The Unlikely Redemption of John Alexander MacNeil

by Lesley Choyce

  SEALY DRANK HIS TEA but Dewey just sat there. I understood that Dewey and his old friend Dickle had disliked me, maybe even hated me, ever since they were caught at their boyhood misdeeds. Maybe there are some people out there in the world who wait for a man to get old and confused to get back at him. Maybe that’s how it works for some. If you hold a grudge long enough, you’ll eventually find a man’s weakness and run him down. Dewey was grinding his teeth. Seemed like a bad habit for a social worker. I wondered if it gave him headaches.

  Emily had the music on in her room. She had brought a small CD player and some of her own music. Crazy stuff but I never said that to her. Odd too. One minute she’d be playing something heavy and pounding and electric and the next she’d have on Mary Jane Lamond or the Barra MacNeils and I heard her sweetly singing along with a milling frolic song or a fine sad lament.

  Sealy was the first to hear the sound of a car approaching. He tilted his head towards the window and we looked out. It was no typical lawyer’s car I saw crunching through the ice in the potholes. My guess is that it was an old Fiat. Maybe I’m wrong but it was small and European and old, anyway. Lots of rust on the fenders. It came to an abrupt stop with a high squeal of brakes. The car engine had barely been shut off when a giant of a woman stepped out of it. Six feet at least but thin as a rail. She was wearing a black motorcycle jacket and jeans. The thing that shocked me most was her hair. It was cropped like that of a Marine. A buzz cut as they say. She hauled a briefcase from the front seat and literally marched towards the house.

  When I opened the door, I could feel the nervous energy pour in as she stood there offering her business card. “Cheryl Hollis,” she said. “Emily MacNaughton’s lawyer.”

  “John Alexander MacNeil,” I said, offering to shake her hand but she looked at it and did nothing. She looked past me at the Mountie and the man in a suit sitting at the table. “Where’s Emily?”

  “In her room.”

  “Can I talk to her first?”

  “Yes, ma’am. This way.”

  She nodded perfunctorily towards the two men at my kitchen table, but the look on her face was that of someone who had just discovered dog shit glommed onto the bottom of a brand new pair of shoes.

  I knocked on Emily’s door and Cheryl entered before anyone answered. The door clicked shut behind her.

  A small symphony of men clearing their throats ensued in the kitchen. “Any more tea, boys?”

  “Me teeth are already afloat,” Sealy said, using the old vernacular.

  Dewey shuffled some papers in front of him, then looked up and around the room as if arriving there for the first time from outer space. “They say she’s a lesbian,” he said without trying to muffle his voice.

  Sealy raised his eyebrows but said nothing. I wondered if he was telling the truth. Why would Sheila have lined up a lesbian lawyer from Sydney for us? I wasn’t even a hundred percent sure I’d ever actually met a lesbian before — not knowingly anyway. And if she was — did that matter? I had no way of knowing how this detail — as truth or rumour — would affect our situation.

  “Always keep the house this chilly?” Dewey asked.

  “I’ll put another stick or two in the stove,” I said. “They say it’s healthier to live in a house that’s not overheated, though.” I could see him scribble something in a small notebook. Something to use against me. Old man living like they did a hundred years ago. Like living in a cave. Cold. No place for a girl. No place for a baby.

  Ten minutes rolled by according to the clock on the wall but it seemed more like an hour. Sealy had to pee and I pointed towards the bathroom down the hall. Dewey seemed even more uptight when Sealy was not in the room. I was wondering exactly how he’d come to be a social worker. He’d never had a very good rapport with people in general, but I didn’t want to ask that out loud. I was trying to be good. But I sure as hell didn’t like being bullied. Sealy returned and asked how my old well was holding up. He said he remembered how good my water tasted when he was a boy. I told him my well was fine. It hadn’t run dry for a couple of years now.

