Mercy Among the Children (39 page)

TEN

Mother planned for Percy to go to First Communion, spoke to Autumn about him, all the while knowing that death was in the room with her, waiting.

Mom had arranged for a boy to come to take care of him in those forgotten afternoons after class. Darren Voteur. He was the only person available at that time. Since Autumn and I knew him, we felt comfortable having him there a few hours a day.

I did not know until later that things did not go well.

“What can you do, Percy,” Darren asked one afternoon during a week of drizzle and storms, “about your mom? She will the soon — will you cry?”

Percy sighed. “I can pray when Autumn takes me.”

“Prayer doesn’t do much good —” Darren said.

“Mommie likes caramels,” Percy said. “I could buy her caramels.”

“It’s more than caramels, Percy,” Darren said. “She has a big tumour eating her away every day — and every day you go there your mom is littler.”

The afternoon was pale and crisp and smelled of ice on fallen leaves.

“And you think you can just buy her caramels.”

“I know, Darren,” Percy whispered. “It’s much more than caramels.”

“Why am I here with you? Where is Lyle? Did you know, Percy — your brother and sister have left you — you’d better find me money or I won’t stay.” Darren wiped his hands across his mouth and looked over his shoulder.

“When Lyle comes he will give you the four dollars,” Percy said.

“If it wasn’t for me your mother would be dead now. Autumn and Lyle don’t care about your mother. You think your mom likes caramels, do you? You know what I think? I think she is happy she is dying — to get away from you —”

When Percy looked up Darren smiled at him, his lips thin and his teeth white, and he had a small moustache, with two small moles on his cheek and two earrings in each ear. He had a Walkman he listened to, and he had cowboy boots, and he had a big wallet, and he liked Megadeth, and he said he had been to Toronto, where he had his tongue pierced.

“I heard your mom tell my mother last year she didn’t like you.”

Percy looked at Darren but said nothing.

“You know what Autumn likes, Percy?”

Percy smiled. “She likes to tickle me.”

“She likes my big prick up her white cunt — that’s what I think — she wanted to go out with me, but she looks like a ghost,” Darren said. “Have you ever seen Autumn’s white cunt? I bet it’s pretty. Have you? I know other boys have — they have all seen it — I told her I didn’t want to go out with her — I told her.” He was breathing strangely, excitedly as he spoke.

Percy kept his head down, ashamed of what had been said.
Then he moved a checker. Percy’s right shirt sleeve was busted through at the elbow. The autumn sun was faint and far away; the graders could be heard on the shore lifting timbers and rocks.

“I moved a checker,” Percy said. “Now you move a checker.”

“You moved a checker,” Darren said, and he swiped the board clean. “I moved all the checkers.”

Percy got down to pick the checkers up. When he stood up with the checkers, Darren struck him in the mouth.

The checkerboard went flying, and Percy fell. Blood trickled from his nose and lip. He got to his feet and sat on the couch where my mother had spent so much time when she was pregnant with him. He tried to get off the couch and go to the bathroom, but threw up on the floor. His bow tie was crooked, and he tried to straighten it. There was some blood on it, and his shoes were bent at the front and two sizes too large, so he looked like a little clown. He had waited for me to take him to the circus last summer. I never did.

“My head feels dizzy,” Percy said.

“I’d better not have to hit you again, Percy,” Darren said, walking about the room with his arms folded, “so you better clean that up — clean it up — go get the pail — go get the pail —”

The boy looked at him and tried to get up.

“I hope I don’t have to hit you again,” Darren said, and raised his hand.

But suddenly he was picked up by the scruff of the neck and thrown out the door. Darren stood up and came back in. And old Jay Beard, now nearing seventy, threw the boy outside once more, and kicked him in the behind, and Darren ran up the lane. Jay came back inside, washed my brother’s face, rolled a cigarette and smoked it, and, holding Percy in his arms, told him that the boy didn’t mean any harm. He was just not right in the head.

After a while the day got dark, and a breeze blew leaves across the lane, and neither turned on the lights.

