Blackstrap Hawco (83 page)

He feels the faint vibration in his feet, the thrilling promise of an earth-heavy rumbling. ‘Roads for Rails' is what they're calling it. Better highways for hauling up the tracks right across Newfoundland. The railway that joined Newfoundland to Canada. If not actually by land, then in a symbolic way, from coast to coast.

Newfoundland apart again. The thought of this should be inspiring, but Blackstrap can't stand it. It feels like a slap in the face. A personal affront. Newfoundlanders all being cheated in a clever way. If they are to be cut off from Canada, then let it be completely. The lyrics from a song fill his head. The voices of thousands of men blending in deep harmony:
Thank God we're surrounded by water.

Ride the last train. It was made out to be an exciting trip. Something to enjoy. Something to celebrate. Get your tickets now for the last train ride. A thrill to be a part of it. As usual, everyone's way of thinking all arse-backwards.

The trembling leans toward a steady thunder and he catches sight of the train, far down the track. The black nose of the locomotive with its moose catcher grill toward the bottom. It would flick him aside like any animal if he never moved. A fitting way to end it, hit by the last train to roll across Newfoundland. The idea of it makes him burst out with a laugh. He looks at the Newfoundland coin in his palm. Then he squats and uses his two good fingers to set it on the gentle curve of shiny, silver rail. The coin stays there and he searches down the line. The locomotive thrusts ahead at a chugging speed. Why ever get out of its way? he wonders. He thinks of his son, his baby boy. The lack of sleep making him feel like he's always half in a dream. Patsy trying to leave the boy in his crib, so he'll get used to being there. The crying. The chug of the locomotive. There's nothing in him that makes him want to move. His boots flat on the ties. Squat down as he is, he feels deadened to the world.

The rumble of the locomotive fills his boots. He stares, mute and mesmerized. The string of passenger cars pulled behind it. He checks over his shoulder to see the slow bend through the trees that leads into the junction.

He turns to face the train. The coin staying steady on the rail, not even rattling. The locomotive there upon him like it never was.

A brilliant escape if there ever was one, but he's at odds to remember how.

 

Blackstrap won't work tearing up track. He was offered a job but turned it down.

On his day off from clearing ground for the prison, he sits in his pickup with his father. Both of them staring through the windshield. A case of India beer down by Jacob's feet. They watch the men pulling up the railway spikes, using tools imported especially for the job. Railway ties are up for grabs. Soaked in tar, they spring up everywhere in the junction, running up both sides of driveways or stacked to shape rock gardens. Other people saw the ties into chunks and burn them in their stoves. They burn nicely through the winter. Slow and lots of heat. The smoke blacker than usual. Black on the snow. And in his handkerchief when Blackstrap blows his nose.

In the spring, when the snow pulls back and the sun comes out a little hotter in the sky, Cutland Junction reeks of creosote. After a month of near steady rain, the water from the taps turns smelly and a little off-colour.

‘The water's brown,' Patsy says, giving Blackstrap Junior a bath in the big plastic pan on the kitchen table. Blackstrap getting ready to go to work, taking his lunch tin and thermos, not checking inside to see what's in there. He prefers to eat onsite. Stay away from the house whenever possible.

Thermos in one hand, lunchpail under his arm, he sniffs the tinged water. ‘Creosote.'

Patsy watches him. ‘Well?' she says.

‘Well what?'

‘Where's it com'n from?'

Blackstrap takes notice of his wife. Most times, she's just there and he doesn't bother to see the details. But now her image comes at him. One hand on her hip. Saucy looking. Her head tilted one way and her eyes with brown bags under them. No sleep. He hears Patsy complaining about Junior on the telephone all the time. Her friends asking if the baby
sleeps. If he naps a lot. If he's a good baby. A good baby if he sleeps all the time. None of it makes any sense to him. He hears the words in his head now. Her complaints. That's all.

He looks at Junior, splashing in the water, making baby noises. He kisses his son on the top of his head. Then he turns and leaves.

