Blackstrap Hawco (89 page)

She looks at him, carefully, deciding.

Two other girls come over from the dance floor, and glance Blackstrap up and down. Then they sit at the table, wondering about him. Not saying a word because they don't have a clue. It's too crowded now, too many bodies, too many eyes watching or not, on purpose. A stupid game.

He nods and backs away.

Karen with her eyes on him during the night. Until she finally comes over, just like he thought or hoped she might.

 

Blackstrap is chasing Karen around a big steel ship tied up in St. John's harbour. Kissing her up against the metal hull. The way she keeps moving away from him. Kissing but not wanting it to go any further. But it's not a ship. It's a shipwreck now. All around them. Full and broken masts stuck up out of the water. And there are big creatures that look like Ninja Turtles. They are dark, evil, with wide swords. He knows that they're from Iran. There's a wall surrounding everything. They're tearing it down with hammers, pulling at chunks of it with their hands. Throwing the pieces at cartoon characters that are like real people. The men on the ship are speaking German. The sunk ships sink deeper. All at once that feeling. He looks for Karen. She is in the corner, slapping Patsy. Then they're dancing together, rubbing up against each other. One of Patsy's legs pressed between Karen's. Then in bed on the dance floor with colourful lights. He's in there with them for the show with
everyone watching. The touch of their bodies better than anything that could possibly be felt. A horn blowing, like a growl, telling them it's over. Before he has a chance to go all the way with both women. Loud blasts of a fog horn. Snores coming from another room. He sits up quickly and waits a minute, letting himself come back into the world. Catching up with himself. On a couch somewhere. A peek at a memory. A mess of clothes scattered around, and take-out trays and pizza boxes on the table. The smell of greasy food eaten. A bit of light through the window. Dawn through the open curtains. Feeling guilty already. About what? Thirsty as hell. A drink of water. Water. Junior, he remembers. Trouting. What's the time? He goes to the kitchen and runs the water. The smell coming up to him. Like freshness, but chemical. Chlorine. He drinks down a full glass with his eyes on the stove clock that's not working. He figures this out after a while. A baseball cap on the counter. Little Tuffy's place. He checks for his keys and anything he might've left behind. Then he leaves the apartment. He's in a building, but has no idea how he got there. Down the stairs. The hollow sounds of his steps.

Outside, the air is early-morning still. Not too hard on him. Not yet. The full weight of his tattered exhaustion lingering off in the distance. Not enough sleep. His mouth a mess. The sky brightening a touch more, enough to see plainly while he treads around the parking lot, scanning the area one vehicle at a time. One row at a time, until he finds his pickup. Sitting there toward the far corner, in a space where he can't remember parking.

Only an hour's run to get Junior.

He climbs in and starts the engine. His back bothering him when he twists his head to see behind. His ribs aching too. He backs out, then pulls up and stops at the lip of the parking lot. A muscle in his neck stretching tight. The apartment building is somewhere downtown, by the looks of the old row housing across the street. The steep slant of the road before him. Not a bad morning for a run on the highway. He turns left, heads uphill. The sky is brighter now. He finds LeMarchant Road. From there, he knows his way to the Trans Canada, the line cut through the wilderness that will take him home.

He pulls into the driveway with the morning sun gone behind the clouds. The flies will be bad where they're going. No wind. He'd prefer if it was a little damp. The flies probably even worse then, but the trout biting on the glassy surface of the pond with new ripples. That circle of the splash expanding in his mind. The trout there and gone. Sometimes a split-second view of their heads or silvery bodies. Then smaller trout, nippers, making their rings in the water.

No one up in the house. He had expected Patsy to be there, waiting with arms folded, ready to bawl him out, like she did when he went off. His father at the kitchen table, not saying a word, just watching out the window from where he usually sits.

Blackstrap cuts a slice of homemade bread. Fresh as anything. Soft to go through. The doughy smell of it. The knife bothering him as something so sharp near his nerves. The serrated teeth. Margarine easily spread and molasses poured from the carton. He drags his finger along the spout where the molasses is running on in a string. He gets a good gob on his fingertip. Eats it. More sweet than metallic. A childhood thrill to the taste of it. The scent of his mother and the house as one.

Then he looks at his father while he eats the bread. The point beyond saying hello has passed. Eating, he feels he must be quiet, so as not to disturb his father with the growth of beard on him. Whiskers still growing after death, they say. He takes his final bite of bread and goes upstairs into Junior's room. The boy's not in bed with Patsy. She won't let him sleep in there, even though he always wants to. Needs to get used to sleeping alone, she says. A boy can't sleep with his mother like that. It's not right. He cries sometimes, but most times he's okay by himself.

Blackstrap kneels by the bed, watches the boy's face. Nothing more perfect than the sleeping silence of that little face. He moves Junior's bangs over to the side, like it's been combed, like he's dressed up especially for sleep, something like going to church. It makes him smile to see that face. It sets some peace in him. He puts his palm on Junior's soft cheek and leaves it there. Then he stands up.

‘Hey.' His voice sandpapery. He coughs a little to clear away last night's debris. ‘Rise and shine, little buddy.' Like his mother used to say.

Junior doesn't move. Long eyelashes and plump lips open a bit while he breathes through there.

‘Time fer trouting.' He nudges the bed.

Junior moves his head and wipes at his nose. Then he tucks his hands under the cheek against the pillow and goes back to sleep. Almost snoring with his lips pushed out like that.

Blackstrap picks him up in his arms and carries him down the stairs. Pain in different points of his body. One slow step at a time. He listens for Patsy, his ears straining, not wanting to hear her stirring. His father no longer sitting at the kitchen table. Gone off to a grave dug a while ago. He turns to go through the back door. His father in the shed window. That old woman from Toronto. His father turned away then, searching for something in what's been saved.

