Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace (10 page)

Cindi had promised herself that she was not going to drink, but the man Ivan had seen in the apartment with her, the man who had the band on his wrist, made her a rum daiquiri.

Up until now, Antony felt he had spoken too much, and had said all the foolish things that he always seemed to say in front of people he wanted to respect him. But he wanted to redeem himself. He wanted to hit someone, to make people go away. He knew three or four of the men had gone into the kitchen with Cindi, and this bothered him for some reason.

“Oh wow,” he heard Cindi saying.

He knew that if Ivan were here they wouldn’t dare do such a thing. He was overcome thinking of little Margaret and her ducks, and how she was saving her money for the Exhibition – and how innocent that seemed compared to this.

“Tell us how the ram went at Nevin,” Ruby said, looking at him, and kicking him on the knee, as if she understood that he was upset. Ruby could read people very well, and she tried to get him back into a good mood.

“Who me?”

“Yes – tell me – I heard it last time I just about fell down and pissed my pants.”

Antony looked at everyone.

“Well, animals of any sort have to respect you or they’ll take advantage of you,” Antony said, lighting a
cigarette and looking at the match for a second. “So many people don’t know the psychology of an animal.” He blew the match out. “The first thing you do in front of a horse is kill a chicken – then that horse will never kick you in the head or bite your ear off.” He looked at them suspiciously for some reason. “I had a dog – you know, Muffins. I had to kick the shit out of it, or it would have torn my throat out. It never learned till the day it ran away – kept trying to attack me. I tried to get it to attack other people, but it wouldn’t. Jesus, it wasn’t a big dog either – no bigger than a fox really. So every day I’d grab it by the scruff of the neck and kick it … boot it … and hide its dog dish – and everything else – and still it kept coming back for more.” Here he paused knowing he had gone off track. “But let me tell you – those goats down at Nevin’s are having the time of their lives, because they take one look at Nevin and go right at him, chase him all over the lawn, and him scared. And then Margaret – you know Margaret, my oldest girl, going in to be a veterinarian in two years there at the university – she just had to go down and handle those goats for him and catch his rabbits – which he is continually mixing up, the males and females, so there is more and more rabbits popping up everywhere. It’s a circus down there,” he said, with that particular self-righteousness he had whenever he finished a statement.

“Well,” Ruby said, disappointed, “it’s not the same way as you told it before – but it’s still okay.”

Everyone laughed, and Antony laughed too.

Everyone was silent for a moment, and then some friend of Dorval Gene’s, the tanned youngster with the wristband, began to laugh hysterically over something in Antony’s story. And Antony felt stung. He
looked at Ruby, as if for some approval or reassurance, but she paid no attention to him.

“You,” he said to Cindi, suddenly and angrily, “have got to get your life together.”

“I am,” Cindi said.

“Ha – you are,” Antony said, sniffing. “I bet you are.”

“I’m sorry,” Cindi said. “I’m sorry like I toldja all before – I toldja last week and everything.” And she put her head down and wouldn’t lift it.

“Leave her alone now,” Gordon said, “for Godsakes, Antony.”

“Oh, I’m not saying anything to her,” Antony smiled weakly.

Gordon looked at him, in the disappointed fashion a more wordly and clever man can do, and Antony said:

“Hell, I’m just jokin” – and he felt his face sting. “Aren’t I, Cindi – I’m just jokin, dear – just jokin – ya know that.”

“Yes,” Cindi said, head still down. “Antony is always coming to visit me.” She spoke into her sweater, so they could hardly understand what she said.

“Oh, Cindi dear,” Ruby said, and real tears flooded her eyes. Her face looked almost more beautiful when she cried.

“I don’t think we should be too hard on Ivan,” Lionel said suddenly. “I mean, he just made a mistake – all of this has been going on now for over a long time. I know Ivan – he helped me rig up a switch to bypass to my starter. Never charged me nothin.”

“The hell with Ivan,” Antony said suddenly. He looked about and grabbed himself a beer, opened it and drank.

Cindi, however, still kept her head low, breathing peevishly into her sweater.

