Catching the Light

by Susan Sinnott

  Change of Scene

  Sarah and Tim drove into St. John’s to take Hutch out, and to treat him to a good meal. Old Josh Parsons, Hutch’s grandfather, was not able to live alone since his stroke and May Parsons was overwhelmed with organizing his discharge from hospital and his removal to their house: wheelchair access, nursing care….

  “Hutch will just have to manage for now,” May said. So Sarah suggested she and Tim take him out for a day that weekend. It was a shock to see Hutch in a wheelchair, but he manoeuvred it like a pro round their new Jeep, asking about gas mileage and how the Jeep took corners. Hutch chatted and smiled as easily as ever but there were changes in his face—not the contours but the expression. There was a holding back, a wait-and-see. That headlong dive into the next moment was gone.

  They went to a steak house with an elevator. Hutch ordered the prime rib, the same as Tim, and watching him enjoy his dinner was worth a foggy journey. He ate it with his eyes first, smiling, examining each item in turn then moving things slightly with his fork so he could see underneath. Then he turned the plate round to get the best route in and paused for a second, considering.

  Sarah remembered a lunch at May’s house last summer when May had complained, food never touches the sides. She’d told Hutch to try chewing before he swallowed. Slow down. There’s another day to live. Hutch just shovelled everything in at top speed and tore out of the house with his mouth full.

  Now he cut a small piece of beef and laid it in his mouth softly, the way a wine taster would, slid it round inside with his eyes half closed. He chewed gently, seemed to be coaxing the meat apart and spreading the pieces round every taste bud. Then he chose another morsel and started all over again. It was a long, slow meal.

  “Well, Hutch,” said Tim, when they were finished. “I see you left nothing standing.”

  Hutch just nodded and said, “That. Was. Good.”

  And then when the waitress came with the bill and asked how they liked the meal, he smiled and said, “Just like home.”

  Further Education

  Bruce was discharged and he marched up and down the hallway in his going-home clothes and you wouldn’t know he was missing a leg. Hutch was glad when he was gone. They used to practice walking together and Bruce would say, “Come on, slowpoke. Get yer ass in gear!”

  At first Hutch would try to keep up, but he had to take longer strides to be faster and it tweaked his back. Then he’d be on the edge of losing his balance because his hips weren’t too steady. It made him land hard on his right foot and he’d feel a crunch in his back; burning pain would shoot down his leg and it would be there for the rest of the day. Hutch tried to explain to Bruce about his back and his weak muscles, but Bruce interrupted and said he’d lost more leg than Hutch and look at Terry Fox.

  “Think positive, b’y,” he’d say in that talking-down-to-you way. “Think positive.”

  “Think I’m not trying?” Hutch had shot back one time. “Think I want to hobble around like an old man? Jesus, I’m a hockey player.”

  It was no good explaining to this guy. Bruce worked in an insurance office so his amputation wouldn’t affect his job much, and his idea of sport was a darts league. Said he’d have to change his stance a bit but he’d still be able to play. He’d have to give up on motorbikes, though, and he’d made that out to be a big deal.

  “Gotta take it like a man, Hutch,” he said.

  But later Bruce’s fiancée said he’d been planning to give up his bike since before the accident because she hated them and said they’d be no good once they had children. It made Hutch so effing mad. He wanted to yell and punch things. Didn’t know what to do with himself sometimes. When he’d got boiled up at home, which wasn’t often, he kicked a ball around or threw rocks in the water or hiked through the woods. He’d been able to work it off. If he tried that now he’d fall flat on his face.

  Hutch worried about his weak muscles. He worked and worked at them but just couldn’t get them back to normal. But it was the pain that pulled him up short more than anything.

  There was another scan and a consult with Hawk-face. Too much play in the left sacro-iliac joint…pain on weight-bearing…some instability…nerve roots in his back…loss of strength could improve over time. Joint pain, nerve pain…. He’d see Hutch in the Orthopaedic Clinic for follow-up after he was discharged.

