The Dead Letter (31 page)

It could have been sharp peripheral vision. It could have been instinct. Or it could have been lingering agitation over the morning quarrel with his wife over his greasy boots dirtying her kitchen floor. But something drew the engineer to look up and, at the top of the ladder, he saw a man framed in the opening to the engine room.

The engine room was strictly off limits for passengers. Only an idiot could miss the bold warning at the entry. The engineer leapt forward, rushed toward the foot of the ladder, and wildly threw his arms about in order to signal his message to get the hell out of his station.

Peale's jaw fell open. His hands still desperately clutched the rail and door frame for balance. Surprise and horror coursed through his mind. He gawked stupidly at the engineer. Then Peale's eyes shifted toward the gun in his hand. Peale suddenly realized that the engineer couldn't see the Webley from where he stood. Relief and mortification supplanted Peale's fright, and a feigned composure, acquired through years of political fencing, quieted his surprise.

Peale backed up, made humble non-verbal
mea culpas
to the engineer, and withdrew from the threshold of the engine room. Once again the Webley found a temporary home in his coat pocket.

78.

Anne pulled into her driveway at eight-thirty. A dim light shone in
the upstairs front bedroom, Jacqui's room. Another, a counter light, burned in the kitchen.

Anne was exhausted. She felt a weariness that seeped to the bone. God knows she needed a full night's sleep, a real night's sleep without interruption. And she hoped the coffee she had drunk earlier wouldn't keep that from happening.

Then her thoughts turned to Jacqui, whose world was upside down as well. But that was the fluky road of adolescent life, she thought, a reflection that gave neither succour for her daughter's pain nor relief from maternal anxiety. Teenage girls could cope with the occasional snap and snarl of adversity, learn from those experiences, and move on, but Jacqui had gotten both barrels of bad luck all at once, and she was bleeding. It didn't seem fair. It wasn't fair.

Anne locked the side entry door and stepped lightly up the stairs. A light had shone in Jacqui's room. Perhaps she had fallen asleep with her lamp still lit, she thought, and she made her way silently toward Jacqui's room. Her hand touched the doorknob, then stopped. Anne heard a faint something. She waited, listened. It was Jacqui. She was awake, and the sound was soft weeping on the other side of the door. Anne remained quietly where she stood and considered whether to intervene or let the passage of time heal her wounds.

Then she turned the handle and entered.

“Hi,” said Anne. Her one word evoked delicacy and concern, as well as a tacit apology for the intrusion. Jacqui lay on the bed, her head cradled on one arm. She had buried the side of her face in a pillow. She stiffened a bit at her mother's entrance, and her whimpering subsided.

“Can I help?” said Anne.

Jacqui's head moved negatively back and forth. She sniffled twice, and the back of her hand swiped her nose.

Anne pulled a couple of tissues from a box on the side table and placed them next to Jacqui. She took one and blew her nose. She took the other and dabbed her eyes. She did it quickly, as if to conceal both tears and disappointment. Anne settled herself onto the edge of Jacqui's bed.

“I'm not going to school tomorrow,” said Jacqui. An uncharacteristic finality coloured her declaration.

Anne responded by brushing a comforting hand gently up and down Jacqui's arm.

“I understand.”

For a long while, Anne simply sat beside Jacqui, her hand touching Jacqui's shoulder or stroking her hair. Sometimes, simply being there is enough to relieve the ache of a loss, she thought, and, sometimes, saying nothing says everything.

A few minutes elapsed before Jacqui's tears dried and her breathing became regular and measured. Her eyes still reflected regret and sadness, but Anne also saw in them a lucidity and warmth that had not been there a short time before, and she felt confident that her daughter's old spiritedness lay not so far beneath the melancholy.

“I don't think I can face anybody ever again. My life…everything I've worked for…is falling apart. Everything is broken,” she said. Anne watched a fresh gush of tears as she spoke, and Jacqui sank once again into a bleak silence.

“You know, I felt that way once…when I was young…a few times actually…and it hurts like hell. I have some idea what you're going through… I've been there, too.”

As Anne spoke, she stared vaguely at the front window of Jacqui's bedroom. The houses across the street cut vague silhouettes against the dark, blustery night sky. Anne's eyes saw, but were oblivious. Her mind and memory had drifted to a place many years away.

