“There ya go – Freezie for ya,” he smiled. “Freezie for ya.”
Then he sat down at the table cautiously, and drummed his fingers up and down.
“Do you know how many planets there are – there are billions of planets,” he said. “I read that in a book – you tell yer mom.”
8
The reason Bines was liked was this: in most ways in his life he had willed himself to be, and made people conform to his will – not so much by physical strength as by a brutal nature, and was surprised when they did not conform, was, in fact, puzzled if they did not. And this was something that Adele had seen and that those who had come up against him, even when he was fifteen and at Kingsclear, had seen.
A few days later he went to Vera to talk about his son.
He looked at her and smiled slightly. He asked her if she would help him get Willie to the hospital in Halifax as soon as possible – any delay was dangerous for the boy.
“I can see about it,” Vera said.
“See about it – that’s good – see about it,” he said.
“Life hasn’t treated you very well, has it?” Vera said, and suddenly she smiled, staring at his callused hands and a scar above his eyes, the tattoo of a star on the skin between his thumb and forefinger.
“No, no – not so bad,” he said.
“Well, you’ve had a much harder life than most,” Vera said.
The day was rigidly cold, the sky blue, the trees with naked branches soared above the town. The streets were bare and yet cold filthy snow clung to their edges. It was November and the colours of Christmas decorations were starting to appear about the street.
“No, no,” Bines said, “my own fault – own fault there – where’s Ralphie – huntin?”
She stared at him quietly. “No, he doesn’t hunt,” she said.
“No, don’t hunt no more very much meself – very much – see those little deer – seems a shame to shoot them.”
And Vera smiled slightly.
“Anyone to do that to a woman should be shot,” he said, lifting his right hand just slightly to the poster behind her head showing a woman and a child cowering while a man was about to strike them.
It doesn’t stop, the poster read, it just gets worse.
“Oh yes,” she said, turning to look quickly behind her. “Yes,” she said.
“Woman can’t defend herself – herself as much,” he said, contemplating the picture again. “Old man – my old man was a rough old cocksucker,” he said.
Vera was surprised he had said that word but he was so unassuming when he said it that she smiled slightly.
“Mister man,” he said but his eyes were far away, as if he was thinking of something and didn’t realize she was there.
By their meeting he found out that she had contacted the hospital but there was nothing she could do.
“Everything that can be done is being done – Mr. Bines refuses to realize this,” she was told.
When she explained this to him, Bines simply nodded.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
But he didn’t answer. And then he spoke of other things.
What he wanted to know about was Nevin. And when he found out that Vera was keeping Hadley away from him he was disturbed.
“Well, maybe you should let him see the little girl – little girl there,” Bines said to her. “Straighten him around, he’s all upset about something.”
“Nevin has to come to grips with himself,” Vera said. “I can’t help him anymore.”
“No, no,” Bines said, “I see.”
“His father was a bully patriarch who terrified him, like mine was to me, and he has to come to grips with it.”
“What’s that?” Jerry said.
“A man who dominates others,” Vera said.
“Oh ya – that’s no good,” Bines said. “No good.”
He looked away from her. And suddenly she said: “I’m afraid of what will happen to Hadley. It’s what almost happened to me.”
“What did?” Bines asked.
“Incest.”
Bines was quiet then. He looked at her a moment and said nothing, but things went over in his brain like tumblers in a safe. Incest – he wasn’t quite sure what it was. He scratched his jaw and looked about. “You stick with me,” he said, “and no one’ll ever ever bother you again.”
But he didn’t know what else to say.
“Hadley doesn’t like her father anyway – she’s frightened of men,” she said, then paused a moment. “I’m not saying your little boy is frightened of you.”
“Don’t know,” Bines said. “Hope not – hope not.” He cleared his throat and moved his hand through his hair.
She had a small display of books along one wall of her office and he looked at them. The titles to him were so obscure and grandiose. He was thinking of buying his son a book. He looked at the titles wondering if he could catch a glimpse of a title his son would like, and when she caught him doing it he lowered his eyes.
For all the times they met Bines kept his answers short and to some point he wanted to make. He would, in fact, answer either yes or no to most things.
Vera would sit opposite him, staring at him as he spoke. But slowly he felt he had given away too much information about certain things, and not enough about others, and this bothered him.
One night he gave her information the impact of which she probably did not fully grasp. He spoke about the tractor-trailer filled with cigarettes that had been stolen in 1986. He spoke about Joe Walsh being investigated because he was its driver and did not report it stolen for forty-eight hours. He spoke of Joe’s heart condition, and his losing his job.
“The man who set it up had to turn around – turn around and save Joe – couldn’t let him take the blame.”
“I see,” she said, but she was far more interested in Jerry Bines and did not know who this man was.
“What about 1977?” she said. “What started the trouble that year – your father died? In what way do you think of it, looking back.”
