Death of a Hired Man

by Eric Wright

  He waited for her news, which had to be dire to make her leave the university so suddenly. He asked her again, “What’s wrong?”

  “After you came by, I decided I wanted to go home for a bit. I told the dean I had to take some time off.”

  “I was just passing. What’s wrong with dropping in to say hello, for Christ’s sake? You don’t want me to drop in? Okay. You just have to say so. Fine. I’ll write and get permission before I do it again. Better yet, I won’t do it again. Suits me. It’s out of my way, anyhow.”

  “Please sit down, Abe. Of course if you’re nearby, I want you to see if I’m free. It’s me I’m having trouble with. I want to sort myself out. Because if I don’t do it soon, there won’t be anything left to sort out, will there?”

  “Meaning?”

  “You. I’ve never seen you looking so bleak as you did today.”

  “Was it that obvious?”

  “Am I right?”

  “I don’t like the way we’re living. I don’t like being made to feel like a spare prick at a wedding when I call on my wife. I know, I know, that’s the way women have always felt when they drop in at their husband’s office at the wrong time. Maybe that’s what I don’t like. I thought about it all the way home. I still don’t like it.”

  “I realized today that things with you might have gone farther than I’d noticed. I don’t want anything to happen that I’d be sorry for, just because we’ve let things drift.”

  “I thought you had it all sorted out.”

  “So did I, but it won’t stay sorted out. You won’t put up with it for much longer. I could see it in your face. And that frightened me. So I thought we should spend some time together and talk.”

  “You’ve quit your job?”

  “No, I haven’t quit my job. After we’ve talked, that might be the thing to do. And it might not. The point is, I don’t know. But if it’s hopeless, I want us to decide, not just find out.”

  “You’re right about the main thing. After I left you today, I just about got to the point on the way home where I thought I would be making other plans.”

  She didn’t respond to that. After a few moments, she stood up. “Did you do anything about your dinner?”

  “We could go to the Chew’n’Chat.”

  “I’ll see what I can pick up at the store.” She stopped. “You are free, aren’t you?” Her voice was unsteady.

  “I’ll follow you up.”

  Ten minutes later, he left. Copps did not look up as he passed.

  Half an hour later, when Dougal stepped out of the bush beside Pickett’s cabin, it was nearly full dark.

  He had taken a chance on the highway patrol and borrowed a car from a supermarket parking lot; the white pickup, he knew, was just one more. He was on the 401 long before the owner came past the cashier, and just about in Larch River before the message about her stolen car had been distributed. And why would the OPP think a car stolen from a supermarket lot off Eastern Avenue was significant?

  Dougal then made his way up to Larch River, crossed over the bridge in town and took the county road, turning onto the trail that led up behind the cottages on the other side of the river from Pickett’s cabin. There he left the car and walked through the bush, following the river road until he came close to the clearing and came out behind the cabin. He had a whiskey bottle of gasoline in each hand, each bottle plugged with a piece of rag.

  When the alarm sounded, Wilkie was just finishing dinner with his wife. He was roused by the duty officer immediately—Pickett’s cabin was now famous in Sweetwater—and he called Copps to meet him at the cabin.

  He could see the fire almost as soon as he left Sweetwater, and he switched on all his emergency noise and lights to keep the sightseers from getting in his way. He met Copps coming down Duck Lake Road from the other direction, and the two cars almost collided as they pulled into the clearing. Pickett was waiting for them in the yard outside the trailer, his arm around a frightened Eliza.

  Already the cabin was reduced to a glowing outline, and they stayed back, away from the heat, waiting for the fiery frame to collapse.

  Pickett said, “Her boyfriend, Sarwin, went after him.”

  Eliza said, “There. In there. He went in there.” She pointed and waved urgently at the bush on one side of the lot.

  Pickett said, “Look after her, Wilkie,” and made gestures of handing Eliza over to the sergeant.

  Copps jumped forward, grabbing Pickett’s arm, holding him back. “No, no. Fuck, no. You look after her. We’ll look after these guys.”

