Charlie's Key (24 page)
“And you planned on being right there behind me,” says Nick.
Tubby laughs. “I did. What I didn’t plan on was it being such a long wait. I mean, after you got manslaughter I figured you’d be out in five years, maybe less. But then you went and killed that guy in the Pen, and five jumped up to fifteen.”
“I never killed nobody in the Pen.”
“Court said otherwise, didn’t it?” says Tubby. “Says you set that fire what killed the other inmate…”
“I never meant for nobody to die in that.”
“Poor Nick Sykes. Never meant for anything to happen. I don’t suppose you meant to kill Sullivan, either, did ya?”
“I never did,” says Nick, his voice going to a shout. “I never…”
He looks over at me.
“I never meant to kill anyone.”
“Well,” says Tubby, “whether you meant to or not, you done the time—or most of it. Though I thought you had a couple more years to go…”
“Got out early for good behavior,” says Nick.
“Guess that’s why I got caught off-guard there, the night of the accident. I never figured you one for good behavior. Anyways, I was thinking I wouldn’t have to worry about the Sykeses for another couple of years when all of a sudden there’s that accident. My jaw just about hit the floor when the kid said his name, then his old man’s. Jesus, I thought, something’s up. Then I come to find out you been released, and it all came together: Mikey coming here, meeting you, heading off to wherever the cash was hid. So I kept close to the kid, figured he’d lead me to you, and you’d lead me to the cash, which is”— Tubby nods at the cash box—“in there.”
“So today in town,” says Nick, “you let me grab up Charlie.”
Tubby smiles. “Had to. I knew you needed something from the kid, else you would’ve gone to where the cash was to and then took off. But you were hanging around, following him—to the funeral home, up on Signal Hill, out to Quidi Vidi. You wanted him for something, so I figured the sooner I let you get him, the quicker you’d lead me to the loot.”
“And you tailed us here.”
“Wasn’t hard,” says Tubby. “Seen you pull off into the gravel pit, then off down Natches Road, and on out to here. And this is where it ends, Sykes. Right here. Now give me the box.”
“If I don’t?” says Nick. “You’ll what? Shoot me? You already said that’s gonna happen—you’re gonna shoot me and come up with some story bout how I were dangling Charlie off the cliff. So why don’t I save you the trouble and take a jump right now and end it? Over the edge. With this lot going over with me.”
Nick holds the box up as he edges toward the cliff, forcing Tubby to take a step backward.
“That’s far enough now,” says Tubby, shooting a quick glance behind him to see where the edge is. “Just give me the box, and I’ll let the kid go.”
Nick laughs. “You’ll let him go…now why would I believe that?”
“I give you my word.”
“Yer word?” says Nick. He spits. “What’s yer word worth? Didn’t ya already take some kind of oath to help out them what needs it? And here ya are, getting ready to gun me down in cold blood and toss me nephew off the cliff behind me. You’re about as good at upholding the law as yer buddies were twenty years ago, when ye all turned yer blue backs on them kids at Cliffside. Christ, yer as bad as the Brothers. So go on, give me yer word, b’y. Shout it loud enough to knock the ears off a rabbit—it ain’t worth nothing. Because I knows what you’re gonna do, sure as shit. Soon as ya gun me down, you’re gonna do the same to Charlie there. Then dump us both off the cliff. No doubt you got yer story cooked up already, ’bout how the kid got caught in the cross fire. That’s how it’s going to go down, ain’t it, officer? I knows it. I can see it in you, you twisted prick.”
And he can—I know it, just by looking at his eyes, glinting in the glare of the flashlight. Nick’s got them drilling full-on, right into Tubby, and he sees just what’s gonna happen. Tubby sees it too, and he takes a nervous half-step back, keeping himself and that gun barrel just outta Nick’s reach.
“Believe me or not, Sykes,” says Tubby. “I don’t see you got much choice.”
“Oh, I got a choice,” Nick yells, then turns to me. “Charlie,” he shouts. “You do better than I would have, all right? Do better for your dad, b’y. And for yourself. And for me. You do better with this.”
Right when he says it, he tosses that cash box straight toward me, then puts his head down and his shoulders forward and runs hard as he can into Tubby and…they’re gone. Gone like your room when the light goes out.
And it’s just me and the moon and the
boom
,
boom
,
boom
, up from sixty meters below.
I never saw what made my dad like he was—leastways, I never saw it till Nick told me the truth about what happened. About how my grandparents died, and about the orphanage and about what happened there. It explained a lot of things, hearing that. Explained how come my dad could seem mad sometimes, at nothing. How he got sad when he was drunk, sad at stuff I couldn’t see. In fact, most of the times when he got mad or sad, it was at things I couldn’t see—at ghosts almost. Which, I guess, is kind of what he was mad and sad about. His mom and his dad and those Brothers and the little kids. All that stuff happened a long time ago. But inside his head it was still right there, as real to him as last night’s hockey score.
