Crimes Against My Brother

by David Adams Richards

  So now our story turns slowly toward this money.

  One day in 1975, shortly after that wedding I attended, Annette awoke and went to see Joyce Fitzroy because Lonnie Sullivan had asked her to. “Find out what he needs,” Sullivan told her the night before, “and come back and let me know. I want to help him. So many people have abused that poor old man, Annette—and you know it for a fact!”

  Lonnie often said “you know it for a fact” to those who did not know it for a fact. He looked at her strangely, seriously, as if trying to impart some message without saying exactly what it was.

  She arrived at the old shack that Fitzroy lived in, and sat on a chair in the centre of the room. The walls had been peeled down to nothing, the stovepipe was black and corroded, and the windows were so thick with grime it was hard to see through them.

  She asked Joyce if she could make him tea. He said no. She asked him if he wanted something to eat. Again he said he did not. She sighed and nodded and tried to tell a joke, although she could never seem to tell them right. She fumbled with her hands, then filed her fingernails for something to do. She watched as the flies alighted on the oilcloth table and got caught in a flycatcher hanging from the middle of the ceiling. Finally, after the old man started to fall asleep, she ran back and reported all this to Lonnie.

  “Did you find out where the money was? Did you get near it at all?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “No.”

  “I thought that’s what I sent you there for.” Lonnie glared at her, as if she was suddenly the worst person on earth. He raised his hand to strike her. She fell back terrified, and he put his arm down. He smiled slightly and whispered, “I guess I can’t trust you—I thought I could.” And sweat broke out on his face.

  They were alone in the office and Annette felt confused and frightened. For the first time, she saw a different Lonnie Sullivan from the one she knew: he had never told her what he’d wanted, and yet was furious she did not deliver what he had not asked for. She stumbled backward and tried to smile.

  He lit a cigar and puffed away on it, then went outside and sat alone. He refused to speak to her the rest of the day and finally she sat at the checkboard, tears running down her cheeks.

  “I’m sorry,” she kept saying, “I’m sorry, Uncle Lonnie—I am!”

  Finally he came in, and stood over her as she wiped tears away with her hands.

  “Next time I ask you to do something—you will do it,” he told her. “That old man is going to burn his house down some night by accident—I want to take that money and make sure it’s safe for him. He has nobody but me—and you know that for a fact.”

  There was a list of who knew and who did not know about Fitzroy’s money. This list was made up after the fact, when things became serious.

  Lonnie knew Fitzroy had money.

  Annette knew it too.

  Harold knew about it, and most everyone assumed Ian knew of it as well—for him not to have known would be peculiar. Still, it is my contention that Ian was ignorant of it. That is, I remembered him from long ago, and I told my students later on that, yes, this idea of who knew about the money was instrumental to understanding all other things concerning these blood brothers.

  Of course Evan knew about the money because he was the boy who tried to take care of Joyce Fitzroy when he went on his three- or four-day drunks; he was the one who tried his hardest to get the old man to take his pills. And one time, Joyce had shown the money to Evan, nodding in the prepossessing way only a drunk can.

  Joyce told Evan he had no use for the money and was going to give it all away.

  “You think I care for money? Do you want it? Here, take it—now is your chance, you won’t get a better one! Take it now! Or never ask me for it no more!” Joyce smiled at him, his beard grey stubble and his face deep red, a Copenhagen snuffbox in his pocket.

  Evan told Joyce not to be so foolish and helped him put the money away. The thought of the offer was both repugnant and enthralling to him. He went home and thought on it. He sat on the chair in his bedroom, already broad shouldered, committed, and grimly focused on doing something special with his life. Should he have taken the money, or no? This was a question to plague him for years to come. But no, he could not take it from a drunk and remain a man.

