The Bay of Love and Sorrows (30 page)

Madonna left the house shortly after, and made her way towards the farm.

By now, 5:40 on his watch, Michael saw himself as another person. Simple and filled with vanity. He couldn’t even protect his fiancée from Everette Hutch. And the one who might know this was a man he once thought he despised, John Delano,

He didn’t mind that John had been in love with Laura for that brief moment. It seemed that, in a small town, things could happen like that, so you could keep in contact with someone you once loved for years. It was that twice he had met Delano, and both times the man had exercised a simple moral pre-eminence over him. And Michael was twisting about trying to change their position. Now he would not be able to.

He came up to the verandah and hurried along to the door, thinking only of the tape, and frightened about what it contained and wondering how to get it back before it fell into John Delano’s hands.

Well this time next year it will all be over,
he thought.

As he opened the door he saw Madonna. She was sitting in the chair in the corner and startled him with how she looked.

She was wearing a heavy coat over a pair of pants. A black purse was slung on a long strap over her shoulder and a plastic bag was resting on the floor beside her, as the wind blew outside and seemed to move the wall

The air was bone-dry, the sky cold, and night was upon her. She sat in dusky solitary at the far end of the main room, near those chimes of sailboats Karrie had bought the previous July

Her face looked drawn, though as beautiful as always.

She lit a cigarette and looked out the window, so he could see her face in relief and desire the fullness of her mouth.

“You have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen,” he said.

The wonder of Madonna’s eyes was that they were two different colours — one was slightly blue the other slightly green. It was like looking into a kaleidoscope. When she stared at anyone she startled them with her mystery. They held in them, those eyes, sunlight and a mirror of a glazed highway. Her voice echoed with them, and her body seemed translucent as rolling summer waves.

She answered him as the Brassaurds always did, quick and without posture.

“I don’t know what I’ll ever do if anyone ever says that to me again,” she said. “My eyes have been my curse — been my curse more than my cunt. I have drownded men in my eyes — like that poor businessman from Neguac — and have gone to the Virgin to pray Yet the same things happen. Everette Hutch is now in love with these eyes, and it is remarkable to me how I even met him —” She laughed. “And how I’ve been able to hold him off for a year.”

He suddenly realized that if she had had half a chance in life — like the chance Mr. Jessop asked Michael himself to give her — her eyes would never have been her curse.

She raised her head boldly and proudly.

The chimes moved, the radio station played, and the kitchen tap dripped solidly and at a regular interval.

“We put too much pressure on Silver — he was always running about for us — and he was just a kid” Here she paused, took a drag, and looked behind her at the bookshelf, as if the bookshelf were impeding her thought, and turned back to face him.

“He got off his medicine, started sniffing glue. In the end he thought you betrayed us, and he cannot bear to mention your name. We lived in such dirt-poverty you could not even begin to imagine. So he wouldn’t be able to step into your father’s house, even if he got the invitation he was sure you were going to send us — the invitation to your wedding.”

She smiled.

“Silver wanted to take a course somewhere. He got the application forms. Then we came down to see you and ask you about it. Remember? He had me dress up, he wore a sports jacket — he was going to get you to take him to Moncton to enroll. Then we were going to take you out to dinner as a treat. You told us to wait. And we waited. And then you went back to town. We waited. Silver phoned you every day And when you did finally come back, that’s when Everette was planning the robbery and wanted me to help him. I don’t know what became of his application form,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Ahh,” she said waving her hand, as if startled by her own vulnerability. “Every time I went to church I was told that Silver and I were made in the image of Christ. Our father beat the snot out of us but I was still told that. We were chased out of yards and houses and stores, and children were not allowed to play with us, but I was still told that. And do you know, I hated to be told that. Then, when I was fifteen, I started getting fucked, and people finally stopped telling me that. But now, since last month, I’ve been aching to hear it again. Just once more from someone.”

There was a long pause, and she looked away

“You are made in the image of Christ,” he said. “You are and always will be “

She picked up her purse and snapped it open, without taking her eyes off him for a second, and took out another cigarette and lit it. The window was open to the snow, the clear evening.

“I went after some rats that had got in behind the shed. They musta smelled something, and look what they were using as their nest.”

She tossed him the bag in the greyish darkness that always seemed to be a part of houses like this. It landed on the couch next to him. He gave a slight movement sideways when it landed. It was one of the
secrets.

Michael opened it. There were a pair of pants, sneakers, and a scarf. He held the scarf in his hand. He could smell it and he could see the heavy splashes of blood everywhere upon it. There was a death imprint visible where she had clutched it. It was as if he could hear her last feeble cry.

“I always wondered where that scarf was,” Madonna said matter-of-factly. “I had to hunt all last fall without it.”

Michael looked over at her. His lips were thin, and his hair moved slightly in the breeze from the window.

Here her gaze shifted again as if she were embarrassed by him, with a deep unforgivable embarrassment of their time together.

Then she took the final drag of her cigarette and flicked it out the open window so that it twirled in the granite-coloured air, end over end into nothing.

