The Bay of Love and Sorrows (9 page)

If only she had not gone with him that day to get the tractor, if only — the clutch — if only it had worked. He suddenly thought of the clutch and the piece of straw under it, and how unimportant it all seemed then. And he remembered Madonna telling him that Michael had come back home.

“He’s nothing like me — and if I see him I’ll break his back,” he said.

He wanted to frighten Karrie the way he was now frightened. But everything about her was inscrutable. And in this agony there was a terrible and conscious realization that his love for her depended now upon this agony, and somehow always would. And then suddenly, and most terribly of all, he remembered her praying at church, with her gloved fingers fumbling in front of her mouth the night she had tried to trick him into meeting Michael He now felt small and pathetic in her eyes.

“Here,” he said, flinging the blueberries high in the air. In a moment they fell, shadowing the road.

She turned with her quart jug and walked down the lane as if his wasting the blueberries was what she had been waiting for, the act that confirmed everything she now felt about him.

Tom stood on the road where the heat was scorching, and the old burnt trees in the distance stood like spikes against the shadow of other trees. Everything was silent, except for the faint ticking of insects. He watched Karrie move away For a while she walked slowly and then suddenly she started to run.

He could not comprehend that this was actually happening. He turned and went into the woods. He sat on some cool moss and then began to grab at it, as if it were hair, staring down at the roadway as if he were drunk.

After a while, he went home. The tractor sat exactly where it had been, the field was dazed, and just the slightest hint of a breeze came from the faraway bay.

Vincent was standing exactly where he had left him, holding little Maxwell. He had a smile on his face, thinking that some enormous reunion had been accomplished.

“Go away, Vincent —” Tom said, at first feebly, and suddenly raging because he felt he was being spied on in a moment of weakness, he went over and hit him.

Vincent stumbled and put his huge arms up, the little dog cried and scampered about them, jumping up and barking, and the picture Vincent carried of himself and Tom and Karrie at the church picnic, when they had all helped at the rings, fell out onto the dirt.

“Good,” Tom said, when Vincent started to cry.

And now he thought there was only one more thing to do. He would go and get drunk, although he had got drunk only once since his parents’ death. He went to his room and snatched the diamond, put it into his pocket, and, getting on the tractor, he drove along the back road. He intended to throw the diamond from the bridge over Arron Brook, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. The air was heavy with the scent of full summer, the puddles were dried and cracked, and now and then a toad moved under a leaf, a rabbit darted ahead of him and disappeared into a shadow.

When he got to the Brassaurds’ he almost sideswiped their old Pontiac, which was on blocks near the back steps.

Sitting on a bait bucket, staring at him, was Madonna Brassaurd. He stopped the tractor near her, and stared at her loose white top, tied at the middle of her stomach in a knot. She had her bathing-suit bottom on. She was smoking a cigarette. There was the foul smell of low water and eels that lingered on this road all the way to the Hutch shanty near the back dump.

“How’s she goin right there now?” he said, but he could tell his voice sounded distraught. She looked at him, and he could tell she knew everything — even things he did not know, and even knew that his coming here was a signal that he had fallen in his own estimation.

He stepped from the tractor, its huge back tires white with dust and mud, his green shirt dust-caked and covered in sweat, and he went inside.

He did not feel welcome. He himself hardly drank, and he had at times, just as he did last fall, lectured them for poaching deer and drinking.

Tom realized now what he had known all along — that the Brassaurds had been part of Michael’s arrival back home as well They cleaned his farm for him, helped launch his sailboat, ran to do things for him. He realized that three weeks ago he could not have cared. And now it seemed that every word he had heard about Michael — from the moment Madonna met him in the woods the fall before, to Mr. Jessop speaking to him in the barn — was a warning to him that he had intentionally put out of his mind.

Silver Brassaurd smiled when Tom asked for wine. He was called Silver because of his silver tooth, which was blackened at the gum. It was then that something he had first begun to see when he looked at Madonna and now saw in Silver’s smile came to him. That the Brassaurds, since they knew all about this affair, would be the ones to help everyone through it, would lend an ear to everyone.

Silver nodded in the wise way unthinking people have when they sense the moment is theirs, and ran into the other room to get Tommie the wine.

“Make it a lot or it won’t last,” Tommie yelled. He wanted Madonna to hear him, outside.

When Karrie began to run away from Tom she could see herself- the quart jug in her hand. She could envision how people might see her running. They would be at the store perhaps. She would walk towards them with tears in her eyes, and the boys who she had once flirted with would look at her, standing about Bobby Taylor’s new Chevy, with the large back tires.

“Oh damn,” she thought now, “I’m crying,” but also thinking what a nice effect this would have on everyone who saw her. That they would know — not right away, but upon reflection — that she and Tommie were
through

Then she remembered a rude boy at community college (the boy who had hauled her scarf) who had taken her to a party and had tried to get fresh. When she told him about her boyfriend, Tom Donnerel, he had said, “Oh, you won’t marry him. Someone else will have you long before him — you’re the type.”

