The Prisoner and the Chaplain

by Michelle Berry

  The thing is, I’m not sure now if Larry was trying to play me in those last twelve hours. Is it possible he did that? To a chaplain? A man of God? Would he play with my emotions, my faith, that way? Did he manipulate his story slightly to make me believe that Jack committed the murder? But when I came to this conclusion, Larry rejected it. And how dare I think this way, doubt a man taking his last few breaths. Imagining that he spent twelve hours fooling me. Is this what I have become? An unbeliever? Not only in God but in human nature?

  I don’t know what to think anymore. I am often confused. Lack of sleep contributes to this. The dreaming contributes to this.

  As I walk down the hallway and down the stairs to the door on the street, I know that I shouldn’t care anymore. What’s the point? Who cares who committed the murders? Three people were murdered. Four, actually.

  I walk in the melted snow towards the Fresh Market Store. Wave at Mr. Lee. Keep my head down against the wind that has picked up.

  Who cares? I keep beat with my feet, walking on towards the Fresh Market Store. Who cares?

  I see Larry’s eyes before the hood is placed over his head. White with fear. Round and open. Seeing the world for the last time. Focused on the observation room, on the people watching. I see Larry’s eyes as they move towards Jack’s eyes, as they take him in and then move away from him. Those eyes.

  Who cares?

  Those eyes find another target, as if searching for someone to save him. He is peering into the observation room and I am watching him, stuck there beside him, not able to move or breathe, just watching, terrified.

  Who cares?

  I enter the Fresh Market Store.

  “Hey-oh, Jim-boy.” Mark smacks me on the back as he passes by carrying a box of bananas. “We got a new shipment of poinsettias today,” he says. “Put them on the cart near the front, could you? When you punch in.”

  Who cares? I tread lightly through the fluorescent store towards the employee doors to the back. I take note of the Christmas music and I think about those two boys and what they would have got for Christmas. Their mom probably would have bought them new scooters or a sled. Or Larry would have, if things had been different – I can somehow see him buying them scooters. Or their father, he would have bought them something. That’s something a father would do.

  And then I stop walking. It hits me in the spaghetti sauce aisle. Blood red jars all around me. Mark waves to me from the front of the store. Points at the cart full of red flowers. The Christmas music is pumped in loud and “Jingle Bells” pierces my ears. Flashing lights above the egg and milk fridge.

  Their father. The boys’ father.

  Who cares?

  Surely, he did.

  Larry’s eyes when they found that man in the observation room. And suddenly, the something that I felt was missing is now making sense. In a foggy sort of way. Larry’s eyes. The one thing I was doing was watching him closely. Watching Larry’s eyes. In them, a quick dawning. As if the blinds were lifted. A realization. A rapid confusion mixed with anger. That weird “aha” look, as if finally the Prisoner got it. Finally he understood something he hadn’t understood before.

  That man he was looking at. That was the father. Mona’s ex-husband. The one who screamed at her on the phone. The one who made her so angry she bit and scratched and bruised Larry when they made love. He came to the execution. And Larry saw him.

  I turn on my heels and begin to walk down the aisle towards the front door. Out past the cart Mark has placed for the poinsettias, out past Mark, who is standing there saying, “What the heck? Where are you going? Jim, where are you going? Your shift just started.”

  It is dark at the Storage Mart. The snow has stopped. The wind is still. The only lights are the ones in the corners of each aisle, shining dimly down on the hard, frozen ground in small patches. There is a light in the office. A young guy sitting behind the counter. His feet up. I can see him through the window. I walk towards the office and he looks up and waves. Not at all suspicious about some guy peering in on a cold winter’s night.

  The office is warm. There is a space heater in the corner. The desk clerk is watching the screen but smiles nicely at me when he looks up. He brings his feet down from the counter and sits up.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I’m looking for Darren Purcell.” Darren Purcell, Mona’s ex-husband. I read that he now owns the Storage Mart.

