“So if Sullivan allows it, you could do it?”
“Yes, I could do it,” Evan said. “I could do the exact same kind of work. But I tell you this, I’ve had my full of falling and do not wish to again!”
“Then pray,” the priest said, “that you do not.”
Evan shrugged. Praying was for women and children and he told the priest this. So the priest said, “Well, maybe—but then again you could light one candle for Molly and Jamie.”
“I don’t know about that,” Evan said.
“Well, they were the reason I thought of you on the way to Doan’s—because tonight there was a mass said in their honour.”
“In their honour—who requested that?” Evan asked.
The priest looked at him, and mentioned the man, Leonard, whom Molly had played horseshoes with all those years ago—the man Molly had seen at the church picnics Evan did not go to; the man who had liked her, and who she too had liked, and who’d brought her home to Evan when she was not in her right mind.
“He often requests a mass for Molly and your son. Leonard Savoy—do you know him? He did so tonight on the anniversary of your child’s birthday. He will do one on Molly’s birthday as well.”
Evan said nothing. He went down the aisle and did not look at the saints assembled, or the quiet face of the Virgin, as he put a coin in the box and lit a wick.
He left in the dark and began to walk toward Lonnie Sullivan’s. He travelled toward the highway, wearing his old torn parka. He himself had ridiculed church every chance he got before. He did so until after the child died.
Now it was snowing, and as he thought about the steeple and how to right it, and what he might use to support it, he forgot completely about the antifreeze and about how he’d believed he wanted to die.
Harold Dew was at Clare’s Longing, some seven miles to the south, looking at the same stars before the mist drowned them and the sleet started. He had stayed out of Evan’s way for years. But that did not relieve him from pain. Nor did it stop him from inflicting pain on himself. Why was this? For if he took revenge on Evan’s family—though he said he did not take revenge intentionally—why then did he cringe each time he thought of little James and Molly and the death of the two? Why did he get drunk when he was forced to think of it coming unto Christmas, and get into a fight where he fought, and couldn’t win against, both Mat Pit and the Sheppard boys? And why had he done so—because they had made light of Sydney Henderson? He did not know Sydney that well, and so it was not rational—and though he had called on Ripp VanderTipp, who he had been drinking with, to help him, Ripp left by the back door, for he was terrified of Mat Pit, and so Harold fought the three men by himself. And why was that?
Now he too had to experience the bane of men who worked with their strength: an injured back that bothered him when the damp weather came. Like Ian and Evan, he believed Lonnie Sullivan was the cause of his trouble. But if truth be known, Lonnie had really done nothing to them; for each of them in their own way had had many opportunities to escape, to say no. And yet, now each of them was plagued by this man—and each of them, while disbelieving in the Divine, had in fact attributed much divinity to this man who they all secretly feared.
In fact, Harold was planning to rob Lonnie Sullivan that night. He had worked on the idea for ten months. To get the pregnancy test—and get his child back. Why this particular night he did not know, but it suddenly came to him, when he woke that day, that this must be the night.
If it was true, the pregnancy test must be hidden there somewhere. For every paper Lonnie had, he kept. And Harold believed he knew where it was: in the workbench drawer, which had a hidden back and where Lonnie kept the notes in which he skewered people’s lives. Lonnie had something on everyone—on widows he impregnated thirty years before. So the pregnancy test would be there too. At some points in his reveries Harold thought he would take it—and he would demand thirty thousand from Annette. At times he believed he would demand a blood test and take the boy from them, and rename the child Glen!
But at other times he believed in his heart he would take the pregnancy test and hand it to her and say: “Burn this and be done with it. I knows how yer friends have used you—and they aren’t your friends.” And he would turn and walk away, and start a new life in the north—the same dream Evan had had, and one that Ian too had entertained.
The same night, and at about the same time Young met the priest, Harold left his house and walked over old Ski-Doo trails that he had helped open, and through the dark of Arron Brook, where the wind always whistled like a mournful cow in heat, toward where the old Jameson mill still half stood, a conglomeration of rusted half walls and withered sluices jammed and bolted and empty.
