For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down
Page 16
“Mr. White,” someone shouted from below, “your pants are unhooked.”
And Nevin saw that his pants were unhooked from the cross scraping against them, and he smiled.
“Yes,” he said, and he hooked his pants again and tightened his belt.
The wind suddenly blew against him, and held him back against the steeple.
“Tie the rope – tie a rope on,” the same man shouted to the grey-haired man, looking not at him but at one of the pastors.
“It’s all right,” Nevin shouted. “We’ll jimmy it up.”
And he went up to the next tier – battered by wind and cold snow, the little group of people huddled below watching him as he dragged their cross behind him.
But he was not all right at all. He was scared to death and he did not know why he was doing such a foolish thing.
The boy stood beneath him on a small platform with his hand on the bottom of the cross, and when he let go the cross swayed in the wind and Nevin grabbed it with both hands, and almost fell between the scaffolding and the steeple.
Some people shouted out to him to be careful.
But Nevin and the boy and the older man managed to get the cross to the last tier. The older man sat down on the scaffolding to catch his breath.
“Come up to the walkway,” Nevin said to the boy, “and we’ll put it in together.”
The walkway was only a foot and a half wide, and the scaffold had ended. They could reach down and brace themselves at the top, but only if they let go of the cross.
“It’s heavy,” the boy said, but still he had the same kind grin on his face, and he reminded Nevin of the child he had teased so many years before. Already he seemed to be much stronger than Nevin and he realized this.
“Give it to me,” he said. “I’ll place her there.”
Nevin’s face was cut and his hands were torn. He bled from every knuckle. “I’ll do it,” he said, “if you support my back.”
“I’ll come up,” the old man said.
“No,” the boy said. “There isn’t room – you support our feet.”
Far away they could see the river turn bleak into the sunless sky, and the trees distant and dark.
Nevin thought about Hadley – but she seemed far away from him. He had been angry with her, for hiding behind a chair in the living room when he went to pick her up on certain Saturdays, while Vera said: “Well, you have to go – it’s your father.”
But at this moment it didn’t seem important.
The boy held on to him. The old man tried to support their ankles, and Nevin took the cross and lifted it into the socket. When it dropped into place he felt his hand jam and he winced.
“Hurray,” two people called up. “You got it, Mr. White.”
He climbed down from the scaffolding. People had drifted inside where there was to be a church service, and Nevin felt uncomfortable with this, so he stood outside the door. As he stood there his left hand bled, red blood dropping into the snow.
He was alone in the little churchyard. Suddenly he was depressed as he was at times when he thought of ending his life.
He thought of reading Kant in his studies at university and felt he had made a great mistake being here.
“Come inside,” a woman said to him. He blinked and put on his glasses and looked at her. She was standing with her little boy near the door.
“Come on – you’ll freeze yer arse off out there,” she said. She smiled and he smiled also.
She was Loretta Bines.
He looked up at the cross. Now that it was done it didn’t seem at all an important thing to do.
“You were brave to do that,” she said. The little boy nodded and smiled at him.
He looked at her, and he felt he could easily mistake her for his first wife.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’ve been a coward all my life. I’m sorry.”
“Well, we’re all as brave as we have to be,” Loretta said, “and none of us are any braver.”
“Forgive me,” he said, his lips trembling, “forgive me.”
But she only smiled kindly at him, and he could think of nothing more to say.
18
The word went out and Ralphie walked the streets from door to door to solicit support for a benefit for a boy hardly anyone knew. And yet the place was filled, and people were turned away at the door. A thousand people called to be tested for bone marrow. Yet the one who matched was the fifth person they tested – Adele Pillar. So she and Ralphie would visit Willie every week.
Their own daughter was sixteen years old, and very shy. She did not know them very well. But she still visited Adele and Ralphie now and again – although she found that Adele could not help bossing her and she empathized with her Aunt Milly much more.
Ralphie’s hair went almost completely white over the next few months. He wore ludicrous bow-ties and talked about things no one seemed to understand. He gave a talk at the high school comparing calculus and reductive biology, and an approach to it by modern man. Four people showed up. Adele’s sister Milly and Adele and Ralphie’s old high-school chemistry teacher and an old man no one knew. The old man looked baffled and said: “My God, boy, that’s the most boring talk I’ve ever heard.” And Ralphie had to agree.
He decided that spring that he might go back and do his Master’s and he went over to visit his professor in physics, who, years ago, had told him he was the brightest student he had ever had.
But when Ralphie saw him he realized that the professor no longer knew who he was and then to make it worse he pretended he did. So Ralphie decided to go back to his shop. And he never spoke of it again.
Some time in April Adele received a phone call from a lady at the local bookstore. She did not know who else to call. So Adele went down. There in a big glossy edition was the book on dinosaurs Jerry had ordered for his boy.
Adele paid for the book, and said she would give it to William.
She saw Vera’s book on a shelf near the door and glanced at it, but she never bought it. Something about it made her think of it as wounding someone in the heart, hunting someone who was wounded down.
Ralphie and she planted a garden that spring, and that summer, in early July, they adopted a child. The feasibility study didn’t matter anymore.
Vera stayed in town that summer to finalize her affairs, and sell the house, before moving with Hadley to Halifax, where Vera said there was so much work to be done.
