For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down (6 page)

When Bines went to Vera’s house he often stared at the little girl with her curly hair as if he was questioning something. He would smile at Hadley, take a quarter out of his pocket, and flip it along the back of his hand, controlling it magically along the top of his knuckles. Then he would pretend to hide it behind his head and find it in her ear.

This act of the quarter along his knuckle brought laughter into the house.

What he was questioning he wasn’t sure about. But it had something to do with Hadley’s empty world. This is what he came to think of as he did these tricks for her, and made her and Vera laugh. It didn’t matter usually
what type of world other people had. But he thought Vera was a very unhappy person, and that this showed in the little girl’s sudden tantrums, and most of all in the drawings she brought from school. It was a world that had nothing because Vera was too conscientious to be a consumer. What people took for granted in their homes, Vera herself agonized over buying. So there was no cable
TV
, no
VCR
, and in the end no happiness either. And all of this was considered diligent, and practical.

In the kind of world Vera had constructed – the kind of statistical world – there were concepts Bines thought were false.

He had no notion why these things bothered him, but the air was cool and winter was coming, and Vera’s questions were now more and more personal.

She asked questions that should not be asked. And he did not know why he had agreed to all of this. (He had agreed perhaps because he thought he would become famous.)

“How often did your father beat you? Can this be attributable to your fear of men – I mean did it engender a sense of powerlessness? And did you beat your boy?”

He did not know how to answer this and smiled.

“I assume you know your problem is you fear men – this is the constant in male violence.”

But Bines said nothing. He shrugged and looked at her a second, so that she looked away quickly.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

And she actually did seem to be sorry. He smiled.

“It don’t matter – don’t matter,” he said. He scratched his ear. “Don’t know – don’t know – the old lad hit me when he was drunk –”

All of these questions bothered him, and yet still he cared for her.

“Nevin hits children. I know he hit Hadley once.” She whispered this.

“I don’t want to know,” he said. And he stood up. “Don’t want to know.”

“Oh,” she said.

He felt strangely disheartened that she would say this about his son – as if nothing he said seemed to get through to her, and he resolved to introduce his son to them at the earliest opportunity.

“That’ll straighten things out,” he thought as he left the house.

By now he knew very well that she was using him. He did not know why. But he was too smart not to know. Perhaps to get back at Nevin – perhaps to prove to her friends how wild she was – or how bored she was – perhaps to become famous herself.

Whatever it was she was using him.

He moved the quarter along his hand, and flipped it with his thumb, unseen, into the air.

The man told this story:

Jerry had never known truth, but he had conceived it
himself like some great men conceive of truth and chisel it into the world. And it was his and no one else’s.

He was like some great soul cast out and trying to find shelter in the storm.

His mother used to sing to him. He had never admitted he was afraid. He remembered those songs when he was a little boy and went to church wearing the suit his mother had bought him, and his father was at the picnic. His father had a plate in his head and would want to fight. And the Matheson boys would always try to get him home.

His father would stand with his shirt out weaving back and forth, his right fist cocked a little, back against the wall, and the dry earth, the smell of hay, tumbling with the crickets and smell of summer and all the world jostling in trumpets of song – a mentally unfit melancholy man along a road with a little boy by the hand.

Then you know truth.

You don’t know it before then. (This is what he could not tell Vera, of course.) You don’t know it before then.

And the Matheson boys go home, you see, thinking his father would be all right, now that the picnic is over and the thumb wedge of darkness is over the trees, and it is going to rain.

Down by the brook with tall delicate sweet grass along the borders, the flies flick out at the last of an August evening.

A cow bellows somewhere off aways. I love you all I love you all.

And the small sifting sand of passing cars blown up as the man walks home in his squalid suit jacket, with a small boy by the hand.

But the men he was going to fight, who had all tormented him, are there on the road. The men, one of whom was married three days before and is on his honeymoon, a man named Gary Percy Rils, is drinking wine with the boys behind the barn near where your father was pitching horseshoes in the dust.

At first it is not an argument and you are still sitting there watching your dad, who at one time was a fine fellow – a long time ago. But then it is arguing. It is always arguing and arguing. And you watch carefully – the man who is just married is wanting to fight – you know him from before.

And your father is frightened. You see that. And the Matheson boys intervene. No one pretends he is frightened. None pretend he is. But he is all alone, and has his little boy.

