For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down (2 page)

But then he realized, after a moment or two, that it was Jerry Bines.

Bines’ smile, however, seemed nothing but kind and even wonderful.

Ralphie was tall and thin, with delicate facial features, but he had deceived himself into thinking he was much taller, for when Bines walked up to him he was almost as tall, but far more powerful when he held Ralphie’s hand and pressed it in his own.

“I wonder if ya got one of these,” he said. And he hauled out a small sprocket for a bicycle.

Ralphie said he didn’t have one in his shop but he would look around, and for Bines to come back.

At first he didn’t think anything about this, but after Bines left Ralphie had the strangest sensation, just as the sun came in on the old yellow window plant, of a kind of euphoria that Bines would bother to ask him this favour.

He did not know initially why he had this feeling. But, of course, it all had to do with Bines being famous and wild.

That night he told Adele about meeting him. He spoke of the way he looked when he was inside the door.
And again he was pleased, as if he had been filled with a kind of grace, and this made him agitated.

“He’s my cousin,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“C-O-U-S-I-N.” She spelled it out. And then sniffed.

Ralphie was silent. It was Thanksgiving. Joe and Rita were both gone, and so too was Ralphie’s mother, Thelma. All had died within the space of six years. Though Ralphie was in his thirties, his hair was now turning whiter, his face was even thinner than it had been.

“Stay away from him, Ralphie-face – he’s bad news.”

“Oh, he just wants a sprocket,” Ralphie said. “What do you mean, your cousin?”

“We are cousins – me, Milly, he – cousins. He’s the bad side of the family – you’d do no good to broker pleasantries with him,” she said in the old-fashioned way.

Ralphie laughed. “I thought you were the bad side of the family,” he said.

“Not a little bit,” she glanced up at him quickly. “Joe tried to get him settled down for two years – took him to
AA
, helped find him a job – but all as it did was cost Joe his life. Who do you think set up the tractor-trailer?”

“Oh – I don’t believe that,” Ralphie said, suddenly angrier than he should be for some reason, and reflecting on how kind Bines seemed to be to him.

“I have no use for him, Ralphie,” she said.

“Well, either do I,” Ralphie said, annoyed. And decided not to mention Bines again.

He actually did find a sprocket in his box of spare parts. And Bines did come back the next afternoon.

“How much?” Jerry asked.

“Oh, nothing,” Ralphie said, “I’d never use it, never miss it – go ahead.”

“Well, I’ll do you a favour then some day,” Bines said. “Do you a favour.”

The little boy had come to Adele and asked her to tie his shoe, and stood there weaving as small boys do.

He was her cousin from upriver and his mother was sick. They had brought her to the hospital the day before because she wouldn’t stop bleeding, and now he was getting ready to go to visit her.

His father was Digger Bines, and he had already made a fuss at the hospital and had hit the priest.

Adele, who was seven, did not tell him this. But the boy still sensed that things were not right and he kept staring at his Aunt Rita as if to get her to explain something. It was as if this was his first glimpse of the darker world, and he was perplexed.

His name was Jerry Bines, and that was Adele’s first memory of him, tying his shoe in the May sunshine, and Jerry standing above her talking about worms and fishing and red spinners.

He had talked nonstop about visiting his mother, and he had bolt-black, almost contagiously brave eyes that could stare at you for an hour without so much as a
blink. And he would not stand still when they fussed with his suit, which seemed to be a patchwork job of two or three suits, and a pair of brown shoes, second or third hand, which were two sizes too large, so Rita had stuffed newspaper in the toes. He ran upstairs to get the new pin for his lapel.

Jerry wanted to tell everyone that Adele was his girlfriend, but he said he would only tell his mother.

Adele remembered something else. Digger bought Jerry a huge family-pack size of potato chips that morning and he carried them wherever he went, offering them to everyone as if he was the richest boy in the world. Also, he was very excited because he was going to take a taxi.

He placed the chip bag carefully on top of his suitcase when he ran to get into the taxi to go and visit his mom, and stuck his feet out the window one at a time. “New shoes,” he said seriously to passersby, being driven with his half-mad father up the lane, “new shoes.”

People turned on the sidewalk to watch and Jerry fell back against the seat, while everything in the world was in bloom.

When his mother died the next afternoon, Adele sat at the table with him, and, putting her arm around him said, “I’m your forever girlfriend.” And she smiled.

All of this had been forgotten and swept away, down a thousand other avenues and years, until now.

Bines was already famous. People had heard a great deal about him. So it was not an unusual request that Ralphie’s sister Vera had to meet him and to write his story. She had gone to Adele for her help. Vera now worked for the department of social services, specializing in child welfare. She had divorced her husband Nevin for mental and emotional cruelty, and spoke calmly about this, and about her refusal to let Nevin see their child, Hadley.

It wasn’t that his story interested her so much. But he fitted a pattern that she had concerned herself about over the last four or five years. And she had convinced herself that she could expose this pattern better than anyone else, show his kind of male violence, show the
broader scope of such violence and how it “impacted” on children and women. “Impacted” being the new word of choice for her at this moment.