Something circumspect in her mother's admission caught Jacqui's curiosity, and she looked at her for the first time since she'd come into her room.

Anne's reverie lasted only a few moments. Then it broke like a wave on a north shore beach, and Anne returned to the edge of the bed. She smiled a broken smile, bent down, and gave Jacqui a firm, tender hug. Anne's eyes clouded with a mysterious sadness.

“You want some hot chocolate?” asked Anne when she pulled away. Jacqui stared back, confused by the sudden disconnection and left wanting.

“What happened? What happened to you?” asked Jacqui.

Anne gave up a cheerless laugh and, with an ostentatious gesture, swept the question away.

“It was nothing…at least that's how I see it now…inconsequential…”

Jacqui braced herself up on one elbow, and her eyes probed for something more substantial than the trivial dismissal her mother had proffered.

“What's important, hon, is how I worked through it. Mind you, it wasn't a lightning bolt revelation, and, frankly, I didn't see it as any help at all, not at the time.”

Anne shot a surreptitious look at Jacqui. She was still quiet, still attentive. So Anne went on: “When you share fears and worries with someone else, they lose their grip on you. That's what I learned.”

“I don't get it. Why?”

“I don't really know. I suppose it's like turning the lights on while someone is telling a frightening story. The fear has nowhere to hide. Guilt can't fester.”

Jacqui suddenly felt a rush of anger. It leapt from nowhere, and she couldn't contain it.

“But I'm going to be the laughingstock of the school tomorrow! Madame Desjardins will hate me, and Rada can never be my friend again! Nobody will want to speak to me. Don't you understand that?”

“That's quite a burden to carry. It is. And you think you're responsible…for all of it?”

“Yes…yes! Who else?”

“Why? Did you organize the party?

“No.”

“Did you invite those kids?”

“No.”

“Did you do try to get them out? Did you try everything?”

“I guess.”

“Was there
anything
else you could have done?”

“There must have been.”

“If there must have been, then you would know what it was…and you would have done it. The Jacqueline Brown I know would have. And Madame Desjardins. What makes you think she hates you?”

“She hardly spoke to me when she found out.”

“Did you tell her what happened?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Did you apologize?”

Jacqui nodded.

“What did she say?”

“Nothing, really. Nothing at all.”

“I'm sure she was quite upset, but that doesn't mean she was angry with
you
.”

“Did you explain about Rada and Bobby?”

“I had told her that Rada might be coming over to help me and that Bobby was dropping by to get the birthday present I made for him. That got broken, too, by the way,” she said and sighed.

“And Rada's in trouble because she came over?”

Jacqui bobbed her head in two, quick, almost convulsive jerks.

“Had you encouraged her to sneak out of the house?”

“I didn't know she'd been grounded, but if I'd been a better friend I would have seen it coming.”

“I don't recall reading minds as being a characteristic of the Browns…or the Darbys…on either side of the family…and frankly I don't see any suggestion that you should shoulder the blame…for any of it. However, you might eventually dig a few life lessons out of it for future reference.”

After that, a bit of quiet time passed between the two of them. Jacqui propped herself up and leaned back against a pillowed headboard. Her knees cocked up, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes focused onto the corners of her semi-darkened room, her mind reflective.

“Feeling any better?” asked Anne.

“Not really.”

“Hot chocolate?”

Jacqui gave up a small concessional smile, then added, “By the way, I'm thinking ‘Jacqueline' is a bit too pretentious. What do you think?”

“Up to you, dear.”

Anne put a kettle on in the kitchen. She took two heavy mugs from the cabinet and poured a tablespoon of cocoa into each. She returned fifteen minutes later with a tray of hot drinks and a small plate of sugar cookies, but Jacqui had already fallen sound asleep. A spare blanket lay at the foot of her bed. Anne spread it over her, turned out the lights, and returned to the kitchen.

Anne sipped her own mug of cocoa in the living room and paged through the phone directory. She looked anxiously toward a clock on the wall. It was nine-fifteen. Not too too late, she decided, and dialled a number.

“This is Anne Brown. I was hoping we could talk.”

79.

Dawson emerged from the engine room as stunned as a prisoner
stepping from stone dark solitary into an abhorrence of blinding light. He looked dishevelled; his ears rang; he felt disoriented; and he faltered like a drunk stumbling through a carnival fun house, where all is illusion and instincts are false.