And your father smiles at you as if it is a joke and everyone is friends and whips his mouth with his hand and takes a bolt of dark whisky.

You don’t know when they are there exactly – it is August and you are going home with your father and it is starting to rain.

I love you all I love you all.

And then the car plays with you on the road.

And you want to help.

Your father picks up a rock and you stand behind
him and his leg is shaking. And you never forget how he tries to protect you, this hobbled, mentally unbalanced, melancholy man.

“Grrr,” he says, with the rock in his hand, and the headlights flicking on and off, the grill mashed with flies, the wilted carnation from the wedding sitting on the dash.

“I have my little boy,” your father pleads. “I have my little boy – Jerry – is just a little boy.”

In the dark, by the ditch, with the crooked brook, going home.

I love you all I love you all.

Ralphie now felt himself lucky – a privileged part of the town. At first he did not admit that he felt this. But after a while it became evident that he did feel this way, and that he could no longer hide this feeling from himself.

It was good to know Jerry Bines because Jerry Bines was either liked or feared. And it was evident that people now looked upon Ralphie this way also. That is, that if Jerry Bines liked him then no one would bother him.

It was strange, because all of his life Ralphie had reacted with aversion to this kind of manipulation. But now, within the sanctuary of it, it all seemed different. It
seemed possible that the things Jerry did were misconstrued, were even wonderful – (the story about him escaping from prison one time now seemed a wonderful story). And Ralphie also knew that within the government, within academic circles, the same kind of manipulation happened. But complementing this was another bothersome feeling that perhaps no one, not even Adele, knew. At first it wasn’t noticeable but lately it had become prevalent.

Last week Constable Petrie had come to tell him and Vera that Gary Percy Rils had escaped from prison. Ralphie had not thought of him in years, even though Gary had made death threats personally toward him.

And Ralphie’s feeling now was – in the most secret part of his being – that he did not want this man in his life and hoped Jerry would help him – even if Jerry had to go to prison or die. It would make him and Vera safe from someone who had plagued their family for twenty-odd years. He tried not to let on he felt this, just as a man tries to let on he does not feel pleasure at an accident on the road.

But how could he ask for help? He worried about this constantly. Of course Constable Petrie told him that Gary Percy Rils would never get here to bother him. But still and all there was this edge on things, and Ralphie would think, “If only my father had not been the judge who heard the case.”

The case was in 1960. Gary Percy Rils had beat up a
young man and left him for dead. The man had three small children. He was an average man who had opened up a small store in Millerton. A good, kind-hearted man. The fight had started over cigarettes.

After he was beaten up he suffered from a punctured kidney, a damaged hand, and was blind in one eye. He was tormented by painful fluid and was frightened, and yelled at the children if they made noise.

He refused to stay in the store unless his wife was there, and could no longer play the pipe organ in the church. Gary Percy was given three years in prison.

“So it is me who is going to suffer,” Ralphie thought after Petrie told him about Rils, and he disliked himself for thinking this, yet he also suddenly disliked the idea that the man had played the pipe organ.

“Everyone must suffer – one for the other,” came the answer.

And this idea that everyone must suffer one for the other – which had been extracted from Ralphie’s thoughts on calculus more than from his study of St. Paul – made no difference once you yourself began to suffer. Once you yourself began to suffer you wanted the suffering to stop, and you would allow someone else to take it and bear it for you. (That this was the parable of Christ made no serious imprint on Ralphie, who disliked religion.)

He wanted to ask Jerry for help in this matter. But how do you do this? Straightforwardly or stumbling? And what were you doing if you did ask for help?

Ralphie had a map in his office upstairs. Besides doing tests on water samples taken from the river for his independent study on effluents from the mill, and a more serious study on groundwater that he was engaged in, he was also engaged in a kind of detective work.

He was plotting Gary Percy Rils’ imaginary course back home, from various police reports, and wondering if he would ever make his way, and then the feeling came over him that he was quite willing to have someone else suffer instead of himself.

To Jerry it would be nothing. And he had heard rumours that Jerry didn’t like Rils anyway. (Ralphie in his innocence never bothered to wonder why this might be.) But this feeling, this other feeling that he would be willing to have someone else suffer instead of himself, plagued him.