He was going to be one of the many people she would write about, but she felt that he would be at the centre of a long history of “maleness” and “patriarchy,” which is how she described it, to her friends and devotees.

She felt that she too would become famous with this book, at least in a small way amongst a certain group.

Vera was now in her forties. Her hair was short. She was too tall for her weight. She had done some freelance work for magazines and she had travelled.

And it seemed to her at the moment that Jerry Bines was the personification of her concern. And she felt this because he had become famous. She went to see Adele after Thanksgiving.

“Why do you come to me for this?” Adele said.

“Well, first of all he’s your cousin.”

“That doesn’t matter – I don’t like him.”

“Well, like doesn’t matter. No one says we should like him. In fact it’s probably preferable not to like him.”

Adele thought this over for a second.
Why did I ever get mixed up with the Pillar family – it’s just a family-pack of loons
.

Adele did not like this idea. It seemed to her to be like every other idea Vera had. And on the other side there was something cheating about not liking him if you were going to use him.

“If you don’t like him, why would you bother to want to do a book on him?” Adele said.

“Would he let me do a book on him?” Vera said.

“Why would he want you to write anything about him if you don’t like him – and why would you want to?”

But again Vera said that like or not like did not matter. She would be fair and objective, and that was more important.

Like or not like meant very much to Adele, however. Nothing else ever mattered more. And there were a good deal of things she would not tell anyone about Jerry. She gave a sigh.

That Vera would come to Adele, whom she never had liked, made her suddenly seem vulnerable, however. And this is what made Adele feel sorry for her. A book to Adele was nothing. There were too many of them around anyway – just heaps of them – and now Vera wanted to write one. Just as Adele had predicted she would.

“Are you scared of him?” Vera said. She had her tape-recorder going and Adele glanced at it suspiciously.

“Am I being interviewed or something like that?” Adele said.

“No, no – this won’t be used.”

“I’d be a fool not to be scared of him,” Adele said, “and so would anyone else – but we both have something in common.”

“Oh, what’s that?” Vera said.

“We’re both exceptionally good haters – and neither of us has ever forgotten a kindness or an insult.”

“My,” Vera said. “Dear, dear, dear.”

Adele shifted her gaze and looked about.

“What I’m saying is – if you use him, use him right.” But again she was angry. She herself did not want to use Bines rightly or wrongly. She knew too many things that she couldn’t say.

“Will I be frightened of him?” Vera said.

“Only if he wants you to be,” Adele said. Then she sighed.

“He’s the kind of man who if he can’t beat you with his fist would get a brick.”

“Well, this is just what I’m after,” Vera said delightedly. And her severe brushed hair seemed suddenly to testify to this.

“He’s been in prison four times, he’s been involved,” Adele said. “And he has people who would kill him like that.” She snapped her fingers. “If they weren’t scared to death to.”

“That’s just what I want,” Vera said again. “I want all of that.”

Of all the lost and hopeless why did her cousin become famous. And why was this happening? Ralphie and she were finally content. They had given up their only child, a daughter, which was the worst thing they had ever done. But nothing could be done about it now. They had talked themselves into it and regretted it instantly and forever.

They had their own home and their own lives. And though Adele could not have another child they had resigned themselves to it.

“So when can I see him?” Vera said.

The meeting was arranged for two nights later.

All day long Adele sat in the huge wicker chair in the back room staring out of the huge old windows at her trampled little garden, which had grown nothing but a few radishes and some brown tomatoes. It seemed a mistake to get mixed up in things best forgotten and so ultimately dangerous.

By 5:00 the dusk came and made her go back into the kitchen.

“Don’t they know what they are getting themselves in for?” Adele said, lighting a cigarette – her first in three weeks – and feeling abysmal because she had lighted it.

Of course she knew all about Bines and they did not, and she could not tell them – because her family had refused to speak about him, and so she had refused too. But still there was another reason. Once Bines came into the room he could command them to like him. He had always been able to, and she was frightened of this. It was not a sexual attraction, more a kind of devotion. And it was this devotion she had already seen in Ralphie, who knew nothing about him.

At 7:00 Vera arrived.

“Is he here yet?” Vera said.

“No – perhaps he won’t come –”

The three of them sat in the small parlour off the living room.

Every now and again Ralphie would stretch his long legs out and then bring them back, smile, and then bend forward, as if trying his best to find something to do.

At quarter to eight the small clock in the hallway gonged, and Vera stood and walked into the living room.

“He won’t be here,” Adele said.

She watched Vera pace back and forth for a minute, and then come in through the dark hallway to the parlour again.

“Well, maybe he’s frightened to come,” Vera said.

“No – he’s right behind you,” Adele answered.

Vera turned her head, gave a startled jump, and moved more quickly along the hall.

“Give ya a start – a start, did I?” Bines said.

His voice was extremely soft, almost indescribably so, yet it had an unusual expansive quality to it. And it had with it, in its intonation, a completely uncomplicated River accent.

The first thing that was apparent to them was that Bines was reluctant to go anywhere now. He came late and said he only had a moment.

