She kept trying to do and say the right things, to be irreverent in just the right way. But she only managed to repeat what others, like Madonna Brassaurd, said and she was clumsy in repeating it. Whenever she said something it only sounded vulgar and foul
No one in the group seemed to approve of her, and she became nervous and her face started to break out. Once, when she was with Madonna, Karrie said: “I’d like to know what to do to be more like you.” And she smiled timidly.
“You have to know not only how to fuck — you got to know who to fuck,” Madonna said. “But he fucked you good, didn’t he?” Though she laughed, as if joking, and though Karrie laughed also, Karrie felt deeply humiliated.
She began to feel that belonging to someone who didn’t care at all for her was her destiny. Soon she began to feel, in a secret part of her, that she had cheated Tom, and had cheated the plans for her future with him, for nothing. It took her some weeks to begin to admit this.
The evenings began to pass, and there was never an easy moment for her. The idea that she had been dishonest came principally from Madonna Brassaurd. And no longer did Michael act in an easy way with her. There was nothing easy between them now.
Soon she hated the boat, and all of them, and yet she was forced to go there. That is, she was forced to go there in the hope that she had got all those impressions of Michael and the rest of them wrong. That they were not mean people, that Everette Hutch, when he once came by, didn’t hate her, or hold her family up to ridicule because of the shack Gail rented. That Michael didn’t take his side and glare at her as if she were a “slum landlord,” as they teased her about.
She wanted to prove to herself that it was exactly as it had been before, like the night they went to P.E.I., that Michael was an angel and she was an angel and they would fly above the world together, over the sorrowful trees.
She kept going back to the sailboat so her father and stepmother wouldn’t be disappointed. And she kept going there because as long as she was there, she had a chance to change their minds about her, to prove something to Madonna and Michael.
For days and days Michael didn’t want her. He seemed very upset with her. He told her that there were things that she didn’t understand. She could not seem to break through.
“If you only knew,” he said to her one night at his farm, “of the trouble I’m now in — you would run away.”
“What trouble?”
He moved his hand through his hair and looked at her.
“I’m in trouble — but you can’t tell”
“Is it Tommie — is he bothering you?” she said.
“Don’t you realize you’ve betrayed him?” he said.
She jumped up and ran to the door. She had just brought him down a set of sailboat chimes for the house, and had placed them near the window in the living room.
The old Mexican sombrero sat on a chair, and she picked it up and fumbled with its leather headband, her lips pouting.
The next night he was drunk and climbed up on her verandah roof and woke her. He looked worried about something, and she allowed him to rest his head on her shoulder when she opened the window, then cup her breast.
“Please don’t do that here,” she said.
He wanted to come in, and began to make a commotion.
Instead she snuck out the back door and down through the cool, dark garden in her bare feet. They went down to the field where she had left Tom that day with the tractor, and right on that spot Michael pushed her down drunkenly and lifted her nightgown. She was very silent and passive, because he was so drunk.
After that night, “cinnamon girl” took on a peculiar, odious meaning. Madonna used it, and she could not stand to hear the way it was said. Also, after that night, and more importantly, she was frightened of her father and stepmother’s terrible hope — of her as an investment for them.
She kept pretending that they were her friends and that everyone loved her. That this was the age of friendship. So her father and stepmother kept making small talk, wanting to know what Michael was really like — asking her about what a sailboat ride was like.
“Why don’t he come around?” her stepmother asked the afternoon after he had come to her bedroom window, with a smile that told her that Dora knew he had been there the night before. Karrie was walking down the hallway, and froze in mid-stride when Dora spoke.
But when Karrie gave the excuse that he was busy refitting the sailboat, that’s all that seemed to matter to Dora.
“Oh, the sailboat — when can I get on it?” Dora said.
The hallway smelled of stale summer air and Karrie glanced into the dining room where her stepmother sat, her cheeks shimmering slightly.
She went upstairs and, staring at the small freckles on her arms, began to sob in spasms. What was she supposed to do now?
NINE
After he left her on the road that day, Tom went to Brassaurds’. The wine was brought out. He hit the bottom of the bottle, took off the cap and took a drink. It was warm sherry wine, called Hermit — or Uncle Herms, as those who drank it with frequency called it. It gave most blackouts and made many violent.
There was the sweet summer smell of clover along with the smell of river water and eels. For many moments Silver, still hungover from the night before, looked upon his imposing guest with sorrowful, even bashful eyes. They talked about haying, they talked about the tractor — the clutch plate — Mr. Jessop’s prize pig. They talked about the lobster season. Until Tom had drunk half the bottle.
“What’s going on down there, Silver?” Tom said. He was staring at the corner where the fridge was. “Tell me everything — the whole of everything. What’s Mike been up to with her? Anything?”
Silver didn’t answer for a while.
“I don’t know,” Silver said, and he shook his head piteously. But then he kept right on talking, in a whisper, as if confidence were required with Tom, when the story had already been spread across the entire road, so that even Dora had heard all about it. “She was naked with him last night —” he whispered. “Now, maybe he didn’t do it yet — but I think he did it to her last night,” Silver said, shaking his head.
