Antarctica (14 page)

I started praying. I haven't prayed in years. I didn't think I'd ever see home again. My birthday's coming up soon. I went through my whole life in my head,
wondering
what it was I'd done to deserve this. I remember
bullying
this little kid in the first grade, thinking God was getting me back. A little cross-eyed kid with slanty handwriting. I used to bully him up good in the baseball park. Funny, the things you think of. But I mean, there I was, out on the Mississippi Delta, no land in sight,
sitting
in a boat with a murderer, some guy I knew from a bar who comes out and gets drunk and tells me he's just murdered his old lady. Then he's sobering up and realised he's told me. What was I supposed to do? Butch had the rudder. I didn't know what to do. I mean, what would you do?

I was just thinking I could go for him, try and get him overboard, when he made a move. Butch stood up and I thought that was it. You should never stand up in a boat. I thought my time had come. The boat started wobbling. Butch tugged at his belt, looking for his hunting knife, I figured, and I'm reeling in the line, watching him out of the corner of my eye. That's right, all this time I was still casting the line, acting like nothing was wrong, like all he was telling me was fishing stories; but then he stands up and opens his pants. I thought maybe he was a queer, that he was gonna rape me. But he just takes a piss over the edge. That's all. I thought about knocking him into the water, but I'd just made up my mind to do that when he sat back down again. I guess I just didn't have it in me.

My hands were shaking; I was having real trouble hooking the shrimp. The waves were rocking the boat and my stomach was acting up. I thought I might lose it. Then I remembered seeing a movie one time where this girl was taken by one of them serial killers and she keeps talking, keeps saying her name so he doesn't start forgetting she's real. She starts talking about her
childhood
and her family so it makes it harder to kill her. I
couldn't stand it, him not talking anyhow, so I start saying he should cast his line and quit fooling around. I'm acting normal, saying anything I can think of, acting like I never heard one word he said. Talking weather and fish and Mardi Gras, Cajun gigs, anything. Talked about my time in school and how I kissed this Oklahoma girl down at the pier when I was sixteen. I was praying I wouldn't hook anything 'cos I knew I wouldn't be able to get the thing off the hook. I was that shaky. But the terrifying part was he didn't say nothing! He just sat there, watching me. Before I started talking, he was looking off into the distance, but soon as I said anything, he looked straight at me. I must have talked for hours, saying every fool thing I could think of, but I still couldn't stand up and he still didn't talk back, even though I asked him questions. Hell, I don't know if he heard one word I said. He looked right through me. I gave up talking around dusk. I'd watched another boat pass and Butch wasn't helping me out none, so I went back to thinking. I thought if I ever got home, I'd stay home more, I'd quit drinking. I'd get rid of the shotgun and never drink another drop and go back to the church.

The sun was going down. It was real pretty, ain't that strange? I was thinking it was a pretty evening to go out on. I could see Butch watching it, turning his head when the boat turned. I thought it would be real nice if he could sing. I know that must sound crazy, but that's what I wanted; that would have made it easier, if he'd sing a song. Butch has the best voice I ever heard, anyplace.

Then he up and said something. He said, ‘What would you do?'

You'll have to understand, I was so goddam terrified. I thought all the talking was done.

I said, ‘What would I do what?'

‘What would you do if you came home and you knew she'd been humping some other guy all afternoon?'

I thought about it for a long time, thinking of the right thing to say; then I said, ‘I'd blow her brains out, Butch. I wouldn't think twice.'

You have to understand, I would have said anything.

And you know his answer? He looked at me with that grin of his and said: ‘I thought that's what you'd say.'

‘Then I'd get in the truck and I wouldn't stop till I reached Canada.' That's what I told him. I said they'd be thinking he'd run off to Mexico and it'd be better if he went the other direction.

‘You ever been to Canada?' he said. ‘It's cold up there. Colder than a witch's tit in Canada.' Then he shook his head.

Can you believe that? This is a man with the blood of a dead lady on his shirt. But he was worried about the weather.

So I don't think he went to Canada. If you're looking for Butch, I'd drive south or west, but don't go north. You won't find Butch in Canada.

I thought he was a damned fool, going out on the river, after doing what he did; but now I know that was the smartest thing he could do. I didn't see no police
hunting for a murderer down the Delta. They were searching the Interstate. And taking me with him wasn't such a bad idea, either. I mean, they'd be looking for a guy on his own.

