He did not park in the visitors’ lot at the hospital, where they charged a toll. Instead he parked on a gravel patch at a small construction site a little way down the street. Then he went down the sidewalk, through the hospital entrance, and up to see his grandmother. He didn’t stay long—she was drugged and sleepy. He delivered the items he’d brought, and he stood looking at her and fighting the constriction of his throat.
He was going back across the gravel patch, thinking about Emily, and how the city had taken her away for the weekend, when the boys jumped him. They’d been waiting in a wood-panelled station wagon. They piled out and set on him hard from all directions before he could even make sense of what was happening. He felt knuckles slugging the side of his head. Someone punched him above his right eye. Someone kicked him in the thigh and he stumbled, and they pushed him over into a ditch alongside the gravel. He raked damp snow off rotting leaves as he slid down. He could feel his forehead swelling.
Roger stood on the edge of the ditch and told Pete to stay the fuck away from the Heron Heights girls.
—Four of you, said Pete.
Roger came down and kicked Pete in the stomach, driving the air out of him. He thought he might vomit. Then Pete heard the station wagon pulling away and they were gone. He hauled himself up. There were leaves clinging to his back, leaves in his hair. Nobody had been around to see anything. He managed to get himself into his car, where he sat for a long time, beaten, ashamed.
T
he radiator made soft clanking noises. Early headlights moved through the predawn outside the window. Lee was sweat-sodden on the pullout bed. First he dreamed the old dream, the boarding house basement, the crippled caretaker shuffling towards him. Then he dreamed he was in solitary confinement in the penitentiary. Brick and steel, enclosed on all sides. In this hole there was no door.
Workless afternoons prior to his hospital visits, Lee would walk the town. It was a strange time for him, when idleness gave way to dark thoughts. Bud frequently occurred to him, the jokes he’d get wrong, and particularly the image of him face down in the bottom of the barge. He thought also of Donna, and found himself looking for things he might get the family for Christmas. Donna used to make Luke and John write to Lee annually, this time of year. Once, a couple of years ago, they’d written about Lee spending Christmas Day with them sometime in the future, after he would be released. The idea had appealed to him, more than he cared to admit, but he hadn’t yet been invited. He didn’t know how to ask.
Everywhere around him was the bustling industry of the holiday season, the store windows packed with signs peddling sales,
the ceaseless clatter of Salvation Army bells. Lee went about in his work boots with his collar turned up.
One day, Lee went into a furniture store he’d passed many times. The showroom was warmly lit with crafted desk lamps. Every article of furniture was made of unvarnished wood. He was drawn to a dining room table, ten feet by five. The tabletop was an inch and a half thick. He ran his hand along the rasping smoothness of the naked wood. A grey-bearded man appeared from somewhere.
—All our pieces are handcrafted, said the man. This table is solid oak.
—You make this? said Lee. It’s a hell of a nice piece.
—Thank you. We like to keep our prices negotiable too.
—I got Christmas coming up. I got some people to buy for. Where does the price start out before you negotiate it?
—This table starts at three hundred dollars.
Lee laughed dryly. He seemed unable to withdraw his hand from the sanded tabletop. He cleared his throat and said: Actually, I was wondering if you ever hire. I’m a carpenter myself.
The bearded man nodded.
—For the most part we’re a family business. And to be honest with you, we’re a little slow-going right now. But I’d be happy to put your information into our files.
With some reluctance Lee withdrew his hand from the table.
—You got the time by any chance?
The bearded man had a silver timepiece on his belt. He brought it out. With his timepiece and his beard he was like something out of the olden days: It’s two o’clock, said the man.
—Two o’clock. Well, I’ve got some things to do.
What he had to do was meet Wade Larkin at three o’clock. After the barge accident and the Ministry of Labour inquest, Larkin said he wanted to meet with Lee more frequently, once every three weeks or so, especially since Lee was out of work. They were set to meet, today, in the same spare municipal office
where they’d always met, and this appointment would be the last Larkin would see him before Christmas. Not that the meetings ever amounted to much. Larkin couldn’t do anything to get Lee a job, or get Irene into her own room at the hospital. He would just ask his questions and nod and make notes in his notebook, and confirm, as always, that Lee had Larkin’s business card in case of any trouble. At least today Lee would be able to tell him that he’d tried to get a job.