Though Tom took in everything he kept staring at the fridge. His whole body began to shake as if it wasn’t his, as if he had no control over it. He picked up the bottle again, couldn’t get it to his lips, and the wine spilled down his chin.
“Don’t be wastin good wine,” Silver said, and he took it from him and drank. “I got a good glance ‘tween her legs — and her hair isn’t so cinnamon downstairs. Go ask Madonna.”
Tom looked over at him, but Silver, in communicating his story with such profound and vulgar naivete, had no idea why Tom was looking like he was, and so he only whispered a little more urgently.
“Oh ya,” Silver continued recklessly. “It was the bet he made me that he could fuck her by her birthday — “
There were two awful sounds from Tom’s throat, and he looked so terrifying that all of a sudden Silver stopped speaking, tipped his chair back, and snuck away, trying to be as careful as he could — for he had just seen a monster.
Silver went outside and the night was hot. The trees waved slightly and the road smelled of tar. He went and leaned against the Pontiac. He began to shake. He was suddenly frightened for himself.
“He’s going to kill someone,” he said.
Madonna looked at him, unmoved by the statement. She loved her brother — because he was her brother. But she had no use for anyone now. Very little talk about love or violence ever moved her. Not as it had when she was a child and had loved everyone in hope. She blinked and took a drag of her cigarette.
“Go in and sleep with him,” he said. “Take his mind off of her? And he said her in an urgent voice.
“I’m not sleeping with him” she said.
“Why not — what’s wrong with him?”
“I’m on the rag,” she said.
“He won’t care.”
“I do.�
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And so the argument continued in hushed and urgent tones about whether or not Madonna would go in and sleep with him, while the tractor sat like a giant sleeping animal nearby.
What was poignant about this argument was its defiling nature; for once, a long time ago, she had waited for Tom to ask her to a school party and had bought a dress by working on the weekends sewing curtains for Rita Walsh.
She thought of this now, and the smell of those curtains in town, as one sometimes thinks of their lost innocence.
She had gone to the dance with someone else. They went in a car to a camp and there was a group of boys. Thinking of this, as if stung, she said once again: “I’m on the fuckin rag — so I’m fuckin no one tonight so leave me the fuck alone.”
“Yer a different girl than you used to be — not doin me no favour,” Silver said. And he walked away a few feet and sat on the grass, looking over now and again at his sister. Then he opened a bag of mescaline and looked at it.
“This is the stuff Everette told us to sell now. What are we going to do? We have to tell Michael what we’re being forced to do.”
Madonna stood, ripped the distributor cap off the tractor, looked at her brother and said: “Useless fuckin men. The last thing I want to do is tell Michael we’re selling bad drugs.”
Madonna wanted desperately to start a new life. But she could not start a new life on the residue of her old, past life. This was the sad truth she now knew. She had struggled since she was six years old, always thinking that around one of the pale-blue turns, on a sky-blue day, her new life would happen
And so the argument ended, and the night was still soft with all its stars.
Silver walked up the old Arron Brook road, past the Jessops’ cow-corn field. He didn’t know what to do. He felt he had all the decisions to make.
Madonna went into the house while Tom was drinking his second bottle of Hermit. He asked for hash, so Madonna rolled some in a cigarette and gave it to him. He took the whole joint.
Then he asked for pills — he didn’t know what kind of pills, but Madonna realized he was probably talking about the mescaline going around. So she told him to lie down.
“The mescaline is filled with shit” she whispered. “We’re selling it — because we have to — not because we want to — Everette got us into it.”
She went into the back room with him. He stumbled and fell against the cot, with its old army blanket. He took out the diamond and, leaning on one knee, tried to put it on her hand. She smiled and lay him down, putting the diamond back in his pocket.
He asked Madonna to take off her bathing suit. She lay down beside him and put her head on his chest, and for an hour or more every time he tried to get up she pushed him back.
He reached down and realized that she had actually taken her bathing suit off, but she was wearing a strap and Kotex pad against her warm and somehow angelic body
After she fell asleep he went outside and lay in the grass for over an hour, and later he could hear Madonna talking to him, but didn’t answer her. Then he got up and stumbled to the driveway and tried to start the tractor.
And then he began banging his head against the tractor housing and slipped, cutting himself.
Somewhere — they were either near the tractor or near the Pontiac — Madonna was holding him, and he was shouting at something. He didn’t know what it was.
Afterwards someone said it was near dawn, and Silver appeared in the dooryard bare-chested, smoking a cigarette.
Madonna’s eyes were deep and mysterious, the most spiritual thing in the whole little yard.
By noon hour Madonna and Silver were asleep in the old house, and Tom had gone. He had washed his face and hair, and had gotten the distributor cap back on the tractor. He started out for home.
The day was quiet and warm and he drove the back road, his shirt tail flapping in the wind, his chest bare. Now and then he would look down beneath the engine at the asphalt. His head was woozy and he felt sick.
