For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down

by David Adams Richards

  “Although Mr. Bines is no stranger to us …,” he read, and then he read the story about how his father had made him fight in the pulpyard against men when he was thirteen, and how he was not a stranger to his share of trouble. And the story finished up: perhaps he was “more sinned against than sinning.” An expression Bines had never heard before, but he nodded with conviction and satisfaction when he read this, the same way he had when he was acquitted at his trial.

  Now it was growing dark, and he waited to see his son whom he knew his mother had brought to town. When he saw the boy he moved across the street and into the park.

  “Where you goin, Willie?” he asked.

  “Meet mom,” the boy said. And in fact Bines saw his ex-wife walking towards them at that moment.

  She walked up to them and nodded. Her hair was red, and she had eyes that were pale blue. She wore a fawn-coloured kerchief that smelled of evening. In all ways she looked like a country girl in town.

  “Look,” Bines said, showing them the article.

  “Yes,” she smiled slightly, as if she were afraid. “I read it.”

  For some reason he was slightly disappointed in this. There was a picture of the camp on page two and he showed it to William.

  “Come through the door, Willie,” he said. “Through the door, almost blew my ears off.”

  Again his ex-wife smiled as if she were frightened, and looked at her son. Her face was covered in small transparent freckles. He was trying to make something up to her by showing her this article on him.

  “What does this mean here?” he said, pointing to the quote.

  “‘More sinned against than sinning,’” she said, looking up at him again in consternation, and puzzlement, as the evening now smelled of snow and brown mud. It was as if she didn’t want to tell him. He looked at her and smiled.

  “What does it mean?”

  In fact, he found out it meant exactly what she would want for herself, and what everyone seemed to want – even what Joe Walsh had seemed to want. To be more sinned against than sinning.

  He shrugged when she told him.

  “Is yer minister more sinned against than sinning?” he said.

  “Of course,” she said.

  “But they would never say that about him – in fact, before he dies they will say just the opposite –”

  He said this very calmly, but she knew he was upset with her for not liking this article. He took the paper suddenly and threw it in the garbage barrel a few feet away as if it were nothing important. He shrugged. “Don’t matter anyways,” he said. “Don’t matter –anyway just go to the drugstore for me – before it closes – just go over – eye drops – got a sore eye –”

  His son looked up at him and then went cautiously over to the barrel to retrieve the article.

  “Leave it be, Willie,” he said. “Leave it be.”

  Bines wanted to give his boy a benefit. And in December – about the eighth – he went to Ralphie to ask him to help out.

  Ralphie told him that they should try to have the benefit after Christmas – for it was too close to the season, and people were very busy – but that he could try to organize it through the Kinsmen some time in January.

  “But you don’t understand,” Bines said, “I already told his mom we would have one – have one – already said he would. Maybe Adele could help out or something – Adele help out.”

  “I know she would,” Ralphie said. “She’d help out in a minute – I know she would.”

  “I want to have him a benefit,” Jerry said, and then he paused. “I want people to know I had him one – had him one. I want his mom to know it too –”

  Jerry had told his wife and little boy about the benefit he and Ralphie were planning. Why he did this as early as November 18, before he had even asked Ralphie, and a day before his camp blew up, no one was certain. But then other things happened to take him away from it.

  “What kind of benefit will it be?” his wife had asked.

  “A big one,” Jerry said, “I’ll only have a big one – right, Willie?”

  The little boy looked at him, his eyes as big as saucers, and smiled faintly holding a toy truck in his hand. His lips were pale blue, and there was a slight bluish tinge to his forehead. But Bines looked at this death in life very strangely – that is, almost hopefully.

  “Here,” he said, suddenly, hauling out a receipt from his parka. “I ordered you a book – a book – I went to the store and ordered you it. I asked the girl – girl at the store and she says ‘order him a book on dinosaurs – kids love dinosaurs’ – so I did. Getting ya a book on dinosaurs – they lived a long time ago – right here in the back yard maybe, though I don’t know. Maybe you and I could go dig for some dinosaur bones some day – in the back yard there maybe – I don’t know.”

  Ralphie however could not get people interested in the benefit on so short notice – not before January 17.

  He told Bines to wait, and that in January he would make sure he had everything organized. He would have the Kinsmen’s hall or the Lions Club, and they would have a fundraising benefit as Bines had seen them do for other children.

  “Okay,” he said. “Fine.”

  He shrugged and smiled, and took some Aspirin, just as his father had done twenty years before, for the pain.

  He said nothing else about it again.

  Some nights his wife would wake and Bines would be sitting in a chair in the other bedroom, with his boy.

  She would wake up and feel his presence in the house.

  “The medicine is making him sick,” he whispered one night. “He’s still got them bruises – and his hair isn’t growing back like they said.”

  “That’s all right. Dr. Lem told me it’s only an antibiotic to clear up some infection; the chemotherapy is working. You have to go in January for that operation – so he wants everything cleared up.”

