“I’m not after gas.”
“No?”
“I’ve been that route.”
“What then? Like I said, we’re closed for the night.”
“I’m just finishing my smoke.”
“Watch where you toss it.”
“I could tell others that.”
“Who?”
“Your buddy. MacTavish. That two-faced man,” he said. “Worst kind. Worst.”
“Why tell me?”
“You boxed.”
“Ah.”
“You’ve been around him, listening to his stories.”
“We all have stories.”
“Some don’t. They have to make them up.”
“Clement’s not that kind of a man.”
“To you maybe. Am I?”
“No way I could know that.”
“No?” Cooper took a long drag and stubbed his cigarette out against the fender, flipped the butt over his shoulder into the cab. “I don’t always do what a man expects. Good ring strategy. Right?”
“Might work, might not. Depends.”
“We have to spar, storekeeper, put on the gloves. Eh?”
“So you said.”
“For the hell of it. Boxing. Nothing personal.”
“Oh, it’s personal. I don’t have gloves, not for both of us.”
“Bare knuckles then. Boxing. Not wrestling around like last time.” He straightened up away from the truck, his fists at his face, serious, grim. Lauchlin had seen that look many times, not the bravado of the street fighter psyching you out but a man eager for the sport, to prove himself within its rules and limitations. Lauchlin took a long step toward him and crouched, as if a ref had barked Fight, but the streetlamp light was poor and he missed that fraction of a second that would have let him dodge Cooper’s jab, it hit his cheekbone with surprising sharpness and so his counter was off, his right hand struck air as Cooper stepped away from it, breathing hard already, excited, his boots raking the gravel. Lauchlin’s face was hot one side, there might have been a bit of blood there, he wasn’t sure, he came in low, faking a jab and driving in the same instant a hook to Cooper’s ribs, over the heart, Cooper grunted, it hurt, you could tell, his right hand streaked across Lauchlin’s scalp and his left hit his shoulder. Cooper could have grabbed, clinched, stopped the boxing and fought by whatever suited him, gouging, biting, knees up your groin, but he circled to Lauchlin’s left, he’d been schooled, he’d boxed, and though Lauchlin could hear his own throat sucking air, he knew that as long as Cooper boxed Lauchlin would have the best of him, the rhythm was his now and he crowded him, stepping up with a jab that connected flush, he felt Cooper’s head recoil, a slight stagger, and he jabbed him again in his nose but the effect was less and Cooper sprang forward, leading with an overhand right that ripped into Lauchlin’s ear, their shoulders collided, Lauchlin’s head bounced back from headbone, they’d butted, warm liquid was already swelling into his eye and he caught Cooper backing up with a left hook to his mouth, Cooper muttered “Fuck” and reeled back against his pickup, his back slapping the door hard, and Lauchlin sent a combination to his face, too sweet to resist, quick left-right, he was so open, stunned, Cooper covered up with his fists, spat into the gravel, and Lauchlin backed off, he was winded himself, so soon, what a joke, he couldn’t do half a round now, not serious, the bag was one thing, this another. Still. Cooper was patting his mouth. He looked at his fingers, then blinked up at the sky, a quiet rain was beginning so hard and straight it stung, Lauchlin hunched his shoulders against it. Through a streaming grey curtain Cooper’s vague figure was climbing into his truck, Lauchlin shouted, with more humour than challenge, “Round two?” The door slammed, but quickly the window cranked down.
“Game called!” Cooper shouted, sticking his face into the rain. “Can’t prove anything in this!” His lips sounded swollen. “And tell MacTavish he can go to hell! He won’t get a fucking cent from me!”
Lauchlin stepped close to the window. “Fight him then, if he’s your gripe.”
“Not a boxer, he’s not like us. Other ways to fight him.” Cooper started the engine. “I hated the guys who made me look bad. You know? You remember.”
“I didn’t hate them.”
“Then you’re a fool, storekeeper!” Cooper slipped into gear, the rain flew from his windshield wipers. “I’ll be in better shape next time!”
“I’m just warming up!”
“Next time, storekeeper!”
