Blackstrap Hawco (82 page)

He steps up to Patsy in the quiet chill. Where she turns to face him. To see what he's going to do.

She wipes hair from her face and watches her smashed car. Backs away in fear.

Blackstrap steps in front of her. Following until she stops and looks at him.

‘You okay?'

She shakes her head. More tears as she reaches for his chest to know if he's really there. A handful of trembling fingers. A wet sob caught in her throat. Blackstrap edging closer to give strength to weakness. Presses his cheek to her wet cool cheek. Patsy shivers her arms around his shoulders and hugs him. Crying louder. The rattle of nerves spreading. The nice smell of her hair. Her perfume and body heat rising to him. He leans back to sniff the clean air. Patsy's eyes on him, waiting. His eyes searching toward the treeline.

‘Wha'?' Patsy looks over her shoulders.

The trees.

Blackstrap stares at one spot. Where something is moving.

I have slipped into the woods

And to find me will mean never

And then never, again

He shifts his eyes to her face. Determined. Set on forcing himself back to now. He lowers his lips to hers and they kiss. Their breath
raging hotter in spurts and moans. Until Blackstrap feels Patsy's hand pressing over his crotch, into his jeans, rubbing the fabric. They kiss and touch with more urgency. Groping. They kneel on the ground then lie in the lumpy grass. Blackstrap on top. Sparkles of glass dust on Patsy's face. She simmers magically while she hikes up her white skirt. Presses Blackstrap's hand to her crotch. Rubs it back and forth. Her panties soaked. She unbuckles his jeans and he helps pull them down. A struggle until she rolls him over. Climbs on top and grinds against him. Feeling the hardness. Then draws aside her panties and takes hold of his cock, guides it in.

From where he is, Blackstrap can see on an angle. No cars on the road. But any moment now. There has to be. His hands on Patsy's breasts through the tight top. She rides up and down, pounding him, faster and faster as her mind glides away from here. Her wavy hair bobbing. Her face gone savage. She comes right away. Shudders until her body melts down and she holds him. Tightly. Not wanting to fall. Her lips on his ear. Her whispers unknown to him. Words as though talking in her sleep. Her ass slowly moving around. Straightening up, she begins grinding and goes at him again.

Blackstrap can't hold back any longer. He comes inside her because she will not get off him in time. Locked onto him. His eyes shut to see nothing. To only feel for once. He finds that he is holding his breath, and exhales.

They lie still until Blackstrap feels himself shrinking. He slips out of her. The need to protect, to cover up. He moves Patsy aside where she stays on the ground, half kneeling, staring up at him. Watching while he fixes his zipper and fastens the button.

The scene brightens while Patsy lies back, there in her hiked-up skirt. One breast exposed where her top is raised. A car coming up the road from the Caribou Lounge. The headlights stretching ahead, aimed right at them. Not too bright at this distance but enough to see the overturned car.

Patsy pulls down her top. She sits up and straightens her skirt.

The car hauls ahead onto the gravel. People get out right away. Their voices distant and quickly wondering.

Blackstrap helps Patsy to her feet. Then he just stands there,
watching the people approach. Mumbling to each other as they check their footing over the dim ground. Shadows blocking and releasing light.

‘What happened?' one man asks when he is near enough. ‘What happened, Blackstrap?' and Blackstrap regards him. What is that man doing here? A neighbour from his community. One look is all he gives. Why does he want to know? He will not meet eyes with either of them. These shadows trying to pass over him.

The faces too sharp to watch. Words echoing in his head, with him just torn from a place where he was less than alive. His body ripped through a muddle to find his feet on stronger ground. Made new and wide awake. No way of looking at his own hands, his own legs, without thinking them possibly elsewhere.

A few minutes later, there comes the sound of an ambulance approaching from Brigus. A woman tends to Patsy who is crying a few feet away. Weeping into her hands. The sound of her tears makes him soft. Makes him feel responsible for everything that has ever happened.

 

Blackstrap's car is parked in the front lot of Ernie Green's Take-Out. Patsy eats her feed of wings and chips and keeps glancing at him, wanting to say something. Words there in her mouth, behind the mash of deep-fried food.