  “He usually leaves at five p.m.,” the clerk says. “But he might be out in his unit.”

  “His unit?”

  “Unit twelve. Next aisle over. He hangs out there at night before going home. Do you want me to get him on the walkietalkie?” The clerk indicates a charging walkie-talkie on a desk in the corner of the room.

  “No, that’s okay. I’ll just head over to him. You said unit twelve?”

  “He doesn’t like to be disturbed. He won’t open the door for you. You’re better to come back tomorrow. He says it’s his quiet space. He fired the last guy for knocking on the door.”

  “Well, I’ll see.”

  “Suit yourself,” the clerk says. He puts his feet back up on the counter and returns to watching the screen. “He gets really mad if you bother him. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Temper and all.” The clerk crosses his arms and shrugs. “Bit of an asshole, actually, but don’t tell him I said that. Goes into unit twelve for hours sometimes. And I have to stay until he closes up. Idiot.”

  I trace my path back to Larry’s old storage unit, the murder scene, and stand in front for a minute, looking around. I can see my breath in the air.

  I suddenly hear something. A crying sound. Coming from one aisle over.

  And there it is. He was here all along.

  Sat there, in his storage unit, biding his time. Waiting.

  Both men, Larry and Darren, ended up practically living in storage units. Or at least hung out in them. Passed time. Small boxes.

  Mona and Darren. Not Jack. Unit twelve. Darren. Mona’s ex-husband. Larry said he only came at night. When Mona had left for the day. He knew about Larry and Mona – he must have. The twins would have mentioned their mother’s new boyfriend to him. They were everywhere, always present, playing up and down the aisles. They knew what was going on. I walk quietly down the aisle and turn into the next one. I tiptoe towards the sounds. A quiet sound, choking, sniffing. Mona must not have known he had rented this unit, the guy at the desk back then must have filled in the forms. Nighttime only, Larry said, to mourn the loss of his wife, his sons. And then staying on to really mourn their loss. A loss he caused.

  Because suddenly I know that the worst thing you can do to a mother is to kill her children. After all, they were stabbed first. The final piece of the puzzle is why he didn’t take any of the money. Why Darren didn’t just scoop up some of the leftover coffee cans as Larry was off loading his car and take off into the night. Larry’s brother, Jack, would have. Of course. But for Darren, it wasn’t about money; it wasn’t a robbery, it was a crime of passion.

  Of course, this is why the children came in behind him. Their father. They would leave the car and come towards their father. Not Jack. They wouldn’t come towards Jack. They didn’t know him. Or Larry. They had been warned not to talk to him. And the files said the children weren’t forced into the storage unit, they came in on their own.

  I pause in front of the closed door. I am shaking. Inside is a man who potentially took a knife to his own sons, his ex-wife. A man who did not flinch when Larry was about to be executed. A man who, in fact, left the room just before they pulled the switch – couldn’t bother to stay for the killing. As if seeing the end result didn’t even matter. As if nothing mattered.

  Did Larry realize, at the last minute, in that look he had in his eyes, that he wasn’t the guilty party, or even that his brother wasn’t the guilty party? Did he know it just before he was killed? Maybe, but I’ll never know for sure.

  The crying stops. A nose is blown. Loudly.

  I turn to leave
. Terrified suddenly.

  But then I turn back. If Larry was innocent, I have to know. If only to rid myself of the recurring dream, the gull with the arrow through it. If only to sleep.

  The door begins to roll open. Slowly. Sliding upwards, winding in upon itself. I see heavy work boots first, and jeans. Knees. I back into the shadows. But there he is, Darren Purcell, looking out into the dark, blinking to adjust his eyes to it. The man is large, heavy in his stomach and thighs, a double chin. A day’s growth of beard on his face. Beady eyes. His skin is sickly white, as if he spends too much time indoors. His hair is thinning.

