From the Chrysalis (38 page)

“Who are you?” two close-cropped boys in blue would chime, as if they hadn’t already met her and didn’t know.

“I’m his cousin,” she’d say. They’d smile and wink.

“What d’you do?” they’d ask.

“I’m a student,” she’d say, and they’d smirk.
So childish,
she’d think, while Dace maintained his mask.

They rode less and less with the Wolfhounds on the open road, and she knew it was her fault. She didn’t like the way people looked at them and more than once the gang had accused her of looking down her long nose at them. Well she did, sort of. At some of them anyway. And they couldn’t understand her university English. They despised education and called her
Teach
to her face. They might have called her even more colourful names behind her back, but Dace would have killed them.
 

Still, none of this mattered during the long summer evenings she dreamed with Dace. Maitland would be history, he swore. And the bikers too, she hoped. It would all happen when things quieted down. They just had to figure how to keep in touch with Uncle Norm and Rosie and Liza’s mother. They could take on new identities, head down to Mexico via the Peace Bridge in Niagara Falls rather than near Maitland so they could keep the authorities on their toes. Or maybe they’d head out to Vancouver, whichever was furthest away. Maybe she’d take some correspondence courses. They wouldn’t even have to cross the border if they went to British Columbia, although B.C. wasn’t Liza’s first choice. She’d heard it rained all the time there. Besides, she longed to see the monarch butterflies’ wintering grounds.
 

“Peace Bridge, by the Falls,” she finally decided. “Okay? I like the name and they won’t expect us to cross there.”

“Sure,” he said. “I like it too.
Glide on the peace train
.” Like her, he couldn’t carry a tune, but he sang anyway.
“
No problem. I’ll have to drive two hundred miles out of my way, but at least we’ll have somewhere to jump if the cops are on our tails.” In reality, he didn’t care where they went, as long as it was away
.
She had been to Ireland; he’d never even left Ontario.
 

She had given up visiting the bikers’ flea-infested Clubhouse, with its boarded windows shot up by rival gang members. Given up saying, “No thanks”
when Dace’s biking “brothers” plied her with drugs, coming on to her just for sport. Lucky for her, she was a university student and dutifully returned to school. If she hadn’t, one of Joe’s creative headlines might easily have read:
University Co-ed Sucked Into Life of Crime.

One morning Uncle Norm called her at the residence. She picked up the phone and heard a grown man crying. “Liza,” he said. “They got him. He’s back in jail.”

“No,” she whispered, sliding down the wall and burying her head in her knees. “That’s impossible. We went to the lake last night.”

“It’s true. They arrested him at a biker party. Then they came out here and wrecked his room. Tore up the shed, too. I had to put myself between them and the poor dog.”

“Jesus! I told him all summer to stay away from those guys.”
 

She didn’t mention she had been to the Clubhouse, didn’t tell him about the things she’d hidden for him. She felt sick to her stomach over the things she was keeping secret. God. She was twenty years old and had so many stories she couldn’t tell. Anybody could be listening on the phone. And Uncle Norm might blame her if he knew.
Stupid, stupid!
She had been responsible for keeping Dace safe. Maybe if she had said no earlier, maybe if she had taken him away … She heard a little hiss on the other end of the line: the sharp intake of Uncle Norm’s breath.

“Sorry, what’s that? Are you okay?”

“Oh, it’s nothing. When they busted in here, one of the buggers twisted my wrist.”

“You should go to the doctor, Uncle Norm. What are the charges? Is it a parole beef ?”

“No. Weapons. They said he had a knife, but that’s a goddamn lie. It was a set up. I don’t know what’s going on, but they want him back.”

“It’s okay, Uncle Norm. Don’t tell me anymore. It’ll be in the paper tonight.”

“Lies, all lies. I have to go now. The lawyer says I can probably get him out if I post $50,000 bail. He’ll have to stay here at the house, though, until the trial.”

“Thank God. The locals are going to love that,” Liza said wryly, and hung up.
 

She was relieved she and Janice had finally gotten a phone in their room. She collapsed facedown on her bed, stuck her face into her pillow, and screamed.

Chapter 27

Making Choices

Devereux farm, near Maitland, August 27, 1972:

He couldn’t leave the farm, so the night before Dace was due back in court she met him there. She was so upset, she hadn’t remembered to bring her purse, much less her pills and she had already forgotten to take two of them this week. Uncle Norm was in the woodshed, hammering together a five-tiered birdhouse: a Purple Martin house, he said. He was slack-faced with grief and looking old. What was he, forty-five? A cigarette hung from his mouth and a bottle of Johnny Walker waited on a three-legged stool by his feet, three quarters gone.
 

Dace was smoking too, balancing a metal ashtray full of reeking butts on his left hand. He wore a long-sleeved Levi shirt and soft blue jeans. On the outside he looked relatively calm.
Like me,
Liza thought,
just before I’m about to scream.
 

Uncle Norm wiped his bottle off and offered it to her, but he had little to say. It was almost as if he thought if he didn’t talk about Dace’s court appearance, maybe it would just go away.
 

Liza took a small swig of Johnny Walker and welcomed its burning slide down her throat. “Uncle Norm, I’m s—”
 

“It’s not your fault, little girl. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s the police. They have it in for him.”
 

