Punishment

by Linden MacIntyre

  “I’ll leave it up to them.”

  “Fair enough. But before you go I want to show you something.” He was rummaging in the top drawer of the desk. “You know, Tony, cops aren’t all stupid and the fellas here, these young Mounties, they’ve done a pretty good investigation. They haven’t talked to you yet?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “They’ll get around to it. Now sit down. Sit down. Just for a minute.”

  I sat in the chair nearest the door.

  “Remember the night, the little confrontation in the yard here? Well they actually tracked down the young fella who was with Strickland—maybe you don’t remember him, he kind of slipped away in the panic. But he was telling them how hot things got between you and Dwayne. He didn’t hear everything so they asked me and I was able to confirm that Strickland called you some pretty nasty things, including ‘a pig.’ ”

  He was shaking his head now. “If I had a dollar for every time I heard that word. And how you said something about somebody putting a bullet in Strickland’s ass. You remember as well as I do, I’m sure.”

  “And did you tell them that it was you carrying the gun, on the verge of shooting him? Did you remember that part?”

  “Gun? What gun are you talking about? Are you trying to say you saw a gun?”

  “This is bullshit, Neil. You know it as well as I do.”

  “I’m just sayin’. But here’s the thing. This dog business never entered the picture, as far as the cops are concerned. But it’s true. You were pretty upset about what happened to that dog. Very upset.”

  And from the desk drawer he removed and held up a yellow piece of paper. “And this here is proof of just how upset you were, Tony. You’re gonna have to tell them that you found this under the wiper on your truck. Clear evidence for you of who killed your dog.” He shook his head slowly, sadly. “Then you head for Strickland’s with the dead dog and the evidence and you break in and leave this on his kitchen table. But that’s not enough. Oh no. Tony’s so upset about his dog that he writes a little love note on the bottom—a threat. A clear, unmistakable threat. And then … and then, you fucking signed it.”

  The expression on his face was one of mockery and pity and contempt. He slapped his forehead in mock disbelief, and slid the paper back in the drawer.

  “How did you get that?”

  “Huh?” He was through with me, his mind already elsewhere. He seemed weary. “Never mind how I got it. But you know as well as I do, Tony, I can’t give it to you. It’s evidence. And as a policeman myself I’m sworn and trained to protect evidence by all means possible.”

  We both stood then and stared at each other, everything that connected us—history, community, the law—now replaced by a single common memory that made us hostages to each other.

  “I have to ask you something, Neil.”

  “Fire away.”

  “You mentioned my wife. Anna. And Strickland. Where did you hear about that, Neil?”

  “Don’t you worry about that, Tony. That’s between us. We can imagine what the cops would do with that but, trust me, some things are just too personal.”

  “The question was,” I said, struggling for calm, “where did you hear about that?”

  He put a gentle hand on my elbow, I brushed the hand away. “I’m just curious, how did you connect with Graham? How did you guys end up talking about Anna?”

  He straightened up, seemed genuinely confused. “Graham who?”

  “You know who,” I said.

  Now he was perplexed. Studied the floor for a moment. “You’re away a head of me, Tony. I don’t have a fuckin clue what you’re talking about.” He caught my elbow again, this time in a grip. “I don’t want to seem unfriendly, Tony, but I’m gonna have to ask you to leave.”

  And he ushered me out of his little office, back through the living room, down a hallway toward the door.

  Passing the now silent kitchen, lit only by a vent light above the stove, I glanced in and saw Hannah standing there in the semi-darkness. She was stone still, holding a dishtowel to her face, concealing her expression or maybe wiping something from her cheek.

  19.

  I needed two days to decide. And it gives me some satisfaction that for those two days I denied myself the comfort, inspiration, stimulation—all the myriad promises—of alcohol. I busied myself around my house. I cleaned. I stored things that didn’t have immediately obvious usefulness. I don’t think I turned on a radio or the television and I avoided the store. It doesn’t diminish the effect of this scene to admit that I was hoping to hear the ringing of the telephone and that I wanted it to be Caddy. But the phone was as silent as the table it sat on.

