Punishment

by Linden MacIntyre

  “I remember. I was seven.”

  As if she hadn’t heard me, she said “You hadn’t been here very long, so …” And she seemed to drift, obviously forgetting that I was already five when I arrived, but in her mind, newborn.

  I was nodding.

  “Ah well,” she sighed. “Poor Duncan. He was never much for self-indulgence. But that was how it seemed to me when he landed home with that truck. God forgive me. We were struggling but he said, no, we needed something. And I remember saying, ‘But red?’ ” She laughed then and wiped at her eyes. “It’ll be so conspicuous. That was what I was thinking. Red. They’ll all be talking. And he just said, ‘They can talk all they want.’ He went away after that, to pay for the truck. To Elliot Lake he went. After that he was more or less back to the mines whenever things got tight financially. Which was a lot.”

  And I was thinking of how they laughed at me ten years later, when I’d arrive at dances in an old red half-ton, especially in the summer when the parking lot would be full of fancy cars with plates from Michigan and Massachusetts and Ontario, smirking at my truck until the summer night when Caddy Gillis let me drive her home in it.

  ——

  The bank was a short drive away. It took only minutes to get a draft to cover the balance outstanding after a generous offer on the trade-in. It was as if destiny ordained that I would own that truck and I was suddenly lifted by a rare excitement, Strickland, Anna, Pittman forgotten, at least for the moment.

  “You can take her out of here tomorrow morning,” the salesman said, gripping my hand.

  Back in the hotel room I poured a whisky to celebrate my new purchase, admitting that I felt improved. After Duncan bought the little red truck on an impulse that might well have been a lot like mine, he spent the next year working underground to pay for it. I’d gone to a bank for fifteen minutes and had drawn the money that I needed from the settlement I got when my career came crashing down around me. Odd, thinking about it: Duncan getting paid to work, Tony getting paid to quit.

  Mary wasn’t at the store. Collie told me it was her day off. “You can call her at home.” I said I’d just drop by her place, that she was looking after my dog. “Yes,” said Collie. “It was all she talked about in here yesterday. The dog. That’s some rig outside. New?”

  “Second hand,” I said quickly. “But new to me. Figured living in the country a fella needs a good half-ton.”

  “True enough,” he said. “And they’re comfortable as cars nowadays.”

  Birch was standing on his hind legs, paws against my thigh, making whining sounds, obviously glad to see me.

  Mary beamed. “Will you look at him. You show up and I don’t exist anymore. Typical guy.” I squatted, scratched between his ears.

  “Did you behave yourself?” I asked him.

  “Settled right in, he did. Didn’t you, Birch.” And now she was squatting too, the dog delighted with the double dose of attention. “Only one little slip-up, right, doggie?”

  “Oh dear,” I said. “What did he do?”

  “Nothing at all,” she said. “It was my fault anyway. First time I let him out to pee he streaked for the woods toward Strickland’s place. I thought I’d lost him but he was only gone a minute. He came right back. You’re a good boy, Birch, aren’t you?” He licked her hand, nuzzled my face.

  “You got a treat for that, didn’t you?” He whined briefly. “No. No treats now, not until your next visit.”

  “Treats?” I said.

  “Our little secret,” she said. “Just between himself and Mary.”

  When we were leaving she said, “You can drop him here with me any time you want. Hey, is that a new rig?”

  “New to me,” I said.

  Sitting at my old desk, sorting through the mail I thought: Maybe I’ve turned a corner. Maybe the truck is symbolic, an emphatic line between who I was before and who I’ll be for the long haul. Maybe I owe it all to Strickland, this awakening. Good things often emerge from the debris of what feels like a disaster. And suddenly I felt like calling Anna and saying, “Hey, guess what. I don’t give a shit. I really, really don’t give a shit. I don’t care that you were screwing Strickland behind my back. You’re both pathetic. So carry on, whatever.”