“I know lots about Ivan,” Antony said. “Lots and lots, but I’m not blaming anybody. Everyone thinks I’m blaming people. I could tell you about a party at Ivan’s and Cindi’s, Ruby. Let me tell you,” he said. “Remember, Cindi? I come in in the morning and here a woman is on the couch with Ivan –”

Cindi knew that this had happened in an innocent way, that she had had a seizure the night before, and Brenda Gulliver was down there because of that. That Ivan, so he wouldn’t disturb her, fell asleep sitting on the couch where Brenda was lying. But Cindi couldn’t lift her head to speak. She only nodded and fumbled with her fingers.

Antony nodded his head and looked about, as if he had proven something. Falsehood doesn’t care whether it is false or not, but dares people to expose it as such. The young men only laughed again.

And suddenly the rage of the whole afternoon’s drinking, of Margaret, of Val going out for dinner, of Gordon being there, overcame him.

He jumped up and grabbed Lionel and hit him twice on the top of the head.

“Don’t you dare mention Ivan to me. I put up, and Gordon knows – Gordon knows – Gordon knows.”

Everyone jumped up to stop what was happening. There was some pushing.

“For Godsakes, settle down,” Ruby said, “or get the Jesus out.”

Lionel tried to cover his head.

“Gordon knows I put pinball machines on this river – Gordon knows –”

Then Cindi walked by them, went along the hallway, and had a seizure. She fell over with a thud and landed on her side, blinking and in convulsions, near her plotted plant.

Ivan did not hear about the seizure. He didn’t go to the apartment. The next morning he had to return two bridles to his grandfather’s, and it was here he met Antony.

Antony was in his father’s shed, trying to find a bucket for Nevin and Vera. He had promised them a bucket the week before, and had not got one of them, and was irritated that they should remind him – and went about as if he was forever having to get buckets for people.

Ivan walked in with the bridles, knotted together in one hand, and looked at his father and smiled. “Now what are you up to?” he said.

“What am I up to – what do you think – what am I up to – taking care of business, as the song says. You see Margaret?”

“No, I just came – I haven’t even been into the house. I promised to give two more riding lessons. I have two really good kids – only ten and eleven – no older than Valerie. I don’t know why you won’t let Valerie ride –”

“She’s not riding and have no horse kick her in the head, let me tell you.”

“No horse would kick her in the cocksuckin head – I can get a helmet for her at half price.”

“No,” Antony said, “she’s not fuckin riding – I lost one little child, and I’m not losing another.”

And then he went about looking for his bucket.

“Did you go and see Cindi last night?” Antony asked.

“No, I’m not going to either.”

“No – either did I,” Antony said. “I’m through with all the big hype over that there – I don’t care what they do.”

Ivan went out of the shed, blinking. The day was windy. Margaret had planted pansies and dahlias along the wall, and he could still see her footmarks where she had stepped about the beds. The impressions were softening to dust, and light sand was blowing up against the west wall of the house.

This reminded Ivan that he had promised to build his grandparents a patio deck this year so they could barbecue and look out at the bay. For some reason he remembered this promise because it was so windy. Now they were barbecuing down by the shed, where Allain used to smoke salmon. He did not smoke salmon any more. Just as, twenty years before, three-quarters of the traffic on the river had to do with work – fishing boats, scows, and pulp boats – now three-quarters of the traffic were people with inboard motor boats and sailboats. It was to this second group that Ruby and her cousin Eugene belonged, while he and Cindi, because of their natures, belonged to the first group, and would always belong to it. Just as Ruby’s father, Clay Everette, with over half a million
dollars in the bank, would always belong to the first group. And just as Vera and Nevin tried desperately to belong to the first group, they could not by the very way they perceived things belong. At times these groups became blurred and infused, and there was no way to separate them if one did not know what it was to look for. Money had nothing to do with it, nor did age. But still the two groups could be defined. Education might be the key – but that was not true either, although people who wished to make simplistic judgements would use the criteria of money, age, and education to accredit the difference.