When he came to the great field of cow corn owned by Mr. Jessop, he pulled the tractor off the road and took a junk of cord from under the seat.
The field spread out for a quarter-mile in each direction. The corn was now waist-high and shimmered in the early-August breeze. Sky birds flew above and the sun beat down. This cow corn had the density of life that Tom had sought and thought he had attained, and he began to walk through it as if committed to do some crime. This crime was to go to the end of the field where he used to hunt partridge and hang himself with the cord.
He had no emotion except that he wanted and needed to do this as quickly as possible. For a good four hundred yards he was in a daze that glowed inside a yellow ball of light. Now and then he would come out of this daze of yellow to stop and look about. And finally the daze, the ball of yellow August light, subsided. He was hampered by the growing corn, and he stopped to inspect its shoots, noticing some small yellow breaks in the stalks, and wondering if he should not go and tell Mr. Jessop about a better quality of insecticide that he, Tom, would have used if the field were his. And, taking two or three samples and inspecting them, he looked at the cord still dangling over his arm and was surprised by it. Then suddenly ashamed, he flung it high in the air, like a black snake, and it fell beneath the ball of sun into the corn, making a stinging sound.
Then he left, determined to be by himself.
TEN
For the next week his brother was away and Vincent was alone and as scared as a boy of five. He tried to feed the mare and the stud. He tried to do the work. He sat every night in the barn talking to the horses, coddling Maxwell the dog. The horses were getting thinner and crankier. He didn’t know what to do. He kept telling them about Tom and him, and how they had gone to the church picnic.
By week’s end he needed tobacco for his pipe, but he was frightened to go and get it by himself. And he was waiting for Tom to give him the note he pinned to his shirt.
Every now and then the mare would move and Vincent would tell it to stop. He was sitting inside the door shaking. But the mare kept moving and flicking its tail.
Once he stood up, pretending he wanted to hit her, and saw that when the mare’s muscles flinched along her flank it was because of blowflies. So he took a carrot and fed it, tears in his eyes as he looked at its yellow teeth. He wept and sat on a bucket. He wailed so that the Egyptians heard him.
He took heart that in the morning the farrier would come and help him with the animals.
Then he looked through the black pouch for more tobacco, but could only find a few strands.
He went towards the house. His door was on the far side, facing Arron Brook. He opened this door with a great deal of dignity A picture of his parents sat on the night table. A large picture matching the one he carried in his pocket of him and Tom and Karrie sat on the mantel. In the far corner was a pet gerbil that Tom had bought him, named Snowflake. His little dog Maxwell looked up at him mournfully
He sat in his chair and thought. Then he opened up the dresser drawer beside him and looked into it furtively for any tobacco that might be left. Then he thought he would go and see his Aunt Libby.
For a while he smoked the last of his pipe tobacco and thought of the gerbil and how he had gone to the pet store with Tom. And how Tom, having to hold Vincent’s hand, talked to the young salesgirl whose name was Sally.
Vincent stood and went out, closing the door, locked it with a good deal of ceremony, and walked down the dry, rutted lane towards the road. Already the stars were out, in the last of the white sky, and all the trees were silent. And he made sure he had his key in his pocket, because Tom told him not to lose it.
He would go to the store and ask for tobacco, and say: “Put on Tom’s account.” That’s what he would do, and this is what he was trying to remember.
PART TWO
ONE
On a sunny Sunday back in June Michael went over to Gail Hutch’s shack. The day was hot, with the smell of pine cones and dust, in the
little yard that sloped so that when it rained, water gathered in pools just outside the door and remained there in perpetuity.
He went inside to find the large pickle jar to take out forty-five dollars to pay his phone bill He had been working on his article again and was phoning former classmates, taping what they said. Many were nervous to come forward, to tell him their views — some might even have felt culpable in what Michael was trying to expose. And this gave him a secret sense of amateurish journalistic power. He would not interview his drama teacher, Mr. Love — but he would go to those closest to him. They were older now and so felt freer to talk.
He felt that he was ready to make a breakthrough, if he could keep his concentration, do his job without a lot of interference. Then he would publish this article in the fall in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald or the Globe and Mail, and punish those, including his parents, who had forced him to go to boarding school when he was a boy This was the whole point of his article. To punish others, to close the school for good. It was his ambition from the time he was sixteen. And though it was right and just for this school to be exposed, he still had twinges of doubt. It was exactly what Tom had told him he should not do, if to injure others was part of his motive.
Thinking of these things Michael stepped into the small, dark shack. But the jar that had always been visible — which had, when he’d last counted, over seven hundred dollars in it, most of it money that he and Silver had earned helping load lobster traps — wasn’t there. He began to search the main room, whistling.
Everette was lying in the dark far room on a mat. He put his hands over his eyes, and looked out at the sunshine.
“Who’s there?” he said, as if to make it clear he was not expecting or wanting visitors.
“It’s me,” Michael said. “I’ve come to get some money”
The Bay of Love and Sorrows Page 8