Lee went to the front door of the furniture store. He paused, looked back over his shoulder at the table: I do think that piece is a beauty.
—Thank you, said the grey-bearded man. Happy holidays.
Lee went back onto the street. He bought a pack of cigarettes and some lottery tickets from the pharmacy. He wanted to buy some booze, as well, before the liquor store closed. He had just enough time, perhaps, to pick up a bottle of rye, walk home and stash it, and arrive at the meeting with his parole officer empty-handed.
That night Speedy was on the drums at the North Star. The band he was playing with was driving through Rolling Stones covers. People whirled. Garish coloured lights beamed through the smoke.
Lee and Helen had had a few drinks, and he was feeling good. Helen said she’d had no idea he could be so goddamn fun. Lee had seen Maurice over near the bar, eyeing the dance floor. Maurice nodded to him. In a booth, Helen sat across from him with her chin propped on her hand, smiling. She’d worn a chambray shirt unbuttoned low enough to show the deep crease between her breasts. She had her foot up between Lee’s thighs.
In the adjacent booth sat Gilmore and Arlene. Gilmore leaned over the plywood divider and clapped Lee on the shoulder and asked if they were enjoying themselves. Lee said they were. It was
Speedy who’d gotten them out here. Lee had had some drinks with Speedy a few nights earlier and he’d told Lee a band he jammed with was going to be at the roadhouse—would Lee and his lady friend come for some rock ‘n’ roll? Lee was feeling now like a big man.
Gilmore dropped back into his own booth.
—I didn’t know you had friends out here, called Helen.
—I’ve got a few.
She gave his thigh a friendly dig. He looked into the crowd and saw strangers moving to the music.
The band took a break and Lee got up to go to the men’s room. He studied the graffiti over the urinal. Someone had written
Sally D Is A Cocksucker.
There were black hairs on the drainplate.
He came out. Gilmore was waiting in the passageway, leaning on the brickwork with one hand in his pocket.
—Looks like you’re having a good time, said Gilmore.
—We’re having a good time, yeah.
—What would you say to going for a ride?
—You want to go for a ride someplace?
—Have a smoke.
Gilmore took out his Camel cigarettes and offered one to Lee.
—I told you before, said Lee.
—I know you did. It’s just a ride is all it is.
—Where is it you want to go?
—I have a business associate I’d like to visit. All you’re along for is just another pair of eyes and ears, that’s all. Lee took a long drag: Eyes and ears, said Lee.
—In business there’s a matter of appearances.
—You keep using that word,
business.
Gilmore laughed: Yes, I do.
He had a fifty-dollar bill folded between two fingers. He tucked it into Lee’s breast pocket. He said: On good faith, Lee. It was a hell of a bad accident you were in a few weeks ago. A raw deal
for a dependable guy. I want to see better things come your way.
—What about my lady friend?
—Come.
Gilmore showed Lee to the booth where he’d been sitting. Helen was in the booth with Arlene. They were laughing. Arlene looked up when she saw Gilmore.
—You keep Lee’s lady friend company, said Gilmore. You hear me?
—Yes, daddy.
—You’re going somewheres? said Helen.
Lee looked at the tabletop. Helen reached her arm behind him and patted his butt.
—Well, go on, Brown Eyes. Just give me a bit of money, will you?
He gave her a few dollars. He and Gilmore walked out shoulder to shoulder like old comrades. Out in the parking lot, Maurice was waiting at his Caballero.
—You were pretty sure, said Lee, quietly.
—Pretty sure about what, pal?
—That I’d come with you.
Gilmore just smiled.
They drove all the way back to town, to a row of frame houses along the rail line. The house they parked in front of had paint peeling from its siding. No sooner had the car come to a stop than two barking Rottweilers materialized behind a chain-link fence penning in the backyard.
A door opened on the crooked porch and the shape of a man shouted at the dogs. He came out and stood on the porch and looked at the car.
—Come on, Lee, said Gilmore.
Maurice did not get out of the car. Lee felt uneasy. During the drive into town it had occurred to him that maybe this was some
affair of old blood, though he couldn’t think of who or what, but maybe this was a house he would go into and not depart from.