  During this time, Ian Preston’s mother was dying in a room alone at the hospital downriver. Ian had not been close to her in the last few years. He had tried to be someone else and had developed a kind of officious and regimental attitude. He was snobbish toward her, just as people had been to her most of her life. Often she waited, in that last year of her life, on the couch in her small living room, hoping that he would visit while the clock ticked away the afternoon. She would sometimes get up and busy herself, but always come back, look at the clock and think: Well, there is still time for him to visit.

  And now, of course, as with so much in life, it was too late.

  Ian went to the hospital to be with her. He sat in the chair and listened to her breathe and watched the monitor; the instruments set up to keep her living were seemingly too advanced for such a small heartbreaking life, and the beeping of machines contrasted with such a frail body.

  She was being given liquid and nothing else now. Ian would look at the orange juice in the cup, the small straw, and feel embittered and depressed. He wanted to take her suffering away but could not. He even hoped that this transference of suffering might happen if he closed his eyes and thought hard enough. But it did not.

  Then a priest was in the room, looking at his notes to see who it was he was visiting, and accommodating Ian with a false smile. Ian walked over to the window and looked down at the parking lot while the priest went to the bed, made the sign of the cross on his mother’s forehead, blessed himself and prayed.

  The priest then came over to Ian; all of a sudden he was at his neck, whispering. He said that if Ian prayed, he might be able to alleviate some of his trouble. And the feeling of the man’s breath on Ian’s neck infuriated him. He turned to look at the man—this was the same priest who had hit him some years before and made a remark about his family. It was a final insult that he was here simpering like a weed, asking him to pray. No, no, of course—the man would never dare to hit him now. He would be too cowardly to do it now; Ian was not a child of twelve now.

  “You will find it less difficult if you pray,” Father LeBlanc said.

  “Lies,” Ian whispered. “Do not speak to me again!”

  “What?”

  “Where were you when we were trying to buy food—except drinking booze with old Jim Chapman, and sniggering at people on the Bonny Joyce?” The worst of it was, this was true. But what was truer was that this feeling of outrage and this outburst came because Ian wanted to exaggerate and perform. And when he said all this, his mother was lying on the white bed, the sheets whiter than any she had had the pleasure of lying on before, with dark rapid shadows playing across her face. The bed was tilted forward so she could breathe better, and her eyes opened suddenly as if she had recognized Ian’s voice, and she tried to shake her head, to tell him to stop. But even in looking at her and seeing her distress over what he was saying, he couldn’t stop.

  “Just a Hail Mary,” the priest said kindly.

  Ian raised his fist, ready to strike the man, thought better of it and left the room.

  He sat alone for the longest time that evening, tears running down his cheeks. Half were for his mother, his guilt over abandoning her, his belief that he was better than she; and half were out of anger with the priest, who had gone away now.

  Later in the evening, Evan came to sit with him. Neither of them knew where Harold was. Evan was silent about one thing—what Harold had asked him two days before: would it be right to steal Ian’s girl? That is, he was as plagued by Annette’s beauty as Ian himself. And Evan had decided he must stay out of it. But he knew this was the reason Harold did not come to the hospital.

  “Never you mi
nd, he must be busy,” Ian said. “He wouldn’t not come unless he was in some bind.”

  The next evening, after Ian’s mother had died, both Harold and Evan went to Ian’s house, and they stuck by his side until the funeral was over. Harold and Evan did not know what to do or say, but they were there. Ian looked at the small living room, the TV that almost never worked, the knickknacks his mother had collected at fairs and picnics, and he picked up a chair and calmly threw it though the front window.

  When he woke the next morning, the window had been repaired by Harold Dew, who had walked to Clare’s Longing to get a new one.

  During the funeral, Harold was preoccupied with one thing: how could he betray Ian and not have it looked upon as betrayal? Ian had asked Annette to stand in line with him at the funeral parlour, and Annette did so because she felt it made her someone special. This was all well and fine for Annette until she actually saw the body of the little woman, cold and utterly artificial, and yet with a look of grave warning and anger that seemed to be directed at Annette herself. Afterwards she could not go into the parlour again.

