Blackstrap Hawco (53 page)

The mugs are laid on the table. And Blackstrap glances up to see that Patsy is shaking her head. Frowning as if out of pity for him, while she takes a seat.

Blackstrap lifts his cup to his lips. Glances out the window he had been on the other side of minutes ago. Lowering his mug, he looks at the boy. The boy's eyes glued on the TV. The boy's head leaned toward his father.

‘Don't listen to yer mother, Junior.'

‘Blacky!' Patsy slaps his hand. Lightly.

‘Listen to her 'bout other things, but not 'bout this one.'

Patsy watching him. A question in her eyes. ‘Wha's widt you?' she says. ‘Da way yer talk'n.'

He reaches for another bun. Tears it apart with his fingers. Butters it generously. And chews. Looking at the bun while he eats. A good thing. Or a bad thing. Her words. He wonders.

‘That missus frum St. John's teaching ya how ta talk right. Or'd she kick ya out?'

He stops chewing. His eyes sting her. His mouth even. His expression hard.

‘Don't be talking about true Newfoundlanders,' she says. In defence of herself. ‘Yer mudder was frum England sure. That's probably wha's da matter widt ya. Where ya got yer uppity nature frum.'

Blackstrap eats the other half of the bun. His jaw working quickly. He sips his tea. Clicks his tongue against his teeth. Cleaning them. Thinking of having a cigarette. Working against the unrest he feels toward Patsy. He thinks of leaving. Of storming out. Of bolting to his feet. And smashing his chair against the table. But that would not be him. He was trying to be new.

‘Quiet now,' is all he says. And Patsy stands from the table. Knowing what it means. When these words come from him. Knowing what might happen. She moves to the counter and straightens things away.

Blackstrap looks at his son. Then at the small screen. Another woman shouting at a man. Charging from her seat. Pointing at the man. Going for the man. A big woman being held back.

Blackstrap watches Junior's eyes seeing.

‘Junior? What's so interest'n in those strangers' lives?'

‘Huh?'

Patsy slaps off the TV button.

Junior stares at his father. ‘What?'

Blackstrap says nothing. Listens to the quiet in the kitchen. A crackle of static, from the black screen. He sips his tea.

Junior newly interested in Blackstrap's presence. The heat of his movements. The vigorousness of his chewing. He glances at his mother. Sees that she is watching Blackstrap too. Watching the back of his head with a look in her eyes. Junior cannot place.

 

With the drugs there is clarity. Isaac Tuttle sees a table for a table. His hand for a hand. He wonders about faith. The bible they have given him. A book. The bible he had pleaded for when he was brought in. Held by two big orderlies. A book. Delivered to him. To hold on to. To hug. Not ever a book. But God. The Bible.

Now, only a book. Words on thin sheets of paper. Something to read. Stories.

A doctor had visited with him. Stood next to the bed. Then sat on the chair. A man whom Isaac did not know. Asking questions. This stranger. Wanting to know. What was the matter? He had answered with memorized words. The doctor trying to look into Isaac's eyes. To see what was in there. Beyond those words.

‘Do you hear voices?'

‘Do you see visions?'

‘Do you smell smells?'

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

He was alive, after all. Wasn't he?

He lies on the bed and watches the ceiling. The big tiles can be counted with simple numbers. There are thirty. Six rows of five. He is frightened by the easiness. By the simple truth. By the thought of losing what he believed in his chest. Deep in there. What had driven him forward. Has stopped.

‘You will have moments of clarity now,' the doctor had said. ‘The medication should do that. And what you have believed in might vary. Be prepared for a different view of things. Simpler, maybe.'

When he first took the pills. He had felt God leaving him. Moment by moment. Pulling away. Dying. God dying horrifically. With rage and accusation and heart-breaking sorrow. And he had felt the tears warmly dribbling down the sides of his head. The tears in his temples wetting the hair. Freshly washed and combed by a nurse. Lying there. Face washed. A mass of gashes. Scabs. His stitched tongue a constant aching throb. Being cleansed. Being cleaned. Your face will heal in time.

With God unthreading from his bones. An image he stopped before it fully came to him. Lying flat in bed. His eyes shut. He could still imagine. What he saw was the church in Bareneed. Where he had stood out front. His arms raised and receiving. The morning before Emily Hawco on the floor in the kitchen. No, Blackstrap's wife. He knew now. The difference. And he was deeply pained to see what he could not believe. Ever possible. The new sign out front. A bed and breakfast. Four stars. It was the saddest sight. The saddest thought he had ever had. His arms raised to a bed and breakfast.

