The Bay of Love and Sorrows

by David Adams Richards

  Michael was then offered a contract by a publishing house in Toronto to write a book on Karrie Smith, the events of the summer, which had briefly made the national news and pricked something in the national consciousness. He said yes, and set about, he felt, to tell the truth as best he could about the murder. Not to spare anyone and to ultimately show that his values — the values of the new man — were much superior, say, to the values of his old friend Tom Donnerel. He felt that he was a moral representative of his age group. There were those young men and women who were liberal and believed in what had to be done to secure equality for everyone and there were those who still clung tenaciously to the repressive dogma of a former time, of community and church. Michael believed more than ever that he belonged to the former group, the best group, the more inclusive group.

  One night in early November he went for a walk after working all day on the first part of the first draft of his book. A young woman came out of the side door of the courthouse and moved ahead of him in the rain. She wore a yellow sou’wester and a matching rain jacket. He walked behind her for some time, and suddenly realized who it was. He had not seen her since the trial

  “Laura,” he said, and she turned and gave a quick smile. “Oh, Laura,” he said. “It’s — you.”

  “Oh, my God,” she said, “I was just thinking that you might have gone away, now that you’re famous, and I wouldn’t get to see you again. I was going to phone and ask you up, but you just lost your friend Karrie — and it’s horrible about Tom. Then I waited for you one night at the theatre — but you must have gone out another door.”

  A car passed and its lights shone on her startled childlike face.

  And for some reason she started to cry. And he went over and hugged her.

  In a way, all that autumn at home, Michael was treated like a hero by his apologetic and relieved parents. And he was very relieved too. Soon he and Laura were inseparable, and then impulsively, because Michael was always impulsive, engaged to be married. And everything had turned out for him as well

  SIX

  Nora Battersoil had gone to work in grade ten at the small bowling alley in town. She was a thin, nervous girl and felt she was homely and would not be loved.

  She met Michael Skid and fell in love and had a son out of wedlock in 1969, whom she named Owen after her grandfather. Michael did not know about this son, and she did not tell him, because he was wild. She did not want to burden him with what she considered an unnecessary request for sponsorship.

  She felt that this was a brave decision on her part, because she did love him.

  She had to tell her family she was pregnant but would not name the father, so her father blamed everything on her, and said terrible things she could never forget. So she left home. And, except for her little sister, Amy, who sometimes took care of the child when Nora visited the house once or twice a year, she never communicated very much with the rest of her family.

  So much so that in the fall of 1973 she quit her own Catholic church and joined the Salvation Army, as a member and a volunteer.

  She helped take care of drives for food, fundraising for events, and, in 1974, books for the prison library,

  One day in November 1974 she was given a box that had been sent down by Mrs. Fewella Skid. In this she found a brooch of a sailboat with the name Karrie on it. And at the bottom of the box was a small volume of poetry by Robert Frost

  Mrs. Skid, when sending these things along that particular day, did not have any idea who she was sending them to.

  For Nora it brought back painful memories and desires, and the kind of self-incrimination she’d always felt because her father had refused to stand up for her, threatened her with the belt, and called her a whore.

  Karrie Smith had been her first-cousin, but she had lost contact with her after Karrie’s mother died. She remembered Karrie one afternoon, the last year of high school, as she ran down the hall, touching the lockers with her hands. She had been so happy at that moment. But Nora did not see Karrie again.

  Twice that fall she had seen Michael Skid in town, walking arm in arm with Laura McNair. On both occasions Michael, his thick black hair falling to his shoulders, his piercing eyes as brilliant as ever, did not see her himself. Now he was writing a book on Karrie and seemed to be talked about, however grudgingly, as a very heroic man. And she was happy for him.

  Thinking of this she placed the brooch in her pocket, and sent the volume of poetry to the prison library in the centre of the province.

  Then she went out, on a cold snowy day towards the end of November, to ring her Salvation Army bell at the grey liquor store near the corner.

  A week later she received a letter from a man at the prison. That man was Tommie Donnerel.

  Dear Miss Battersoil:

  I got your name from the libary here who sent on the poetry. Because of the writin on the cover I felt it was for me from Karrie Smith — when I was gonna go to do my upgrading. But she didn’t have no chance to give it to me. How I want to thank you for this here book. Have you read the Apple Picker — I have never read a thing as good! It makes me think that all things will turn out someday. I want to thank you for Karrie’s book to me!

  Tommie Donnerel

  P.S. I like the book!

  Nora Battersoil didn’t answer. But a few days later, with the smell of cold snow mingled with ice and the sunlight frozen across the tin roof with its rusted rivets, she received another letter from him.

  It was a letter wishing her a Merry Christmas. He never mentioned his time, except to say that he could do two lifetimes if he could only be sure Karrie had not suffered. And he was now reading Stephen Crane.

  This letter begged an answer more than the first, so she replied, somewhat sternly. She told him that though she too prayed that Karrie had not suffered, it was unconscionable to think that she had not. She added that she hoped he was in good health, but that he should read the Bible more and literature less, and added that she knew Vincent was not responsible for his actions and therefore was at peace.