Lauchlin watched him U-turn around the pumps, rain pouring through the sweep of his headlights, the streetlamp greening the truck’s sheen as it passed beneath it and disappeared quickly, taillights dwindling. He let the cool rain wash over him, waiting for the pain in his chest to speak up, he feared it more than felt it now, adrenalin fading. Soaked and trembling, he drove up to his back door and sat in the rain-riven dark, the pickup’s metal ringing. Water ticked on the floormat. His knuckles hurt. The bone above his eye felt hot. He touched it, the blood was clotted, sticky. What foolishness. Absurd. What in God’s name was in his head? And yet, he had wanted to do it, he’d wanted that crazy, senseless, atavistic clash, it had risen up in him. Through the rippling windshield the kitchen light burned. What a thought, if Morag were up there in his room, waiting, her warm hands would soothe his face. When he started to shiver and couldn’t stop, he dashed for the back door, his boots splashing.
NINE
IT was nearly dusk when he drove up the MacTavishes’ driveway, the spindly poplar saplings taller now, more startling, insistent flashes of leaf, this field is ours, they said. Tena had called him and asked him to come by if he could, but she didn’t appear at the back door. Just above his eyebrow he’d pinched the cut closed with a strip of tape, below the eye a dark yellow bruise whose swelling gave him a slight squint, and he was already weary of the remarks it had prompted from Johanna, from customers, though Malcolm, who knew just looking at him, kept quiet. Dark and slippery last night, Lauchlin told the others, I fell into my tailgate, believe me or not I don’t care, you’ll get nothing more out of me. Tena, in her forgiving blindness, would not ask.
The fish van was parked, Clement’s pickup gone. His shirts and trousers flapped on a clothesline. Tena hung wash on days of wind and sun, she liked the business of pegging the clothes to the line, feeling them whip and snap around her, their damp fresh smell, and the sun hot on her face, she had told him on the way home from Munro Point. The sun had just eased behind the mountain, its leftover light stretched yellow along the ridge, and he touched the bruised knob of his cheekbone. At least it wasn’t cut, and hurt much less than leaving Morag’s near midnight without sharing her bed.
Lauchlin knocked, said, Tena? into the kitchen, savoury with the smell of roast meat. He didn’t want to go further without hearing her. Then she called his name somewhere behind him, out by the barn, and there she was switching her way through the grass with a grey stick.
“Lauchlin?” she said. “It’s so nice to hear you.” He met her and she reached for his neck and pulled his face toward her, kissing his cheek. That surprised him, a flush of warmth ran through him and he checked the impulse to return her kiss because he knew his would feel different. “You’re trembling a bit, girl,” he said. “Tell me what’s up.”
“Oh,” she said, “little noises I shouldn’t be worrying about. I wish I’d never mentioned it.”
“You sounded nervous on the phone.”
“But you’re here now. Let’s be reasonable anyway, Lauchlin. You couldn’t be with me day and night. Who could? I’m fine, I’ll be fine. Come, I’ll show you what I found by the old apple trees. You know, I roam around here more than you’d think.” She took his hand and led him toward the remnants of the old orchard. “I know where they are, I can smell them.” The breeze carried a sweet vinegary scent of windfallen fruit, yellow in the grass, browned and misshapen with rot. She dropped the stick and stooped in the thicker grass until she touched the wheel of a rusting bicycle.
“I used to ride a bike. Is this one salvageable?”
“I’m afraid not, Tena.” He smiled. “You weren’t planning to ride it, were you?”
She stood up, frowning. “Just in the yard, with someone watching. I don’t see why I couldn’t, one end to the other like, stop, turn around. I used to ride.”
“This steed is all but shot, Tena. Major surgery needed, intensive care.” He didn’t mention the matter of balance, how much harder it would be with your eyes shut.
“Let’s walk then.” She took his arm. “I had to get out of the house. I went to the edge of the woods. I felt frightened and I went out there and I said, all right, here I am. It’s cooler by the barn.”
“Frightened of what, Tena?”
“It’s maybe that I hear too good now, Lauchlin. I put little noises together and sometimes I come up with a bogeyman. Sometimes they seem foolish, but real enough.” There were sounds she noted with pleasure—the high hawk screeching, dry flower stalks stroking the windowpane, the hummingbird feeder tapping the shingles on a windy night, a goldfinch’s call, a breeze fluttering pages of a magazine, the hum of the stove clock, rainwater. Then she told him about the phone ringing when she was alone and no one spoke when she answered it, but that was not awful, people dial wrong, she just hung up. Far worse the morning she woke up certain someone was in the house—a sensation of menace she had never felt before, not even in the early days when her imagination twisted sounds into inaccurate shapes her hands were always straining to touch.