  I am there in the dark and he sees me. It is obvious from his expression that he recognizes me, and it is doubly obvious he knows from where exactly. The execution. Darren doesn’t move. I don’t move. We study each other. Time seems to stretch. And then, slowly, Darren nods at me. He is acknowledging the last ten years. He knows that I know. He knows he has been caught. And then he nods at me and walks out of unit twelve, limping. He leaves the door open and walks towards his car, parked down the aisle towards the front office. He gets in. I am frozen. Stunned. I can’t seem to move. And then I come to life.

  “Hey.”

  But Darren doesn’t turn back. Instead, he shuts the car door behind him, starts the engine and backs out of his spot. Not once does he look back at me.

  I run towards the car. I run furiously towards Darren, pound on the window, but Darren only looks forward, out into the night, and drives away.

  “Hey,” I shout. “Hey.”

  The clerk comes out of the office.

  “I told you he didn’t like to be bothered, didn’t I? Hey, he left his door open. He never leaves his door open.” The clerk comes down the stairs and begins to walk towards unit twelve. I follow. The clerk has slipped his feet into his large boots and the tongues are out, the laces untied. He trips his way towards the storage unit. I glance down the aisle towards Larry’s storage unit.

  “Holy shit.” The clerk stands there, staring into the lighted room. “What the hell?”

  He is just a kid, I think. He knows nothing.

  “I mean, that’s really weird, you know,” the clerk says. “Considering what happened to his family . . .”

  We stare into the room. All of the walls are covered with photographs and newspaper clippings. Pictures of Mona. Of the boys. Of Darren with the boys. Pictures of Larry and Mona. Together. Talking. Laughing. Mona slipping into Larry’s storage unit. The boys sliding on cardboard in the snow, on scooters between the aisles. Baby photographs. Wedding photos. Newspaper articles that scream Appeal Denied, Bank Thief and Murderer to be Executed, The Countdown Is On.

  In one corner of the room, there is a chair. A side table. A lamp on the table. Turned off and dark. There is a coffee cup on the desk, steam rising out of it. The chair is facing the picture wall, as if Darren were watching a screen.

  The scenario brings to mind the prison cell I sat in with Larry for twelve hours.

  “Fuck,” the clerk says.

  On the table beside the chair is a knife. A large wooden handle, a thick blade. The knife.

  “Gives me the creeps,” the clerk says. “I thought he did the bills out here, you know. Because he didn’t want to be in her office. Too many memories or something.” The clerk shivers.

  “I don’t think he was doing paperwork,” I say.

  Darren was crying long before he killed his family. Larry had heard the crying for a while. And he continued to cry after he killed them.

  “Serious business,” the clerk says, releasing his breath. The clerk knows something is not right. “I guess I should call the cops.”

  Veritas

  The irony of all of this is not lost on me. I am sitting in a chair on the deck, a drink in hand. Miranda’s kids are splashing about in the river with friends. Richard is refilling everyone’s drinks and is carrying a tray of empty glasses into the cabin. Here it is, then, my old, recurring dream come to life around me. Miranda’s friend Beatrice has invited me to join Miranda’s family for the weekend at her cabin. Everything has that déjà vu feeling, a hazy kind of weirdness that makes me wonder if I’m awake or asleep. Especially after the two beers and the heat of the sun.

  And of course, I can hear a seagull. I pinch myself. I am not asleep.

  I see Miranda, her mouth open in laughter, talking to Beatrice, both mothers watching all the children who are playing around the water. I hear the gull coming. Solitary. Over the trees. And then down towards us.

  I haven’t had that dream since the new year. I haven’t heard the sound of a crying gull coming at me for quite a while. I slept well on my travels – to Europe and Asia and then India. Six months I was gone, backpack on, wandering the world. Trying to figure it all out. Trying to understand how my faith could be so easily found and then lost, could be strong and then weak. I dropped, exhausted, into hostel beds at night. Was energetic during the days. Taking it all in. Even slept on trains, buses, rickshaws, planes, boats. And not once did I hear the seagull in my dreams.