  All the while, my mind processed the images and sensations and potential ramifications of all that had happened to me in the previous month. By late on day two I was reasonably certain what I had to do.

  ——

  For a moment I wasn’t sure that she would invite me in when she saw me on her deck. Her face was expressionless. Then she nodded.

  “I was about to make a cup of tea,” she said.

  I sat. I did not presume to remove my coat. “That would be nice.” I sensed her uneasiness. I had caught her by surprise and I felt a little bit sorry for her. “I won’t stay long,” I said.

  She shrugged, leaned back against the counter to await the kettle.

  “You said the other day, ‘We’re all in this together.’ I want to understand what you meant by that.”

  “It isn’t complicated, we’re community. We’re …”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  We were both startled to silence by my tone.

  “I’m sorry,” I said quickly. I stood up and paced, calm resolve crumbling. “I’m starting to hate that word. ‘Community.’ It’s turning into an excuse for everything from mediocrity to corruption.”

  “Sit, Tony,” she said. “Just sit.”

  She unplugged the kettle and fetched a bottle. It was a fifteen-year-old single malt, unopened. She placed it on the table, returned to the cupboard and found two small glasses. She sat so that we had only the corner of the table between us. She placed her hand on my thigh and squeezed gently. Then she took the bottle, broke the seal and struggled with the cork.

  “I found this the other day, after you left. It was with Jack’s stuff. A gift from some old friend, or customer when he had his own business. Poor Jack wasn’t much for Scotch. Rum or rye would have been Jack’s choice.” There was a squeak and a hollow thunk as the cork pulled free.

  “You don’t have to,” I said. “Not for my sake.”

  She smiled. “I think Jack would have loved to see you have a sip of this. You two would have got along.”

  “I’d like to have known Jack,” I managed to say.

  “Yes. You’re alike, you two.” And she poured carefully into the small glasses, then stared deeply into my eyes. “Maybe that’s why I loved Jack.” She put the bottle down and slowly put the cork back in, never breaking eye contact.

  And somehow I knew that the special bottle and the heartfelt disclosure were signals that broken strands of time were about to be rejoined, if only for a moment. She looked down at her glass.

  “I read somewhere that you aren’t supposed to mix this with anything. Though Jack said once that out west they like to put Coke in it.” She swirled her glass, a forearm resting between us on the table. In the late afternoon sunshine, the soft fuzz on her arm seemed to shimmer golden. “Then he’d say, ‘Out west, they’ll drink anything.’ Did you know they put raw eggs in beer out west?”

  I smiled at her and we sipped quietly until the drinks were but small puddles in the bottom of our glasses.

  “That was another thing. The sense of humour. He was you to a T, my Jack was.” Then she stood.

  “Help yourself to another. I have to go and get something.” She put her coat on and went outside, heading toward the garage and disappearing through a side door.

  When she came back she remove
d her coat and sat where she had been. She was clutching something in her hand. “Do you remember that day in court when the lawyer asked me, ‘Have you or any member of your family ever used OxyContin for any medical reason?’ ”

  She drained the little glass and studied it for a moment. Then looked up. “And I said, ‘I can only speak for myself … No.’ ”

  I waited.

  “It was the truth. But there was something nagging at me the moment after I said it.” She splashed a bit more whiskey in both our glasses. “After Jack passed, I was tidying his workshop and I found this in a drawer.” She held up an empty plastic pill vial.

  “I thought nothing of it at the time. He was a construction worker. That work is hard on people, especially out west. Fort Mac, Fort Chip, always Fort something in the middle of nowhere and in the middle of their ferocious winters. And then, even when it’s warm, there’s the pollution and just the wear and tear on the body.” She smiled. “Jack was full of aches and pains, not that he ever complained.