  Tommie Donnerel received the letter on December 11, his second full month in prison.

  The day after he received this letter he was down in the small barren gym watching some men play basketball. He kept looking out the window at snow falling against the mesh, and trying to see as much of the sky as he could. He was wondering if Nora was the same woman Michael Skid knew a number of years before, and he was also thinking that he would be allowed TV privileges this night to watch the Christmas special

  As he stood there a man walked by him with his arms folded. Then looking up at him and smiling he shoved a homemade shiv into his chest.

  “Here, this is a treat for you,” he said, his face twisted in raw glee. The handle had a piece of rubber attached to it, and it vibrated slightly as it stuck in. The hope, of course, was that it would break off in Tommie’s chest. He was Everette Hutch’s friend, the man Laura McNair had prosecuted for the rape of the young woman. He was doing this as a favour for Everette, who would now, he believed, be obligated to kill Laura McNair for him.

  Tommie dropped backwards, hit his head, and everyone started whistling, clapping, laughing. The man stood over him, giving the knife a tug sideways and trying to break the blade off.

  “I can’t get it,” he said.

  Then he went to the other side of the gym, furtively, and stood with the group. He went out onto the court alone, took the basketball and tried to throw a basket from the key, as if this would increase his popularity, and Tommie’s blood ran onto the floor.

  SEVEN

  Tom awoke in the hospital in Moncton. The shiv had missed his heart but had punctured a lung. Both the doctors and nurses, though they did everything they could to save him, maintained a dismissive attitude towards him.

  In the seven nights he spent in hospital he received two get-well cards, one from Nora Battersoil, the other from Madonna Brassaurd.

  The first night, when he was on morphine, he had a dream. An
d then another almost exactly the same three nights later after they had taken him off the morphine drip.

  In the first dream Vincent was standing on the far side of the room. He was not Vincent as Tom had known him, but Vincent as he might have been. He approached Tom smiling and he bent down and showed Tom his head. There was no wound there any more.

  “The doctor I have knows how to cure it,” Vincent seemed to say

  Then he showed him his pipe, which was not nibbled at on the stem like it had been, but was silver, and bubbles came from it and disappeared into the wide, blue sky above him.

  “I like your pipe — did you get it at the gas bar?”

  “No — you can’t get a pipe like this at the gas bar — but I want to show you something.”

  Suddenly Vincent became solemn, and he turned about. Someone spoke to him and said: “Not now”

  And Vincent smiled and nodded, and disappeared.

  There was some incident in this first dream that Tom tried desperately to remember. But as long as the pain was severe and he was kept on morphine he couldn’t.

  Then, on the night after they had taken him off the morphine drip, he had the second dream.

  In this dream, Vincent came into the room. He was wearing his jacket. He took out a picture of Karrie and him at the picnic. It wasn’t the picnic they had gone to with Tom. Karrie was wearing the pantsuit Tom last saw her wearing. She and Vincent were smiling, looking up at someone.

  “Look into the picture,” Vincent said, as if this was most important. “Tom you must look into the picture — see? Not like in my room — it’s quite a different picture.”

  “Will he know?” came the voice on the other side of his bed.

  In the dream Tom felt terrified. For a moment he looked at the picture as Vincent had asked him to do. And then he turned. Sitting on the chair to his left was Karrie. He knew it was her, but he couldn’t recognize her. He only saw her smile, which caused a light to glow in front of her face.

  “You must not ever worry, Tommie — I am to inform you that the clutch is fixed. You must tell Madonna to find the distributor cap for you. You must tell Michael to spend his time now to search for the good answer, and he will find it helping those he does not yet know. You must wait for Nora Battersoil at the window of the bus.” And she smiled in angelic delight.

  When he turned back Vincent was gone. And he awoke.

  For two days he didn’t understand the dream. The hospital was grey and hot, filled with weak and smiling clerics, and he began to run a fever. They were worried about infection and changed his bandages three times a day.

  On the third day a nurse named Sally came in to change his bandages at four in the afternoon. He was sitting up, looking about morosely as she unwrapped him.

  “No spots of blood today,” she said as she crumpled the soiled bandage in her hands. He came awake and looked at her.

  “Yes,” he said, quietly. “Yes, yes — yes, yes!” “She looked at him curiously, and then wrote on her clipboard and left the room promptly, her white uniform hugging her hips so that he could see the outline of her slip.

  Tom kept looking about for someone to talk to. But then he never spoke to a soul. He waited vainly for another dream so he could tell Karrie and Vincent that he understood. But there would be no more dreams of them. He was transferred back to the prison, along the old back road on a sunless day. It was now December 18. Snow and dirt crowded the ditches, the air was sharp and metallic. He sat in the back seat, handcuffed and staring at the white ice of the strait, and the white formless houses that they passed.

  In the picture, in his dream, Karrie and Vincent were looking up at someone in mesmerized joy. And Vincent’s hands were glowing, resting on the cane stand. There were no spots of blood.

  PART FOUR

  ONE

  After Karrie’s funeral, things happened as always. As always, laughter and life returned.