The man on the porch was wearing unfastened work boots and a T-shirt, despite the cold. He was short but he looked like he pumped a lot of iron. He merely nodded when they came up. The dogs behind the fence seemed half berserk. Gilmore and Lee were led into a kitchen. The room was crammed with junk on the counters, engine parts, a twelve-ton jack. Through an opening, they could see into a living room where coloured Christmas lights were strung around a shuttered window. A young child was parked on the living room floor, watching a movie on a black-and-white cabinet TV.
The man closed the door to the porch. Turned the deadbolt.
Gilmore sat down at the kitchen table. He pushed aside a telephone from which a snarl of wires had been partially eviscerated.
A woman in a wheelchair rolled through the opening into the kitchen. She was thick-bodied, with grey hair in braids. Her legs were gone below the knees. She pulled up to the table. The man in the T-shirt leaned against the wall behind her. He glanced back into the living room, perhaps to check on the child.
—Gilmore, said the woman.
—Happy holidays, Jean.
—You got a new friend.
Gilmore looked back over his shoulder at Lee, smiling: Where are my manners? This is a good friend of mine. Say hello, Lee.
Lee nodded to the woman. She looked him up and down. There was something shrewd about her, calculating.
—You might think we came because of the Christmas season, said Gilmore. Friends calling on each other to spread cheer and all that.
The woman chuckled: The way you talk, Colin, I almost got the idea you think I’m just some young hussy.
—Jean, I wouldn’t think that of you for one second. Not one second.
Gilmore brought out a thick sheaf of money held together with a wire clasp. Lee saw twenties. There might be a thousand dollars in there. Gilmore held the money out to Jean and she took it and counted it.
—On good faith, said Gilmore.
—You’ll have the van before Christmas. The electronics too. The other things, I got here.
She gestured with her head. The man opened a door off the kitchen where Lee saw steps leading to a basement. The man went down.
Lee found the woman studying him again. He wondered once more, was this old blood, was he maybe going to be taken down to the fruit cellar and shot in the back of the head? He’d heard of such things happening, cons with serious history getting out of the pen, only to be found dead a short while later. He was digging deep to remember who he’d had particularly bad blood with. There were any number of names from his first five or six years—but that really was a long time ago, and he didn’t think any of them had ended up here, in his hometown.
Just then the child appeared in the kitchen. A little red-headed girl, maybe six years old. She came and stood beside the wheelchair and regarded Gilmore and Lee. The woman put a hand on the little girl’s head.
—And how are you, half-pint? said Gilmore.
The little girl shrugged: I’m okay.
—Beautiful, said Gilmore.
The man came back upstairs carrying a canvas duffle bag. There was something long and thin pushing out the side of the bag. A golf club, perhaps, but Lee doubted it. The man set the bag on the table in front of Gilmore. Gilmore unzipped the bag and glanced inside and zipped it back up before Lee could see what it held.
—Good, said Gilmore. Of course, there won’t be any need.
—The Bible says hear no evil see no evil, said the woman.
—Sure it does. It also says a man can get up and dance three days after you nail him to a chunk of wood.
Midmorning the next day, Lee woke with a bad hangover. Helen was snoring. Lee got up and for some time stared into the mostly empty refrigerator. He had enough food for today, that’s all. He thought of the money Gilmore had given him.
He boiled water for coffee and fried some eggs. His recollection of the rest of last night was dim. After they’d left the house in town they’d driven back to the North Star. He’d danced with Helen for awhile, he could remember that. Then there was a fight. Some townies, some hatchet-faced woman screaming at them. The woman jumped on a man’s back. Lee remembered Maurice wading into it, moving his big fists in steady articulations, but Gilmore had disappeared altogether. Lee had been bumped by a stranger, whom Lee then struck under the eye and in the side of the head because the stranger looked like he might be thinking about it. Lee remembered the hatchet-faced woman sitting spread-legged on the concrete floor, shrieking curses. He’d walked off into the dark then and he couldn’t remember much more. A car barrelling through the night. Cigarettes. Helen’s hand squeezing up his thigh. It was Speedy’s car. What hour?