  “Anyway, after I came back from court that day I went back to the workshop to see what this was, hoping like crazy that it was Tylenol 3 or something.” She handed the vial to me. “Tell me what you see written there. I don’t have my glasses.”

  I read: John T. Stewart, OXYCODONE x 80 @40mg, as required. May 28, 2000. And a doctor’s name.

  I handed it back. “So Jack was using OxyContin, from a doctor’s prescription, for perfectly legitimate reasons. You didn’t know that. It was an honest mistake on your part.”

  She was silent for what felt like a long time.

  “Is it really that simple?” she said at last. “Wasn’t I under some obligation to correct my mistake? To tell them that I was wrong, that in fact someone in the house had used OxyContin?”

  “It wouldn’t have changed anything.”

  “Tony—what if I told you that it was full of pills when I first found it, after Jack was in his grave. And it was empty when I went back to look, that day after court. And there was only one other person, ever, in that garage. After Jack died, she’d sit out there for hours, grieving. I thought.”

  There was no sound but the sudden hum of the refrigerator, the whir of car tires on the road outside.

  “So that’s what I meant, Tony. We’re all in this together.”

  Where do I go with this? I asked myself. She’s right. We’re all in it, all part of this crime. She reached for my glass. “Let me freshen that,” she said.

  I stood. “No thanks, Caddy.”

  I wanted to say something reassuring, to seal the compact. And I might have if it were only about Caddy and Tony. I wanted to reach back through time and finally seize the hand she never offered when I was innocent and warm and recklessly in love and needed it. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t get past that other factor, the brute instinctive pragmatism that Neil, and now dear Caddy, represented.

  Turning out of the last bend in the lane to my house I could see a car in front and I realized too late to stop that it was Neil’s. Goddamn. Adrenaline pumping and mind racing through a dozen reasons for his visit, none pleasant, I pulled up alongside the car. But it wasn’t Neil behind the wheel. It was Hannah. I tried to see past her, to the passenger seat. Nobody there. I climbed out of the truck cautiously, surveying the surroundings. No sign of him. Then I heard the whir of the electric window lowering.

  “I’m alone,” she said. “Will you get in?”

  I nodded and walked over to the car, slid in on the passenger side. Waited. “He’s home,” she said.

  “I see.”

  “He’s been in his bedroom pretty well since your visit. He doesn’t always show things … like feelings.” She looked away, out through her side window. “It’s lovely here,” she said. “And what a lovely little old house.”

  “You can come in …”

  “No. We can talk here.” And then she went silent, struggling, I could see. At last she smiled. “He came off the wagon shortly after you left.”

  “I’d forgotten about his wagon. It was a long fast this time.”

  “Right after you left he came into the kitchen and saw me there, asked what I was doing. Just cleaning up, I said. I asked if he’d offered you tea or a drink and he just grunted. Then he took a bottle from the cupboard and went to his room.” She added, “We have separate rooms.”

  She waited for a reaction from me, but I had none. I just nodded.

  “It’s been a very long time,” she said, “since we’ve been what you’d consider … married.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “There are worse things. I didn’t mind, I guess, until we moved here. But then he kind of disappeared into his own past—at least the pure, innocent part of his history that this place represents. And, of course, I’m not a part of that.”

  She pulled off a glove and studied the rings on her left hand. “It’s very lonely,” she said. “And it’s worse when people look at your rings and they say to themselves, ‘She must be okay, she’s got so-and-so.’ Isn’t that the way it is around here?”

  “Probably most places,” I said.

  She put the glove back on and I thought she was about to leave. But she opened her purse, peered inside for a moment, then extracted a folded, yellow sheet of paper. She handed it over.

  “I heard everything the other night. None of it surprised me. But I couldn’t stand the thought of him having this power over you, knowing how he’d drawn you into everything. He was just obsessed with that poor Strickland boy. You couldn’t talk about it. Strickland was worse than Saddam.” She laughed. “I bet if he could have got Cheney and the gang to come up here …” And she laughed again, then said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t make a joke of it.”