  The door to Emily’s room finally opened. Abruptly. Cheryl Hollis marched (apparently that was her normal mode of transportation) to the table with her briefcase. Emily emerged but hung back. She looked a bit shell-shocked. And I was noticing how she was showing the bulge in her belly now — more than I’d truly noticed in the day-to-day time I’d spent with her.

  In another life, Cheryl had been a drill sergeant or an emperor or an Amazon warrior. Her high cheekbones, perfect teeth and penetrating blue eyes gave her an intense cold power that seemed to render us men speechless. She was a high-octane woman who looked at me and Sealy as if we were of no concern here whatsoever. But she looked at Dewey like an old schoolteacher would look at a boy she’d just caught masturbating in the washroom.

  “I understand you have concerns for my client,” she said to Dewey.

  I got up and offered Emily my chair but she said she preferred to stand.

  Dewey shuffled his papers again, tidied them. “It’s all here,” he said. “Parents have at least temporarily turned Emily over to us as a ward of the Crown.”

  The papers were set down in front of Cheryl, who did not even look at them. Instead she went on the offensive. “I’ve already alerted Judge Stipples about the procedural mistakes in this case. There are, of course, several big issues involved here — charter of rights and freedom, age of consent issues and the like. We can attend to them down the line. But first, you’ll have to take these back to the judge and he’ll need my approval before you can even serve these papers.”

  “Your approval?” Dewey barked.

  “If you are going to perform your occupational task, Mr. Newton, it is expected that you follow your own departmental guidelines on procedure.”

  Dewey sat stone-faced. As a civil servant, he had taken the social services job probably because of family connections and because it paid well. He had survived in that capacity undoubtedly due to the fact that he didn’t care if the people he came in contact with hated his guts or not. There were only a few good jobs left out there for bullies and Dewey had found his calling. While the other good-intentioned social workers in these parts — many of them still young and idealistic, fresh out of the Maritime School of Social Work — hated the task of serving papers or wrenching families apart, Dewey had taken to it like a duck to water. He wasn’t used to a woman standing up to him, tossing things back in his face. He looked at Sealy. But I could tell that Sealy didn’t want anything to do with whatever weird voodoo Cheryl Hollis had going for her.

  Dewey cleared his throat again. “The girl is supposed to go with us. She is to be placed into foster care as directed in these documents.”

  Cheryl still refused to even look at the documents. She put on a pair of dark-rimmed glasses and dipped into her own briefcase, as if looking for something of great value. She placed one of her business cards before Dewey and said, “I’ve been waiting for a case like this to come up for a long time. I consider it a privilege to be here. I will be representing Emily MacNaughton and all communication on this issue should be through my office. And if it isn’t, I will, as they say, see you in court.”

  Sealy half-heartedly joined the conversation. “Well, from where I sit, I’d like to hear what the girl has to say on this. I mean, we drove all the way out here …” His voice trailed off, lacking conviction.

  Cheryl nodded to Emily.

  “This is my home, now,” Em said. “I want to stay here. And I plan on keeping my baby. My parents can’t make me give it up for adoption.”

  Dewey, I think, was about to speak, but Cheryl gave him a look that could have fried a two-pound steak. The men got up to leave.

  WHEN THE DOOR CLOSED behind them, Cheryl, surprisingly, let out a sigh. Emily sat down now at the kitchen table. She looked scared.

  “That was quite the p
erformance,” I commended Cheryl. “Thank you so much.”

  She gave me a steely look. “John Alex, let’s make one thing perfectly clear. I was asked by a friend to get involved in this case. I’m sick to death of teenage girls losing their rights any time one of them gets pregnant. I’m here for Emily. I’m not here for you.”

  I felt a little hurt by the way she said this as she wagged her finger at me, but I said nothing.

  “As I understand it,” Cheryl said, “they may try to prove you to be unfit or mentally incompetent if the Crown wishes to pursue that path. But all I care about is that Emily has rights and she believes this is the best option for her. You screw that up, mister, and I’ll be your worst nightmare.”