Outside, he puts Junior in the passenger seat. The boy still asleep. Leaning in that way, Blackstrap finds his back, the pain troubling. Difficulty straightening. He takes his time. Stands there dealing with it a while, then returns to the house. A plastic grocery bag filled with canned wieners, canned hash, Irish stew, a few tins of cola. He'll get chocolate bars and snack cakes along the way.

He loads the poles and rubbers in the back of the pickup. It's done before he notices half of what he's doing. Then he goes to the shed for the tackle box and wicker basket, takes them from where they're hung from his father's hands, and out into daylight.

‘Bring us back a few pan fries,' his father calls lightly.

The sun trying to brighten. He smacks at a fly on his neck. A smear he doesn't care to feel. He stores the box and basket away, climbs in the pickup and looks at Junior. He checks the rearview. A woman watching back at him. Watching over him. Nothing new to see with his damaged eyes. His father's profile in the shed window, holding a kitten up to his face.

He heads for the highway again, back toward St. John's. Driving now with his son aboard. From a couch in an unknown apartment in St. John's to this, in what seemed like a span of no time. An unwelcome thought. He looks through the windshield, aware of the road. The quietness of space. Scanning the forest growth near the highway for signs of moose. His eyes wanting to check the rearview. But he looks at
Junior instead. The boy still asleep in his pajamas with cartoons from TV coloured on them. Big creatures with wings. Fierce looking. The way the day is, the boy won't need any other clothes.

An hour and a half to Horsechops, his mind sifts through thoughts from earlier that morning and the night before. What he did right and what he knows he can't change from wrong. Nothing done or said ever good enough. His mind on the club outside Horsechops. Where he likes to stop in for a beer, before tackling the narrow rocky road to the pond. Then his eyes finding it there, the white siding in need of a coat of paint. Junior wakes up to the feel of tires slowing, rolling over the gravel lot. Rising up to see out the windshield, his small hands grip the dash.

The club is wide open inside. Hollow sounding underfoot or against any small word spoken. A jukebox with a country song playing low against a far wall. That sound carrying in an almost echo. The beer and cigarette ash smell of last night or years of it. No one there on a Sunday before noon. He orders a beer at the long bar. The bartender has a plump face, one turned eye, short black hair greased back, and a black T-shirt. There's a tattoo of a mermaid on his forearm. The blue ink thick and smudged. Blackstrap checks the empty wooden tables that go toward the back. A pool table down there with one cue stick laid across the worn green cloth. Junior climbs up on a stool, having a Coke with a straw. A pickled egg soon on a napkin in front of him, the napkin with a wet stain spreading. A salt shaker nearby. Junior still half asleep with his head held up on his palm, elbow on the bar, barely tall enough to stay that way, nodding a little, catching himself.

Blackstrap wishes he had a camera. His brother on his mind for some reason lately, the camera up to his eye, so his face is hidden. One of those severed fingers on the shutter button. Sometimes his memories are perfectly still, like he's watching what someone else captured for him. That photograph he saw in the Boston pub. That was the sort of thing Junior would take. A beer with his brother at this time of the morning would have given him something worth listening to. A whiff of the egg and vinegar. He musses up his son's hair, and Junior smiles without looking. Eyes shut while he drinks more through the straw.

‘Eat yer egg,' he says. And the boy does as told, shaking on salt and sleepily chewing small bites.

Nothing but suds in the bottom of the brown bottle. He eats what's left of Junior's egg in one bite.

They get back in the pickup, his eyes seeing a little more clearly after the beer. The sun brighter than before, edging out of the clouds. Humidity thickening so that he can't come all the way awake. He feels like he needs a shower and rolls down the window.

A mile ahead, he stops into the store for provisions. A half-dozen eggs in the container left there from a full dozen, and bacon and a quart of milk. A loaf of bread to toast on the bent hanger on the woodstove. Tea bags. A half-dozen India and chocolate bars for Junior. The boy walks up and down the aisles in his pajamas and black rubber boots, bare feet inside.

Blackstrap lifts Junior up on the counter at the checkout.

The chubby, curly-haired woman with glasses smiles at both of them.

‘Look at you,' she says to the boy. ‘Still in yer jammies.'

‘Goin' trout'n,' says Junior. He raises one leg and points at his boots. ‘See?'

The woman laughs, looks at Blackstrap while bagging the items. ‘Fine day fer it.'

Blackstrap nods, checks toward the front window. The road with a car going by. Pays the woman.

‘Ya got worms?' asks the woman.

‘Right,' says Blackstrap, going back to the cooler. He opens the long glass door and bends down to lift a styrofoam container. He thumbs the lid off and pokes around in the dirt. The thick worms in a clump down toward the bottom, sleekly inching around each other. A surprise of hidden life. He takes the container back to the counter. ‘Thanks.'

The road is always worse than he remembers. It depends on the amount of rain and the ruts worn away. Some of the boulders scrape the undercarriage of his truck. A cursing cringe whenever that happens. The ride bumpy. The truck swaying one way, then the other, while branches and bushes scratch the sides. He takes it slower in different places, but wants to go faster to get it over with. No matter how many times he travels down this road, he can never judge the time. It vanishes in concentration. It might take him an hour to get in. It might take half an hour. Usually, a few ginger-coloured rabbits hop across the
road. Blackstrap points them out to Junior, the boy too low in the seat to see. He kneels up, but never in time. Stays kneeled up for now.

Birds flying close across the front of the truck, near the grill or up over the bonnet. That chunk of moving steel not supposed to be there. Those birds going so fast, getting out of the way is how it looks. Maybe there are nests nearby that they've been startled from.