A
LTHOUGH
he had been awake since first light, Lauchlin did not get up. He lay there listening to the sounds of his mother stirring, then Tena. Johanna, hearing her, tapped on her door, asked if she could be of any help to her in this strange house, then Tena joined her in the hall and they descended the stairs together, their muted voices fading into the kitchen. Still he lay in bed, his eyes on the ceiling. Christ, how could he have seen that it was Cooper on that bicycle?
Did
he see? Or was he now giving to a face murky beneath a silly helmet the features of a man who had done God knew what? Maybe it wasn’t him, maybe it was an odd coincidence and if he asked around, someone would say yes, that was so-and-so, biking at night, he likes to do that, he’s kind of crazy that way, and they would tell him who his family was and where he lived.
Lauchlin got up when he heard a car. Through the curtain slit he saw Arsenault climb out of the cruiser and open the passenger door while Johanna walked Tena toward it and helped her inside. The constable said a few words to his mother and then drove away. She glanced up at Lauchlin’s window before she returned to the house. He could not have faced Tena in that kitchen this morning, she would have
heard in his voice the timbre of his own fear and uncertainty. What good would he be to her until he got this straight in his own head? Others were seeing to her, he’d have to leave her to them for now.
He sat on the floor, his face in his hands. Jesus, where would he go with all this? He fell into the rhythm of his sit-ups, they felt like davening, faster than usual, his teeth set hard, his breath hissing, he broke a hundred and he kept on until he groaned and his muscles burned and Johanna called up the stairs as if he were late for school.
“Where were you?” she said as he stood by the stove sipping coffee. “How could you stay in bed like that, things as they are?”
“I was out cold. You should have woke me.”
“She wouldn’t
let
me wake you, what do you think of that? Let him sleep, she said, he’ll be tired after last night. Well, I said, no more than you and the rest of us.”
“I’m sorry I missed her. Where has she gone?”
“The young Mountie came for her. It seems they found the van.”
“What?”
“Over in Glen Tosh, in the woods.”
“And Clement?”
“Just the van. That’s all he’d say. Oh Lord, any ray of hope, any. I can’t even talk about it.”
His mother went out and he thought she was going down to the store, but he caught sight of her out the parlour window. She was at her flowers, the spout of a watering can spraying the deep yellow heads of golden glow. He watched her as he finished his second cup of coffee. She was leaving the store to him. All right. He deserved it.
As he started down the hill, she called out to him, “Morag phoned yesterday, I forgot! She’s home!”
Morag. His mind seized her name, its sanity, its warmth.
News was sought and shared at the store, locals with scanners knew the Mounties had been back and forth, some pulled in long enough to find out what Lauchlin or anybody had heard, curious
outsiders hung around, warming their hands in the glow of someone else’s predicament. Lauchlin made no mention of Cooper or the fish truck, but word of blood had gotten around somehow, flaring into speculations, quite vocal among the fans of forensic crime shows on satellite TV, but no one seemed to know whose blood it was exactly or where, someone had heard it was inside the van but Lester Peters said they hadn’t even found the truck yet, so how could that be? Dr. Rechtsmann Schroeder, Rechts to his friends, a college professor from Massachusetts who’d bought a summer cottage down Ferry Road years ago, spoke up, coddling in the crook of his arm two large cans of barbecue-flavoured stew. Behind the myopic lenses of his glasses his eyes scrutinized them ambiguously and distantly, the social grievances that coloured his conversations were sometimes, though not always, shared by other customers, such as the Canadian propensity for coddling violent felons, one of whom might well be at work in St. Aubin right now, Schroeder said, and considering the patty-cake penalties meted out in Canadian courts and the generous conditions of release, probably a parolee. Regarding the blood, Dr. Schroeder said you had to know how it got there, how long ago, and whom it belonged to, just finding blood wasn’t much use to anybody, not yet, grave evidence though it appeared to be. But his cool reasoning had little effect on his audience, everyone preferred leaping to their own conclusions. Lauchlin did not confirm that blood had been found, pleading ignorance, his role had been only to bring Tena to his mother’s, but the wilder facts that others bandied about he tried to cool down. No, no, Tena had not been shot at last night, that’s not why the Mounties came back, she was okay,
is
okay, no, Clement didn’t return and surprise an intruder, this from the bread man making his delivery who’d thought he’d seen the fish van on the road, but he conceded as he slung the loaves on the shelves by the door that maybe that had been the day before yesterday. No, Clement was not in the hospital in Baddeck, no, his old partner had not been arrested in Sydney but he
was, more than likely, a “person of interest” to the RCMP. Lauchlin ducked into the backroom now and then just to get away.