On the way he passed Lonnie’s house, and it was dark, the old truck in the yard—a small yard with a fence. So Lonnie was asleep.
He would confront Annette—in fact, he could not help thinking that this would make him even. Only then would he be happy.
But would he be? That is, happy? For even if he did this, he would still in some way love her—and need her to love him.
Still, robbing the shed would be easy. First, because no one would suspect he’d walked nine miles to do it; and second, even if the back was locked he knew how to get in, since he had been there a thousand times since he was a child. Third, he felt this was his due for how Lonnie had treated him. After Lonnie bragged to him about the test and how he had used the woman, he’d recanted and said that what he told him wasn’t really true. That there was no pregnancy test at all.
Harold remembered he’d kept staring at Lonnie as he ate a poached egg—and Lonnie wouldn’t look his way, but mumbled something, and sighed as he looked at his egg.
Therefore he decided Liam was his child.
He finally came to Glidden’s Hill and moved along the alder bushes at the side of the field, with the hail and snow falling down upon him, and saw one light on at the shed’s back entrance. He opened the back door and went inside. When he went inside, the room was dark. There was no sound and so he snapped on the light.
He began to open small drawers, not caring much about the noise, for Lonnie’s house was far on the other side of the road, well over a mile away. He knew there were two false compartments at the rear of the drawers and he was trying to find them. But as he took out the drawers, nothing was there except an old pay sheet from 1982 and a bulletin from the Catholic Church, which said: “At this time of Lent please fast, give up worldly desires in order to come closer to God.”
Ten minutes passed.
Then twelve minutes.
It was snowing; the little light was still on. Harold left very much the same way, but very quickly.
Then there was silence.
The door was left opened—a light shone on the snow.
Lonnie Sullivan lay on the floor of the shed with his skull bashed in.
Harold was holding the large industrial wrench in his right hand. He had returned everything to its place, and carried well over fifteen thousand dollars in his pocket.
Dawn came slowly over the black trees. The snowstorm stopped. All was quiet in Clare’s Longing.
Harold hid the wrench under a plank in his attic, where it would remain for some time. He had found fifteen thousand dollars in a manila envelope stuffed at the back of that drawer, along with fifty-three hundred more dollars tucked under it in loose twenties, fifties and tens. It all seemed surreal.
Still, the money was real, and since no one knew it was there, or that it was gone, Sullivan’s death was initially considered an accident: the man, a vicious alcoholic, had slipped while drunk and cracked his skull on the large workbench.
It would be some months—yes, even years—before the investigation would open once again because of all the treacherous finagling Lonnie Sullivan was known for. The corrupt documents he kept on people in order to blackmail them would someday come to light. By that time, Harold’s whole life would have changed for the better, while Ian’s
life would be a disaster.
Luck, luck, and nothing but.
Ian believed in gentlemanliness—or at least, some good part of him did—and above all, a sense of duty. He had married Annette for better or worse. So he must continue on. He went and bought the pregnancy test from Lonnie. And he carried a buck knife in his pocket because he did not trust Lonnie—and he held it in his hand, in case. Yes, he had been parsimonious and thrifty—and he could not understand why he shouldn’t be, for a man who grew up with nothing and made his own way should not be laughed at for saving a quarter. Yet now, this was for his son. But it was also to save his own reputation, and out of the fear of being called a joke by Sara (even though she never would). He did not want Sara to know. He knew this was part of his reasoning as well.