  Harold stood outside the funeral parlour in the strong wind, hoping to talk to Annette, now and then picking up the twigs that had fallen from trees and tossing them high into the air. He was thinking of one thing: how would his life be without her? And: If Ian thought enough of Annette to ask her to stand with him in line at his mother’s funeral, what was he, Harold, to do? How could he change this in his favour without hurting his blood brother?

  Only if she was not Ian’s girl would he feel justified in doing this. But as we know, there are ways to convince yourself that the direction you want to go in is the direction you must take.

  Is she his girl or what? Harold asked himself, walking alone that night toward Clare’s Longing. No, he had been told by Lonnie yesterday afternoon, Annette was no one’s girl. Harold had said nothing. Still, if she was no one’s girl, that certainly meant she was not Ian’s.

  But there was something else he thought about on the way to Clare’s Longing. Harold believed his mother, Goldie Dew, was in Fitzroy’s will and would someday claim the old man’s money. For Goldie had come into their house one day most excited, and said that Fitzroy had exclaimed, “You may as well have it—I don’t want it. I will give it all to you after I go—just use enough of it to pay for my funeral, and the rest is yours.”

  This had been said when Harold was only fourteen, but he had remembered it ever since. And now, the more he thought of it, the more he was certain that this money would someday be his.

  But Joyce Fitzroy had said this to a dozen others when he was drunk—others who visited his little clapboard structure off the beaten road. Fitzroy liked saying it, and in fact, there was a bit of a taunt in it—even more of a taunt than one might first imagine. He knew very well why certain people visited him. And he always liked them to assume he didn’t know. Then, after they left, he would spit his snuff into the hot stove and look with disdain at their departing snow-draped figures.

  So Harold had begun to brag about his mother’s place in Fitzroy’s will. He’d done it in front of Lonnie one afternoon, just before the funeral, saying that someday he would be as rich as Lonnie Sullivan.

  Lonnie had nodded and said, “You might be richer, for sure.” But he was definitely bothered by this.

  The day after Mrs. Preston’s funeral, Lonnie spoke to Annette about it. “What are you doing with that pipsqueak Ian? Harold is the one who will get the money—it would be a shame to see you spend your life in some shack.”

  “I don’t care about that,” she said.

  “It’s not up to me—but if you don’t, you are stupid. That’s hundreds of thousands.”

  Annette was flustered and said nothing, and looked ashamed.

  It was true that Joyce Fitzroy’s money was thought to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. And Lonnie added more to the sum the more he spoke about it. During this time it obsessed him so much he was only sleeping three or four hours a night.

  “I want you to find out everything, and tell me what you find out. I don’t want any mistakes—like last time,” he said. And when she looked at him apologetically, he shrugged.

  A week after the funeral, Annette heard Harold talking about money at the horse haul in Lower Newcastle. He was not talking about Joyce Fitzroy’s money, but about twenty dollars he had won playing horseshoes that day. Still, she tried to get closer to see what it was he was speaking about, so that Lonnie would be pleased. She went around by the back of the large tent and came up behind him to listen. He spoke loudly and brazenly. And suddenly, turning his head, he saw she was there—only ten feet from him!

  That was the day, well recorded here, when Mr. Laws’s Belgians got hyped on rum and tea and were crazy in the eyes. The handlers had a hard time bringing the team back to the pole to hook the heavy load, and most of the women and more than half of the men stood well back. As Annette herself said, she was scared “of them awful horses.” She did not say this to bring attention to herself—but it did bring attention.

  “What are ya scared off? Stick with me, for I’m scared of nothing.” Harold laughed, walking over to stand close to her.

  The horses’ great hooves pranced in the dirt, their eyes looked strange and startled, and their massive backs rippled as they were forced into place; and all the men around them looked ordinary—even, somehow, fragile. Annette again said she was frightened of those awful horses, and so Harold put his arm about her, and she stood where she was, Harold with his large arm hugging her.

