For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down

by David Adams Richards

  “He only smiled and nodded – and said the only money he had was for his little girl.”

  “How much was in the tin box?”

  “One hundred thirty-two dollars.”

  “That was all – there was no ten thousand dollars?”

  “There was one hundred thirty-two dollars. I’d been told there was a lot more.”

  “By Jerry?” the police asked.

  “No, not by Jerry.”

  “What did Nevin do then?”

  “It was Jerry – Jerry wouldn’t take the money –”

  (In his first statement Mr. Rils suggested that it was he who didn’t want to take the money.)

  Rils stated that they turned on the light and Nevin was sitting up in the bed in his underwear. He was very thin, and he kept shaking his legs back and forth because he was cold, and he had red bumps on both knees. He had pictures of a girl all over his room, which Rils later found out were Hadley. Nevin coughed and began looking for a cigarette. He rolled one and told them that he hadn’t had a drink in four days.

  “Did he tell you or Jerry?”

  “Pardon me now?”

  “Did he tell you or Jerry this about his drinking – that he hadn’t had a drink in four days?”

  “Oh – I don’t know – he told Jerry, and Jerry said: ‘That’s good then – that’s good –’”

  “And then what did Jerry say?”

  “Jerry said he didn’t want his money.”

  “And what did you say then – did you respond to that?”

  “I said we’d take the money.”

  “And Jerry grabbed your hand.”

  “Well, he had a strong arm.”

  Rils said that Nevin also had a pack of loonies – about nine of them.

  “He told you you could take those?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “What did he say when you threatened to tape the shotgun to his throat.”

  “I never did that.”

  “Well, you stated earlier that you did. You stated on January seventh that you had threatened to tape the shotgun.”

  “Oh, that. Nevin said he was sending the money to Hadley – and if we wanted money from him we would have to wait – he didn’t seem scared anymore.”

  “That’s when Jerry told you to leave.”

  “Yes – told me to leave.”

  “And that’s when you decided to kill Jerry Bines.”

  Rils didn’t answer this. He simply restated that they left the apartment intact, and took no money. That he was broke and cold and lonely and, not having been able to sell his jewellery, he felt it had been a wasted trip.

  “Why did you hit Mr. White?”

  “I wanted him to confess.”

  “To confess what?”

  “To confess that he had a lot of money – everyone said he had a lot of money – all the street talk was that he had a lot of money – so I was surprised.”

  “Do you think Jerry was simply trying to keep you from robbing Ralphie Pillar?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And what was Mr. Bines doing when you were hitting Mr. White?”

  “He was looking out the window as if this had nothing to do with him. He seemed to have removed himself from it entirely.”

  (There were some questions asked about Nevin’s ex-wife, Vera Pillar.)

  “And what did Mr. White say?”

  “He said he would not give the money to us because it was for his daughter. I never thought he would be brave.”

  “And that’s when Jerry told you to stop hitting him?”

  “I don’t remember –”

  “But on January seventh you stated that.”

  “Well, maybe – maybe not – I don’t remember what Bines said most of the time.”

  The reasoning the boy followed was that Jerry was trying to save everyone. His reasoning was romantic. But, lying in bed at the cottage in mid-July, he would think it all over. Jerry hadn’t wanted to steal the tractor-trailer, but he had been forced into it. (The boy did not know how Jerry had been forced into it, but he only reasoned he was.) After they had stolen it he refused to sell the cigarettes and a fight occurred over it between him and Buddy.

  Then, to atone for Joe Walsh – the man who was his uncle – he made friends with Ralphie. To atone for his son he gave the wheelchairs, and tried to get his son to Halifax as soon as possible.

  Andrew’s uncle was far more cynical. He said that Bines knew Rils was coming, so he made friends with anyone he knew who would be able to give him an alibi – he made a big deal of everything so people would know about his boy. It was part of his histrionics. And he told his story to Vera, which was a way to impress her, about how he wanted to change.

