The Bay of Love and Sorrows (5 page)

Michael had come back from his trip. With his money gone, and nothing much to do, he came down to spend the winter. And the road, with the river that ran beyond it, filled with trout, and the fields of corn, and the gracious elms, had suddenly become less idyllic.

Tom felt that nothing would be askew now if he and Michael had remained friends. But unless they came to
him,
the three of them would not be able to stop until something desperate happened. This thought came with the feeling on his skin of dry winter air, and he opened the letter.

Tom shoved the letter into his shirt pocket and went into the back room where the smell of cowhide and the smell of ice was ever present. He went to take some plug but didn’t.

The next night he borrowed Jessop’s truck and drove to the community college in Bathurst to see Karrie. He waited for her to come out of the stone building, saw her coming down the stairs with a boy following her and grabbing at her scarf. She tossed her pretty head this way and that, in a teasing way The boy fell back a few steps, as the wind blew over the ice-riddled streets. Her small black winter fairy boots slipped along on this ice as she walked. She was almost to the truck before she noticed him, and gave a startled look, her scarf hanging down either shoulder. That startled look bothered him, and he glanced slightly away as she turned and waved goodbye to the boy

He had thought that she would be delighted to see him. And he supposed she was, but getting into the truck she spoke only about the test she had to do the next morning on office management and said that her feet were freezing.

She had a small room in an apartment she shared with three other girls. Entering it he felt suddenly that her life here was foreign to him, and foreign to the Karrie he had known on the river. He saw her knickknacks, the picture of her deceased mother, the small decorated china plate she liked, her underclothes, panties and bras which she picked up hurriedly when they came in, and a small slice of pepperoni that she offered him, delighted that she had something to offer.

“No, keep that — look what I brought you,” he said. “Jam from Mrs. Jessop, and homemade rolls — cheese too.”

She sat down on the bed immediately and began to eat and he watched her. Although he didn’t like to, he asked her about the boy

“Oh, he’s no one. He’s doing a drafting course, so I see him because our room is just next door. Sometimes the boys like to come over and tease us — well, you know boys,” she said, putting jam on a roll and looking at him.

She paused, and smiled prettily, her head cocked just slightly, as if questioning him.

“What’s wrong?” she said,

“Oh, I don’ know — just a long way to come fer an hour,” he said.

“I know,” she said, and again, as it had been the first night he spoke to her, the word
know
was said sensuously, “But it’s just my test,” she said, “I have to study for it tonight — “She paused and reflected on something, “Tom — when are you going to get a haircut?”

“Oh, I been puttin it off — I didn’t get to town,” he said, reaching along his neck.

“Well, it’s getting long again, isn’t it. You don’t want it like Mike Skid’s all-greasy long hair,”

She smiled, put the roll down, and came over and sat on his knee for a moment. The door of her room was half-closed, and it was almost dark. He realized that in another half-hour he would have to leave and drive home,

“Are you going to take upgrading next year like you promised?” she asked, rubbing his nose with hers,

“Maybe — if you want me to,” he said,

She smiled, held his face in her hands, looked at him intently, then gave him a lingering kiss that tasted like jam and butter. Then she suddenly leaned forward so he could kiss her eyes, like a child who has just seen something that has scared her,

“There, that’s better” she said, “My eyes are kissed all better again”

And Tom hugged her, knowing he was profoundly in love,

At this time Michael was firmly established with his new friends, but they realized that at any time he could give this life up for a safer, more sedentary life. And in certain poignant ways Madonna tried to stretch the boundaries of her relationship with him,

Sitting on the opposite side of the table from him, in her small house, she would shake her head and say: “Someday I’d like to see your house — I’ve never been in a house like that — well, I was at a house where I made curtains once — Rita Walsh showed me — but other than that, no, I’ve not been in a house. Now Karrie Smith has a nice house I guess — I been down there.”

Michael would nod.

“Some day Madonna is goin to get her own bicycle,” Silver would say, smiling. “She never had a bicycle before, didn’tcha, Madonna”

“Well, I don’t care about no fuckin bicycle now, Silver, for Jesus Christ sake — I’m nineteen fuckin years old — “

Madonna would blush, embarrassed that this secret about her childish wish to have a bicycle was now revealed.

“Well, I’ll get ya one anyway someday, ya stupid quiff — I tol’ja I would.”

“Silver got on pills and tried to knife himself, and went and stabbed hisself in the leg — and now he’s back into sniffin the glue.”

“Ya ya ya ya ya, so what the fuck,” Silver would answer, angry that this had been told about him.

“Stay away from my fingernail polish is all I’m saying.”

“Ya ya ya ya ya “

One night, near the time Tom went to visit Karrie, Everette came to Madonna’s house. He mentioned that a friend of his was coming to trial for rape, and wanted to know if Michael could put in a word for this man. And for the second time Michael heard the name of the girl he’d once taken to the school dance: Laura McNair. She was prosecuting this friend of Everette’s.

“I want you to help him out if you can,” Everette said.

In ways in which he himself never understood, Everette’s entire life was obsessed with and dealt with institutions and the courts and the law. His eager face showed this as he waited to hear Michael’s answer. It was as if this obsession were a chess match, where the morality of right or wrong, or the sense of right and wrong, never mattered, but the idea of
winning
or
losing
was paramount. In this way, all things were simply business to him.

