He sat down on the deck and began to laugh. His whole body shook up and down, and no sound came from his mouth, and Michael at times did not know if he was laughing or crying.
Then Silver began muttering and cursing. He was outraged. But still he stayed by Michael’s side. He would not, ever, desert him.
“You know what?” Silver said, throwing a cigarette into the water. “Let me tell you, okay? We’re dead. If Everette finds out we don’t have the fifteen thousand, we’re dead. He already thought we cheated him in our little pool.”
“Oh, don’t be crazy, Everette is our friend. He’ll understand. I know how to handle him. No one kills for fifteen thousand,” Michael said.
“What? No one kills for — ? Let me tell you something and you listen, you listen very carefully: Everette is on the fringes of real bad people he’s been in and out of jail with. He liked you only because he could use you, you and your boat. And he would kill you for fifteen dollars.”
Michael said nothing, but he felt humiliated, and immediately took the towrope in his hand and tossed it off as the coast guard blinked their lights goodbye and moved to the north. The wind had come up, and the small waves danced and jabbed the keel
Everything they did was done to erase this one mistake.
They could get no more hash or mescaline. They had taken a trip to Fredericton to try to find some on the quiet, from Michael’s friend Professor Becker at the university there. Becker had a pleasant, uncaring smile and liked to talk about his female students and Timothy Leary. He had a dark tan. He sat in his office with his sandalled feet propped on the desk, clicking some worry beads in his hand and smiling, looking now and then at Silver, and then giving a glance at Michael, his desk overflowing with papers and books.
But Becker had nothing to give them, though he liked to garnish his talk, and therefore his life, with all of the proper sayings of the time. Once when he left the office, Silver looked over at Michael with the look a disappointed child might have.
“He’s talkin nonsense,” Silver whispered.
Becker came back with an expensive hash pipe and three small chunks of hash, and locking the door and opening the window passed the pipe around.
Professor Becker then waited until Silver walked back to his Pontiac and, taking Michael aside in the afternoon corridor of the long empty university building, whispered: “These look like dangerous people you are dealing with,” he said. He himself looked thrilled at the fact that Michael would know dangerous people, and he asked if he could go and visit the farm.
“No,” Michael said, smiling at him, “it’s not a good time for you to visit”
Becker looked grave, accepted this with a nod, and walked back to his office, turning at the door to shake his head and wave.
When they got home from Fredericton they found out that Everette was back from the hospital, staying at Gail’s and convalescing in the sunshine. Michael could only think of how Everette spoke about others who had cheated him. How when they once witnessed an accident of an elderly couple from Toronto along the coast road, Everette had stood and talked with concern to the police. When he came back to his van, he smiled and winked and said: “That’s how I like to see the rich die.” Yet Michael had not reacted against that
This night, on their return from Fredericton, Michael asked Karrie to take Tom to church, so he could meet him after. He wanted to ask Tom’s advice — to come clean, to try to start over. He walked to the graveyard and waited. He could hear the out-of-tune organ during Communion and he stepped a little closer to the church.
Unfortunately, Tom turned away from his entreaty and Michael was left waving into thin air. He was angry and bitter that Tom had deserted him. For a moment that night he thought that Karrie had also deserted him, and did not think he would see her again. And part of him wanted to pay her back for this.
In the end there was nothing else to do. He and Silver had to go and meet Everette.
Everette walked with a cane, and wore a white bandage on his side, and white corduroy shorts, which showed his legs to be thick and muscular. All this made him look even more powerful and oppressive.
He called them in and said: “Where’s my money?” Resting his hands on his cane he studied them. He was actually old enough to be Silver’s father. To him, drugs, hallucinagens, had absolutely nothing to do with freedom of expression, or values, as Michael believed they had. Drugs had only to do with business, commerce, money, and the using of people like Michael who desired to be gullible about themselves.
By this time Everette had found out everything. He knew that the deal had not happened, that they did not have his money. He also knew how he would react once they told him. He knew how Michael now viewed him with fear, how this new reality was, in fact, the only reality.
He knew for instance that they had gone to Fredericton and whom they had seen. He knew that they had not come to visit him because they were scared. He knew too that this was the first time he had ever asked them to do something for him. He didn’t remember all of the other times.
So there was no sense in pretending any longer. And Everette took a certain delight in his posture of having to get tough. And he wanted to give them examples how he could do so.
Silver stood near the shack, looking off in the direction of the trees.
“We’ll get it,” Michael said, after admitting what had happened.
“Why did you go to Fredericton?”
“We went to Professor Becker. He’s a good guy — but he’s got nothing much right now.”
He expected Everette to laugh and say, “Well, we’ll figure a way out.” Or even tease him. And he smiled, waiting for Everette to smile.
But Everette didn’t tease him at all. When he stood up, in the late-afternoon sunshine, Gail came running up with his tea. He looked at her, Everette did, rushing out the door towards him, and he simply backhanded her with his left hand. She fell against the door, and lay on the ground.
“Don’t you fuckin get up,” he said. And she lay exactly where she was.