  “He worked like that there all his life,” the boy’s uncle said.

  What the boy wanted to find out was about Buddy’s death.

  “Well, Jerry would use you whenever he could,” his uncle said. “And he had Rils and Buddy steal the trailer – but then he got worried about it. There were too many ways to get caught. Bines liked to use people and cause trouble. It isn’t right to steal – but all Buddy wanted was his money–”

  The boy liked the other idea, that Jerry was protecting Joe Walsh.

  Andrew’s uncle wasn’t fascinated by this at all.

  “But it was Percy Rils Bines had to worry about,” his uncle said. “You can’t steal a tractor-trailer from an uncle who brought you up and have grand feelings –”

  The man had another theory – that Jerry did not know who the tractor-trailer was going to be stolen from.

  This is the theory that had surfaced in the last few months. That Jerry tried desperately to get Joe off the hook because Rita was ill. It seemed a nice thought to the boy.

  His uncle countered this by saying that Jerry had a more perfect solution. Take no responsibility for it – pay no money for it, refuse to help move it, until Joe Walsh was charged with it, and they would be home free. If Buddy and Rils were caught he would not be implicated. And if Joe was charged, he could then manoeuvre about and be friends with Buddy and Rils once more, and make his estimated profit of thirty thousand dollars.

  “The idea that Jerry was protecting someone like Joe is a good story – the truth is always somewhere else.”

  16

  The place was never measured in any way. The scene was a redundancy of sharp broken trees cast into the naked sky, the earth cast up the thousands of acres clipped and broken, the roads twisting here and there, winding their way through what was previously dug up and rooted out. Far away the trail of smoke ebbed like a fingerling in the cold blue sky. His wife’s house stood back from a road, naked and white with pink curtains in the upstairs window, as nondescript as a thousand other houses in the rural areas of the provinces.

  On December 21 he went to get Amoxil for his son at a pharmacy in town. Then he took his presents over to Hazel and Lucy and Frances. He stayed thirty minutes to help adjust the outside Christmas lights for them and then he drove away.

  He stopped at Sullivan’s Groceries and bought some cookies, the kind his son liked.

  He did not have the tree yet, so he must have gotten it between the time he left Sullivan’s and the time he picked up Rils. He could have gotten it at the Irving five miles further on.

  For some reason when he arrived at the house he had Gary Percy Rils with him. Again this was a glitch in his nature, something he had intended never to do, unless, as was said later, he had not judged Gary Percy well, or intended to kill him there and then.

  His wife watched them from the small window in the living room as they got out of the truck. Everything was in slow motion. It was as if every step had been played over and over in her mind a thousand times before that, her wild man coming home to disrupt the house with a friend from his other life.

  Jerry was not a good man, make no mistake. She remembered the night he had tied a noose to the kitchen beam and was going to hang a friend for saying something he didn’t like. And
he would have done it, too, of that there was no question in her mind, until she begged him to desist.

  What was said was the thing said only in one of those arguments that happen when each of us is drunk, Bines later admitted. I might have been wrong to try and hang him, but he was wrong in saying what he said although, when I think of it, I was too drunk to remember what it was.

  At first she had been naive enough to believe that he had never done anything, and dismissed all the times Constable Petrie came up to put him in cuffs. But slowly that changed. She saw how people would come to him and ask him his permission about who to rob.

  He would nod his head slowly to one, say no to another, his voice so soft that it would be hard to believe it carried such power. “Don’t burn him out,” he would say to one. “No – that’s no good – no good.” Or, with his head turned slightly sideways, and his eyes cast down, he would nod, yes – and everything would be comprehensible.

  She became more certain of this when Gary Percy Rils arrived in 1986, because over him Bines had no power.

  As she watched them walking towards the house now, she saw that Gary Percy wore industrial leather mittens, soft shoes, and suit pants from some city somewhere. He was dressed in a patchwork of two different worlds. His face looked peaked because of a greying beard.