  Ian saw this. He and Sydney Henderson were the only two brave enough to hook. Hooking a team of horses to a giant slab of wood, when the team is trained to bolt as soon as the clamp is set, is as dangerous a job as one can have. By hooking, both boys were risking injury or death to win fifteen dollars.

  Harold knows she is my girl, Ian thought, looking over at Annette’s wilful and beautiful and taunting face. But he was so upset he almost did not get out of the way of the sled when the horses lunged. Afterwards, he went to the tent and sat in his place, waiting for Annette to come have dinner with him. He held the money he’d won in his hand, hoping to pay for her dinner. But she did not come. He could not eat, and when he left the tent, one of the horses had gone down with a heart attack and was lying on its side in the dirt, a half-metre away from the tonnes of wood it had been forced to haul—the tonnes of wood Ian had hooked on.

  Ian looked up at the sky and cursed—but he did not know if he was cursing Harold or God. He walked all the way back to Bonny Joyce, stopping every little while to wait for Annette. The day was empty and the wind had turned cold.

  Later, when he went looking for her down at Bobbi’s Dairy Bar, he heard from Mat Pit that she had left the horse haul to go swimming with Harold at Arron Falls.

  Over the next few weeks, as warm rain began to spit down, Harold ignored Ian, not saying hello when he met him on the long lane by the piles and bypassing him as he walked to Annette Brideau’s house.

  Ian was struck dumb by this. But Harold, one evening, said to him, “All is fair in love and war.”

  Then Ian walked to Annette’s little cottage with flowers, trying to win her back. But she ran into the house and her father told him to go away. After a few days of Ian staying away, Annette asked Lonnie what to do.

  “Do you want to see if he will still follow you about, if you still have some control over him? Then write him a little note,” Lonnie said, chuckling at all of it. To him, it was innocent fun—that is, he had these youngsters fighting and upset, and he loved the spectacle. So Annette wrote to Ian, with this line: “Meet me now—I will explain everything to you, but you have to come at once to Fallon’s Brook.”

  Ian ran there, up past Fanny Groat’s on the Gum Road, past old Harold Tucker’s and the stretch of Arron, and into the great fields beyond. He got to Fallon at supper hour, covered in muck and brine, filled with the scope of Annette’s majesty, her imperial beauty, her charm that era
sed all thoughts except that he would die for her—at once. And yet, she wasn’t there. And the day darkened little by little in the stifling afterhours. It became still in the after-supper hours and full of the scent of rain, and then the low clouds tormented the bushes.

  He thought there must be some mistake—or perhaps she had hurt herself and was lost. He finally walked down the Gum Road, and around eight o’clock suddenly heard tittering like that of little blond birds at the edge of the highway, near old Jim Chapman’s grader. It was Annette—and two other girls—who had come to watch.

  “There he is,” they were whispering, “there he is.”

  Then Annette teased Ian when he ran down to see her swimming at the wharf. “I wouldn’t go out with you if you were the last man on the river—even if you owned the river, would I? If they said, ‘Oh my, that Ian Preston, that pipsqueak won the entire river,’ I’d say, ‘He is still a pipsqueak to me.’ ”

  She knew she was being cruel but could not help it. It seemed like so much fun for everyone. Lonnie was pleased with her again, and everyone seemed to like her.

  Harold did not know about Annette’s game playing or tormenting, but who knows if it would have mattered if he had. Lonnie knew, and enjoyed it. So he went on blindly, this Ian Preston, scratching himself against the surface of Annette’s soul, unable to understand or wound—and he certainly wanted to wound them all. But how can you wound someone else when you are heartsick?

  We know how love tormented the lover—but must also realize how much the torment pleased the beloved. Annette said she did not wish Ian to follow her but was pleased when he did—and more pleased when her friends had to tell him to leave her alone. And so Ian did leave her alone. He went back to the small house on Swill Road and sat on the porch staring out, almost in madness, at the trees. He wandered through them from Badden Brook all the way down to where Little Hackett flowed into Glidden’s Pool—and there he hid.