The Only Café

by Linden MacIntyre

  He turned back to the old house. Even five years earlier it would have been unwelcoming and he could understand his father’s preference for the boat. He’d never seen the boat, though he knew it was large enough to live on. Pierre could have gone anywhere on that boat, but he chose to stay in the little harbour. He obviously felt safe here. Nobody would have thought of looking for him here. Nobody here would have any reason to cause him harm. The boat blew up. Probably propane. It happens. The body disappeared, a conspiracy of wind and tide. Probably.

  It had been wishful thinking, the notion that he could stay here, in the house where his mother spent her childhood. “You’ll have to vacuum,” Aggie said. “The flies, they’ll be everywhere. Every fall the place filled up with flies. And probably the mice will have taken over. You’ll have your hands full for a whole day, I’m telling you. If it was me going, I wouldn’t give it a thought, with all the nice places to stay and you earning a salary. Finally.”

  She was right. It annoyed him how often she was right. She had a way of making what was right and logical sound querulous and therefore aggravating and unacceptable. It was at the essence of their struggle.

  “You don’t get it, Mom. It’s more than just a place to stay. I’m surprised you can’t see that.”

  “Well, you can do what you want, but mark my words.”

  He tried to remember the name of one of the little inns and bed and breakfasts he’d seen along the way. He couldn’t. He’d have to drive back to the village, go door knocking. He considered continuing on to the harbour to take a look. But it was getting dark and he felt a sudden sense of dread. He decided to call Angus Beaton, set something up for tomorrow morning, maybe at the harbour.

  Beaton answered. When Cyril told him who was calling he went silent. Cyril waited for a moment, the discouragement gathering around with the cool gloom of the October evening. “I was hoping to meet up,” he explained. “Maybe sometime tomorrow, if you have a few free minutes. I heard you spent some time with my dad, before the accident. I just wanted to meet you, I guess. Nothing in particular…”

  “Where is it you’re staying?”

  “I was just on my way back to the village to look.”

  “You’ll not find anything this late. The place is filled up for the Celtic Colours.”

  “The Celtic Colours.”

  “It’s a music festival. They have it every fall.”

  “Okay.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Mabou Coal Mines. My mom’s old place.”

  “You might as well come here,” he said. “There’s a rec room in the basement, if you don’t mind sleeping on a pullout couch.”

  “Ah, no, I couldn’t. It would be too much trouble.”

  “Well, it’s up to yourself. But you’ll be welcome. I don’t suppose you ate?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Well, come along. We’ll set another place. We can talk about the sleeping arrangements when you get here.”

  “Ah, but…”

  “You know where we are. We’ll expect you.”

  Angus Beaton was tall and broad-shouldered, with a substantial paunch. His handshake was firm, his eyes cautious. He led Cyril straight to the dining room. “We usually eat in the kitchen, but you’re a visitor.”

  “I hate to be putting you to…”

  “Never mind that. Can I give you something before we eat? I don’t touch it myself but Maureen likes a little nip when there’s an excuse.”

  “Well, maybe.”

  He turned toward the kitchen and called, “Maureen, where did you hide the Scotch?”

  “In the usual place.”

  He walked toward a small hutch. “You’ll be having one yourself,” he shouted.

  “Sure,” Maureen called back. He produced a bottle and two glasses, poured generously.

  “The food is nothing special,” Angus said when they were at the table. “If we knew you were coming…when did you arrive?”

  “Just today.”

  “First time?”

  “Well, when I was just a kid.”

  The boy, Bradley, was uncommunicative. He ate quickly.

  “Slow down,” his father said.

  “Are you using the truck this evening?” Bradley asked.

  “I had no plans. Where were you thinking of going?”

  “Just to Kevin’s place for an hour. Okay?”

  “You know you can’t be on the road after midnight.”

  “I won’t be that long.”

  “I’ll be up.”

  The boy rose from the table, gulping a glass of milk, turning to leave. Halfway to the door, his father called him back. “Where’s your manners, goddammit?”

  “Oh. Sorry.” He smiled, came back and reached out to shake Cyril’s hand. “It was nice meeting you.”

  Cyril and Maureen had a second Scotch after dinner while Angus cleared the table. She fetched a photo of their daughter, Melissa. She was twenty, in first-year university. Very athletic. Played varsity field hockey. She was stunning, Cyril thought—how her mother must have been twenty, thirty years earlier.

  Maureen told him she was a nursing supervisor at a senior citizens’ establishment in Inverness. She loved the work, relating to the old folks who had so much history and wisdom.

  Angus came back with a pot of tea. “I don’t suppose either of you two boozers…”

  “Listen to him,” Maureen said.

  Cyril said, “Actually, a cup of tea would be great.”

  “Life is queer,” Angus said after Maureen had left them. “Your poor father wouldn’t believe what you’re in the middle of here. Me and Maureen and Bradley. Melissa off in university. A nice house. Me a teetotaller. It was quite a different scene five years ago.” He shook his head. “I was pretty down and out when I met Pierre.”

  They talked then, and they were still talking at eleven when Bradley returned, stepped into the room, but backed out wordlessly and went to bed.

