Finally he went to the door and knocked. An old lady answered it, and he stared into the same kitchen he and his wife shared almost twenty years before. Except it looked much homier now with a great degree of quietude.
“I was looking for Gail White,” Nevin said.
“No, I’m sorry, this is the wrong apartment. You could try upstairs.”
Nevin nodded. “Okay, I’ll do that,” he said.
And he turned and walked along the street towards University Avenue.
With Nevin the compulsion to have a drink was almost always unbeatable. Sooner or later he would have to submit to it. And the idea of course was that he had already submitted to it, and the matter was settled. He took out his change purse – for he had always carried one – and looked through it. Besides the little miniature picture of Hadley, and an older picture of Vera, he had four dollars in change, which would give him a few draft at any rate.
He smiled at this, and he looked through every pocket of his coat, not only for more money, but to make sure he had his return ticket.
The old tavern was gone with a new one in its place, and he sat down. Over in the corner a heavy-set man with a huge black beard and a worker’s vest was looking at him.
It was Gail’s brother. Nevin knew this instantly but the man didn’t seem to know why he recognized Nevin.
“What’ll it be?” the waiter said.
“Yes – just a minute,” Nevin answered.
He went over to Donnie and sat down.
“Oh ya – Nevin – well, how are you?” Donnie said.
He put out his huge hand and held Nevin’s gently and shook it up and down the way a man does who is hardly ever this formal.
Nevin was frightened that there would be abuse heaped upon him or scorn or ridicule for how he had treated Gail. But Donnie only said, “Boys it’s been a long time since I seen you – where you been?”
“Oh, haven’t been any place in particular,” Nevin said. “Do you want a beer – I’ll buy you a beer.”
“Ya, sure – I’ll have a beer,” Donnie said, “and then I’ll buy you one.”
“No, just get me a pop,” Nevin said. “What are you doing?”
“Oh, I work on tractor-trailers – work on them – probably be run over by the sons of whores some day.” And he smiled. He took his beer and drank a sip and looked about as if he didn’t know what to say.
“You a professor now I suppose or somethin like that.”
“No, no, I’m nothin like that,” Nevin said. He wanted to be derisive about professors and say that is why he couldn’t be one, but Donnie only smiled at him kindly, and he found he could not.
“Oh, I was thinking of you just the other day –”
“When was that?”
“Oh, I don’t rightly know,” Donnie said, in the old-fashioned way, and smiled. “Oh, yes, it was the day I had to drive the grader down to Hampton – what day was that?”
Nevin shrugged, and lay his huge mittens on the table before him.
Donnie looked about again and then yawned and looked at his boots. They were frayed and torn and untied.
“Well boys I don’t know she’s some bad now this economy,” he said, looking up.
“Yes, it is,” Nevin said.
“The country is more or less a ghost now,” Donnie said.
“That’s true,” Nevin said.
There was a pause.
“More or less useless as a country now,” Donnie said holding his glass and drinking, while he looked around the room.
“So, are you married?” Nevin asked.
“Oh ya – married now, a boy and two girls.”
He cupped the glass in his huge hands so it was almost hidden.
“Where’s Gail?” Nevin said. He said it in a way that startled him. He held his breath after he said it.
Donnie took his big thumb and pointed it sideways.
“Oh, she’s just here –”
“She married too?” Nevin said, after a pause.
“Oh ya – married – married a boy from home – Furlong – George Furlong – no, you wouldn’t know him,” Donnie said, shaking his head at himself.
“I’m glad,” Nevin said, although secretly he was disappointed.
“Oh ya – well, she’s doing all right you know – you too married now?”
Nevin shook his head. “No, no – I’m not married.”
It was growing dark. The snow was hard on the street, the lane lying brown and salted in small neat heaps, and the lights were on above the wires, shining golden on the snow.
Nevin followed him outside and stood beside him a moment.
“Do you know where I can find her?” he said.
“Who? Oh, Gail – well, she’ll be home now,” he said. And he told Nevin where she lived.
“You need a drive?” he said.
“No,” Nevin said, “I can walk.”
And he started out briskly, with the wind and the cold in his face.
The house was across the river. The driveway was ploughed to the stones, and an old hockey net sat inside the open door of the garage.
The closer he got to the door the more nervous he became, until his whole body shook.
“She will laugh in my face,” he thought. “She will laugh and then spit in my face.”
But he was propelled not by his courage but by some other aspect of his nature. He took off his hat and held it in his hand, and knocked.
The door was opened by a little girl.
Nevin looked at her. A little over three feet highp with big brown eyes and her whole head a mat of tiny curls.
“Mommie, it isn’t Patty – it isn’t Patty–”
“Well, who is it?” he heard.
“It’s me,” Nevin heard himself saying.
Gail came to the top of the stairs and looked down at him, bending her head down to make out his face.
“It’s me,” Nevin said, smiling slightly, “Nevin.”
“Nevy–” she said.
He had not been called Nevy in twenty years.