There's one thing I'd like to make clear at this point, one thing you should know before I say another word. You have to understand, I'm no hero and I don't pretend to be one. You may look at what I did and think you may have done different. You mighta fought that man like a crocodile, pushed him overboard and cracked his head open with the oar. But you have to understand: I was faced with a life-and-death type situation. Like nothing else that ever happened to me. Like slow motion in the movies. Things slow down. Every little thing means something. When Butch twitched his eyelid, it meant something. I would have said anything to get out of that boat alive. I would've sworn an oath not to breathe a word to anyone, but that don't make me no criminal. I'm the victim of these circumstances.

Well, like I said, I'm no hero. It was getting dark. When Butch started up the motor and took the boat back upriver, it was late evening, nearly night. I didn't know what he was gonna do. I didn't have the first idea. I didn't know if he was gonna slit my throat or turn me loose or give himself up or what! I saw a trawler coming upriver behind us and Butch pulled into this lagoon and let it pass. That man knows the river. He let us drift into some reeds and killed the motor.

It was real calm out there. Like glass. I could see bass
in the water, and trout. I could see Butch's face too. He looked calm. He didn't look like a man who was about to kill somebody. Our eyes met in that water.

That's when he took his shirt off. That man has hair all over his stomach, black hair, like a baboon, he is. He told me to get out. We was right by the reeds and I got out. I could hardly stand up, my legs was shaking so bad. I don't mind telling you I was so scared I pissed my pants. I stepped on the marsh and my feet sank a bit. My heart was thumping like a rabbit, felt like my chest was gonna collapse or something. There was no place to go. It was just a little marshy island out there. Anyway, I didn't want to make any sudden moves, didn't want to spark off anything that might make him mad.

He hitched the rope up and cut a chunk off with his knife. He said if I co-operated, nothing bad would
happen
. He told me to behave. Funny, that cut me, the way he said that. ‘Behave yourself.' I looked all around, but there wasn't one boat, not a dinghy. The moon was out. I tried talking again, tried talking sense into him. He told me to shut up and take my shirt off. I had real problems with the buttons, but I didn't want to take it off over my head because that way he coulda moved while my head was covered. Then he threw his shirt over and told me to put it on. He told me to button it up and lie down and put my hands behind my back. He put his gloves on and tore a piece off my shirt and gagged me with the sleeve. I don't breathe too good through my nose, what with my asthma and all. When he pushed me down in the
marsh, I couldn't get up. I couldn't see nothing. Nobody could see me neither, what with all the reeds. He was just standing there with his hunting knife out, watching me. Then he bends down over me, puts his mouth up real close to my ear. You wanna know what he said? ‘Take it easy.' That's what he said, like he was walking out of the Decatur Lounge, going home to Lina after a gig. Shit! He reached into my pocket and took the keys to my truck and got back in the boat and headed upriver. It's a miracle I didn't die out there.

Butch is a smart man. He's maybe the smartest man alive. You may think he's just some two-bit,
middle-aged
Cajun singer, but that man has brains. He takes me out there, puts his shirt on me, with Lina's blood all over the damned thing. He takes off. Shit. I'm left with all that and a story he knows nobody'd believe. That's just brilliant, ain't it? I mean, that's like Einstein, that's so smart. He does something and knows no matter who I tell it to, they won't believe it. And he's right, ain't he? What do you do when the truth ain't something anybody'll believe? What do you do? Like I said, Butch has brains. He nails me, knowing what he did was
incredible
. Another man would have slit my throat and weighed me down with the outboard motor, but no, not Butch. Where is he now? that's what I'd like to know. Where the hell is he?

The $100 question everybody's asking me is why I didn't try to escape. Why I didn't swim out to the other boat, knowing Butch couldn't swim. I can answer that,
but it's got more to do with me than it has to do with Butch and it goes back a ways. It's like this. I told you my full name and how I got it. I mentioned my old man. He was a minister down in Lafayette for a while. And he knew his Bible. I know my Bible 'cos of him. I don't know if you're familiar with the Old Testament, but some of the stuff in there would never get past the censorship board nowadays. Rape, murder, sodomy, all of that. It's all in there.

