Mercy Among the Children

by David Adams Richards

  The officer took a letter and held it over his head to view it in the light through the window blind. He then flipped the notepaper back and forth rapidly as if it were wet. Then, holding it up again, he looked over the top of the page at my father.

  “Pasted?” Morris asked with a look of stunned inquiry.

  “Yes,” my mother answered. There was a brief pause. Again he looked at my father, but this time he smiled knowingly.

  “Sydney, you did a fine job pasting this — is this to throw us off the scent?” Morris laughed out loud, perhaps because he believed he’d made a witticism; that is, the scent of my father.

  “I got it in the mail.”

  “Got it in the mail?”

  Sydney nodded at the duplicity, not of his but of the officer’s tone. Unfortunately the nod, and the polite smile behind it, made him look dishonest. Morris had, we were to find out, a copious amount of information on Sydney that came from neighbours of ours, all willing to help the police. How he had looked at their young child funny, how he had once eagerly volunteered to help with a children’s camp, and a teenage retreat.

  There was silence. The wind rattled the blank windows, and one could imagine the snow blowing across the wide field and buffeting clotheslines. The officer was short, thick set, with somewhat larger teeth than normal. He looked over at my mother not for an explanation so much as for a complicity of sentiment with him.

  “Of course it was mailed to him,” my mother said with a somehow heroic tone. She looked at Sydney quickly and took his hand. Sydney only nodded.

  The constable put his glasses on, made a face as if his nose was itchy, and said: “How can you be sure he has not made all of this up? — he has made up things before — haven’t you, Syd — made up things before — little things — big things —money and robbery — robbing the poor box at Father Porier’s church — you got a good kick in the bum for that, didn’t you — lighting a fire at McVicer’s mill — you got away with that, didn’t you, Syd? The box of smelts? Hmm? It’s all catching up to you now — lies and deception, deception and forgery?”

  “I have never in my life heard him exaggerate or tell a lie,” my mother whispered.

  The officer’s face went blank. An uneducated woman, the woman Diedre Whyne had phoned him about, saying that he, Constable Morris, must be willing to take the initiative in her case, sitting in a heavy old coat, with her face reddened from frost in the mid-afternoon room (her cold face added in some way to her being suspect), had told him that he was not only mistaken but presumptuous.

  I know there are all levels of rich and poor in our society, and Mother and Father were very near our bottom rung. Morris was determined to be looked up to by Elly. This was a secret not even admitted to himself.

  Besides, the idea itself was infectious. The idea that my father, living in a shack, was an oddball, and peculiar enough to do something heinous to a child. A fell man — a barbarous man. That was part of it. It was in fact essential to it. Not essential to the crime but to the outrage over the crime. My father understood this, I am sure — but he did not fight it. People would believe what they would believe, and nothing more.

  Constable Morris took a different tack. He stared at my mother with newfound assumption. Perhaps she had mailed the letters. She denied this by complete and utter silence, a silence I have noticed in my life that the poor and mistreated have often had. When the silence became intolerable the officer smiled and shook his head, as if my mother’s moral superiority was nothing but a ruse he easily saw through.

  He was not a bad man, Officer Morris. He was, simply speaking, a stupid man — although stupidity and cruelness of heart enter the door hand in hand. In fact Officer Morris believed he was winning this confrontation. And he was pleased by his own sense of ruefulness. And he felt progressive for his ability to take them on.

  But suddenly he stopped for lunch. He sat at the desk drinking coffee and eating a tossed salad and a chicken sandwich on homemade bread. My father and mother, unaccustomed to the ways of the police (or anyone else), stayed where they were, not looking at one another. Now and then Morris unfolded a napkin, wiped his mouth, folded the napkin again, and set it back beside his fork. Then, finishing his coffee, and looking into the cup, he continued.

  “I’ve been thinking — what can be made of the letters?”

