Punishment (21 page)

“You said you didn’t know anything about Pittman.”

“I didn’t know why you were asking. And we were talking on the phone.”

“Okay. Now you know.”

“Pittman was the go- to guy for drugs in Millhaven when he was there, as you probably knew.”

“I didn’t.”

He looked away thoughtfully. “Everybody knew he was working for a little group of maggots who were running drugs into the population. You must remember the guy who got killed in Collins Bay some years back? Picked off with a high-powered rifle from the tower. Weird, eh? The con was a drug dealer. You knew that.”

“No. News to me.”

“Anyway, one of the fellas in the yard that night was Pittman. And it seems that Steele was in the tower.”

“I never heard that. About Steele.”

He stared intensely at my face for what seemed like a full minute. “They never did find out who murdered Pittman, right?”

“Never did.”

“Big surprise. Same thing with the poor fuck at Collins Bay.”

“What are you trying to say, Dwayne? You got something specific to say about Pittman?”

“You kidding?” He was shaking his head, but his eyes were still intense. Time to move on.

“Hey, Tony … that little speech before … forget that, okay? That wasn’t me talking. I don’t know where that came from. Right?”

I stood. “I hear you, Dwayne. Maybe when you’re out of here we can have a real talk.” I placed the palm of my hand against the screen.

He stood, ignored my hand. He was about to put the phone receiver down. I smiled at him, withdrew the friendly hand. “Actually it was partly because of you that I went out early.”

His face now openly registered surprise, and caution. “Me?” he said.

“They said I had a tendency to take the side of inmates in too many situations. Ironic, eh? It was on my file when I got to see it, just before I left. Pittman, Vito. They were both mentioned. But you were Exhibit A. They said that for reasons that were personal I took an inappropriate interest in you when you weren’t even part of my caseload. Think about that, Dwayne.”

He nodded, but his mind had gone somewhere else. You could see it in his eyes. I’ve noticed that the most revealing moment in a conversation, whether face to face or on a telephone, can come at the very end, when formalities and niceties are done.

“Good luck,” I said. “I mean that.”

He sat down again, studied the receiver for a moment, chuckled, then said, “You know, for a minute there I thought you were
going to say that you had to retire early because I was fucking your wife.”

It took a moment for the words to register. I laughed, a spontaneous reaction, then said, “Not funny, Dwayne.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

“You’re a sick fuck, Dwayne.”

“Anna didn’t think so.”

“And you’re a liar …”

“Why don’t you ask her …”

“I don’t talk to Anna.” I felt my face turning hot, scarlet.

“Well ask her daddy, ask anybody …”

“As if …”

“Or ask yourself, Tony, how I managed to go straight from Warkworth to a halfway house.”

“I thought it was because you were a fucking rat …”

“Oh come on, Tony. Give your head a shake. Anna and her daddy made a deal. Dwayne goes to the street, Anna promises never to see that awful Dwayne again. Daddy writes to the parole board. I guess you didn’t know how Anna loves bad boys, did you, Tony. Everybody else did. It was win-win, man. It was over between us anyway. I don’t much fancy older women. Too complicated. She was only in it for the ride anyway. Didn’t give a shit about Dwayne. Typical old lady, not getting it at home.”

Now he was standing. Graham, now behind me, said, “Move on Strickland. Time’s up.”

“Man to man?” Now leaning, face practically against the screen, turned away slightly, “I felt shitty at first. Figured poor Tony’s lost his edge. Then I heard about you and the little
shrink. The cute one, Sophie. It was the talk of Warkworth. And I just hadda laugh. ‘That old horn-dog Tony,’ I said.”

And he was gone. I was on my feet. Slamming the phone receiver against the screen, then suddenly being wrestled away by Graham. “Hang on, Mr. Breau. Just give it time. The time will come …”

P
eople who didn’t know my particular circumstances, or forgot them, would often comment on how much I resembled my adoptive father or some other MacMillan I’d never known. I had the MacMillan eyes or hairline or was tall, which had been a distinguishing feature of a prior generation of the Mountain MacMillans. Even the dark complexion, which was really a reminder of my Acadian heritage.

