The Disinherited

The Novels of Matt Cohen

Korsoniloff

Johnny Crackle Sings

The Disinherited

Wooden Hunters

The Colours of War

The Sweet Second Summer of Kitty Malone

Flowers of Darkness

The Spanish Doctor

Nadine

Emotional Arithmetic

The Bookseller

Last Seen

Elizabeth and After

R
ichard Thomas woke up, aware of a slight feeling of nausea, an acid line that stretched from the base of his throat to his stomach. He swallowed and rolled over, but the feeling persisted until finally, drowsy and resentful, he pushed and worked himself into a sitting position. He adjusted the blanket over his knees and rubbed his eyes. Outside the air was dark blue with the pre-dawn light. But the room itself was still uncertain and composed of shadows. Through the window he could see the silhouette of the maple tree that stood beside the house, shading the summer kitchen. The tree was old and brittle: two of its limbs had been sheared off by lightning and Richard Thomas was always saying that he should take it down before the rest of it fell over and caved in the roof. Sitting up, he felt better. He remembered that he had intended to sleep in. He thought of his son Erik, in the city, in his glass cage. He should be at home, to help with the haying in the summer. It wasn’t right to have to hire people. Richard Thomas’s shoulder was sore, and when he moved it he became aware of his stomach again. It hadn’t relaxed; it was just simmering. He had thought it was an ulcer, but the doctor had said it was diabetes and gave him a special diet. Miranda moved in her sleep, pushing into him for comfort. He slid his hand under the blanket and let it rest on her back. Her skin was smooth and hot. He considered waking her up; it had been more than a week, but then decided against it. The impulse was fading already.

He could see the brass handles on the dresser now, and folds in the blanket. He slid carefully out of bed, took his clothes off the chair, and walked slowly downstairs to the kitchen. Standing in front of the mirror, brushing his teeth, he looked old, even to himself. There were tiny red veins in the whites of his eyes and his flesh, beneath the surface of the sunburn, seemed pale and distant. He spat into the drain. He still had his own teeth, anyway. All the Thomases had good teeth. Not like Brian, half his age, who had false teeth already. He splashed water over his face, making sure to wash the sleep out of the corners of his eyes, and went back into the kitchen to make his tea. His stomach still wasn’t quite right. He poured the tea and sat down at the table. Automatically he reached out for the bottle of saccharine, rejected it, and took a spoon and a half of sugar.

He wrapped his hands around the teacup. It always amazed him to see Erik’s hands, the fingers slender and defined. His own were like battered sausages, covered with calluses and scars. “Like an old bull,” he said to himself. A few months ago, in the middle of winter, he and Miranda had driven into town to go to a movie. There had been a short about bullfighting. It had pleased him to see how many people it took to weaken the bull enough for the matador. The matador himself, making his fancy passes over a half-dead animal, hadn’t impressed him at all. He finished his tea and went outside.

It was still too early to do anything, Brian and Nancy wouldn’t be up for an hour. He walked past their trailer and through the barnyard towards the fields. His stomach was uneasy, but the movement distracted him, made it feel possible that he wouldn’t have to bring up. There was a place where he used to stand with Miranda when they were first married. She liked to walk with him there, after supper, and talk about what they would do with the farm. “Don’t you ever cry?” she had screamed at him one time. That was when he had gone there, angry over something, he couldn’t remember now, and sat for an hour, waiting for her. She came to him and they had started fighting again, shouting at each other. His parents had never argued, but he and Miranda, the first few years, fought over
everything. Some nights he had stormed out of the house and gone down to drink with Pat Frank and his twin brother Mark. He would never say why he was there, just sit in the kitchen and drink with the two men until dawn. Then, dazed and contrite, he would make his way home. If she was still angry, she would be wearing her nightgown and sleeping in the spare room. Otherwise, she would be in their bed, naked and patient.

When he and Miranda came back to the farm, his father had moved to a house in town. The house was long gone now, there was a supermarket there instead. Every Sunday his father would come out to the farm and eat dinner with them. Then, when it got dark, he would drive back. He had a housekeeper who lived in but he never brought her with him. When he came to dinner he seemed entirely disinterested in the farm. At first he asked polite questions about what Richard was doing, but eventually he didn’t even do that. After the funeral, Richard Thomas had cried. He had lain on his bed, shaking with grief and rage at his father’s withdrawal. Miranda had kissed the tears from his cheeks. “It’s good to cry,” she had said. Her lips had been moist and cool. With the tips of her fingers she had traced patterns on his skin.