  He held the letters in his hand and looked at Mom, stifling a belch. At first he complimented Mother on her loyalty. Not one woman in a hundred as good looking as she would be so loyal to a man like Syd. Then he put the letters down with a firm hand, and asked, while patting his hand over them, did she have any love for humanity in her? He again looked at my father and said, loudly, as thoughtless people do when speaking to those they think beneath them: “That’s humanity, Sydney — it means humankind, the human race. Sydney, I’m asking your girlfriend if she has any feelings for it — being attached to you — that’s why the question is asked.”

  Sydney nodded, holding his hat with the faded fur earflaps in his hand and looking about the room as if expecting someone else to be there. Then he looked back at the officer and adjusted his glasses.

  “Yes,” he said. “Humanity.”

  “I suppose you want our protection?”

  Again there was silence. My mother waited for an assault upon them by lowering her head just slightly — not in fear but in shame for other people.

  Constable Morris stood over them, looking down at my mother, with her pale face, blue eyes, and chestnut curls. Her day had begun at seven in the morning, heating water on a stove to bathe, because we had no hot water tank, and using the kitchen chairs to iron her maternity frock so she would be presentable to him Now, in silence, obdurate and proud, the wind blowing across the desolate fields between the landscaped houses of town, creating those soft fleeting rainbows, she fumbled with her fingers, and said nothing.

  I can only tell you that I wish I had been there at that moment, no matter if I was thirteen. I would have struck him because of his rudeness.

  Another officer came into the room and said that if they wished to file a complaint he would be willing to type it up. But there was no suspect, and any of dozens upon dozens of people might have mailed this. Nor were my mother and father above suspicion. And perhaps Sydney liked all the attention. Morris glared at him, as the other officer said he knew people who did things for attention, set grass fires, and pull fire alarms —perhaps this letter-writing scheme was an attention-getting device.

  “You like this, don’t you, Sydney —” Morris piped up, “like this part of it — you’re not caught yet — but still the paper is writing about you. They say you are something of a philosopher — and like poetry — quote me a poem, Syd — quote me even one line of a poem — I bet you could not — spit it out — one damn line of any poem from anywhere at any moment that was ever written. Come now — you must know one — do you know one?”

  “As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods;/They kill us for their sport,” Sydney said, staring almost in shame at the constable.

  My mother listened to this and her lips tightened. Constable Morris turned his swivel chair away, and leaned back, stretching with midday fatigue.

  “Do you want to make a formal complaint?” the other officer asked more kindly.

  My mother said, “No thank you, sir.” Her lips trembled. My father was again utterly silent. Ever since he was a boy and beaten he was silent in the face of adversity. He was silent in school when people gathered about him at recess, and he was silent now.

  “You’re dumb, aren’t you, Syd!” Morris said. “You knock up a little girl like Elly here — a sweet girl from the boonies who’s never met a real man, or been to a party or had a date, or taken a trip — you are her first — first to touch her — I know you, Syd — then you keep her in a prison for fourteen years, knock her up three or four times — use her to rob Leo McVicer who likes her and refuses to press charges, refuses even to fire you until Christmas is over only because of
your children. Then you take that money from her, frighten an old woman, use a stick of dynamite you had on you for years, and entice her retarded boy to the bridge, you even bragged you would do so saying you knew more than God. A heathen, eh, Syd, and this poor woman is in your clutches, because she’s never felt a real man between her legs —”

  Then, swivelling around to face them, he added: “I know real men who would love to get to know you, Elly — you could go back to school — on to university — get a student loan — now is your chance — I’ve talked to Dr. David Scone about you —imagine, a man like that — a man who would have nothing to do with Sydney yet is interested in you! Stay here, Elly, turn evidence for us and he will never bother you again. You and your children will be taken care of — I’ll see to it, and you’ll be enrolled in university.” He stood to walk away, and then turned abruptly again, and with great almost mindless fury added:

  “You like picking on women, Syd, and old men — do you? — come from the Bartibog in some shack, do you? — eat moose meat, do you? — perhaps you thought the old lady would give you money, did you? — and perhaps poor Trenton tried to run away from you, and you lured him to his death. That made you feel powerful, did it? Well, do you want to step outside, I’ll take my uniform off and you can have a go at a real man — see how you measure up — oh yes, look at your face — I’d love to wipe that smirk from it. So you want to come outside and fight me?”