“I got up, my heart in my throat. What could I do anyway? Wait for them to speak, or whatever? I dressed, I couldn’t go through the house in a nightgown. Do you know how foolish it feels to keep asking, Who’s there, what do you want? when anyone with sight would know damn well who is there or who isn’t? A couple days later I heard small noises, here and there, distinct, something falling, in the afternoon. I was angry then, I had possession of myself, it wasn’t like rising out of sleep when you feel so weak in your bed, and I shouted into the house, come out of there, you bastard, I raised the poker above my head. But it came to nothing, just ruined the day. I tripped over a stone bookend, on the floor a long way from where it belonged, and I broke into tears. I had to call the Mathesons, Lorna and Alan came over from weeding potatoes and he went through the whole house, even the old cold cellar beneath the pantry hatch, we never use it anymore. He checked the outbuildings too, the barn, he said, There’s no sign of anyone, dear. Lorna came and stayed with me and drank tea for a while and talked about what it was like when the MacKenzies lived there, the good farm they had, how alive the place was in those days, full of people. I don’t care about those days, I told her, it’s these days that concern me. Lorna went quiet, I know she was thinking, This poor blind creature, she’s scaring herself to death.”
“Lorna’s a good soul.”
“She is. Could we sit in your truck? Could we drive someplace? Clement’s in town picking up some part or other.”
“It’ll be dark in a while.”
“What’s the day like now?” she said.
“A little hazy still, we’re in the last of it.”
She halted but held onto his arm. “I used to go to Point Aconi sometimes, before I was married, at sunset. I dreamed about it last night, the sea so soothing, and the wind. But then suddenly I could feel the mountain near me and I woke up scared, like in the night it had moved right to the backyard. I knew it was just outside and I was afraid to open the door. I’d like to go all the way to the point, Lauchlin, above the rocks? Where it narrows like the bow of a ship?”
“That’s a few miles, Tena. We wouldn’t want to be there after dark.”
HE PUSHED IT ON THE Trans-Canada, passing slower cars ahead of him on the uphill lanes. The need to rush exhilarated him, kept away thought, this probably was not wise, they hadn’t even left a note for Clement, but he felt as if he were flying headlong toward something and, for the moment, he didn’t care what it was. Tena was telling him about this afternoon when she heard a door close somewhere in the house, not slam like the wind might do it, but quietly, the way someone shuts a door if they think you’re ill or asleep. That’s what made her phone him.
“Somebody should be there with you, in the day,” Lauchlin said.
“Oh, I don’t want that. I didn’t tell Clement yet anyway. I don’t think he believes me either. Or maybe he does, and that’s even harder for him. He has enough on his mind.”
“Listen, Tena. You call me any time at all. I’ll come down.”
“I don’t want to think of it now. Is it just in my head, Lauchlin?”
“I couldn’t say that.”
“Why, if it’s true?”
“How could we know if it’s true? I’d have to be there with you, wouldn’t I, when you hear things like that.”
“I feel better now. I can smell the water.”
The channel meandered like a pleasant river, the road gentle dips and rises moving toward the ocean.
“Have we passed that grand old farmhouse,” Tena said, “with the saltbox barn?”
“We have. It’s the newer houses now. And there’s that big derelict fishing boat up on timbers, been there as long as a monument.”
Tena leaned into the window breeze. Across the channel Lauchlin could see the fish plant Clement worked for, its wharf, maybe it would be derelict too, another Cape Breton enterprise on the edge.
When they hit the dirt road it passed through woods, then a broad, uneven field to the west, grassed and scrubby, and the sea beyond. He slowed as the red-roofed tower of the lighthouse came into view.
“I don’t remember that noise,” Tena said, frowning.
“The ventilation system for the new mine.” Set far back from the road in grass reddish with ocean sun, the ventilator station sat, a low metal building rusting already like an old ship. A huge square maw high at the rear of it gave off the sound of heavy, thrumming fans. “The coal seam runs out under the sea a few miles, but the way things are going with the mine, it won’t be operating long, I’m thinking.”
“It sounds so strange. It was always peaceful here, even when the weather was fierce.”
He parked below the lighthouse where the grade rose gently toward the point. The sun had dissolved in strokes of cloud, turning the sea a calm, dark lavender. Sea-bitten cliffs bore off to the west, woods pressing near their edges where clifftop sod spilled over. The mine fans had faded to a humming whisper. They sat listening to the metallic rustle of the gravelled beach below the cliff. Tena reached for his hand.
