Blackstrap Hawco (98 page)

‘Really?' Excited is how Junior's eyes look. ‘That's gross.'

Blackstrap recalls what he has done to Isaac Tuttle. The man lying there on the shop's floor. Not breathing. Dead or maybe not. He'll find out soon enough. To harm a man in defence of a woman who was his.
Who means almost nothing to him now. He'll go to jail. The law made only to take things away from a person. He stares off, toward the dresser, the articles belonging to his mother, the perfume bottle with the little oval rubber ball he used to squeeze when he was younger, breathing in the perfume, squirting it at Ruth. She loved the smell of it. The smell would settle her right down, still her. She'd sit with her eyes closed, like something asleep, just feeling the smell. It reminds him of someone he saw on television, a woman sitting cross-legged on the floor, hands out and resting on her knees, meditating was what it was called. Black tassel with long silky threads hanging from the ball. His eyes skim over the porcelain-handled brush and comb set. The single photograph of their family together. His mother, his father, Junior, and young Blackstrap. Ruth not yet born. Junior not yet dead. That photograph taken by who? He does not remember exactly, but suspects it was Isaac Tuttle. He recalls hearing that Tuttle had a camera and used to photograph people and their houses. He thinks of the shotgun out in the shed, of going to get it and shooting whoever it is that will come for him. The gun turned on himself. But he steadies his thoughts. No use for confusion in a situation like this. No use for further complications. Nothing the boy needs to see. What would he learn from that?

When Blackstrap looks at his son again, he sees Junior's curious eyes on his scarred arm. Blackstrap has rolled up the sleeve of his green and grey plaid shirt so he can tell the story. Only now with Junior's eyes on the scars has he remembered why the boy was called here.

‘You wanted ta know 'bout these scars.'

Junior nods. ‘Yeah.'

Blackstrap thinks of the boat, the blinding January storm that hurled itself in front of him, grey sweeping in from all directions at once. Viciousness with him in the centre. The growl of the white wind. And then him nothing but a part of the blinding gale. Trapped in an open boat for over twenty-four hours as the snow piled up, covered him. No matter how much he moved. Snow trying to bury him. And the rocking of the boat in the swells. The engine puttering and finally choking off. Lost. Taking his hunting knife from the box and slicing lines into his arm to frighten his body, to keep it awake. Alive. Rubbing that warm blood in his eyes to melt the ice, to see, on his lips to barely feel. Even
drinking a little to keep up his strength. His own blood feeding him, sticky in his mouth and throat, warming his innards. Until another boat sent out to find him did just that, the men aboard suspecting he was involved in some sort of slaughter. What would Junior think of such a story?

It all seems so vivid to Blackstrap. Sitting in his father's room with those memories in his head. His own blood on his face, on his hands. But how would Junior see it? It is not what Junior expects. Blackstrap has seen flashes of the video movies that Junior watches. Filled with action, guns, screams, car chases, explosions, monsters blown apart, blood and gore. His story is not the one the boy wants to hear. It is a slow, careful story about the world trying to claim him, spoken of in a calmed voice. A trapped story that cannot be respectfully released. Not with his tongue. Not with his words.

His fingertip runs back and forth along one scar then moves to the next. He thinks about the words before he says them, wondering how they will sound: I believe I just killed a man, Junior. But they are garbled in his mouth.

Blackstrap searches the boy's face.

Junior stares down at the scars, squinting as if they might somehow be responsible for what he is about to be told. ‘What about those?' he asks.

‘Cut meself shaving.' Blackstrap gives a weak smile and a chuckle that makes him feel like a boy himself.

Junior laughs, uncertain tears of sadness and joy bubbling up in his eyes. He knows. ‘No, you didn't.' He stands and slaps at his father's arm, sits on the bed beside him, looking up. ‘It was an animal you fought.'

In realization, Blackstrap can't help but stare at his son. Something centuries old almost there in the boy's eyes.

Who are you?

Junior's eyes still trained on his father's arm.

Blackstrap undoes the top two buttons on his shirt and slides the material over, showing the two round clumps of scars beneath his shoulder.

‘Wow! Were you shot?!'

