He did not feel welcome. He himself hardly drank, and he had at times, just as he did last fall, lectured them for poaching deer and drinking.
Tom realized now what he had known all along — that the Brassaurds had been part of Michael’s arrival back home as well They cleaned his farm for him, helped launch his sailboat, ran to do things for him. He realized that three weeks ago he could not have cared. And now it seemed that every word he had heard about Michael — from the moment Madonna met him in the woods the fall before, to Mr. Jessop speaking to him in the barn — was a warning to him that he had intentionally put out of his mind.
Silver Brassaurd smiled when Tom asked for wine. He was called Silver because of his silver tooth, which was blackened at the gum. It was then that something he had first begun to see when he looked at Madonna and now saw in Silver’s smile came to him. That the Brassaurds, since they knew all about this affair, would be the ones to help everyone through it, would lend an ear to everyone.
Silver nodded in the wise way unthinking people have when they sense the moment is theirs, and ran into the other room to get Tommie the wine.
“Make it a lot or it won’t last,” Tommie yelled. He wanted Madonna to hear him, outside.
SIX
When Karrie began to run away from Tom she could see herself- the quart jug in her hand. She could envision how people might see her running. They would be at the store perhaps. She would walk towards them with tears in her eyes, and the boys who she had once flirted with would look at her, standing about Bobby Taylor’s new Chevy, with the large back tires.
“Oh damn,” she thought now, “I’m crying,” but also thinking what a nice effect this would have on everyone who saw her. That they would know — not right away, but upon reflection — that she and Tommie were through
Then she remembered a rude boy at community college (the boy who had hauled her scarf) who had taken her to a party and had tried to get fresh. When she told him about her boyfriend, Tom Donnerel, he had said, “Oh, you won’t marry him. Someone else will have you long before him — you’re the type.”
That statement had bothered her very much at the time, and now it bothered her more.
The lane was hot; the trees still and moribund. After a time she stopped, looking back quickly, hoping that Tom would still be there. But he wasn’t. And suddenly the emptiness created a pulse in the sky, where a haze rose off in the distance and she, too, was slightly afraid. She took two steps back towards where Tom had been, thought of poor Vincent and the little dog, and how she had a picture of them in her jewellery box, and then turned and walked quickly, arms folded like county girls do.
An idea had formed of late that Tom had done something wicked — against hen And she had played upon this idea for the last two weeks with Michael, and with her father and stepmother.
The previous two weeks had been the most eventful in Karrie’s life. She was always discussing great issues now, and saying wonderful things about life. And everything was fitting into place, as if she had come into her own.
With Michael she had feigned being in a predicament over Tom’s cold behaviour, and feigned needing to come to Michael for advice. Yet though she and Michael pretended it wasn’t, it was very much a predicament that both of them knew would not exist unless they themselves willed it.
At first Karrie wanted to believe that Michael’s and her relationship revolved around the principal idea of getting Tom to reconcile with his friend. Later, when she saw how hurt Michael was, Karrie felt sorry for him, and angered by Tom’s stubborn meanness. Yet behind all this, there was a subtle but marked game being played between her and Michael, that both of them knew.
She thought, as she walked, that Michael would not let her go back to Tom ever again, even if Tom did get violent. There would be some kind of confrontation, but she did not know how that would turn out — only that Michael by the power of his voice and his brave eyes would finally win.
Why did she suddenly think of court? Perhaps something would happen — she would have to go to court — then Michael’s father, the judge, would come — everything would be solved. The judge would put his hands on her shoulder, calling her his daughter (or something — that part was still vague.) Then, in her mind, years passed. They would be in a large brownstone house. Trees, children.
Her own father seemed to think of some injury against her, and so did her stepmother. Karrie was silent in the house. And for the first time she felt very powerful, and sensed that they were both in awe and perhaps a little afraid of her.
“Well, it’s a shame,” her stepmother had said, a week ago, a slight smile playing at the corner of her lips, where tiny black hair could be seen. “I don’t like to see anyone hurt.”
She remembered how outside of their house the bay was black and steely, and far away a buoy-light could be seen, Down the road was Oyster River corner.
Her father had sat licking the filter of his cigarette and frowning at some memory, with grey suit-pants high up on his waist, and counting the money he kept in a tin can beside him. This was the money her father and her stepmother were saving for their retirement. They kept it locked behind the bookshelf in the den. It was money that came from rigged gas pumps — especially the diesel pump, which the local trucking companies used. It was not that they had rigged these pumps themselves. The calibration had been set wrong by the previous owner five years ago, and only Dora was astute enough to notice this. When Emmett went to telephone the company to report the mistake, she rushed in and stopped him.
“Don’t be a godalmighty fool — we are not the thieves — they did it. We’re going to make an extra seventy cents on a tank of gas.” And her face turned beet-red and she looked over quickly and suspiciously at her stepdaughter. “You keep your little Smith mouth shut up tight, Karrie,” she advised.