There was just one thing: if Ian had not gone down to visit him, Lonnie would have locked up long before and gone home; Harold would have come to an empty shed. But Lonnie was imbibing after Ian left, for the money he’d wanted to get to pay the back taxes on properties he had researched he now had—and this would make him wealthy if he played his cards right. Part of the property he wanted to claim belonged to Ian Preston himself, and was situated on the lowest end of Bonny Joyce, at the Swill Road turnoff. Ian had completely forgotten about this property—but it alone would command thirty-five thousand dollars in a sale to Helinkiscor, Sullivan thought. Ian had no knowledge that Lonnie was about to get it all—that is, five properties, including Evan Young’s, for twenty-three thousand dollars in back taxes. He felt he could make thirty-five thousand on Ian’s property alone. On the rest he might make forty or fifty thousand more.
So Lonnie thought he would go to town in the morning, pay the property tax with the money Ian had given him, wait until Evan helped him tear the mill down, then put Evan and old Mrs. Thorn out of their places, buy Ian’s place, and turn about and sell their properties to the pulp and paper mill that wanted to clear a road right through Bonny Joyce. His profit would be more than eighty-thousand dollars in all. He could make a great deal of money out of this—and the money to pay everyone’s back taxes had just come into his possession as if by complete chance that very night. (He had fifty-three hundred more in his drawer that Annette had given him over the last few years.)
He was, for those few minutes before his death, delighted by everything he had done in his life.
So then Ian had arrived first.
Lonnie took out a cigar and lit it, looking at him as the smoke billowed. Then he shook the match out and placed it on the table.
“I’ve come to give you money,” Ian said. “But I want the test.”
“What test?” Lonnie said, his eyes streaked with yellow. His mouth was round and playful on the cigar, his eyes suspicious.
“Annette’s pregnancy test. I have money for you, but I want it back—and I will destroy it.” He clutched the knife in his pocket and stood before the man who had betrayed his wife and his child. But then he let go of it and felt for the envelope. And he took the manila envelope out from under his coat.
“How much is in the envelope?”
“I am not saying,” Ian answered.
“Is there anything in it?”
“Yes, but I am not saying how much. I think you should do the honourable thing and give it back, never mention Annette to anyone again, and I will hand you this envelope.”
“You want it just to hold over her head?” Lonnie smiled slyly, thinking of Ian as being a man like himself.
“I intend to destroy it.”
Lonnie took the cigar out of his mouth and looked at it, paused, then opined on all the things wrong with the world. Look at Africa—big mess; Asia—there was another one. Besides, what about him? Trouble had followed him all the days of his life, and what did he do but try to help people?
Ian held the envelope in his gloved hand—he was a citizen of the town now, dressed in a long tweed winter coat and silk scarf, and he wore a silk yellow tie. At one time, though not in a long while, he’d had meetings with premiers and with deputy ministers over town rezoning and a more efficient snow removal system, but in spite of it all, this was by far the most important meeting in his life. There was something magnificent in this meeting—something that stretched the boundaries of what was just and fair. Because this was the moment his empire, such as it was, was falling away, and all he had built up was going to be lost. The premier, who had once mentioned his name in the legislature, would no longer do so. The town council, which had once taken his opinions seriously, now scoffed. And he knew this, just as a man who gambled everything on a long shot knows this. So in this moment, in asking for this test, he was transcendent, trying to protect his namesake and give him what he could.
But he did not want to be caught here—by someone entering and seeing him. He had no idea that both his childhood friends were already on their way.
“Destroying it seems such a waste,” Sullivan said. “I mean, look how she planned it. You know how conniving she was—how she planned it. Now I may as well tell you. ‘You know who would be able to get close to him?’ she asked me. ‘And we wouldn’t have to pay them much? His uncles—yes, have his uncles follow him, those town drunks. They would do it just to do it, find out where he goes, when he closes early.’ I said, ‘Pawnmesoultagod, that it didn’t seem fair,’ and she said, ‘All is fair in love and war!’ I said, ‘What about Sara?’ and she said, ‘Sara who?’ and laughed as if that poor little girl was nothing.”
“That is not important.” Ian touched the buck knife with his other hand, once more, and fleetingly thought of his son and Sara—and let go of the knife as if it burned him.