Well, one time I stole this magazine from a
seven-eleven.
Oh, it's way back. I couldn't have been more than ten years old. I never stole as much as a hairpin since then, I want you to know. But I stole this magazine and my daddy found out and he decided he was gonna punish me. My mama wasn't home that day. She was out organising some kind of barbecue for those holies; she was always out, organising other people's lives, making herself look good. But while she was doing that, Daddy put me in the doghouse and bolted it on the
outside
. It was dark in there. All that dog-poop and all. I heard him take off in the truck. I don't know how long he was gone. I just started getting lonely, when I heard him coming back, banging the truck door. He opened the doghouse and I was just about to come out when I saw what he had. He came back with a rattlesnake on a hoe. He threw that snake in with me and locked the door. I heard him talking outside. He said if I was going to act like the Devil I should know what it's like to live with the Devil. And he left me there. He left me there for
a long time. It got pitch dark with the snake rattling its tail in there. My mama didn't come home till near eight o'clock that night, and I was in there since noon.

Well maybe now you'll understand. Like I told you, I'm scared to death of snakes. And therein lies the answer to the $100 question. See, I had a choice between Butch, between being in the boat with the Devil, and getting into that water with those water snakes. And sir, I chose the Devil. It's a terrible thing to happen to a man my age, you know. To go out on a boat like that and come back knowing you're a coward. It happened to me. It could happen to you too, you know. It just goes to show, you can't be too careful.

Every morning the boy dresses and leaves the house before his father wakes. It’s an uphill walk for the first mile, until he reaches the old school. From there he can see her cottage in the valley, the thatched roof glistening in the wet sun. The wheat in the surrounding fields is past ripe. Farmers are waiting for fine weather to bring out the combines and save the harvest. It was a bad summer.

His grandmother’s cottage is not like other houses. There’s no pretty garden out front to turn people’s heads, no flower beds to weed or lawn to mow. It looks worse now than ever it did. The narrow strip of ground is littered with builder’s rubble, broken boards, lime bags, shards of broken glass. The Council wanted to knock the house back in April, but his grandmother would have none of it, told them it was her house, and she would do as she pleased. The boy was there the day the county engineer came out to persuade her.

‘Look, missus,’ he said, ‘we’ll build you a grand new house with a little bathroom and electricity. A snug house for your old age.’

‘Who says I’ll live to be old?’ (She’s almost eighty.)

‘Well, with the help of God you will, and wouldn’t it
be nice not to be dragging well-water for the rest of your days?’

‘There’s no water makes tea like well-water. Would ya not agree?’

‘Ah now, missus –’

‘Would ya like a cup of tea?’

‘You must see reason –’

‘Whose reason? There’s no point in reasoning over something I don’t want. Is there?’

The county engineer had no answer.

‘Is there?’

So, instead of knocking the house, the Council built a tall block wall between the cottage and the road. Now nobody can see out, or in. The front rooms are dark and gloomy and the new plaster in the front half of the house isn’t painted. It’s the strangest-looking house in the parish.

The boy opens the gate and runs down to the back door. Her kitchen smells of burnt lard, coal smoke, lamp oil. He fills the teapot from the water bucket, gets her china cup and saucer off the dresser. His mother used saucers, but now his father makes do with mugs and doesn’t bother with a tablecloth. His Sunday clothes aren’t pressed, his shoes don’t shine the way they did before.

He knocks on her back-bedroom door, puts her tea on the dressing table. She’s wide awake. She doesn’t sleep much, keeps odd hours, but always she waits for him to bring her tea before she rises. Lately there’s a shake in her hands she can’t control. She isn’t able to carry a cup
on a saucer without spilling the tea. The boy opens the window to drive out the smell of the chamber pot. The glass in these windows is blurred, the view’s distorted. A photograph taken on his mother’s wedding day is hanging crooked on the wall, his mother and father in dark suits smiling for the camera. His grandparents did not come to the wedding, did not approve of his mother marrying his father.

His grandmother was a gypsy woman once, but settled here when the boy’s mother was born. Before that she travelled Ireland collecting scrap with her husband. The boy vaguely remembers his grandfather. A big man who lifted him up on to the bare back of a chestnut mare, and laughed when he was frightened.

‘I was dreaming about cattle,’ she says, and blows on her tea.

‘We’ll finish the job today, Gran.’

‘Aye, I won’t be sorry.’

They have been trying to finish the wallpapering all summer, but their hearts aren’t in it. They wind up
digging
new potatoes in the plot behind the house, frying black pudding and playing Beggar-the-Knave, listening to the rain dripping on the rhubarb leaves. Most days she sends the boy down to the shop on the bicycle, gives him money for sweets and her tobacco. Then the van comes round on Fridays with the groceries and gas.

The boy takes the chamber pot from under the bed and empties it down the plot, rinses it out with rain water from the barrel. He looks at his reflection in the
water’s surface. His fringe is growing down over his eyes: he needs a haircut.

