stop.

  ——

  Just after eight that evening I remembered Birch. I turned away from the other people at the bar, found my cellphone in a pocket. I considered calling Caddy but called the store instead.

  “Mary, it’s Tony. I need a little favour.”

  I was enunciating carefully, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  “I got tied up, won’t get home tonight. Do you think you could look in on the dog? The key is under the mat in the porch. Maybe let him out for a minute or two.”

  “Sure,” she said. “Or why don’t I just take him home with me for the night? When are you back?”

  “Oh tomorrow. Next day for sure. I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”

  “No trouble. He’ll know me, from being at the store so often with
Maymie or Caddy.”

  “Of course. Okay then. There’s dog food on a shelf in the porch. And you’ll need to take his coat.”

  “His coat?”

  “The coat he sleeps on … Jack’s old coat, but it’s his now.”

  “Jack?”

  “Yes, Jack, his … I almost said his father.” I giggled.

  “Hey, Tony. Are you okay?”

  “Yes,” I said, struggling to strike a tone that was appropriately serious. “I’m great. Just got caught up on some business over here. You’re sure it’s no trouble?”

  “Relax,” she said. “He’ll be fine with me and the cat.”

  After I put my phone away, the bar felt different, alien, no longer a haven. I considered paying up, returning to my room, but that option felt worse. The bartender leaned across the counter separating us, wiped in front of me, seemed to be in my face all of a sudden, something on his mind. I had a sudden urge to lash out, pre-emptively. I think he saw something in my look and backed away.

  “You’re sure you want another?” he said.

  “Double,” I replied.

  Mental math is almost always masochistic but it is irresistible. The math was simple. Anna started spending a lot of weekends at home in Warkworth because she said her parents were having some marital difficulties. And she was up front about Strickland: she told me she wanted to help him improve himself; he was determined to finish high school, had even signed up for a university course, English lit if I recall. Helping Strickland was, she said, actually a pleasant experience compared with the miserable atmosphere at home. She was worried that her parents were on the verge of splitting up. Why would old people do something like that? Strickland on the other hand was full of youthful potential. He had the kind of creative curiosity that could take him places if he had a little help. I agreed. I was disarmed. But I was also feeling guilty. I fell asleep in my hotel room that night struggling with a different mental math equation: attempting to calculate exactly when it was that I first told Sophie that I thought I was in love with her, and whether or not it was likely that Strickland was already banging Anna. And whether one betrayal cancels out another.

  ——

  The day before the Pittman board of inquiry, Sophie called. She suggested a long, quiet lunch.

  “Not feeling very hungry,” I said.

  “You have to eat something. We don’t have to talk about tomorrow,” she said. “We can talk only about nice things.”

  “For example?”

  “Come on, Tony, I know you’re just sitting there, fretting. Tomorrow is very simple. You describe exactly what you saw and heard that day. Factually. And then it’s done.”

  “You know and I know it’ll not be done.”

  There was a long silence before she said, “You’re right about that. There will be tomorrow and then the day after tomorrow, and the days after that. And you’ll have to live with whatever you say in the course of about an hour tomorrow for a long, long time. But I think you know as well as I do that the truth is always easier to live with than a lie. That’s all I’m going to say.”

  “The usual place?”

  “That’s my Tony. I’ll see you there.”

  And we kept to the plan, kept the conversation light. I teased her, telling her I was writing a song. “A One-Night Stand in Newfoundland.” She blushed, as she always did. “That isn’t funny.”

  We’d had one intense conversation in the days after St. John’s, then resolved that while we could not regret what had happened, it couldn’t be repeated—for a hundred reasons.

  But after that lunch, just outside her office door, she took my hand and said softly, “I love the time I spend with you, Tony. I only wish …” I kissed her on the lips then and she put her arms around me and we stood for the longest time, recklessly clinging to each other.

  Turning away from her, reluctantly, I saw Tommy Steele approaching. He seemed to be reading from a file, seemed surprised to notice me. “I guess we aren’t supposed to talk,” he said. “But good luck tomorrow.” Nodded at Sophie who had stepped back from me, arms now folded.

  “You too,” I replied, studying his face and his expression for insincerity. I couldn’t shake the uneasiness all that afternoon.

  After my testimony the next day I felt redeemed, exhausted but somehow refreshed. Steele was waiting just outside the boardroom. He was to be the final witness.

  “Well?” he said, as I walked by.

  I said nothing and he grabbed my arm. “Well, well, well,” he said. “You can’t even look me in the eye.”

  “Let go of the arm,” I said. He let go, hit my shoulder lightly with the heel of his hand as if brushing something off my jacket. It might have been a shove.

  He was nodding his head as if confirming a sudden private insight. “Get a good night’s sleep, Tony. We got some hard days ahead.”

