Their back path led through the gravel pit and to the dark, worn path through the spruce grove that smelled so green to a hidden trampled field behind Leo McVicer’s. I know how she must have moved, for I envisioned her. Hers was a remarkable journey — for it was a journey that would radically shift the balance of power and loyalty for myself and others.
She came to a tree, and paused in a moment of splendid isolation, a woman as proud as the world, living in solitude. She came to McVicer’s back fence and tried to climb it, catching her leg on the wire and tearing the skin.
McVicer was sitting in the porch staring out at the bay and winging a red alder switch when she came to the front of the house. The water had taken on the look of desolation that water takes on in September, after the vacationers have again sought the comfort of the town or the cities of Toronto, Montreal, and Boston.
So our shore was now abandoned, and the water suspended for one second or two before the maelstrom. Leo, too, looked as if he had postponed his slide into old age. And flush with his recent victories — for he knew Mathew and Connie and Rudy would go under now — he was offering a laurel wreath to the one he wished to save. It was the same bestowal he had once given Gerald Dove, or a dozen others over the years. His power allowed him to pick and choose. He saw her walk through his back gate, knock on the door, and enter with a smile.
“Why, you are hurt,” Leo said. He jumped up in a spry way and took her hand, which was large for a woman’s. “Look — let me get something for you, girl —”
He pressed his hand against the small of her back and led her into the living room.
“Really, I’m fine,” she said.
“Fine — nonsense altogether.” He left, and she was alone to gaze about the room. He came back with cotton balls and iodine and kneeled before her. She let him take her leg in his hands and wash her cut, and she stared at the top of his white head, cropped close, with reddish wrinkled skin on the back of his neck, and his hair unkempt; not like a man with so much money. And when he stood she was suddenly surprised at how poorly fitted and unnatural looking his false teeth were. His life was in the woods, and though he might have thousands tucked away, he still called mathematics figures and men with education eggheads.
He took a seat beside her. He smelled of spruce gum and earth, of moments cast against the ice and snow that should never be a cause of disrespect. But now children thought him an old man and of no importance at all. They did not even care about the Second World War, let alone think it important that he exercised extreme courage in it.
“So, Miss Pit, how is your mom?”
“Please — call me Cynthia — she is okay —” And then her voice changed. “But Trenton’s death took a lot out of her.”
He was smiling when she said this, and his smile faded, first on the side of his face nearest her.
“That was terrible,” he said, “but they get theirs back, you see, those people who cause those things, they never get away. They might think they get away for three or four years, and then suddenly new information comes forward, and the little boy is avenged — and new charges will be laid by Christmas or soon after!”
This startled her, and frightened her as well. He raised his finger and pointed to the ceiling as if it was in God’s hands and he alone understood this. Then he glared down at the carpet and looked up suddenly.
He told her that he needed her advice about who might help look after his daughter.
“Oh my, what’s wrong?” Cynthia asked, with feigned concern that she could not disguise, and he could not help but detect though he pretended he did not.
“She is an invalid more than ever,” he said. “She is depressed too, and has no friends. She used to have a monkey when she was a girl — but he died. Rudy wouldn’t allow her none.” He paused, his brow furrowed.
“A monkey — ?”
“No — friends — wouldn’t allow her no friends.”
“Oh yes,” Cynthia said.
“She has a wheelchair — but it’s very hard for her where the hallways are carpeted. And I’ve gotten her a hospital bed but it’s still out in the garage. Rudy is completely useless — I don’t know if you know him?”
“Rudy? Oh yes.” Cynthia expressed a slight smile of disapproval that Leo welcomed. It seemed to make her feigned concern for Gladys more acceptable.
“And how is your little girl?” he said, eyeing her quickly.
“Teresa — she’s okay — in fact, I was going to bring her today but thought against it — I’ll bring her over some day maybe to see you.”
“She was named after Mother Teresa, I bet,” Leo said.
“Oh yes,” Cynthia said, although this was the first she had heard of it.
He nodded. Then they were both silent. He felt attracted to her, and she let him be. She crossed her legs suddenly to look at her cut, which allowed him a slight view of her panties, and then she looked up at him with large brown eyes.
“I can do it any time,” she said, without changing her position.
“Pardon me?”
“I could help your daughter —” she said, rubbing the scrape with her fingers. Her nails were painted purple. “I’ve taken a course in homecare because of Trenton. It was a while ago, and I don’t have references — but I can help her in and out of the bath, take her for walks, cook a meal — you know, that kind of thing.”
“That kind of thing,” was said softly and coyly, as if it was a coded message or soft trap, and she looked again at the scrape.
Then she put her knee down and pressed her legs together shyly.
There was another long pause, and Leo McVicer scrutinized her. Then he smiled, once again showing the poor fit of his false teeth.
“Of course — that would be good —”
When she got up to leave he walked behind her. He suddenly felt the same man he was years ago, when he had walked into a dispute at his sawmill and taken a peavey out of the hand of the man who had promised to crush his skull.
