In a Mist (11 page)

“Ever think about heading out west? To find work?” he said.

“Can't say I've given it much thought.”

“I've got a son. Jim. Went out that way as soon as he finished high school. Found something right away. Makes good money.”

“Glad it worked out for him.”

“He had nothing keeping him here though.” Lloyd took his eyes from the road and glanced at Richard.

“I won't pretend I don't miss him,” said Lloyd. “But you can't blame young people for doing what they have to do.” Richard looked out the window at the side of the road.

“No you can't,” he said.

“I left Newfoundland for the mainland when I was seventeen.”

“Ever been back?”

“Once.”

The city limits fell behind them and they approached the trees and lakes beyond.

“Is there a bus that heads back to the city from out this way?” said Richard.

“Closest bus leaves from Fall River. But I wouldn't worry about that if I were you.”

Lloyd turned off the highway onto an exit ramp that led to a side road lined with dense forest. They slowed to cross a set of railroad tracks and then pulled into a gravel
driveway another few kilometres down the road. The driveway ended in front of a squat wood-shingled house, its brown paint flaking off to reveal patches of dark red paint beneath. There was a small satellite dish mounted on the side of the house and a power line leading back down to the road. Lloyd parked the car beside the rusted body of an old Pontiac station wagon with no tires and no windows. He opened his door and got out and Richard followed. The yard was covered in tall grass that had wilted in the sun. To the left was the dried bed of a pond that had shrunk to the size of a puddle. Past the pond Richard could make out the railroad tracks on a slight embankment about a hundred meters away. Beyond the tracks lay dense evergreen forest.

“I like my privacy,” said Lloyd, gesturing beyond the pond. “Those tracks made it a luxury I could aff ord when I bought this place. Thirty years later and I've almost gotten used to the noise of the trains.” He made his way to the back of the house, to a weathered shed built of unpainted slats with a slanted, shingled roof. Between the shed and the house there was a tree stump about half a meter wide, its pale ringed surface chipped and dented. Blocks of fire-wood were stacked against one side of the shed, reaching almost as high as the taller side of its roof.

“Suppose I should've asked if you ever done this before. Jim used to take care of this. Ever since he was old enough.” Lloyd lifted the latch on the shed door, stepped inside and came out carrying a long-handled axe. He rested the axe against the wall of the shed, and set a block of wood on the stump. Richard stepped back.

“Get a good stance, let gravity do the work,” said Lloyd, raising the blade of the axe and bringing it down dead-centre on the block. The wood split in two and fell at his feet.

“You'll want boots and gloves.” With one hand he sank the blade of the axe into the stump and went off toward
the back door of the house. The worst of the day's heat was over but Richard could feel the sweat on his neck and under his arms. He unbuttoned his shirt and hung it on a rusted nail protruding from the doorway of the shed. Then he sat down on the stump and untied his shoes. He wondered whether Lloyd intended to give him the boots he had been wearing on his own feet. But Lloyd came back out a moment later carrying a much older pair with the steel exposed at the toe. His left hand held a pair of leather work gloves and a green mesh ball cap.

“Keep the sun off your head.” He held up the cap and Richard could make out the same ship's wheel and yellow lettering he had seen on the sign outside the Crow's Nest. It looked as if it had never been worn.

“Stack it up in the shed once it's split.” Lloyd set down the boots and went back toward the house.

The boots were only slightly too big and Richard laced them tightly. He put on the ball cap and the gloves and then set a mid-sized block of wood on the stump as Lloyd had done. He could feel the old man's eyes on him from the doorway of the house as he raised the axe and brought it down, heard him chuckle as he grazed the block and knocked it to the ground. Richard set the block back on the stump, braced himself, raised the axe and brought it down a second time, this time sinking the blade a third of the way into the block. Using the handle of the axe he raised the block as high in the air as his strength would allow and brought it down with a grunt. He lost his footing, stumbling toward the stump as the block split in two, and fell to the ground. He looked back toward the house but Lloyd had gone inside and shut the door. He could hear the sound of the television coming from an open window. Richard's stomach rumbled and he realized he hadn't eaten anything since breakfast.