  I unfolded the paper, folded it again, handed it back. “You can’t do this,” I said. “He’ll know.”

  “It won’t matter. I’m leaving for the States in the morning. He doesn’t know it but I’m not coming back. I couldn’t survive another week here.”

  I put the paper in my pocket.

  “I’m really sorry it didn’t work out,” she said. “I’m sure there are lots of nice people here. I liked his idea of getting close to another couple like you and—what was her name?”

  “Caddy.”

  “She sounds Jewish.”

  “No.”

  “A lovely person though, I’ll bet.”

  “She is.”

  “Anyway.”

  I thought she was about to start the car engine and I was searching for the words, the words of sympathy, concern, regret, gratitude—something human. She sighed loudly.

  “How much do you know about what happened in Boston?”

  “He told me some.”

  “He told you about his partner, Donnie?”

  “Yes.”

  “And about how he shot somebody … and the big inquiry.”

  “Yes.”

  “Everything was going well at the inquiry until the lawyer for the criminal who Neil shot made it public that the only drug at the crime scene was a bag of cocaine in Donnie’s coat pocket. And that the drug was from the evidence vault. You know what I really think …?”

  She was shaking her head, tugging at the fingers of her gloves.

  “No, Hannah,” I said. “You don’t have to …” I reached across and touched her hand.

  “I never cared for Donnie,” she said. “It had nothing to do with his race. He was just one of those people who make you nervous.

  “Then the media made a big to-do about the fact that Donnie and Neil were business partners who owned the crack house where all the shooting happened. The reporters were saying Neil and Donnie wanted the dope dealers out of the house but it wasn’t enough just to evict them. They were going to plant drugs there and arrest them, which would get them all put back in prison. Later, Neil told the grand jury he knew nothing about the bag of cocaine that Donnie had with him. They believed him. But I didn’t. Not for a moment.”

  “How much of this did you know befo
re the inquiry and the media got hold of it?” I asked carefully.

  “I made it a point never to ask about his work. He just came and went.”

  I said, “He didn’t tell me the outcome—just that Donnie came out the bad guy.”

  “Donnie, God rest him, had the cocaine on him. And they proved that the bullet that killed the drug dealer came from Donnie’s gun. But Donnie was dead—there was a third guy they never found who shot Donnie then escaped out a window. Climbing out the window he managed to shoot Neil just as Neil was firing his shotgun at the other one. The one who lost his arm. You can imagine the story they made of that when the details started coming out. We love our violence when it’s happening to other people.”

  “Neil was never charged with anything.”

  “No, thank God. He could never have handled that.”

  “So he retired.”

  “They went easy on him. He got a good package, generous retirement terms. After all, he’ll wear that bullet in his back for the rest of his days and it could cause serious problems at any time. The real problem though was that guy with the arm shot off. He was a brother of the dead drug dealer. Intelligence kept picking up street talk that there was a contract out on Neil and just about everybody connected to him. It just got too hard on the nerves. So we moved here. Even if they thought of looking here, they wouldn’t bother.”

  “Punishment enough, living here.” I laughed.

  “Exactly.”

  Down at the bottom of the field I could see the sad pile of stone but beyond it there was sunshine glinting on the endless blue. I realized she was watching me.

  “I like you, Tony.” She smiled broadly. “You’re easy to talk to. Maybe you’re Jewish … you never know, being adopted.”

  I laughed. “At one time I checked. I’m not.”

  “Too bad. One of my favourite Jews in the whole world is a Tony. Tell me you’ve been watching him on all those terrible television shows about Iraq. Tony Judt? The historian. He’s the only one who ever made any sense, insisting that invading Iraq was a huge, huge mistake we’ll have to live with all our lives. You weren’t impressed by him?”

  “Can’t say I recall.”