Blackstrap Hawco (84 page)

Patsy sits on the chair and bounces Junior a little. The baby has started to fuss. She puts the dumb tit in his mouth, and he sucks and watches Blackstrap, one arm reaching out to touch the rail. Grip it firmly and then Junior's small fingers just touching.

Patsy pulls him back. She doesn't say much more. She sniffs and looks at the wall. Then she looks out the window, more and more nervous to be anywhere near him.

He wonders how his father is, if Patsy is looking after him, cooking for him, making sure he changes his shirt every now and then. He waits for his father to come and visit, to show himself in the hospital doorway. He hopes the man does not. And he does not. He stays away. Even with his mind the way it is, his father knows better than to look his son in the face.

 

There is no way he can lift anything. The thought of picking up a half case is enough to crucify him. He can't even bend over without the pain shooting up the left side of his groin. The swelling makes his lower back ache mercilessly. His stomach feels pasty from the medication. His thoughts aswim in physical sickness. He stands in the shed and looks at his tool kit. He can't lift it. He stares with a haze in the corners of his eyes. He won't ask anyone to do it for him, so he squats and takes the tools out one at a time. He carries them to the front of the house where
he fixes the cars. He drops the tools as soon as he gets there. His eyes shut at the embarrassment of the pace. His mind off somewhere.

A one-nut wonder.

His father up in the window, watching him, not a word about the accident.

Worker's compensation is not enough money. He wants a new boat. The one thing he wants for his father. The other boat given back because payments couldn't be made. There is talk of a settlement from the union because of his injury. The insurance company's working out how much a nut is worth. Soon to get back to him with the calculation.

Sometimes Patsy laughs about it. She can't help herself. No way of talking about it without smiling. After so much time has passed, it's not an injury anymore, but a funny story. She tells her friends.

A complete recovery, the doctor told him. Two or three weeks after the removal, you'll be perfectly normal again. The talk of a prosthesis. A fake nut. Most men have it done, the doctor explained, if they're active. Just for the look of it. But he decides against it.

 

Toward the completion of the penitentiary, a flyer is handed around informing workers that jobs are available as prison guards. Paddy brings a flyer to him. He gives it over and stands there with his hands on his skinny hips, licking his top lip. He nods once, patting the flyer in Blackstrap's hand, like he's asking what Blackstrap's going to do about it. A training program has been set in place. The completion of the ten-week course to coincide with the official opening of the penitentiary.

‘Dat's a job fer you,' says Paddy, sniffing. ‘Yer jus' da type.' He laughs, shifts from one leg to the other. ‘Mr. Muscle.'

Blackstrap folds the flyer into four and lays it inside the open window of the car he's fixing.

‘All yours,' says Blackstrap.

‘Right,' says Paddy, making a small muscle and smacking it with his other fist.

Blackstrap goes back under the car.

‘Wha' ya at under dere?'

‘Dig'n fer gold.'

Paddy laughs outright. ‘Muffler is it? Bunch 'a nuggets inside?'

Blackstrap makes a noise and puts out his hand.

Paddy hands him the tools without needing to be asked.

Rust sprinkles into his eyes. He blinks it away and blows the dust from his lips. One bit of rust stings and he blinks for a while before the blur goes. A set of clamp nuts are seized on. He'll need to torch them off. Pushing himself out from under, he gets a twinge running down his legs when he stands.

‘You should give some t'ought to being a guard, dat's what I t'ink.'

A prison guard is not the job for him. Watching over men locked away, while the men hate his guts. He knows how it works. He's seen enough of it on TV to know.