  Bines had been tested for bone marrow in September and the operation was finally scheduled for just after Christmas. Always her voice was uncertain as if she was trying to explain something unfathomable to him and was worried that he would not understand and get angry. She also felt indebted to him because of the bone marrow. And he knew this and hated it. Did she not think he would do it in a heartbeat? This angered him as he looked at her.

  “That’s just a little annoyance – you know they gave him a transfusion – the last time he was in. It’s just a little annoyance – Dr. Lem said.” He held his hand up.

  And then, moving into the kitchen, he sat with his hands on his knees.

  On the old oak table there was a Bible, and a vase of imitation daisies with huge plastic petals. Over in the corner there was a group of sloganizing plaques on the wall.

  His wife came out and sat in the chair near him with her head down, as if she were waiting to be lectured. He looked at her a moment, ready to say something, but then he stopped. He did not know what to say to her anymore. So he said: “Read me a part from the Bible.”

  “The what?”

  “Bible – read me a part –”

  It was after 3:00 in the morning. The kitchen was dead quiet. The air was cold, and some snow had gathered about the outside window frame.

  “Yer always telling me you’re good on the Bible.”

  She picked the third marker from the back of the New Testament and looked down at it.

  “Pick a part,” he said again.

  She was shivering, her arms were bare, and her legs trembled. When she started reading her voice shook and broke and was lost because of the presence of the man sitting off to the side with his bolt-black eyes resting upon her.

  “‘I am the true vine – and my Father is the husbandman; no one comes to the Father except by me.’”

  She looked up. There were some cookies in the dish. He seemed distracted. He remembered how Willie liked those kind of cookies.

  “Ya,” he said, and he nodded silently. “That’s good, though,” he said, smiling. “That’s good.”
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br />   Ralphie had not seen Bines in two or three days when he got a call at his shop.

  “I shouldn’t tell you,” Adele said.

  “Tell me what?”

  “Jerry wants you to go and bail him out.”

  “Of jail.”

  “Well, not out of church, Ralphie-face.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Threw a table through a wall at the hospital.”

  “Why?”

  “You’d have to ask the turbulent mind of Mr. Jerry Bines,” Adele said. “Oh,” she said almost as an afterthought, “he wants you to bring money, so you’d better not disappoint him – his friends are not allowed to.”

  Ralphie went to the police station and bailed Jerry out. And felt numb the whole time. It gave him a strange sensation that Jerry would ask this favour of him.

  “I’ll pay you back,” Jerry said, as if he were worried that Ralphie would think badly of him.

  “No – I mean don’t worry about it. What happened?”

  Jerry told him that no doctor wanted to take responsibility for his boy, that he had finally been scheduled to go to Halifax for tests, but they were now postponed, which meant the operation wouldn’t take place until early February. He seemed to be very agitated about this.

  “Well, I’m sure they are trying their best,” Ralphie said.

  “They’re all frightened of taking responsibility for the boy. They didn’t ever consider it was leukemia. At first they just thought it must’ve been me beating him.”

  Jerry said that all the doctors were frightened of the boy because of who he was.

  “They all know who he is, and they’re all scared something will happen to him. I demanded that we go today – to Ronald McDonald house – to Ronald McDonald house – demanded we go there now. But it’s not scheduled up until the fourth of February – fourth – that’s too late.”

  Ralphie again did not know what to say, so he only shrugged.

  “They can mix my wife up with it – she puts her faith in things – in things,” Jerry said.

  “In what things?”

  “I don’t know – not the same things I do – different than me – than me.”

  The doctor he had wanted to see had gone on vacation and his son had to wait in the outpatient ward for over two hours. Jerry already had the boy’s bag packed. No one had any idea why he was there and he became upset when they finally told him that Dr. Lem was not available, that there was no ambulance scheduled to take the boy to Halifax, and that Dr. Charing, who would perform the operation, was not available either.

  “I’m sorry about it but I won’t be laid a hand on,” Jerry said.

  “Well, who laid a hand on you?”

  Jerry didn’t answer. Then he looked at Ralphie, as if trying to atone for something. “I don’t want to lose the boy,” he said. “He’s only small.” And he turned away.

  “I have to go back down to Lucy’s and get William,” he said. “He’s all upset – just like his mom now. That’s no good at all.”

  When Ralphie came home he sat down on the small chair in the living room.

  “Do you know why I don’t like him?” Adele said. She came into the room and looked down at him. He was lost in thought. His hair was turning white, and his whole life was filled with expectations that to him had not materialized.

  “I don’t know why you don’t like him,” he said, matter-of-factly. “Not at all.”

  “When I knew him he wasn’t famous – not like he is now. His dad used to hold parties up at his house and Joe was still tilted then and used to go up. Jerry used to beat up the kids and take their money – he was a little snitch, and his father Digger used to hit on the old man – but Joe wouldn’t hit him back because he was his sister’s husband maybe or he had a plate in his head. Digger would wait until Joe got drunk and then throw a punch and knock him off the chair. He was built just like Joe – strong as a mule.”

  “So that was years ago – look how Jerry had to grow up,” Ralphie said. “His father wasn’t responsible for his actions. He had pain in his head all the time.”

