Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul

by David Adams Richards

  To their surprise and consternation they learned later that it was Roger Savage, denied a job that very morning, who was lurking around.

  The pry bar was hidden in the bulwark under the cubby and, along with the Lutheran, was returned to the sea.

  Markus sat for an hour, staring into nothing. Once in a while he would begin to shake, so terribly that the muscles in his legs would tremble. Then he would be very calm.

  He looked again at the front of the envelope: To be opened on my death. Brice Peel, water boy for the fourth hold of the Lutheran on June 19, 1985.

  2007

  SOMETIMES DURING THAT LONG LAST WINTER, MARKUS would take Brice’s envelope out and look at it. But he did not open it again.

  At times when he went to his grandfather’s house he would look at the pictures Amos had taken. Then it all became clear—the bucket damaged by the swing that Topper had taken, the logs lying in one place, everything in order, and the gum from Hector’s shirt pocket, which he had so offered about, lying up against the bulwark almost unseen. The same gum Hector had offered Markus in the truck cab that morning.

  There was a story he had heard when he was little, one his father, David, had told him. It was about a boy years ago working alone in the woods. He had got turned around, and had not eaten or drunk anything in two days. And he stopped at an old Indian house near the barrens and knocked on the door, and he asked for something, and the woman in the house said, “I am sorry—but I only have a glass of water.”

  Now, years later, the woman was in hospital, and was unable to pay for her care. Her doctor happened to be Dr. Hennessey, who had paid his way through school by working in the woods years ago. He went to her chart late one night and he wrote across her bill: “Paid in full, with one glass of water.”

  Markus thought of that story, now and again, as the days got shorter, and colder, and the snow scattered between the buildings at the edge of this nowhere. Sometimes he would sit in the window to catch the sun.

  Markus once again borrowed money—that was his problem—and bought a snowmobile, though he couldn’t afford it. Sometimes he hunted coyotes up on the barrens as they came out just at dark. He could bring one down at 250 yards with a .22-250 that he had also borrowed the money to buy.

  He went to a Skidoo party and began to date a French girl from Neguac. They would go for pizza and have a beer or two. Twice in bed he wanted to tell her what had happened so long ago. He had a duty to, he knew—and he would—soon. He would. He inquired about exhuming Hector’s body and was told it was best to wait until the spring.

  He went to Bill Monk’s late one morning as Bill sat there entertaining one of his friends.

  “Yes—what do you want?”

  “Nothing much,” Markus said, and he walked over to the sink and poured himself a nice cold glass of water, turning around to face Bill as he drank.

  He listened to Bob Dylan a lot that winter.

  He listened to Hank Williams.

  He saw Roger’s old girlfriend, May, at the Kmart one evening. She worked there now, and was a rotund, greying woman. He wanted to tell her about Roger’s complete and heroic innocence but did not. There would be no point.

  One cold day in February 2007 he went to the co-op and bought and wrapped a pry bar, and sent it to Topper Monk.

  The phone would ring and he would not answer it.

  Heidi Doran sent him a Valentine’s Day card.

  Once he saw Sam Dulse in town and didn’t even say hello.

  Sometimes in the dark he would listen and listen to nothing at all.

  He decided he would get a court order to have Hector Penniac’s body exhumed as soon as the weather got warm. He was told April 26 would be the best day. So he decided that was the day the case would be reopened and he would hand the evidence over.

  He inquired by email about the Lutheran and a week later word came back, not from the Netherlands but from the captain, who had been forwarded the message in Brisbane, Australia, where he had retired. From him, who seemed a nice enough gentleman, Markus discovered the Lutheran had been dry-docked, not scuttled, and at last report was blocked and rudderless in a yard in Rotterdam.

  If the pry bar had been hidden well enough, it just might still be there.

  He decided he would go to the Netherlands in the spring, before the body was exhumed. He told his commanding officer this one day, out of the blue.

  He thought how truth had now snapped those chains that had once seemed impossible to break.

  He visited his father’s grave for the first time.

  Then one morning, in a freezing March snowstorm, Markus woke up to a call from the office. “Get over here. Someone’s in the cell,” the boyish constable said.

  Markus got up and dressed. He knew from experience that it was probably an Indian in the cell. And it was his duty to go. Well, it was his duty to go anyway, First Nations or not. He put the pistol toward the back of his right hip, by habit.

  He arrived at ten and went in through the side door. There was loud talk when he entered and then a kind of mirthful silence. Back behind the front office a corridor led to metal stairs where footfalls sounded heavy, and beyond a heavy grey metal door were the six cells, which were more often than not occupied by drunks and smalltime thieves.

  He walked right past her. He thought the constable had pointed to the fifth cell. She was in the fourth. She was handcuffed to the bed but was lying on the cement floor, almost naked. Her long, greying hair fell down her back. They had taken her false teeth out, and her bra was lying in the far corner.

  He stared at her a brief moment. She was still beautiful.

  “Why is she only in panties?”

  “Didn’t want her to injure herself,” the young constable said, chewing gum.

  “You had to take her bra?”

  “Didn’t want her to injure—”

  “Where did you arrest her?”

  “Neguac—in a fight at the bar. It’s always something with her. This time she said it was her brother’s birthday. Who knows? She was pumped full of ecstasy.”

  She was shivering and had pissed the floor.

  “Do you know her father is a member of the Assembly of First Nations and a recent recipient of the Order of Canada—Isaac Snow—and one of the great men on this river?”

  “Well,” the young constable said, snapping gum and frowning, “just goes to show. Do you want to go in?”

  “Sky,” Markus whispered, not staring at her nakedness. “Sky.”

  Sky turned, made a lunge at the air, her brilliant eyes flashing.

  “Fuck you,” she said.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks to Philip Lee; my first reader, Liz Lemon-Mitchell; my agent, Anne McDermid; my editors Maya Mavjee and Lynn Henry; my wife, Peg; and my children, John and Anton.