He already has plans of his own. A new boat bought out of the insurance settlement. He'll have plenty of money from what he's heard. And all he needed to do was lose a testicle. If he'd only known that before. He'd have cut one out himself. Maybe he'll call the boat the
Floating Nut
. He's also working on getting his big rig licence. Patsy reads the books to him at night. The stuff he needs to know. She helps him study when Junior's napping. Blackstrap sits in class with others who don't say much, mostly younger men and a few in their thirties like him. He listens to the instructor and understands every word. The government pays him to attend the school. His father says nothing about it, not to his face anyway, but he says plenty to Patsy. He hears them at it in the kitchen. ‘A licence fer wha'?' Jacob demands. Patsy slams a cupboard door, bangs down a pot. She leaves the kitchen with the baby and sees Blackstrap stood there, thinking about the book for his course where he hides it out in the shed. Looking in at his father at the kitchen table, he sees the man is vexed and muttering to himself.

Blackstrap drops out and drives a rig anyway. Whenever an offer comes his way, he lies about having a licence, grunts when asked if he finished the course. But everyone knows he didn't. They smile at the thought of it. That's Blackstrap, one says to the other. Just like himself. And he's hired anyway because people know he won't ever do a job unless it's done properly.

 

Chapter XII – 1987

Fred Astaire, Jackie Gleason, Liberace, Rita Hayworth Die

(?)