  “Look,” my niece, Daisy, says. She is standing on a rock in the river, her small body tan and lean and wet. She points towards the seagull.

  I do not want to look. I want to look away. But I force myself to look at the seagull.

  “It’s like your dream, Jim. Remember your dream?” Miranda turns to her friend, laughing. “He used to have this dream about this seagull with an arrow through it.”

  The women talk. The kids shout and splash and slip. The river current is strong. The sun is hot. Richard comes out from the cabin.

  And the gull flies past us all. Solitary. Crying. Calling. With no arrow through its body. Just a single flying bird.

  Then suddenly, beyond that single seagull, the sky is full of gulls, crying wildly, flapping madly and making such noise. Their wings beat hard and I swear I can feel the breeze they create. They are flying low above us, a huge flock of them.

  Acknowledgements

  My book wouldn’t exist without the guidance and support of some very special people: my extraordinary editor, Paul Vermeersch; my initial readers, Edward Berry and Allie Vandersanden; my legal-minded brother, David Berry; Noelle Allen and Ashley Hisson at Wolsak & Wynn; and my agent, Chris Bucci. Thanks to Emily Dockrill Jones for the thorough copy-editing. Thank you to the Ontario Arts Council for the much-appreciated bolt of confidence, a Works in Progress grant. Giant gratitude goes out to my mom, my dad, Stu, Abby and Zoe, who always have my back and know exactly when to put me in my place. Finally, special thanks to the greeter-galore, the one who is so happy he almost dies as he wiggles and groans around the house when I come home, my border collie/basset hound, Buddy. He deserves his name in a book for once.

  Notes

  The quote that begins “O loving and kind God” comes from Psalm 51:1–12, The Living Bible (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1971).

  The quote that begins “When my time has come” comes from the Tibetan Nyingma Master Longchenpa Rabjampa in the fourteenth century. Quoted in Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, Repeating the Words of the Buddha, 2nd ed., trans. Erik Pema Kunsang (Hong Kong: Rangjung Yeshe Publications, 2006), 145. See www.a-good-dying.com/tibetan-prayers.html for more information.

  The quote that begins “Now I say to you in conclusion” comes from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s September, 18, 1963, “Eulogy for the Martyred Children.” It has been reproduced on the website Martin Luther King, Jr. And the Global Freedom Struggle: http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_eulogy_for_the_martyred_children/index.html.

  The quote that begins “I am of the nature to grow old” comes from Buddha’s Five Remembrances. See http://www.worldprayers.org/archive/prayers/meditations/i_am_of_the_nature.html.

  The quote that begins “God of all Creation” I found on the Benedictine Health System website. See Prayers for the Dying: Non-Christian, http://www.bhshealth.org/prayers/140707021014698.

  The quote that beings “He maketh me” comes from
Ezekiel 34:11–24 and John 10:1–21, King James Version. See biblehub.com/kjv/psalms/23.htm.

  The quote that begins “The prisoner’s eyeballs” comes from W. Ecenbarger, “Perfecting Death: When the state kills it must do so humanely. Is that possible?,” Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine, January 23, 1994, as quoted in “Descriptions of Execution Methods,” Death Penalty Information Center, http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/descriptions-execution-methods.

  Michelle Berry is the author of three books of short stories and five previous novels. Her short story collection I Still Don’t Even Know You won the 2011 Mary Scorer Award for Best Book Published by a Manitoba Publisher and was shortlisted for a 2011 ReLit Award, and her novel This Book Will Not Save Your Life won the 2010 Colophon Award and was longlisted for the 2011 ReLit Award. Her writing has been optioned for film and published in the UK.

  Berry was a reviewer for Globe and Mail for many years, and teaches online for the University of Toronto and is often a mentor at Humber College. Berry now lives in Peterborough, ON, where she operates an independent bookstore, Hunter Street Books. Please visit www.hunterstreetbooks.com.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, places and events portrayed are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  © Michelle Berry, 2017

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright license, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.