  Adele sat down on the seat opposite him. In the pale light of afternoon she looked her age, like Rita had looked some fifteen years before.

  But this is not what Adele had wanted to say.

  She wanted to tell him about the tractor-trailer that was stolen, and Joe losing everything because of it.

  “Oh, I don’t think that was Jerry,” Ralphie said.

  He said this in the way every man or woman does when they choose not to want to know.

  “Who put the finger on that tractor-trailer, Ralphie-face?”

  Ralphie didn’t answer.

  “What lad in town would be brash enough to do that?”

  Ralphie didn’t say anything. He only looked up and then looked away.

  “Who do you love more – me or Jerry Bines?”

  “You,” Ralphie said.

  “Who put the finger on that tractor-trailer, Ralphie?”

  Ralphie didn’t answer.

  The day was growing darker, panning out into one shadow with the moon over the trees lying down flat on its back.

  “Who do you think you hurt when you talk of Jerry Bines as a hero?”

  Ralphie didn’t answer.

  “Who wanted to see my sister graduate from university?”

  “Joe.”

  “And that’s the guy they suspected when they couldn’t find their cigarettes.”

  Ralphie sat with his head down, a strange smile on his face.

  “Who put the finger on those cigarettes, Ralphie? Who put the fuckin finger on that tractor-trailer?”

  “He’s all changed now – he’s trying to change,” Ralphie whispered. “Joe – Joe wouldn’t mind him now, he’d help him.”

  “There is a dream about the most beautiful boy in the world being cold on the street – and you are in it – it was in the dream I had one night when you went up to see him at the hospital and I say to you in the dream, ‘Don’t look at him, don’t pick him up, because as soon as you pick him up he changes and becomes something else.’ That was a dream I had, Ralphie-face.”

  Ralphie didn’t answer.

  “It’s his power that you like, Ralphie-face.”

  Ralphie didn’t answer.

  “There is trouble coming – I can tell.” And she tilted her body over and reached into a stack of papers that were ready for the fire. She showed Ralphie a picture of Bines’ camp. “Why did he blow this up?”

  “Oh, he didn’t blow it up,” Ralphie said, in the tone of voice that suggested that someone had gone too far in their argument.

  “Someone is on his way and Jerry doesn’t want him using it – so he blows up his camp.”

  “That’s the most ridiculous theory I’ve ever heard,” Ralphie said, as a less perceptive person will always tout their rationality.

  “Someone is coming and he doesn’t want him using it. That’s why he blew up his camp.”

  Ralphie didn’t answer. He seemed to be cold and his beautiful hands trembled slightly, as if they were trying to find some bolt or screw or attachment to fix.

  “What did you teach me, Ralphie?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You taught me in calculus that everything is for a purpose, everything happens – a rock falls twenty storeys at an angle that laws of ten billion or hundred years says it must. That’s what I put faith in when you lost your feasibility study – and the eighty thousand that went along with it. That’s what I put faith in when our life went wrong – when Mommie and Joe died – why did Bines blow up his camp?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s what I put faith in – who fingered the tractor-trailer?

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who was Daddy trying to sober up?”

  Ralphie didn’t answer.

  “Jerry – who everyone told him not to trust – who knew Dad had to pick up 120 thousand dollars’ worth of cigarettes – who knew he w
as going to go to Saint John.”

  Ralphie lit a cigarette and looked out the window as if he were very interested in something outside.

  It was not as if this was an unusual way for Adele to argue. She had argued like this for years – over matters far less consequential. And Ralphie pretended that all of these arguments were the same and not one new idea was ever explored. And to do this he looked out the window, and puffed on his cigarette.

  “Who sent him a postcard – when he was in prison?” he said. “Who told me that they took care of him the year his mom died?”

  Adele faltered, and looked about the room.

  “And who loves this most beautiful child in the world – you don’t want me to pick up? Whose family is the only family on the river ever to love him?”

  Adele didn’t answer.

  There was a long silence.

  “Loves that most beautiful child in the world –”

  There was another silence.

  “Because he is their own. And he’s come home now–asking forgiveness –”

  There was another silence.

  “Looking for shelter.”

  There was another silence. Then Ralphie whispered: “Tired of being hunted down.”

  12

  Nevin took the bus to Fredericton. It was a long dreary ride, and the bus stopped many times, to let off passengers or to pick up parcels. He was on his way to see his first wife.

  After they reached McGivney Station he slumped into a depression.

  It was fine to say to yourself you were going to meet someone and ask forgiveness for a cruelty you had done. It was another thing to actually do it.

  He went along the old street where they had once lived, near the farmer’s market, and felt himself shivering. All the memories of those youths who had grown up on popular songs of revolution and change, and used it to hurt and bully others until they themselves floundered into middle age and obscure dreams on windswept streets while the lights flickered on at dusk.

  For nearly an hour he stood in the parking lot behind the apartment he and his wife had shared. Memories flooded him of her hanging out the clothes, or smiling at him when he came home.