The pain pills and the rum and the world not there. When he thumbs a capsule into his palm. Washed down with a swig. Burning a trail for the capsule. Floating under, in him. Deeper in the dredge. What sealed in the capsule? How many men spill out when it dissolves? To feel so exactly. Awake and sitting grim-faced-staring for hours with a memory of laughing the night before. Bashing off walls and laughing. A cataclysm from calm room to room. A person flashing by. Speaking or moving or still. They don't know what it's like, those ones, the woman and the child. How would they know? But the father. An old man. Older than he should be. He does know. Because of his age. His time. His dissolution. Naked in front of the mirror. Artillery shot with the fingers gone. He holds them up. Running fingers over stubs. What war? A battle at sea. The toes not there either. The scar in his cheek that throbs when it rains. It rains and it rains and he stands in it. Drenched and breathing his head off. Only a hook to save him. Winched up. The legs dangling. Never drowning in earth. The hook to the story. An abomination. Soaken wet but not cold enough. To die. He screeches in laughter. A mouth open unstopping. A hollow. His mouth pooled with water. Wind. Ripples. A shiver unsteadying the surface. Who afloat in there if not him? Bobbing. The nut once in liquid smashed to smithereens. A sack less one tiny skull. What is this? Me? What? Look. Me? Look! Look at you! LOOK AT YOU! A bottle raised to his reflection. And a pill. Dropped on the carpet. Green. Like plastic n the
outside. Bashed together. On his knees searching for green ones. Blue ones. Red. Bashed together. In his palm. Pills to play the room around. Words on the label he believes he can read. With eyes not often his. With him falling into walls at all hours. With one blank and artful expression chunked and crumpled up in his heart. He says what he feels. And his son not knowing him. Who is he? What is that crying man? What is this son? Shaking the baby and raging: ‘Who is this son? Mine?' And Agnes or Patsy or Susan shouting for him to go. His grip no longer on the baby. Clutching after the woman. Who pulls away. Spinning him. A swirl a whirl a hiding in the room. The three of them there. One and the same. A heyt wuyver, he shouts. A heat waver. Tracking them at night. To aim. To leave. To go. Get out. Yer crazy. Get out or I'll call the cops. Her hands in his hair. Her nails. His hold on her. His hold on a bottle. Pulling and pushing. What muscles were made for. He falls to the floor. Slams to rattle everything. His face a clutch of chuckling. Words barely pressed through spastic lips, Y's, wha' muscles ma f'r. The bottle scraped along the floor to his lips. He stares along that level line. A fit, they think, he is having. The cops called again and again and again. With him gone. And wrapped in bandages. His father unknowing itself. To watch that figure stooped, sitting, asleep in age caving in on itself. A man he knew as a boy. Which one is he now? The one who keeps changing because he cannot stop. Will himself to. Not what he ever knew. Why did time do that? The memories ribbed around what is changing. The heart. A mystery who once lived in the house. Now, out in the woods. Crackling and snapping like a fire of shadows. With him moving. He is the fire of shadows. Arms and legs shooting out to damage. Crackling his way through. Only in there. With the living things he cuts down. Tree or animal. Will he near the nature of the suffering he feels. Falling through wilderness growth and laughing and cursing. In perfect understanding so sharply attuned. Patterns in the bark in the leaves in the sky. He wakes in the woods. Cold. Damp. Staring up. Criss-cross of life blocking the sky. No forgiveness spoken in silence. Back in that house with the woods growing around it. The sun and snow and rain. The hovel. The hole. The hiding place. From the wilderness into it. Crawling or standing or falling. A fever. A chill. An ache. All at once for his hands searching like nothing for the bottle.
Which bottle? Where is it? Where? Where did you put them? No, you
do
know. You do. The pill cap trembled off. The rum unscrewed. Steadiness in what is put inside. To shut the inside off. Holding on to steadiness with eyes shut too. Silence is everything then. Better and better. Boot heels dug into certainty. Breathing easier. Not so bad toward muscle. Only time until up on his feet again. Yes, his house. His feet. His hands. In his house. The things he worked for all his life. Mine. For who? For what? And then loss. Because there are others. Regret for the less-than-that they give him back. Shouting at that woman. Why? Never enough are you. He does not know her. Who is she? What is she? What has she done to him? Into this. Me into this. Look at me. Roaring. Look at me. You fucking cunt. A king in no castle. A mite infesting what? Fucking hate you. Fucking hate you. And I hate you. You should be dead like the others. Oh, I hate you, too. Leave. Go. If that's it. If that's what you want. Exactly, yes. Exactly. Laughing and falling down over the stairs. But no stairs in sight. The police come. He comes back. He must to his house. Where else could he be kept? Barely lifting his head from where it is. And seeing. What is he seeing? He falls down again. The police put him away. He watches out through steel bars. Why have they trapped him with the door shut? Holding bars in his hands. Slit shadows in his eyes. Every object pressing in on him for space. Spitting on about the little that's left. No one understands a word. No one comes to his rescue. What is he saying? Spitting out words. He froths at the mouth. I am not. Not these words. Not mine. These words. Don't you say so. Head thrown back, he wails. He reads everything. On the walls in the room. These lists of conditions. These rules to live by. Reading but not understanding. That's the noise he makes. How to read without understanding. He shouts and points. A blurt. You should know. But not crazy. Me. I'm not. Take me home. Show me it. That's not it. I don't know that place. Not where I feel. Where are the ones where it's easy? Not to that place. Never to the place I can even begin to imagine. Not in the confines. I could never know. I could never say. People like me, help me, please. Who know what I am. In the back of the car. The policeman with his hat. Quiet now. Helping him into the house. Confinement. The wife. The son. The father. He the father and his father. The two of them. Him with what's left of him. In silence. In
sorrow. In hating regret. Which prison to clang the door shut in. Capsules afloat in rum inside him. Not against each other but with. Back at it right away. Because no one can tell him. Except him. What he is doing. Put me in there. I made it. Him outside the wall. Shouting in the darkness. FACK'N IDIOCY UH DA W'RLD. Outside. The house he thought was his. With the rain beating down. Not enough to drown anything. Having walked there. Back of Coombs Hill. The prison. Put me in there. Everyone inside ignoring him. The prisoners hear him shouting all night. While he stumbles around the walls. FACK'N IDIOCY UH DA W'RLD. Jumping to get over. Trying to grab but sliding down. Feeling with his hands. Knowing every nook and cranny because he made it. Built it. This body. He would kill it off if it weren't already.

 

Chapter XIII –1989

Valdez

(March, 1989, 35 years old)

Driving through Wreckhouse is always cause for concern. The winds can gust up to 165 kilometers per hour, lifting cars and tossing them off the side of the highway. Last week, Blackstrap saw a fox roll across the highway, like a tumbleweed on one of those western movies he sometimes watches on Sunday with Junior. The boy going into kindergarten in two years. Patsy can't wait to get him out of the house, to get a break. There's no end to it, she complains to Blackstrap. Junior doesn't sit still. A friggin' torment the way he's always poking at everything.

