Lauchlin of the Bad Heart (29 page)

“They’ll find him,” he said, a whisper more to himself than to her, a mantra he was sick of. “It doesn’t make sense they wouldn’t find him soon.”

“They can say what they like about the old days, outhouses and muddy roads and party-line phones, and everybody in on your business, ” Johanna said, “but he’d have been found by now. Even on the back roads there were lots of people, good people.”

“With horses. Damn few cars. Who doesn’t have one now?”

“We had one when we married, your dad did. A second-hand Oldsmobile, a long black hood to it, whitewall tires, like spats. Had a radio.”

“Lord, what could you pick up on a radio then?”

“One local station. What more did we need?”

“The world, Ma. More of that.”

“We’re getting it, all of it’s storming in if it isn’t here already. Marie Dupe, stabbed forty times in her little store? They haven’t found the creature who did that even yet. And those murders in the McDonald’s hamburger place? A horrible year that was.”

“I wasn’t thinking of crime, Ma.”

“Well I was.” She fussed with the curtains. “You wouldn’t remember that murder in the Sydney hotel, in the thirties. An American,
passing through. He killed the night clerk and fled into the country in the middle of winter. People took him in, my mother let him in the kitchen door and fed him, dressed as well as he was. Cold and hungry. He didn’t know the country, not in winter for sure, and he was done out, he’d walked a few miles in the snow after someone let him off on the highway. After all, he was just a cold, wet man at the door. But they caught him later, after he’d gone from Granny’s, and they didn’t mess around trying a murderer then either, not like today, months and years going by, what do they get but a few years in the penitentiary? That fella? Four weeks, convicted and hung. From his cell he could hear them building the gallows, the sawing and hammering. He was from money, down in the States somewhere, the South maybe. Black sheep of the family, I guess. Didn’t know much at all about here. He needed money to keep moving. Called the clerk up to his room, said the light was burned out. Why kill a man like that, while he’s changing a light bulb for you? I bet that hurt him, when it came back to him later, hearing the gallows go up, like a new house. He wasn’t a killer really, something snapped in him. It was one of those deeds in your life you can’t explain, it runs against everything you are. He was nicely dressed, he had good manners, Granny said.” Johanna turned away from the window. “If you still had God in you, if you had Him in you now, you might do her some good.”

“What am I, Ma, a TV preacher? An evangelist? You don’t even like evangelists. Am I supposed to lay hands on her or what?”

“Don’t talk foolish. You’re too intelligent to talk that way.”

His mother could still make him feel like a boy sometimes, if he let her, if he opened that door for her.

“She doesn’t want help right now, she doesn’t need my prayers either. For what?”

“Whatever help you gave her, all along. But there you are, just another man who wanted her. Wants her, but can’t help her.”

“I barely knew the woman. There she was in the store one night, blind. She’s a friend. Like Clement, and she’s waiting for him alone.”

“My mother had a blessing from the Gaelic she passed on to us. ‘God with me lying down, God with me rising up, God with me in each ray of light, nor I a ray of joy without Him, nor one ray without Him.’ Isn’t that lovely?”

“It is, Ma.”

Johanna fingered a pendant she sometimes wore, the occasion known only to her, a piece of dark grey shrapnel removed from a favourite uncle of hers in World War One. He’d left it to her, already mounted in silver on a chain. “I never liked vigils. They wear you down and I want to sleep.”

“Go back to bed then, Ma.”

“You know what was the worst after your father died?” she said. “The sound of him was gone, in the house, in the store, outside in the fields. I would be sitting here in the kitchen and suddenly it would come over me—there is no sound of him.”

“Goodnight, Ma.”

In the bathroom, he washed his torso in cold water. He towelled himself slowly, his eyes half-shut. Before the third ring, he had the phone in his fist.