Tena might be in her house but he held off phoning. The news of the van would have hit her hard. And there he’d been this morning, the slugabed, not in the kitchen, just his mother making breakfast for her. If he had told the Mounties about the cyclist, that would be over, they could have made of it what they would, but he hadn’t told them or anyone else and now he was afraid of the consequences: if Cooper were the man on the bike, oh, it would matter, to him and to Tena. But Cooper on a bicycle? No, no, the light of day told Lauchlin no, it could not be. Maybe later he would have to reveal what he saw, but he couldn’t now—he had to turn it over and over first, detail for detail, until he was certain he understood just what he’d seen and what he hadn’t.
Shane had the radio on behind the counter but there was nothing to be had from it but music or a national program that had nothing to do with Cape Breton, let alone St. Aubin Island.
“If this was Halifax, they’d have a TV crew down here,” Shane said, “we’d be talking into a camera right now, Lauch.”
“What a shame.”
People came and went, Lauchlin said as little as possible about the night before, about what he knew. He felt numb, like he’d been hit and couldn’t get his legs back. No, he didn’t know Clement’s wife that well, he told Lois Lefevre, an attractive woman in a white halter and white shorts, wearing a quick reddish tan on her way back from a cottage weekend, but yes, he and Clement were friends and he was clinging to a sliver of optimism, he didn’t like all the gloomy talk, After all, he said, how much do we know? He noticed Lois’s smooth legs as she went out the door but she aroused not a hint of sexual feeling in him, as she had so often in the past, and that alarmed him, that it could die in him,
would
die, sometime. But Morag was back, nothing was dead there, or was it? God, she was probably engaged by
now, back from Greece, what was he thinking? Did she know about Clement? She must, it was on the news, St. Aubin Man Missing, and gossipy details, true or false, had surely raced up the west coast by now. What a relief it would be to drive to her house nevertheless and close himself away with her, even for an hour, the sea at their backs, he was hungry for that again, to sit at her table, he had to will himself not to slip away right now and find her, regardless.
Close to noon when the store was mercifully empty, Lauchlin told Shane he had a way with the public. “You can handle them. Tell Jenna Marie you’ll be her press agent someday, promote her writing career.”
“No chance for that, Lauch. She’s heading for England after she graduates, so she says. And she’s not taking anything of me with her, that’s for sure.”
“What now?”
“Over, by the looks of it. She’s leaving this stretch of the world behind, Lauch. It’s too small-time, like me.”
“Worse things have happened, Shane.”
“Sure, I’ll survive. Not the woman for me, to be honest. Maybe I’m just a bachelor by nature anyway, like you, eh?”
“You’ve got lots of time to find out your nature.”
On the back steps, under the breezy leaves, Lauchlin took out his brother’s letter, scanned the pages in the shifting shadow and sun. He’d been carrying it around like some kind of missal, slipping it into his pocket in the morning, grabbing a passage when he could.
It’s good to be taken out of myself for a bit, Lauch, I’ve found that very worthwhile. Improves the vision. I can see farther, wider.
MALCOLM’S HOUSE WAS CLOSE
to the road and he was standing at his mailbox, talking into the passenger window of Sam Anderson’s old pickup as Lauchlin pulled up behind it. A dark-green bicycle lay
in the truck bed among Sam’s stippled ladders and paint buckets. Lauchlin got out and looked it over, Sam watching him in the rearview mirror.
“Want to buy her, Lauchie?” he yelled.
Malcolm stepped back where he could see Lauchlin. “Sam found that down Big Bank.”
“Did he? Worse for the wear.”
Sam climbed slowly out of his cab. He’d been painting houses for years and his clothing was smudged and flecked with a succession of colours, on his glasses a mist from the latest job. He pulled off his spattered baseball cap, exposing grey, windswept hair. “I spotted her this morning, you know, when I got out of me truck. Hit a hole and a bucket flew out, had to fetch her. There’s this here bike lying partway in the culvert like.”