  It seemed to her that things took forever, or happened in an instant.

  Willie had run to the door to meet his father, but she grabbed him and said: “Shhh,” and already she was trembling.

  She remembered that she sat Willie on the bed in the far room and closed the door, and when she turned around they were in the kitchen, the door still opened and the pale afternoon light sweeping in, with its smell of snow and winter dirt.

  In retrospect the argument must have started in the truck about the Pillars. She did not know what it was about exactly. Gary following Bines about the room, and Bines, his eyes always on him, saying: “No – not taking you there – no,” in a quiet voice.

  The various prison psychiatric reports on both men suggested paranoid megalomania. All of this Vera eventually mentioned in her book. And it was one darkness pitted against the other, as Bines’ little boy sat in the room, listening.

  Jerry told Loretta that Rils would be leaving that day. Bines turned sideways and shut the door quietly. He took the shotgun from under his coat, and placed it on the kitchen table. Then he took the handle off and placed it on a chair, and took a small butt handle from his pocket.

  But it didn’t fit and he kept working at it. Gary went over and looked out the window. Some snow began to fall slowly down and made the earth white again.

  “I’ll fix this for ya, and then I’ll drive ya out of town.”

  And on the radio came a song: “Oh come let us adore him….”

  He jammed the handle up and taped it with electrical tape, and held it in is hand to fashion the grip.

  “Try this,” Bines said, and he placed it on the table.

  “I’d never be able to shoot,” Gary said, picking it up, and looking disdainfully at it.

  “Well, I’ll put the other handle on, and take it like that,” Jerry said.

  “Too long.”

  “Then I’ll cut it down.”

  They looked at each other. There was dead silence. After a long moment, Jerry said: “I’ll cut it down.”

  “Saw it off at the front.”

  “No.”

  “Saw it off.”

  Jerry shrugged and looked at his work.

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  Gary said that Alvin might be able to do it, and they should go into town.

  “No.” Bines shrugged and stood up slowly, and it was at this moment that Loretta looked at Rils. His eyes were fixed on the distance, yet filled with an inner self-loathing that could be felt across a room.

  “Tell him to stay where he is,” Bines said to Loretta. “I’ll bring the tree in.” He was speaking of Willie, but Rils said he could go where he wanted. He seemed to become very agitated by this.

  Bines looked at him. “Not talking to you,” he said.

  Mrs. Bines then stated that they were putting the tree up in the living room. This was the next thing she remembered about events. She did not remember Bines coming in with the tree, and the cookies under his arm.

  He called to Willie to come out. “Got you your tree,” he said.

  The little boy looked at it, as little boys do, suddenly unfettered and released from the adults around him.

  “Go get those tools for the stand,” Jerry smiled. “The ones I give ya after I fixed yer wagon – fixed yer wagon –” He smiled at this too, and looked at his wife, for some reason hoping that she would be pleased.

  Rils wanted to go, but Jerry told him there was time, and that he was putting up the tree, like he said he would.

  “I don’t like trees,” Rils said. “I got things to do.”

  For some reason peculiar to his nature, he began to tease Willie. No one knew what this was about. “What do you think of your father?” Rils said.

  Willie had come out of the room and was standing there with two screwdrivers in his hand. He wore his white cap, because his hair had not finished growing out. He looked up cautiously at his father when Rils spoke. Then he looked at Rils and said nothing.

  “Like yer father – doncha, Will?” Jerry said. “Like your father.”

  “How do you like your father?” Rils said again. “If you don’t like your father, join the club,” Rils said. “Join the club – right Loretta – join the club.”

  “Not going to join any club, are ya, Will?” Jerry said softly, as if to smooth things over.

  “Join the club,” Rils said again.

  Jerry glanced over at him but he was trying to put the tree in the stand. And out of character, but because he was trying to impress Willie, he told his wife to tell Willie about the man in the Bible. “The one there who gives the lad all the clothes and food when he’s in trouble,” he said, and he glanced over at Rils.