In the sort of fog that Blackstrap is barrelling through there is no telling what might appear out of the woolly grey. His nerves are on edge. He wishes he had taken a flask of rum along, but there was no time to get one. Only empty bottles in the house when he checked through everything. He is already behind schedule with a load of fourteen grey containers on his truck. They're filled with codfish in need of offloading
at the plant in Badger's Tickle. Workers waiting on him because the fog has made him late. He doesn't like the thought of the looks he'll get from the workers who've been sitting around outside the plant, talking or smoking. They'll rise to their feet when they see the truck and face him like a long-overdue challenge. Not his fault. Tell them that. They'd never listen. Just wanting someone to blame for the sorry state of their lives. Fuck them. When he's done with his delivery, he'll drop by the Cozy Glow for a few shots. No hurry to get home then. He might even sleep in the back of the truck.

He's doing 100 km. If anything gets in his way, it'll just be knocked to the side. He feels the wind pushing at his right, coming from the north, gliding down over the mountains to pick up speed, nudging the rig, making the steering wheel seem jammed. He doesn't care. He won't slow up.

The wind is a wonder on this part of the island. Always its own weather report on the radio. In the Wreckhouse area, high winds. Wind warning in effect for Wreckhouse. The CN Railway used to have a man named Lockie MacDougall on the payroll. Blackstrap heard a story about him once on CBC Radio. Lockie lived with his wife in a house next to the train tracks. They called him the Human Wind Gauge. He could step outside and sniff the air and know when the wind was coming. The railway paid him to do this. There was only one time they didn't listen, and sent the train through anyway, because something on board couldn't be delayed. The wind came then, and hurled the train off the tracks. The locomotive and two cars derailed. No one injured, but it cost CN millions. They listened to Lockie after that. His word golden.

The rig takes another punch.

Blackstrap's driving for Rex Fowler who's laid up in the hospital with a bad back. Sitting behind the wheel of a rig, living on French fries and cola can pack the weight on. The weight did something to one of the discs in Rex's spine. And he was rushed off in an ambulance. No one knows when Rex will be out of the hospital. Rex's wife told Blackstrap that Rex can't move without yelping in pain, like a struck dog. She's the one who called him with the job. They needed someone quick and no one else was available. Blackstrap doesn't believe that Rex was actually yelping. He can't see Rex yelping. Always such a quiet, shy fellow.

Blackstrap stares into the grey. It's possible to imagine anything in that grey, anything that isn't there at all. It's even worse because he's tired, and he feels like he's coming apart. It's starting to get dark, the light grey deepening. He could take a pill. A pack of wake-ups in his pocket just in case. But, he won't. He's sworn that he won't. A pledge to himself and to Patsy. He checks for the package, rattling the box in his pocket. They're not like painkillers. But he won't take another. Not after the harm done to Patsy. The hand raised to her that he could not remember. The deep shame of that. Not another drink either. That's what he'd said. How long did that last though? Not long. His head almost on right after six months. Maybe he won't stop into the Cozy Glow. Maybe he'll drive right back home after. He pulls on his headlights, but they don't show him anything, only make the grey brighter, glowing back at him. The stretching cones of his headlights make their shape in the fog.

He turns on the radio to keep his mind alert. A throb of bass from the speakers. Rex has a good system hooked up. Cassette tapes in the glove compartment if Blackstrap wants them. ‘Fight the Power.' A thud of music. A beat to beat on something. ‘Fight the Power.'

He catches himself in a half doze and starts awake, his skin prickling. He raises his hand and belts himself across the face as hard as he can. His head jerking to the right.

‘Uh,' he says, wincing, then surprised that the sound came out of him. He slaps his face again. It's not doing the job. He reaches behind his neck, pulls at the short hairs near his collar, pulls until his eyes water and he has to curse.