ELEVEN

A few days later when I came home and walked down the lane, I saw Percy asleep in some ragweed, near his wagon. It was late in the day, the leaves had fallen and were being sucked along in the brook. There was a slight wind, yet most things were very still, and the ragweed branches carried the glow of the autumn sun. Jay Beard had gone to a meeting, and Autumn was in a school play, so he had been alone since he got home at three o’clock. Scupper Pit sat beside him, and I picked Percy up and carried him to the house with the old dog hobbling along behind us.

Percy told me that he had fallen asleep waiting for his father.

“What does your dad look like, Percy?” I asked.

“He is a kind man, and his face glows and he never says anything that isn’t true. I saw him in the field.”

“You saw him in the field when?”

“When Scupper Pit and I went to see Mr. Beard, he was standing looking at me. There was red sun on the branches, and he was there. He told me he would visit me again. He talked to Scupper and Scupper wagged his tail. Then he said I would go away with him when he came to visit me again.”

“Who told you such a thing?”

“The man in the field!”

“Where did he say you would go?”

“He never said.”

“Don’t talk to him —” I said. “If you see him again come and get me — I will deal with him.”

He screwed up his face in wonder and then gave me a smile.

“Don’t be sad, Lyle,” he said after a moment, touching my face with his hand. “Everyone is sad. Darren is so sad I told him not to come back — for whatever I do, I cannot make him happy anymore.”

Tears flooded his eyes. His shoes were untied, his pink socks were wrinkled, his nose ran, and burdocks stuck to his shirt, and in his shirt pocket was a dog biscuit Jay Beard had given him for Scupper.

“I am not sad,” I said, trembling suddenly. “Why did you say that?”

“I see into your heart,” Percy whispered. “I see into everyone’s heart. It is sad, just like Darren’s heart, and Mathew Pit’s heart. But the man in the field’s heart doesn’t beat — it glows.”

He lay down on the couch with Scupper Pit and fell fast asleep. I sat with him all that night.

The next morning Diedre Whyne came to see me. She looked at me politely and held her purse with both hands. She wore a coat with padded shoulders and had a barrette in her hair that made her look younger than my mother had before she took ill. She told me she was looking for Autumn. I told her that Autumn was at school with Percy.

“We are dropping the charges against you,” she said.

“What charges are those?” I said.

“The taxes,” she said. “You should thank Ms. Hardwicke for this — she has been a tireless supporter of your cause. We just got the letter sent to us from Ottawa.”

She took it out of her purse and handed it to me. I didn’t take it, so she put it on the table.

“I see,” I said. “Well, I’m glad.”

“I was too strident — with my
concern.
Anyway, people did try to —
adjust
your life — I know you are angry about it. But if you knew the conditions in which your mom and dad grew up. The fifties and early sixties were much different than today — you couldn’t imagine the poverty your father saw. It might seem to you that all we did was meddle — but that wasn’t the case at all. Back then I had a duty to protect her. I knew your mother as a little girl — oh, she was so beautiful — I did not want to see her ruin her life — I was
against
the marriage — but perhaps I didn’t help her, perhaps I tried things I shouldn’t have — but I was young! It was the times we lived in — I got caught up like everyone. Do you think I was wrong?”

“How the hell should I know?” I said. “Certainly we’ve all paid for it.” I added, “For your being young.”

She gave a start, and cleared her throat. She asked for a glass of water, and I gave her one. She took a small drink and set it on the table.

Then she explained that three girls had come forward to say things against her, and one of the uncles, Bennie Sheppard, had come by to ask her for money. She told me she had not done anything like
that
to those girls, but people
might
believe them. She asked me if I knew them — the Voteur girls, and the Sheppard girl.

I told her I knew that they all stayed at Covenant House. She told me that Convenant House had been taken from her. She had worked tirelessly to start it — but an upstart, a younger, more volatile and self-righteous woman had come forward in the past little while with the accusations of the girls fresh on her lips.