  I swung my chair and faced the filing cabinet, opened the drawer and pulled out the legal file and the fat folder marked “Anna.” Affidavits, lawyers’ letters. Some faded faxes. And I remembered how she’d call on a Sunday night to tell me that she planned to stay a few more days in Warkworth for meetings with some inmate clients there. It never occurred to me to complain, or pry. Absences became the norm. Trust pre-empts anxiety, habit reinforces trust. Dutifully I’d ask about the old folks. Dutifully she’d explain. I suspected not a thing.

  Time to get rid of this, I thought. Maybe tomorrow or maybe next week—a little bonfire out back. Time for new beginnings.

  “Hey, Caddy. What are you doing?”

  “What am I doing? Let me see,” she said. “I’m sitting in my hot tub, sipping champagne and reading Vogue. How about you?”

  “I didn’t know you had a hot tub.”

  “You poor guy. Everybody in St. Ninian has a hot tub. But actually—do you really want to know the truth?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m knitting.”

  “Knitting?”

  “What’s wrong with knitting?”

  “I didn’t say …”

  “It was in your tone of voice.”

  “Look, can I come by? I have a surprise.”

  “A surprise?”

  “Something I bought. I want to show it to you.”

  She walked slowly around the front of my new truck with her arms folded. “Red,” she said at last. “It’ll sure stand out.”

  “It’s a Ford,” I said. “A red Ford half-ton.”

  She was nodding. “So I see.”

  Then I realized that she was freezing. We were standing outside in the dim light of an evening at the end of January and she was wearing a light sweater. “Jump in and I’ll turn the heat on,” I said. She opened the truck door.

  “Well,” she said. “This is lovely. I love the new-car smell.”

  “It’s actually second hand. Hardly driven. The first owner died shortly after he got it.”

  “I hope it isn’t the buidseachd,” she said. “I should go in and get the holy water. Wasn’t that what the old people used to do? Sprinkle holy water for luck. And put a little cross from Palm Sunday up on the sun visor.”

  And I felt a sudden welling up, looking at her there, listening to her as she teased. “Let’s celebrate,” I said. “Let me buy you dinner.”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Come on,” I said. “Enough of the hot tub. It’ll just wrinkle you up anyway.”

  She laughed. “Let me get my coat.”

  ——

  Driving through that early winter evening, the western sky in flames, low pink clouds hovering above a claret sea, I felt balanced in a way that had become unfamiliar. Anna exorcised, Caddy beside me in a red truck. Maybe it was just a moment, but I wasn’t going to quibble.

  I hadn’t forgotten Strickland but my anger was gone, though God knows I now hoped the courts would nail him and throw him back into the shark tank where he belonged. That old cliché was running through my mind. “What goes around, comes around.”

  As if she were following my mental conversation, Caddy said, “I had a call today from the prosecution. The preliminary hearing starts next week. I’ll be testifying.”

  I said, “It’ll be good for you, a kind of closure if there is such a thing.”

  “I’m not looking forward to rehashing a lot of stuff I’m trying to put behind me.”

  “I can see that. But it’s important that they hear from you.”

  She didn’t respond. I glanced in her direction but she was staring out the side window at the darkening sea.

  It was mid-week and the restaurant was quiet. As we passed an older c
ouple, the woman reached out and caught Caddy’s hand. Caddy introduced me—“My friend, Tony Breau,” she said. The name sounded strange coming from her.

  Distant relatives of Jack, she explained, after we sat down. Then she whispered, “I almost said MacMillan.”

  I said I thought Jack was from away. Yes, she said, but he had roots here too. She seemed subdued. I suggested a glass of wine while we explored the menu. She smiled and I ordered.

  As she sipped her wine she picked at the tablecloth with a long fingernail that was painted silver. Finally she said, “There’s word going around that both sides have approached you to testify and you’ve said no to everybody.”

  “You have good sources,” I said.

  “It’s true, then.”