I don't know, Blackstrap thinks. But this is the scar he has chosen to
explain. Not the ones on his arms and not the one on his cheek. Perhaps his last words as a free man.

‘I was driving a transport truck, carting salmon from the Northern Peninsula caught up on da Labrador. Run it into the plant down in Cupids.' Blackstrap watches openly into his son's face. He sighs and shifts a little nearer. Not true, he thinks. That was another time. He was coming from Cupids, on his way to the Northern Peninsula. A load of codfish. His pause confuses him. Wasn't it? he wonders. Or was he shot that time? Where was that? In Halifax? Or out at sea with the Portugee?

He is drowning. Finally, that's how he feels. Finally drowning now.

‘Were you hijacked?'

‘Hijacked?'

‘Yeah.'

‘No.'

‘Who shot you then?'

‘I was driving through Wreckhouse.'

‘Where's that?'

‘West coast. Winds run up to a hundred miles an hour. Used to toss trains from da track. Back when we had trains.'

‘We had trains?'

A tiredness plummets over Blackstrap. A weighty exhaustion accumulating in his bones that might be akin to death itself. He wants to shut his eyes, lie back on the bed, and give up. In his mind, the length of train rolling through Cutland Junction. The steel-heavy rumbling in his chest as the cars surged out of the station. The pennies they used to put on the rail lines.
Flatter den piss on a plate
.

‘Trains,' Blackstrap mutters, lost to the memory, carried off by a locomotive through the cut of the wilderness.

‘What happened? ‘ Junior asks.

‘What?'

‘With Wreckhouse.'

He makes a low sound of uncertainty, drawing the thoughts back through a length of endless highway. ‘Was foggy,' he quietly begins, ‘and the wind was shoving me t'ward the side of the road…I had ta keep the wheel turned a bit into the wind just ta keep straight. It was dark and I had ta get this salmon home. The workers were waiting in
the plant and…' Blackstrap's voice trails off. He is trying to keep his mind away from the death. The woman and the crippled little girl. It is a curse put on him. The man in the hospital parking lot. In Agnes' house. Agnes' eyes burning into him then and now. The years have given bits of it back to him. Images he did not want. Maybe partly dreams. Maybe not.

So much of life only.

‘What happened then?' Junior says.

‘I was taken by trying ta keep the truck on the road. I was barrelling ahead through the fog, the thick grey all I could see, roaring along, I t'ought of slowing for some reason, don't know why. I just had this feeling…' He searches his son's face as though wondering if the feeling he speaks of might be found in the boy. ‘You never know go'n through da fog like that. It's always something, anything any second right in front of ya. And there it was.' His lips pressed tightly together. His nostrils flaring.

‘What?'

‘Just a brown bulk that hit the truck and spun in the air and all I knew next was the crashing of the windshield…and the antlers busting in…two points ramming right through there.' Blackstrap places two spread fingers on the scars.

Junior's eyes shift to the scars. ‘Really!'

Two holes. Shot twice. The explosions ricocheting out over the city streets, through the wilderness, across the ocean and icefields.

‘Da moose pinned me ta the seat and the wheels went over onto the soft side of the road 'n the machine tilted 'n the wind did the rest, lifting the truck and setting it atop a bunch of spruce, everything was still…' His voice goes lower, like the wind hushing. With lips parted and eyes shifting to the window, he listens for something. A whistle far off, a light through the woods. Steel wheels over steel lines. The shriek of a train waking him. ‘I 'member blinking 'n my eyelashes could feel anudder antler point an inch from my right eye, trying ta focus.' Blackstrap breaks off from the memory to check Junior. The stunned, silent interest. ‘Except for da sound of da moose's breath, its big glassy eyes looking at me up close while it snorted through its nose 'n moaned a painful sound, its head the size of all of me from da waist up, I just sat
there, pinned to the seat, watching in pain, hoping he wouldn't kick or move anymore 'n drive the rest of the points inta me. He was as worse as me, dat moose.'

‘Jeez. What happened?'

‘He were in pain, so I stretched me fingers to reach the buck knife I kept under the seat of da truck, I lifted it up,' Blackstrap purposefully, exactly raises his right hand, ‘and I stuck it inta the moose's throat.' A thrust with gritted teeth.

Junior flinches back.