It always seemed odd to me, even when I was very young, because it was no secret that the MacMillans weren’t my biological parents. It was no big deal at our place. We’d always exchange glances, a secret smile or wink at such careless observations. Once my father remarked to a visitor in a jolly way that I hadn’t been so much adopted as kidnapped, then told the story.
I still find it very funny because it’s partly true that I was stolen from the orphanage, or at least borrowed and never given back.

“Your dad will never be dead as long as you’re around.”

I’ll never forget the words.

It was late in an evening of cards with an older couple who had been regular visitors for tea and sometimes rum and games of auction. I took the words to mean that, not only did I look like him, but I also had his integrity and toughness. High praise to me, especially at that moment. My father had died in the autumn, suddenly, and I suppose we were all still in a state of shock. It was 1969. I was home for the Christmas break and sitting in for him with Ma at the card table. The woman who made the remark was a close friend of the family and knew the facts first hand. I was flattered and profoundly moved and briefly had to leave the table.

Duncan MacMillan was a quiet man who never seemed to register the stress and disappointment of his daily struggle on the edge of a subsistence life. But from time to time he’d simply disappear for a day and a night or maybe two. We’d fret. Ma would spend a lot of time staring out the kitchen window, or sitting by the stove in her rocking chair, rosary in hand. The house would be very still.

He’d come back bleary-eyed and rumpled, sometimes bruised, and head straight for bed. And invariably, afterwards, there would be a quiet conversation with Ma at the kitchen table, rare moments that excluded me. Once, I remember, the conversation at the table included the parish priest. Remembering that explosive aspect of his personality guided and restrained me in many potentially chaotic situations.

After I left the regional jail I sat in the parking lot for a while rationally processing the significance of what Strickland had revealed to me. I imagined what Duncan would have done. I think that guard would have been somewhat less successful holding Duncan back.

In the reeling emotional reaction to Strickland’s revelation, there was one idea that probably saved me from extreme behaviour and its consequences:
We can’t be held accountable for what we feel, only what we do
.

Sophie
, I thought,
I would call you if I had your number with me
. And I laughed, thinking how I’d tell her that while we were agonizing over poetry and responsibility and guilt, euthanizing something real and good …

And then I felt the anger,
whitely passionate
. It was just as the poet had warned, the punishment of memory, a sudden rage that drove me to the verge of tears because tears have always been a cursed feature of my outrage. It was one of the reasons why I’d learned how to control my anger, hold it below the tearful threshold where my weakness is exposed. But sitting alone in the parking lot I let the tears flow freely, allowed myself to shout,
You fucking prick
. Then thought of the absurd significance of those worn-out words, here and now.
Goddamn shit
.

I drove to a hotel and checked in. I ruled out the liquor store. Bad idea. But after sitting numbly in my room for what felt like hours, I found my way to the hotel bar. It wasn’t about you, Anna. Oh no, love, once again I’m kind of grateful for the insights gleaned from human failures. Your perversity is on
such a scale that mine feels infantile, innocent. I suppose I felt at some dark masculine level a primitive humiliation: bigger, better, younger more attractive dick, and all that stuff. But overall and after long consideration, I felt sorry for you. This is what intimacy and knowledge do—enable empathy in the most extraordinary circumstances.

It was Strickland I wanted to punish, and not for his sexual invasion of my life. These things happen out of human weakness. People rarely fuck your wife to hurt you. It’s more likely than not the opposite. They often do it in a state of sentimental warmth toward the betrayed. Okay, pity. Whoever knocked up Caddy—if he thought of me at all, it was probably with some faint sense of guilt. Something in the male psyche causes even the most remorseless of men to identify with the poor slob they’re cuckolding. Even twisted Strickland. But to throw it in my face like that? That was not a careless gesture. That was calculated to do damage.

