Down to the Dirt (11 page)

I wonder if I should go back to Gerald’s and crash on the couch? He’s probably after drainin’ the rest of my beer, passed out at the table. He won’t remember fallin’ out with me. Or I could swing by and see if Andy’s home. No. Me and Andy are after driftin’ apart these days. All he minds is his fuckin’ hockey. And I think he’s shaggin’ around with some young one from up the Shore.

Fuck.

I can’t go home.

The rain is pickin’ up again. The church is my best bet for now. Surely the
Good Lord
will have me. Keep me dry for a while. I’ll figure out what to do in the morning. I picks up the pace, not feelin’ so lopsided now that I got a place to go.

We spent a fair lot of time arsin’ around in the church when we were growin’ up. Runnin’ up and down the aisles, jumpin’ over pews, climbin’ down from the choir like monkeys, bangin’ on the organ. I even had Shannon Kelly on the go in there one night. We drank what wine we could find. One time myself and Bobby O’Neill went in and swiped every hymnbook from every pew, lugged ’em down to the
beach and burnt the works in a bonfire. There was some uproar over that.

It’s rainin’ good and hard again now. Lightning flashes in the mouth of the bay. I scurries up the church steps only to find the door locked. Surprise. I probably would’ve been too creeped out to go to sleep in there anyhow. Still, who the fuck do they think they are to go barrin’ people out of the goddamn church?

I sits down on the steps and tries to think.

My face is poundin’. My arms and legs are stiff and bruised, my feet hot and itchy in my army boots. Soaked to the bone. My cigarettes too damp to smoke. I’m all-in. I lies back, closes my eyes and lets the rain beat down on me.

A dull pain in my armpits as a pair of leather hands jerks me to my feet. I smells cinnamon. My heels clunkin’ down the church steps, draggin’ through the mud of the parking lot. Pain in my head like a knife stuck on the inside tryin’ to stab its way out. The squelch and bleep of a two-way radio. The world turns blue, then red. Blue. Red. Then a steady gust of dry, hot air blankets my body. I’ve died and gone to heaven. A brief surge of alarm penetrates my new-found bliss as I hears the words:

—We got him. We’re bringing him in.

Then darkness…

They releases me the next morning, after makin’ me sign a dozen fuckin’ papers and askin’ me a ton of questions about
Gerald Careen and Francey O’Dea. Even though it’s nowhere near true, I tells ’em that Francey supplies half the Shore.

I’m being charged with break-and-enter and theft under a thousand dollars. My court date’s in two months. On top of that, they’re tellin’ me I’m s’posed to come back to the station every Friday to sign my name. Christ. All over Harold Reddigan’s maggoty old duffle bag. What fuckin’ next?

Steam rises up off the cold, wet road ahead of me. At least the sun is shinin’. Looks like it’s gonna be a dandy day. I have no idea why I’m headin’ back towards the Cove. There’s nothing there for me no more. Never was. Sure even if I
wanted
to stick around and there
was
a bit of work on the go, who the hell is gonna hire me? I don’t even have a place to go lie down for fuck sakes. I s’pose I’m after pissin’ too many people off over the years.

Fuck ’em.

I checks my pockets, counts out a little over eighty bucks. I got a few places to crash in St. John’s. Eighty bucks might do me for a couple of nights. I’ll figure things out from there. I crosses to the other side of the road and starts thumbin’ towards the city. There’s lots of early morning traffic. Most people just slows and stares at me like I’m some kind of fiend. The rest speeds up and pretends they don’t see me. I resigns myself to a long walk. People still slows and stares. Twenty minutes of this by the time some
human being
pulls over and stops up ahead of me. I keeps my head down and tries to collect myself as I runs towards the vehicle. I’m in no mood to talk to no one, but, if they’re going right to St. John’s, it’s a good hour and a half drive. So I’ll have to be halfway civilized.

My head is in such a mess that I’m already sittin’ in the cab of the truck by the time I realizes what I’ve gotten myself into. Father’s truck, Father at the wheel. On his way to St. John’s. It’s gonna be a long, long ride.