As long as they were careful about this they felt they would not be caught. It would only be a problem to explain if it were found out they had kept extra profit for themselves. And though Emmett felt guilty and though Karrie was at times burdened, they maintained complete silence. And Emmett and his wife would smile at each other at times across the table late at night.
As Karrie walked away from Tom she thought about this. And then thought about the night before, her twentieth birthday.
She had not meant to meet Michael, but it was destiny. This is what she told herself. It was what her stepmother had told her the week before.
“It’s just destiny, dear. Don’t fight it.”
“But I feel some bad about it,” Karrie said, at that particular moment not feeling bad at all. “We were s’posed to start our instruction at the church” And she blessed herself.
But Dora snapped her fingers quickly in front of Karrie’s eyes, startling her. “Think for once of what you want. People like you and me never think of ourselves, dear — think of yer own self-” And she suddenly smiled, snapped her gum, hugged her stepdaughter coldly, and her lips quivered slightly, so Karrie had to look away.
Now, Karrie remembered Michael as a young boy who swam out from the wharf without a thought to get a wounded seagull — and it seemed as if she’d always been attracted to him. Yes, she was the one who always took his side, and never allowed people to talk about him.
Her stepmother had bought her a new silk blouse that she had worn on her birthday.
Karrie had also been singing the song lately: “Many a tear will fall — but it’s all in the game of love”
She did not tell herself that his family was well known and wealthy — with political connections in Fredericton, an uncle who was a senator in Ottawa, and sailboats and trips to the Bahamas — her stepmother did.
As she ran away from Tom, smelling the thick, bland heat, remembering Tom’s poor troubled face, and what he had done with the blueberries, she felt that she had finally met someone who understood and respected her.
SEVEN
Everyone called her the cinnamon girl Michael gave her that name during her fi
rst trip on the sailboat.
“Oh,” he had said gravely, “you won’t be Karrie here — you will be — oh hell, I don’t know — the cinnamon girl.”
There was such gaiety at everyone else’s expense — there was such disorder, fighting and cursing and nudity. There was such high revelry at nothing at all There was such a pretence of concern for their friends, the world of affairs, the marijuana laws, that seemed upon reflection to be tired and sad.
Sometimes as they sat on the sailboat, it drifted to the port side, and they could smell the Jessops’ farmyard.
“God, those horses,” Michael complained about the odour.
“Them aren’t horses, boy — them are cows. Them is the smell of money.”
Michael studied her in a particular way when she corrected him. There was just a slight look of aversion on his face. Then he just bent over, and with his hand on the inside of her thigh he kissed her. She opened her mouth slightly and felt his tongue.
He was only the second boy she had ever really kissed. Then he drew away and playfully squeezed her thigh.
“Now, stop it,” she said, “What am I going to do with you?”
And she began to laugh again, with a marked fear at doing something inappropriate, and then moved a lock of hair back from his face, and shook her head, as if she was exasperated.
She decided then to go back to Tom, where she felt she would be safe. But on her way to Tom’s the next afternoon, she came out on the road, and spied Vincent waiting for her, looking down the highway holding Maxwell Far up in the field she heard Tom’s tractor, and her heart was no longer in it. She turned quickly and ran, all the trees passing her at the same instant, and didn’t stop until she got to the bay.
“I’ll go with you — to Prince Edward Island,” she said. “If you want”
“Well — as long as we enjoy it,” Michael said in an almost ice-cold fashion. And she suddenly gave a short embarrassed laugh, and looked at Madonna.
On her birthday, Michael took her to Prince Edward Island. He had to talk to some people there, or Silver (who seemed to be upset about something) did. But while the rest went to shore, she remained on the sailboat, looking down the teakwood stairs into the cutty
She kept walking back and forth on deck hoping they would come back soon, and her attention was drawn to three young teens on the wharf who kept asking her if she owned the sailboat.
“My boyfriend does,” she said suddenly, filling a glass with white wine.
She then looked across the strait to the far-off shore she had come from, and took a drink. She promised herself she would be back home by six. When Michael came aboard again, she found herself talking about Tommie.
“Shhhh,” Michael said.
He took her hand, and led her into the cutty.
She looked at his face and it was filled with a quiet strength. She could understand why he was likable. And all the rude things she had thought about him. But she now felt Tom had told her those things. But she was free of Tom, if she wanted to be.
There were many things in the cutty and she tried to remember them. Bottles and small hash pipes, clothes tossed here and there, a map on the wall with pins in it, showing where he’d been in the world, a chart of the bay, and the overriding scent of suntan lotion and of a faintly soiled mattress.
Silver Brassaurd was on deck, cursing to himself about something important, and now and again he would peek down the stairs, his bottom teeth protruding from his mouth.
The sailboat rolled in the waves and Michael sat beside her, squeezing his strong slender fingers on her back. He told her a story of riding out a hurricane off the coast of Africa, while she sat and drank.
She drank almost an entire bottle of wine, and now and then as he continued rambling on, she ran to the cupboard in the cutty to pee. She kept falling back and forth laughing while the door banged open and closed. He went over, helped her to her feet, and pulled her panties up.
“I’ve never done anything like this,” she said, staggering and laughing.