He stares and, gradually, his chin dips toward his chest. He startles, his body warning himself awake, his eyes desperately searching to see where he is, what reaction is needed. The rig still on the road where it should be. No need to cut the wheels one way or the other. His hand in his pocket for the box of wake-ups, stopping, then going for the radio. ‘Fight the Power' turned up until the speakers pop with bass. He rolls down his window to let the wind pound against his face and eardrum. A gust shoves him sideways, and he almost loses hold of the steering wheel, scrambles to roll up the window. The chill gone right through him. He slaps himself as hard as he can. Curses and grits his teeth. He tightens
up his muscles and lets his palm come at him again in a vicious snap of movement. Tears warming his eyes with a faint blur.

He checks his speedometer: 110 km. The music is making him go faster. He turns it down.

When he looks up again, he sees a shadow. Not a show from his head but something out there. The shadow darkens to a vague outline. A moose stood on the asphalt. In the truck's path. Blackstrap tries gearing down, hits the brake. Useless. He'll lose the load if the rig jackknifes.

The moose turns its head to look into the two cones of lights. It knows nothing about what's coming. What to expect.

One thousand, four hundred and twenty-six pounds.

Like a rock carved out of stillness, until it's popped up into the air. A second of waiting for what might happen. Then a huge sound buckling the windshield. A spread of curved points rammed forward and stuck.

 

He only knows that he is lying down. He thinks it might be in the middle of the road. There are people moving around him talking. In the fog, he hears the words: ‘Head injury.' He cannot breathe deeply. Something is wiped across his face. He draws in short breaths. It takes him a while to realize he is seeing because he is seeing double.

‘You have to stay aboard,' someone says to him.

He tries to focus.

‘On this board,' someone says. ‘Aboard.'

He wants to say ‘what.'

‘Don't move,' someone says. ‘Until X-rays. Please. Try not to swim. Move. Stay on this board. No, you have to lie flat. Float.'

‘His ears,' says another person. Somewhere behind the top of his head. ‘Gauze.'

Something is stuffed in both his ears.

He tries moving.

Dull, muddled words: ‘Keep him down.'

‘Get the girl clear…from him.'

He goes away again.

 

He comes to himself in a room. A child across from him. Is it Junior? His fourth birthday. Wasn't it just a few minutes ago? The boy seems
older. On his side with a tube in his throat. The tube is clear. But there is red draining from the boy's mouth. A bandage around his head. A great wave of emotion, a surge of pain comes over every single inch of Blackstrap's body. The pain tightens itself around his thoughts, crushes them into a misshapen ball.

He makes a sound that has nothing to do with him.

A nurse hurries over. She tosses back the sheet and stabs his leg with a needle.

‘Can you tell me where you are?' she asks.

He does not know what she means. He watches her pluck the needle out. Then she swabs his leg.

‘What's your name?'

Junior, he thinks. Where is Junior? There was an accident. Underground. In the earth. Where his mother is. Where Ruth is.

‘It's okay,' she says.

‘Junnr,' he says.

It's okay.

He drifts off. Wonders if he has spoken. If he is asleep. He thinks and speaks at once. But he is doing neither. Effortlessly. Worming through a tunnel of the blackest red.

 

A woman in a long white coat is outside his door. She's talking to a nurse. The beautiful nurse with the dark hair. Has the baby been born yet? He tries looking at his hands. All of his fingers there. His mouth opens. And he stares toward the doorway. The other woman has a stethoscope hanging from around her neck. The nurse has on a nurse hat. The nurse nods and walks off. The woman leans toward the doorway. Knocks.

‘Hi,' she says. Smiling in a way that makes him feel better. ‘Remember me?'

Blackstrap wonders if he has seen her before. In the hospital. He is confused because he does not remember exactly. He reaches for his face, not knowing why. His fingers feeling around. A bandage on his forehead. But he seems to know the woman. She is pretty. Long dark-blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. He checks her belly. But she is not pregnant. Did he have a child with her? Part of him knows. But she is
different. Part of him knows her deeper than he can ever feel. Because tears begin running from the corners of both his eyes. He is awake in what? He cannot be.

