Kill All the Judges (15 page)

VALE OF TEARS

A
rthur has soared too close to the sun, and his feathers are melting. Fire above, fire below, engulfing the hall, and he's falling toward those blue flames, totally doomed, totally doomed…

He opened his eyes before the impact and lay still, staring at the rough cedar ceiling, feeling no relief to have survived those flames. No interpreter of dreams needed. A telling metaphor for last night's disaster.

Margaret's side of the bed was distressingly unrumpled, denying him any flickering hopes she'd found a tiny corner of forgiveness in her heart. “Come in,” he'd told Stoney, Dog, and McCoy, “meet some friends.” This grossly negligent invitation was, to Margaret, further proof of his secret plot to abort her political career.

It may have taken a while for her Greens to realize that the tumultuous invasion of Bob Stonewell and the two dwarfs was not some picaresque after-dinner entertainment. Reactions ranged from puzzlement to barely suppressed dread.

McCoy sang bawdy songs, Dog threw up, and Stoney passed out business cards:
Loco Motion. Ride in style in our fleet of heritage limousines.
“One of them's a cherry 1970 Chrysler New Yorker,” he announced proudly. “Gulps the gas, you only get eight to the gallon, but where you gonna go on a small island anyway? The fun is just laying some rubber on the roadways, man.” The three of
them polished off the leftovers, washing them down with the remaining organic wine and beer.

The champion worst episode involved a venerable, now broken, leaded-glass window in the parlour. The runner-up: a burning butt in a paper recycling bin. Third place went to Dog vomiting on shoes left by the veranda door.

The woofers, embarrassed, left early, though the noise was loud enough to draw Nick from his room, complete with iPod and headphones. Margaret skipped about with a fixed, ferocious smile until her friends and patrons sped off to the late ferry. Whereupon she wordlessly fetched her night gear and slammed the guestroom door behind her.

He'd slept poorly but late, Aurora had long ago rolled up the curtain of night. He dragged himself up, looked out the window–the family pickup was gone. He lashed himself with an ugly scenario, Margaret speeding off to the city to start a divorce.
Petitioner further alleges mental cruelty rendering intolerable the continued cohabitation of the spouses.

The flatbed was still parked below, though Icarus had mysteriously disappeared. The driver's door was open, Stoney lying there under a dirty blanket. Somehow, despite having got awe-inspiringly drunk, he'd had the sense not to drive. Also in the driveway was the rust-scarred van of Mop'n'Chop (“We do it all, no task too small”), so Felicity Jones and Bobbi Rosekeeper must be downstairs, cleaning up.

There was Nick, standing by the pond, idly tossing pebbles, making ripples in the reeds. Looking down upon this sad, thin figure, Arthur felt devastated. He'd promised to take him fishing before breakfast. This skipped-generation relationship was being badly mishandled by the Baron of Blunder Bay. Lord Stumblebum.

He hurriedly washed, dressed, crept down to the living room. Beneath the staircase, the cat was sniffing at the stubby figure of
Stoney's pal, Dog, who was face down on the cat's pillow. Where had Hamish McCoy disappeared to? Icarus had either been spirited away or regained the power of flight.

The girls had already done the living room, except for Dog's redoubt under the stairs, which they'd vacuumed around. They were in the kitchen now, dishwasher and washer-dryer going, the ninety-year-old house jiggling and rumbling.

He stepped out into a chill, dry morning. A wind had pursued the mists into the dales, and the sun was a pallid ghost behind the unbroken gloom of filmy cloud. A flutter in the bay, a school of fleeing herring, competition for his lures–pinks had been running, but now they'd be sated and lazy. As a backup, he could fetch his crab pots–he had put some bait aside in the freezer, salmon heads.

The Japanese kids were repairing fences. Lavinia was in the far distance, leading Barney, the overfed, farting horse, to a leaner pasture. Nick was staring forlornly after her.

Arthur called, “Come and join me in the barn, Nick, we're going to set a couple of crab traps while we go off in pursuit of the wily salmon.” Why must he sound so pompous in front of the kid? Nick must see him as beyond square. Cuboid. Totally unhip.

He led Nick past the flatbed, past Stoney's prostrate form. Still life as object lesson:
This, young man, is where the loose life leads.
But who was Arthur to talk? He'd been no stellar example in his youth and worse in his prime. Arthur Ramsgate Beauchamp had descended to dizzying depths, a fool when drunk, bellowing threats at prosecutors, refuelling from a water pitcher spiked with Beefeaters. He ought to tell Nick about how he once lost his balance beside the jury box and fell into their laps. Or how he spouted the
Rubáiyát
at the top of his lungs in a crowded restaurant. The time he fell through a skylight while spying on faithless Annabelle. His years on skid road, defending street people for free out of a hole in the wall.

Seventeenth anniversary coming up next month. He and his fellow stalwarts of the Garibaldi AA will celebrate that. In their way.

“I gather you talked to your father.” Arthur didn't want to open the wounds, but this had to be discussed. “How did that go?”

“Okay. I guess he felt pretty bad.”

“He's still taking you to Hawaii for New Year's?”

“Naw, I told him I don't want to go. Mom phoned too.”