One night he got up late and went into his office. The naked tree branches were tapping the window. He was standing in bare feet and long underwear looking at the map. There was a tiny bit of snow on the ground and everyone was sleeping. He believed Rils to be somewhere in Quebec – it was only an intuition, a feeling.

“No, I can’t ask Jerry – I’m his friend,” Ralphie thought. “I’m his friend.”

And at that moment a feeling of peace descended upon him.

The peace lingered a long time in the cool night air. And yet he shivered as he went back to bed.

He only knew that if something terrible happened to
his life, it would be because he had been born. In this he was only the same as everyone else, like the poor man who played the organ at the church.

On November 3, Ralphie promised Bines he’d go to see him.

All day he was worried about it. He didn’t know why Jerry would want him to go, though he pretended to himself that this was not worrying him.

There was a fresh load of wood piled at the back of Bines’ house, and when he got out of the car there was the smell of the silt of deep fall in the air. The river gurgled down below and turned away at the wide bend towards dark heavy trees.

He went to the door but suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder.

“’Lo,” Bines said. He was wearing his toque and his army parka, with its attached fur hood sitting down on his shoulders. The toque made his head look small. His eyes seemed mildly annoyed. “Come on way in,” he said.

And he swung the door open to let Ralphie pass.

“Got someone for ya to meet – ta meet here,” he said. “Come here,” he said.

Ralphie looked at the kitchen door that was only half open – it didn’t open any wider – and a young boy of about three or four squeezed through it.

His hair was blond and his face was pale. He had a
small mole on his neck. He was clutching a small wheel in his hand.

“This is William – William – this is Mr. Pillar – he’s a friend of mine.”

And William came over with his hand out to shake Ralphie’s hand. It was as if, and Ralphie was certain of this, Jerry had rehearsed this with him all day.

“Excuse me, Mr. Pillar,” the boy said, and then looked at his father worried and flushed.

Jerry smiled. “What do you mean, excuse me?”

“I mean – hello, Mr. Pillar.” And he put his hand out again.

Jerry smiled again.

Ralphie took the small warm hand in his.

“My young lad,” Jerry said.

They were putting the boy’s wagon together and Jerry had been out to the shed to get some tools.

He went back into the kitchen and sat over the wagon, with William standing beside him holding the wheel. Two dogs sat in the corner with their heads on their paws.

Now and then Jerry would ask William to hand him something, or to take something from him and put it away.

“Put this in the box,” he would say, or, “Hand me that axle.”

And silently, and with great interest, the boy watched as his wagon was assembled. Now and then he looked up at Ralphie and smiled.

“Mr. Pillar’s been to university,” Jerry said, with an inflection of absolute respect, so that his son would also show it.

When the wagon was finished, Jerry told William to get ready for bed and that he would make toast for a lunch.

“Got your pyjamas?” Jerry said. “Didn’t your mom send no slippers down?”

The boy sat at the table, with his eyes resting on Ralphie. His face was delicate, and his small ears stuck out just slightly. He looked very pale, and somehow not entirely of this world.

After the boy went to bed Jerry came back downstairs.

“His mother’s a Pentecostal girl – from upriver,” Jerry said. He laughed slightly. Then became serious. “That’s all right though – that’s all right.”

In the light, and warmth of the stove, Ralphie noticed Bines’ hands. He was always noticing things about him, as if trying to decipher something.

“You know,” Bines said, enthusiastically, as if Ralphie would like this, “I coulda shot a moose yesterday – I didn’t – didn’t shoot it – no – I said, that’s that, Ralphie Pillar.”

He smiled again. It was as if he was admitting to a weakness. And Ralphie looked down at his rubber overshoes for a second. Again he felt he had done something wrong in looking away when Bines was speaking of something that was suddenly important to him, but he
could not help it. And Bines’ reaction was to look at him questioningly a moment, and then to look away also. Then Bines cleared his throat and tried to think of something else to say. He spoke quietly. “I like children,” he said, after a moment. “Poor little kids – some never have nothin –” he paused as if reflecting on something, as if he realized he had said this before. There was another terrible silence, pregnant in the still house.

What he wanted to ask Ralphie about was the continents. How many continents were there? Where was Russia? Why was Russia like it was? How many war planes did Russia have?

And then he asked if there were people from other planets.