Look at him, shovelling it aboard himself like a savage. That vicious scowl on his face. Swear he never saw a bit of ground beef in his life. Get it in you, b’y. Don’t choke. My God. Dogs eats like that. It’s in their blood. I saw it on Discovery last month. Goes back to before they were domesticated, when they ran in packs. Barely chewin’, afraid they won’t get enough. But sure it’s only me here. I got my own plate. I’m hardly gonna leap across the table and grapple him to the floor for his share.

We’re here two weeks now. Not much light gets in, but it’s a nice little apartment. Decent area. Lots of trees. Twenty-four-hour shop just up the road. Walkin’ distance to the university. Suits me. Keith had his heart set on a spot downtown, but I talked him out of it. I’m after hearin’ too many stories of people gettin’ sucked into that scene. Plus he’s on a court order, not allowed to possess or consume alcohol, and so I figured the last thing we needed was pubs and clubs on all sides.

A few months back he wandered into the Reddigans’ place on the South Side of the Cove and made off with a duffle bag and a short-wave radio. Stupid. He was cockeyed. The cops
found the bag at Gerald Careen’s place, but the radio never turned up. Keith swore in court he knew nothing about the radio. But, I don’t know, sounds like something he’d rob. Anyhow, there was a load of break and enters goin’ on at the time, the high school in Ferryland and the gas station in Fermeuse. The cops were comin’ down hard on everyone. They gave him a year’s probation with all kinds of retarded regulations: the alcohol thing, no non-prescription drugs, sign in at the station every Friday, no hangin’ around with anyone with a criminal record. Half the Shore’s got a criminal record for God sakes.

They made him go see a counsellor too. A place in St. John’s called the Second Chance Society. How cheesy is that? Anyhow, I started drivin’ him into town in Mom’s car every Friday after he checked in at the station in Ferryland. When I picked him up after his first meeting with the Second Chance crowd, he was in seventh heaven, goin’ on about how he finally found someone who could relate to him, someone to trust, someone who actually understood what he was goin’ through. But that’s Keith for you, always havin’ to lug around the heaviest burden. No one else knows what it’s like and all that.

But, to be honest, I was excited for him myself. Long time since I’d seen him so energized. He’d been mopin’ around since his court date, mumbling and depressed. No interest in doin’ anything with me. Wanted to be off by himself, readin’ books about vampires and listenin’ to The Doors. I was at my wit’s end.

On the way back to the Cove after that first visit, he broke down screechin’. Right out of the blue. He’d been goin’ on and on about this counsellor guy he was talkin’ to, how easy it
was to open up to him, then in mid-sentence he started wailin’ and howlin’. Frightened the life out of me. I’d seen him shed a few tears in the past, but never like that. It wasn’t the regular old
what-am-I-gonna-do-I’m-so-fucked-up
kind of cryin’, but more or less this huge outburst of, well, liberation. Guttural sobs. Nice to see him with his guard down for a change. I pulled in on the side of the road just past Tors Cove and let him cry in my arms for a while. Maybe things were gonna start lookin’ up.

And they did. I’d drop Keith off at Second Chance on Friday evenings and he’d come skippin’ back to the car an hour later. And he was that much easier to talk to. My God. He opened right up. All his doubts and worries about his livin’ situation, his future.
Our
future. It was new ground for me. For the most part I figured he just lived from day to day, not carin’ how the world saw him or where he was gonna be in five or six years down the road. So it was nice to know that he included
me
in his plans. It made it easier to move forward in my own life, knowin’ I had him with me. He even broke down and confessed to sleepin’ with my cousin Margaret at a Christmas party in Aquaforte. Said the guilt was tearin’ him up and he didn’t want them kinds of things between us. We had a fine-sized row over it, but, in the end, I was glad he came out with it. I resolved to move past it. If he was willin’ to wipe the slate clean, then so was I. Things were lookin’ up.

Reverend-Doctor Shane Adams. That was his name, the guy Keith was assigned to, the head honcho at the Second Chance Society. He supposedly had lots of pull in the courts, counselled inmates down at the Pen and everything. He came out
to meet me after Keith’s fourth or fifth session. Nice bit of gear he was too. Early thirties. Wicked shape. Pale blue eyes and an easy smile. I could tell right away there was something about him, like a glow. He had this fire in his eyes, this infectious energy that made me want to just jump out of the car and break down bawlin’ in his arms.
Take me! Take me! I needs a second chance too!
I don’t know, maybe I was a bit jealous.