The sun spread a narrow yellow band along the horizon. Richard Thomas, a slow-moving, stocky man in his mid-sixties, worked his way down the hill, away from the barnyard and the house and the trailer. His stomach felt worse; with each step it bounced uneasily, precariously, but he thought that the motion might help. He wanted to go back to the lake and watch the sun rise there. They had told him to sell his waterfront for cottages, had said that his taxes would go up, that he would be better off without it. The man from the real estate company, sure of himself in his striped shirt and tie, had sat across the kitchen table from him and pulled out the forms from his briefcase, already filled out and just waiting for Richard Thomas’s signature. “Fifty thousand dollars,” the man had said. “We’ll give you fifty thousand dollars for the waterfront and the island.” He said it in a low voice, as if the mention of so much money might scare Richard Thomas to death and prevent him from signing the deed. “I was brought up on a farm myself,” the man had said. “I
know how it is.” He helped himself to some of Richard’s tobacco and expertly rolled himself a cigarette, backwards, the way the farmers do it. He pulled out a cigarette lighter, one of the ones that hold their fluid in clear plastic. It had a naked woman etched onto the plastic. He saw Richard Thomas looking at it and held it out to him. “Ever seen one of these?”

Miranda, sitting on the couch, spoke for the first time. “I gave him one for Christmas,” she said. “Five years ago.”

The man put the lighter back in his pocket. He picked one of the wooden matches out of the glass on the table and struck it with his thumbnail. He took a map of the farm out of his briefcase and spread it out in front of him on the table. “We’ll put a road in here,” he said. “You won’t even see it from the house.”

The hay fields, freshly cut, looked smooth and manicured in the early morning light. The toes of his boots were black with dew. He stopped at the gate to the maple bush, deliberating whether to lift it open or climb over it. He leaned on the gate, decided against a cigarette, tried to remember when the thing with his stomach had started. Sometimes he reassured himself by saying that he had always had a weak stomach, that nothing had changed; but he knew better. He felt dizzy and sat down in the grass. He leaned his back against the gatepost and lit a cigarette. There was nothing wrong with sitting down, not when he hadn’t slept properly. The doctor had given him some pills for dizziness; but he had left them in the house, in the bathroom cabinet where they had been put the day he got them. They were right beside the vitamin pills that Miranda had bought him after he complained about not having enough energy. He had watched them chase the bull on horses, tearing into its hide and slashing it with their strange spears. The bull, bleeding from its flanks and exhausted and disoriented, had finally turned on one of its tormentors, pinning horse and rider against the wall of the ring. Richard Thomas squeezed the cigarette out between his thumb and forefinger, put it in his shirt pocket, and got to his feet. He opened the gate and then closed it behind him. It was easy, he had done it thousands of times, he couldn’t imagine why he had hesitated. He started to walk quickly, enjoying the feeling of the blood pumping through his body, the full
green smell of the trees and ferns. They had managed to pull the rider up over the wall but the horse had been gored.

He stopped to look in the sugar house. It hadn’t been used for over ten years, since Erik left. The arch had caved in but the building was still solid. Light came in through the cracks of the roof and stood in the air like thin white sheets. He lit his cigarette again and blew smoke towards the roof, watching it appear and disappear in the strips of light. He always did that, every time he came there. His father had shown it to him one spring, fifty years ago. “Here,” Simon Thomas had said, handing Richard his cigar, “you try it.” That, Richard realized, was the time when the problem had begun, the first time he could remember the feeling of ripe discontent in his stomach.

Walking slowly, it took longer than he had planned, and when he finally got to the beach the sun was already up. It hovered, just above the horizon, gradually cutting through the mist on the lake. He had always thought that after Erik was married he would let him build a summer cabin on the island. He had mentioned that once, before Erik left for college. It had been understood. But he wasn’t married and he didn’t want to come back to the farm. Erik had even once said to Brian, as if it was for him to say, that
he
should build a cottage there. “It must be hot in the trailer,” Erik had said. That was at Christmas, the only time he ever came home now.

Richard Thomas searched on the beach for flat stones and skipped them out across the water. When he threw the stones there were flashes of pain across his chest and left shoulder. He swung his arms around to loosen up but it just made him dizzy again. He sat down and lit another cigarette. The doctor had told him to quit smoking. He bent over to stub out the cigarette. As his hand moved towards the ground, the morning jolted and stopped. He pressed his left elbow against his ribs and tried to get a breath. He knew in the very centre of it there would be a place where he could gather himself and survive. It was as if some giant hand had wrapped around his ribs and was locking him into that one particular moment.