“I don’t know,” Ralphie said, smiling slightly.

“Well, how many other planets is there?” Bines said.

“Billions,” Ralphie said.

Bines said nothing. Every now and again there was a static sound from the other room.

“What’s that?” Ralphie asked.

“Police scanner,” Jerry said. “I have to know what’s going on here – my young lad is asking me about the continents and I said, I’ll see about it.” Then he grinned, and said: “I don’t know very much – very much –”

“Sure you do,” Ralphie said, the way he would lie easily and comfortably with other people.

Bines answered this by getting up and opening two beer.

But then he felt embarrassed.

“When you were in school – I was in Kingsclear. Never learned nothing. My young lad’ll know all of that anyhow – sooner or later – I don’t care about it – but it’ll be good for him – for him anyways,” he said.

Bines had told his son this story. It was just before Willie went to bed. Bines was sitting, facing his son, with his huge hands folded near Willie’s knees. Every now and then Bines would touch those knees with his hands, and draw them away delicately.

It was a story about a deer and how it outsmarted a hunter. It was a story of the woods, of gloom and darkness, of autumn ending and winter coming on.

“This happened a long time ago,” Bines said. “There was an old deer, who had been in many battles in many ruts, and this was its ninth year. It had been cold all autumn, and the trees were naked and raw. Far off it could see smoke from the hunter’s house, rising in the sky. It had lost its strength – this old buck – and kept only one doe, who had a small fawn. The afternoons were half-dark and winter was coming on hard – and the hunter kept coming – the hunters always keep coming.”

Bines looked over at Ralphie and smiled, and Ralphie nodded.

“The big deer didn’t have no friends. He usually travelled alone. But he saw all the other deer being
killed, one by one. And though he gave them other bucks advice – gave them advice – they didn’t follow it.

“So all the other deer was killed, one by one. But the hunter who tracked him – who tracked the old buck in the snow – was smart as any hunter. The buck knew this, and wanted to keep him away from the doe and her fawn if he could. He was an old deer and the doe was young. So the big buck decided to draw the hunter to himself – and each day the food was more and more scarce, and each day it was colder. And each day it led the hunter farther and farther from the cabin.

“The puddles were frozen and the trees were naked, and the sky moved all day long –”

Jerry touched the boy’s knees lightly again and smiled.

“Every day the hunter would get closer – get closer to the doe. But the buck had a plan, which it had learned from living so long. It would always show itself to the hunter at daylight and lead him on a chase throughout the whole day. The hunter could never catch up to it. At the end of every day when the hunter came to the river the buck wouldn’t be there. The buck always disappeared – and its tracks disappeared, as if it had flowed away.”

“Where?” the boy asked.

“The hunter didn’t know – didn’t know. No one did. The hunter too was tired. He was a tired man. Each day he got up earlier. And remember – each day he wanted
deer meat for his family. So he was only doing what he had to. Had to do there. Each day he concentrated on the buck – each day he followed the tracks to the river. Each day he found nothing there.

“And each day his children were hungry, his wife was sick. And each day the hunter was weaker and colder. And each day the big old buck had allowed the little doe and its fawn to live another hour, another night.”

Jerry looked about the room, and the boy smiled timidly.

“The buck was old and tired but so was the hunter. The hunter had a bad hand and had wrapped it in his leg stockings. His eyes were fine and could pick out a small bird in a thick bush. He scanned the river every evening. The river was a wild river and had just made ice – a wild river there, but the ice was thin.

“One day after a heavy snowfall the hunter found himself deep in the woods – the sky had cleared, the stars was coming out – the hunter had been following the buck for many hours. It was hours I guess he had followed the buck that day.

“There wasn’t a sound when the hunter come to the river.

“The day was solid and still and he cursed to think he had lost it again. Lost that buck there again. Now the stumps were covered and everything was quiet. Afternoon was almost ended – and night was coming on – and that’s when he saw the doe. She was making her way
along the riverbank, and he could just make out her brown hide by a tree. She was coming right toward him. It was almost dark. She hadn’t seen him, and she was leading her fawn toward him up an old deer trail. The fawn behind her.

“So the hunter felt he must use this chance, and he knelt and aimed and waited. Everything was still. He cocked his old rifle and was about to fire – about to shoot it, you know. But then of course everyone knows what happened.”