H
E
drove slowly up the driveway, his mouth dry. He had never heard her voice like that, a wail, barely coherent. In his headlights everything had a different cast to it, suddenly false, deceptive, as if its very familiarity were a ruse, the beams swung into the yard, sweeping their stark expectations across the sheds, the barn’s dark maw, the seemingly wrecked machinery, Clement’s pickup sheened with mist. He felt that tawdry alarm always latent in headlights, something sudden, all forelit, shadows stretching into the dark, and he punched them off as soon as he stopped and turned the key. Above the closed barn doors the motion light was lit. He stood beside the cab listening. The Mathesons’ dog was barking somewhere behind the east woods, a cold bark, distant, monotonous. He could hear nothing else but cooling metal until she called to him from the back door.

“Lauchlin, for God’s sake! Is that you?”

“Yes, Tena! I’m here!”

She was shaking, her hair mussed, and he was glad to calm her in his arms. She let him until her shivering subsided, then she stood back. Tears had made her eyes bright, searching.

“Their dog’s been barking so
long,
it’s driving me crazy,” she said. “Did you hear him this afternoon?”

“I might have, I don’t remember. Could be raccoons out there now, they’re around.”

“Oh no, no. It’s more than animals.”

All the lights downstairs were burning, every lamp, ceiling or table, one was tumbled on the floor, a scorched eye in its white shade. “It’s horrible to be blind,” she murmured, “horrible,” turning away. He could see the slender lines of her underneath her long blue nightdress, a body she was unaware of now, of his seeing it, and he thought it beautiful, sad, the delicate bones and tendons of her feet. He righted the lamp, pushed aside with his shoe broken crockery from its base.

“Tena, do you have a robe, I can get it for you…?”

“Robe?” she said almost angrily. “Why would I care about a robe, Lauchlin, I’m not
cold.
” She pressed her fingers to her temples, shut her eyes tight. “I don’t want to be like this, I don’t, I don’t.”

“You’ll have to tell me more. I don’t know what’s going on, dear.”

“Oh, God, do I?”

He led her into the parlour, she didn’t seem to care, and sat her down.

“The truck came back,” she said quietly, staring at the floor.

“What truck?”

“The truck! The fish van! It woke me up, it was coming up the driveway, Lauchlin. It
came,
and after a bit it went away, it
left.
”

“Clement was here then…?” A moment of giddiness rose in him, a sensation that overrode the strangeness in what she was saying.

“But he didn’t come inside! The van drove into the yard, deeper than usual, somewhere out back and…”

“He drove it back
out?
”

“Yes! Yes. I’m lying there, I’m thinking, God, what is he doing back there in the trees this time of night? I almost called out to him, but I was afraid, scared to get out of bed and show myself so helpless
at the window. Clement, he’s always in bed with me at night, and here I’d been waiting all day with no word of him, and he’s not coming into the house?”

“I’ll have a look around outside. Will you be okay here? You could wait in my truck.”

Tena laughed mirthlessly. “Are we going for a drive? I’ll wait in the kitchen, thank you.” She shuddered, rocked back and forth, her eyes closed. “Lauchlin, am I losing my mind? I wasn’t dreaming this, I
know
that.”

The light above the back steps threw his shadow a few feet ahead of him, then it dissolved in the dark. He didn’t know what he was looking for, nothing added up. Why would Clement return in the fish van, then leave? The air was cool and Lauchlin grasped the cold dew on the door handle of Clement’s pickup, parked as it had been for two days. On the passenger side a web of cracks radiated from a spot of crushed glass. Under the dirty dome light battered leather gloves lay on the seat where cassettes, one unspooling, were scattered. On the floorboards a crushed cigarette pack, spent wooden matches, a dusty Labatt’s bottle. The cab smelled of damp, worn plastic, of old smoke and wood pitch, a well-used pickup smell. He fished out a twocell flashlight from the dash box and slammed the door.

The Mathesons’ dog was quiet now. Lauchlin wanted to go back and tell her, There’s nothing out here, Tena, maybe it
was
a dream, a vivid nightmare, he could vouch for their power. But he knew that was a lie: something that hadn’t been here before was out here now. The whole place seemed charged with it, cold and tight. Nothing moved. No tree swayed or trembled, the barn gaped with silence. The Great Bras D’Eau beyond the long woods was, on a slack tide, soundless. The mountain was almost invisible in the black sky.