Lonnie looked hurt at this reprimand, and astonished that Annette was so beguiling, as if he too had been caught up in her web. Then he quietly lit his cigar again and looked at the Auto Trader, humming and hawing over pictures of snowmobiles. When he looked up, Ian had put the money away and was turning to leave.
“I didn’t say no,” Lonnie said. He stood and went into the dry room, near an old workbench and industrial wrench that Corky Thorn had sold to him some time before. He came back with an envelope and a slip of paper that he had kept for years. As he rummaged around, he spoke from the other room in carefree disregard of Ian’s feelings or honour. He spoke about the trouble he’d been in with Sylvia’s Mom years ago. Ian realized after some moments that he was talking about a trotter out of Truro, “owned by a man not like you or me,” Lonnie said, but a man who didn’t “have no feelings for people.”
Sylvia’s Mom was a good mare but got caught between a paddock fence and Lonnie’s trailer in a snowstorm and had to be put down. So the man—an awful man, religious too, so you know what that’s about—wanted six thousand. Lonnie said no way—but said he was frightened of losing his own horses. The man had seen Annette with him—more than a few times—and “That’s where it all started,” Lonnie said, matter of fact. Annette owed him “big-time” for a lot of things, and this would get her out from under. He insisted that she wanted to go; it was not his idea—he’d begged her “like my own daughter” not to. Now she wanted to go and meet a rich man. He had told her he didn’t know any. But she’d insisted. She’d insisted on going with him to Truro. She was thinking she could do something special with her life. He’d tried to talk her out of it, said, “Think about your honour, and what about your future? But she said, ‘Never mind that.’ Do you understand? I had no choice in the matter,” Lonnie said.
“I cried a thousand nights thinking about it,” he said.
“I took her to him that spring. Don’t think I wanted to! Don’t think that!” Lonnie said without a change in his voice, adding, “Now, where is that goddamn paper—awful if I lost it! Anyway, she is with him—in the mortuary, and she frightened to death of funerals. It was an awful painful time. Poor little thing. I wanted to stop it. But what can a man do? Then afterwards she thought he loved her, because he told her how pretty she was—told her that he owned a house in Florida. ‘Does he really have mo
ney?’ she asks me. She goes to town and looks for a present for him, goes to the post office almost daily thinking he will write her. Ha!”
There was a pause for a moment before he continued talking. Not only as if Ian had no humanity, but as if Annette did not either.
“Before then, she wanted to get out of Bonny Joyce real bad, get away from Harold, take some course in Moncton, become a hairdresser. Trying to prove she was worth something—you know. So I pay for that and think my obligation is finished. But she had to meet that man, ’cause she had to be rich. Then what happens? She came to me two months later with the pregnancy test and was too scared to look at it. So I did. Was she really pregnant before she met you? Well, you can find out, once and for all,” Lonnie said. “Then we will put all this terrible sordid affair behind us.” And he came out smiling and looking somewhat defensive.
His arms were still large and strong, his eyes were somewhat watery at the moment, and Ian thought of killing him.
He handed over the envelope with the pregnancy test, and then went to take it back as a joke. Then he stuffed the Auto Trader in his pocket and took the envelope with the money. Eagerly he opened it, counted the money, suddenly breaking out into a sweat.
“Oh, I coulda got more than this,” he said, but he looked pleased. His breath was short and his eyes glowed. “More than this. So open up the envelope and see what you think about her now,” he said. “Yes or no—was she pregnant or not? It’s like a big prize you might win.” He nodded and pointed in expectation. “Go on. See if Liam is actually yours. He might be, after all.”
Then he looked up, startled. Ian had taken the matches on the desk and lit the envelope with the pregnancy test inside.
“Aren’t you even going to look?” Lonnie asked, incredulous.
Ian watched with inquisitive pensiveness as the small envelope burned and the fire grew hot. Some ash scattered, the small slip of paper inside burned too, and Ian held it in his hand until there was nothing to hold, and it fell and scattered—as if it was nothing at all.
Crimes Against My Brother Page 24