Michael then got upset about something that had happened on the Island two or three weeks before, and began to hit his fist against the wall behind him. When she turned in fear to stop that fist she fell against him. There were tears in his eyes, and he was drunk as well, and she was frightened.
“Why are you fooling him?” he said, “He was the only friend I had — or is it me you are making a fool of?” He smiled.
She jumped up in a start to run away, but when he hauled her back to him she started kissing him apologetically She kept kissing him, on the mouth and teeth, on his bare chest.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry — this wasn’t supposed to happen between us at all” And then she said quite suddenly: “I’ll go out and get you some blueberries tomorrow — I’ll bake you a pie”
And he began to laugh, that laugh he had, which always frightened her.
Later, there was phosphorus on the green bay The swells were high and they went on deck. Actually he got up first, and went above first, leaving her alone to dress.
Far away they could see the lights from the road, and she could make out the one light over her father’s gas bar. She called Michael to show this to him, and when he came over she leaned her head against his arm. Then he smiled and gave her a squeeze, and told her he would be back in a minute.
Riding in the wooden dinghy that was being towed behind them, dead drunk, was Silver Brassaurd. It was dangerous to be out there now, with the strong wind. If the dinghy ever came loose, there would be no saving him and he didn’t even seem to care.
While she was looking at him he would roar and yell at the waves, then sing. Then as Karrie was watching he took a plastic bag from his pocket and shoved it up behind the dinghy’s rear seat. For some reason, as Karrie watched she thought of herself as a little girl hiding marbles from her cousins one Sunday afternoon. Yes, she had wanted all those marbles for herself, and perhaps, who knew, that’s what Silver was hiding as well. Some marbles for himself. Something he didn’t want to show anyone else.
When she turned around to look towards the bow, she felt that she belonged to all of them. This was a very warm feeling.
But then she caught a glance from Madonna Brassaurd, who was sitting on top of the cutty, smoking a cigarette and tipping a bottle of wine. And Karrie remembered, dizzily, that with all the wine she’d had, she’d been naked when people — both Madonna and Silver — walked in and out of the cutty.
Madonna simply stared at her now and the look unnerved her. She realized it was because she had always, as had her stepmother, felt superior to the Brassaurds, and Madonna’s look said she knew this.
Michael had to climb up at the bow to get the spinnaker out. But it had been broken on an earlier trip, and bowed under his weight. He wore old cutoffs that were very loose so that the top of his butt showed. And he was cursing about something as he seemed to swing far out over the desperate water.
She remembered when they’d been on the hard, long seat how thin his ribcage was. She had tried to stop him, at first. She remembered too how much it hurt her at first, and how she’d been unable to stop moaning, so he’d held her mouth,
Now in the dark she could only hear his voice — and for the rest of the night he didn’t speak to her. He seemed to be responsible for everything and everyone. The idea that he was Michael Skid seemed to be implicitly woven into this responsibility to care for those about him.
No one spoke to her again, and she felt very lonely. She kept trying to talk with them, but it became quickly apparent she had done something that they all thought was dishonest, or at least she felt they did. Just once, when she was moving back towards the cutty thinking she was going to be sick, Michael’s eyes caught hers, and she looked away.
EIGHT
From the day Tom threw the blueberries, everything about Karrie’s situation changed and was to become worse and worse from the moment she ran away from him.
When she ran from Tom that day, she did no
t go back to the sailboat, but the next day, she went down. As she got off the dinghy she felt that they had been having a conversation about her.
“What are youse saying about me?” she said, laughing, but her laugh was a nervous one.
Michael looked up at her and she thought his smile was cold or annoyed. She remembered his smile on the beach when she had first met him. It was the same smile.
There were other young women on the sailboat that day as well, and they were all going to Portage Island. She was angered that they would go there and not invite her.
Michael got up and moved around her, as if he were very busy. He told her they were casting off, if she wanted to come. But she stubbornly said no and asked someone to take her back in.
She went back to shore and looked out at the boat. No one waved back when she waved — so she picked up a stone and pretended to throw it at the boat and laughed. Then she yelled out to Madonna: “Madonna — I have something to tell you — wait till I see you again. But I’m not going to tell Michael — la-te-dah.”
She watched Michael disappear into the cutty, and then soon
— ten to fifteen minutes later — Silver Brassaurd pulled anchor and the sailboat began to drift, as she heard the squeak of the sail being lifted.
Going home, she borrowed her father’s car and drove quickly along the bay road, watching as the boat became a dot in the sun. Then she turned and drove into town. Town was hot and empty and silent,
She went to the bookstore and bought Michael a book. It was a book of poems by Robert Frost. She wrote in it, “All my love dear one. Karrie.” She did not know much about literature, but she did once have a part in a school play.
She was aware of herself walking back to the car, and felt a little hopeless.
And so it started. She could not help but be with, and wanted to belong with him. Or more to him. But everything about them intimidated her. She hid the book of poems in her room, waiting for the proper moment to give it to him.
The Bay of Love and Sorrows Page 7