A Good Man (27 page)

Next morning it takes two of them to shoulder open the door. A snowbank lies curled up like a large dog on the threshold. The snow gleams with a faint tint of indigo as if it had been rinsed in laundry bluing. The sun is a blurred, hazy whirlpool sucking all the colour out of the sky.

“Christ,” says McMullen, “she’s cold as a pauper’s coffin.”

Case shivers in the doorway. The only signs of life are the smoking noses of the cattle, the steam rising from freshly dropped dung, the famished bawling as they mill around the fences that ring the haystacks. The two men plod through the crusted snow, grapple their way up the icy sides of the stacks, and begin to fork feed down to the cows.

The first snowfall marks a revolution in the Tarr household. Given the severe turn in the weather, even Randolph can’t argue that Dunne should remain sleeping on the porch bundled up in a buffalo robe. But he tries to keep him quarantined as much as possible. Dunne never eats with the family, but takes his meals separately in the kitchen. He sleeps there too, on a pallet by the stove. Randolph and Celeste treat him with open contempt, leaving Ada to bear the weight of his doleful presence. For the best part of the day, Randolph is at his office and Celeste spends most of her time in the sewing room, working on her finery. When Lieutenant Blanchard pays her a call, Celeste banishes both Dunne and Ada from the parlour, exiling them to the kitchen. On the first few occasions when this happened, they simply sat at the table drinking tea and making stilted conversation, or rather Ada did the talking, Dunne only seconding whatever she said with a fervent, disconcerting enthusiasm.

Now to avoid such awkward moments, Ada busies herself with baking, but can sense him following her every move. Sometimes it makes her hum with frustration. It’s like having a begging dog underfoot, or a greedy child, eyes pleading for a taste of sweetness. So she feeds him raw cookie dough and spoonfuls of cake batter to appease his hunger, never guessing that Dunne is famished for something else.

Looking at him, licking a blob of cookie dough off his finger, slowly sucking a gooey spoon, Ada can only think,
Poor, poor booby
. Yet this poor booby is souring her life. Randolph is right; it’s impossible to share a house with the man. Now that he keeps watch in the parlour, her favourite place to read and think is spoiled. It’s not that Dunne chatters at her when her nose is buried in a book, as Randolph or Celeste frequently do, it’s that his efforts to remain silent, to not disturb her, are so very distracting. He ostentatiously tiptoes across the floor. When he shifts his legs, or crosses them, he does so with such excruciating care that she’d like to shout at him,
You’re not building a house of cards. Just cross your legs and have done with it!

And there is something else. Ada is beginning to wonder if the steady gaze he directs out the window doesn’t sometimes detect, mirrored on the surface of the glass, the look of distaste on her face when she glances over his way, distaste for a man whose only crime is doing his best to make himself agreeable. When this guilty thought crosses her mind, Ada will set down her novel, one of those books in which the most charming man is invariably the most wicked, and ask, “Mr. Dunne, could I interest you in a cup of tea?”

And Dunne always says, “Don’t put yourself to any trouble, Missus, not on my account.”

Despite his aggravating humility, she pulls her face into the brightest smile she can muster and assures him, “It is not a trouble at all, Mr. Dunne. It is my pleasure.”

A week after Mr. Dunne took up quarters in the house, Ada descends the stairs one morning and hears Randolph and the bodyguard talking in the kitchen. Whatever is being discussed is a serious matter, Randolph’s tone alerts her to that; she has heard that scolding urgency before, directed at her when she has displeased him. Dunne’s responses are flat, monosyllabic.

Both men fall silent when she enters the room. She sees a bag at Mr. Dunne’s feet, the one he used to bring clothing and personal effects from the Stubhorn. His shotgun lies across it.

“Good morning,” says Ada, glancing first to her husband, then to Dunne. Randolph makes no reply. He is blinking furiously.

“Good morning, Missus Tarr. I trust you slept well,” says Dunne.

“Moderately well. And you, Mr. Dunne?”

Impatiently, Randolph taps his foot on the floor. “Ada, please go back upstairs. Mr. Dunne and I have business to conclude.”