  The words were still flowing a half hour later when Angus finally stood up and stretched, yawned, and said, “We can continue this in the morning, if you’re up for it when we go down to the harbour. I go back there now and then, just to remind myself.”

  Before climbing into his temporary bed, Cyril checked his BlackBerry. He couldn’t remember having gone so long without trawling for texts and emails, browsing through the news. There was nothing in his inbox.

  He sat on the edge of the makeshift bed and composed two messages, but he agonized before he sent the first one. Finally: Hi I need to talk to you. It’s kind of important. xoxo

  Then to Nader: Hey brother, where are you? I’m on the East Coast. I might be onto something.

  36.

  He woke up frequently to look for messages, but also to compulsively return to the reconstruction of events from details Angus Beaton had provided from the year he’d spent in a tiny, dilapidated travel trailer near the wharf at Mabou Coal Mines.

  Gloria had responded with surprising promptness: Whenever. But whatever excitement her cryptic message might have caused was lost in the frustration he was feeling over Nader’s silence. It had been days now with no call or text.

  Then he’d drift again, into the recurring thought: how life goes off the rails. Crisis, catalyst for change. Explains everything. Then he’d doze and dream and be awake again, wondering if he had really slept or if the dream was part of a memory that was inaccessible.

  Angus Beaton, he thought, was a crisis master. He had survived so many crises he now spent much of his life helping others deal with crises of their own. Mostly struggling military veterans, or often active-duty soldiers arriving on his doorstep unofficially. Word gets around about someone who will listen, someone who had been to the dark places. The local legion had a grant and paid him a stipend to be available to the haunted walking wounded.

  The crisis that reconfigured Angus Beaton’s life had started with a game. A stupid game he realized in retrospect. Grown men being careless little boys.
Cyril later couldn’t remember all the details, as he’d been listening for openings to steer the conversation back to his own agenda.

  At one point Cyril had asked: “Do you mind if I take some notes?”

  “Don’t know what’s worth noting,” Angus said. “But go ahead. Whatever turns your crank.”

  “So, this game?”

  “Oh. I don’t like talking about it and for a long, long time, I didn’t. Then I realized I had to. Bored guys farting around in a very dangerous place in Afghanistan. Kind of a race. Anyway, one day I lost two good people.”

  He lit a cigarette and walked to the door, opened it, stood there, blowing smoke out into the still darkness. Spoke to the night. “I was in charge so. There was a court martial, naturally. But the guys stood up for me. Long story. I didn’t do such a great job of standing up for myself. From then on it was administrative duties. Which was probably wise. Then I was out of it.”

  His second crisis was arriving home to an empty house—Maureen and the kids up and gone. “I got pretty crazy after that. It was during that phase I met your dad. I probably wouldn’t have met him at all. He kept pretty much to himself and I would spend my days alone, too, digging my grave with a bottle opener. But I couldn’t sleep at night and I got the impression he had the same problem. Though he never said much. I just know he wasn’t much for the booze.

  “This night I’m wandering around the wharf, completely wired. I decided to have a look at this new boat. It was all in darkness so. It must have been about three in the morning. And I’m standing there having my smoke and I realize there’s this guy sitting down there and he’s watching me. Not saying anything. We exchanged a few words and I left, feeling kind of stupid. Later I discovered we probably had a lot more than insomnia in common.”

  Then there was a long digression about the failure of his marriage and how Pierre had listened. It was good talking to him. It was a rare experience for Angus, a stranger listening and being really interested.

  “But, funny thing. I don’t think I’d have gone back to the boat at all to talk to him if it hadn’t been for the two guys I saw snooping around one day while he was out on the water.”

  Cyril made a note: Two guys snooping.

  “Local guys?”

  “No. They were cops.”

  “Cops?”

  “Plainclothes cops, but I could tell by the car they were driving. A big old black Crown Vic with tinted windows and those lights you never see until they start flashing at you. They were cops all right. But they weren’t from here. I knew all the ones from here.”

  “So you told my dad?”

  “Yup. He seemed to take it all in stride. Like he was surprised, but not overly. So I just let it go. Anyway that was when we started talking. Eventually he told me where he came from originally. And that, in itself, was revealing.”

  “Revealing how?”

  “Lebanon. I’d never been there but I knew enough to know I never wanted to go—certainly not soldiering. I met some Irish fellows once. Jesus, but the stories. Somalia was bad, but I couldn’t imagine Lebanon. The Israelis, eh. Run right over you. And you couldn’t do a thing about it. And then of course the Syrians. I had a bellyful of them on the Golan Heights.”

  He lit another cigarette, walked to the door, pinched off the ember after three quick puffs.

  “Okay. So there was this morning when I figure, looking back, I hit rock bottom. I don’t know whether I was sleepwalking or what. At first I thought I was in a dream but I wasn’t. I’ll show you in the morning—there’s a breakwater down there. I was out on the end of it, in a wind would blow your hair off. And the waves pounding. I was soaked. Not a clue how I got out there, never mind how I’d get back.

  “And it just came to me in a flash: I’m not meant to go back. It’s all over now. I was that close.”

  He was staring hard and Cyril couldn’t read the look.