A car pulls up alongside Blackstrap's. He looks to see Donny Laracy, and gives a small tilt of the head. Donny nods. Ted Galway behind the wheel. Music blasts in the car, turning louder when Donny gets out. Shuts the door and goes up to the order window.

‘I been in S'n John's,' Patsy says.

Blackstrap stops eating his fries, licks the grease from his fingers. His eyes on the dashboard clock, checking it against the time said on the radio. The announcer's voice talking about the weather for tomorrow, then ‘Like a Virgin.' He changes the station to the middle of ‘Born in the USA.'

‘You remember dat night, da crash?'

Blackstrap watches her face, wondering what she might say next. It's something out of the ordinary. Something he's not expecting. The crash. How long ago was that? A week? A month?

‘'Member?' She turns down the radio.

He nods. He'd rather be hearing the music than her voice.

‘On da ground.'

‘Yeah.' But he doesn't remember. He takes one of the white napkins and wipes his fingers, but the napkin is soon soaked with grease. It tears in places so he has to use another one.

‘ 'N ya know.' She tries smiling, but it's nervous. It comes and then it goes. Her eyes go a little wider. She nods a secret. Then, without the slightest bit of warning, she bursts into tears.

Blackstrap looks at the car next to his. Donny getting in with the food covered in a brown bag, held upright to keep it from spilling.

‘I'm pregnant,' she bawls.

His eyes on Patsy. The air sucked out of his lungs. His mind rushing back to that night. All he sees is the yellow sign with the black arrows. A blur and a tumble in the slowness of time.

‘We did it dat night. 'N now I'm pregnant.'

‘Jaysus.' He wipes at his mouth with the napkin. ‘You sure?'

‘Yes, da doctor told me, Blacky.' She goes from tears to anger. She slaps his leg hard. ‘I'm knocked up, 'n it's yer fault.'

As if someone has stuck a plug in his throat, in his mind, too. Someone kicked him in the nuts. ‘I—' He is going to tell her that he doesn't remember anything about that night. But he knows it might be the wrong thing to do. He checks the car with Donny and Ted, both with their fingers up to their mouths. Fries and chicken wings. Biting and chewing and washing it down with beer. He rolls down his window to toss out the brown paper bag. Gulls screech and head over from nearby where they're waiting. Walking or fluttering their wings between the cars. They screech and fight for the scraps.

Eyes on the rearview, Blackstrap starts the engine and backs up. Donny waves and grins. A mouthful of food behind his teeth. Blackstrap doesn't nod. He tries not to notice anything. Because nothing seems worth ever bothering with now.

‘Wha're we gonna do?' Patsy says.

He straightens the car in the narrow lot. In front of him, a row of pickup trucks and cars waiting for their orders. A few gulls in the sky, circling the overflowing litter bins. He drives off.

After so much time, he sighs. He's thirty-one, and never planned on
children. He watches the cars pass on the other side of the road. Maybe when he was younger, with Agnes. The thought might have crossed his mind back then. Patsy is making teary noises on the seat next to him. He just can't look her in the face, can't bear the sight of her now. A fucking curse.

‘Wha's da matter?' she asks. ‘Blacky?'

‘Nothing.' Agnes is who he should be having children with. Not the way things have turned out though. A waste of a life now.

He feels Patsy's eyes on him.

Then she says, ‘I'm not hav'n anudder abortion.'

Another?

The steering wheel in Blackstrap's hands. The car rolls on. The wheel turned a little this way, a little that way. Watching the road, but watching nothing. The word ‘whore' in his mind, the word ‘slut.' And Agnes there to taunt him. A pretty face in chaos.

Not a decision that he can make for himself.

Dug in so deep to both of them.

 

Chapter XI – 1986

Chernobyl

(March, 1986, 32 years old)

‘Remember da time I broke me leg on da trapline?'

Blackstrap nods.