  Hutch had a bad back. Jesus, old men had bad backs not him, just turned eighteen. With his bad back and crappy balance, how would he manage on a wet deck, an icy deck—a deck on the ocean that tilted and corkscrewed?

  He’d wait and see how things went. In a few months.

  ***

  Mrs. Powell Senior lived near the Rehab Centre and once Hutch could handle two hours in his wheelchair, he was invited every Sunday for lunch along with Bud. Bud said Paul was invited too but he never came.

  The house had wide doors and a ramp, left from when Dr. Powell had been in a wheelchair, so Hutch wheeled himself over every weekend. The house sat on a hill with a view of the lake and they watched the action on the water while they ate. Mrs. Powell said the rowers were out at all hours practicing for the regatta but it didn’t seem to bother the wildlife. Hutch scoffed at her idea of wildlife.

  “Townie ducks. They’ve got an easy time of it—people throwing food at them all day and no risk from hunters.” He would not think about the rowing.

  And here comes the Royal St. John’s Regatta. You would hear the loudspeakers from the lake all over the building. There would be back-to-back races all day, people talking about teams and times, and whether the whole affair should have been postponed until the next day because of the wind.

  Hutch prepared himself for Regatta Day by persuading people to bring him a beer or two. He used up every cent he had, even though some of them said, “Nah, keep your money.” Most people assumed he was of legal drinking age, if they thought of it at all. For them it was just a matter of breaking the No Alcohol on the Premises rule.

  “It’s Regatta Day for god’s sake. Give the poor guy a beer.”

  Hutch collected eleven bottles, and he drank the first two with breakfast. At least he waited until he had food inside him. William had gone to live with his sister and wasn’t there to give Hutch the eyeball—just an empty white bed, waiting for the next poor slob.

  He skipped his rehab appointments and just wheeled himself up and down the hallway all Regatta Day. Each time he came back to his bed he pulled out a bottle from his locker and took a few swigs. Two more bottles with lunch.

  He slowed down in the afternoon and there must have been a smell of alcohol because the aide ransacked his locker and took it all. Hutch had expected that and had hidden two bottles in the cleaning closet. But then a nurse saw him getting one and there was a tussle and she called security and things got a bit fuzzy after that.

  The next day he was told he’d thrown up all over the place and the cleaning staff was in revolt.

  “And you kept everyone awake singing that awful rap song.”

  “…one in the morning…”

  “…every other word the F word.”

  He had no end of tongue-lashings. He was warned he would be discharged if it happened again. Did he know they’d have to report him to the police for underage drinking? Hutch just sat there and let it roll over him. But it was one of his worst days, and not just because of the hangover; he’d probably yanked every nerve he owned.

  “And you know alcohol isn’t a good painkiller.”

  Well, not the day after it wasn’t.

  ***

  Nine months passed before Hutch was discharged. The pain and instability held him back, but he managed to walk over to Mrs. Powell’s for his last Sunday lunch and even managed the steps. And he did not take that frigging cane. They kept pushing the cane all the time for safety. “Not all the time. Just for uneven surfaces or ice or for hills and steps.”

>   His mother bought him one that folded so he could carry it around out of sight, so it’s there if you need it.

  Brian and Lori drove in to take him home. It was the first time he’d seen them since they got engaged. The staff advised him not to wear his leg for the long drive but Hutch wanted to be able to walk into the house like a normal guy so he wore it anyway. By the time they pulled into the lane his stump was sore and everything ached, but he was too excited to care.

  The minute they stopped, the door opened and light poured out. The family was pulling on boots and calling out. The dog was winding round his legs, bumping into him, his mom was giving him a hug like she hadn’t seen him for months, Gramps was calling from the kitchen, and Dad was in there somewhere patting his shoulder. Hutch had a tight hold of Brian’s arm because he couldn’t see where he was putting his feet and stones were tipping them every which way and throwing him off balance.

  But it was so good. So good to be home.

  The Aunts

  “How’s Stephanie Sheppard doing?” Aunt Dot asked.