As he walked about the west side of the house, he saw Margaret sitting in a lawn chair, reading
Teen
magazine.

“There was a call for you,” she said.

Immediately his heart sank when she told him it was not Cindi who had called – but Olive and Gerald Dressard.

“What do they want?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Something about coyotes, and you could trap them.”

“Well, why didn’t you find out?” he said irritably.

He returned the call about thirty minutes later.

“Yes,” he said. “I doubt if it’s many coyotes – just a mother rounding up her pups.”

He found out that Olive was afraid because of her child playing in the yard. Two coyotes had come out to it.

“They’re all around us,” she said.

“Well, I don’t really care to trap them.”

Olive said that not only could he have the pelts, but he would be paid also. Then Ivan reflected that it was Adele and Ralphie’s child she was talking about.

“I have to boil my traps,” Ivan said. “Okay – I’ll be over in a few days.”

“I don’t agree with trapping,” Olive said, “but this is a special case.”

He went back outside, and, lighting a cigarette, sat on a stump.

“A good man’s position is always the right one,” Margaret said to him. He stared up at her. She was looking not at him but above his head as she spoke. Then she touched him on the top of the head gently and smiled.

There was a general excitement over Vera’s pregnancy.

Everything was already done for Vera’s baby – everything was already collected – money was already sent and people were already talking about who the baby would look like. Things were largely done that were done everywhere when a pregnancy occurs. And Vera and Nevin were happy that everything was the same.

Now the house that hadn’t been a major priority before became one, and it was redone. Because she was pregnant, the whole idea was that she and Nevin knew all along that they would have a child – and that their child was wanted because it was planned for, was a common consensus.

Only Vera seemed to realize that this wasn’t quite the way it happened. Of all the doctors they discussed things with, only Dr. Hennessey maintained that she might get pregnant, and the old doctor was the only one they didn’t take seriously. Nor did he care if they did.

One night, a couple of weeks earlier, Nevin stayed out until morning. She knew he was now preoccupied with money, and making money. She waited up almost until dawn. When she woke, she was in the spare bedroom and he was sitting looking at her. Nevin had not been home all night – and here he was with his boots, which he prized so much, covered in mud, and his eyes glassy.

“Good morning, Vera,” he said tipping a bottle of wine to his lips.

“What do you mean?” Vera said. “Where were you last night –”

“I joined Antony as partners.”

“You what?”

“I drank Hermit wine and joined Antony.”

Then he reached down and stroked the ears of the rabbit that had followed him down the hallway.

“Well, go to bed,” Vera said.

Then he spoke so rapidly that she had trouble following what he said: “We’re going to get a big hose and suck every clam alive into it and sell them and make a million dollars.”

He looked serious even though she laughed. Then he tipped the bottle to his lips and looked about the room, with its bright new paint, and its crib, as if he’d never seen it before.

“And we will too,” he said.

“Well, do what you can,” she said, smiling. “Go to bed–”

“Bed,” he said. “Of course you don’t want to listen to me. You know nothing about it – how could you know.” He looked at her sadly while sunlight fell on his boots. “How could you know,” he said, cutting an
imaginary line with his flat hand through the sunlight, and hiccupping, “if you paid ’tention to me.”

“Well – I do,” she said.

“No – you don’t,” he said solemnly, and he rose and wobbled down the hall, stopping now and then because of imaginary barriers.

The night after the party at Ruby’s, people began to rock Ivan’s cuddy. So he went out onto the wharf. There was no one near the boat except the small dog he had been noticing there since he came. The dog followed him as he walked, looking at him with the inquiring look dogs have when they realize that things have changed in a person’s mood.

“There’s a big-feelinged lad there,” Jeannie said, out of the dark. He couldn’t see her, but he knew her voice – utterly plain and yet with a tone unlike any other he had come across – her red hair pinched behind her. Then he did see her gradually standing in the cool air, which, though cool, had a host of mosquitoes hovering in it.

“Ha, ha,” Frank said, as he always would answer his wife’s insults with a guffaw as if, if no one else in the world recorded them, he himself would. “Odd man out,” Frank said.