But Cynthia had also gone through a metamorphosis. Suddenly she was not the Cynthia who had talked to Rudy that morning, but was concerned and tolerant of others, was not envious of Gladys’s money but was her compatriot, who wished to help and protect her. When Cynthia turned at the door Leo was very close to her and her breasts pressed against him.
“Oh!” she said.
He laughed uncertainly and grabbed her shoulders to keep his balance.
“You come tomorrow afternoon and we will work out the money — and, well —”
“Of course,” she said. “I’ll be here at three o’clock.”
She left the house along the walkway and disappeared, while he went outside and straightened gunnysacks over the newly planted pear trees. They never grew here, but nonetheless were planted every few years on a whim. He watched her walking away, saw her lilting sway, and his heart leapt in old fire and joy.
At this time Leo was sixty-five years of age, and reflecting on his life. After Cynthia left, Leo dressed and went to a Knights of Columbus meeting with his son-in-law.
In Rudy’s pocket were the plans for the marina; in his mind was his sales pitch to his father-in-law. If he did not get this marina, he would be destitute.
In Rudy’s soul was an unquenchable fear that he would as always be refused the money. In his heart was his hope that this marina would rekindle Cynthia’s interest in him, if only to keep her from betraying him.
So, driving along the reserve with its small incomplete houses, and children sitting out on porches in the last hour of the day, the rays of sun falling on patches and slanted roofs, on shingles shining and dull, on empty dog tins, and the green grass at the back of the house, cool in the evening air, Rudy waited his moment.
Bellanger saw all of this, saw it all, and kept going over in his mind what he would say to Leo and when he would say it.
When we get to Carl Francis’s house, he would tell himself. But the Francis house would be passed by; the porch, the dark second-stor
ey window, the small speedboat with its fancy red flag.
Bellanger knew Leo McVicer was at the height of his power, even though, at sixty-five, he had almost ended his years of work. His decisions, always final, came quickly and without any thought. The car progressed, as well as the silence. But suddenly Leo moved in his seat, looked over at Rudy, and said:
“Son of a bitch, a goddamn marina!”
“What?” Rudy said.
“It’s what the people up in town have almost finished — surprised you didn’t know? Amalgamation is coming and they are going to make us into a city — so of course we must look like a city. Now we don’t have scows or boats or working people like I grew up with, and you grew up with too, Rudy — we have pretty little sailboats —”
“Where did you hear this?”
“Just heard.” Leo sniffed. “Just heard.”
He did not tell Rudy that he had known of Rudy’s plans for three years and had been quietly working to build a marina in town with a small consortium of trusted pals. That he had convinced himself that Rudy had stolen his idea; and that this marina, of which he owned 37 percent, and which he pretended he hated, would be opened officially next July first.
They passed the entrance to the church ground, the last place Rudy had reflected on before the old man had spoken.
FIVE
Only a few Knights made it to the meeting, and fewer stayed for mass.
Leopold’s mind was not on church. It was on a variety of things men’s minds are on when they go to church. Sports flitted to boxing, to ridicule in his youth, to the laughter he had had to endure as the son of a drunkard, to his mother’s death, to his mistakes in business that resulted in an argument with his men and the collapse of his sawmill.
Saint Augustine wrote that men always believe they can con God into serving them, asking not for direction in their lives but for gain if they do right in service of Him, and he uses Cain’s discussions with God to prove this. Though my father and I had read Saint Augustine, and perhaps Leopold McVicer had not, Leopold was a personification of this particular wry truth on this particular dusky fall evening.
He wanted to have a relationship with Cynthia, and he wanted God to believe that he was hoping for Gladys’s well-being and thus sanction this relationship as being in the interests of his daughter. He also wanted the insurance money from his lost store and promised God a stained-glass window.
He wanted his sins forgiven, but sins he was not willing to admit to. Those sins he was not willing to admit to he wanted overlooked; they had to do with his mistress and the treatment of his three other children; and his mill, and the initial spill into the upper levels of Arron Brook.
People never knew how clever this old man really was. He had understood things for a long while now. He knew only Connie could have turned off the floodlights, only Mathew could have frightened him enough to do it; and Rudy was involved. Why? Because of the tag from the inside of Elly’s skirt that had been left on the carpet that day, and the way the vacuuming had stopped, so that the creases on the floor were different. And Rudy’s boots running down the road, which would never have been noticed, except the native boy Darcy Paul had helped Leo with his deer and had mentioned it peculiar; someone running with cowboy boots on the wrong feet. All of this had Leo suspicious, as did a speck of blood on the tile behind the carpet. He was sure there had been an attempt at an assault. It took him longer to decide Rudy was involved in the robbery, to cover his assault, and the bridge to cover up the robbery. He was still uncertain until a few months ago. But this is why he never gave Rudy the marina.
This week or the next he would tell Gladys what he had discovered, and let her decide how she wanted to proceed. Well, actually he would tell her how to proceed. And Rudy would be gone from their lives.
He stayed on his knees and prayed. He prayed for forgiveness and grace and peace of mind. And he prayed to get back at those who had sabotaged his bridge. He did not take communion.
SIX
After mass Leo went into the vestry to speak to Father Porier about Vicka, the girl from Yugoslavia who, along with five other children, claimed she had seen the Virgin Mary.
