The Carpenter

  Irene asked in halting words how was work and when would he be going back to school. He told her what he always told her. Then he asked her the question.

  — You know that, Peter.

  — I just thought maybe you remembered something. Or maybe I forgot something you or Mom told me once.

  — He wasn’t nobody at all. Come and gone. Left a young girl pregnant …

  She lifted her hand and gripped his wrist with surprising strength. She whispered: Don’t you go treating girls that way.

  — I won’t, said Pete.

  — I know.

  Irene’s eyes gaped at him. He smiled for her and wondered was she afraid of this, the long business of dying.

  It was after midnight by the time he got home from work. The only sound was Luke grinding his teeth. Pete got into bed. He read a paperback until his eyes burned. He shut off the light but did not sleep. He saw Emily in the bowling alley, in her formal dress, laughing. It was four o’clock before he fell asleep.

  — We’ve been through this before. You carry that number over, you add it, and that’s how you get the answer.

  — I don’t understand.

  — Yes, you do.

  Pete watched them from the kitchen doorway. Late-morning sunlight banked in through the window over the sink. The boys had their notebooks open before them. Luke had his pencil in his fist and was glaring at an arithmetic lesson. John saw Pete and fixed him with a stare. A bubble of snot pushed out of the boy’s nostril each time he breathed.

  Donna noticed him at last. She paused with the dog-eared curricula notebook in her hands. Then she told the boys to keep at their sums and asked Pete if he wanted breakfast. Pete sat down at the table with his brothers, asked them how the lesson was going.

  — Hard, said Luke.

  — Hard, said John.

  The boy still had the mucus in his nostril. Pete told him to blow his nose. His mother brought him oatmeal with brown sugar and a cup of tea. Pete knew he should be hungry but he wasn’t. It was as if his belly was obstructed by a thing just starting to take shape.

  Donna picked up the curricula book.

  — Okay. We were at times tables.

  Pete put his spoon down. He said: Hey, boys. Can you go into the living room for awhile?

  The boys looked at him.

  — We’re doing lessons, said Donna.

  — Just for a few minutes.

  The boys looked at their mother. Her thin shoulders drooped. She made a shooing gesture and they hopped off their chairs.

  — No, take your notebooks. This isn’t playtime. They bounded into the living room.

  — Peter, do you know how easy it is to get behind in the lessons?

  — I want you to tell me what we never talk about.

  — What?

  — I want to know about my dad.

  — You know about that.

  — No. I don’t know. We never talk about it.

  John’s voice rose in outrage from the living room. Donna stepped to the doorway and looked out at them. She raised her voice: Let go of your brother’s head. Now.

  — We never talk about it, said Pete. I want to know.

  — There’s nothing worth talking about. He was nobody.

  — Goddammit, listen, Mom. What’s it got to do with the cops? Is Uncle Lee involved?

  She stepped forward and slapped him, but drew back immediately, with all her fingers splayed and her lips quivering. She hadn’t struck him hard but his face felt branded all the same.

  Pete rose from the table. He carried his dishes to the sink and washed them. He was slow in his motions. Everything, every feeling he’d felt over the last few days, over the last month, over the last year, seemed to be coming together into a single, slow-burning flame. It was a sensation he didn’t even have a name for, but he felt the heat of it in the bottom of his gut.

  Donna moved backwards to give him a wide berth. She spoke quietly: He was just a loser. How do you think it felt to be me? Why do you think you didn’t live here for so many years? I couldn’t be here, Peter. I couldn’t.

  Pete nodded. Hot water flowed over the bowl and the cup. Steam lifted through the sunlight.

  — Peter?

  — Never mind.

  He turned from the sink and went out of the kitchen. He didn’t know if the boys had seen anything but they were sitting on opposite sides of the couch, conspicuously silent.