  “Yes, I’m staying out of it.”

  She looked away, nodded slowly.

  “I’m not interested in helping Strickland’s case. And for reasons I don’t particularly want to go into, I don’t think I could be of much assistance to the Crown.”

  “I see.” She took another sip of wine. “We don’t have to talk about it. Actually we shouldn’t.”

  But I had to tell her. “Strickland is going out on a limb. He wants to avoid a trial because he says he’d be at great risk in the prison system. He’s considered a rat in that world. And that kind of reputation can get you killed.”

  “A rat,” she said, nodding. “I saw something on television.”

  “It’s the lowest form of life in prison,” I said.

  “Well.” She made an unsympathetic face. “He’s made a trial inevitable, hasn’t he?”

  “Maybe not,” I said. “Not if the charges get thrown out at the preliminary.”

  “How could that happen?” Her expression was dismayed.

  “Caddy. They admitted to me … the Crown admitted to me that the evidence is thin.”

  She looked away, nodding. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised if he wiggles out of it.” Then she studied my face for a while, as if I were an interesting stranger. “I sometimes forget that you come from another world. I don’t mean that to sound …”

  “It’s true,” I said. “It’s another world. A hard, hard world.”

  “And maybe he belongs there …”

  I examined the tablecloth, struggling to hold on to her, to stop this drift. Then she reached across, squeezed my hand, held it. “Poor Tony,” she said. “I’m glad you aren’t in that world anymore.”

  I just nodded.

  “Tell me. What would happen to him …?”

  “Probably nothing,” I said. “There would be a hundred ways to protect him.”

  “And why can’t you just say that?”

  “Caddy, his lawyer could make an awful mess of my credibility. Strickland knows as much about me as I know about him.”

  “What could he possibly know that would damage your credibility?”

  “Strickland had an affair with my wife.” It was out, inadvertently, the moment suddenly derailed by shock.

  “My God.” She withdrew her hand. In the silence that followed, the restaurant seemed to have become very busy. People at other tables laughing, clinking cutlery and glasses, background music, waiters enumerating specials. Caddy’s eyes now fixed on me, once again the stranger.

  “How could you possibly know something like that?”

  I laughed. “Because he told me.”

  “He told you? And you believed him?”

  I nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

  “Why would he tell you?”

  “It gives him power. If I’m not going to help him, I’ll know the risk of doing damage to his case.”

  “How could he have an affair with Anna when he was a prisoner?”

  “He was in a place where her father was the warden. Anna was there a lot, visiting her parents, inmates who were clients. I told you she’s a lawyer. She was also helping Strickland with some courses, to improve his education.” I laughed.

  “How …?”

  “I introduced them.”

  Once again she slipped her hand over mine, squeezed my fingers.

  “So they’d drag that out in court and I’d come off as just some guy with a personal grudge.”

  “Poor Tony. What a world.”

  “And he’s indicated that he knows some other things related to my work. I can only assume some of the information came from her. In which case he probably knows a lot, especially about a particular situation that became one of the reasons for my retirement. So.”

  I called the waiter. “Double Scotch, water on the side. You? Another glass of wine?”

  She shook her head. “I often wondered why you retired so young, Tony. In every way, still in your prime.”

  “Maybe that’s what it looks like.”

  “You’re a good man, Tony. You were a good man when the rest of us were only children. I always thought that.”

  “You might not think that if Strickland got his yap going.”

  “Among other things, he’s a liar and everybody knows it.”

  “And what would you say if he had proof that I’m as bad as he is, causing death by negligence. Or worse—cowardice.”

  “I wouldn’t believe a word of it, not coming from anybody.”

  I studied her face and the soft shadows tracing lines left there by time and sorrow, but in her searching eyes, there was no shadow, no trace of doubt. I forced myself to smile.

  “Have you given any thought to what we’re going to eat?”