Bines had quit school in grade five. This was the first thing Vera learned that proved her stereotype. And he had turned pro at eighteen and had four fights – his weight varied from middle to above light heavy, and he fought light heavies to heavies. But he wasn’t disciplined and at least twice he entered the ring half-drunk. The only thing he had on him that was really above average was a left hook like a Philadelphia club fighter, but he was always off balance when he threw it so the other fighter could move to his right and counter Bines on the top of the head. So he quit the ring. And, the man said, he was responsible for a number of things which he did not tell Vera about and a number of things which he did.
But surely Adele knew. And this is why, concerned for Ralphie, she finally drove up to see Bines.
The man wasn’t sure when this was. It could have been as late as the third week of December.
There was the house that she hadn’t visited since she was a little girl, and a house in some ways which she had always feared and in it a person she had always feared also.
A dog snarled in the cold night. If it had been the third week in December the shotgun hole in the wall would have been made – so it had to be that late. Because Adele asked him about it.
Bines was sitting in his sock feet by the stove, and he had the scanner on, listening to the police broadcasts.
“Oh, that,” he said, about the shotgun hole. “Well, I gotta fix that. I’m trying to quit this smoking racket – I have this gum – it don’t do a thing for me – just makes my teeth numb.” And he smiled at her. “I also got a beeper – cost me a hundred dollars. You’re only spose to smoke during the beeps – I never figured it out.”
And he took it out of his pocket and showed it to her.
“That’s what I should get,” she said.
“Here,” he said, handing it to her immediately.
“I can’t take it,” she said.
“Go on – it’s yours – yours,” he sai
d. “Quit smokin – it’s yours.”
Then he got up to get her tea.
“I don’t need any tea,” she said shyly.
“Well, you don’t drink – so I’ll make you some tea,” he said. And he went into the kitchen.
Always one act for Bines proved his ultimately generous nature, which in the common man would never be seen as anything more than civil.
Bines was struggling at this time. Of course at this time he was almost blind in his left eye but no one knew it.
This was close to the end, so there was a lot going on that Adele did not know.
But he desperately wanted to make a good impression on her – because of Vera who he had fallen in love with as one falls in love with his teacher, as university sophomores idolize their professors.
Of course, Bines did not know quite how to make a good impression on anyone. He had qualities greater and lesser than the qualities it took to make oneself socially acceptable.
He had been beaten all his life, and beat back. He had enemies everywhere, and like most of the wounded he had always kept himself physically fit to ward off those who might come against him.
“I don’t want Ralphie to get into trouble, Jerry,” she said haltingly, “so I’m coming to you as a favour – for Joe and Rita, if they were alive.”
“Trouble – Ralphie wouldn’t get into any trouble,” he said, and then with the same unfathomable sense of self he had, a sense of self that always in some important way disregards others, he moved his hand through his coarse hair and smiled at her.
When he went into the kitchen she noticed that his grandmother was lying on the couch, on her back.
“Is your gram sick?” she said.
The wind howled; there was snow against the window, and an old potted plant sat in the corner.
“I don’t know – check her pulse. She’s been drunk as a loon the last three days. Most likely still with us,” he said. And then he went into the corner and brought out a steel ball and joint.
“This is what they took out of her hip – and replaced it with a plastic one – lift that.”
“It’s heavy,” Adele said.
“She’s been dragging that about with her for five years – and look at this.” Here he lifted the old lady up.
“Don’t wake her,” Adele said.
“See that – she’s got a brace from her bum to her neck – if she doesn’t wear it she bends in two – it’s a sorry racket –”
When they went out into the night air, the stars had spread their canopy over the heavens above the crowded trees and furiously frozen wastes.
Jerry put his arm around her, the first time he had done this since they were children, and pulled her toward him.
“Come here – I want to show you my pet.”
And he took her to the pen by the shed.
It was the dog that had snarled at her. But it was not a dog, it was a coyote.
“I was drivin on my Ski-doo and came across it eating on a fawn, so I run it over and brought it home – and it gets up and starts to walk away – so I grabbed it by the tail and threw it in here. I don’t know what to do with it.”
“Why don’t you let it go?”
“Let it go,” he said.
Adele nodded, her scarf wrapped about her face, so that only her eyes could be seen.
Bines opened the pen, and the coyote slouched on its belly as all coyotes do and then dashed towards the field.
“There ya go, Delly,” he said. “There ya go.”
And Adele could not help but feel what so many others felt when they met him, that she was in the presence of an extraordinary man. For what reason she would never really discover.
9
Nevin had wanted to change his visiting date, but Vera said that wouldn’t be possible. Nor was Hadley any longer allowed to visit his apartment.
So, finally he went to visit her. All the way there he was trying to think of what to say to her. “I know you’re a good person – a kind person – and everything like that – but I can’t change her name.”
He walked to her house. It was after 7:00 at night. The river stretched out beneath him and the wind snapped the trees. The grey night seemed heavy, and scuds of snow unravelled on the frozen earth.