“And now you’re getting married — and you don’t even know how much I loved you —” She turned, looked at him suddenly, smiled, almost timidly, and was gone.

He hadn’t anything to say. In fact, the bag of clothes said it all.

Michael sat with his head in his hands.

“My God, Tom. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Yet he had to think. On the one side there was Tom, on the other Laura — both were haunting him. To protect one, he would have to give up the other. There were no other options. If he gave himself up, Laura and his own father would be seen involved in a coverup of drugs and murder to protect a fiance and a son. And Michael would face the one thing he was afraid of, and the one thing he had heaped upon others — ridicule. But if he remained calm — if Becker could keep quiet — if Everette got away, then Tom would remain in jail, and no doubt be murdered sooner or later.

Yet either way, Karrie was silent now. Now, when he wanted her to say something to him, there was only silence from her grave — a place he had not yet visited,

He could smell Karrie as he grabbed the bag of clothes.

He wondered about her body, remembered it, thought if it, and got sick.

He stood and looked about, wiped his mouth.

He shoved the scarf down into the bag, and turned to leave, snapping out the light.

In the darkness he stopped.

The dump,
he thought.

And he made his way towards the shore. He walked along the shore — for he feared being followed if he went any other way

The shore was dark, a gale wind was up, and he moved with new resolve. Coming off the shore, towards the back path, he slipped and fell. He landed on his back and stared at the sky for a long time.

“Tommie,” he thought.

Just then, a voice said, “Are you okay?”

He tried to stand and see who it was. The voice spoke to him again.

“Here, you dropped your bag — let me help you — “

The man put the scarf back into the plastic bag, along with the pants and sneakers, and handed it over.

“Oh, it’s you,” the voice said. “I just come down here for a minute.”

It was Emmett Smith. He moved his false upper plate out, as he smiled slightly, which seemed to make his chin look as rigid as that of a store mannequin’s.

“Were you coming to see us?” Emmett said, and he smiled in the same ingratiating way he always had. Michael looked behind him. “I’m glad you’re coming to see us. There are things I want to tell you about Karrie — you know, she kept a diary of events — but we can’t find it.” Emmett said. “How she loved to talk at night about you — and how special you were to her. It would be good to have that in your book. But I have to tell you about our money — I have to tell you — you are the only one to confess this to — Dora doesn’t want me to confess — but I have to — Karrie is telling me to from her grave! Tom should not be in jail — I’m thinking — it has to be someone else. Help me find the real murderer!”

“I killed your daughter,” Michael whispered, but the wind and darkness made it soundless.

“How she loved you,” Emmett continued suddenly, and tears started in his eyes. “And how I loved her — she was my only love. So I don’t care — I have to confess about the pumps — that is what Karrie would want me to do. Don’t you think Karrie would want us to?”

Michael didn’t understand him. He only noticed the tears on the old man’s face. The same kind of tears he had seen earlier in the afternoon on Mr. McNair’s tired face.

Emmett wore a brand-new winter coat that looked out of place on his old body, a grey shirt and heavy woollen tie. He came down here almost every night while his wife flirted with younger, stronger, more virile men. What she did or did not do he did not know or ask.

The night air moved his hair and in his ruined body was the personification of rudimentary country-business life. Small-mindedness, kindness to his daughter, the disrespect of those younger men towards him, and sickness and misery at the end. All the things Michael had thought he himself was above. All the things Michael had once felt contempt for. But now Emmett, because of his daughter, was determined to confess.

“I have to go,” Michael said.

“Come up to the house — please see Dora” Emmett said. “Please, for my sake, we have to straighten this out.” And he smiled once more.

“No,” Michael said, “I can’t, tonight.”

Emmett gave a stiff nod, as if to acknowledge that Michael’s business was far above his own, and far more valuable, and grabbed Michael’s elbow and shook it.

Michael turned and moved up the bank — the very one Karrie had fallen down five months before.

After a time he reached the dump. But he could not bring himself to do anything. It was now essential that he act. He stood with the bag of clothes in his hands looking at the smouldering perimeter of fires. A girl’s ancient bicycle rested against some old car parts on his left, and he decided that this is where he would hide the bag. He breathed the smoke of burning garbage, which was somehow pleasant as he looked at the stars.

By now, the rat with the slick, black face had wandered back into the dump, where it hopped three feet behind him and, nestling under a mat, a cardboard box, and a burlap sack, again found itself in the company of dozens of other rats no more than a foot or two from Michael

Michael heard them whenever he took a step but paid them no mind. He held on to the bag. Then he turned and started towards the farmhouse again, still with the bag under his new down coat, and the smell of remorse, tears, and Karrie on his hands.

“I will turn them in, and myself as well.”

All during this time Everette was trailing him at a distance of about a hundred yards. Everette did not know
what
Michael was doing, but his plan was ingenious. He would kill Michael, which he hoped would relieve him of his burden to Daryll. He would take the tickets, and send the tapes to the police. If they listened to them carefully they would see that Silver had planned everything, from selling bad mescaline to murder. And no one would come looking for
him
any more. He and Madonna would be quite free of everyone. Thinking of this, and pleased with it, he lost Michael near the farm.