  By half past noon, Pete was in town. He drove past Heron Heights, where a number of students were moving between the parking lot and the school doors. Emily was nowhere to be seen. What Pete did see was the wood-panelled station wagon. It drove past him into the lot and parked. Roger and one of his friends got out and walked into the school. Pete watched them.

  Pete drove back downtown. He parked at the A amp;P and walked over to the variety store and went around back and rang the buzzer to the apartment. No one came. He went into the store. Mr. Yoon was stocking the refrigerator.

  — You see my uncle?

  — Not working today, said Mr. Yoon.

  — You know where he’s at?

  — He just walks around sometimes. I see him. Or he goes and plays pool. Bar around the corner.

  — Okay.

  — When is he going to work again?

  — I don’t know.

  Pete drove to the Corner Pocket, the only poolroom on the block. There was a small parking lot in back. He went in through the back door. The place was nearly empty this time of day. The man behind the bar was wiping down the sides of a jar of devilled eggs. The radio was on, or the jukebox, but Pete could only discern the dry sounds of the drum track. Finally he spotted Lee at a table across the room.

  Lee was lining up a shot when Pete came over. Four empty beer bottles stood on the rail behind him. He was working on a fifth.

  — Uncle Lee, said Pete.

  Lee banked the six-ball into a pocket. He said: How are you, Pete?

  — If I ask you something, will you level with me? Lee leaned the cue against the side of the table. He took a drink of beer.

  — What are we talking about?

  — I want you to tell me what nobody else will.

  — You’re not making any sense.

  — Look. You know that cop? Frank Casey? He came to my work. He says he knows what I am. What I am, he said, whatever that means. I’ve never even gotten a speeding ticket. So what is he talking about?

  — That son of a bitch is a ball-breaker, Pete. He’s giving you a hard time because of me.

  — That’s not it. There’s something nobody will tell me. My mom got real upset when I started asking-

  — Don’t bother your mother about it.

  — And Grandma won’t tell-

  Lee slammed his beer bottle down. The noise drew casual glances from the few hang-abouts in the place. Lee pressed his finger into Pete’s chest.

  — Do not bother your grandmother with this shit. Do you hear me?

  Pete stared back. He felt blood come into his cheeks: Fuck this. One more person. The sooner I’m done with all of you the better.

  He turned and went out the back door.

  The afternoon was all the brighter for the brief minutes he’d been inside. He was opening his car door when he heard Lee say his name. Lee was standing at the back door of the poolroom.

  — Maybe nobody tells you because they figure you don’t want to know. This was a bad thing, buck.

  — Yeah?

  — But I know what it’s like to be on the outside of everything. So I won’t lie to you. I won’t do that. But what you have to know is nothing will be the same if I tell you.

  — I want to know, Lee. I can’t live my whole life like this. Maybe I used to think it didn’t matter, but it does now. People around me have made it matter, but they haven’t wanted to give me a choice in much of anything. So I’m choosing to know. I don’t know if you understand what I mean, but I’m choosing to know.

  — Well, like I said, I won’t lie to you.
>
  Pete followed Lee back inside to a table near the jukebox. On the wall above was a faded print of dogs shooting billiards. Lee went to the bar and came back carrying four beers. He gave one to Pete. Pete nodded at the bartender.

  — He won’t mind?

  — I’ll talk to him if he bitches. But he won’t. If I wasn’t having a drink, I don’t think I’d be able to get into any of this. If you’re going to hear it, you’ll want to have a couple too.

  They drank in silence for a little while. Lee lit a cigarette. He said: You’re eighteen.

  — Yeah. I am.