Patsy is at the stove. Her belly stuck out. Due any second. She comes over and takes up Blackstrap's pack of smokes. ‘I'm some
fuck'n
hot.' She blows a breath up at her forehead and wipes hair away with the butt of her palm. Putting a cigarette in her mouth, she lights it with Blackstrap's Zippo. Then she clunks the lighter onto the table. Goes back to checking the big pot. Boil-up on the stove. Salt meat boiling since early in the morning. Every pane in the kitchen windows steamed up. Vegetables cut into pieces on the counter. Potatoes. Carrots. Turnip. Cabbage.

Blackstrap's father runs his fingertips along the tabletop. Looks out the window. He seems worried, concerned. A sky layered in shades of grey. It's been that way for days. A biting wind too, dampening the spirits. Pellets of grey snow begin hissing off the panes.

‘I had it laid there up on da desk,' says Jacob, ‘da wooden one. 'N I called yer mother on da telephone ta tell her I broke me good leg.' It is almost a joke, but not funny anymore, not after so many times.

Blackstrap drinks from the bottle of beer. He checks back to see Patsy. One hand on her back, the other on the counter. She waits and takes a breath. Then lifts a knife to start peeling potatoes, squinting to keep the smoke from her eyes.

Jacob nods, calls out: ‘Em'ly?' No answer that he knows of. He shouts: ‘EM'LY?'

Blackstrap endures the call.

‘Em'ly. Jaysus Christ, womb'n?'

‘She's not here,' Patsy says sharply.

Blackstrap looks at her, but she's still peeling potatoes like she hasn't said a word.

Jacob faces Blackstrap, a threat in his eyes. ‘Yes, she is. Where's yer mudder? Out whoring 'round widt Tuttle? I knows more den anyone t'inks.'

‘She's in da living room,' says Blackstrap.

Patsy checks over her shoulder, giving him a look. He shifts to watch out the window. Through the moisture trickling down, he can only see part of what's there. No amount of snow on the ground. The weather not what it used to be, not like when he was a boy. Snow drifts as high as telephone poles. The baby due soon. There's no point to driving backhoe in the winter without snow. Greg Wells with no work for him. He thinks about getting his own backhoe soon. Not buying, but leasing. He decides to get Patsy to check into it. Then he looks at his father.

Jacob nods, says quietly: ‘She can hear me a'right.' He gets up and goes into the living room. The sound of the television being switched on.

‘Em'ly,' says Jacob.

Music comes from the TV speaker. A woman singing in a commercial.

‘Wha's fer supper?'

‘…brand of canned ham you have ever tasted. Fry it, bake it, slice…'

‘I'm half starved sure.'

And the voices cross over each other. The words all jumbled together eventually. Conversation hard to make sense of. His father talking to himself. The TV talking steadily. Never any rest. Never any silence.

Blackstrap looks to see Patsy, her eyes still on him. One hand on her belly, stubbing out the cigarette in the pile of peels. Her eyes accusing him for some reason. He can't figure out what. He looks at her belly, counting off the months, slowly trying to do the math, but no way of figuring it out so it makes any sense. Hotness in his eyes and mouth.

 

Blackstrap never was one for hospitals. The stink of them is always worse than any rotten smell. The clean stink. He hasn't been in one since the
Ocean Ranger
. The hospital in St. John's. Not this smaller one in Carbonear. He remembers his mother visiting, her face next to him when he woke up from wherever he was.

Shoot me, he says to himself as he steps up the corridor, before I go back in a place like this. Shoot me. His body cringing at the sights. His mind wanting out of the deathly feel of the corridors, aware of his hands and feet. The fingers and toes missing. He wonders where the fingers and toes went. Did they burn them up in a hospital fire with all the blood and shit and disease? He thought to ask at the time, but was afraid then. Afraid to ask anyone anything about himself.

He's heard the old men and women moaning and bawling from the beds upstairs. His mother took him there when he was a boy to visit Nan Duncan. He remembers her hair gone white, her soft eyes and face, then the pain stiffening her body. Trying to make it seem okay for him though. To ignore the pain and smile. Her voice with a proper accent. She would call him: ‘young man' or ‘Master Hawco.' The smell of spearmint off of her like the smell of chewing gum.

Shoot me.

