Blackstrap Hawco (97 page)

‘Fill it in fer what you want and I'll sign 'er.'

The man studies Blackstrap, then lifts a pen from his top pocket. ‘I'd prefer if it was in your handwriting.'

Blackstrap takes a long draw on his cigarette. ‘You just fill it in. I'm sure you'll do a fine job of it. Educated man like yourself.'

The man keeps his eyes on Blackstrap, then starts to smirk. ‘Oh, okay,' he says with an intake of breath. ‘I get it.' He looks down at the boy, then back at the dozer. Snorting out a bit of amusement, he shifts his attention to Blackstrap's clay-covered boots.

‘“Oh” what?' Blackstrap says, only the slight shifting of his shoulders, the straightening of his neck.

The man notices Blackstrap's arm, the row of deep scars, like notches on a wall counting time.

‘Nothing. No problem.' The man fills out the receipt against the steel of the dozer and hands the book to Blackstrap to sign. Blackstrap takes the pen and leans, balancing the book on his knee and squinting the smoke away from his eyes. Slowly, he shapes his name with the wide loops and straight lines that his mother taught him.

The man is smiling when Blackstrap tears off the top copy. A smile that is better than any deed ever done.

Blackstrap hands the book to his son. ‘Put it back now, Junior.'

‘Sure.' The boy takes it and races off for the backhoe. ‘Time me.'

‘You got that cheque?'

‘In the car.' The man tosses his thumb toward his Lincoln.

‘Get it and be lucky I don't break yer fu'k'n neck.' His lips gone bloodless tight in an instant. ‘Be lucky I let ya outta here with all yer teeth, ya fluffy-white townie.'

‘What's your problem?' the man snickers. Right away, he sidesteps along the fresh clay, but his eyes go to Blackstrap, again and again.

Blackstrap watches the man move away, then bend into his car to write the cheque up. When Junior returns, Blackstrap places a hand on his son's head without glancing down, waiting for the shame-made hatred to clear from his eyes.

‘What'n arsehole,' Junior says outright.

Blackstrap checks the boy who is looking up.

‘He's just a townie,' he tells the boy. ‘Awright?'

The boy nods, as if he's the one being chastised.

‘He can't help it.'

The man comes toward them, the cheque ready in his hand. ‘Here you go.'

Blackstrap sees the amount. The numbers more than what they agreed on. ‘Is that okay, now?' The man nods, trying to make amends, but not really meaning it.

Blackstrap folds the cheque, pokes it into the top pocket of his flannel jacket, then spits off into the dirt he has shoved into a heap.

‘That should help you get ahead,' says the man, a smile directed toward the boy before he turns and steps back to his car, humming a tune along the way. Climbing in, he toots his horn as he drives off. Nice guy in a big car.

Blackstrap holds himself still.

 

‘Yyy yuh yuh yyer nnnot at much,' Wilf says to Blackstrap. ‘T'day.' Wilf shuffles slightly to the side, his bushy beard tucked in close to the fabric of his plaid shirt, his head tilted on a permanent angle, cheek set against his shoulder. ‘Haven't buh been in fffer a while.'

‘No, b'y,' Blackstrap plainly responds, lifting a beer bottle to his mouth. He stares at Wilf's lame arm held in against his beer-gut stomach. He remembers the accident Wilf was involved in years ago,
coming upon it on the highway. Blood all over Wilf, and the one in the passenger seat dead. Then he remembers the car that he himself had rolled, kicking open the door of the upside-down vehicle, falling out without a scratch. He wonders why the difference. Why Blackstrap walked away while Wilf didn't. Two wrecks with different outcomes. The thought sinks deep before he shifts his gaze to see the rack of cheezies on the other side of the makeshift bar he has leaned one elbow on. Behind Blackstrap, billiard balls crack. A boy named Gilbert plays a game of eight-ball with himself.

‘Rrrrr…right on,' Wilf says, wiping the bar with the damp cloth, turning it over with his one good hand, rubbing the same space again.

Blackstrap watches Wilf, sees in his face and actions that he is wanting to tell Blackstrap something. The way Wilf peeks up at him. An expression in his sad eyes with wrinkled sacks under them, like Blackstrap can read his thoughts. They have known each other since they were boys. Wilf from Bareneed too. Forming a friendship when they both first arrived in Cutland Junction back in '62. Blackstrap wonders what news would be so bad for Wilf to hold back from him; it can only have something to do with Karen. More news of her in this place. It would be the only thing Wilf would be fearful to speak of.