The week before, Leo had promised to write a cheque to help cover Vicka’s visit and he now wanted to know if Porier thought Vicka was a crook or was she on the up and up.
“Oh I think so,” Porier said. “She is just a child who has had a wonderful gift and wishes to share it with the world.”
Leo looked at one of the young altar boys who was leaving the room, and then looked back at Porier. He said he would help with her visit but he would be surprised if there was a miracle. Porier asked him if he believed in miracles.
“I don’t know why God gives messages to Vicka and not to — oh, someone on T.V. like Regis and Kathie Lee — you know what I mean.”
Porier nodded, and waited as Leo lit his pipe.
“You know, Leo, what you just said reminded me of something —”
Leopold, forever suspicious, suddenly felt he was being chastised.
“I was thinking of the little albino girl — the poet — what’s her name?”
“Autumn Henderson?”
“Ah, Henderson — and how she came here with her little brother — yesterday — what’s his name?”
“The little one — Percy.”
“Ah yes — Percy — and that old dog of Trenton Pit — the little dog with the pointy ears and flat face — what’s its name?”
“Scupper Pit,” Leo said.
“Ah yes, Scupper Pit,” Father Porier said. He smiled and went into some kind of reverie, and then looked at Leo.
“Well, what did they want?” Leo asked.
“Who?”
“The children — the children — not Scupper — I don’t feel Scupper wanted much — except to follow the children — but what did the children want?”
“Well, the children. Autumn had the little girl with her too — what’s her name — the little Pit girl?”
“Mother Teresa Pit.”
“Ah yes, Mother Teresa Pit. Autumn asked for a blessing of her because of her heart. Then Percy wanted me to bless Scupper Pit. So I blessed Scupper. Percy wanted to pray at the bones of our saint for Teresa Pit and for his mother, who is sick.”
“Their mother is sick? Elly?”
“Very sick — very sick —” Porier said. “She has had numerous miscarriages, you see — and — well, with herbicides et cetera —”
Porier lowered his eyes sadly. He knew who McVicer’s three children were, where they went and who baptized them as theirs — and this knowledge gave him a certain power over McVicer.
“Percy is wonderful, and he lifted Teresa up for me to bless her. I told him that there were no saint bones in the church. And the little boy said to me, ‘But there are!’
“‘Oh,’ I said, ’are there saint bones in my church?” (Here he affected astonishment.) “And Leopold, do you know what Percy said?”
“No, I don’t,” Leo said. “I don’t know what Percy said. How would I know what Percy said? Percy may have said anything.”
“Percy said, ‘If there are no saint bones, then there is no church — you cannot have one without the other.’”
Leo was exasperated. He was exasperated because he didn’t know what the child had meant, didn’t know why it was a great thing to say, yet was jealous of the little child for saying it, especially after he had written a cheque for the visit of Vicka. Could Percy do that? No, he could not It was always up to him, McVicer.
“Children say all kinds of things,” he said. “I have said similar things myself.”
“You have?” Porier said.
“Of course I did — lots of smart things. Anyway,” Leopold said, “I know Mathew Pit did it — the robbery.”
“What — How — ?”
“You know the five hundred dollars? I bet my pocket money Elly never confessed to it at your confessional. Why? Because she never did it.”
“Oh —”<
br />
“Mathew Pit — he had me fooled for a day or two — no, not even that long!”
The light had gone from the room and only a few electric candles burned. The altar boys had all gone.
“You see, no matter how long, things get figured out.”
“You are right,” Porier said. “All things unseen will be seen.”
This struck Leopold not as comforting as he left.
The autumn night was warm, and smelled of rain through the oak doors. In the autumn night Porier stood, turned out the lights, and locked the back church door, from where he could see the white marble altar glowing faintly. He could not admit to himself the sexual misdeeds he had committed on the two poorest children in his ward thirty-five years before — his one lapse in all this time — Sydney Henderson and Connie Devlin.
Sydney had survived in some fashion. But it had ruined Devlin’s life, so that he became a cheat, a drunk, and a liar in the world. Porier saw in Devlin’s weak mouth and small, deceitful eyes a vague yet discerning moment of himself, of his own sad soul. He was hoping for God’s forgiveness, without wanting to bear any further cross.
He knew who McVicer’s other children were.
He knew. He knew who had burned the store, and who asked to have it done. He probably knew my father was innocent of every crime ever bestowed upon him.
Leo went home. He sat and thought a long time. Now the natives were saying he had stolen their land and were demanding restitution. And Dr. David Scone, who had once sat at his table, had taken their side; and so too had Diedre Whyne. Perhaps he would lose it all. But not if he was smart. He took off his uniform and sat in a chair near his bed. All his friends were now dead; others whom he had fed and clothed had turned against him in their piss-arsed pants. The premier, a man he had helped get elected, had snubbed him last Christmas. David Scone was publishing a book on the injustices against the First Nations. It was being serialized in the local paper. Seven times in the first three chapters Leo’s company was mentioned, the wood he had cut, the roads he had dug out. And Scone wrote his reports against him in an office building his lumber had built and on paper his softwood had supplied.
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