In the pickup, he looks at the house sat there with the trees behind it. His thoughts shifting to Toronto. The urge to take off, to drive to the ferry and escape the island. Leave it all behind like many men. Men pretending that the work was better on the mainland. But really running away, wanting nothing to do with the family they're stuck in. Heather in that room on Brock Street. Skinny Nix. The three of them on that bed. Heather with one, then the other. The grabbing and holding. The eyes staring up close. Creatures. That's what they were. Creatures slying at one another on a bed behind a shut door. His breath stuck in his chest. Find Agnes. Find Susan. These women removed from him. Which one does he want? He's not breathing, just staring at the house. No one in the window. No one in the doorway. The world sparkles white around him and his ears slowly go dead.

When he comes to, he's slumped across the seat. His head is heavy and his legs feel weak while he pushes himself up. The same place where he's always been. Parked outside his father's house. Since the Ranger, when he thinks of the past he sometimes passes out. He starts the engine and drives up the dirt road, trying to see what's right before him, while trying to forget.

 

The Department of Health is called in to figure things out. The water supply in Cutland Junction is sufficiently contaminated to be of concern. A study is undertaken to determine the source of contamination. Someone from the mainland is brought in. A company made up of environmental experts. Their fee close to half a million dollars. They hang around the community, going into people's houses, sniffing here and there, taking samples in jars and bottles. They even ask the residents for urine samples. Special gloves on their hands. White masks over their mouths. Poking around in gardens until the cause is determined. It takes three months for the study to be done.

The government issues a press release.

It's the railway ties.

‘Bunch of geniuses,' Jacob tells Blackstrap. ‘Ya can't pull the wool over dere eyes. Sharp as tacks, dem fellers. Prob'ly got three 'undred year 'a schooling betweenst 'em.'

The railway ties are all hauled away. Several options are introduced. The earth has to be moved, trucked off and treated. Then trucked back. Or new earth brought in. Or the people in Cutland Junction can relocate if they choose. The government will provide land in other communities. Their houses moved too, on flatbeds. All paid for by the government. Another proposal sees the entire community shifting one mile east, picked up and put down again.

Television cameras from the CBC show up to talk to people and capture the action. The reporter is the most interested person who has ever existed. Then another group of people with cameras arrive. A company making a movie about it. Not for theatres, but for TV. These people are young, with long hair and sloppy clothes. They keep asking about the children in the community. Are the children sick? Have the children exhibited any signs of abnormality?

The town council votes in favour of earth moving. Trucks come and go for months. Bulldozers and backhoes. Dump trucks. Eventually, every lawn looks brand new. Landscapers work alongside the construction workers, planning to make everything ‘visually pleasing.' These are the words Blackstrap hears someone say. New sods are laid. Held in place with wooden pegs. Others in the junction opt for seed. Yellow sprinklers are bought for everyone as part of the settlement package. New wells are dug. ‘Artesian or shallow?' asks the well-digger. ‘The choice is yours.' Most opt for artesian because they're the most expensive.

The cameras for the movie figure this is the end of it. They pack up and take their time going around saying goodbye to everyone. Sadly, they have not found one sick child. Only false alarms of children with colds and the like. This makes them have to rethink their theme. But they're not worried. Being good sports, they even throw a little party in the town hall. Everyone goes for the free booze and food. The smell of dope outside, where some of the long-hairs are toking up. During the party, when people get enough booze in them, they keep asking when
they're going to be on TV. ‘When will I see myself on TV?' The film people are a bunch of strangers, trying their best to fit in. They're friendly and seem well-intentioned, but they're in the junction to make a freak show out of it. They think the people are interesting. They think the people have character. But these stoned young townies actually think they're smarter than the people in the junction. Blackstrap knows that the film they're making will be about stupidity and ignorance.

By this time, construction has started on the prison. Blackstrap is hired to work the steel and cinder block. It's the second time he's been made to wear a hard hat on any job. He doesn't like it. It reminds him of the Ranger. He changes the white one for another colour. Lifting block and steel, he wishes he was welding. Better pay. Plus he likes melting things together, joining them to create something solid and unbendable.