“How’s Cindi?” Jeannie yelled.

Ivan tossed a rock into the water, and looked through the dark, but he couldn’t see them any more.

“How’s Cindi?” Frank said after. The sound however seemed to come from a different direction altogether.

“Cindi’s just fuckin dandy – you dumb cocksucker,” Ivan said.

That day another rumour had started – that Cindi had filed for divorce. Ivan, of course, had heard this rumour, the way all characters involved in rumours hear one, as if it were already true and he himself knew about it.

He looked about and then turned back towards the boat. A group of high school kids had come onto the wharf to drink beer and were sitting there watching him. He didn’t notice them until this moment. He didn’t know them and they didn’t know him, but at this moment it seemed as if they did, and that everything that was said was said for their approval.

When he walked by them, he could feel them staring at him. So finally he said, “You hurt this dog?” as if they were the ones to blame.

“I never hurt the dog – is that yer dog?”

Ivan said nothing but took the dog with him to the boat. Then he turned the spotlight on the water, and moved it in the direction of the shale bank.

The only thing that looked back at him was one lone cow standing in mud, with the blank expression an animal has when caught in a beam of light.

“I must be fuckin mad,” Ivan said, and he smashed the light with the flat of his hand and sent it sprawling onto the water.

A few moments later, Antony drove along the wharf at ten miles an hour, waving to all the boys Ivan had just accosted, smiling and talking in a loud voice, and stopped just by
The Simonie D
.

“You think he’d name the boat after me,” Antony said, “instead of that adopted twit.” Simonie was Allain’s adopted daughter and was one of the administration
nurses in St. John – but whether this was the reason or not, Antony didn’t like her, and said she had “stole” his “mom’s” affection for the others. Ivan sensed a deep bitterness here, which had struck Antony’s heart – and seemed both comic and pathetic.

But still, since Ivan always felt tricked by his father, his one thought was, what in hell does he want now?

The visit was like getting phone calls from people whom you like, but who never consider you until they need something. Antony would never come just for a visit to an old cuddy – he had spent half his life in one, what did he need it for.

Ivan had turned the radio on and had picked up a station in the Gaspé, a French station playing Paul McCartney’s “Ram” album – “Monkberry Moon.” The music seemed to expand through the little cuddy and across the whole wharf, which smelled of shells and tar and the rind of traps, the wharf being still pale in the night air. Against all parts of the wharf, boats were tied.

Ivan held a bottle of rye in his hand, and Antony noticed it but said nothing.

“Guess who wants to become like me,” he said solemnly.

“I don’t know,” Ivan said.

The radio-band light was orange, but only the bottom side of the dial was lighted. It glowed in the little dark cuddy, and the boat tossed more against the tires.

“Nevin,” Antony said, “he asked me the other night if I could make him some money, and I said, ‘Sure I can make you some money – how much you need?’”

Antony said this as if everyone knew he could make people a lot of money, and that it was a known fact,
and the only naive thing about Nevin was that he had not asked him before.

And as always with new partners, tonight Antony could do nothing but speak about Nevin – as always with Antony, the new partnership had already made all the money, and it was just a matter of picking this money up.

As always with Antony, he was drinking to this new partnership and forgot that he’d been in partnership with Nevin before, and as always if anyone said anything about it, he would dismiss them as not knowing what they were talking about.

“Nevin looks up to me,” he said solemnly. “I suppose he and Vera know that whatever I’ve done I’ve done on my own.”

As the general smell of saltwater, rope, and tar filtered throughout the cuddy, as the radio played, and as there were still lights out in the bay, Ivan was thinking. Every time Antony strayed onto a wharf, he was like a man who one day suddenly grabs the halter of a disgruntled horse and backs it down off the trailer to the amazement of those there. On the wharf there was nothing Antony saw that he did not know, and there was no swell of wave or sound or shade of light that he did not feel or expect. And this was seen in spite of being away from fishing for twenty years. Antony, as a youngster, had fished with his uncle while Allain fished with Antony’s older brother.