There’s not much papering left in the front bedroom, three or four strips, a few awkward patches around the window. They used to call this ‘Mammy’s room’. This is where she slept; this was her room until she married the boy’s father and moved into the big house up the road. They hung the first strip crooked but carried on, and now the palm trees in the pattern are leaning to the left.
Outside
, a gust blows the garden gate open and an empty lime bag cartwheels in the breeze. The boy must thin the paste, he must finish wallpapering today, because this is the end of summer. Tomorrow he must go back to school. He does not want to think about school because it reminds him of homework, and Saint Patrick’s Day.

Saint Patrick’s morning came white with frost. His father sent him back into the house for water to melt ice on the windscreen. His mother pinned shamrock in his collar, gave him a 10p coin for the collection box. She wore her good tweed suit, her linen blouse, and sang during mass. Afterwards his father drove them to his grandmother’s but refused to come in. He was in a hurry. The races were on in Coolattin.

‘Will I call for ye on the way home?’

‘It’ll be too late.’ She knew he’d be the worse for drink. ‘We’ll walk.’

His mother stuffed a chicken and iced a sponge cake with green, runny icing. The boy went to the well for
drinking water, balanced the milk can on the old steel push-chair his father’d made for him when he was just a child. He liked feeling useful, liked the greedy sound of the bucket glug-glugging the well-water, and then the shrill spill into the milk can, wheeling it back along the icy road.

The blustery trees made a carousel of shadow inside the kitchen. There were smells of baking and cauliflower cheese. A woman was singing in the transistor radio. His mother set the table, used the china, the bone-handled knives. After dinner she read
The Nationalist
while the boy did his homework. There was spelling and some maths. He hated maths; it didn’t always make sense. How could a minus by a minus be a plus? Geography was his subject. He could name all the counties in Ireland, the mountains, the rivers, their tributaries, the main roads.

Towards dusk, his mother braided his grandmother’s hair. Flames from the black range threw shadows on the lino, and his grandmother sprinkled oatmeal on the window ledges for the birds. Looking back, the boy would like to believe that nobody wanted to leave, that nobody wanted to put an end to that day. But that wasn’t what happened.

‘Okay, son, finish up; it’s getting dark.’

‘Ah, Mam!’ The boy had finished his homework, was reading about the formation of cliffs in his geography book.

‘I’m tired out, son.’

‘I’m not finished my homework,’ he lied.

He lied because he did not want to go home. His father would come home drunk after gambling the housekeeping. They would fight over money again.

‘How long more?’ his mother asked.

‘I’ve geography to do still. Ages.’

‘Well, I might have a lie down. But wake me when you’re finished.’

She went into the front bedroom and closed the door.

The boy sat reading, drew diagrams of the sea cutting into the land and the land falling off into the ocean. He read in the withering light until the print grew indistinct and he had to hold the pages towards the window to see the words. His grandmother didn’t like to light the lamp until it was necessary, for that, she said, marked the end of another day. Dusk was her time. She rolled her daily cigarette and sat smoking, staring at the west-facing window until the sun sank.

‘You’ll destroy your eyes, love.’

She got up and adjusted the wick on the oil lamp and struck the match, lowered the shade down over the flame, bathed the room in sudden, gauzy lamplight.

‘Get the cake tin,’ she said; ‘we’ll make a cupán tae.’

They ate slabs of sponge cake, played Forty-five, kept track of the score with matchsticks. The boy remembers red, burning coals keeping the cold at bay, the shuffling of cards, cinders collapsing in the grate, the smell of paraffin, the sound of cars passing close by on the road, people coming home from the races, the constant rush of wheels on the tarmacadam.

The boy was winning when it happened. Two tricks to win and he had the knave. His grandmother was
robbing
the queen. Then a crash, the sound of breaking glass and falling stone. At first they thought a tree had fallen on the roof.

‘What in name of God?’

‘Mammy!’ the boy cried. When his grandmother opened the front-bedroom door a cloud of plaster dust fell into the passage. At first they couldn’t see, but the transport lorry still had one headlight working. It had run off the road, had come right through the front wall into the bedroom. Inside the wreckage, his grandmother found his mother. She was crushed between the lorry and the wall. The boy saw blood. He didn’t want to look. His mother’s hand was hanging lifeless like the dummies in Duffy’s drapery.

‘Margaret!’

