The Bay of Love and Sorrows (6 page)

“If we get caught — we’re in a scrape,” Everette said simply, looking down and spitting between his legs, tapping his boots on the dusty floor, and then looking up and yawning, to watch Michael’s reaction.

But Michael was not at all frightened of this, not at this moment with the sweet-smelling air, the feel of springtime, and the feel of his own strong body.

Michael caught little Gail Hutch’s look at that moment. She had been waiting for days for him to talk to Everette, to try to get him to settle down. With her hopes dashed, she went over to the bed and sat down, stroking her son’s hair.

The smoke from the dump seemed solid and pleasant as they left and drove to Chatham in Everette’s truck,

The shop was small and cramped. There was the smell of earth and oil and wood, and the gleam of four or five bikes in various stages of being painted or repaired. It looked like the shop of a man who bore no relation to the description he had just suffered.

The door was wide open and Everette’s Sportster was sitting near the front, behind a small Honda. They moved the Honda and rolled the Sportster towards the truck, lifted it quietly, tied it down with bungee cords, and moved off.

“He didn’t even do the job right — the tank is streaked, there’s no flames painted — I’m going to have to do it meself. And why would he not guard it? Anyone could have come in and stolen it.”

“Won’t he know you took it?” Michael said, and Everette looked over at him with gleeful savagery Michael remembered when, in the winter, Everette had tried to steal Mr. Jessop’s little baby pig, and then had taken a pitchfork and thrust it into its side so it squealed in terror. Everette’s eyes were exactly the same now.

“Don’t worry, Michael Skid, I got something good on him,” Everette said emphatically.

What Michael did not understand, what Silver and Madonna and possibly Tom Donnerel did, was that Everette Hutch kept tapes on certain of those whom he considered his well-to-do friends — for future embezzlement and blackmail — such as the tape he was wearing at the moment, inside his left boot, as he smiled.

Michael went home to his parents’ three-storey brick house and met Laura McNair. She was the special guest and was sitting with his father and mother in the living room when he came in.

Dinner was over, and though he didn’t mean to be, he was abrupt with Laura. He answered her questions simply and vaguely and felt bored.

Just once the name of Everette Hutch came up, in connection with some ongoing investigation, and Michael blinked monotonously. And when Laura asked casually if he ever saw Tom and Vincent Donnerel any more, he flushed.

“I don’t know why everyone hates Everette Hutch, why he’s blamed for everything. He’s as good as most of us,” he blurted. But though he tried, he could not do what Everette asked, to plead for the man accused of rape. And so he became sullen and looked bored again.

At one point, when his mother mentioned the re-zoning law for the industrial park coming into effect in August, he called the mayor an embezzler. Laura had dated the mayor’s brother in grade eleven, which made her laugh in embarrassment when he said this. She then said she had to go.

But when she left he knew his mother was angry

“She’s just lost her brother Lyle — he was killed two weeks ago —” his mother said. “How could you ever be like that? Is that how your new friends who we never see, and who never come to the house, and all look like refugees, just like you, taught you how to be?”

At that moment the whole evening, Laura’s sad laughter when he spoke about the mayor, the way she looked about the room at nothing at all, as if she sensed he was attacking her, took on a far different meaning. And he realized how close he once was to her.

So he went to visit her the next day The McNair house was the last house in a cul-de-sac. The presence of death still clung to it, and the spring air amplified this, with the sweet smell of lilacs and the trickle of a little manmade stream, placed tactically behind their hedges.

The graciousness with which he was brought into the house also signified a kind of rehearsal and mourning as did the coloured stone wall, Mr. McNair’s nervous volley of movements and nods.

Laura came down from her room and the two of them sat in the den and spoke. She told him her brother had died trying to rescue someone from the river. He and two friends had been on their way home from first-year university They had stopped to have a beer near one of the old bridges and lit a smoky fire on the shore. The ice was still moving out, and the water was high.

“You know what kids are like. We have to watch them nowadays — there are so many things they can get into,” Laura said, and she squeezed her hands together. “One boy walked out over the old bridge. He turned to wave and slipped, and Lyle ran and jumped in to help. He was always helping others. But the water was too cold. He tried to help his friend onto one of the ice floes, but the boy panicked and grabbed him about the neck, couldn’t let go. Both of them were gone.”

Her brother had been everyone in the family’s pride and joy, and had died in simple unplanned heroism.

“I wish I had been there,” Michael said. “I’m a very strong swimmer. I wouldn’t have allowed him to drown. I would have gone out with him.”

This brought tears to Laura’s eyes and she started to cry. “I know — I know — I know — I know what people are like in this community — people risk their lives for each other in a second — I know you would have. I was waiting for him to arrive home when Constable Deborah Matchett came and told me.” Then she whispered, looking at him and smiling, as if this was what he had come to find out. “I was friends with Constable Delano for a few months — but it was a very silly mistake. We both know it was a mistake, you see. He still tries to protect me, though, and now that Lyle is gone he is often here worrying about me. So you’ll probably see him around, protecting me.” Here she sniffed, held the Kleenex to her nose, gave a surprised cry at her own vulnerability, and looked about. “Oh my God — here I am talking about my problems — “

“Don’t be silly,” Michael said. He looked at the curtains, the fine ordinary collection of Royal Doulton, and the well-creased, vacuumed carpet with just one small piece of lint. Outside the day was warm, the street dry. He suddenly disliked police officers like Constable Delano who would take advantage of her.

In the trees jays squawked. Laura’s mother came in and sat down for a moment and asked about his family and if they still owned their cottage. Mrs. McNair was a tiny lady with red lines in her tired, long face, who looked at him and Laura in timidity, as if she expected another jolt or shock at any time. She asked Michael if he remembered once taking Laura to the dance.