  — Eighteen, that means you’re a man. Eighteen years ago I was twenty-two. I was on trial for capital murder. Six months was all it took. You’re born in, what, July? ‘62? Well, July ‘62 I’d already been inside for three months. Your grandmother sent me a snapshot of you in the hospital when you were born. There was this Indian in jail that I had some trouble with when I was first there. He thought he was a big man and he thought I was just some young goof. He got a hold of some of my stuff and he burned it. That picture was part of it. He did this when I was working in the mailbag shop, which is where all the new fish go. I don’t know why. But later on I got my chance at him in the shower. I did twenty days in the hole for what I did to him, but that big dumb Indian, anytime he saw me after that, he stayed away. I’m already off the subject. Look. When your mom and me were kids we didn’t have it too easy. I know everybody says that. But our old man-your granddad-even though he worked all the time, we never had enough money. I don’t know why. Maybe he could earn money okay but he couldn’t save it. He wasn’t bad to us, never beat us up or nothing, but I never knew him either, not really. When I was still pretty little, the old man had three heart attacks. He still didn’t quit working. The fourth heart attack killed him flat out. That was the end of that. The store went bankrupt and a year later we were on the dole. Do you know all that?

  — Not like this, said Pete.

  Lee finished his beer and started on another.

  — Well. We lived in a boarding house on the other side of downtown, north of the river. Merritt Street. I think about that place a lot, I don’t know why. I went to see it awhile back but it’s different now. Your grandmother helped clean the place to take down the rent she was paying. And your mother wasn’t always so serious, Pete. Did you know that? How she is now, I wouldn’t of even known her. So quiet. So wrapped up. But she wasn’t always so serious.

  — I don’t remember her ever being anything else. There were times when I was younger, I’d see her just staring off into space. Just blanked out.

  — When she was young she was a lot of fun, and she was real pretty. A real knockout, they’d say. She didn’t care that she barely had two changes of clothes. She got along good with practically everybody. She was the only person, the only person … I mean, she cared for me. I was her older brother, the loser, the small-time hood, but none of that bothered her. I used to be afraid I would, you know, disappoint her, but I’d get drinking or doing something stupid, and no matter what, she was always there to pick me up and drive me wherever it was I needed to go, or if I needed to come back home for a little while, she’d give up her room and sleep on the couch …

  Lee was peering into the tabletop, moving his beer bottle back and forth between his hands. Pete drank down his own beer. He left the dregs in the bottom of the bottle. A man weaved into the men’s room nearby and by the time he’d come out Lee had still not resumed.

  — Lee, said Pete.

  — You know that hockey arena in town?

  — The community centre, sure. Charles Grady Memorial or whatever.

  — And you never played hockey?

  — Never. I took some skating lessons when I was little, but I wasn’t any good.

  — Well. Chuck Grady was a hockey player from town. He played forward. He had a hell of a name for himself. He was playing Triple-A when he was sixteen and he got scouted for the National League by the time he was your age. I knew this because everybody in town knew it. Chuck had a brother named Simon, about a year or two younger than him, and when Chuck was back in town you’d always see them two together. The Grady boys. There wasn’t a teenage girl around that him and his brother couldn’t get into. Chuckie Grady. He started sniffing around your mother. She was going with a guy-I can’t remember his name, but what does it matter-and she didn’t care about hockey and she had no interest in Chuckie Grady. But him and Simon would cruise by the boarding house every now and then. They had this, what was it, a real flashy car. T-Bird, if I remember.

  — T-Bird? said Pete.

  — Yeah. A T-Bird. Their old man owned the dealership.

  — Jesus, said Pete.

  — What?

  — Nothing. Never mind.

  — Well, I figured I’d let Chuck and Simon know that your ma wasn’t interested in them. I saw Simon one time at a party and I let him know he didn’t need to have anything to do with her. Ha. A week later I was pretty drunk, coming out of a dance hall, or maybe the bowling alley, and Chuck and Simon and a few of their pals were waiting for me. They stomped my ass into the ground pretty good. I guess they figured a greaser hood like me shouldn’t be speaking up for his sister.