  Everette Hutch still kept his bike in the back room of Gail Hutch’s shack, the crankshaft sitting in oil and lubricant, with white rags in the cylinder heads. He still took morphine for the burns he had suffered and the doctors were still frightened of him, and turned their backs when he rustled pills from their cabinets. He still wondered why things never worked out for him, still threatened people, still played cards, and his uncles still ran errands for him, the old aunt still laughing at them when they did.

  Dora Smith and her husband still slept in separate parts of the house, and each night, as always, she made her way over to the gas bar after supper to flirt with certain young men.

  The young men still came, even though it was not the same. Vincent was no longer there, as a comforting person to graciously tease, and Karrie was no longer there, as a young woman to look at and admire, though the pair of gloves that she liked to wear to church sat on the inside window sill near some old bottles of fly dope and mosquito repellent.

  The worry over where the money had gone, the feeling she had that the police were suspicious, the worry that Emmett wanted to confess because of remorse, aggravated the skin condition on her hands, and made Dora’s life miserable. And that was why Karrie’s gloves were on the inside window sill

  By November John Delano had forgotten about Laura McNair.

  But he had not given up on the case, which had too many unanswered questions. He was puzzled by the robbery. And he was puzzled by Michael Skid’s trip to Fredericton. No one else was. Yet one day when he had to drive over to the main office in Fredericton he decided to see Professor Becker. Constable Deborah Matchett thought it ridiculous and petty for Delano to keep at it, but he could not help himself, and so he met with the professor for over an hour.

  A few days later, John went downriver and walked the path. Some partridge hunters were in the field, and the air was warm. He could hear a little brook running, and the sky was blue. The trees trembled, their leaves gone red. He came to where Karrie Smith was murdered. He was a methodical, careful man. He understood houses like Karrie’s, and meanness over nothing at all.

  He stood, brushed his pants off, and walked towards the Smiths’ yellow house at midday, and remembered Karrie when she was in grade nine.

  Dora was standing in the gas bar in the mild yellow sunlight.

  She stood behind the counter waiting on two customers, and did not look his way. He wanted to ask her about the money and about what she had heard that night, so after the customers left he approached her.

  “Oh, there wasn’t much money,” she said as she took a breath. “I’d already said all that, my, my — “

  “Are you sure there wasn’t much money?” he said. “Perhaps there might have been some other money — I’ll confide in you, I think money was used to pay off a debt — I mean a lot of money — Would Karrie have any reason to have a lot of money on her — was she going away? I mean, if there was a lot of money it might just change the complexion of the case — Vincent was not really a thief, was he? I don’t care where the money came from. My concern is to help get Tom Donnerel out of jail”

  Dora smiled. There was a hesitation, as she looked towards the back of the store, where Emmett stood in a kind of acute resignation.

  “Get Tom Donnerel out of jail — get Tom Donnerel out of jail,” she said in an almost pleasurable, catatonic way “You know Judge Skid is a friend of mine. I’m up their place all the time — “

  So John left these questions unanswered. But he asked, “Did you hear anything?”

  She thought a long moment and then nodded.

  “Something — a door — I was tired, it was after midnight — I said ‘Karrie — get in this house.’ Yes — I do remember that.”

  He went out into the flat parking lot, looked at the penned-in tires, all of this vista having an uncrowded mild despair, and glanced up at the window over the porch. It was as if he could see Karrie leaning there one summer night.

  He glanced at the pumps, and walked over to them, looked back to see Emmett staring out the window. Then he turned and
walked sanguinely back down the path and to his car.

  Far across two fields and a fence, near the dry autumn inlet, the large old farmhouse that Michael had rented was boarded-up and empty. John sat in his car, with the door opened to a gentle autumn breeze, the scent of fall musk-like and sexual on the warm, fading yellow grass. The arm of the bay moved dark and full. He read over his notes, flipping through the pages as if angered by them.

  “Carried money next to skin, under panties — robbed gas bar — tin box, robbed for who — “

  He had written this line sometime during the day of September 10 when everyone was in a rush.

  Now, in red pencil, while the fall wind came up and gently buffeted the car, he wrote, “Someone in house — murderer? Two robberies — Karrie’s and ??? — “

  He then took a walk across the field and went onto the verandah of the old farmhouse. The wind had picked up. The porch was saddened by vacancy, the window ledges glutted with fallen leaves. He thought of all Karrie’s eager laughter frozen in time as he looked across the shore. He stood a minute and walked away, and as an afterthought turned and walked towards the barn.

  It was already the middle of the day. A shotgun sounded in the distance. It seemed to John that he was visiting ghosts in this autumn wind. He tried to open the barn door to go inside, and found that the door was blocked by the dinghy they had used to travel to and from The Renegade. He moved it as he came in and set it against the cord of yellow birch. The Renegade, its bow showing the beating of summer, was also housed here. John leaned against the woodpile and shone his flashlight at the sailboat.

  Now the barn door banged open and closed. He started to leave, and as he stood he heard something almost weightless drop from underneath the dinghy’s rear seat and land against his left shoe. He lit a cigarette and waited, five minutes, maybe longer, and then he reached down and picked it up. It was a small plastic bag.