When he walked in, the house was almost dark, yet a
soft light glowed from the lamp in the room and Vera had set up her tape-recorder. As he came from the darkness into the light Adele remembered that she had not really seen him in a long while.

He looked so much like her cousins from that other side of the family – the darker side, which Joe and Rita had always tried to protect the children from. He looked, for instance, like their cousin Packet Terri – except he was slighter. Adele felt strange that he was in her house, because she immediately felt that she must do something for him. And this was exactly the kind of devotion that he inspired.

Jerry shook Vera’s hand like a man who was so unused to this common civility that it embarrassed him, and then he smiled.

“Ralphie’s sister – right,” he said.

He said this not to make sure that he had gotten the relationship right but to show that he would treat her with the respect that Ralphie’s sister accorded.

And then he sat down on the small couch directly across from Adele. Adele tried everything not to look towards him but it was impossible.

“Hello, Delly,” he said quietly, after watching her for a moment.

When she looked up at him he winked. In a way this was done to bring her closer to him, in an instant.

“Sorry to hear about Joe,” he said softly. “Joe – always liked Joe – always liked Joe. He come to jail all the time – all the time when I was there. Try to straighten us
around. I didn’t know his heart was bad – bad there – like your mom’s too.”

Adele only nodded at this, and then gave a sigh as if she was about to say something but thought better of it.

Vera then explained the nature of her request. It would be done only if he wanted to, and in the way he wanted it done.

“Write an article on me – why would no one want to do that?” he said.

He spoke with his head slightly slanted to the right.

“Oh, but you’re just the person I want to do it on,” Vera said. “Everyone’s heard so much about you.”

“About me – ya – about me,” he said. He glanced at Ralphie as if he were wondering about something, perhaps wondering who was telling things about him, and then he shrugged.

There was a long silence as he looked at them. All of them felt uncomfortable, and even frightened. But to him it was just a casual stare.

“Get Jerry a beer,” Adele said to Ralphie.

Jerry glanced sideways at Ralphie a second and then looked away, as if he were puzzled.

“Article – ya – don’t matter none to me.”

“It will only take a week or so – maybe two,” Vera said. “And then, after the transcript is done, you can read it.”

“Then it better not have any big words on it – cause I don’t read so good,” Jerry said softly, and he smiled.

But when she went to turn on the recorder, he said, “No – not now – some other place – other place – I’ll go to your place.”

“When,” Vera said, disappointed.

“Oh, I’ll go over in a week or two – week or two,” he said.

“I’ll give you my address then, and phone,” Vera said.

“No, no – I know where you live,” he said.

Then he told them he couldn’t stay. That his young lad was back in the hospital for his blood test and he wanted to go over.

“You have a child,” Vera said, “that’s right.”

“Little boy is sick – little boy who’s sick,” Jerry said. “What’s he got –?”

Adele looked at him a moment, startled. It was not that he did not know – it was that he was struggling with the word.

“Leukemia,” Adele said, kindly.

“Ya – got that,” Jerry said. “Lots of children got that – I guess – nowadays.” And then he said, as if he had calculated an advantage by saying it, “It’s what they put in our water now on the river – right, Ralphie?”

Ralphie, known as a conservationist, blushed, for some reason, and nodded, and Jerry nodded too.

Then he stood, said goodbye, and seemed to move away as silently as he had come.

“So that’s Mr. Jerry Bines,” Vera said, as a person does when someone is brought for their benefit to study.

“That’s him,” Adele said.

And she picked up another cigarette and lit it, and puffed out her cheeks.

In so many ways Bines was familiar to her. The problem was, as she told Ralphie that night, that once he thought you liked him he would like you – in fact he would die for you in a second, but then you could never not like him.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Ralphie said. “I’ll never see him again – I don’t even know if he’ll go to see Vera. I know one thing: he’s not worth worrying about.”

Adele said nothing more. She sat on the side of the bed, scratching at her feet. The moon was pale over the old trampled garden, and below them on the street some rocks shone yellow in the night. It was fall and the house smelled of dry paint. It was a house they had moved into two years before.

After Ralphie turned off the lights everything in the house was still, except the
tick-tock
of the clock downstairs in the hall.

It was as if nothing had ever happened to disrupt their lives.

“I feel sorry for his little boy,” Ralphie said, whispering in the dark.

“Do you ever see Nevin any more, Ralphie-face?”

“Not since I had to throw him out of my shop for whining about Vera,” Ralphie said, almost asleep. “Anyway, I’ll go over tomorrow and see him again.”

“Vera won’t try to use Bines, will she? I mean not for her own sake.”

“No, no –”

“Because he won’t like it if she does. He’ll give her all the benefit of the doubt, but if she tricks him –”

There was a pause, and Adele turned to face him. He could see in the light from the street her small nose covered in cream.

“I don’t like this,” she said.

“Why not?”

She paused and then sighed, and her voice was cold when she spoke.

“Something is going on – it’s time on this river for something to happen once again.”

Jerry actually went to Vera’s house four nights later. When he came in she was aware of how uncomfortable she was with him at first.

But he didn’t seem to notice this. He smiled at Hadley, her little girl.