That statement had bothered her very much at the time, and now it bothered her more.

The lane was hot; the trees still and moribund. After a time she stopped, looking back quickly, hoping that Tom would still be there. But he wasn’t. And suddenly the emptiness created a pulse in the sky, where a haze rose off in the distance and she, too, was slightly afraid. She took two steps back towards where Tom had been, thought of poor Vincent and the little dog, and how she had a picture of them in her jewellery box, and then turned and walked quickly, arms folded like county girls do.

An idea had formed of late that Tom had done something wicked — against
hen
And she had played upon this idea for the last two weeks with Michael, and with her father and stepmother.

The previous two weeks had been the most eventful in Karrie’s life. She was always discussing great issues now, and saying wonderful things about life. And everything was fitting into place, as if she had come into her own.

With Michael she had feigned being in a predicament over Tom’s cold behaviour, and feigned needing to come to Michael for advice. Yet though she and Michael pretended it wasn’t, it was very much a predicament that both of them knew would not exist unless they themselves
willed
it.

At first Karrie wanted to believe that Michael’s and her relationship revolved around the principal idea of getting Tom to reconcile with his friend. Later, when she saw how hurt Michael was, Karrie felt sorry for him, and angered by Tom’s stubborn meanness. Yet behind all this, there was a subtle but marked game being played between her and Michael, that both of them knew.

She thought, as she walked, that Michael would not let her go back to Tom ever again, even if Tom did get violent. There would be some kind of confrontation, but she did not know how that would turn out — only that Michael by the power of his voice and his brave eyes would finally win.

Why did she suddenly think of court? Perhaps something would happen — she would have to go to court — then Michael’s father, the judge, would come — everything would be solved. The judge would put his hands on her shoulder, calling her his daughter (or something — that part was still vague.) Then, in her mind, years passed. They would be in a large brownstone house. Trees, children.

Her own father seemed to think of some injury against her, and so did her stepmother. Karrie was silent in the house. And for the first time she felt very powerful, and sensed that they were both in awe and perhaps a little afraid of her.

“Well, it’s a shame,” her stepmother had said, a week ago, a slight smile playing at the corner of her lips, where tiny black hair could be seen. “I don’t like to see anyone
hurt.”

She remembered how outside of their house the bay was black and steely, and far away a buoy-light could be seen, Down the road was Oyster River corner.

Her father had sat licking the filter of his cigarette and frowning at some memory, with grey suit-pants high up on his waist, and counting the money he kept in a tin can beside him. This was the money her father and her stepmother were saving for their retirement. They kept it locked behind the bookshelf in the den. It was money that came from rigged gas pumps — especially the diesel pump, which the local trucking companies used. It was not that they had rigged these pumps themselves. The calibration had been set wrong by the previous owner five years ago, and only Dora was astute enough to notice this. When Emmett went to telephone the company to report the mistake, she rushed in and stopped him.

“Don’t be a godalmighty fool — we are not the thieves — they did it. We’re going to make an extra seventy cents on a tank of gas.” And her face turned beet-red and she looked over quickly and suspiciously at her stepdaughter. “You keep your little Smith mouth shut up tight, Karrie,” she advised.

As long as they were careful about this they felt they would not be caught. It would only be a problem to explain if it were found out they had kept extra profit for themselves. And though Emmett felt guilty and though Karrie was at times burdened, they maintained complete silence. And Emmett and his wife would smile at each other at times across the table late at night.

As Karrie walked away from Tom she thought about this. And then thought about the night before, her twentieth birthday.

She had not meant to meet Michael, but it was destiny. This is what she told herself. It was what her stepmother had told her the week before.

“It’s just destiny, dear. Don’t fight it.”

“But I feel some bad about it,” Karrie said, at that particular moment not feeling bad at all. “We were s’posed to start our instruction at the church” And she blessed herself.

But Dora snapped her fingers quickly in front of Karrie’s eyes, startling her. “Think for once of what
you
want. People like you and me never think of ourselves, dear — think of yer own self-” And she suddenly smiled, snapped her gum, hugged her stepdaughter coldly, and her lips quivered slightly, so Karrie had to look away.

Now, Karrie remembered Michael as a young boy who swam out from the wharf without a thought to get a wounded seagull — and it seemed as if she’d
always
been attracted to him. Yes, she was the one who always took his side, and never allowed people to talk about him.

Her stepmother had bought her a new silk blouse that she had worn on her birthday.

Karrie had also been singing the song lately:
“Many a tear will fall — but it’s all in the game of love”

She did not tell herself that his family was well known and wealthy — with political connections in Fredericton, an uncle who was a senator in Ottawa, and sailboats and trips to the Bahamas — her stepmother did.

As she ran away from Tom, smelling the thick, bland heat, remembering Tom’s poor troubled face, and what he had done with the blueberries, she felt that she had finally met someone who understood and respected her.

Everyone called her the cinnamon girl Michael gave her that name during her first trip on the sailboat.

“Oh,” he had said gravely, “you won’t be Karrie here — you will be — oh hell, I don’t know — the cinnamon girl.”