  Emily frowned. She didn’t like the way I was being treated, I could tell.

  Cheryl saw the look on Emily’s face and suddenly exhaled through her teeth loudly. “I’m going to have to tell you the truth. I was bluffing with those guys, okay? All that procedural stuff and the rest. It’s all talk. I just got into this case. I’ve got nothing.” Then she paused and looked up at the ceiling. “But don’t worry. I’ve been down this road before. Right now we are running the show. I mean to say, I’m running the show. So sit back and just watch me. Now, if you’ll excuse us, Mr. MacNeil, Emily and I have to talk.”

  I took the hint, put on my rubber boots and work coat and headed for the woodpile outside. I felt like a powerful army of one had just invaded and taken over my house. But at least the army was on my side. I felt a little older than the day before and more powerless as I picked up my axe from the front porch and walked to the chopping block. The brooding sky was dropping small pellets of ice but there was no wind at all.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  CHERYL HOLLIS STAYED FOR an hour. I split a goodly supply of Vin McCallum’s handsome fine-grained maple logs into kindling. You can never have enough kindling on hand. Vin would have done this for me, but I preferred to do it myself. I liked the swinging of the axe blade, the connection with the wood. Sometimes, I swear, a frozen log would split even before the axe blade touched the top of the wood. All wood-splitting men and women have had this experience. As I worked, I was thinking about Emily and about the baby and about the sternness of Cheryl Hollis. I did not like her, but there is a comforting feeling when a powerful someone is on your side instead of being your enemy.

  And she was on our side because Sheila, our lady of the library, had called her forth from Sydney to help us. Sheila, who said she had loved me since she was young. What exactly did she mean, love? And how could that have been so? And why me? Admired silently all those years. It seemed unlikely.

  I stopped splitting and studied the white puff of expelled air coming from my mouth and nose. The world was very still. Very silent. I could hear the sound of the snow-ice pellets falling on the frozen ground. These were not malevolent stones of hail. These were something else. Gentle pearls falling from the clouds. White, granular but not truly hard. I took off one glove and held out my hand, collected a palmful of them and then licked them from my palm. I don’t know why. I just did.

  I closed my eyes and tasted my childhood. Snow on an outstretched tongue, the silence of snow without wind. The possibility of winter without pain. The possibility of it all.

  The door opened and Cheryl vaulted out. It was as if she had caught me doing something wrong. She shook her head once. She was headed to her car; she was in a hurry. Purpose was written all over her. Her hand was on the door handle when she stopped and turned suddenly as if I had just shouted her name. She walked towards me, and immediately picked up my axe. She noticed my surprise but said nothing.

  A single log was poised upright on the chopping block. She hefted the axe, brought it down hard and the log split cleanly in two, perfect halves falling on either side. The blade of the axe dug deep into the chopping block. Then she looked straight at me with two piercing blue eyes. “Mr. MacNeil, I can tell you don’t like me. You don’t understand anything about me. But we seem to have a common cause. You seem to be very important to Em, so you are, in effect, of greatest importance to me. She is my client. I took this case on as a personal favour to my friend, Sheila.”

  She paused and took a breath, studied the imbedded blade of my axe. “I’d do anything for Sheila,” she said in an entirely different voice. And then her savage blue eyes became unfocussed and her face went soft. This shifted back again to her harder self ever so quickly. She put another log on the chopping block, one I noticed with a massive knot. I wanted to warn her — it would not be split. The axe would bite deep and the blade would be stuck.

  “Miss,” I said. I didn’t know what else to call her. “Miss,” I repeated. But the axe was already in motion. There was a solid thud and I could almost feel the shudder that went down her arms.

  “Damn,” she said.

  “It’s okay. I’ve done it plenty of times myself.”

  She let go of the axe.

  She began to regain her dignity, her professionalism. “Like I said, I would do anything for Sheila and she’s never asked me to do anything. Until now.”