When Vera left, Adele felt that part of her life was over forever. And a new life, whatever it was to be, with her husband and her adopted child had come. There was a sadness at the drive of the house when Vera came up to say goodbye. She glanced at Adele, and they both smiled timidly.
“You eat some – and get some weight on you,” Adele said, as bossy as always, trying to hide her absolute love for people by being sharp.
“Take care of Ralphie,” Vera whispered. “He would be lost without you.”
The day of Jerry’s death Alvin had decided to turn Jerry and Rils in for the reward. He sat in the station and he kept reaching over to shake Constable Petrie’s hand. Later he blamed his wife and children for what he had done.
The following fall Lucy went to Moncton to take a course. No one knew who she was or how close to Mr. Bines she had been. She never spoke about him, although there was a book and even talk about a movie. She had a wistful faraway look, and the wind blew in her dark blond hair.
She bought herself a little car. The kind that Buddy had always wanted. Coming home for Easter in late March she lost control of it and was killed just south of Rogersville. Adele and Ralphie paid for the funeral expenses.
Trenda, Jerry’s first wife, made inquiries into his property – and certain benefits she might obtain.
Those who accused Joe Walsh of being implicated in the theft of the tractor-trailer still did.
19
Andrew learned of all of this over a length of time and pieced it together little by little. Some th
ings he learned from overhearing his mother and uncle, some from the man who came those July mornings and took them to the cottage.
When Jerry was in prison, the man said, he’d taken a hot iron and burned the bare chest of another prisoner who was “making indecencies” towards him, so that the mark of the iron would always be visible on his chest, and it would always seem that he had pressed his shirt while wearing it.
Andrew had heard this at the cottage. He would listen to the old alarm clock ticking away in his mother’s bedroom, the trees waving softly at night, a smell of perfume from the shrubs and flowers coming in through the screen door, and a mosquito as big as a truck continually bothering him.
The only time the boy had ever spoken to Bines was that night at the camp. Andrew had a scout knife and he wanted to show it to him, simply because he had shown it to everyone else.
Bines had been sitting in a chair in the far corner of the room. He had the peculiar habit of putting his head down and slightly away from a person as they spoke, but when the boy asked him if he would like to see his knife Bines looked up. His eyes, bolt-black as they were, seemed to be filled with a particular kind of light.
“Sure,” Jerry said. And the boy brought his knife over to him. Jerry looked at it a moment. “Boy Scout, now,” he said. “Boy Scout, are ya?” Then he handed the knife back.
The boy took the knife and then said: “But you haven’t even seen all its parts – it has a whole bunch of different parts.”
“Don’t be saucy,” the boy’s uncle said quietly.
“No, no – let’s see – see there,” Jerry said, as if he didn’t want to be rude. He took the knife in his hand and opened it.
“Got a spoon here,” Jerry said, “and a pair of scissors – pair of scissors.” And he reached over with the small pair of scissors and clipped a strand of hair from the boy’s head, so that all the men laughed.
“There you go – I got your strand of hair –” And he took it and put it in his shirt pocket. “Next to my heart,” Jerry said, smiling. “Keep it here next to my heart.” Then he said: “You come back and get it from me when you’re seventy. It’ll still be here – next to my heart.”
That night at the camp the boy thought that he would get his strand of hair back in about sixty years, if all went well, and he would take a piece of tape and tape it exactly back on the spot where Bines had cut it. He knew enough not to mention the hair again because that would lessen its importance.
And he had forgotten about it until this hot July evening. Half asleep, and sitting up in bed to take a roundhouse at the mosquito, he suddenly thought of the piece of hair.
Falling asleep he wondered what he would be doing at seventy.
David Adams Richards is the author of thirteen novels, including Hope in the Desperate Hour; Mercy Among the Children, co-winner of the prestigious Giller Prize; The Friends of Meager Fortune, winner of a regional Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book; and, most recently, The Lost Highway. He is also the author of the celebrated Miramichi trilogy: Nights Below Station Street, winner of the Governor General’s Award; Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace, winner of the Canadian Authors Association Award; and For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down, winner of the Thomas Raddall Award.
Richards has also written Gemini Award—winning screenplays for the CBC-TV adaptations of his novels For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down and Nights Below Station Street. “Small Gifts,” his original screenplay for CBC-TV, won a Gemini Award and the New York International Film Festival Award for Best Script. His books of non-fiction include Hockey Dreams, the Governor General’s Award—winning fishing memoir Lines on the Water, Playing the Inside Out, and, most recently, God Is.
Copyright © 1993 by Newmac Amusement Inc.
First trade paperback edition published 1993
Emblem edition published 2000
This Emblem edition published 2009
Emblem is an imprint of McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
Emblem and colophon are registered trademarks of McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Richards, David Adams, 1950–
For those who hunt the wounded down / David Adams Richards.
eISBN: 978-1-55199-312-6
I. Title.
PS8585.I17F6 2009 C813′.54 C2009-901619-2
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.
For her help, the author wishes to thank his editor, Ellen Seligman.
McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
75 Sherbourne Street
Toronto, Ontario
M5A 2P9
www.mcclelland.com
v3.0
Table of Contents
Cover
Other Books By This Author
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
About the Author
Copyright