Blackstrap yanks at the air. ‘I tugged and tugged, cutting it across dere.'

‘It wasn't dead?'

‘No.'

‘You had to kill it?'

‘Yes. Because he were in pain, Junior, and it's best fer da moose ta be dead.' Blackstrap taps the two round clumps. ‘Busted up inside like dat.' Old scars without feeling. ‘These two was through the shoulder, nothing damaged, a little lower I would've been a goner, through da heart.'

‘How'd you get out?'

‘Rescued. They had ta saw off the antlers that were stuck through me and get da moose outta there with a crane.' Partly memory, partly what he was later told, partly invention.

Junior shakes his head in bright disbelief. ‘Did it hurt?'

Blackstrap smirks, musses up his son's hair. ‘Nawww. It never hurt, Junior. Stuff like that doesn't hurt. It's only da things that happen ta other people that hurts ya most. Never stuff that happens ta your own self.'

‘I don't know. I bet it hurt.'

Blackstrap licks his lips, his gaze toward the window with a view of the trees. Hovering above the entire story. The crippled little girl. The dead mother. The angry father. Fighting what? He will not speak their damage into existence. Agnes always knowing this might happen, afraid of him. Away from him because of the danger he would cause. All those years ago, gone from Cutland Junction because he was part of a life not hers.

Isn't that the way it was? A life not hers. A life not his.

‘Have you ever seen a ghost, Junior?'

‘No. Have you?' The boy moves back to the rocking chair, rocking a little.

Blackstrap stands from the bed, facing his son, then puts his hands a little ways out by his side. To raise them any higher would make him feel foolish. ‘Take a good look.'

‘You're no ghost.'

‘You know, they used ta be everywhere, but they jus' don't come 'round anymore. I saw the ghost of my little sister for years after she died, my brudder, too, Junior's ghost. Where're they now?'

‘I don't wanna see a ghost.' Fear in the boy's face. His body tightening up to let nothing in. He wipes at his nose, hunched in that rocking chair, the armrests worn by his grandfather's hands.

Blackstrap watching into the silence, listening beyond the walls, and into the forest, until something comes to him: ‘Maybe you're one too.'

Junior gives his head a nudge of a shake. ‘I'm not,' he says. ‘Definitely not.'

‘Don't ever be 'fraid of ghosts, Junior. It's not like in da movies. Spirits used ta be welcomed everywhere. They did not a bit of harm. If you were scared, then that wouldn't make me feel too welcome when I came 'round ta say hello.'

 

Blackstrap has drawn the curtains in the spare room and stands in the late afternoon dimness, studying the fabric, not knowing if he's trying to see out. Dazed, he steps away and sits back against the low wooden dresser. Light edges in and he watches the door open up. Patsy staring ahead at the bed, then searching the room. She reaches for the light switch, flicks it on, but it does not work.

‘Blacky?' she asks with Blackstrap's shadowed form off to the right. ‘Where ya to?'

‘The bulb's gone. Shut the door.'

Patsy glances up. The bulb gone. The shade also. She steps in and pulls the door closed.

‘Wha' ya do'n in da dark?' She steps toward the curtains to open them.

‘Leave 'em.' He moves for her, roughly taking hold of her arms, squeezing tightly and staring into her face. A woman in his hands.

Patsy makes a sound of displeasure. ‘Let go 'a me.'

Blackstrap throws her back onto the bed where she bounces and settles, her elbows into the mattress, already half risen, her face ready for him, to take anything and give back worse.

‘Don't ya dare,' her voice quivering. ‘I'm not fond 'nough of ya ta have ya in me.'

The savage need to bust out of himself, to punish someone for what he never meant to do. He kneels to either side of her and tears open her blouse, popping the buttons while she slaps a hand against him.

Her nails in his chest. Her neck going tight.

His hands shoved beneath her bra.

Her breasts smaller than he remembers. Practically not even there. Her ribs aching out from her skin. The stretch marks along her belly, the only loose skin remaining.

He squeezes her breasts to make something of them.

Her nails digging deeper in his chest.

He quickly stands away from the pain, then leans forward right away and yanks down her elastic-waist pants. Her hips protruding like the contours of a skull, her cunt lips thicker, fleshier.