Punishment (34 page)

He closed the door, sat staring straight ahead for a while. “Okay. Fair enough you’re wondering what I know about you and your ex. It’s like this. Anything I know originates up this lane.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He’s been spreading it around. How there was a thing with your wife.” He raised a hand. “I’m just repeating what he’s been saying.”

I stared into the night, suddenly desperate to be home, craving a cigarette for the first time in years.

“Apparently he’s been telling the young ones that you’re the one stirring the place up against him and the only reason is because, well … anyway, that’s what they passed on to their parents when they got some grief for hanging around his place.
I’m just repeatin’, Tony. I’m not saying I believe any of it.” He stared at me for a while, waiting for a response, then he opened the door again and slipped out of the truck and vanished into the darkness.

I stood on the roadside near the truck studying the stars. Duncan knew the planets and the constellations. Told me once, very briefly, how in late adolescence he had spent a year or so at sea and had become enchanted by the sky during long hours on the night watch. Typically he never spoke of it again. He was like that, delivering brief biographical disclosures that became, after he was gone, a disjointed and confusing memory. I can imagine, now that I have lived longer than he did, that it was how he avoided scrutiny; in his time it was important to avoid discovery of hidden weakness. We all have them, always did. But once upon a time weakness was a challenge to be overcome or hidden. Now we deceive ourselves, thinking that our private weaknesses don’t matter. We reveal them freely, sometimes unsolicited, hoping that our disclosure of vulnerability will be interpreted as a sign of trust and will warrant kindness, or tolerance at least, in return. So naive we are, our sad belief in sympathy.

There was a car sound in the distance, a quiet murmur in the stillness of the night. I looked in the direction of the sound, saw a glow.

You should have been more like me, Tony, learned to read the skies. Read people better. But it’s too late now
.

The car was closer now. Instinctively I moved away from the truck, nearer to the roadside trees.

How did you ever survive all those years in the corrections jungle, Tony?

Truth of the matter? I didn’t. Did I, Duncan?

The car was slowing down. Should I step out, wave, acknowledge it. No, nothing wrong, just answering the call of nature. Lovely night though. But the car continued past me, then turned up Strickland’s lane.

I got behind the wheel and started the engine, peering into the night to where Neil had dissolved into the silent shadows. Then the truck door opened roughly, and Neil was inside, panting. “Go, Go!” he shouted.

“What happened,” I shouted back. Wheels spinning, then the truck jerked forward as rubber caught the pavement, fishtailing slightly.

“Just go.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. He saw me. Drive.”

Darkness parting, pale roadside furrowing away before us as we raced through the narrow corridor of light. Neil was staring backward. “Fuck, there’s a car behind us.”

“What did you do, for God’s sake?”

“I did nothing. Just drive.”

I’d barely come to a stop when Strickland was at the passenger’s window, the car he’d been driving tight behind me, high beams glaring. He was pounding on the glass. Neil rolled his window down. Said nothing.

Strickland shouted: “What the
fuck
 …” Then Neil was shoving the truck door open. When he was halfway out, Strickland
slammed it back on him, trapping him half in and half out of the cab.

Neil roared in unintelligible rage and heaved outward, sending Strickland stumbling backward.

Then I was outside and I saw another backlit figure in the glare of the car headlights, just a shadow. I backed away, realizing that I was totally exposed. Then Strickland was advancing toward us. Neil turned toward the house. “I’ll be right back,” he shouted to me. “I know how to deal with this shit.” He left the door open when he went inside.

’ ”You’d better leave now, Dwayne,” I said.

“Oh, I’m leaving. But it’s all clear to me now, Tony. No doubt left now …”

“Just go.”

“You’re a pig, Tony. Like Anna said …”

“Go now,” I hissed, looking toward the house where a light suddenly flooded an upstairs room and a shadow moved, bent, searching urgently. “Go, for God’s sake, before he gets back.”

“She said that down deep you were no better than the rest of them, including her old man …”

Then Neil was back, breathing heavily. “Leave this to me,” he said. His arm was hanging loosely at his side, whatever he was holding concealed behind his hip. “Move out of the way,” he said, elbowing me.