It was while sitting in that hotel bar that many forgotten details of my life on the Mountain Road started coming back to me—like when Duncan, overwhelmed, would disappear for a day or two, the way our dog did from time to time. The logic, I once figured out, was to consciously take himself from a bad emotional place to a worse one. Then returning to the normal situation at least felt like an improvement.

I told the bartender to just keep bringing doubles and I’d tell him when to stop.

——

Just after eight that evening I remembered Birch. I turned away from the other people at the bar, found my cellphone in a pocket. I considered calling Caddy but called the store instead.

“Mary, it’s Tony. I need a little favour.”

I was enunciating carefully, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“I got tied up, won’t get home tonight. Do you think you could look in on the dog? The key is under the mat in the porch. Maybe let him out for a minute or two.”

“Sure,” she said. “Or why don’t I just take him home with me for the night? When are you back?”

“Oh tomorrow. Next day for sure. I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”

“No trouble. He’ll know me, from being at the store so often with Maymie or Caddy.”

“Of course. Okay then. There’s dog food on a shelf in the porch. And you’ll need to take his coat.”

“His coat?”

“The coat he sleeps on … Jack’s old coat, but it’s his now.”

“Jack?”

“Yes, Jack, his … I almost said his father.” I giggled.

“Hey, Tony. Are you okay?”

“Yes,” I said, struggling to strike a tone that was appropriately serious. “I’m great. Just got caught up on some business over here. You’re sure it’s no trouble?”

“Relax,” she said. “He’ll be fine with me and the cat.”

After I put my phone away, the bar felt different, alien, no longer a haven. I considered paying up, returning to my room, but that option felt worse. The bartender leaned across the counter separating us, wiped in front of me, seemed to be in my
face all of a sudden, something on his mind. I had a sudden urge to lash out, pre-emptively. I think he saw something in my look and backed away.

“You’re sure you want another?” he said.

“Double,” I replied.

Mental math is almost always masochistic but it is irresistible. The math was simple. Anna started spending a lot of weekends at home in Warkworth because she said her parents were having some marital difficulties. And she was up front about Strickland: she told me she wanted to help him improve himself; he was determined to finish high school, had even signed up for a university course, English lit if I recall. Helping Strickland was, she said, actually a pleasant experience compared with the miserable atmosphere at home. She was worried that her parents were on the verge of splitting up. Why would old people do something like that? Strickland on the other hand was full of youthful potential. He had the kind of creative curiosity that could take him places if he had a little help. I agreed. I was disarmed. But I was also feeling guilty. I fell asleep in my hotel room that night struggling with a different mental math equation: attempting to calculate exactly when it was that I first told Sophie that I thought I was in love with her, and whether or not it was likely that Strickland was already banging Anna. And whether one betrayal cancels out another.

——

The day before the Pittman board of inquiry, Sophie called. She suggested a long, quiet lunch.

“Not feeling very hungry,” I said.

“You have to eat something. We don’t have to talk about tomorrow,” she said. “We can talk only about nice things.”

“For example?”

“Come on, Tony, I know you’re just sitting there, fretting. Tomorrow is very simple. You describe exactly what you saw and heard that day. Factually. And then it’s done.”

“You know and I know it’ll not be done.”

There was a long silence before she said, “You’re right about that. There will be tomorrow and then the day after tomorrow, and the days after that. And you’ll have to live with whatever you say in the course of about an hour tomorrow for a long, long time. But I think you know as well as I do that the truth is always easier to live with than a lie. That’s all I’m going to say.”

“The usual place?”

“That’s my Tony. I’ll see you there.”

And we kept to the plan, kept the conversation light. I teased her, telling her I was writing a song. “A One-Night Stand in Newfoundland.” She blushed, as she always did. “That isn’t funny.”

We’d had one intense conversation in the days after St. John’s, then resolved that while we could not regret what had happened, it couldn’t be repeated—for a hundred reasons.