The driver’s face was slumped over the wheel. More blood. Horses groaning. Strangers ran in with torches. Ages passed. A siren grew close and stopped. A
uniformed
man came in and pumped his mother’s chest, and breathed air into her mouth with his own. When he shook his head, somebody led the boy from the room. He was taken out of the house, under the trees, and people told him everything would be alright. Later the shot of a gun as the horse was put down.

There was ice on the road that night. A skid on the bend, that’s all it took. There was nothing to prevent it happening. Some people said it was a miracle it hadn’t
happened years ago, what with the house being so close to the road. It was an accident waiting to happen, they said.

Strange, dream-like days followed. Grown men shook the boy’s hand, as if he too was a man. Women came into his mother’s house and made sandwiches and filled cups with tea and did the washing up and put the dishes back where they did not belong. People stood around drinking and smoking in the parlour, dragging dirt in on their shoes, on to his mother’s good sheepskin rug, saying what a fine woman she was. Was. People talking about his mother in the past tense, as if she was dead. But she
was
dead, the boy had to remind himself. His mother was dead.

The boy found his father in the forge after the burial. He was standing there in his Sunday clothes, curving a red-hot iron bar, making hinges to hang a gate. A
half-empty
whiskey bottle was standing on the shelf where he kept the tools.

‘Well, son,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how we’ll manage now your mother’s gone.’

When the boy didn’t answer, his father started
pumping
life into the fire with the bellows.

The boy went outside and looked up at the stars. His mother had said the stars were angels looking down at them. His mother believed in God. People said his mother was in Heaven. He couldn’t go back inside. The house was full and empty at the same time. There were snowdrops she’d arranged in a vase, a shirt she’d ironed
and left for him on a wooden hanger, her furry slippers under the armchair.

The boy ran across the fields, left the track of his good shoes in the fresh clay. His heart was hammering, he was breathing hard, sweating, when he reached the cottage. The place was in a shambles. His grandmother was sitting in the rubble with a blanket around her shoulders, drinking brandy from a cup. Her hair was loose. She looked wild.

‘If you’d gone home when you were told,’ she said, ‘your mother would be alive today.’

His grandmother is smoking a lot today, stops every time they hang a strip to roll a cigarette. Her hands are shakier than usual. There’s a little trail of tobacco on the floor between the kitchen and his mother’s bedroom. The palm trees look queer and out of place on these walls. It was painted a plain custard-yellow before.

The boy pastes the wall while his grandmother pastes the paper. Slap slap, say the brushes. The last strip won’t fit into the corner. The palm trees are crooked. When the boy slides them into place at the bottom, they overlap at the top. He cannot fix it.
Wake me when you’re finished
. He feels hot and cold at the same time.
If you’d gone home when you were told
. Tomorrow he must go back to school. She would have covered his books with wallpaper, inked his name on the collar of his new anorak. She would fry mashed potatoes, wash his lunch box and sign the exercise book to say he’d done his homework.
She would ask him to go out and make sure the latch was on the gate, fill his hot water bottle and say ‘sleep tight’ at bedtime.

The wallpapering is done. His grandmother is tidying up the last strip, cutting away the excess at the skirting board with a blade. Her hands are shaking, and the cut she makes is jagged. She sits down and rolls a cigarette. Tobacco falls into her lap. The boy strikes the match for her. It is getting on for dusk; light is draining from the day. The palm trees look like a storm has blown them sideways.

‘It’s crooked, Gran.’

‘No matter. Who’s to see?’ She is staring out the
window
at the wall.

‘We’ll make a bonfire.’ There’s fire in her eyes.

They collect the scraps and rags and take them
outside
. She gets the oil can and the sprong from the shed and they collect all the rubbish, make a pile out front beside the wall. She douses broken ceiling boards with lamp oil and strikes the match. A blaze starts, smoke rises. Broken branches crackle in the heat; bark turns into white ash. This woodsmoke smells good. It stirs something ancient and necessary in the boy’s heart. He won’t go home. He will live here all winter, make fires and play cards and draw well-water and go to the shop. He will not leave his grandmother.

She is pulling withered boughs out of the ditch,
pitching
them on the flames. She can’t get the fire big enough.

Smoke drifts out across the wall, rouses the drowsy
wasps in the fuchsia bushes at the far side of the road. Crows are circling in the sky. Caw. Caw. The Irish sound for where. Ca? Ca? they ask. Beyond the fire, the evening seems much darker; shadows are wrestling at their feet. His grandmother’s feet are big; his mother’s shoes wouldn’t fit her. He watches her lighting the cement bag in the fire. Something in his blood tells him what she’ll do. But he is stunned when she pitches it on the thatch.