  He indicated that Wilkie should follow him, and smashed into the wall of scrub, disappearing immediately. From behind him, Wilkie could see nothing, but he stayed close to the noise of the constable’s progress. Copps, his forearms up to meet the willow branches that could tear his face open, finding some kind of trail under his feet, moved forward quickly. Then he stopped, holding on to Wilkie as the sergeant nearly stumbled into him.

  “Listen,” he said. There were shouts, and the noise of splashing water. “What is that?” he asked. “The river? So close?”

  Wilkie, unable to tell if it was blood or mucus or tears or all three smearing his faceter something had smacked him hard across the eyes and nose—tried to remember the first time Pickett had given him a tour of the lot. “It’s a beaver pond, or an otter pond,” he said. “A small one. Shallow.”

  They listened again. From the direction of the pond came the shouts of two men, and the noise of splashing. “Let’s go,” Copps said.

  Once more Wilkie fell in behind as Copps kicked his way through the brush and this time, within ten yards, they came to the clearing and a pond illuminated by starlight, where two creatures, covered in mud and up to their waists in water, were trying to drown each other.

  Copps launched himself at the pair, caught the one he wanted by the neck and dragged him up to the bank, where Wilkie was waiting with his gun out. An exhausted Gupta followed Copps out of the pond and flopped onto the bank.

  “You don’t give up easy, do you?” Pickett asked.

  “You sonofabitch. Next time,” Dougal said.

  “There isn’t going to be a next time. Gruber told us the whole story. He’ll tell it again in court to get a couple of years off his own sentence.”

  “Gruber ain’t going to tell the court anything. He’s dead.” Dougal looked at Wilkie. “Can we get this over with? Fuck standing here talking.” He turned back to Pickett. “It was a mistake, killing that guy in the cabin. I wasn’t after him.”

  “I know that. You were after me.”

  Copps had now wiped most of the heavy mud off himself, and Wilkie handed Dougal over to him and two other constables. As they drove off, Wilkie called headquarters to find out what had happened to Gruber. He listened, slipped the phone back on its rest and said, “Very simple. When Dougal saw all the guards I had posted, he created a little diversion. He got a hold of an orderly’s uniform and set off the fire alarm. In all the confusion, when Gruber’s guard poked his head out, Dougal sent him down the hall to hold the elevator while he ‘prepared’ Gruber to be evacuated. I suppose Gruber was hooked up to some of those bottles on wheels. When the guard came back to see why they hadn’t come, he interrupted Dougal trying to strangle Gruber, who is back in intensive care, but he’s still alive, for which I guess we should all give thanks. So that’s that, and you were right, Mel.”

  “We all were. And lucky. You going back to Sweetwater?”

  “I have to book this character. Then I’m going home. My wife’s there, waiting for me.”

  “I was watching him through the window of the trailer. I was just about to go out and ask him if he was lost—you know how slow one can be to respond to the unusual. I mean, if you saw Napoleon in the front garden, you would think, for a long time, ‘He looks familiar,’ so I wondered why he was in the yard. Then he lit the first of those Molotov cocktails he was carrying and threw it at the cabin. He watched it burn for a few moments, which gave m
e time to come to my senses and go out the door after him before he could throw the second one at us. He got it lit, then I was on him, so it just went into the bush. I suppose the bush is still too wet to catch, and the gasoline burned out. I assume that’s what happened, because by then, I was chasing him through the woods. He had several seconds’ start—twenty perhaps—but I had the advantage that he had to break the trail and I could follow more quickly.” Gupta smiled. “I also had the advantage that I’m harder to see in the dark than he is. When he reached the pond and decided to go across it, then I had him, stuck in the mud. It was difficult because he wouldn’t stand still long enough for me to get a proper grip on him, so I was glad when you arrived.” Gupta smiled again to show he was joking.

  They were sitting around Charlotte’s table, where they had come once they had seen the embers of the cabin safely doused. The fire department had arrived in time to water the ruins and damp down the scrub around the clearing, but not in time to save the structure or anything in it.