  “No change,” said Aunt Maisie. “Still staring into space. Doesn’t eat. They say Dr. Brooks is trying to get her in to see someone in Mental Health but there’s a year’s waiting list.”

  “That’s shocking. She could be…you need the help when you need it.”

  “And young Hutch Parsons,” said Aunt Gert. “My, oh my. How are they going to keep him on the farm? He’d applied to Memorial, you know. Wanted to do geology. But you can’t go tramping around mines and oil wells on one leg.”

  “Or volcanoes. That show the other night had geologists on volcanoes.”

  “Too bad,” said Aunt Gert. “Him and volcanoes would have got on great together.”

  “Gert! That’s mean, Gert. That poor young man.”

  Then there was more talk about this person with the frozen shoulder or that one with the bad neck or the wicked headaches, all from the accident. Every family had a victim of some sort. Even Cathy’s cousin Annie was having nightmares because she had been at the back of the other bus—the same seat where Jenny had been sitting.

  Cathy left the aunts to their first picnic of the summer, headed down the steep road to the little wharf next to the Mariners Head fish plant. The building looked like it was remembering a time when it had a life—it seemed to sag, though if you looked closely everything was still at right angles. But Cathy would draw it with a sag. Weeds poked up through the pavement and litter snagged up against walls, which were stained and rusty looking near the ground. Three old-timer gulls sat on the edge of the roof, facing the ocean. Used to be flocks of them. Cathy sat on the wharf, her back toward the building.

  It was true, what the aunts said. The bus crash had changed the whole town, especially Jenny’s family. Why did it have to be Jenny? Why, out of that whole bus, out of all of Mariners Cove, did it have to be Jenny? And they said Josh Parsons had that stroke when he heard about his grandson. He was never around on the docks anymore.

  And as much as she’d wished the sky would fall on Hutch Parsons, she didn’t wish this on him. She remembered, back when they were still in the same grade, how every year the teachers would go around asking all the kids what they wanted to do when they left school. Cathy wanted to be an artist and Parsons wanted to captain his own boat. Always. Everyone else changed from year to year or didn’t know or didn’t care but the two of them knew for sure, always.

  Maybe his family—and that geologist friend of his brother’s—had been working on him, because when the career people came round last time to talk to the grade elevens and twelves, Parsons had said he might look at geology. But now what?

  How would Cathy feel if she lost an arm? That started off as one of those clever questions where you don’t expect an answer, but she suddenly pictured herself without her painting arm—no right hand and no chance of ever getting it back. She sat turned to stone, cold to her heart, frightened in a way she had never felt frightened before.

  Cathy lay her right hand on her knee, studied it: the way the fingers all leaned towards each other ready to hold her brush; the way her wrist bent back a bit when she was gripping something, which put her hand in the perfect position to work on a picture; the way she could rest the side of her hand on the paper when she needed it to be extra steady. It was so amazing, how everything worked together. Until something went wrong. Her hands were shaking now.

  Cathy tried to sketch the rocks in front of her, how they looked when the water frothed up between. Like her aunts back there with all their talk bubbling up in a rush. Rising and sinking. On and on. That spatter of laughter.

  Her hands were still quivering—not so anyone would notice, nothing on that Richter scale—but it wasn’t stopping. She stuffed everything back in her painting bag and scrambled to her feet. Walk. Take your mind off it.

  She set off along the road and the ocean looked so big and empty: no skiffs, no kayaks. She liked to have people in her pictures. Parsons would miss the whole paddling season now and Jack Sheppard wouldn’t have the heart to go without him and Jenny, and the other guys wouldn’t go if they didn’t. She’d seen Mr. Parsons taking tourists for trips round the harbour, but that was business not fun. There was no fun now in Mariners Cove.

  Think good thoughts, girl, Cathy told herself. Her reading was as good as the rest of the class now. Not as fast as Rose Tucker, but then nobody was. But Sarah said Cathy was accurate, and that she now read as if she understood what she was reading. Sarah and Dad had both listened to her for hours. Even Mom didn’t mind Cathy reading out loud now. Said she was proud of her.