The beam was not strong enough to light but a couple yards ahead as he went, bending low, slowly sweeping it back and forth. A tire iron leaned into weeds like it had been flung. A peck basket,
upturned, dirty grey. Past the barn in the higher grass grasshoppers leapt clicking out of the dark, and he picked up fresh tire tracks. The mashed grass led to the edge of the backwoods where the tracks circled, criss-crossed, headed out again. Tena thought it was the fish van but why would it have to be? It might’ve been kids drunk, messing around. Yet she was sharp about sounds, she could hear a whisper through a wall, a door unlatching downstairs, raccoons in her garden. Lauchlin didn’t like the look of the disturbed grass, tramped down near the scrub maples and the tall spruce. He pushed the light close to the ground, stopped, knelt. Jesus, what was this? Dark, sticky, a patch of it here, and there more in a flattened circle of lady’s mantle. Someone’s lifeblood, a lot of it. He knew blood, brightly fresh or dark like this, coagulated. This had been here a while, dew glistened on its coolness. He squatted there, listening, whacking the flashlight on his knee to keep it lit, then harder until it pained him. He waved it at the mute blackness of the woods and just before the batteries quit, a few feet away in its wan light a glimpse of a baseball cap, crown down in grass. Jesus. Something the last couple days had caught him when he wasn’t looking, sent him reeling along, unconscious, unaware, and here he was, stooping dumbly in the dark, afraid to feel out that cap, to touch it. Tena was waiting in the house. But for what, now? He was afraid to bring her this, her mind would fly away with it, away from him. He was a part of all this, part of whatever had happened, somehow, and that made it hard for him to get up. But he did, a car was coming up the driveway, the headlights brushed over him as it wheeled into the yard and he glimpsed “RCMP” on the door. He was relieved in a way. Let him tell her about the blood in the grass. Something awful had to be explained, solved, the Mounties would be moving on it soon, wherever this led. He’d leave the ballcap for them, he didn’t want to bear anything back from here anyway.

Stumbling through the field he broke into a jog after the constable
stepped out of the cruiser. Lauchlin hailed him and waved into the beam of a powerful flashlight.

“MacLean, is it?” He waited while Lauchlin approached, breathing hard.

“Constable Harrington?” Lauchlin raised the useless flashlight. “Dead,” he said. “You’d better have a look back there.”

He explained quickly what had brought him to the house, the blood he’d seen in back by the woods. Harrington, an older officer, tall and white-haired, who’d been around long enough to have arrested Lauchlin for drunk driving one night years ago had he wanted to, was already briefed on Clement’s disappearance.

“You know anything about that partner of his? Cooper?”

“A difficult man. There was bad feeling between them.”

“We heard about that. You had an incident with him too?”

“We had a run-in, yes, a while back.” He wouldn’t tell him about the second one, their midnight match stopped short by rain, unwitnessed, that was theirs, it had nothing to do with the blood in the grass. “He had a customer complaint he pushed too far. We grappled a little, then it was over.”

“Haven’t seen him recently?”

“People spotted him here and there since Clement broke with him, but I couldn’t say he was around.”

“Yes, well…” Harrington peered toward the woods, touching the fresh tire tracks with the beam of his flashlight. “Wait here for a bit, if you would, Lauchlin. I’ll talk to the woman first.”

He would remember the feeling of standing outside, drifting near the screen door where he could hear Harrington in a low voice talking with Tena but not pick out their words. The constable went through the downstairs slowly, talking as he took notes.

When he came back outside he said, “She was asking for you. Tell me a little about the layout here first. Where does he usually park the van, do you know?”

“Over there, near that old piece of plywood. He drove it out this morning.”

“So his wife said. And it came back tonight, she thinks.”

“She’s blind. It’s what she heard.”

“Maybe she didn’t hear it all. You’re a friend of Mrs. MacTavish’s?”

“Both of them. I’ve known Clement since he first came here.”

“I’ll have a look around. Then I’ll need some more information from you.”

“I saw a man’s cap back there, where the blood is. I didn’t touch it.”

“Good. Go ahead inside if you like.”