  Most of Larch River had come to watch the fun, and one of the bystanders had provided a clue as to why Dougal had returned, even though he must have learned from Gruber that Pickett was no longer using the cabin. The assistant in the hardware store, identifying the principals of the drama for the latecomers, but still misinformed, was heard to point out Eliza with the words, “That’s his granddaughter; she stays in the trailer.”

  Wilkie, hearing this, made sure Dougal was well on his way to Sweetwater before he told Pickett, who had reacted—as Wilkie guessed he might—by looking around for Dougal so he could kill him.

  Now Pickett had a second reaction. “Imogen,” he said. “She’ll surely be here any day. And my son. I’ll have to drive in tomorrow.” He turned to Charlotte. “I’ll stay there until they come.”

  He didn’t want Charlotte around when his son arrived. The man had said he had information, and Pickett feared what that information might turn out to be.

  Gupta said, “I am sorry about your cabin, Mel. Eliza has told me all about it. I understand what it meant to you, recreating the world of your pioneer ancestors.”

  “I can do it all over again now, can’t I? Give me something to do in my old age.”

  “Really? You will build it again?”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps it wouldn’t be quite the same. The original achievement was so much like that of the first pioneers, when you had to work it out a step at a time. But now that you know how, it’s just building a cabin, isn’t it?”

  “I feel like I’m being interviewed on CBC. Yes, it is.”

  “It would be a pity, though, if—”

  “Sarwin,” Eliza said.

  He stopped, looking at her. “Yes?”

  She held a finger to her lips. “Time to go.”

  And then, late the next afternoon before he left, Pickett got a call from his neighbor in Toronto. His sister-in-law, Verna, was now in his neighbor’s living room, demanding the keys to his house on the grounds that Pickett was dead and she was the closest relative, or her son was. Hope had sprung again in her breast; apparently the break with her had been so clean she had not heard that he had remarried.

  He remembered the famous line from Mark Twain, or somebody: “‘Tell her the news of my death has been greatly exaggerated,’” Pickett said and then, satisfied, denied himself any further satisfaction. “Maybe not,” he said. “Put her on.”

  “Who is this?” Verna’s voice, even in three syllables, shrieked and rattled in his ear like a badly fitting cutlery drawer being closed. Abraham Lincoln said that every man over forty is responsible for his own face; now Pickett thought that every woman over fifty is responsible for her own voice. Verna sounded like the Wicked Witch of the East. Appearances are not deceptive, he thought, wondering if it was not time to buy himself a little notebook to write down such thoughts. He reckoned he thought something interesting like that four or five times a year; one little notebook would last him.

  “Are you there?” she squawked.

  “This is me, Verna.”

  “What are you playing at? We heard you were dead.”

  “No, I’m alive. Here in Larch River. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be funny with me, Mel Pickett.”

  “Thanks for wanting to help out, Verna. But, you know, Charlotte, my new wife, she would have let you know.”

  A considerable silence followed. “Your new wife! I can rely on that, can I? Where did you find this one? Jarvis Street?” It was no more than an attempt to try for an aggressive response to the fairly shattering news, but it made Pickett angry at last.

  “What difference does it make?” he asked.

  “No skin off my nose, but a friend of mine was telling me recently that Harvey has considerable status as far as family estates are concerned. Has to do with reasonable expectations of having a valid claim on an estate.”

  What Pickett had always feared was that somewhere there existed the evidence of his “son’s” true parentage, which would come to light after his death and create a huge muddle should Charlotte die before him, or at the same time, say in a car crash. Blood tests might be used to disprove his parentage of his son. DNA, by Christ. He was hearing now that Verna would try anything. She had to be sent on her way.

  “Yeah? As far as I’m concerned, Verna, old dear, the expectations of your son come a long way behind the claims of my wife, my granddaughters, my son, and any other connections they might have. Don’t get your hopes up. I’ll check it out, though, make sure it’s watertight; you’ve obviously been talking to a lawyer, but don’t let him charge you too much. You haven’t a hope, according to my lawyer.”

  “You bugger, Mel Pickett. But maybe it won’t all be in your hands. Maybe this new wife has a shred of decency in her.”