“Of course —” he said. And instantly he remembered her young brother Lyle that night, peeking his nose about the door of the den. Their eyes met just briefly — and that was the only connection Michael had had with him.

When he stood to go he shook Laura’s hand.

“I’ll see you again,” he said. “If I knew you’d be around — I’d change my ways,” he said, laughing.

“Oh,” she said, surprised. “Yes — okay” Because she didn’t know his ways. And she took more Kleenex.

Michael stayed home for over a week and a half. He mowed the grass, painted the outside of the garage, and cleaned the deck chairs. He chipped some golf balls and now and again met his father for a round at the golf club. All about him now was talk of the man named Everette Hutch, the man from downriver, who had stolen his bike back from Ken’s shop. Once or twice Michael would say, “Oh yes, well, I know him, and he’s not so bad.”

“Yes, well, that’s like knowing Mephistopheles,” one golfer said, looking at him and smiling. Then he teed up his Titleist and drove the green.

His father would ask him about Laura, and he would say, “Laura is fine,” or “Laura is sweet.”

But just as his mother was making plans to have her over again, and just as he was thinking it would be nice to see her, Silver phoned him and said that Michael had to come down for a lobster boil at the Hutches’.

“Madonna wants to see you tonight,” Silver said. “She has to.”

“I don’t know if I can”

“For her sake — just tonight — just for one night!” Silver said.

And Michael, knowing he could have Madonna again that night, instead of waiting on Laura McNair, perhaps for months, went back downriver.

He arrived at nine o’clock at Gail Hutch’s shack and learned that Everette was planning a robbery He was startled, but tried not to show it. He also was in a conflict of interest, and wanted to stay out of any involvement.

Everette explained that a certain businessman had travelled back and forth to Tracadie, stopping at Hutches’ one day a week for a bottle of moonshine and to talk about baseball or hockey

“He thinks I’m a friend of his,” Everette said, “but he cheated me — and now I’m gonna cheat him.”

In a way, Michael realized, things had changed slightly but emphatically Madonna and Silver were now more under Hutch’s control Silver was sniffing glue much more.

Michael also knew that Everette wanted him to hear what he was saying about the robbery so he could gauge his loyalty

Everette was relying on Madonna to help lure the businessman into a trap, and “get him” by using her body. Any money was to be put into the pickle jar. The man wouldn’t dare tell on them because he had a wife and kids.

“Just flash him yer tits —” Everette kept saying.

Both Madonna and Silver Brassaurd were terrified of Everette Hutch. Neither would ever have bothered with him if it wasn’t for their friendship with Michael Skid. For days Madonna had balked at the notion of playing a part. And for days Everette had asked Silver to talk “some sense” into her. Today she had asked Silver to get Michael to come down, and to help her out of this.

Now she and Silver waited for Michael to speak.

“Don’t look at me,” Michael said, when Everette logically explained how the robbery was not only necessary but of good conscience, designed to take back money that Everette felt he had been cheated of, that the man had the courts on his side, but Everette had
right
on his.

“This is something you have to decide, Madonna,” Michael said, finally, after seeming to weigh it for many moments.

“Michael,” Madonna said, brokenheartedly, “what are you saying?”

But Michael only raised his hands as if to wash himself of it and he took a drink of rum.

“Don’t look at me,” he said, laughing.

Madonna did not know why Michael and Everette were laughing, and tried not to be embarrassed. She looked at Gail, frowned, and shook her head. She had waited all day for Michael to come and help her. But he had not come — at least not the Michael she expected or knew. His laughter suddenly made her blush. It was as if he had told Everette what she looked like naked, or that he could always make her come. She looked from one to the other.

The little boy sat in the chair near the door, listening, and Gail kept her eyes fixed on the far wall with her fingers folded.

“Well, I’m not robbin nobody,” Madonna said, as if it was the only answer she could think of, and her eyes darted Michael’s way once more.

Everette then took the faded blue picture of the Madonna and Child that had rested on the table and, holding it up, said: “Look, yer so saintly a cunt, what we got here is a picture a you “

“You shut yer fuckin mouth,” she answered. Then, taking a lighter from the pocket of her shorts, she grabbed the picture and burned it in her palm. The picture crinkled as she dropped it to the floor.

“Ya’ll burn in hell now,” Everette said.

“Well, I was always teased — so I hate that joke, and that is why I burned it”

Silver felt ashamed that he had not stopped them from mocking his sister. He did not know why they would treat his sister meanly all of a sudden. Especially Michael. And he was worried and angry because of it.

The little boy looked up at them, without much expression.

“Why won’t you help me?” Everette said despondently, rubbing his bald head. “You help me get that man who stole from me. I tried the cops, Michael,” he said plaintively, “I really did. So Madonna, you help, and I’ll make it worth your while. We can get three or four hundred off him. Well pool all our resources — in that way, anytime you need money it will be here — and anytime you need a toke it’ll be here — and if I need the sailboat for a day, I can have it. That’s how people should live. Like the communists.”

Michael then Everette both burst out laughing at this.

“Help them,” Silver suddenly blurted. “Help them — they would help us.”

“Wait till next week and I’ll think about it —” Madonna said quietly.

Michael and Everette both looked at her and smiled. She sat down near the boy and patted him on the head.

“But if I do it for you, don’t you touch your sister or her little boy ever again “And she crossed her beautiful legs, wearing terry-cloth shorts, without panties.

“I treat everyone okay,” Everette said.

Michael looked up, wondering why this was said, and what it was he didn’t know.