Michael wanted to react — help her — but for the first time in his life he was truly scared.
THREE
The next few weeks were lived in worry and desperation. And their trip to the Island the night of Karrie’s birthday was a trip in the hope of getting something going again. Silver insisted they take this trip, because he had people to see there. What Michael didn’t know was that Silver was being forced to sell bad mescaline for Daryll Hutch and that he had seven-hundred-dollars’ worth of it in his possession, or that this is what he had hidden under the seat of the dinghy.
All during this time Michael was seeing Karrie too. Long before the trip to the Island he was warned to stay away from her, not only by Silver, but by his own inner voice.
“Why do you have her about?” Silver asked him one day.
“Because she doesn’t love Tom, and it’s better if he finds this out now.” He frowned, and took a puff of his cigarette.
Underneath this concern for her was unmasked carelessness and cynicism for no one more than for the girlfriend of his former friend. He did not look upon her as a human being so much as a plaything.
Silver knew this and looked at him silently, and shrugged as if he were disappointed.
“I care very much for her,” Michael said spontaneously, noticing Silver’s shrug. He batted a mosquito away.
“No,” Silver said, “it’s just because she’s Tom’s. It’s Tom you care for. Not her. Tom though cares for her — he would crawl on his knees all the way to Manitoba for her. So why don’t you leave her alone, let Tom have her? Why aren’t you nice to Madonna no more?”
“I am nice to Madonna,” Michael said.
“Just get this summer over without no problem. Take a look in a mirror! Everything is going wrong now- it’s not the time to have a fling with Karrie Smith. I don’t like her parents — I think Dora is a weasel snitch, who will try to find out what is going on here.”
I
t was only after the night of her birthday, the night they went to the Island, when it became clear to Michael that he cared nothing at all for Karrie, and that what was done was all done for the reason Silver had said. But by then Silver treated it all as sport, and so spoke of it as such. “You fucked her good,” he said. “I heard her moaning.”
Michael told him he didn’t want to talk about it — and never to mention Karrie’s name again. Silver could see he was upset about what he had done.
“Don’t worry, you did him a favour — you just broke her tight cunt in,” Silver said. “Why don’t you go back to Madonna — she’ll suck your cock until you turn inside out”
Silver said this without any other inclination than love for his sister and devotion to his friend.
That same night, Michael left and went out along the bay. He started out in one direction, but was pulled in the other, and walked almost to the wharf, then turned and started back. After a half-mile, he could see the faint glittering lights of his farmhouse, he prayed that Karrie wouldn’t be there.
The black trees were solid and nothing entered or left the woods above him except warm draughts of daytime air that had been caught in the spruces, and some flickering lights from fireflies under some secluded branches. The bay was heavy, and warm seaweed rolled onto his feet.
It was almost dark and one swallow flew next to him in the thinning late-summer air.
“I can’t see her again,” he decided, “I can’t. Let her go back to Tom.” And he stopped and sat down, wondering how he ever got into so much trouble.
He smoked a cigarette and was ready to go home when far out in the waves, which were rising steadily, he heard some shouts for help. In fact the shouts sounded as if they had come from Karrie herself.
He stripped off his pants and waded into the water, and began to swim towards the noise. He took much water against him and felt the swells move him in the current. He had to bear down and swim hard to reach the shouts. Far across the bay he could see the twinkling of lights, from cottages and houses, that always seemed so sad and so distant.
He swam out far enough to see a boat turned over, and two children in the swell One was Amy Battersoil — Nora Battersoil’s fourteen-year-old sister — the other, a small child of four or five years old.
“Jesus Christ, Amy! What are you doing with a little boy out here?” he roared, his head bobbing in the waves.
The little boy was trying to be brave, but was constantly swallowing water. Amy was trying to hold him up, but he kept slipping out of her grip.
“You’ll have to get up on top of the boat,” Michael said, lifting her with his strong right arm out of the water. But she fell back down and, when she did, took the boy with her.
“We’re going to drown!” she cried, which made the child cry “No!” Michael yelled. “No! You’re not going to drown on me”
He grabbed her once more, twisting her arm to get it off his neck and throwing her onto the top of the half-submerged dory
“He’s gone,” she yelled. “Owen!”
Michael looked frantically towards the stern of the boat and saw a child vainly trying to swim towards it. He swam the length of the boat, coming behind the boy and, taking him in his arms, he passed the child to the girl
“I’m going to push you in,” he said. “Hold on to him — I’m going around to the back again and push you in.”
For over fifteen minutes he pushed, and twice he felt he could not endure because seaweed had wrapped around his legs. But little by little the outline of the beach loomed closer.
When he got close enough to shore to see it, dismal and grey, he stood up and hauled them in, a pelt of seaweed across his thin strong arms.
Then he found his pants and covered himself, wiping water from his hair. And then he turned on them.
“Jesus Christ — Why were you out there, Amy?”
Suddenly she started to cry. She explained that they had gone to the wharf to look for starfish for the little boy. They’d begun playing in a boat, which was tied to a rung of the ladder, but the rope came loose and she couldn’t paddle back. No one else was there.