“Do you mind?”
“How could I mind?”
“I might want to move my fingers over you, to know you like that sometime. I’ve never really seen you.”
He didn’t want to dwell on what she meant by that or let his imagination seize it, but his afternoon with Maddy swept across his mind. “You saw me once, Tena. You stopped at the store for gas when you and Clement were courting. I don’t remember that you went weak in the knees.”
“I don’t go weak in the knees, Lauchlin. I think about a man, though. I might want to touch him and I might not.” She feathered her fingers over his face, his brow. “What’s that?”
“Cut a couple times, boxing.” Tony Mellich? Head butt.
“Men have died in the ring, haven’t they?”
“Not often. It’s after they leave the ring sometimes that they suffer, the damage catches up. Fight too long, take too many hard shots to the head. That’s worse, I think.” Lauchlin could see the remnants of a barrier at the cliff edge, a few yards of rusty I-beam under which the turf had eroded, exposing stark metal rods. He and three buddies had come to this spot years ago. “A pal of mine died here, over that clifftop grass.”
“Here?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t need to bring that up.”
“Maybe you did.”
“You’re here to enjoy yourself.”
“I’m here with you.”
He focused on a distant c
ontrail, a slowly dissolving stroke bright with reflected sun, the plane invisible. “I was living in Sydney then, Whitney Pier. Four of us, boxing pals. There was Benny Gouthro. And Owen MacAuley and Laine Calder. We all worked out at the same gym, Lou Nemis was training us. We’d seen Blair Richardson fight in the Glace Bay Forum that week, we all admired Blair and it pumped us up to see him take out Wilf Greaves for the Canadian title. End of September, leaves just turning. We drove down here on a lark, one of us heard there was a party along the road but we never found it, we just kept on until we got here and someone had a bottle, so. I didn’t drink much because I was dedicated to the sweet science by then. I was fighting pro and I’d won a six-rounder, a knockout, and I felt so damn good, I was high. We rolled down the windows, sang into the wind, passed the bottle around. A black night, you could barely make out the sea except when the beam swept over our heads. Then someone wanted to go up to the lighthouse. Stay away from the cliffs, it’s awful dark, I said, me, more sober than the rest and a little older. Oh, to hell with that, Benny said, you have to go the edge sometimes, Lauchie. Not that edge, I said. I wasn’t keen on the risk even after a few swallows of liquor. I wanted to keep boxing, I was getting good at it. Why would I play the fool on the Point Aconi cliffs? But Benny did, pasted with rum. He had us put the headlights on him so we could see the daredevil of it, tiptoeing along the rim there like a stage dancer. Our headlights of course went straight out into that sea darkness, you wouldn’t know there was anything but level land behind Benny, he was just showing off, but we knew it was a long way down, where a dark sea meets a rocky cliff, that’s a bad place. Then he’s shadowboxing in the headlights, jab jab, jumping around, and suddenly I didn’t like it, it scared me a little, that sight, and I start to open the car door, I want to get him away from there. But he falls comically like he’s been kayoed, a pratfall. We laughed, that was the effect he wanted, but then we saw that he wasn’t lying on the ground, that he had in fact disappeared. Nobody had a flashlight and the car lights of course we couldn’t aim downward, but we knew he was down there, and the tide was out. We were yelling for him, shouting at each other, stumbling around, drunk and scared. I don’t remember who finally got a flashlight. Laine drove off to get help. It took a while for Owen and me to find a way down, then along the bottom of the cliff, we had plenty of time to feel sick about it. We found him over the bare rocks, broken, he came to rest where gulls had been. Splayed out there on the guano. Jesus, we were stunned. He was dead in the beam of a goddamn flashlight, a buddy, just a kid really like all of us, not much more than twenty. That light was not kind, I can tell you. He wouldn’t’ve looked so bad at daylight. When you come upon something like that in the dark, in pathetic flashlight…Part of the shock was his stupidity. He died for a laugh. We all laughed in the moment, it’s true. He had that moment. We helped the Mounties work him off those rocks. We kept thinking Benny might come out of it, like he’d wake up from a drunk. We were young, young, drunk, yes, but wide awake, believe me. What do you know of it then? Your life seems glorious and cheap. You think, I’ll stick my neck out, it’s okay for now, boy, it’s all now, death is a word and you have so damn much time to challenge it, who cares. Who knows.”
Lauchlin of the Bad Heart Page 15