  “Oh, the Good Samaritan,” Loretta said gently.

  “Ya – the good lad there,” Bines said. “Who hides the lad out and feeds him,” he said, “even though no one else in the world will.”

  Willie looked cautiously about, at the man in the corner, and then suddenly smiled.

  And Bines looked at him and smiled gently back. Then he turned away, as if in utter disdain and contempt for injury and began searching for the lights in the box of Christmas decorations.

  “Now, when we get the tree up – we’re going to invite some people up for supper –” Bines said.

  “Gram,” the boy said.

  “Gram,” Jerry said as if the boy had guessed it.

  Rils went into the kitchen for a moment. Supposedly there was something said about the little boy’s hair, and about wearing the white cap.

  “His hair will come again,” Jerry said. “Won’t it, Will – what did the doctor say in Halifax – what did she say?”

  “Hair will grow back,” Willie said.

  “That’s what the doctors say at Ronald McDonald – right, Will?”

  Willie was standing with icicles in his hand waiting to put them on the tree.

  “You don’t mind no hair anyway – do you, Will?” Willie didn’t answer.

  “Anyone can have that old hair,” Jerry said.

  “The boy was standing with the icicles, and he turned to me to give me some,” Loretta said in her statement to Constable Petrie. “I wasn’t watching Mr. Rils. I had mentioned about supper the next evening and that perhaps Jerry and his grandmother could come over then. Jerry had just been called to go work a boat, and he didn’t know if he could come. Although I knew he was too sick to work. He was moving very slowly – I was surprised. It depended on what shift, he said. I remember him being very agitated about this, because he had forgotten it, and he didn’t want to disappoint the boy. It seemed to bother him more than things usually did. ‘Well, I’ll come up after work – no matter when,’
he said, ‘I’ll be here.’ I mentioned to him that he could phone someone to work for him, but he was displeased with this also. Now that I think of it, of course – he needed money for Christmas.”

  (Her statement continued after a question from Constable Petrie about a lock of hair encased in plastic and found in Jerry’s shirt pocket. Loretta said she didn’t know about it, and then answered a question about Rils)

  “No, not at all. I don’t think he was worrying about Mr. Rils at all.”

  (Her statement continued)

  “Yes, he was short with Willie – because of the icicles, but I think he was thinking more about supper the next night. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Go sit down until the lights are up,’ is what he said. He said it more sharply than he ever said anything to William before. And I’m sad about this now.”

  (Her statement continued)

  “No, William sat down and watched from the corner. I don’t know what Mr. Rils was doing – except the argument they were having continued. Then I knew it was about seeing to Mr. White. Rils hated him – and he said he wanted to see about Mr. White.

  (Her statement continued)

  “Jerry said no. He didn’t elaborate one way or the other. The other argument – over the phone, yes. Jerry didn’t want Mr. Rils to use the phone because he thought there was a tap on it. Mr. Rils said he wanted to phone Calgary. But the argument only lasted a second because Jerry walked over and hauled the phone out of the wall and came back in.”

  (Her statement continued)

  “No, Calgary. No, Buddy wasn’t mentioned. I remember at one point Alvin was mentioned. No, the tractor-trailer wasn’t. No, money wasn’t mentioned at all. He didn’t say if he was trying to get money from people in Calgary. I don’t know why he wanted to phone Calgary. I thought it was because of Christmas.”

  (Her statement continued)

  “No, as I said, I wasn’t watching Mr. Rils. There was no liquor involved. No – I don’t know – Jerry always had cocaine, so there could have been. He was in pain so he probably had cocaine.”

  (Her statement continued)

  “I did not know anything about Mr. Rils wanting to do that – to the Pillars. I didn’t know about the history of it. No, Jerry wanted nothing to do with it. He told him, no, he wouldn’t take him into town, and I now assume he meant he wouldn’t take him into town to go there and do that.”