The Bay of Love and Sorrows (12 page)

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.

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”

“What money?” Everette said, sitting up. He walked out of the gloom and into the main room in his underwear. It was the first time Michael had seen his muscular body, covered with ink tattoos. “There’s no money here,” Everette said. He was angry that Michael had woken him up. “How can you expect us to make a deal if you keep grabbing at our funds?”

“What deal?” Michael smiled.

Everette looked into a drawer and began shaking some seeds back and forth, looking for enough grass to roll a joint. The sun came partially into the shack and the flies soundlessly moved at chest level in and out of the sun.

“The deal I told you we were making —” Everette said.

Later, when Michael went back to the farm, Madonna and Silver listened to him, staring out at the dull, sunbaked shoreline.

“He says we have a deal of some kind — which is part of our investment. Do you two know about it?”

They both looked at him and shook their heads.

“He mentioned a deal — once or twice —” Silver said. “I mean about earning twenty thousand. I don’t know.”

“Well, Jesus Christ, I just lost three hundred dollars,” Michael added.

And again the three of them looked at each other.

“Tom always said —” Madonna began.

Michael raised his hand. “Come on,” he said. “We'll leave Tom out of it”

They had pooled their resources and their capital at the end of May. That was the main reason Michael did not take the job his father had secured for him for the summer. Everette had spoken of this collective as a way to ensure everyone had a good time, and to ensure that Michael was able to stay downriver, instead of going back to town.

They had, until this moment, believed that it was working wonderfully well. But the real problem was that neither Silver, who waited for Michael’s instructions, nor Michael himself wanted to blame Everette for doubledealing them.

“This is what we have to do,” Michael said to Madonna and Silver. “We just have to talk to him — calculate what he has taken if it’s not in our best interest we’ll break it off.”

“Breaking it off- now — would be good,” Silver said, his forehead reddened by the band of his old leather hat, and by the sun beating down upon him.

The bells of the church pealed for Sunday Mass, and they could hear cars driving down the church lane and parking. The sound of children, the slamming of car doors, all sounded depressing.

At this moment on this particular Sunday the idea of his article seemed depressing too. One man from Sackville kept saying, “Michael — if this comes out — if this comes out — talk to Terry about that incident — that was his fault — you talk to him.”

This was a boy, who was now a lawyer, whom Michael had secretly detested. It was strange, but Michael felt sorry for him now.

Now, turning to Madonna, he asked: “What do you think Everette has up his sleeve?”

“A way to earn money.”

“By doing what?”

“By selling drugs — but sooner or later hell want us to sell them for him “

Michael looked at her. He squinted slightly. He immediately envisioned two scenarios. Everything would be fine and they would get away from Everette as soon as possible, or they would get caught and end up fined or jailed. But there was of course a third possibility that enticed him — and this was that they would actually make a lot of money — and that Everette
was
doing all of this for them.

They decided to talk to Everette that night. They drove over in Silver’s old Pontiac.

Everette was very used to inquisitions. And he claimed that all the money was safe and hidden and, in fact, he could have charged them for the lobster that they had eaten one night the month before.

Then he offered advice. He crouched on his haunches, drawing some numbers in the sand with a stick he had picked up at the side of the woods.

As he drew these numbers, in tens and twenties, he spoke.

“We have about three thousand now — but I need another thousand. Then we can get fifteen thousand in uncapped mescaline for four thousand dollars “

He said that they should all keep tabs on how much each one earned or spent. But they should start earning some money, because he could not do it all by himself. It was as if he had taken over a part of their lives they had not willingly cast his way. And this was done as naturally as all other things that he did, so that
not
to go along with his scheme, of getting mescaline from certain people he knew, and selling it on the Island in a month, would display deep ingratitude.

“It’ll be the biggest deal I ever worked on,” he said, smiling at them.

To Michael it didn’t seem possible that he had not heard of this deal before, but, so as not to embarrass himself or Everette, he kept pretending he had. And he felt at that moment that this was exactly what Everette was relying on, that is, Michael and Silver’s omission to ask the pertinent questions, or demanding
out
of a deal that had not been fully explained to them.