“For the love of God, Dad,” Dace said, kicking an old tire lying on the sawdust-covered floor. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here. It doesn’t matter if they have it in for me. I’m my own man. C’mon, Liza, let’s get out of here.”

“We can’t go anyplace,” she protested, glancing at Uncle Norm. He shrugged and cursed when the hammer slipped, almost striking his thumb.

“Jesus Christ. I’m not in jail yet. We can go for a goddamn walk,” Dace said, walking out the shed towards the back of the property. “Get over here. Take a look at the full moon.”

“Dace,” Liza ventured, running to catch up with him.

“Shut the fuck up,” he said, putting his arm around her shoulders and squeezing her against his side. “I’m tired of everybody yapping at me.”
 

“I’m not everybody,” she snapped. She walked beside him into the tall uncut grass by the trees, until all they could see of the house Uncle Norm had built for him was the occasional twinkle of window light.
 

He tried to push her from him, but she grabbed his right arm and held on tight. He kissed her, going right for her mouth. “Liza,” he broke off, pushing at the waist band of her pants. “I’m warning you, I’m not myself tonight. Get out of your jeans or I’ll rip them off myself.”

 
“Dace,” she said between kisses, stripping almost as quickly as he did until jeans, shirts and underwear littered the damp ground. “What’s the matter? Are you scared?”

He stopped kissing her then and held her out at arms’ length. She looked at him warily, then closed her eyes, almost afraid of what was coming next. His eyes, his mouth and his nose had all narrowed; he had never looked so livid, at least not at her. He shook her for what seemed like a long time so that her head whipped back and forth and spittle flew from her mouth.
 

“Dace?” she tried to say, counting her blessings he wasn’t a man to slap her, although she almost wished he were. Anything would be better than sensing his terrible fear. Twigs snapped underfoot when he finally stopped shaking her and took her in his arms. For a moment, her feet left the ground. She closed her eyes and held on tight until he dumped her back down.
 

“No,” he said, thrusting a leg between her knees and burying his face in her neck, then in her hair. “Check between my legs. Does it feel like I’m scared? Goddamn, Liza. The only thing I’m afraid of is losing you. I’ve been to court for something much worse before. This is just a bullshit charge. To get me back in the can. The Crown Attorney visited me yesterday. Oh, yeah, that’s right. Came all the way out here. Ate a half dozen of Mrs. O’Connor’s muffins and drank some tea with a splash of whiskey on the side. Didn’t Dad tell you? He’s always yammering to you on the phone.”

“Of course he didn’t. He hasn’t had time. The Crown—that’s like the prosecuting attorney, right? What did he want?” she asked, taking his head between her hands and trying to focus on his eyes. He reeked of perspiration but she didn’t care.

Dace ripped his face from her hands. She fell back, staggering a little, struggling to keep her balance on the uneven ground. He steadied her by reaching for her elbow, but he still wasn’t ready to look at her or talk about what was really bothering him. Instead he stared at the sky. She stood alone, bereft, competing with the stars for his attention. “
She.
The attorney is a
she
. My God, a woman can do anything these days. Although I gotta tell you, she looks like she’s one tough lady. Kind of like Margaret Thatcher.”

Liza crossed her arms over her chest, barely suppressing a grin. “Meaning she was immune to your charms. So what did she say?”

 
“That they’re charging a bunch of the guys with the murders of those diddlers last year.”

“The riot victims?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.

“Yeah, those
victims,
” he said, suddenly grabbing her hair with both hands and giving her head another shake.

Tears sprang into her eyes, but she didn’t care. At least he was touching her. “Okay, so it’s about time.”

He wiped the tears from her eyes with his thumbs. “Liza, they’re charging Alf and Steve with second degree murder,” he whispered. His hands slid down her smooth cheeks and settled on her shoulders.
 

He still couldn’t look at her, though. She rubbed her cheek against his right hand, trying to make him see her. “But weren’t those the guys on your Inmate Police Force team? And Steve, isn’t he the one who’s seventeen?”
 

“Well, he might be eighteen now. But the point is, he didn’t do anything like that. I swear on Granny Debo’s grave that he was with me almost all the time.”

“So you told them that,” she whispered, wondering if it were just the moonlight that made him look so pale.

“Yes, but that’s not what they wanted. They want me testify
against
Alf and Steve.”

When her legs almost buckled, she lay down, trying to take him with her as she sank to the ground. “Oh baby, you can’t. So that’s that, right?”

He looked down at her and knew he saw her as luminous, as she saw him. She was smiling and crying at the same time, beckoning him with her open palms. “Please,” she begged, reaching for his stiffened penis, ready to take him in her mouth.
 

He slapped her hands aside. Some of their clothes had landed close by. Retrieving his discarded jeans, he lifted her hips and bunched them under her rear.
 

“Open,” he said, placing his feet astride her and sinking between her spread thighs. He stayed on one elbow so he could keep one arm free. His sex bulged against her hip; they both knew he was good for a while. Her labia peeked from its nest of curly hair, blush pink, but he ignored it, caressing her erect nipples with his thick fingers instead. Nerve lines ran directly from her nipples to her clitoris, the beautiful place he had traced so many times before.