  God Almighty. Now Verna was announcing that if all else failed, she planned to hound Charlotte, and probably Imogen, too. “Well, good luck,” was all he could think of that he wouldn’t regret later. He needed some time to figure out how to dispose of her for good. “Let me speak to my neighbor again.”

  Pickett apologized for putting his neighbor in the cross fire, and told her not to give his keys to Verna under any circumstances.

  Then she said, “There’s someone else here. An Englishman.”

  “Who? What’s his name?”

  Now the man spoke. “This is George Colwood. You know?”

  “Jesus! What are you doing there?”

  “I arranged to meet your sister-in-law here when I heard you were dead.”

  “How did you know where to find her?”

  “I phoned the police, and the clerk said she was listed as your next of kin.”

  “That computer’s out of date.” But the news muddled his attitude to Verna. To know she was still listed somewhere as his next of kin was to have provided her with some hope. Not all her fault.

  Colwood continued. “She told me your neighbor had a key, and she drove down from Hamilton to meet me here.”

  “Up from Hamilton, not down. But now she knows there’s no reason for her to stay. I’ll hang up now and you can tell her I’ll be meeting you there, alone, later on. When she’s gone, call me back. Hang on, hang on. Does she know who you are?” Pickett feared that his son had discovered his true parentage and had already told Verna.

  “Well, no. No. I, er, didn’t think it was necessary to broadcast it. I have explained to, er, friends and others that I’m visiting you from England. A family acquaintance from the war.”

  Pickett silently offered thanks to the English practice of never telling anyone your family’s business, not even other members of your own family. “Kick her out, then,” he said cheerfully. “Then call me back. But stay mum about us—you and me.”

  The phone rang forty-five minutes later. Verna had been hard to get rid of, but finally Pickett was alone on the telephone with his son.

  “Can you wait for me?” he asked. “I’ll be there in a couple of hours.”

  “Of cours
e. Your neighbor is making us a cup of tea.”

  “Is Imogen there?”

  “Not at the moment. She’s off to look at the shops. She says everything is half price in Canada. She’ll be here when you arrive.”

  “I’m leaving now.”

  “Shall I wait here? It seems like an imposition on your neighbor. You’re going to be rather late.”

  “Let me speak to her. I’ll tell her to give you the keys; you can make yourself at home.”

  22

  “So you just came to check me out?”

  “To see if I wanted to be connected. To you. I thought I had the right to choose. When I was finished in New York, I decided I would scout around a bit first, so I drove up to Larch River on Friday to look at this cabin that Imogen has been talking about. She said you would have moved up there by now. I found the cabin and peeked through the window, but the man I saw didn’t fit Imogen’s description of you, so I waited in the road for a few minutes wondering what to do, then drove to a place called Fenelon Falls and found an inn. I returned to Larch River in the morning. I was having a cup of coffee in the motel coffee shop when I heard the news. I gather it’s not true.”

  “I’m not dead yet, no.” Pickett walked to the window. “That your car parked out there?”

  “A gray Chevrolet? Yes.”

  Pickett said, “How long were you waiting on the road by my cabin?”

  “Not long. A few minutes.”

  “Did you see anyone else coming or going?”

  “A woman in a little sort of farm lorry …”

  “A pickup truck.”

  “That the term? As I left, before I reached the end of the road, I saw her turn into your drive. I waited a bit more, then she drove out with the man I had seen through the window. That was all.”

  Pickett made a mental note to tell Wilkie that he had some confirmation of the Sproats’ story if he needed it, if Dougal should clam up before they got a statement signed.

  But he was wondering now how to proceed with his visitor. On the drive down from Larch River, he had been over it again and again, seeking the self-justifying thread that could be spun into a lie, whatever came out. Once upon a time, he had been gallant, and that should have been the end of it, but now, after all this time later, why was the fiction continuing? Pickett scrambled to remember a justification and found it in his duty to continue to protect the man who was Imogen’s real grandfather, a respectable married teacher of art in a secondary school, who, in 1945, would have been ruined if the truth had come out.