  Again my father said nothing.

  Then the second constable brought Morris another coffee. Officer Morris, his face beet red, sat down, looked through a file, sipped on his coffee, and after a minute or two looked up startled, as someone will when they wish to acknowledge to everyone concerned their willingness to dismiss you out of hand.

  My mother stood, black purse in hand, with my father. My father simply said, “Thank you now.”

  My mother asked for the letters back.

  “The letters will remain with me,” Morris said, taking another sip of coffee.

  My mother stared at the dismal day. How was she to repair her life if it could be mocked so easily? She felt a deep, immense loneliness and love for my father that went beyond loyalty —she felt their love was meant to be, in some way, when the atoms in their blood coursed through the endless stars in the endless beginning of the night.

  “Thank you, sir,” she said again, “but I don’t want the letters misplaced. They are proof of my husband’s grave innocence.” Grave was without a doubt the word to use, but she did not know at that moment why she had used it — it had tumbled from her tongue. It tumbled from her tongue like a word from a slip of a girl in some pasture downriver on some May afternoon, like the word circumnavigate had come from her lips one day when she was ten and in love with Diedre Whyne and the world.

  The constable looked at her.

  “His grave innocence,” my mother whispered again, blushing.

  “Please,” the constable said, waving his hand at her histrionics.

  My mother stared at him, unsure what else he could possibly do to them that showed his utter disdain.

  Sydney looked at her and said: “We must go — there is nothing more to do.”

  “Yes,” she said, and they left the shelter of the station.

  They started their trek home again, this time with the raw wind behind them. Sydney took off his ragged blue scarf and gave it to Mother, and she put it around her face. She had planned that after everything had been cleared up she would take Sydney for a treat at the restaurant.

  Now this hope seemed a vague and distant thought born out of another age. Now again she was worried about her pregnancy and desperately afraid of losing another child.

  If only she had not taken the job at McVicer’s house — if only she had not felt sorry for the old man. If only she had not gone to Polly’s Restaurant for hamburgers, or if only Sydney had not gone over to Alvina Pit. For some reason she felt them both culpable. But worse, in the wind, the blast of cold that penetrated her coat and sweater, she felt that no one in the universe cared for her husband or her children except her.

  She asked him if he wanted something to eat.

  “No, I’m fine,” he said.

  “Sydney — you need something to eat — you have not eaten in two days. I have five dollars.” She went into a corner store and bought him a carton of milk and a sandwich.

  “What do you think — will anyone help?” Sydney asked when she came out.

  “No, they will not help.”

  He nodded and looked sideways a second.

  “I know,” he said. “They will not help — we have been for some unknown reason, Elly, thrust strangely into hell.” He smiled and touched her face tenderly.

  My mother looked very pale — my mother was always pale, as pale as a sweet autumn sky. Her lips trembled.

  “But it doesn’t matter,” he said. “Sometimes at the worst time something happens to make things all well again. Sometimes when I am out smelt fishing, just when it looks as if it will never brighten up, the sky clears, the ice turns a dazzling blue, and rays from the sun drop down onto our shoulders.”

  They stood a moment longer while he opened the carton and looked into it, seeing in his periphery vision small and changeable whirlwinds of snow over the street beyond them, and the day darkening over the stolid bare houses.

  “I guess you have been let down by me — I am not very good at the world — in all my life I have not been. I don’t know why. It is a trait I have had. I come to people believing not that they don’t know things but that they do, and will, because they do, agree with what I know. Then when I find out I have been very mistaken about them, I become silent. I thought this would clear a path. I am not very bright.”

  “Oh, Syd,” she said. She smiled and tears flooded her eyes.