“She is just out of Mount Saint Vincent and she thinks she knows everything. The girls all went to her to complain. None ever darkened my door with an allegation. None of it is true, but if people believe them — you know what might happen?
Nothing has hit the papers yet — my family has managed to keep it out. But the damage is done, for once an idea is planted in someone’s mind it is impossible to erase without — some kind of
help.
” She took a breath as if our air was more valuable to her now than it had ever been before. She took another drink.

“I am in a very delicate situation — dealing as I did for twenty years with homeless or sexually abused girls and being —” She paused. “This was the reason I left social services and went to the tax department — I didn’t go to the tax department to get you, as you suppose — it was only a coincidence.”

I said nothing.

“There was an opening — I had training and my father had a few connections. I’m sorry also about the wood. But in reality it’s what the tax department is forced to do. I was only doing what is required by law. I really thought I could get you some-where else — some better place.”

I didn’t answer.

“I know what you might think of me, but I will swear on a Bible to my innocence,” she said.

“A shitload of good that will do. My mother swore on a Bible in court — so did my father — and the whole river turned against them. You didn’t believe in the worth of Bibles then. Nor did Mom and Dad have the comfort of keeping it out of the paper. You gave them a picture of Autumn so everyone would think the worst about us — if you know what I mean.”

“I never wanted a child’s picture in the paper!”

“Well it got in nonetheless.”

“But couldn’t you see how
we
would think — I mean how certain people
might
think? And then I believed you were being abused — how could I not think that —?”

But her own words confirmed the irony. I have always felt sad for women caught. Much more than men. Her private world — the world where she dreamed at night alone, of drowning
in women’s kisses — was now drowning her. Now Diedre needed our help, and the worst of it was, I wished I could help her.

Diedre stroked old Scupper Pit’s hair, then brought her hand up with her fist closed and looked at me as if she had just thought of something that was agony to think.

“I’m not a bigot or a racist — but the new woman they have here is implying — because Cheryl’s mother was Micmac — that I used them as easy targets — well, you know how they think,” she said.

“I know that!” I yelled, tears brimming in my eyes. “I know that — but what in fuck does that matter now? Look at my muscles — why have I worked out for five years? Why? Why can I punch like a mule and yet why am I afraid? Why can I throw a man twice as big as me on his back in three seconds and why am I afraid? Why — why am I afraid! Why do I sleep with a knife? Why?” I paused and shrugged.

“I can take it, but it wasn’t fair — not for Mommie,” I said, almost like a child, “not for Autumn and Percy.”

She smiled tenderly and reached out and took my hand. More than ever I felt her sadness and wanted to alleviate it. So would Autumn, that child who once smelled of poverty and icy silence and spruce and gave the world a crinkly hopeful smile it rarely gave her, who now, finally in her last year of high school, seemed no longer to be orphaned by the world but somehow striding above it.

“Take this,” I said, and got from a drawer Isabel Young’s card, and placed it on the table. “She is the best lawyer I know and the kindest person to ever deal with us — because that’s all any of us want, Ms. Whyne — not revolution or doctrine but only kindness.” I felt smug saying this, but I did not take it back.

She took the card and placed it in her purse.

I felt looking at her leaving that the old world was disappearing under our feet and another one was being born on
the molten lava that our enemies’ corpses created. Suddenly, quite unexpectedly and for the first time, I was beholden to no one in the world.

There is a moment in young people’s lives when a fire erupts in the belly and a self-knowledge casts other knowledge aside. They strut like archangels though the caverns of both heaven and hell, yelling bons mots to each other from glittering tavern windows in the night. But even in my laughter I knew that revenge was futile and did nothing for the soul.

I looked at Autumn the next morning as she ate her cereal. For the first time I saw in her the epitomized elements of generous wit and kindness over adversity. The kind my father had prayed for me had been borne high in her — she was the dauntless
Roof Beam Carpenter
, the humorous undefeated champion of all our lives.

Constable Delano came to the house two days later. He had come down to look at the bullet hole, something that I thought everyone had forgotten. He paced out the area, and came back into the house and went over to the bookshelves. He picked up a book or two and mused over them, and then he said: