The Western Light (22 page)

The Heartbreaking Story of Sal and John Pilkie

 

Sal was going on thirteen when she fell in love with John. The Pilkies were Tubby's second cousins by marriage and after Mrs. Dault ran away with a beer salesman, Mrs. Pilkie used to cook dinners for Tubby and Sal. When the Pilkies weren't at the Western Light, the two families were knit tight.

The winter John turned seventeen Tubby helped Mrs. Pilkie with the birthday party. By then, Roy Pilkie had drowned. Tubby found toboggans for John's guests and he made John a bonfire by the harbour after the kids had finished tobogganing down Bug House hill. While the other kids roasted marshmallows, John kept jumping over the flames. Sal didn't think much about it until John took her aside and asked why she didn't notice how hard he was working to get her attention. Sal had had a crush on John since grade one, but he was five years older. She felt touched when he admitted he felt the same way she did.

They started going steady, and they stayed sweethearts all the time Sal was in high school. After John was discovered by a scout his life changed. Sal said he began thinking highly of himself, although he still came home every so often to keep track of Mrs. Pilkie, who depended on John to pay her household bills. When John started playing for the Oshawa Colts, he and Sal got engaged. Sib was playing for the Colts too, but Sal wasn't interested in anybody except John. Then John started playing for the Detroit Red Wings; the next thing Sal knew, John was engaged to her schoolmate, Peggy Wilson. Sal had been the one to introduce John to Peggy, a quiet, brown-haired girl with buckteeth. Peggy had come down with polio when she was two; she walked with a limp, like me, and Sal hadn't considered Peggy competition. “No offence, Mouse, eh?” Sal asked. I said none was taken, because I wanted to hear what happened next. Sal wrote John demanding an explanation for his engagement to Peggy. He wrote back that Sal had stopped answering his letters, so he gave up on her. Later, Sal found out that Mrs. Pilkie had picked up John's letters at the post office, saying she would give them to Sal. She never did.

In those days, Mrs. Pilkie worked at the post office. She thought Sal wasn't good enough for her son. The postman found out about Mrs. Pilkie hiding her son's letters and told Sal. For three years, Sal was too hurt to speak to Mrs. Pilkie. But the damage was done. John was already married with a baby girl on his hands. When John burned up his wife and child, Sal decided Mrs. Pilkie had done her a favour.

“But his concussion made him do it,” I said.

“I know Doc Bradford feels different and I respect him for that,” Sal replied, her voice low and confidential. “But John always had a temper. When he was mad, he was hopping. And he always liked fire, eh? Think of him jumping over that bonfire when we were teenagers.”

I didn't try and argue. What was the point? If John did what he did by mistake, then Sal's whole life was ruined. Better to think of him as a bad man so she couldn't be hurt again.

40

THE DAY THAT LITTLE LOUIE HAD PROMISED TO SNEAK US IN TO see John in the Bug House infirmary arrived. It was two Fridays later. The day with a big “X” on it in Little Louie's date book. True to her word, my aunt drove Ben and me over to the Bug House after school. In our station wagon, Ben explained how we should act. In the “Old-Man-So-and-So” voice Ben's father used when he wanted Ben to listen, Ben told us not to say “the Bug House.” We were not to call the hospital “the loony bin” either, or “the nuthouse,” even though lots of people did. And we shouldn't gossip about patients howling at the full moon, because there wasn't a shred of truth to it. Nor were we to call the patients “inmates” or refer to them as “criminal lunatics.” If a patient was a lunatic, he didn't know right from wrong, so how could he be a criminal lunatic? I'd heard some of Ben's rules before, but most of them were new as far as my aunt was concerned. Pretty soon she was laughing her head off at how seriously Ben was taking himself. Little Louie was only eight years older than me and I couldn't help thinking that my aunt was really a kid at heart herself. She acted like she was playing hooky from school although she looked the most grown-up I'd ever seen her. She'd trimmed her bangs, and she wore a short, colour co-ordinated skirt and blouse; the turquoise shade brought out the blue in her heavy lidded eyes. She had on a short Persian lamb jacket even though it was below freezing outside. The seams of her nylons were straight.

Like Ben, I wore my padded snowsuit. My hair was combed back into a ponytail under its hood. I'd daubed my lips slightly (well, ever so slightly) with Candied Apple, my aunt's Revlon lipstick. I was carrying our gift — the jar of Medonte honey I'd borrowed from our pantry.

The hospital infirmary was on the top floor of a brick farmhouse on the hospital grounds. We entered through its basement door, sneaking glances at the workshop where patients were hammering and sawing wood. Sib was in plain view, strutting back and forth like a bandmaster. The patients were making pews for the local church, Little Louie whispered as we peeked into the gloomy room. It was so dingy we could barely make out the hulking shapes of office desks and chairs piled up by the walls. The sight gave me the willies. What if I was one of them, and not the daughter of Doc Bradford? What if I had to slave away for no money in the Bug House basement? “There, but for the grace of God,” as my father put it.

Upstairs, in the front hall, a nurse stopped the three of us. Ben and I smiled politely up at her. Little Louie said, “I'm with
The Chronicle
. These are my children.”

“Oh, all right, dear.” The nurse smiled back a little tentatively and walked away. When Little Louie was sure the nurse wasn't coming back, we crept up a flight of stairs and down a long hallway. The walls were hung with the same weird oil paintings that hung in our house. In every painting, people were paddling canoes on calm northern lakes but none of the paddlers had eyes or mouths.

Suddenly, Little Louie flattened her back against the wall and motioned for us to do the same. At the end of the hall, Chief Doucette was sitting at a desk, a billy club resting in front of him. A revolver bulged from the shoulder holster that criss-crossed his white shirt. Slowly, the chief stood up and stared in our direction with a frank, blind look. I realized he didn't see us, because he was thinking about something else. “Quick. In here!” Little Louie whispered and tugged us into an alcove. The sound of the chief's footsteps echoed past us down the hardwood floor. When the footsteps faded away, we hurried past a bedroom where patients lay in cots reading or gazing into space. An old woman without any hair cried, “What happened to your leg, little girl?”

“It's all right,” Little Louie called softly. “We're on our way to see a patient.” The woman sank back on her bed. Ben whispered, “Mrs. Gruen won't tell. She can't remember things.” Little Louie nodded. Somewhere nearby, a man was coughing. The three of us stopped to listen. “John,” I whispered.

Sure enough, John was in the last bedroom, lying in bed in striped pyjamas. Jordie was sitting nearby in a chair, flipping through a scrapbook. One of John's hands was handcuffed to the metal headboard. “Jumping Jehosephat!” he waved with his uncuffed hand. “Am I seeing things or have two beautiful women just walked in?”

He pointed at the edge of his bed. My aunt sank down gracefully on his mattress, crossing her long legs in their nylons and opening her jacket so John could see her pretty turquoise blouse.

Ben and I remained standing in our snowsuits. “We're on guard duty,” I explained. John nodded solemnly.

“I don't know about you, Louisa, but the kids should scram.” Jordie jumped up. “Chief Doucette will be back in a couple of minutes.”

“No, you scram, Jordie,” John replied. “Go distract the Chief, eh?”

“Okay, but make it snappy,” Jordie said on his way out.

“Louisa, look what Mary has brought me!” John held up my jar of Medonte honey. “It's fresh too. Made this year, it says here.”

My aunt smiled and my heart sank. The Candied Apple lipstick looked pretty against her big white orderly teeth. It did not look nearly as nice on mine.

“It was thoughtful of Mary, wasn't it, son?”

“Yes, Mr. Pilkie,” Ben replied.

“John. Call me John, eh?” Without waiting for an answer, he pointed to the scrapbook that Jordie had been looking at. “Maybe you and Mary want to look at my pictures while Louisa and I talk.” Ben picked it up, and we stared bug-eyed at a picture of a young John Pilkie in a dressing room with a bunch of toothless, sweaty men. Using an upended trophy, one player was pouring champagne into John's open mouth.

“That was taken the night we won the Stanley Cup. In those days I was somebody, eh? Not like now. Now here's Sib and me with the Oshawa Colts.” John tapped a photo of two slim young men leaning over their hockey sticks. Ben and I didn't recognize Sib without his bald head and pot-belly.

“The Colts were a lot nicer than the Wings, I can tell you that.” He coughed again, covering his mouth with a handkerchief. “Those NHL managers, eh? You're just a slab of meat as far as they're concerned. But forget I said that. How's the skating coming, Mary?”

“I … I can't stand up very well.”

“It's true, Mr. Pilkie,” Ben said.

“Her balance will come. It's her posture, son. She needs to keep her head up. And bend at her knees and ankles, not from her waist … Now what's that noise?” He cupped his hand to his ear. Down the hall, we heard Dr. Shulman's raspy chuckle and Morley's off-hand rumble. There was another voice, low and sarcastic. It was Dr. Torval, Dr. Shulman's friend.