As Keith was about to get in the car, Adams walked over to him with his arms held open for a hug. Keith wouldn’t. They shook hands instead. Keith had told me that was the one thing he wasn’t so struck on. At the end of every session, Adams’d spread his arms out as an invite for a hug, like it was some kind of test to see if Keith had made any real progress. Or maybe a trust thing. Sure, me and Keith are goin’ on three years together and it still drains me to coax a hug out of him. But I thought it was a bit odd, Adams puttin’ Keith on the spot like that, right in front of me. It didn’t seem appropriate.

Keith wasn’t near as enthusiastic about that particular session. He hardly opened his mouth. I wasn’t gonna push it. But by the time we got past Kilbride and he still hadn’t said nothing about it, the tension was drivin’ me cracked.

—So?

—So what?

—So how did it all go?

—You don’t want to know, girl.

We drove on in silence for a while, him wolfin’ back the last of my cigarettes. Bruce Springsteen came on the radio and I turned it up on bust. Thought that might cheer him up a bit. Halfway through the song he turned it off.

—All he wanted to know about was sex.

—Like your sex life? Keith, you didn’t talk about me?

—No. He wanted everything but. It was fuckin’ creepy. And I couldn’t quite put my finger on what he was doin’ to me. Like, he got this way of askin’ questions—

—Well that’s what they does. I mean, he
is
a psychologist—

—No. It’s different. It was like he was tryin’ to mesmerize me. Like he was takin’ me places against my will. Had me sinkin’ deeper and deeper into the past. Little details I never thought about for years. And I was tryin’ to keep my wits about myself, but he kept askin’
why
and
how
and
how did that make you feel.
And the questions were comin’ out of him so fast that I barely had a chance to think about what I was sayin’. And before I knew it, I was down in the lower meadow playin’ dicky-birds and shit.

—Oh.

—Yeah. And it was like he got right off on it. It was right fuckin’ weird. He didn’t want to know about girls or what women I went out with or how things are with you. He wanted to know about things I did when I was little.

—Well, Keith, I guess he knows what he’s doin’. You can’t expect to just walk in to a place like that and not give out anything about yourself—

—That’s another thing too. He’s always talkin’ in these fuckin’ tacky metaphors.
We’re gonna walk you through the sewers of your life, but you’re gonna come out clean on the other side.
Shit like that. And here I am, goin’ right along with him, thinkin’ yeah, my life really is a fuckin’ sewer.

—Keith. Come on. Maybe it’s too good to be true? Maybe you’re just pullin’ away ’cause you’re afraid. You can’t expect—

—Too good to be true? I have a few more pressing issues in my life right about now, ’Tash. He was s’pose to give me a
hand with the cops and all that bullshit. Sure I don’t even speak to my family. I’m half the time sleepin’ in a parked car, or sneakin’ around your place when there’s no one home. Slept in the stable the other night. What’s that got to do with whether or not I
experimented
when I was a little fuckin’ youngster? It’s sick. And he wants to hug me then when I’m leavin’? Fuck. Tryin’ to make me feel like everything’s gonna be fine and dandy, that my world won’t come crumbling down, long as I makes my way back to see him every Friday. It’s like brainwashing.

He spent all the next week broodin’. I knew it was too good to last. He started readin’ up on cults and communes and that sort of stuff. Jim Jones. Charlie Manson. A book called
Savage Messiah
about some freak from Quebec. Another one called
Cults: Is Your Child At Risk?
He read some of it out loud to me. It was mostly just tabloid and propaganda, but I had to admit, the similarities were there. Most of them characters at least started off with a bit of respect from the towns they lived in. And they were oftentimes ordained ministers with a background in psychology or social work. Handsome, intelligent, charismatic fast talkers. But it was a bit much to think that Keith had gotten himself tangled up with that kind of fella. In St. John’s of all places. And that the courts had ordered him to go there.

So I convinced him to give it another go. It was only an hour a week and he’d get in more trouble if he just blew the guy off. Wow, that never came out quite right.