  Sitting outside her place, truck engine running, Caddy said: “I’d ask you in for tea but it’s getting late.” I examined her face, listened to her tone of voice for some lingering traces of disappointment or embarrassment from my disclosures or from the last time I’d been in her house, the stormy night we shared her bed.

  “Thanks anyway,” I said. “I really should get home. And of course there’s my guest.”

  For an instant she seemed confused, but then she smiled. “Ah yes. After the court stuff, I’ll take him off your hands.”

  “He’s no trouble at all,” I said. “He’s good company.”

  “You’ll be going to the court yourself, I’m sure.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I wasn’t really planning to.” The thought of watching Strickland posturing, manipulating, left me cold. “To tell you the truth the sight of Strickland would be a bit more than I can deal with just now.”

  “I know what you mean.” She continued to sit thoughtfully on the far side of the truck. “I was hoping, though, that you’d be there. It would be good to see you there.”

  I silently cursed the console between us, the ridiculous cup holders, four of them it seemed.

  “Do you know when you’ll be on?”

  “They’ve set aside three days,” she said. “He told me I’ll probably be on the second day, after a policeman and a pathologist and some others. Probably the afternoon sometime.”

  “What day?”

  “Next Thursday, the thirteenth.”

  “I’ll come and get you at noon and we’ll go together.”

  “Ah no, Tony, I wouldn’t … I didn’t mean you have to babysit me.”

  “Caddy, if you want me there, I’ll be there.”

  I woke to a racket the next morning. I’d slept in and it was nearly ten o’clock. The dog was barking and the phone was ringing by the bedside. I half-expected Caddy. I picked it up, struggled to sound cheerful. But there was a computerized female voice on the other end: “You have a collect call from a correctional institution.” And then his voice, full of confidence: “Dwayne Strickland.”

  “If you wish to accept the call,” the computer said, “say ‘yes.’ If not, you may hang up now.”

  I put the receiver down slowly, firmly.

  “Hey, Mr. Breau,” the inmate said. He was smiling as if we were old acquaintances. We were on Lower E range. There were two other inmates nearby but too far distant to overhear. He was speaking softly. The name printed on his shirt didn’t mean anyt
hing to me. Dewolf. “I just came from Warkworth. Somebody there asked me to give you a message.” I was confused.

  “Strickland?” I said.

  “No,” he said. “Steele.”

  I said: “Steele?”

  “You’re Tony Breau?”

  “Yes.”

  “Steele said you also go by Wentworth.”

  “Wentworth? You must have the wrong guy.”

  “No. He said it was your nickname among the coppers, eh, Wentworth. Anyway, he says hello … hopes you’re well. Says, take care of yourself.”

  “Wentworth?” I asked in the lunchroom. “That name mean anything to anybody?”

  There was an old guard there, memory going back to the fifties. He said: “What about him?” And I said: “Someone brought his name up.” And the old guy said, “Only Wentworth I ever heard of was a guard here back in the early sixties. He was making his rounds one night, somebody shanked him in one of the toilets. No witnesses and nobody ever figured out a motive. Eventually there was a suspect, based on information from another inmate. But no proof. Possibly a contract job. Somebody with a beef against poor Wentworth put out a hit on him. Not hard to do in a place like this. Some of these fuckers would kill you for a cuppa coffee.”

  12.

  I remember it was late on a Friday afternoon and I was preparing for an early weekend exit. I was actually standing, stuffing a briefcase, when the door opened and two officers from institutional security walked in.

  “Got a minute?”

  I sat down. They sat opposite me. I didn’t know them well but remembered one of them from the Pittman investigation. He was the larger of the two, with a shaved head. “You know some con by the name of Dewolf?”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s been talking about you.”

  “So what’s Dewolf been saying?”

  The smaller of the two looked at the floor for a moment, then straight at me. “What do you know about him?”

  “Not much,” I said. “Sex offender. Came here a while back from Warkworth. Out of the blue he made some comments to me that could have been a threat.”