“Yes,” he said, “it’s me.”
He stood at the door and she came down the stairs.
It was, to Nevin, as if they had said goodbye earlier that morning.
“Thea,” she said gently to the little one, “don’t block the door.” And she smiled.
She was now forty years old, but to him she was exactly as she had been.
She had three children and it was right at supper time.
The baby was in the highchair, with a big plastic bib on, which made his face look very chubby, and covered with red spaghetti sauce. The older boy sat at his own table in the hallway, drawing. There was something reserved about him that Nevin did not like – he did not know why. Perhaps it was only because he was no longer a child but a little boy, something he took very seriously.
Perhaps it was just because Nevin was nervous. He put his mittens in his pockets.
Have you had your supper?” she said.
“Oh, I’ve just got a minute,” Nevin said. “I was in town and saw Donnie – so I just thought I’d drop over.”
“Oh, yes – well – you were where? Up at the university?” she said, somewhat cautiously, as if she didn’t want to intrude on his intellectual doings.
“Yes,” Nevin said, sitting down in a chair, “on business – so I just thought I’d come over and see you – I mean see about how you were.”
She smiled and sat down.
“You just missed my husband,” she said. “He’s gone to work – just went out the door –”
There were shouts of children playing road hockey on a side street and far away a train shunted with a thud that was muffled by the snow.
“It’s good to see you,” she said. “I often wondered where you were now – and what you were doing. I mean, almost every week I think about you.”
Instantly Nevin thought of making up a story to impress her. But he only said, “I wanted to see you for a long, long time.”
After a moment she said, brightly, her eyes shining, “You didn’t know that I ran after you – after you went around the corner – did you?”
“Oh no, I didn’t know that,” he said, and he tried to make it sound light-hearted but it didn’t sound that way. Then he cleared his throat. “If I had known that – maybe I would have turned back,” but he thought he had said this too flippantly.
She smiled gently and smoothed her hands on her apron and looked about the room, but averted her eyes somewhat.
“I wanted to find you for a long time,” Nevin said. “I did not know where you went – where–”
“Oh well,” she said simply. “We were both young.” She looked at him. “I mean, we can’t blame ourselves – it was so long ago now.”
“Oh no – no,” Nevin said, “I don’t blame myself about anything.”
She smiled. There was some powder on her chin, and she wiped it away. Then when she turned to the baby, when he saw her slight back and the angle of her head so he could see her small neck and the medallion’s chain clasped to it, he said, almost humbly: “That’s not true – I’ve always blamed myself – I always thought – not always, but in the last five or six years, that I should never have gone away – that I always loved you – that I always loved you and –”
She turned to him and her eyes seemed startled with hurt, and then suddenly she reached over and put her fingers to his lips.
“Shhh,” she said, and her eyes filled with tears.
It was as if he had gone around the corner but had decided to come back, and all those years – all those years had never passed or mattered in any way.
“I’ve always loved you,” he said, through her fingers. “Why did I belittle you – why did I belittle –”
“Shhh,” she said, and smiled. “Shhh.”
He left an hour later to catch his bus.
He was out on the street and he looked up at the stars, and felt a kindness in the cold air, a warmth in the battered naked trees, and he didn’t bother to put on his hat.
The boy came out with his jacket unzipped and his boots on.
“Here,” he said, and running to the edge of the driveway he handed Nevin two peanut-butter cookies, which were still warm from the pan. “Mom says to give these to you for your trip on the bus.”
And then he nodded and ran back to the house, turning suddenly at the door to wave goodbye.
13
It was now the middle of December.
In the darkness a man of medium height and build, about fifty to fifty-five with greying hair and a sharp, somewhat impressive face, with very pale blue eyes that were somewhat sunken into his head, made his way along a street in town. He had a false ID and two hundred dollars in jewellery in his pocket that he himself had calculated to be worth much more. His name was Gary Percy Rils.
He had been wanted on a Canada-wide warrant for the last six months, for escaping custody and a murder committed in Sudbury, and though summer had been fine, now he was cold and tired. There was over a bootful of snow on the ground. He wore shoes and thin grey socks, and suit pants that the wind cut through.
He was the darker square of the jigsaw, the most oppressive in his disregard for the life of others, and the most vindictive in his sense of self-perpetuation.
He moved into the derelict lot and sat for a while on an oil barrel. Seeing a police car drive by he gamefully waved to the constable, who nodded back, and, lighting a cigarette, looked back over his shoulder at some noise on the road above him. The small trees that were once here had disappeared. The earth had the smell of cinder and wet snow. He had just walked through the woods about one half-mile and it had frightened him.
In all ways over the last twenty-five years he had become a city boy – and yet something compelled him to believe that this was where to be. He had had no idea an hour ago that he would make it here and be sitting in this old derelict lot. But this is where he now was.
Across the street a tiny light shone out from the house, and a wind started. The sky was brutally clear, the streetlights glimmered.