While maintaining his friend’s innocence, he casually mentioned that the rape victim was deaf and dumb, aged twenty-two, and had a four-year-old son. They had been hitchhiking, and her son witnessed the entire assault. The man had been sure he would get off, because the woman could not speak to defend herself, or to say no.

But Laura McNair had got enough clinical evidence to support the case against him, and the man was no longer sure, so he had gone to Everette. And Everette, as a matter of course, had come to his new friend, Michael Skid, who was “a good guy.”

“Could you please put in a good word for him with your dad? He is the best of lads,” Everette said, and his face looked touching and reflective. “I know your father — I hold nothing against someone doing their job. As you know, he put me in jail and it was fair and square. I was reckless and did a reckless thing that I is — is ashamed of. But this man is a friend of mine. He never did nothin to that woman — she was beggin for it. He just took her back to the lane and give it to her as she wanted.”

“I’ll try,” Michael said.

Everette came over to him and squeezed his arm. There was a seductive quality about this. He remembered how Silver had squeezed his arm trying to get him to leave the shack the first night he had met this man.

The case was odious to Michael, but to have Everette’s friendship was a certain valuable plus.

Then Everette lit a huge chunk of hash and put it to Michael and Madonna’s nose.

“Here you go.”

Madonna began to giggle, but moved away when Everette tried to hold her around the waist.

In May, Michael decided to go home to Newcastle. He wanted to do more research for the article on the private school he was committed to write. There was a certain moment when it became clear to him that he should take this no further. His father wanted him to take a job collecting soil samples for a mining operation in Labrador. It was far away, and it paid well, and there were no temptations. Michael knew this. His friend Professor Becker asked him to go back to university in September to begin his master’s. But Michael knew Professor Becker liked having students around because he wanted to be seen as youthful and boyish.

Still it was time to go.

When he told his friends, Madonna said nothing. She only tore paper from a cigarette box and then set it afire, so the smoke came up in front of her brilliant eyes.

“So I think I will go back up to town,” he said finally.

“Well, I’ll come visit you, okay?“

“Sure,” Michael said. “Anytime.”

However, when he went down to say goodbye to Everette he got a different reaction. Everette looked disturbed, even irritated. And it pleased Michael to see such a reaction.

“You’re a friend of mine — what are you doing? Summer is just starting and you’re thinking of leaving — wait until the summer is over — you know I’d love a trip on that sailboat of yours — just once.” Then he looked at him, and smiled, “Well, if you have to go — I wish you could wait — but I understand important things — always important things keep friends apart. Look, if you don’t have the money, we could pool our money and booze and drugs together so everyone would get a share.” And here he lifted up a pickle jar, poured a tiny bit of moonshine out, wiped the jar clean, and took twenty dollars from his pocket.

“Now, that’s the pickle jar — and that’s the money, and it’s
your
money- so you don’t have to spend the summer up in Labrador, working for that mining company your father wants you to. Anytime we have something well just pool it together!”

Michael smiled, and was happy he was so well thought-of. But he didn’t know how Everette would have heard about the job in Labrador. As he started towards his car he heard a short shrill whistle, and turned to see Everette coming out behind him.

“Come here — just for a moment,” he said.

Michael hesitated, shrugged and went back into the shack. Everette sat at the table smiling, a huge grin on his face.

“You didn’t think you were going to get away this easy, did you?”

“What do you mean?” Michael said, feeling nervous.

Everette then said that Michael owed him at least
one
favour.

“One favour — okay,” Michael said, smiling, “One favour before I go. What is it?”

It was a warm, white night in May, with some snow still at the edge of the woods. The birds were singing late into the evening, and tamaracks were budding behind them, while a whiff of dark smoke rose from the dump a little ways away.

“What?” Michael asked.

“I want my chopper back,” Everette said. “My Harley.”

Then he picked up a hammer and tossed it against the wall, so close to the little boy’s head that it surprised everyone, except, it seemed, the little boy himself. “And I’m not paying 426 dollars either.”

“Why, where is it?”

“Ken’s shop,” Everette said.

He wanted to get his bike out of the shop where he had taken it to get it painted. The shop was across the river on a back street behind a half-dozen houses. The man had threatened him, Everette said. The man had used him, and tried to “besmirch Gail’s name with bad language and called Gail a slut.” (Here her little boy looked up.) The man was out chasing Gail even though he had a wife at home. Here Everette shook his head as if he couldn’t go on.

Michael formulated a vision of Ken as a conniving, machiavellian, unprincipled man who was trying to steal Everette’s bike and ruin the Hutch reputation in the neighbourhood where they grew up.

“Always it is the same” Everette said. And then he ended by saying: “Will you come with me? I need you with me. The man’s as much a bastard as that Tommie Donnerel. I tell you about Tommie — we owned a fishing camp together — put money in a pickle jar just like this — but his drunken old man kept interfering, and finally stole the money, so I ended with nothin — “

Michael did not like to hear this. Yet he felt for some reason he did owe Everette at least one favour. He did not know why he felt this. He felt in fact that he owed him a great deal. Cicero once wrote that men are sometimes grateful when men of power do not kill them, and Michael had read Cicero before — read that very line, and felt it could never pertain to him.

Michael sighed. That night Michael’s parents were having a special dinner, and had invited someone to meet him, as a surprise.

“Okay, but I have to get it done — and get on home. And then I’m done with
all of this!”
Michael smiled.