“Quick now, Louisa, you hide in the closet. And Mary, you and the boy under the bed!” My aunt obeyed him, closing the closet door quietly while he lifted up the bedspread and we crawled underneath in our bulky snowsuits. Luckily, the bedspread hung almost to the ground.

“Gentlemen! What can I do for you?” John asked in a hearty voice.

“The boys have a few questions to ask you, John,” my father said, and I imagined Morley looking down at John with his sad healer's eyes. “Chief Doucette's going to uncuff you. Then he'll wait in the hall until I call him. All right, chief?”

There was a clink of metal as Chief Doucette unlocked John's handcuffs, followed by the sound of footfalls leaving the room. “Okay, do your worst, eh?” John said.

Dr. Shulman and Dr. Torval talked in deep low voices, like Doomsday judges. “How do you feel when you think about your crime?” Dr. Shulman said. “Would you have done anything differently?”

“The day Peggy and baby Sheila burned up was the worst day of my life.”

“Were you angry at the time?” Dr. Torval asked.

“I couldn't think clearly. My concussion affected my judgment, eh?”

“You walked off these grounds in June,” Dr. Torval said. “Do you call that using good judgment?”

“Well, sir. No offence, but I can't agree with that. As I told Doc Shulman, I wanted to get attention for my case.”

“And what's this about roughing up a guard?” Dr. Torval added. “Mr. Beaudry says you tried to choke him with a sheet.”

“I was going to send you a note, Henry,” Dr. Shulman said sounding embarrassed. “Sib admitted he'd been riding John pretty hard.”

“Sib has never liked me, sir,” John replied. “He wanted to play for the NHL, but he drank too much beer. He's held it against me ever since.”

“You have an answer for everything, don't you, Pilkie?” Dr. Torval asked. “Well, you've got nerve. I'll say that. What I'd like to know is whether you're free of your fits of aggression.”

“Tell them how you feel, John,” Morley said.

“I save my anger for the rink, Doc Bradford. Then I let her rip. If you can't beat 'em on the rink then you can't whip 'em in the alley, am I right?”

“Try to be serious, son,” my father said. “Do you feel fine? Is the hockey helping?”

“It sure is, Doc Bradford. I feel like a new man,” John said.

“You feel differently now,” Dr. Torval says. “What about your wife and child? Would you do the same thing today if your wife got up your nose again?”

We heard the rustle of covers being thrown off, and then the headboard moved sideways as a pair of bare feet smacked the floor. John's feet were so close I could touch his heels. I glanced at Ben and he put a finger to his lips.

“What did you say, Doc? Are you insulting my wife?”

“I was asking how you feel about your wife.”

“No, you weren't. You were saying I murdered Peggy because she was a bitch.”

Morley's black wingtips creaked closer until they rested by John's bare feet. “Get back in bed,” my father said gruffly. “Now. I mean it, son.”

“No way, Doc Bradford. Not until he apologizes about insulting Peggy.”

“Calm yourself, Pilkie,” Dr. Torval said. “Chief, get in here.” Footsteps pounded into the room. Suddenly, the bedsprings dipped so low the mattress touched our heads before it bounced up again. Terrified, Ben and I crouched lower. Above our heads, we heard a deep, wheezing gasp and then a man groaned in pain. A moment later, the groaning switched to an awful, choking noise that sounded like somebody being strangled.

“That's enough, chief,” Morley said. The choking noises stopped.

“No more lip, okay, Pilkie?” Chief Doucette said. “Or next time I'll stick this down your throat and make you swallow it.”

John mumbled, “Jesus Christ,” and Morley said, “Thattaboy, son. You'll see. Everything's going to be fine. Just do what Chief Doucette says.”

From the hall came the sound of squeaking wheels. “Sorry to interrupt, Dr. Shulman,” a woman said. “I'm here to take John to hydrotherapy. He'll go in the wheelchair. But Chief Doucette has to cuff him to it.”

“All right, Jeanie,” Dr. Shulman replied. “We were just leaving. Goodbye, John. Stay calm now.” The men said goodbye and the squeak of the wheelchair grew fainter, which meant John was leaving, too. When we were sure they'd gone, my aunt hurried out of the closet. She and Ben helped me up and we tiptoed down the hall so we didn't disturb the bald-headed woman.

Once outside, we couldn't stop talking about what Chief Doucette did to John. Ben thought the Chief gave John a Chinese wrist burn. I thought the Chief must have pressed his billy club against John's windpipe. My aunt hissed that John didn't do himself any favours by getting angry. That shut Ben and me up for a while.