Blackstrap stares the question into Wilf's eyes. Wilf blinks, shuffles to the side to toss the cloth toward the bare plywood ledge in the back. Shuffling face forward again, he sees that Blackstrap is still watching after him.

‘Cuh cuh cccan't say,' Wilf mumbles, his head jerking against his shoulder with the sideways intentions of a nod. Blackstrap stares, wants to grab Wilf. Anger still taut in him from his confrontation with the man in the Lincoln. Junior brought home, back to Patsy. The ride in silence. Blackstrap not knowing what to say, to clear the air, to explain. Junior out of the pickup and gone into the house. Blackstrap just staring at the place where Junior had been sitting. He will make people answer him. The way people should answer anything that is asked, plainly. Staring through the anger, buzzing in his ears, Blackstrap barely hears the door open behind him. He glances over his shoulder to see past the pool table that occupies most of the room. Isaac Tuttle shuffles in from the daylight through the door, a cardboard carton in his arms. Back from the insane asylum.
Carefully moving toward the bar, he lays the carton there without looking at anything. Only straight ahead, like a blind man.

Wilf leans toward Tuttle, dragging his numb leg along, and nods.

The day Blackstrap went after Tuttle with his shotgun through the woods, the day they took the man away, months ago, something he wanted out of his mind. That life. A mistake. Karen. Tuttle gone. And back again, dragging the memory in with him.

Karen off with the mountie.

Tuttle's doing.

‘Rrrr…right on,' Wilf says, then flicks his sad, nervous eyes toward Blackstrap.

‘Kleezies,' Tuttle thickly says, his tongue seeming swollen. An accident, people have said, but unable to figure out the possibilities of hurting one's tongue so fiercely by accident.

‘Cheezies' is what was said, Blackstrap suspects.

Isaac pokes his glasses up on his scarred knob of a nose. From another injury no one knows the cause of. ‘Y'order'd, reet?' He writes up a bill from a book, tears it out, then recognizes Blackstrap for the first time. He shifts away, startled. ‘I nayer,' he blurts out. ‘Nayer.'

‘Never what?' Blackstrap grumbles, taking another glug of his beer to finish it off.

‘Nayer…Nayer.' Tuttle turns his seemingly misshapen head away, holding his hand forward, while Wilf, using his one good arm, counts the dollars out onto the bar.

Tuttle's fingers wait for the money despite what might come.

‘Never did what?' Blackstrap asks, laying his bottle down, twisting his body to fully face Tuttle. Almost an old man now. Late sixties or older, but ageless. The invoice book has reminded him of the man from the city. A hole poked through by a trickle.

‘Din't.' Money in hand, Tuttle shoves it into his pocket and hurries for the front door.

Blackstrap waits a moment, then – eyes on Wilf where Wilf is watching him – turns and strides across the room. He glares out the open door to see Isaac Tuttle pulling clear of the dirt drive in his small grey van. Faded red letters for Tuttle's wholesale company printed on the side.

The boy Gilbert comes up behind Blackstrap.

‘He were say'n t'ings 'bout yer missus,' the boy professes. ‘He were drunk here one night and he were saying all sort 'a ugly t'ings. Crazy religion stuff. Fuh'k'n Cat'lic.'

Blackstrap turns on the boy. A dangerous boy. Never to be believed. Never to be trusted. A fatherless boy. A mother who'd suck you off for a package of cigarettes.

Gilbert steps back, pool cue in hand.

A voice from the back of the room. Wilf now joining in. Someone having already started it, calling, ‘I hhheard 'em say'n he hhh hhh ad sum of 'er. Took 'er. Pissed drunk were 'e ruhrrrrave'n.'

‘Emlee,' says the boy, Gilbert, in mimicry, ‘Emlee, dat's wha' he were saying.' The boy laughs. A buckled-up mouth full of brown teeth. Looks at Wilf. ‘Emlee,' a childish taunting moan, then bucktoothed laughter.

His mother's name spoken like that.

‘Duh-Dancin' 'round,' Wilf says. ‘LL-luh-LLLike 'e were wwwwaltzing widt duh-da dead.'

It carries Blackstrap from the room in a rush. His wilful body hurling forward into the outside air, across the dirt and grass, the earth something he glides over, something that holds him up.