When the prison walls are finished, the unit roofs are fitted in place. There's plenty of room to move around because of the open yard. The supplies are delivered to that central location where they are fanned out by the workers.

The pay is good. Because the union is involved. Everyone is made to join, and they all carry a union card. Some of the workers don't like the idea of it, but it's worth it for the money.

Business as usual, learning a few lessons here and there. But it's not until the bars arrive that things get really interesting. It's then that the workers start to catch the true shape of what's being done. They begin to realize. Up to that point construction was nothing more than cinder block cubbyholes. Small rooms with holes roughed in for plumbing. A building coming up from scratch.

The day the bars arrive, the men all stand around to watch them being unloaded by the crane. It takes eight men to lift one front unit. They carry them in through the wide open doors and up the stairs. It's a struggle that's barely possible with so many men trying to give directions. They face corners that the wall of bars must be moved around. No one planned on that. Someone says that the bars were meant to go in first, before the roof was set in place. The crane should have hoisted them in. A screw-up. But nothing slows them down. They just have to knock down walls to get the bars through and put them up again later.

The first set of bars, the facing of a cell on one of the units, goes into place nicely, fits like a glove in the space made. The bolt holes are drilled into the blocks. The anchors and bolts fixed and set. The door hole is open because the door is to be put on separately. They go out into the yard and carry in the door, four men holding one corner each, tilting it on its side to get in through tighter spaces. All of them sweating and grunting with their boots shifting over concrete. They fit the door on the pin hinges. It's hot in July and all the men working around make it hotter. The hard hat is a nuisance, nothing but insulation for the top of the head.

After they fit on the first door, they shut it. It closes and opens, its clanging sound distinct. No keys for the lock. Not yet. They're being shipped in by armoured courier that's driving from Ontario.

The second length of bars is lifted in the same way. While taking a corner, one of the men slips on a half-eaten bologna sandwich, and falls fast. When the load shifts, the other men scramble to shift with it. Calls of ‘whoa' ‘hey' ‘hold on' ‘Jesus' before someone else has to let go or be pulled down too. Then another man stepping back fast to get clear of the edge swinging up to almost smack his chin. The weight taking over. Blackstrap's boot twists in between the bars. He goes over to stop the ankle from snapping, and the bars come down on him. The hard hat protects his head from the fall, but a steel corner of a protruding plate gouges deep into his testicles when he hits the floor.

 

Whenever the medication begins to ease out of his system, he feels his stomach churn, and he dry heaves.

Patsy comes with Junior to visit, her eyes trying not to know.

‘How ya doing?' she asks, like everything's the same.

The sight of her with the baby makes the pain between his legs throb. No one has told him anything yet, but he feels the news will not be good. They've told Patsy though. He can tell by looking at her. That's how it works in here. They tell everyone except the patient. That's how it was after the Ranger. Everyone knowing everything about his condition, or the possibilities of his condition, except him. The other men in the room probably know too. The way they watch him. They probably heard nurses or doctors talking while he was unconscious. After the surgery.

‘Aaron called 'n said you'll get worker's comp. He's got it in da works.' She leans Junior near him. He kisses his son on the top of his head. His lips barely feeling. The nice baby smell. His testicles a dull ache. When he first woke, a thought hit him and he slowly reached for his penis, barely strong enough to work his hand down there. It took a while to find what he was after. Awake and then gone before awake again. The penis where it was supposed to be. Useless was how it felt. A tube in it, lower down a bandage. He wonders what happened. If his nuts are okay. But he won't ask anyone. He can't stand the sight of the nurses, sweet as they are. Trying to pretend they don't know why he's on the bed, his balls bandaged up, telling him that the doctor will be by to see him tomorrow, to have a chat. The beautiful, dark-haired nurse from when Junior was born in the same hospital. The one with the white skin. He's seen her in his room, or imagined it.