In the evening air was one other notion — and this notion, as the three of them stood side by side, was this; they themselves realized they were weak, and had no qualities that would allow them to escape, or stand up for themselves.

As Everette spoke, Michael could only look at the knots on the old birch stick in Everette’s hand.

Michael sat in the shack later that Sunday night, looking at the vicious stingers outside the window and wondering how all of this had happened.

“This’ll get me outta my scrape with Daryll,” Everette said. “That’s the first thing we got to worry about.”

Yet no one knew why they themselves should be worried about this.

They then went back to the farm and sat in silence.

Madonna wanted to ask Tom’s help in getting their money back, but Michael could not bring himself to.

“It is an awful good deal — if he can get fifteen-thousand-dollars’ worth of uncapped mescaline for four thousand — it’s a big profit for us all,” Silver suddenly said. “I don’t think we should worry — he’s a good guy.”

Being called a good guy in Everette’s world always came when someone had just done something dishonest.

By the end of June, Michael was worried whenever he went to his parents’ home lest Everette come visit him there.

He remembered how casually mistrustful Everette’s smile was every time he looked at anyone.

He also felt obligated to Madonna and Silver, who had already put their savings into Everette Hutch’s hands. They had put in about twelve to fourteen hundred dollars. And now they waited with innocent faces for Michael to tell them what to do.

One day after a party, Michael went over to pay Everette for a certain amount of marijuana.

“What about the other fifty?” said Everette.

“What fifty?”

“The other fifty — the interest for the pool — it’s for all of us. I told you the other night — Daryll is patient but his patience will wear out — and how will I explain to him that you are welshing on us — “

“Do I owe another fifty?”

“Gail — what does he owe?”

Gail looked abashed and tried to speak, but Everette cut her off.

Everette smiled and rubbed Michael’s head playfully, as if he were trying to keep Michael in line, implying that he had caught Michael just then trying to take advantage of them.

“Oh oh oh oh oh — I’d better not tell Silver this, or he’d be some disappointed in you,” Everette said. “You know he doesn’t have that much. And he worked for a week hauling traps for the little money he got,” he added in a pious whisper.

The idea that Michael would ever be thought of as duplicitous in anything was infuriating to him, especially at the tail end of that false and pious whisper. But his fury was only spent in Everette mockingly pointing a finger at him.

“Come on,” he said, smiling a sugary smile. “Admit it — I caught you!“

And Michael could not help but smile at this falseness, a smile which made the accusation seem true.

“Ahh-ha — you see that?” Everette said, pointing the smile out to Gail

Michael then went back to Brassaurds’ and told Silver that if Everette ever said that he, Michael, had cheated them, they should not believe him.

But this made Silver suspicious. He sat on the grass, looked here and there, and spat.

“Where is the pickle jar?” Silver kept saying, pulling grass up with his hand. “Where is that pickle jar? I’d love to have a look at it. I put my money in it, and it’s been a month and there is not a cent. We have to buy groceries — what in Christ are we doing mixed up in this? What are you and Everette doing?“

Both he and Madonna felt betrayed. Michael did also, but now they both suddenly suspected him.

Still, Everette said the one deal that would allow them to recoup all of this money, and more, would come through. That he and his cousin Daryll Hutch could be trusted with this.

By the early summer, this deal was constant in Everette’s conversation. And he spoke about it as if
they
were the principle investors, so that almost every cent Michael got from home, he gave over to his friend, because now he had committed himself.

One night he was at his parents’ house. His mother left fifty dollars — two twenties and a ten — on the ironing board, and Michael, going out the door, picked it up. And, instead of keeping it for himself, he went down to Everette, thinking:
I’ll give him this, and prove it

He had no idea what he was trying to prove at that moment. There were two other men with Everette that night. One was Daryll Hutch, the other a biker from somewhere in Quebec. Michael tried to be nonchalant and brave. Now it seemed imperative that he show them who he really was.