  He’d taken to studying the tabletop again. After a moment, he went on: I’d been on a real tear for a few days, way out on Indian River. Me, Speedy Simmons, Jimmy Robichaud, a couple others. It was maybe September. I came back to the boarding house at night. I wasn’t supposed to be living there any more-I was in my twenties-but I couldn’t hold a job down for real long, and I’d been evicted from the place I was living. I remember that night because it was late, eleven o’clock. I had Jimmy Robichaud’s dad’s Buick, which we all just kind of used when we needed to. Anyways there I was near the house and that fucking T-Bird is going the other way real fast, and I thought, there’s the Gradys cruising again. But when I got to the house, your mom, she was just sitting outside on the porch. She … she had no shoes on. She was barefoot. Her legs were all scratched up.

  Lee peeled the label off his beer bottle. Pete’s mouth was bone dry.

  — I never figured out why those two guys thought she’d just keep her mouth shut, said Lee. I thought about it a long time. But you know? They were right. She did. Far as I know I’m the only person she ever told it to, and I think it was on account of I saw their car and I saw her sitting there on the porch. The only time she said a word of it was to me that night. How she was walking home from the grocery store where she worked. How they came by and saw her and picked her up, she said, and this was maybe nine o’clock at night in the fall, so it was full dark, and then they didn’t drive her straight home. She didn’t talk a lot more about what happened after that. Not to me. Not even when she got called up as a witness for the defence, and I was sitting there with those charges laid on me. She just looked at the floor when the lawyer asked her. Did you know Charles or Simon Grady? She said, no, sir. Not at all, sir. I guess they all knew a lot more about shame than I ever did, which is why they knew she wouldn’t say anything. I don’t know what Chuck and Simon did when they went back into town, and after that night Simon was never able to talk clearly anyway. He couldn’t even be called as a witness. See, I don’t know where they went after they left her. I only know I got to their house before they did. When they got home it was around midnight and I was there already.

  Pete started to get up from the table. He felt queasy.

  — Sit down, said Lee.

  — I have to go.

  — Sit your ass down, Peter. You wanted me to start talking about this, well, I am. The Crown wanted to hang me for it. You can’t duck out now.

  Pete sank into the chair.

  — Jimmy’s dad was a framer on a building crew, said Lee. He had a framing hammer in the trunk of the car. It was twenty-two ounces. I didn’t say nothing to Chuck or Simon and they never got any words out themselves. The whole thing was done and over in less than a minute and I drove away. I threw the hammer d
own a creek. But the thing is, Simon Grady was still alive. That’s something I didn’t think of at the time. When I left them, they both had their heads pretty messed up. I … I know I used the claw a couple of times, anyway. But I was also young and pissed off and drunk. Stupid. Simon Grady was still alive, but he was all messed up. He never got right again.

  — I feel like I’m going to throw up.

  — They gave me twenty years. They talked about some of the chicken-shit stuff I’d been picked up for before, and they called a few witnesses who said I had prior history with the Gradys. And me, us, whatever you want to call it, I just told the court I didn’t like them bothering my sister. If she couldn’t talk about what they’d done to her, I couldn’t speak for her. Mom knew, and I think some people in town might of had the idea, but it never come out in the newspaper. Just how the local hockey hero got murdered in cold blood. They called it envy. The first chaplain, when I was inside, he called it covetousness, and he showed me in the Bible what that was.

  Pete stood up again. He was unsteady and feeling sick to his stomach. He said: I don’t understand at all why you … why you’d come back here. Why you’d do that to us.

  — To us, said Lee. Is that right? You’re the man of the family now? You’re the big man?

  — I’ve got to go.

  — Well, one more thing, big man. I’m sorry you had to find out from me, like this. I’m sorry your mother won’t say nothing, specially when I think of all the time I sat in jail. I’m sorry for all that wasted time. I’m sorry for what’s gone down since I got out, like Bud, for example. I’m sorry that Simon Grady is a halfwit because I didn’t have the sense to make sure I finished it. But I’m not sorry for what I did. I never will be. I can see that. Clear as anything.

  — What gave you the idea you could decide that?

  — What gave you the idea I couldn’t?