“Pigs,” Dwayne said.

I moved directly in front of Neil, blocking him. He shouted, “Get out of my way, goddammit.”

“Strickland,” I gritted. “Get out of here before my friend puts a bullet in your ass.”

——

I remember small details from later that evening—the look on the dog’s face when I came in the door, which might have been comical in different circumstances.

“So
I’m
in the doghouse, am I, Birch?” I said. “Great. Move over.” And I went to bed but couldn’t sleep. Tossed and twisted in the darkness, battering the pillows into human shapes. Holding tight, fighting a sudden disorienting confusion.

Strickland had seemed genuinely pissed, but mostly disappointed.

The next morning I didn’t even notice when the dog, after his morning ritual of sniffing at and pissing on the left rear truck wheel, trotted off up the lane and didn’t come back. I forgot about him, only noticing his absence when I heard a car outside and didn’t hear him bark his customary warning. I felt a sudden sense of panic. Where did he go?

I didn’t wait long for an answer. Mary clambered out of her car and the dog hopped out behind her.

“So look who came to visit this morning,” she said happily. “There he was, yipping on the doorstep.”

“He was mad at me,” I said, squatting in front of him. He licked my face, full of forgiveness.

“I was thinking,” she said. “Here you’ve been batching for over a year and I’ve never once had you up for supper. What about tomorrow night?”

I couldn’t think of any reason to say no. “I’m getting to be like Charlie,” I said. “Living off the local hospitality.”

“No fear of that,” she replied. “Anyway, there was no harm in poor Charlie.”

——

Neil was at the store early Wednesday morning, poring over the newspaper, jabbing the paper with a stubby forefinger. “Thirty countries in the coalition and guess who isn’t. Makes me ashamed to be a Canadian.”

“I thought you were an American,” someone said. He ignored the comment, kept reading.

Collie winked at me. “Looks like this is gonna be Neil’s big day,” he said. “Finally, he’s got himself a war to fight.”

I waited for Neil to allude to the night before, the confrontation in his yard, but he kept his eyes down, scanning headlines. Then he looked up and past me as if I wasn’t there.

“See, this is typical,” said Neil, gesturing toward Collie. “You think it’s all a joke.” He tossed the newspaper back on the rack and walked out.

Mary phoned mid-afternoon to confirm that I was coming. “And come early,” she said. “I like to eat early.”

Her place was an old farmhouse with a huge kitchen that reminded me of my childhood home on the Mountain Road. The walls were unadorned, except for a calendar, a crucifix and clock. The doors to the rooms beyond were all closed. The kitchen was uncomfortably warm.

“I’d show you around,” she said. “But the rest of the house is freezing. I suppose you remember the layout anyway, from growing up. I keep threatening to get a furnace but they’d have to tear the place apart.”

In the cold deep winter months, all life happened in the
kitchen. One of the doors would lead to a steep, narrow stairway and a bedroom directly above.

“I sleep up there,” she said, pointing to the ceiling. “Not that it would matter to you.”

I laughed.

“Sit,” she said. “Let me get you something.”

I calculated that she was in her late thirties. Her face was pretty, hazel eyes that seemed to go from green to grey depending on the light; dark hair with a dramatic streak of white above her left ear.

Over dinner she informed me she’d been working at the store for more than twenty years. She started in her teens, a summer job to earn the money she needed to go away. Then her mother became ill and lingered long enough that Mary lost whatever dreams she had. “You stop noticing time after a while,” she said. “It’s just one day after another, each more or less the same. Then one day you look back and it’s too late for anything else.”

We ate in silence for a while. Then she said: “But don’t get me wrong. I have no complaints.”

“Going away is just ending up somewhere else,” I said.

“That’s the thing,” she said.

Then after another long pause, I said: “So you’d be older than … your neighbour.”

“A few years,” she said. “I was ahead of him in school. But I remember him—he was always getting the blame. Most of the time he deserved it. A little instigator he was, for sure. Teachers used to say it was a shame he couldn’t put the brains God gave him to better use.” Another long pause. “But I always found him nice enough.”

