Ethel and Ian were married in 2004, after Ian sold his little invention to Doan. It was used on industrial sites to test effluents all over the Maritimes until better inventions came along. It wasn’t the best invention, but it wasn’t bad. He must have made a profit of about ninety-five thousand dollars on it. And with that, he and Evan bought and refitted Jameson’s sawmill, and used the wood stands far up beyond Little Hackett Brook, and began to sell the best lumber in the province. They also began to replant Bonny Joyce—and after a few years they put up a headstone for Harold Dew, with the inscription
OUR BROTHER, GONE HOME TO GLEN
Sara gave Ian and Ethel the house on Pleasant Street as a wedding present, along with the travelling trunk she had bought at auction. Ian and Ethel kept mementoes of Liam in it. It became sacred after a while. They put in it all the things they remembered he once had loved.
Every vacation, Ian, who I got to know fairly well after I retired and who was Evan’s partner in the mill, would get in his truck, and he and Ethel, who now worked in the office of Dr. Sara Robb, would spend three or four weeks trying to find his son. But as time passed, the chances became more and more remote that Liam would be found.
Someone said he’d seen him on a street in Toronto on a July day under a great building that offered little shade. But that lead went nowhere.
They came close a few years later, after a sighting in Windsor. Someone said he’d worked with Liam at a video store. Liam would tell the kids stories about how he built forts, and he’d talk about his friend Pint McGraw. In fact, he seemed comfortable only with children. But then, after a few months, he went far, far away. He had his passport and a work berth on a ship to Australia. “There is nothing for me here,” he’d said.
The person who had invited Liam to come to Australia was in fact a forgotten neighbour, Sydney Henderson’s son, Lyle. He had sent Liam four emails asking him to come down and work with him like a brother at the other end of the world.
Before Liam left, he told someone he had no family.
With the reverence certain young men have for the new age, this man spoke of Liam, how he could go to the highest levels on the most difficult video games in the world and was a master at fixing computers. Everyone wanted to retain him because of how well he could solve cyber problems. He played the harmonica, had grown tall and strong, and had the most beautiful white teeth and smile.
He was a whiz at mathematical problems too, and had read The Diary of Anne Frank and talked about it always, and carried it in his duffel bag when he went west to board the Southern Star one grey evening in autumn.
“What did he say?” Ian asked, his face filled with tears and premature wrinkles, while Ethel stood beside him holding his hand.
And the man recounted what Liam had told them before he went into the dark.
“Men!” Liam had said. “Those lads, let me tell you, they drink nothing at all—but blood.”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my agent, Anne McDermid; my editor, Lynn Henry; my dear friends Liz Lemon Mitchell, Jeff Carleton and Philip Lee; and my family: Peggy, John and Anton, and sisters Susan and Mary Jane.
I remember my parents and many others who are gone, such as Peter Kelly, whose lives touched me deeply; two noble unsung writers: Rick Trethewey and Wayne Curtis; those at McCord Hall, such as Bob Gibbs, the quiet genius; and Michael Pacey and Brian Bartlett, who knew me way back when.
Crimes Against My Brother Page 41