“When?” Lauchlin said.
“Hour ago maybe.”
“You planning to ride it, Sam?” Malcolm said.
“It’s not rideable,” Lauchlin said quickly. A few spokes were stove, a wheel rim twisted, handlebars askew, chain off the sprocket. The tires were khaki with mud. Surely it was not the same bike.
“No,” Sam said slowly. “But it was a little while ago. Them scratches is fresh.”
“You might want to mention it to the Mounties,” Malcolm said.
“What for?”
“You heard about Clement MacTavish?”
“I heard he’s missing, poor devil,” Sam said.
“They found his fish van early this morning,” Lauchlin said.
“They’ve found him too.”
“Where the hell did you hear that, Malk? Jesus Christ, I’ve heard nothing but rumours tripping over each other all morning long, up one side and down the other. You’ve got your own version?”
“Easy. I’m telling you the man is dead. Shot.”
“Well my Lord,” Sam said, sitting down on the running board.
“But how do you
know?
” Lauchlin said.
“My cousin, Molly? Molly Red George? She was on the phone to me a bit ago. I started for the store, I had to get out, when I saw Sam here. Peter, her nephew, he’s a woodcutter, the one who located Clement’s van, way up a logging road. He’d seen fresh ruts, tracked it. Brought the Mounties in. Then later, a good distance from the van, they came across poor Clement’s body. Been dragged toward a brook and left face down in mud, like the bad footing made the killer give up.”
“Clement was a big man,” Lauchlin said, more to himself, “a good two-twenty at least,” as if this detail could quell the tightness in his chest. “How can you be sure about this?”
“Molly is. I trust her. It took the wind out of me too.”
“What about the bicycle, Malcolm?” Sam said.
“Maybe nothing about it, I don’t know. Some queer circumstances to it, that’s all. Effie next door said a Mountie was asking along here had anybody seen a man on a bicycle.”
“Did they?” Lauchlin said, touching a loop of heavy manila twine on the handlebars.
“Emma Landry, you know, retired from the post office? She got up in the wee hours to let her dog out for a pee the other night and the dog ran off to the road. She’ll trail anybody who passes by, friend or foe it wouldn’t matter to Tippy, off she goes trotting after someone on a bicycle. Emma heard the fella cursing, she thinks he gave Tippy a good boot because the dog yips and comes limping back, her tail down, you know?”
“What in God’s name,” Sam said. “They coming after us on bikes now, are they?”
“But did she
see
him, the man on the bike?” Lauchlin said.
“No, he was past her. Voice didn’t sound like a kid though. The
police have to check it all out, you know, in a situation like this. Every crazy little thing.”
“Maggie liked that MacTavish fella,” Sam said, climbing into his cab. “She won’t like to hear this at all.” Shaking his head, he drove off.
“God. Do you have any liquor handy?” Lauchlin said.
“You know where I keep it. Let’s go up.”
He walked Malcolm slowly up to his porch, the going so painful for him he could barely talk until he eased himself into a chair. Lauchlin felt like an invalid himself, crouched, bent.
“This is the worst, Malk. The worst.”
“I thought maybe you’d heard already.”
“It hadn’t reached the store, and I wouldn’t have believed it if I’d heard it there.”
“You can be sure Tena knows by now. You going to see her?”
“When I get myself together.”
Lauchlin fetched the whisky from a sideboard, two glasses from the kitchen. A heavy, engulfing sadness was spreading through him. He poured a drink for Malcolm, then himself, two good swallows, and brought them to the porch. “To Clement MacTavish,” Malcolm said. “God rest him, now and forever.” They touched glasses and drank. “He’d been shot through the eye, that’s what it looked like to Peter. He knows guns, he’s a hunter.”
“Jesus.” Lauchlin stared into the woods on the other side of the road. A pipe emerged from the bank above the ditch. Spring water flowed from it and people often stopped their cars there to fill jugs, it had been flowing like that as long as Lauchlin could remember, Archie Bugle’s water. “The forest is different to the Mi’kmaq. Did you know that, Malk?”
“I couldn’t say I did, Lauchlin.”
“It’s Chaos, the unknown, the unconscious, no map for it. And
the deeper you go into it, the stranger things get. What’s real and unreal is hard to distinguish.”