  But her writing hadn’t changed for ages: same old spelling mistakes, missing apostrophes, that stupid silent e. She went back to her room and dug out her project book. This was where she had written notes about subjects she and Sarah discussed: Louis Riel, the Canadian Pacific Railway, the Northwest Passage, the cod moratorium in ’92, and her very first notes about that picture of a Tunis market in Sarah’s living room.

  Sarah had wanted Cathy to make a list of everything she could remember about that picture. Jot notes in a different book from her journals. Sarah kept coming back to it every few weeks. Put your thoughts in order of importance. Put them in groups. Sentences. Now put the sentences in groups. Now write it all out so one group of sentences flows into the next. Now introduce it—something like this is about a picture of Tunis—and add a conclusion. I’d like to paint in Tunis. Now you have an essay. You said you couldn’t write essays. Here’s an essay. It’s a bunch of thoughts about something, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Like a painting. Cathy had said a painting didn’t have an end and Sarah said a good essay should trigger the reader’s thoughts, so it didn’t really have an end either. But it had to be complete in itself. Like a painting. One day Cathy was going to win an argument with Sarah. It’s not an argument, said Sarah. It’s a discussion. Look it up.

  Yes, Cathy’s writing was definitely improving. And her arguing. Nothing was going to stop her getting to art school now. Nothing.

  Home

  Hutch’s mom had cooked dinner that first evening after he was discharged and the house smelled of turkey and birch junks instead of antiseptic and bathrooms. She gave Hutch first pick of the dark meat and there was salt beef and the last of their homegrown carrots and pease pudding and gallons of good gravy and real cranberry sauce—not those sick-looking rubber squares he’d been having for months.

  They turned the lights down once everything was ready and the whole room glowed in deep stained-glass colours. The wood stove crackled and sputtered, sending shadows dancing up the walls. Home. Hutch never wanted to see cream and chrome again in his whole life.

  He sat with a smile on his face and let the familiar voices flow round him: Brian and Lori rambling on about their wedding plans and Mom laughing about who was doing what in school. Dad talked about the trouble he’d had with the renovations for some sum
mer visitor.

  Gramps kept scraping his plate and asking for things and everyone picked at seconds and thirds and they wiped out two lemon meringue pies. Hutch sneaked food to the dog and Mom saw but let it pass.

  Hutch tipped back on the hind legs of his chair so he didn’t have to bend in the middle, but the chair overbalanced backwards. He grabbed the table edge to hold himself and everyone jumped and the dog yelped. Less weight at the front of the chair now: something else to be careful about.

  The dog tried to sit on his feet but Hutch had taken off the prosthesis before the meal and pinned up his pant leg, so he was confused. He sniffed around the stump with his ears forward in his thinking position then settled back on his haunches, tongue lolling, ears flicking backwards and forwards, looking up at Hutch with his fluffy smile.

  “Okay, Trooper?”

  The dog always leaned on Hutch’s leg or lay on his feet. He went round to Hutch’s other side, trying to squeeze in between him and Gramps, whining because the chairs were too close. So they shuffled over to make room and the dog spent the meal leaning against Hutch’s right leg, licking the back of his hand now and then. That heavy warmth was so familiar, so comforting, Hutch almost choked up.

  ***

  Aunts and uncles and the younger cousins dropped by over the next few nights; the older cousins weren’t home for Christmas yet. They brought in bursts of cold air and loud voices and the aunts brought homemade treats like shortbread and brownies and the kids brought CDs and the uncles brought the aunts and the cousins.

  “How are you, my boy? Good to see you home.” Uncle Em put an arm round his shoulders and gave him a squeeze, which wasn’t his usual style.

  His buddies had all finished grade twelve and left while he was in rehab: Jack and some of the guys had gone to St. John’s, Andy to Camp Borden for basic training, some to Memorial, and Paul to Dalhousie in Halifax. They were coming back for Christmas except Paul and Bud. Others were gone to Alberta and didn’t know when they’d be back.