It would be just like Deborah to fly in suddenly, scoop the boy back to Australia. Arthur would feel hollow saying goodbye, knowing he'd utterly failed to connect with his only male descendant.

“I told her I want to stay on here for another month. If it's okay with you.”

That had Arthur blinking with surprise. Was Nick finally acclimatizing to Blunder Bay? Or was Lavinia holding him here? In any event, he was taking some control over his life.

“I'm delighted, Nick. By the way, did Margaret say where she was going?”

“I didn't ask. She wasn't in a good mood.”

Arthur groaned. “What a debacle.”

“Yeah, it was a ripper.” Suddenly, Nick grinned. Arthur had provided some welcome comic relief. “You keep scoring own goals, Grandpa.” He touched Arthur's shoulder. Contact. A gesture of commiseration.

The crab traps were hanging on hooks in the barn, but Arthur was more interested in Icarus, whose swaying, winged form was suspended from the rafters by ropes. Bronze eyes staring earthward, a look of agony as he fleetingly contemplated impending death. The creator of this noble work was asleep under a blanket of empty feed sacks.

He sent Nick to the
Blunderer
with the traps while he detoured to the house to get the fish heads. He was hoping to avoid the gossipy girls from Mop'n'Chop, not wanting to add to their store
of anecdotes. He particularly didn't want to deal with Felicity Jones, the twenty-year-old, ever-forgiving sometime lover of Cuddles Brown and only child of Tabatha, a weaver, who fumed at the mere mention of Cud's name.

“Mr. Beauchamp, can I talk to you?”

Trapped at the open freezer door. “Yes, Felicity?”

“He cried last night.” She was a poet herself, of sweet, runny verse that occasionally found its sticky way into the
Island Bleat
. Cud refused to stoop that low.
I don't throw pearls at swine, man.

“You were with him.”

“I was there
for
him. It was Christmas Day, and he was so alone…and he wrote a poem for me as a present. In return I had no gift to give but my love.” Felicity had an uncommon speech defect: she talked like a greeting card. “We shared the night. I couldn't bear–and didn't dare–leave him alone.”

“The matter must be very stressful for him.”

“I'm not sure if you understand, Mr. Beauchamp, he's truly despondent, he talked about wanting to ‘depart this vale of tears.' That's the expression he used, it's not mine.”

“Yes, he does tend to romanticize his situation. Felicity, let me repeat, and I've told you dozens of times, Cudworth is competently represented. I have nothing but the highest esteem for Mr. Pomeroy.”

“Cudworth can't find him. He's like, hiding from Cud, and his case is coming up in a month and a half!” Emotional now, tears building. “My Cuddlybear.”

“I'll get in touch with Mr. Pomeroy later today. Now you go back to Cud and tell him to stop using expressions like vale of tears.” He was about to race off with his fish heads but stalled. “Do you know where Margaret went?”

“I think she made an appointment with Reverend Al.”

That was not what he wanted to hear.
You're his friend, Al, you'll have to break the news. I can't even look at him.

He joined Nick on the
Blunderer
with a hearty, ill-felt, “Let's go fishing!”

A few hours later, their shiny offerings unanimously rejected by the wily salmon, their two undersized crabs returned to freedom, Arthur and Nick pulled into Hopeless Bay, to the general store, in search of more accessible prey. A frozen pizza must suffice for dinner tonight–but no, Arthur decided, pizza is poor contrition; he will offer Margaret the amends of a winter garden salad and his famous hearty pepper pot.

Nick helped Arthur tie up but stayed aboard with some electronic gizmo he'd brought. He hadn't talked much while fishing but listened politely to Arthur's grumblings about the disastrous Christmas of 2008. “You're letting things get to you, Grandpa,” he'd said.

A hush as Arthur passed by the coffee lounge. Then a snort. A giggle. Emily LeMay's coo of sympathy: “There's always a spare bed at my place, you poor thing.” Arthur decided not to invite further ridicule by asking if anyone had seen Margaret today.

“Heard things didn't go too smooth for Christmas up your way.” Makepeace, the lugubrious storekeeper.

“A little bump in the flow chart of life.” Maybe Arthur ought to move back to the city, where one's life is not a glaringly open book.

He found himself gazing down on a jar stuffed with small bills and labelled
Cud Brown Defence Fund
. Makepeace said, “I hear he's got a cheap legal aid lawyer you wouldn't hire for a parking ticket.”

Even Makepeace was in on the conspiracy. The island was united in an unseemly campaign to shame Arthur into representing a duly certified permanent local, a title conferred on those who have survived Garibaldi for at least a decade.

Winnie Gillicuddy, Garibaldi's pugnacious centenarian,
called from among shelves. “I'll ask again. Where's the goddamn oatmeal?”

“Winnie, set yourself down over a cup of tea, and I'll find what you need.”

“Abraham Makepeace, you stop patronizing me. I'm not blind, just tell me…What is this poison? Honey-coated corn puffs. You should be ashamed of yourself.” A whack of her stick, a sound of cascading boxes. Unfazed, she stepped over the spillage, kicking boxes from her path, triumphantly clutching her oatmeal. “And you, Arthur Beauchamp, you should be ashamed of yourself too.”