He worked steadily, gradually improving his technique, increasing his accuracy. He found the work satisfying, taking pleasure in the arc of the axe's blade as it cut through the air, the crack of the dry wood as it split. He could measure his progress as the split wood began to accumulate on the ground before him. Once he established a momentum he found no need to rest. He did not stop even when the handle of the axe began to burn his hands and blisters formed inside the gloves. The steady repetition was mesmerizing, propelling him onward when his mouth dried and his arms began to ache. It was not until he had worked for several hours that he rested the axe against the shed and wiped his forehead with the back of his glove. The shadows had grown and the sound of crickets coming from the grass at the edge of the dried pond had intensified. He heard the train long before he saw it coming. The air horn blared and the wheels sounded against the rails and then it rolled into view, approaching steadily, growing louder and nearer, commanding his attention. The blade of the axe rested against the ground and he leaned his weight on its shaft and stood and watched the blue-grey passenger train as it passed. The faces in its windows appeared to him only as streaks, though he knew they could see him clearly. In his last semester of university he had taken the train to a conference in Moncton. He turned to look at Lloyd's house as the train disappeared from view. He imagined the old man in his bed in the dark of February, awakened for the thousandth time by the passing clamour in the frigid night.

He gathered as many of the split pieces in his arms as he could and carried them into the shed. The air inside was dry and warm and the scent of earth and sawdust and decaying wood made him want to lie down and rest. He set the wood down against the back wall, went out for more and worked until he had filled the far corner of the shed. As
he deposited his last load on the earthen floor he noticed something on the side wall. By the thin shafts of sunlight between the slats he could make out a magazine centerfold tacked to a cross-beam. The monochrome print had a silvery sheen and at first he thought its colours had faded with time, but when he saw the figure he knew she had been photographed in black and white. A lithe, young model in sailor shorts dangled over a calm sea, holding onto a ship's rigging with her left hand, waving with her sailor's hat in her right. She had short bangs and dark curls that hung to her shoulders. The nipples of her bare breasts were erect, as if chilled by the ocean breeze. Her left knee was bent as she perched one foot on the bottom of the rigging. Her other long, shapely leg was fully extended, its pointed bare foot poised squarely on the deck. She smiled coyly, her eyes betraying the slightest hint of trepidation at her precarious pose. Richard thought of the men's magazines in his neighbourhood corner store, and could not imagine this sort of expression on the face of the models between their pages. He realized it was most likely not Jim who had hung the photo, but his father. It occurred to Richard that Jim must have seen this photograph every time he filled the wood shed and every time it was emptied in the spring. He wondered what he had thought of this model, whether he had ever mentioned her to his father or shared the old man's evident enthusiasm for her.

When he came out of the shed Lloyd was standing in the doorway of the house.

“Thought you'd gone to sleep in there,” he said. “Come have something to drink.”

He took the can of orange soda that Lloyd off ered him, and was glad to find it ice cold. He drank it quickly while Lloyd appraised the progress he'd made in the unsplit wood stacked outside the shed. When he finished the soda he
asked Lloyd for a glass of water. Lloyd took the empty can him from him and came back a moment later with a mug of water. It was lukewarm and tasted slightly of coffee.

“Called the fella from down the road. He's due in for an evening shift. He'll take you back in.”

“I appreciate it.”

“I'd have you back to finish up some other time, but I figure I'll do it myself once it cools off a little. Keeps me in shape.”

Richard nodded. He went to the stump and sat down, untied the boots and put his shoes back on, wondering whether Lloyd regretted hiring him. He took the boots and the hat back up to the house. As he rapped on the screen door he could smell the odour of frying fish.

Lloyd opened the door, took a billfold from his front pocket, peeled off a crisp fifty and handed it to Richard.

“Don't spend it all at the Crow's Nest.”