He was no longer a church.

‘If everything works out,' the doctor says one day, ‘you might be able to go home in the new year.'

Isaac presses his palms flat together. Pushes harder in hope.

‘Would you like to go home?'

Home, thinks Isaac. No longer is there that place. A house, but not a home. If it is only Me.

 

It is dark when Blackstrap returns from Heart's Content. The visit has worked out well. And he knows that there is hope for the return of his family. He will block Karen from his mind. She has been gone for months. Living with a mountie in Bay Roberts. He's seen her once or twice. In the drive-through line at the coffee shop. Nothing to do about it. Taken up with another man. Living that way. Move on.

When he pulls into his father's driveway, he sees old Mrs. Shears waiting in the window in her coat. And then out in the doorway in an instant.

Far off, there is the sound of a siren. Blackstrap steps from the car. Feeling the cold night air. The too-still night air. Too crisp. Sharpened for clarity. For tragedy.

‘I called the ambulance,' Mrs. Shears shouts.

Blackstrap knows that his father is dead. Before Mrs. Shears has a chance to tell him. And instantly he believes his visit to see Patsy has caused it. He should never have gone. Never given in. Lowered himself.

Shutting the heavy door of the Tornado. He hurries toward his father's house. Already questioning everything in his head. Mrs. Shears fretfully follows after him. Whose fault is this? The telling of this heart-stopping truth?

‘What happened?' he asks. Moving away from Mrs. Shears. Fast down the hallway.

Only now the old woman begins crying. He hears her sobbing somewhere behind him. ‘Merciful Lord.' While he steps into his father's bedroom. The smell of his mother hits him. Fiercely. Stops him like running into a wall. His mother. She has been there. Lingering now at his father's side.

Mrs. Shears has lit candles in the room.

Blackstrap leans over his father's bed. Takes his father's hand. Cold. Feels for a pulse. Like he was taught to do in the safety course for the oil rigs. Nothing. He dips his head near his father's mouth. No breath. He joins his fists and strikes his father's chest. His father's face has changed. Again, he strikes the chest. What once was him. Has left. Again. Now. What lies. On the bed beneath Blackstrap is not his father. And again.

The siren nearer. Mrs. Shears gone out to meet it. Men soon in the room. They get by him. They push him back without looking, saying, ‘Please.' They go to work.

‘What happened?' Blackstrap says. This time a whisper.

‘It was his time,' says his mother. Not Mrs. Shears.

Mrs. Shears tries to speak, ‘He said somet'ing. Numbers. Da temperature, time or something. Then 'e shut his eyes.'

Blackstrap turns to look at her. The men at work around him. They have him on a gurney. Strapping him in. Lying there with his father. He gets up.

Mrs. Shears is a small woman. Who now holds her hands over her heart. As if a pain is there.

‘I writ 'em down,' she says, tears glistening on her face. ‘Poor, poor soul.'

‘What?' Hurry. If the gurney is to go. He should be on it too.

Calming herself. Closing her eyes. And taking a few quick breaths. ‘I writ 'em down.'

Blackstrap can only manage a quick look at his father. The candlelight across the features of a dead man. The way he moves only when the gurney moves. A rustle of paper from the pocket of Mrs. Shears' smock. The gurney being wheeled out. He follows after it.

‘47 degrees, 33 minutes,' she says. ‘53 degrees, 14 minutes.' She pushes the note at Blackstrap. Paper in front of him. He is at the front door. But he will not take the note. Will not touch it. He checks Mrs. Shears' eyes instead. She watching a ghost.

‘He just kept on repeatin' dat,' she says, fretfully. ‘Da temperature. Da time. Were it? Like a countdown.'

Blackstrap glances at the numbers and words. He heads for his car. Climbs in. Follows after the ambulance. The lights flashing in his face. 47 degrees, 33 minutes. The siren. 53 degrees, 14 minutes. From his
father's stories of Uncle Ace. Latitude and longitude. A ship's bearings. Co-ordinates to chart its return. When out on the uncertain ocean. Back to the safe enclosure of Bareneed bay.