Lauchlin paused behind the screen door to watch the constable search the yard in slow circles where the van had been in the morning. He stooped, lifted the piece of oil-stained plywood with the tip of a finger, set it slowly down after examining the ground underneath. Nearby lay a blue fish box, overturned. He carefully pushed it aside a few inches with the toe of his shoe, holding the flashlight still. He knelt, touched a spot, then continued toward the barn.

“Tena, can I get you something?” Lauchlin said, turning away. He had to keep himself usefully near her before it was too late, before a veil of grief and regret came down between them.

“Just water,” she said. “A glass of water would be nice.”

As Lauchlin ran water from the tap, he could see Harrington’s flashlight sweeping toward the woods. Tena stood up and reached for the glass as he came near her. She took it from his hand and this time she drank from it, not like the night she appeared in the store, and as he watched the slim muscles of her throat, it seemed as if he had never touched her, never come close to her, that he was back there in that night, the store counter between them, a man she knew then only as a name.

“Thanks, Lauchlin. I was terrible thirsty.” She moved about the kitchen slowly, turning the glass in her hands, gently bumping chairs,
the table, as if she didn’t care. “I’m waiting for something different now, aren’t I?” she said.

“I wish I could say no, Tena.”

“He said you found some blood near the trees.”

“There’s some out there, yes.”

“I was wondering, what’s blood to a blind person if she’s never ever seen it? Just stickiness, I guess, maybe that little iron smell you get. It’s a dark red word to me though.”

“Don’t think about it now.”

“I wish I didn’t have to think. That I could shut my mind down until it’s over and I know everything, because my imagination is tuning up, oh Lord, is it.”

“Don’t let it get the better of you. We don’t know enough yet.” He hoped that Harrington would leave out the particulars of what he found.

“It wouldn’t take a lot. He said the fish van was seen early this morning, but they weren’t sure it was Clement at the wheel.”

“Who wasn’t?”

“Old Willie Dunlap and his wife passed it on the bridge. They didn’t think much about it, I guess, who was driving, but then word got around about Clement and they called the Mounties.”

“Willie is what, close to ninety? His wife isn’t far behind.”

“He can drive a car, he must see all right.”

“Maybe.”

She sat at the table, the glass in her hand. Neither of them spoke. The radio in the Mountie’s cruiser crackled and went silent. They listened to Harrington somewhere in the yard, then his footsteps in gravel nearer the door. Lauchlin met him outside on the steps. Holding the ball cap’s bill lightly between his thumb and finger, his hand gloved with latex, Harrington raised it into the back-door light.

“Look familiar?” he said. “We don’t want some animal to carry it off.”

The bright blue crown with its chainsaw logo was stained a deep red, almost black.

“It’s his, it’s Clement’s.”

Harrington took some time storing it in the cruiser and writing things down. Then he talked briefly on the radio. “Let’s go inside,” he said. He told Tena gently that he’d found blood in the grass and in the yard where the van was probably parked. The cap he didn’t mention.

All she said was “Oh,” a soft moan of pain, and dropped her head. Harrington waited respectfully. She didn’t scream or weep, just lifted her head. “What do you think?” she said. “Tell me.”

“We can’t know for sure yet, Mrs. MacTavish, whose blood that is. It could even be animal.”

“That doesn’t seem likely.”

“Did your husband hurt himself at all this morning, cut himself maybe?”

“Not that I know of. He wouldn’t tell me if he did.”

“Why?”

“He’s a man.”

“But you’re sure you heard him leave?”

“He drove out and away,” she said, “Yes.”

Tena pushed her hair back from her face and kept her hands there. “I remember something,” she said, calmly, her eyes wide, intense. “My husband took longer to leave this morning. He’d hollered up to me he had a flat tire, he had to put on the spare. I was dozing, it was like hearing it in a dream. And when I woke up, the truck was leaving, and I’d forgotten it.”

“Is there anyone who might want to harm your husband, Mrs. MacTavish?”

“Ged Cooper. He threatened him more than once.”

“We’ll want to talk to him, yes. We’re trying to locate him.”

“You should probably tell him the sound you heard this morning, Tena,” Lauchlin said.

“What sound? Oh…that.” She described what she’d heard, faltering, as if to diminish its importance.

“It didn’t sound like a gunshot?” Harrington said.