Randolph does not look well; his eyes are haggard, his lips a sickly mauve. Dunne looks insufferably pleased. “What has happened?” she demands.

“Mr. Dunne is leaving us this morning,” Randolph answers.

“When was this decided? As usual, it seems you have kept me in the dark about your plans.”

“Mr. Dunne is unhappy here.”

“No I ain’t.”

“It’s settled,” says Randolph, raising his voice. “Your services are no longer required.”

“I don’t understand,” says Ada.

“No, you don’t. And that is why it is not your place to interfere.”

This is not the tone to take with Ada, not the thing to say. She turns to Dunne. “This comes as a great surprise to me, Mr. Dunne. But if you must go, allow me to offer my gratitude for the service you have rendered us. A service that has eased my mind very much.” She extends her hand. “Thank you, sir.”

Dunne hesitates, takes hold of her fingers, and simply holds them, unable to lift his eyes from the amazing sight of their linked hands. “Missus Tarr,” he says, “you are a peach. To have made your acquaintance …” His voice falters; he looks up and colour rushes into his face. “Words do not do you justice, Missus Tarr.” He stoops in a sudden bow, snatches up his bag and shotgun, and flees out the back door.

Randolph drops down on a chair. “Well, I’ll be damned. What facility you have, my dear. I can’t eject the hooligan, but you butter him up and out the door he squirts.”

Ada may feel relief at seeing Dunne go – but that only makes her more acutely aware of the disgraceful treatment her husband and stepdaughter subjected the man to. They were the reason she felt it necessary to pet him up, and now she is being mocked for it.

“Why have you sent him away?”

“Leave it alone, woman,” snaps Randolph.

“Here we have lived for months in fear of Gobbler Johnson – bullet holes in the wall of your office, dead dogs on your doorstep – and now all danger from him has evaporated. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Gobbler Johnson, Gobbler Johnson,” he mutters, “I’m sick of the sound of the name. If you need an admission from me, I will make it. I lost my head. I panicked. I fell prey to an old man’s senile, impotent threats. All Johnson meant to do was give me sleepless nights. He succeeded. Now are you satisfied?”

“That is not all. Something else has changed. Tell me.”

“If you insist on harping at me like a fisfe I’ll give you my answer. I am stony broke. One step short of bankruptcy. I lack the money to pay Dunne.” He sags in the chair, shoulders hunched in defeat.

“Where has the money gone? What are you saying?”

“It is not so much a case of it going as it is of it not coming in.” Randolph fretfully rubs at his eyes. “A good deal of my income came from the business I did with Harding. He is a man who requires a good deal of legal advice. But now he has dispensed with my services.”

“He must have provided you with reasons.”

“Harding doesn’t give reasons, neither does he explain himself. I was his faithful dog. I rolled over, sat up, fetched the stick at his bidding. And what good did it do me?” he says bitterly.

“Harding is not a man who concerns himself with doing good to others. He certainly did me none. You might have learned a lesson from the way he treated me.”

Randolph gives Ada a look filled with such vindictiveness that it takes her breath away. “You and your damned insufferable sense of superiority. How many times did I have to listen to Harding complain about how you squabbled with his wife, sneered at his daughters. A man like that doesn’t forget such things. Lord,” he groans, “maybe it’s you I have to thank for this. What was I thinking when I married you?”

It comes as a shock to Ada that her husband could entertain the same question that has so long perplexed her.

TWELVE

DUNNE CLUMPS UP THE
stairs to his room above the Stubhorn, pauses on the landing to gaze back over the snowy roofs of Fort Benton in the direction of the Tarr residence. A slim finger of smoke beckoning to him above the horizon, a reminder that right now Mrs. Tarr will be preparing baking soda biscuits for breakfast. The thought leaves a flaky, hot, buttery taste on his tongue. She knows they are his favourite.

Dunne enters his quarters. It is no warmer inside than it was outside. Nailheads are capped with a fur of frost; the only window is glazed with ice. He reaches up and puts his hand to the chisel resting on the ledge above the door; making a circuit of the room, he ritualistically touches all his totems, those items that quiet his mind: the parlour gun stowed in the wood box, the straight razor secreted in one of the socks on the floor by his cot. He takes the Schofield Russian revolver from the waistband of his trousers and slips it under his pillow. He runs his fingers over the short-barrel detective-model Schofield nestled in the silk sleeve sewn into the lining of his jacket. Everything is where it should be; everything is in order. It feels safe enough to light a fire.

He spreads his hands above the stovetop. As he waits for the room to thaw, his breath steams from his nostrils; the heat of his happiness makes itself visible in the freezing air. Dunne knows the truth of it. Whatever Tarr might say, he hadn’t packed him off because he couldn’t pay his wages. It wasn’t because that snotty bitch Celeste objected to having him around. It was because he had
alienated> the affections of the lady of the house. Jealousy was why Tarr had shoved him out the door. Affections alienated, affections captured. All of the smug legal phrases Tarr had mouthed in those Chicago courts, how does he feel now that he knows they apply to him? And those last caressing looks Mrs. Tarr had given him when they parted, the fond way she had let her hand linger in his fingers, how had Tarr felt when he saw that?

Mrs. Tarr is his for the taking, if not tomorrow, then someday soon. He knew it as soon as he spotted those crusty white speckles on the toes of Tarr’s glossy lawyer shoes. Grand Da’s workboots had been spotted with them too, dribbles from the old man’s cock. That had set him on watch for other evidence. It was all there. Tarr’s thirst, his hunger, his fatigue; Grand Da had shown all those symptoms too. No one can say that Michael Dunne isn’t clever, hasn’t a nose for details; he overlooks nothing, no matter how small. Not him. He had stolen up to Tarr’s room, tasted a few drops of piss from his chamber pot. It was liquid sugar. He has the sugar diabetes. He will waste away just like Grand Da did, will slip into the dark sleep of a coma. Randolph Tarr is dying and doesn’t know it.

This is the best of all possible secrets. Soon he will sit on Tarr’s chairs, eat off his plates. Tarr’s debt will finally be paid in full, with interest. Soon he will lay his head on Mrs. Tarr’s breast in a bed that Tarr bought. But that last thought is so arousing, so stimulating, it is necessary to place his thoughts elsewhere.

Dunne’s brain is a furnace. He goes to the window and presses his forehead to the melting ice, slowly rolls it from side to side, scrapes frost from the pane with his nails, stumbles to the bed and crashes down on it like a felled tree. He lies there, fingers stuffed in his mouth, sucking on the ice trapped under his fingernails. All his life people have handed him dangerous, dirty jobs, wanted him to clean up their messes, asked him to smooth the stony way, and when he did, they cast him off, turned their backs on him. They were all the same, the skinflint Hind, McMicken, who had turned him out into the street when he had had no more need of him, the debt-dodging Tarr. Shifty-eyed, lying scoundrels, every one of them.

Of them all, it was McMicken who had wounded him worst. “You will be my special care,” he had promised. And at first, when he had come under the great man’s wing, he had felt warm and safe, cradled against the dove’s breast, but then, just like that, McMicken had pushed him out of the nest. The good work he had done, the risks he had run, in the end they earned him nothing more than a handshake and an offhand goodbye. There was gratitude for you. The crimpers he had handed the magistrate, the Confederate wheels he had jammed a stick into at the danger of breaking his wrists – that counted for nothing. And when the War Between the States had come to its bloody end, and the Irish veterans of that struggle had marshalled to make war against Canada, who had McMicken relied on? Michael Dunne. “You’re the man,” he had said to him. “Who could doubt your sincerity with that bogtrotter name and the potato written all over your face?” And so he had undergone another conversion, from Proddy Dog back to Cat Licker, from frequenter of the Queen’s Hotel to regular of Michael Murphy’s tavern on Esplanade Street. There he had become a dues-paying member of the Hibernian Benevolent Society, an organization that employed mysterious signs and passwords, was divided into companies led by captains and lieutenants, all at the beck and call f none other than President Michael Murphy of Esplanade Street. After serving his apprenticeship there, he had been initiated into the Toronto Circle of the Fenian Brotherhood established by the head centre for America, John O’Mahony, and received his card identifying him as a member in good standing.