The next week when I pulled in to pick Keith up, he was already waitin’ for me on the sidewalk in front of Second Chance. His eyes were all red and his hand was bleedin’. Some heavy bouncer type was hangin’ around the front door. Shane Adams was nowhere to be seen.

If Keith’s story is anything to go by, things got pretty tense. Apparently, their get-together had been goin’ along fine, Keith relaying all his defects and problems while Adams sat there like a sponge, every now and then concocting just the right metaphor to keep Keith fuelled. Then, out of nowhere, he invites Keith to Montreal. Said he had a place up there where people could focus on straightening their lives out. That’s when Keith lost it, accused Adams of posin’ as some kind of guru lookin’ to brainwash him and stuff. And, just like that, the office door flew open and in burst this big burly chap who snapped his fingers and straight away ushered Keith to the front door. Like he’d been listening in the whole time. Adams shouted after Keith that he was more than welcome to come back whenever he felt ready to get his real life underway. But no hug, no handshake, not even a simple goodbye. Imagine. Keith hung around outside and took a few cracks at the side of the building while he was waitin’ for me. That’s how he messed up his hand. He was some vicious on the ride home.

The never-ending drama of Keith and Natasha. God help us.

We were expectin’ that Keith might get picked up by the cops then, for breakin’ his probation order. But, oddly enough, nothing came of it. Keith kept signin’ in at the station every Friday like clockwork. I made sure of that. And, as best I could, I tried to keep him clear of the beer. Wasn’t easy. So I
mostly just hung around and made sure he never got too loud and wild. I felt bad for him. He was so miserable all the time, hangin’ around down by the wharf all hours in the night and half the time sleepin’ in the twine shed.

It got old pretty quick though. I got sick of babysitting, sick of spendin’ all my time worrying about what was gonna happen with
poor old Keith
when I hardly had a clue what I wanted to do with my own life. So, I started makin’ plans to move us into St. John’s.

Mom and Dad weren’t too keen on me and Keith shackin’ up together. For one thing we never had a cent to go about it. But I started savin’. Then I convinced Keith to put his name in on a scallop dragger in Cape Broyle.

—Go on, b’y. Sure you’re always talkin’ about gettin’ in shape. It’s only for two weeks. Fast money. When you comes back, you’ll have your own place to lay your head.
Our
place.

A few days later he was gone offshore. Two whole weeks. And let me tell you, I might have missed him a bit and worried about him, but them two weeks were the best I had in a long time. I went mad. The weather was warmin’ up, all kinds of parties on the go. I got so loaded one night I ended up neckin’ up a storm with Bobby! He called me up the next evening and asked me to go for a run down the Shore. I went. For a laugh. We drove down to Witless Bay and picked up some weed. On the way back we pulled in the track just outside Horse Chops and got wrecked. We shagged around a bit but I never screwed him or nothing. I’m not that bad.

I got two strange phone calls while Keith was offshore. The first was from Shane Adams. He was all concerned about
Keith. I told him what I tells everyone, that Keith is doin’ the best kind, workin’ away, off the booze and maybe goin’ to school in the fall. But Adams didn’t seem to want to hear that. Something peculiar came into his voice, this weird urgency and he started askin’ me shit that was none of his business, like whether or not I was faithful to Keith, and suggesting that maybe we weren’t really right for each other.

—Who the fuck do you think you’re talkin’ to?

But he just barrelled right over me. And I let him. I don’t know what the problem was, if it was anyone else I’d just hang up. But it was like Keith said, he had this way of draggin’ things out of me to keep the conversation movin’ along. And even though I was pretty pissed, I realized I was hangin’ on his every word. I wound up spillin’ my guts about our plans to move into St. John’s, about what I wanted to do with my own life, about Keith’s drinkin’. When he let me off the phone I literally had to give my head a good shake. Like I was in a daze.

The second phone call was from R.N.C. headquarters in St. John’s. Lookin’ for Keith. It was a detective from New Brunswick. She was working with the R.N.C. on an investigation concerning none other than the Reverend-Doctor Shane Adams. They were lookin’ up all his former clients, lookin’ for statements in relation to Adams’ character. I asked what the investigation was about, but she wouldn’t tell me. Just left her name and number for Keith to get ahold of her as soon as possible. Christ, there was a movie in there somewhere. Or a book, at the very least.