He had been up the line repairing track. A part-time job that he got when Pete Galway left for Kitchener, Ontario. Pete's brother on the mainland with a job in construction that paid more money. Blackstrap had been replacing a section of rail when Charlie Coffin came down the
line on the mini-car, anxious to tell him that Patsy had gone to the hospital in Carbonear. ‘In labour,' he'd said, smiling like Blackstrap didn't know what he was in for.

That was a little over twenty minutes ago. Long enough for him to get back to his pickup and drive to the hospital at breakneck speed.

Maternity, he'd been told, second floor.

He takes the elevator up. Finds the nurses' station. His palms sweaty. He can't get the taste of death or disaster out of his mouth. Has the baby been born? He asks at the nurses' station. He gives over his wife's name. They give over the room number. Not born yet. The nurse smiles kindly. A nice-looking woman. Something special about her. He wipes his palms in his jeans when he makes it to the door. The right numbers next to it. He checks his hands. A mess of dark smudges and the stink of creosote from the railway ties. The baby. Born dead? This is what he fears most. Or what he expects, what he wants. No.

He goes in to hear Patsy cursing in the bed. ‘Jeeesssus!' She notices him and her eyes burn with accusation. Your goddamn fault. He almost laughs. Then Patsy is overtaken by a wave of pain like his grandmother dying.

A nurse comes in and checks under the blanket. She says something to Patsy about dilating.

‘Hold on,' the nurse says. ‘You'll be fine.'

‘I needs more drugs,' Patsy pleads. ‘Fer Christ's sake! More dope.'

‘I'll check with the doctor.'

Patsy glares at Blackstrap, her cheeks puffed out with rage. She growls in her throat, deep like an animal who needs shooting. It's nothing like what Blackstrap expected. From what he thought, it should be a quiet time. A joyful, loving one. The birth of a baby. That's how he's seen it on TV. A man and a woman holding a baby all wrapped up. Both of them smiling at each other. The woman a little sweaty.

Instead, Patsy there acting like a savage.

‘We're going to take you now,' the nurse says, beginning to wheel the bed away. ‘Are you coming?' she asks him.

The thought slams into Blackstrap's head. Coming? Where? To watch?

‘You'll need a gown from there.' The nurse nods toward the shelf of folded green gowns. ‘You have to put one on.'

Another nurse enters the room. And the bed is rolled by him. Patsy has just enough time to grab his hand while she passes, her fingernails digging in, tearing skin, stinging.

Smarting with pain, Blackstrap watches the bed go. Then he steps out into the corridor and half-heartedly follows after it. He suspects that's the thing expected of him, but he's not certain. The bed goes through a set of swinging doors by the nurses' station.

‘You need a gown to go in there,' a nurse calls out. ‘And a mask.'

Blackstrap looks toward the nurse who comes at him, a gown in her hands. It's the pretty nurse. ‘Here.' She holds it open. ‘Arms.' He fits his arms in. ‘Coopy down.' He squats and she puts the mask on, hooks the loops over his ears. The heat of her near. The fabric of her uniform against her breasts. He looks at his filthy hands. Is that allowed?

‘Okay,' the nurse says, smiling at him. ‘Good luck.' She even pats him on the back. Half a pat and half a rub. He glances at the nurse's hands. Long, slim fingers with no rings. Her skin so fair it is almost white.

Blackstrap checks the nurses' station. Another nurse stood there watching him, smiling like she knows something he doesn't. She nods toward the swinging doors. But there is no anger in her, not like Patsy. These nurses are like different women. He remembers them from the other hospital when he was in. The same sorts of women. He almost fell in love with every one of them. The way they treated him with such care. Sweet and gentle. And the way they were with the drugs in him. The nurse keeps watching. He wonders what she's thinking. Then she shifts her eyes to the counter, reading some pages. The pretty nurse steps in behind the counter to join the other. And Blackstrap wishes he was damaged, wounded, half dead, if only to be in the hands of those women. To fall on the tile floor and be gripped by seizure. To have his heart explode.

‘You're going to miss it,' says the pretty nurse.