Dawson had no idea where Peale was lurking, and, for his first few moments in the brisk salt air, he didn't care. He slunk down on the cold, wet vehicle deck, leaned up against the fuel tank of a refrigeration truck, and tried to make sense of himself and his situation.

Slowly the half-blindness of his mind began to clear and, in spite of the ringing in his ears, he felt stronger and more aware, and he stood up for a better look around. Priorities re-formed, and stopping Peale again became his foremost thought.

Dawson scarcely heard the blast of Peale's gun. To him it sounded like the pop of a child's toy cap pistol, but the bullet went high, struck the left side-mirror of the truck, and showered fragments of reflective glass on Dawson's head. He fell to his knees, crawled under the truck, and wriggled his way toward the next row of vehicles. As he did, he heard Peale cry out: “Dawson, go away. I don't want to kill you, but I will if I have to.”

I need a weapon, thought Dawson. The tire iron he had used earlier came to mind, but it had disappeared. Then another idea struck him—the axe in the fire box on the bulkhead—but maybe not. Getting to it would leave him too exposed to another shot. Dawson had been lucky so far. Three shots taken and no hits. So now maybe it was Peale's turn to get lucky, he thought.

Then another idea, less risky, came to his mind. Dawson worked his way along another row and tried three other trucks before coming upon an unlocked cab. Once inside, he seized a portable fire extinguisher. Finding one turned out to be a blessing. Doubly so, in that it led to spotting Peale.

From the lofty cab of the truck Dawson observed Peale stalking him. Peale crouched low and moved cautiously, gun in hand, but his eyes never lifted above ground or car level. He never looked upward enough to see him, but Dawson was able to determine the search pattern he was following. It was a reversal of the pattern he had used to track him to the engine room, except that this time he had become bolder and more thorough—stalking him between the rows of vehicles, first from in-board rows and then moving toward the ones nearer the rail.

Dawson predicted where Peale would end up, and Dawson was determined to be there waiting for him. If he could surprise Peale—and there was no doubt in Dawson's mind that he could—he'd finish the job he'd started and be done with it or die trying.

Dawson left the truck, slunk away, and hid himself very near the same spot he had confronted Peale the first time. A steel partition by the winch gave him cover. The starboard rail stood behind him. He glanced back. The Caribou lighthouse blinked its cautionary signal into the night. At this point, the ferry was making its approaches. He had maybe ten minutes before docking in Nova Scotia and debarkation. This was his final chance to put an end to a long and complicated misery.

Dawson readied himself. He pulled the retaining pin from the trigger of the fire extinguisher, pressed his back against the cold steel frame, positioned the nozzle at the estimated height and direction at which Peale's face would appear, and listened to the agitated thumpa-da-thump of his heart and the tremulous wheezing of his own panting breath.

At the first glimpse of Peale's gun, Dawson thought his heart would stop. Peale edged within eight feet of Dawson's hiding place. It was farther away than Dawson had anticipated, but going back now was an impossibility. As Dawson stepped forward, Peale's face was averted, his concentration fixed on the last few cars in the line ahead of him.

Dawson squeezed the trigger on the extinguisher. Peale heard the scuff of Dawson's shoes and turned. The extinguisher failed to discharge. Peale stepped back reflexively, the gun wobbling in front of him. He stumbled, but his back steadied against the door of a car. Dawson squeezed the extinguisher's trigger again, and, when nothing happened, he hurled the heavy metal cylinder toward Peale's head and lunged forward.

As Peale emitted a small cry of fear and surprise, Dawson leapt ahead, his hands reaching out desperately for the gun, but the deck, wet from sea spray, was slippery, too slick for Dawson's shoes.

Dawson fell forward, flat, headlong on the deck, his arms outstretched, still three feet short of his mark, and, when he recovered and looked up, he faced the enormous blue-black barrel of Fenton Peale's Webley.

Peale's hands clasped his weapon firmly. His arms were locked. He waved the gun in a motion that Dawson understood to mean that he should move back toward the partition and the rail.

Peale's face was set, and his eyes were wide and fierce. A trickle of frothy spittle stained the corner of his mouth. Dawson saw desperation in Peale's look, and in that expression, Dawson read his own doom.

Dawson slowly rose and moved toward the starboard railing. He looked out. Almost nothing was visible but the Caribou lighthouse, now falling astern, and still blinking a silent admonition.