Richard put the bill in his wallet and accepted Lloyd's outstretched hand.

“I'm grateful for the work.”

“Better head down to the road,” said Lloyd. “He won't drive up. You'll be lucky if he slows down long enough for you to open the door.”

“Sure. Take care, Lloyd.” Richard had walked halfway down the drive when Lloyd called out.

“You're forgetting something.”

He turned to see Lloyd standing by the shed. Lloyd held the axe in his hands and Richard realized he had forgotten to put it away. Richard walked back toward the shed, unsure of what was expected of him. Lloyd gripped the axe handle, pointed toward the door of the shed with its shaft, where Richard's shirt hung on a nail. Richard grabbed the shirt and hurried back toward the road.

“Don't worry,” Lloyd called out. “Things will turn around
for you. Stick to your guns.”

Richard waved once, and turned to watch the road. He heard the screen door bang at the back of the house. A few minutes later an ancient grey Chevrolet pickup approached in the distance and came to a stop a few feet from where Richard stood.

Richard opened the door, climbed onto the running board and into the cab. The man behind the wheel had a dark moustache, wore a suit of navy blue work clothes and a tweed driver's cap. The brim's shadow fell on his face and Richard couldn't tell if the man was forty years old or sixty or something in between. A metal lunch pail and a Thermos rested on the seat beside him.

“Evening,” said Richard.

“I'll drop you uptown,” said the man.

“Fine by me,” said Richard, and closed the door.

The cab of the truck was air conditioned and the windows rolled up. The two men drove in silence, neither making any attempt at conversation. Richard looked out the window at trees and then lakes and houses as they neared the city. They rounded a curve in the highway and the sun lay directly in front of them, low in the sky. The man lowered the sun visor over the windshield. Richard shielded his eyes with his hand. The clock on the dash of the truck read twenty after five. Laura would be home by now. She would call his name and then wonder why he didn't respond. She would walk to the kitchen and look in the refrigerator. Then she'd go into the bedroom and rest her knapsack on the floor at the foot of the bed and look in his study. She'd examine his desk to see if he'd written anything that afternoon. He imagined her looking through the trash can. He realized then that she might find the crumpled page torn from his notebook. She would carry it to the bed, sit cross-legged with her running shoes still on, smoothing down the page on her thigh. Later
he would walk in the door, covered in dust and dried sweat with burst blisters on his thumbs and the edge of his palm and she would not ask where he had gone or what he'd been doing.

“I found something odd in the trash today,” she would say, after he came out of the shower and they sat down to dinner. She would ask him about it, out of curiosity, and he would not be able to explain. Or she might return the page to the wastebin, as if she had never found it, only bringing it up later, the next time they fought, using her discovery of his strange and morbid exercise as the very reason she finally decided to leave him.

Lloyd's neighbour took him as far as the apartment buildings. He pulled to a stop two blocks before the row houses began and left the engine running. Richard looked up the street, but the lemonade stand was gone. He stepped out of the cab into the warm evening air.

“Thanks for the lift,” he said, and shut the door. The man touched the bill of his cap and then drove away.

“Have you tried getting him into one of those support groups?” said Joan. Lyle looked across the table at Susan and she could tell by his expression that he knew the answer didn't really matter.

“The woman's made up her mind, Joan,” he said, almost yelling. “She's got to think about what's best for the girls.”

Joan stood at the counter spooning coffee grounds into a chrome percolator.

“It's just the timing,” said Joan. “If you could wait, hold out a little longer. Things might change. You know we won't be able to help you financially, now that Roy's starting college.”

The phone rang in the living room and Joan put down the spoon and left them. Susan could hear the change in her sister's voice as she answered the phone. She took out a cigarette and reached in her purse for a lighter. Lyle placed his hand over hers. She looked at him and he looked directly back at her, without averting his gaze. His hand was dry and calloused and its weight pressed her bruised wrist painfully against the hard Formica of the table, though she tried not to let it show.