Nevin had come up from the street below, which was almost bare and smelled of supper. His feet were cold, and his eyes stung. Suddenly he stopped, not knowing what to do.
Jerry Bines’ truck was in the yard.
It was as if he was seeing a crude joke at his expense. In fact he did not at first realize it was Bines’ truck. Snow began to fall down from the sky over the heavy branches. A cat scurried and stopped to notice him, wind blowing its fur so it seemed as if it had a hole in its back.
Hadley wasn’t allowed pets of any kind because of her allergies. She wasn’t allowed anything. She went to school and came home, and Nevin remembered that the only time she ever tattled at school seemed worse simply because of her nature.
And thinking of this as he saw the cat, he walked across the street, and went into the house.
Bines was sitting in a chair with his arms crossed and two huge rings on his fingers – rings that could slash Nevin’s face in a second.
“What are you doing here?” Nevin said. He took a cigarette out of his pocket and held it in his hand. Bines looked over at Vera and then looked away – as if something had distracted him and Nevin was not important.
Vera said nothing. But at this moment Hadley became her major concern and she ran to get her – as if something horrible might happen. And at this moment Nevin smiled weakly, because he was unsure why she did that. Later he realized that this was the worst part – but that it also was orchestrated. That by doing this she had cast a calculated moral judgement – and part of her enjoyed it.
Bines glanced at him. “Be here if I want.” He said this very calmly – as utterly calm as a man could possibly say it.
“You have your own wife and son. Why don’t you go there?” Nevin said.
Bines said nothing.
“I’m not frightened of you,” Nevin said.
“No one asking you to be frightened of me,” Bines said.
“Then what are you doing here?
Bines looked at Vera. Nevin remembered that at this point Vera shook her head for some reason, and was hugging Hadley.
Again Nevin remembered that he said something he felt was horrible but he couldn’t stop himself. “What in hell did you ever learn? You can’t even read very well – that’s what Ralphie told me. He laughs about it at his shop – all the time.”
“No one’s asking you to be frightened a me,” Bines said again. He was hurt by the remark about Ralphie and didn’t know how else to answer.
“Can’t even read,” Nevin said. “So Vera feels sorry for you – just like she feels sorry for Lucy – and all those people.”
“No one told you to be frightened of me,” Bines said.
“Well, I’m not,” Nevin said. “And you got a sick little boy – what are you doing here? You should be home with him. At least I don’t have a sick little boy.”
Bines again looked at him, more puzzled than before.
“My boy’ll do all right,” Bines said. He turned away from him, like you would turn away from someone who is sick, and then he stood and went into the kitchen to get a glass of water.
Nevin was still talking away in the other room. And then he started to complain. He was saying that all he wanted to do was to visit with Hadley and no one would let him. That all he wanted to do was hug his child.
When Bines came back Nevin was sitting there as if everything had been drained out of him. He went to reach out for Bines’ hand and shake it. And then he began to follow him about the room with his hand out. “Here we go, brother – here we go. Little mixup. Here we go.”
Bines, who had not paid attention to him while he was doing this, turned to him while he was putting his parka on. “Go sit down,” he said calmly. “Sit down.”
And Nevin did actually go and sit down. “Hadley,” Nevin spoke. “Hadley, you understand.”
And as Bines was leaving Nevin said: “Jerry – I’m sorry about your son.”
Damp snowflakes fell out of the sky, and birds flitted in the crevices of half-empty doorways below Nevin’s room. There was a smell of cold harsh salt and bread.
Why did he leave his first wife? It was at university. Of course, he didn’t give a damn for divorce or marriage. But there was something else. She had waited for him at home all one night in January of 1971. It was his birthday. And the next morning when he came in, the cake was covered and left on the table in the kitchen.
“I’ve met someone – Vera Pillar – so you should know,” he said. And he couldn’t help feeling vindictive. “She is a woman with her own mind about things – not like you.”
He remembered her smiling at him timidly, as if he were joking, and then she lowered her eyes and sat on the bed clutching her left thumb with her right hand.
“So I thought you should know,” he said to her angrily, blaming her for things she had not done.
Now he remembered another incident painfully. It was Hallowe’en and Vera and he were living with a group of friends on University Avenue.
Instead of giving a group of little boys and girls treats they brought them into the house and scared them. Of course, this was a long time ago, and Nevin was only young. But what was supposed to be a joke turned mean.
And what he most remembered about that night was a little boy trying bravely to protect his sister when she started to cry.
Twenty years had passed and he had not forgotten a moment of that terrible encounter.
Can you imagine growing up like Jerry? he thought suddenly. He’d heard of Jerry’s father, who’d had a plate in his head, and had beat him unconscious “whenever there was a full moon,” Nevin had heard.
But, of course, there really was no way to help him. And every time he saw him, it always seemed to startle him, and he looked away in fear.
And he knew that Jerry disliked him.
And his little boy was sick. Which was awful. Especially now coming on to Christmas. How could a man as powerful as Jerry have a child who was sick?
For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down Page 8