  “We appreciate it,” I said, not exactly sure who the “we” referred to.

  “So you must understand. Now it’s all about the girl and her child. I will take care of the law. You must take care of her.”

  “This is not a problem. Although I must say it’s more like she takes care of me.”

  “Understood. But therein lies the grief. Information has already been assembled that would make it easy enough to prove you incompetent.”

  I understood what she meant. The driving incidents and other public things. “Dr. Fedder would be willing to declare me healthy and sane … and what is your word? Competent?”

  “Dr. Fedder is a doddering old lecher who should have been forced out of practice a decade ago.”

  “He’s my friend,” I said on his behalf.

  She tried again to remove the axe but the blade was imbedded deep into the knot of the log. This seemed to anger her. She was used to getting her way, I could tell.

  “Miss Hollis, I promise you I will look after Emily.”

  “I offered for her to come to Sydney with me. And she refused.”

  “We will get by.”

  “John Alex, look, it’s winter. You live here in this remote place. If something goes wrong …”

  “If something goes wrong, I will drive her to the hospital in Inverary.”

  “Will you?”

  “Yes.”

  “John Alex, I want to believe in you because Em believes in you. But all my life men like you — older, supposedly wiser, supposedly good men — have disappointed me or proven themselves to be liars or worse. Why should you be any different?”

  I could not answer her that question. It was odd that I was thinking of my father just then, a man who had in his own way been highly respected in his community, in this community, long ago. A brutal man at home. But I was thinking of a lesson he had taught me in that long ago. He had made me split many cords of wood as a boy to heat the house. Once Lauchie and I were old enough, he hardly ever cut or split wood again.

  I grabbed hold of the axe handle, put one boot onto the base of the log and I jerked the axe handle in just such a way that it freed the blade. The method cannot be explained accurately. It’s a technique that must be demonstrated. And that I did. I think the lady lawyer understood but she still did not trust me.

  “It’s not necessary that you and I like each other, Mr. MacNeil. We just need to have a clear understanding.”

  “I think we have that, miss.” I stooped and began to gather kindling.

  “I left my information with Emily. If you need me, call.”

  “I will.”

  She began to walk to her car now. Before she got in, she turned once more. “And John Alex, I know all about your good intentions. But I can also see that you have become
dependent on Emily. This will work against her. Above all, you must appear to remain reasonable, responsible and competent.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  And she was gone. And I was alone, an old man standing at a chopping block with some kindling in his arms. An old man suddenly not sure if he were fully awake or dreaming. When I turned, I saw Emily standing in the doorway. I walked towards her. She had a look of concern.

  “How long was I standing there — after she left?”

  “Only a few minutes, John Alex. What was it?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Just thinking, I s’pose.”

  But I did not know where I had just gone or why.

  ONCE INSIDE, I STOKED the fire, warmed my hands and phoned Dr. Fedder’s office. Amazingly, Mandy put me through to him. My intention, despite Cheryl Hollis’s advice, was to ask Shaky Fedder to prepare a report on my supposed sanity. But he gave me no chance to speak.

  “John Alex, I was debating whether to call you or not but here you are so now I have to tell you.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Your brother is dying.”

  “I know.”

  “Well, I mean to say, he is dying soon. He is worse off. He will not go into the hospital.”

  “It is his decision.”

  “Have you seen the rooming house?”

  “I know which one, yes. One of the old company houses.”

  “When was the last time you were in one?”

  “Years ago.”

  “Your brother is dying in squalor. If you won’t help him, I’ll have him forcibly removed.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “So he can die with some dignity.”

  Em was listening to me and scowling. She turned her back, went to her room and slammed the door. Jesus.

  “He’s coughing up blood,” Doc Fedder said. “No one there wants to deal with him. He stays in his room and locks the door. But the landlady called me. She’s says it’s my job to phone the authorities.”

  “Jesus, the damn authorities again. Shaky, I thought you were my friend.”