  They turned along the road together.

  EIGHTEEN

  For a week or so after, Mom stayed in bed, because she was afraid to start bleeding and lose yet another child. The doctor was angry with her for being pregnant and having walked to Newcastle; and the one time she went to see him, he admonished her when he examined her.

  No one spoke to Autumn or me at school, but the activity about us caused increasing anxiety, especially on Autumn’s part.

  We went with other people to the great churches to pray —to pray that Mom would have her baby — for she had asked us to go. For the first time I remembered my father did not go to church. I found out he had been refused communion when he stood in line. He could have had mine. I did not want or need it to be saved from these people. I sat in the pew and stared at the gold chalice that Father Porier held in his white liver-spotted hands, with his white linen hankerchief stuffed into his sleeve and the light lingering on the stony altar, and hated him, for my father’s sake; for my father refused to hate.

  It is strange, the thing people most value about themselves they will lose sooner or later. My father during this time lost the church. It crumbled beneath him and left him alone in the air. And how he needed it now, with an inquest coming. He sat at home reading, not the things written against him or Mom, but reading the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. I saw the Penguin edition of that small book in his back pocket for days. And I remember thinking that professors teaching it at Saint Michael’s or at the University of Toronto hadn’t the same need of it.

  Often I saw Rudy Bellanger at church at the masses given for the soul of Trenton Pit, wearing his Knights of Columbus uniform and blessing himself and receiving communion. The Knights went on parade, and he stood with his father-in-law, Leo McVicer. Leo McVicer was secretly blamed by some for having hired Sydney in the first place, and Leo knew this. So he acted.

  He threw a benefit at the community centre for the children — it was called “The Healing of the Children.” It came in January on a Saturday when the sky was purple with cold and ice lay ten feet thick in our bay.

  Everyone got a toy. There was a hot dog eating contest and Rudy wore a chef’s hat and boiled h
ot dogs in a giant pot. There were cookies and cakes from the store, and a stereo system set up for music that the children skated to at the outdoor rink. Constable Morris was there, letting the children sit in his patrol car.

  Mother begged us to go.

  “You are children too,” she said. “Why would they not know this?”

  So with trepidation we headed out in the raw afternoon. But I was too smart to show myself. Instead Autumn and I, hand in hand, watched the festivities from the field beyond the community centre. We stood hand in hand because I knew that when we were noticed we’d be chased by the other kids. And that is what happened. Griffin Porier saw us, and with his friends tried to cut us off from our house. I was so scared and I ran so fast I ended up dragging poor little Autumn like a rag doll behind me. But we made it across Arron Brook, to our yard, with a whistle of rocks coming behind.

  The Pits were usually in attendance at mass, for Alvina insisted that Mathew take her so she could be seen receiving the Blessed Sacrament. It gave Mathew a certain grace, as a worldly, hard-bitten man who had had his share of difficulty now humble enough to be seen attending to his mother and to Christ Jesus. And for Cynthia as well, long considered a seducer of young men, to be seated in the pew with black skirt and gloves. There was talk of her first child, who would if she had lived, have been my age.

  Alvina stumbled forward — never standing at the altar but kneeling silently, with hands folded, and closed eyes damp with tears. Watching her — with Cynthia helping her back and forth to her seat — there came the rather pleasant thought associated with early death.

  I was sent as a representative of the family, an emissary not made welcome. People stared at me as I genuflected and stared harder at me if I took communion. So in spite of my mother’s request, I did not take communion after a while. Anyone can be made to feel a hypocrite, but I, wrestling at the time with the very idea of a God, considered my own self ludicrous. One day a man put his hand on my shoulder as I walked up the lane. He smiled at me and said it would have been better if I had been stillborn and Cynthia’s child had lived. He walked on, still smiling. I never forgot the feel of his wrinkled leather work glove on my shoulder. He was Danny Sheppard, purported to have been that child’s father, and one of the most desperate men on the river.