  Angus stood suddenly and walked into the kitchen. Cyril could hear a tap running. He was gone long enough that Cyril thought that perhaps he wasn’t coming back. He made a note: Breakwater. Storm. Then Angus returned, sat rubbing his hands on his thighs.

  “So there I am. Close as I think I’ll ever be to the other side without actually crossing over. And I felt…happy.” He looked away. His hand was shaking as he lit another cigarette. Cyril watched the smoke curling upwards, the ash growing.

  “And then your old man showed up. I have no idea how he got there. I seem to recall he was kind of crawling over the rocks until he got close enough and then he stood up and reached out. I tried to wave him off but he got hold of my hand somehow.

  “I’m going to tell you, Cyril…” He halted, struggled. Cyril picked up an empty tea cup, held it out. Angus flicked the ash from his cigarette into the cup. “I’m sorry. Anyway, we’re standing there and he has ahold of my hand. And he kind of steadied me. He had some kind of a grip, your dad did. For a lawyer. And we helped each other off the rocks. And he didn’t let go of me until we were aboard his boat. We had drinks. That’s about all I remember specifically. I know we talked.”

  “You talked.”

  “Yes. And I’m ashamed to say it was pretty well all about me.”

  “Okay. And that would have been when?”

  “I think Sunday morning. I was supposed to go out with him on the boat the next day but I overslept and I missed him. I wasn’t much for boats anyway, so I didn’t think he’d mind.”

  “The accident was Tuesday morning.”

  “Yes. About seven thirty. It was a miracle there were no other boats in the harbour at the time. It was lobster season and they go out early. It was one of the reasons they were saying it was deliberate.”

  “Deliberate?”

  “The timing. Like he wanted to do himself in without hurting anybody else. The fishing boats were all out, right?”

  “I suppose there were other ways, if he wanted to. I mean, going to the trouble of blowing up a boat?”

  “Yes. That was what the cops were saying. That, and there being no body. They thought maybe he’d staged everything to cover up a disappearing act.”

  “What did you think?”

  “I didn’t know what to think. I was kind of in shock, right? So I did what I normally did. Numbed out on booze and pills. But I remember the cops and their theory.”

  “These cops would be Mounties?”

  “I presume so. The same two that were looking at his car earlier on. Of course there were other Mounties, too, in uniforms. But they were mostly concerned with trying to find a body. They were sure of what happened. They were blaming a propane tank—I told them he’d cooked supper for me and he had a propane stove.”

  “You have doubts?”

  “I’ll show you something in the morning.”

  “Okay.” Cyril made another note: He wants to show me something.

  “The plainclothes guys seemed more professional than the others. Lots of questions, mostly what he might have told me about himself. Which wasn’t much.” Angus settled back. “Odd, remembering. I thought they’d have been more interested in the fat guy.”

  “Fat guy?”

  Cyril wrote: Fat man?

  “Yes. Some stranger around the wharf the day before. But then I thought, maybe he was one of theirs. But why so much interest in some Toronto lawyer on a boat in a place like that?”

  “This fat guy, what do you remember about him?”

  “Well. He was in a car up on the gravel road for the better part of the Monday afternoon. Just sitting. As I was driving out, on my way to town, probably the liquor store—he was out by the back of the car. He had his back to me. It looked like he was taking a leak as I drove by, turning so I wouldn’t see what he was doing, right? So I never saw a face. I recall thinking, ‘That guy is as broad as he is long.’ And I kept on going. But he was still there when I came back, sitting in the car.”

  “Where was my father’s boat?”

  “Out. Sometime between six and seven I heard it coming in
. Then a few minutes later it went out again, which I thought was strange. I didn’t notice when it came back the second time. I fell asleep, I guess. But I was up later. Maybe ten o’clock and it was there. There was a light on. I remember now, I’d picked something up for your father while I was in town. A bag of ice, I think. I started over with it but when I got close I could hear voices.”

  “People talking?” Cyril was writing: Boat in, 6 to 7; out again; back by 10. Voices.

  “I thought so,” Angus said. “But it could have been your father talking on a phone. Or it could have been a radio. It was just one voice I heard. But I turned back. And I saw that car near the end of the wharf.”

  “The fat man’s car.”

  “Yes. But it was gone by three a.m. when I was on my usual stroll. There was no sign of Pierre. No lights on. Boat dead quiet.”

  “Could the fat guy have been somebody from around here?”

  “Could have been. But the car was a rental.”

  “And you told these policemen all this. The car. The stranger.”

  “I did.” Angus yawned. “I wish I could tell you more,” he said. “Maybe when we’re at the harbour in the morning, things will come back. But I’ll tell you something, Cyril. That explosion woke me up in more ways than one.”

  Cyril had a feeling that he’d seen the harbour before. Perhaps on calendars or postcards. Or it could have been an image surfacing from childhood memory. There was a solid wharf and a floating dock embraced by boulders. They were stopped on the road above the harbour. Cyril pointed down. “The famous breakwater?”

  “Imagine me standing out on the end of that in a southeaster. Wind must have been gusting to seventy knots. Wild.”

  “And the car with the fat man.”