She kept hoping that the waves would wash them into shore, or that someone on the road would see them, but neither happened. They had been drifting for two hours. When it got dark the wind came up. The boat began to toss and fill with water. The little boy had stood up to call out and the boat tipped.
Michael was still angry but said nothing more about it.
“How’s Nora?” he asked.
“Fine,” Amy said. She looked cautiously at the boy, and then at Michael, and said nothing.
“What’s your name?” Michael asked the child,
“Owen,” the little boy said. Then he looked down at the ground, the waves still washing over green rocks near his shoes, and began to cry
“Oh — don’t cry —” Michael said. “Don’t ever cry if you are ever on this shore again, I will show you where I go to read — I read up against the red cliff- up there.” He pointed, and noticed his hand was cut. “And if you ever come here and walk up the shore it will sound like all the rocks themselves are talking to you because I read aloud, and there is an echo. I read good books too — but perhaps not as good books as I should.” He smiled.
Then he patted the child’s head. He led them through the woods, along the old path to their home, and shook the little boy’s hand, without going onto their property
He then walked through the dark woods, feeling elated. Far off there was the smell of wood smoke. Far off there were the sounds of boys and girls having a beach party. Far off — far off was his new life. Which he knew someday he would have.
When he got back to the farm it was very late, and he was startled by Silver Brassaurd.
“He thinks we sabotaged his bike — he thinks it was us who wanted to kill him — he thinks we set everything up to steal from him, and that we went over and sold the drugs in Fredericton — he’s going to get Daryll to take care of us unless we get all his money back by September 10. Told you,” Silver said. “Told you.” He said it as simply as a man does who is proven right, even at the moment of being hanged.
FOUR
Michael went to see Everette the next day. He was asked by Gail to wait in the dooryard while Everette ate. So he walked up and down the drive like a servant.
A cool autumn-like wind cut the blueberry field across the road, and there was the lingering scent of a dead animal Everette’s sky-blue bike rested on its kickstand in the yard. Although scraped and battered it was still rideable. Michael had taken Karrie out on it once.
When Everette came out he hobbled over to the old picnic table, picking up a birch stick before he sat down. Michael stood behind him.
“Everette —” he began.
“It’s your trouble — once that is over you can come about again. But as it stands now, it’s your trouble — with daily interest — “
Everette sniffed and spat. The wind blew again. He made no movement in either direction.
“Well, no matter what you think of me I want to ask you a favour. It’s the only favour I will ask. I heard Laura McNair was getting death threats. Don’t threaten her — I mean, she’s just doing her job.”
At this, Everette turned and thrust the birch stick into Michael’s chest, smiling. “You’re the one who sabotaged my bike” Then, standing, he walked towards the house in insolent anger at Michael’s presumption.
“I was waiting for two years for that deal, all the time I was in jail on ‘count of that proper quiff Laura McNair and your old man,” he said at the door. “And you ruined it — if you don’t have the money back to me I’ll confiscate your boat”
A single white trail of smoke came from the dump, and Michael was left to ponder all of this with a sorrowful grin on his face.
Though he had decided not to see Karrie again, and tried to pretend it had never happened, and though he hoped she and Tom would be married, and felt he had done a miserable thing, he went
to her house, when he was drunk that night, and had her come outside.
She was having her period and made a feeble attempt to stop him, but he slapped her hands aside and she lay passively in the field as he lifted her nightgown.
He remembered there had been quite a bit of blood on her after he removed her Kotex. She had tried to stop him and then had just given in, so he hauled her Kotex strap down and threw it aside. This had pleased him, and had aroused her.
Yet now he disliked that aspect of things because he thought of Tom.
The next afternoon she came to the sailboat, with a book of poems by Robert Frost.
Her hair was done up, and two strands fell about her ears. She wore small earrings, and a dress, and looked forlorn in the drifting smoke. As soon as she got on the sailboat she began picking up the dishes — some of them had not been done for days.
“You’ve got to take care of this here boat — my parents want to see it.” And she turned to him with a self-conscious little grin.
“What’s this?” he said, quickly, flipping through the pages of the poetry book.
“Oh, I got that for ya,” she said.
She kept her head down as he began to lecture her quite calmly about poetry and Allen Ginsberg and Professor Becker, who had once met Henry Miller at a party. And Henry Miller always did outrageous things, he said. His voice was emotionless, and she became scared. He was thinking that Karrie was in danger hanging about with him. And Tom would be outraged if he knew she was in danger. Only he could not tell her this. He wanted her to go away for her own good. Forever.
“But what’s the use?” he said, cruelly, “You haven’t read a book.”
“I did.” She looked up proudly, and then lowered her head. “I read The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck,” she said, giving a forlorn little smile. The breeze came up, and the loose sail fluttered. Her blouse was clasped with a silver brooch in the shape of a sailboat, with her name engraved upon it, that she had bought to please him. She had bought chimes made of sailboats which she’d placed in the farm’s living room. All of this he disliked.
The Bay of Love and Sorrows Page 11