Climbing into his pickup, Blackstrap revs the engine, tears out of the drive, flinging dirt up in his wake. The sound in his head,
Emlee
. Memories of the shy Isaac Tuttle stood in their Bareneed kitchen when Blackstrap was a boy. The simple, quiet man who delivered coal and brought presents for his mother. Presents he'd seen her hide from his father. The betrayal he felt, even as a boy. Something not sitting right in his stomach. That retarded man. What would his mother want with that ugly, retarded man?

Blackstrap screeches out onto the pavement, races down the main road of Cutland Junction. It takes no time to find Tuttle's van pulled up in front of a convenience store. Blackstrap is out of the pickup before it seems to have stopped, speeding through the confusion. In through the shop's door.
Karen, Emily
. Tuttle in love with his mother right from day one. Everyone knew it. Joked about it. And now this. What he has done to Karen. How he drove her away. How did he change her? Everything after that destroyed. Everyone knowing what was done every time they
looked at Blackstrap. The disgrace that Tuttle has brought upon the Hawco name.

Down an aisle, Blackstrap sights Tuttle through hot steady eyes, moves toward him, roughly grabs him by both shoulders, spins him around. Lips tight, eyes furious, Blackstrap pulls back his fist and strikes Tuttle full in the face with all the pain and hate of decades gathered in him. Tuttle's scarred knob of a nose hard against Blackstrap's fist. Not giving like a real nose. Clumped like a soft stone fitting into the spaces between his knuckles. Tuttle's glasses fly away, his naked eyes wide and seeing upward as he tilts back, striking a steel-edged shelf with the back of his neck. A crackling sound, like a small moist branch giving way. The sound that mutes everything in the store because it is uniquely internal. A sound from inside the body for all ears to hear. It is a final sound from the human catalogue of quiet disasters.

 

Blackstrap knows that it is only a matter of time before the RCMP arrive to knock on the front door. He sits in the old rocking chair in his father's bedroom and traces the rows of scars on the underside of his left arm. Junior had told him that the scars looked like claw marks from a man named Freddy, a man with steel blades for fingers. Junior has asked about them and Blackstrap has said nothing. One day he would tell him, when Junior is old enough to understand. Knowing that he might not be there for that time, Blackstrap calls out to Junior, waiting and watching the doorway until the boy appears, his expression expectant. Blackstrap tilts his head for the boy to enter.

‘Close the door.' He stands from where he's been resting and nods toward the rocking chair. ‘Sit down.'

Junior does as his father says. Then Blackstrap thinks about how he is stood there above his son looking down. He settles on the old pink bedspread, the mattress gone soft ages ago.

A strange position to be in. The smell of Blackstrap's mother still in the room. The sounds of his father. The smell of gasoline off Blackstrap. Chainsaw smoke in his clothes. He catches a whiff of it himself.

‘This is yer grandfadder's room.'

‘Yeah.'

‘You 'member him?'

‘A little.' He nods in a disappointed way.

‘You knew 'm when you were jus' a baby. He thought the world of you.' Blackstrap recalls the day that Patsy left, pregnant and with Junior. And Jacob's silence for almost a month before he even said one word to Blackstrap. Blackstrap's fault to let his family go, to fall apart that way. A man's duty to keep it together. Nothing but selfishness otherwise.

Where was Jacob's family now? His duty?

How bitter would that make a man?

‘You know yer great-uncle Ace were a sealer.'

‘Yeah. You told me,' Junior says, his hands tucked between his knees, pushing them in deeper. ‘That's cruel clubbing baby seals. I saw on TV. Blood everywhere.'

Blackstrap watches his son's face. ‘It's no crueller den killing other things. You gotta eat, right? Or someone else has ta do it fer you. A butcher in a supermarket. Dat's easier for some people.'

Junior nods in agreement. He stares at his father's hard eyes. ‘I'm gonna be a vegetarian when I grow up.'

Blackstrap snorts a small, futile laugh. ‘Good fer you. But who's gonna strangulate all those vegetables fer yer supper?'

‘They're not alive.'

‘No? Well, yer grandfadder had an interesting conversation with a turnip once.'

Junior laughs, good and clean merriment of the young sort.

Blackstrap leans and reaches forward, touches the boy's head, his palm resting there in silence. Then he takes it away. He thinks of hugging the boy but does not know how Junior might respond.

‘Yer Uncle Ace sailed on big ships up to da ice. He were a hero, just like me brudder, da one you were named after. He saved a man from when da roof collapsed down in da ore mines on Bell Isle. There were an explosion, too. Nut'n left of him but his fingers.' Blackstrap holds up his own fingers, a few of them nothing but stubs.