 

(July, 1993)

Junior watches his father chopping wood. He thinks of the axe and he thinks of blood.
Camp Kill.
The teenagers who were chopped up and stored in the wood shed. Their heads hung on steel hooks. A dog licking up what was dripping on the floor. He stands on the top of the wood pile. Eight-foot lengths of spruce and fir. Stands there still and watching. Hearing the splitting sound as the heavy axe cracks through a wide junk. Picking up one half, Blackstrap sets the open half to face him. Up on the block. Splits it again. The quarters neatly flying away to either side. He glances back at his son. Checking for a second. His son seven years old. Blackstrap thinks on the years and numbers, counting.

‘Neat chainsaw,' Junior says. Watching off toward the wood horse and the pile of cut junks in the sawdust. He thinks of wrestling. One man in a mask. Another in a cape. Holding a chainsaw. Revving it outside the ring. He looks toward the shed where a hole was dug with a shovel. Yesterday searching for worms. Trouting with his father up at Middle Gull Pond. The hole. The open earth. He thinks of his grandfather buried in the ground before Christmas. A crowd gathered around all the old tombstones. Expecting the worst to come out from behind one.

Blackstrap picks up the other half of the junk. Splits that one. The quarters flying away. Landing on the ground with a dry, hollow sound.

‘Can I go in and watch some TV?' Junior climbs down from the pile. He has heard the sound of buzzing. Maybe a wasp. He steps closer to his father. ‘Can I?' He checks back to see if something with wings is following. He listens. No buzzing. ‘Cartoon Saturday,' he says to his father.

Blackstrap nods without looking. He stares off at an angle. Toward the back of the house he built for Karen. The house ruined by what he had heard of her. Isaac out now. Back in Cutland Junction since last Monday. Let out of the Waterford. Released. Something he has been thinking on for days. That house vacant now, having moved Patsy,
Junior and Ruth into his father's house. All of them together since December. It had been a good Christmas for the children. Good for everyone except him and his father. The need for family at a time of death. No greater bond.

‘No one ever home over there,' says Junior. Pointing toward the beige bungalow.

Blackstrap lifts the axe and swings into another junk. He hears the wooden screen door open. Thinks of his father. That sound. That creaking opening a memory of him stood there.

Bending, he gathers the splits into his bent left arm. Walks into the back door. Into the kitchen. Sets the wood down in the steel tray beside the old woodstove. His mother used to bake bread there. The stove where his father stood. Cooking once his mother was gone. Patsy likes a fire at night. Even in summer. To sit and drink tea. And talk about her parents. His mother liked a fire in the evening. His father, too.

Blackstrap hears the volume from the television. Patsy's distracted voice, ‘Jus' wait a second.' He hears her coughing. Walking into the living room. He sees Patsy sat on the old highback couch. A blue cloud of cigarette smoke hanging in the air. Junior standing there. Watching the TV screen, dimly interested, waiting.

‘Where's Ruth?' he asks.

‘Down fer a nap.' Patsy turns her head. Offers brief attention before tapping ash from her cigarette. Shifting her eyes back to the screen. A young man pointing at a television up on stage. On the TV, there is the screen image of a woman. In a prison jumpsuit. People sit in chairs to either side of the television. A grey-haired man with glasses holding a microphone in front of the young man's face. The grey-haired man pushes his glasses up on his nose. Smiles evenly. Trying to be reasonable.

‘That woman killed all her children, ate one of 'em.'

Junior looks at his father. Looking for what? Reaction. Permission. Then the boy slowly sits on the couch. Next to his mother. Eyes trained on the screen.

‘What happened to cartoons?' he asks.

No one answers.

A commercial for laxatives comes on. Smiling gentle people. Not a care in the world. Now that they've got themselves unstogged.

‘Did you see
Terminator 2
?' Junior asks his father.

Blackstrap shakes his head. Surprised by the television's picture. Sharp and bright. All the time his father watched it. Still like new. It was the same set his father bought for Patsy. Back in 1984. When Blackstrap and Patsy first moved in to stay with Blackstrap's father. To watch after him. Then, after Patsy, there was Karen. The one his father never liked. Still married to Patsy, his father had grumbled. He had liked Patsy. Her sauciness. Her spirit, he called it. Spirit reminds him of wind. He thinks of his mother and the back door he has just come in through. The wind that snatched the door she was holding. Threw her from the doorway. The earth that killed her when she struck it.