You’d think it would make me sad to find out about all that stuff, but you know what? It makes me happy. Well, not happy. But it makes me feel a bit better. I’ll tell you a secret about those times when my dad got mad or sad at stuff I couldn’t see. Deep down, I always figured it was because of me—because of something bad I did. For a long time, I couldn’t figure out what it might be, that something bad. Then one afternoon, when I was four or five—before I started school—I figured it out. I remember the exact time, because me and my dad were at McDonald’s. I was sitting at the table while he got our stuff, and I was looking at this little family across the aisle: a baby in a highchair and kid a bit older than me, keeping an eye on that baby to make sure it didn’t flop out onto the floor. And while I was waiting for my dad, along comes those kids’ mom with her tray. And she puts it down and passes out the fries and the ketchup and the straw and the napkins. And right then, watching her open up one of those stupid ketchup packets that spurt the goop everywheres, right then I figured it out: my dad hated me for killing my mom. Not that he hated me all the time…But those times when he got mad for no reason? Now I knew the reason. And the worst part was there was nothing I could do to make it better, ’cause even a five-year-old knows you can’t bring someone alive who’s been dead all that time.
That was the first time I got the feeling of that black hole trying to suck me into it—that day at McDonald’s. Pretty soon after that I started having dreams that my mom wasn’t really dead, that she might be out there somewheres, looking for me. And that was about the only thing that could make the black-hole feeling go away. Until today—until right now, when I think about what Nick told me. What Nick told me makes me figure maybe I wasn’t the only reason my dad was like he was. Maybe my mom dying was still part of it, but it wasn’t just me. It wasn’t just my fault. And that makes things a bit better.
Maybe that’s part of what the truth does—makes things a bit better, even if it hurts finding out about some things.
That’s what I’m thinking about, up on the cliff, with the last of the clouds blowing away, leaving a clear view of the stars—thousands of them, with the full moon off to one side. It’s almost bright as day, bright enough to see if I can spot anything over the cliff. I haven’t dared look since Nick charged into Tubby, but now I figure I gotta. I get down on my belly and slink out to the edge, poke my head out beyond the last of the rocks and the grass and the stones, and I look down.
There’s only the ocean and the rocks where the waves hit the cliff. Nothing else. When I slink back from the edge, my cast bumps into my backpack, sitting where I set it before Nick headed down into the crypt. There’s a sweatshirt in it that I get out, because it’s cold with the sun gone down. And the urn’s in there too.
Maybe this would be a good place to scatter those ashes, I think—with Nick close by somewheres. So I pull out the urn and creep back to the cliff edge, where I pop the top and turn it upside down. Nothing happens. I shake it, and still nothing happens. The ashes are stuck. How can something that’s nothing get stuck to itself? But it does. I have to bash the bottom like a ketchup bottle to make the ashes fall out, and when they finally do, they come out in a clump before the wind catches them and explodes them a thousand ways: up onto the tuckamore, out into the sea air, down onto the waves and the rocks and the cliff, silver dust in the moonlight.
My dad would like that, I bet—that wind blowing him around. I bet if he could pick a way to disappear, to really disappear so nobody’d ever find a trace of him again, that might be it. Into the wind on a cliff over the ocean in Newfoundland.
It’s when I set the empty urn down that I get the idea of what I can do with those coins. I get the cash box that’s lying in the tuckamore where Nick chucked it and set it down by the urn. They’re almost the same size—it’d only take a second to move the coins from one to the other. Then I could just shut it up and take it back into town and put those coins right into that safety deposit box.
I open the cash box and count them—fifty-seven, which I don’t know how much that is in dollars, but must be a lot. Enough to buy a bike, or a car even, when I’m old enough to drive. Or enough to get a ticket back out to Fort Mac when I decide I want to go. Then there’d still be some left over to build a camp, like the one me and Robert started down behind his place. Except we didn’t have money to buy any real lumber or anything, so we just used up some of his dad’s old plywood. I could maybe live there for a bit—till I was sixteen or something. Then I could rent a place or get a job or go to college. It’d be easy with this money.
Except…
It would mean telling lies, which is something I’ve already done plenty of, I guess. What’s a few more? I already told Dez and Miz I didn’t know anything about why we came out here—that it was just a vacation. It’d be easy to keep on telling that lie. How I didn’t know anything about what Nick wanted, or why Tubby ended up on the cliff. They might ask a couple of questions, but then they’d figure I was just what I was pretending to be: a dumb kid who didn’t know about anything much.
But I’d know. And then I’d be like my dad, with all those ghosts in my head I couldn’t talk to anybody about. I’d have to keep them all secret, for the rest of my life. And right now, what I want to do more than anything is to talk to somebody about this—even if they won’t know exactly what to do. Just to talk to someone and maybe ask them what they think’d be best to do.
That’s when I remember Clare’s phone, still in my pocket. The sky over my head is going from deep black to dark blue when I start scrolling down the numbers to find the one I want.
It rings once.
“Hey,” I say. “It’s Charlie. Can you come get me?”
Though the events in
Charlie’s Key
are fictional, there were many, many real young boys who suffered physical and sexual assaults at the Mount Cashel Orphanage in St. John’s, Newfoundland. It was widespread, horrific abuse that went unpunished for many years, ignored and covered up by both church and civic authorities. Michael Harris has written an excellent overview of their story in
Unholy Orders
(Viking Canada).
ROB MILLS
has been an award-winning reporter, newspaper editor and writer in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Ontario.
Charlie’s Key
is his first published novel. He lives in Peterborough, Ontario, with his wife and two daughters.