She put her fork down. “Looking back, you start to remember some of the good things. Like, he could be hilarious. He’d come to the store and if it was just me there he’d be mimicking people, the locals who hang around for the free coffee. He’d even be trying to sing popular songs with a local accent—‘Hey, hey, get affa my clewd.’ You couldn’t help but laugh.”

And she started to laugh but stopped suddenly. “Sad when you think about it. Collie never wanted him around.”

“The incident at the store,” I said. “The little fracas.”

“Yes,” she said. “That was a shocker.”

“I meant to apologize. It was just that when he mentioned Anna …”

“No apology necessary,” she said. “But I was wondering. Who’s this Anna anyway?”

I laughed. “I thought everybody knew who Anna was, thanks to the gossip …”

“What gossip?” she said, standing. She walked toward the counter with her empty plate. “Help yourself to more.”

“Anna was my wife,” I said.

“Obviously not from around here,” she said above the sound of running water as she rinsed her plate. Then she turned, looking puzzled. “How would Dwayne have known her?”

I studied her open face for evidence of guile, saw only honest curiosity. “Don’t answer if you don’t want to,” she said, turning back to the sink.

“I heard Dwayne was blaming me for all his troubles in the village,” I said.

“Well, I suppose,” she said. “He was over here afterwards saying he suspected you for planting the dope. I told him he
was crazy, that if there was one person in the village he could probably count on it was you. Then he said something like, ‘You don’t know the whole story.’ ”

“That was all he said?”

“That was it.”

She squatted by the dog who was sprawled, asleep. “What can we give you, little guy? How about one of Mary’s special treats.”

Birch raised his head then scrambled to his feet, wide awake.

I said, “I’m surprised you’re into cats, Mary. You should have a dog.”

She put her face close to his and he licked her mouth. She grimaced. “Cats are great,” she said. “A cat’ll never let you love him. I never know one day to the next where my old tomcat goes. Just shows up at the door when he needs something.”

She rubbed Birch’s ears. “I had a dog once, Birch, didn’t I? You can get closer to a dog than to a human being. After he was gone I said I’ll not put myself through that again, no siree. But you’re only a pup, aren’t you, Birch. You’ll outlast all of us.”

At home I poured a drink, turned on the television set. It was strangely silent, a fixed image of a darkened city, sand-coloured, low-rise buildings in the foreground, faintly lit. A broad city boulevard in the middle distance, street lights gleaming but no sign of traffic. In the distant darkness above and beyond the city, soft light flashes. I adjusted the sound, but the picture was still silent as a photograph. Then a car, cautious, solitary, creeping through, hesitant, uncertain as if driving over broken
ground. And then a quiet voice from the television told me that the silent city was Baghdad.

How can everybody in the village know and Mary not have heard? Mary didn’t seem to know a thing. Then logic spoke: They don’t know. And I asked logic: So how does Neil know? Then I remembered, Graham the prison guard. He must have overheard. But how would he know Neil? When and why would he report something that was inconsequential to anyone but me?

From the television came a sudden jarring crash and a flash from somewhere off-screen. The commentary grew more urgent. Coalition forces had landed in the distant desert, were advancing on the silent city. The moment and tomorrow fused. Everything and nothing happening at once. The unseen future now implacable, unthinkable, inevitable.

T
he dog woke me with his whining. Then he barked once. He was at the door. Someone on the television was calculating how long this newest war would last. I stood, killed the television picture. “Nature calling, Birch?” He whined again and when I opened the kitchen door he dashed off across the porch and into the night. I shouted sleepily after him, “Don’t be long,” then turned back to the living room and sat. How did I forget to close the outer door? I was completely sober coming home. I yawned.

When I woke again it was daylight, soft and silent, shortly after dawn. I remembered that the dog was still outside, swore silently, opened the kitchen door expecting he’d be huddled in the porch, full of accusation. The porch was empty.

I stepped out. There was a distant truck sound lingering in stillness. A crow and then another crow responding. “Birch,” I called. Then: “
Birch Bark
!” No reply. A momentary flash of irritation. “Where did you go this time?” Then I thought of Mary’s place. I shouted: “
No more treats for you, asshole
!” I shuffled upstairs, removed my shoes, lay on the bed in my clothes to wait.