He had been Buddy’s friend since they met in Dorchester in 1976, and this is where sanctuary would be for a while. He made his way across the street and knocked, quickly kicking the snow from his flat, soaking shoes.
The knock was answered by a shuffle inside, as if a disturbance had been interrupted, and finally the door opened. A soft light shone on his face.
“Oh,” Alvin said. He said nothing more for a moment, and it was as if he were wondering whether or not he could close the door and lock it before the man put his forearm in, which he had started to do.
Rils’ face was one of those faces which, in the light of a room, demonstrated a total invariable of expression. It was simply cold.
“Hello, Alvin,” Gary Percy said as he came in. His fine hair was soaking and stuck in three separate ropes against the back of his neck. Sticking from his jacket were two or three small boughs, which he had placed inside to keep warm.
He glanced about the room. Over in the corner, curled up and watching him, while she smoked a cigarette – like young people do, with the affectation of someone older and wiser – was Lucy. She had been in bed for three or four days, as she was every month at this time, and was now just coming around.
The man nodded in her direction, and the faint flicker of a smile passed over his face. Frances hobbled in from the other room, and looked at him. She had a sore ankle from where Alvin had kicked it. For his part he hadn’t meant to kick her but he had gambled away some money of theirs on the machines and everyone at the tavern – or those he put the most stock in – had teased him, and when he came home he took it out on her.
Alvin had been walking around the room, finishing up the beer left over from the night before, when the man knocked, and he was telling the children that they were all to go out and get jobs. When the knock came on the door he had thrown a shirt over his back to hide his stump – which he hardly showed to anyone outside the family.
When Gary Percy came in, Alvin looked cautiously at his daughters and said nothing. But his face looked as if he had just taken a hit in the mouth.
However, regaining his composure, though his hand was trembling as he held it out for the man to take, he smiled as if a trick had just been played on someone and he had been a part of it, and thought that it was a fine thing.
“How did you make it here?” he said in a voice a little too enthusiastic, so he tried to look suspicious at the same time.
“I’ve been around here for a month,” the man said, “though they don’t know.” And he tossed his head as if to indicate the police. But this was a lie, though it didn’t matter.
Lucy caught what she always caught about men when they came to the house, and which she had caught since she was a little girl, that is, whether these men were weak or strong. And she could see by the way her father looked that this man was strong and even more so than Jerry Bines. She had known this before.
She sat up and looked at him. From far away she looked like her cousin Adele, except there was no great softness of her features that enhanced her looks. She was beautiful or would be, there was no doubt about that.
Rils sat down on the edge of a chair and looked about. The wind blew outside and the old house seemed to crack and move. The lights themselves flickered slightly.
“Where’s Jerry?” he asked, and again Lucy looked over at him cautiously, and lit another cigarette.
“I haven’t seen him,” Alvin said.
“Tell him I want him,” he said, and he glanced over at Frances, who stood in the same position she had when he came in.
“Well, I don’t know where he is.”
Then Alvin told him that Jerry spent most of his time now with Ralphie Pillar – hanging around with the judge’s son. Gary Percy said nothing about this for a moment. “Has he got religion or money?” he said finally.
“I think he had a little of both,” Alvin said, suddenly realizing
disgust at Bines.
The man shrugged, but his small eyes glittered in an immobile darkness. All the children, who were sitting in small rows on the stairway, all those blonde and brownheaded little girls, who had been born in this household and were now waiting for Christmas to come, watched him. They all noticed the cheap watch on his wrist, because its imitation gold glittered somewhat.
“He might be here tomorrow night,” Frances said.
“Oh, he still designs to come here, does he –” Gary Percy said. And the whole family laughed, even the little girls on the steps.
Lucy then stood and walked by him with her blanket wrapped about her, because she was almost naked under it.
She turned and looked back over her shoulder for a second, and then went upstairs to her room.
The thing was she had no love for Gary Percy Rils. She thought only of warning Jerry Bines.
Lucy got dressed later and went out through the old back hallway which slanted, and down the back stairs with a door at the bottom. She stole away in the dark and crossed the picket fence.
She went to Ralphie’s shop and looked through the glass. There was no one there. The stars were out and it was cold.
Boys on the street whistled to her.
“Hey Luc—cy,” they said.
“Piss off,” her answer was.
She made her way through the small gate at the side of the brick shop and along a narrow street grown more narrow with snow until she reached the highway, and then she cut across the graveyard in a hurry.
In ten minutes she was at a small house above the tracks where a group of boys, and one or two girls, were sitting smoking and talking.
“Where’s Jerry?” she asked.
No one had seen him.
She waited in the house a moment because she was cold. Ice had formed on the window outside.
Then she turned and walked back down over the hill. It was after eleven at night and she had no idea what to do. Her boots made a soft echo of late night as she walked along the street, and the lights in the houses were out.
When she got back to her own street she saw Jerry’s truck coming in the other direction slowly. He flashed his lights and she ran up to him.
For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down Page 11