‘Agnes,' says the doctor.

He stares.

‘Agnes Bishop…From Cutland Junction.' So different from herself.

He sniffs and begins bawling. Nothing real now. Finally, his mind not his. Bawling and sobbing with his mouth open.

The doctor pulls a tissue from a box on the side table and dabs at his tears. ‘Can you tell me where you are?' she asks.

He breathes through his open mouth. A wet sob. He presses his lips together and breathes through his nostrils. His eyes on the woman's face. She smiles like everything's okay. Then she looks toward the window. A woman doctor. She glances back at him and smiles again. The best she can. Who is this woman he knows? How she has been trained to know him not too dearly.

‘Agnes,' he says. The way he says it, like he has teeth missing. Is that so? His lips swollen.

‘Yes.'

He tries and moves his eyes over the room. There is a white curtain pulled around a bed.

‘You had an accident. Do you remember?'

He looks back, not knowing where the words have come from. Or how long ago they were spoken. The woman is gone. He swallows. Startled, he checks toward the darkening window. He wonders what he is looking at. Trees. A forest. A mountain. One or all of these things. He is scared for what will not come to him.

A moment later, Agnes is back. She reaches forward and shuts his eyes. Her fingertips lightly on his lids. He is sleeping or he is awake. The swirls of her fingerprints up that close, even when they move away.

 

When he opens his eyes, Blackstrap sees a man in uniform. The policeman has coughed. It is that sound that has brought him back from a dream of Agnes into the room.

‘He shouldn't be told,' says a voice.

He shifts his eyes toward the door. But there is no one to match the
voice. Tubes going into his arms. What sort of dope? he wonders. He doesn't want the same as before. Two nurses are stood there. ‘Not yet.' One of them looking in, the beautiful one. The other one turns away because there has been a sound somewhere else. A scream. A shout. Something tipped over. A clang. A rattle. A bang.

The police officer says, ‘I'm Constable Fry. I'm the officer investigating your accident.'

Accident? The question not in his mouth, but somewhere on his face.

‘Your semi hit a moose on the Trans Canada Highway outside Wreckhouse. Correct?'

Blackstrap remembers greyness. A head with antlers. The crashing intrusion. He takes a deep breath in pain. He cannot stop the pain from taking control of him. The pain is centred in his back, but everywhere at once.

The police officer waits until Blackstrap sees him again. Sweat runs out of every pore. Blackstrap tries licking his lips.

The pain is mute noise.

‘We've done toxicology tests on your blood. Everything's in order there. Just so you know. That's out of the way. But I'll need your licence. Not right now. Later's fine.'

This is meant to be a good thing, Blackstrap thinks. But there is something else, something the constable has to say whether he wants to or not. What? Time passes through his eyes. The rest of him does not sense a thing.

‘Unfortunately, your semi struck another vehicle in the oncoming lane when it swerved.'

Struck.

Blackstrap tries to remember. The bulk tumbling up over the front of the semi. Those antlers not snapping, but punching holes in steel. The glassy web of the windshield caving in.

‘There was a woman in the other vehicle, and her six-year-old daughter.'

The other vehicle.

The windshield in a web at first. Then the furry stilt of a leg and a hoof coming through the hole, straight toward his head. An instant of jumbled movement. The bulk still rolling or tossing and then antlers.

‘The woman was killed instantly.' The policeman takes a breath, the news seeming personal to him. Talking about it is making him uncomfortable. He glances toward the doorway, his jaw set, then toward the window.

Blackstrap makes a noise that is meant to be a question. A question about the little girl. Without moving, he feels the pain take the full of him. He has done something to his head. The little girl being wheeled past him. A slow rolling shape through the clutter on the grey pavement. The gradual and instant shift of the earth. The grey sky. The fog a trap. He tried to move but was not allowed. He twists in bed to escape or help someone, and the pain rushes at him in a blazingly silent shriek that deafens and blinds.