Blackstrap goes through the doors and finds the activity by the noise. Another room he goes into. There's a doctor between his wife's legs. Two nurses there too. He stays close to the doorway, watching. At one point, when the head starts to show itself, he thinks he might be
sick. His eyes flinch away. But then back again. Something he has to watch. The clump of bloody purple and colours unknown to him. A monster showing itself. His eyes strain and his stomach goes nauseous. He breathes through the mask. The stench. This birth. Birthing. He remembers kittens as a boy. The cat they always had. He must have been ten or eleven. Always the immature spring cat that had six kittens. The first litter usually seemed to die, except for one. Then the next litter in the fall. The ones that died on their own and the ones he tossed in the ocean in a brin bag. And the one that died and he put in the brin bag to throw away. Cold and stiff and small with the softest fur. His father and mother had touched that kitten to make certain. Hours later, when he picked up the bag to throw it out, the kitten made a shriek that scared the shit out of him. The sound had made his fingers loose their grip and drop the bag. There was movement behind the brin. When he looked inside, he saw the kitten blindly squirming around and mewing, its limbs almost useless. It had been dead; bone cold through the fur. And it had come back. A miracle cat, his father had said, naming it Resurrection. It became his father's favourite kitten then. A man who usually had no time for nuisances. His father said that Resurrection was magic, that it was good luck. But that screech it had made in the bag. The screech that let him know absolutely anything was possible.

More activity before his eyes.

A baby there, but not a sound from it. Where is the baby noise? It mustn't be alright.

Patsy with her head turned away like she's dead, the baby hovering over her. Held that way after Patsy had seen it. Hovering over her in the hands of the nurse. Then brought to the table by the wall and laid down. Blackstrap sees it, then sees its legs and hands, pink fingers and toes. The tiny movements of its messed-up face.

‘He okay?' he calls out, not meaning for it to be so loud. All heads turn toward him. A shout from his mouth like he's found someone lost.

‘Yes,' says the nurse, more to the baby than to him. ‘He's just fine.'

It is something to see. A small one like that, coming out of a woman. A boy. The thought of it brings up a blur in his eyes, spilling down his
face. No control over it at all. Not a speck of hope to pull himself together. Blubbering like a baby himself.

He sobs and swipes the tears away. They smear from his cheeks, leaving wide black trails along his face. The stink off his fingers. Creosote. Preservative.

 

(September)

It is one of the Newfoundland coins from his father's collection. A woman with her hair done prettily on the heads and a crown on the tails. The date 1865 under it. It is one cent. He knows because his father told him. The word Newfoundland is there too. Blackstrap holds it in his fist. He stands in the centre of the track between the two rails, each boot on the same oily railway tie. He has walked away from the crowd gathered on the platform in Cutland Junction. All of them there to see the last train pull in and then pull away, taking their jobs off down the line into the path cut through the wilderness. Cutland Junction's main source of employment on its final run. The CN train service losing money for years right across the island. All 548 miles of track being scrapped. But a promise from the provincial and federal government of new jobs for the area. A federal penitentiary. Maximum security. It was all on the radio this morning. A federal–provincial initiative jointly announced by Newfoundland premier Brian Dickford and Gaston Maudet, Federal Minister of Justice. The project to create 250 onsite jobs and a further 125 off-site jobs over a two-year construction period. Workers from the area will be given preference during the hiring process. And once the penitentiary is completed, the workers involved gain a special Unemployment Insurance package for an equal period of time. So they can be retrained. University or Trades College. A big chunk of land already being cleared for the site, off behind Isaac Tuttle's place on the back of Coombs Hill.

Stood on the track, Blackstrap remembers a painting he saw in a store window in Toronto a few years back. A street that had art galleries all in one rich area up near Bloor. People walking around dressed in fine clothes with their little, well-bred dogs on leashes. There was a painting of a black horse galloping head-on toward a train at night. A cloud of smoke from the train spread out across the night-grey sky. The train
light on, brushing the rails with a faint bit of light, barely showing the horse. Blackstrap imagines the horse striking the train. Knocking it from the tracks or disappearing into the steel, going right through it.