  The inquiry, when all the paperwork was done, recommended reprimands for Meredith and Wilson. For Tommy Steele, demotion and a transfer out of Kingston. I knew the question everyone was asking: “How come Breau got off?” I could see the answer in the eyes of my fellow officers.

  ——

  I woke in the hotel room feeling grim and I remembered that my little happy pills were back at home. I checked the time. Ten o’clock, near the check-out deadline. The thought of the long drive home and my arrival there made me want to throw up. And then I did, gagging over the toilet bowl. I realized as the persistent slime dangled from my lips that I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast the day before, and retched again. Hair o’ the dog, we used to say. The magic bullet. And there was surprising comfort in the prospect of a drink of something stronger than coffee. The dog, I thought, will survive another day with Mary. I stood, splashed water on my face. Then called the front desk and informed them that I planned to stay another night.

  There was a Ford dealership across the street from the liquor store. With my bottles safely stowed in the trunk of the car I stopped in front of it to peer in through the showroom window. But the day was sunny and the light reflected off the glass, making it difficult to see. So I went inside, maybe out of boredom, or maybe it was the cautious instinct to forestall the return to the hotel room. Whatever. I went in and was instantly buoyed by the new-car fragrance as a large, well-dressed salesman bore down on me with a predatory smile.

  “I’m just having a look,” I told him, but he was anxious to assist me anyway. “We don’t have a whole lot in just now,” he was saying. “The ’03 stock went pretty fast in the fall. What were you thinking of?”

  “I remembered that growing up we had a Ford half-ton.”

  “What year would that be?”

  “I recall it was a 1955.”

  “Yes,” he said, clapping his hands together. “Just between you and me, the best Fords ever made were ’50 to, say, ’56. The cars in ’49 were pretty good. But for quality and style, my year would have been ’54.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought you’d be old enough to remember,” I said.

  “That’s the thing,” he said. “They were made to last. My dad had a ’54 Monarch that he drove up into the eighties. Took better care of it than me.” He laughed. “I still have it. Keep it in the barn under a tarp. Mint condition. Only take it out for the odd homecoming parade. Now what can I show you?”

  “Ah, I’m probably just looking.”

  “And what are you driving, yourself? Just now.”

  “Actually it’s a Toyota …”

  “Great car,” he said enthusiastically. “What year?”

  “Well, it’s only three years old,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. “They last and last, those Japanese cars. The thing is, though, just between you and me, the motors in them are so great that people keep them for a long time. Eh? Not so much turnover. So the dealers have to make the money somewhere, right?”

  “Right,” I said. “On service.”

  “You got it,” he said. “Engines last forever, but everything else goes
for a shit with normal wear and tear. You’re going to notice from now on, every time you take it in they’ll find something. Big, big service bills, and getting bigger as time goes by.”

  We’d stopped beside a blue pickup. I peered inside. Console like a jumbo jet. Stick shift. Knobs and buttons. Smell of leather. “They don’t make half-tons like they used to,” I said.

  “You can say that again. But don’t be fooled. This thing here is rugged as a bulldozer. F-250. Built for work, though I agree you’d never know to look at it.”

  I opened the door and slid behind the wheel.

  “Lots of memories about the ’55 half-ton, I imagine,” the salesman said.

  “Lots of memories,” I said. And got out.

  “Were you thinking of a pickup?” he asked.

  “No,” I laughed. “But if it was red, I might be tempted.”

  “Well, just by chance we have a red one out back. Do you want to have a look?”

  Then we were in the garage amidst the clamour of mechanical activity, wheeze and rattle of pneumatic wrenches, men in coveralls moving slowly and deliberately peering under hoisted cars. Near what looked like a brand-new red half-ton, a smudged mechanic was studying a clipboard. There seemed to be a lot of wires running from a panel into the area of the engine.

  “Everything’s computerized nowadays,” the salesman said. He rapped a fender with his fist. “Just got this in yesterday and he’s giving her a total check-up. She’s an ’02 model, F-150. Guy took it home last fall but unfortunately passed away at Christmas. Low, almost no, mileage. Wife can’t drive a stick shift so we took it back, gave her something more appropriate. I could give you a pretty good deal on this baby.”

  “Ah, I don’t know,” I said, holding back.

  “This here, the F-150 was what replaced the little F-100 you had back in the day. This is as close as you’re going to get. Jump in behind the wheel,” he said. “Then we’ll have a look at what you’re driving.” He was beaming.

  ——

  We were reminiscing after Duncan died, Ma’s eyes red-rimmed. It was unusual, this revelation of emotion where her husband was concerned. “You probably wouldn’t remember the time he landed home with the red truck,” she was saying. “You’d have been very small.”