Architects Are Here (35 page)

We ran after her and pinned her down and dragged her back to the car by the neck.

What’ll we do with her.

Why can’t she just be a patient hunting dog.

I wouldnt want her straying.

You afraid you might shoot her.

A ricochet.

Tie her on the bumper.

So I tied her to the trailer hitch and jumped the fence and found a cardboard box, emptied it, then tore it into two flat halves for targets. We used to drink beer at the cement plant and steal gravel from the fence of Lundrigan’s. When they got a load it would spill out through the fence and, in our circles, what went through the fence was fair game. We’d load up the trailer with gravel and sand if we were making cement. Of course, it helped if you knew the truck driver off-loading stone. It helped just to reverse the tail-end a few feet more so the arc of the spill dragged itself through the fence. We knew men who bought dented cans from supermarkets and resold them. It helped if you befriended a stock boy who could make sure enough cans were damaged. The thing is, as soon as you account for waste, and make waste a commodity, more good things will become waste.

Me:What’s the meaning of life, Dave?

Kids.

I dont have kids.

But you have parents and you feel like a kid.

I promised I’d always be a kid.

Promised who.

It was a promise I made to the kid in me.

We marched off fifty yards and set up the targets.

We each get three shots then we run.

The shots would bring the police, as we were still within the city limits. David fired off three rounds in a standing position, then threw the rifle at my chest. I caught it. I was surprised though and had to wait to calm down. Risky fucker. I dropped to one knee. Then I shot and I knew I’d done better than David.

It’s sighted, he said. Now let’s get the hell out of here.

We left the targets and slung ourselves into the Matador. We were the old police making a getaway from the new police. We bombed back into town along the river highway, past coves and shoals I used to fish from, and only stopped on West Street when a body in a T-shirt jumped on the hood of the car and banged on the window and cried out, You cruel sick motherfuckers.

What’s your problem sir.

Mainland assholes.

Hey he can read a licence plate.

But it struck me. An image of Bucephalus materialized in my forehead.

It’s the dog, I said.

We’d forgotten the dog.

The speed we’d gone. And from the way this man was into us. But maybe it would be all right. I jumped out, my hands in my hair hoping not to see what we had to see. We’d forgotten Bucephalus. There was the red rope and a cruel side of her.

This.

It was far beyond any hope and the shock of it paralyzed the next step. But I became cold in the head and knew what to do. Open the trunk. Get the keys and open the trunk. Now just lift her in.

It’s about the worst thing I’ve ever done.

We’re useless, Dave.

We untied what was left of her. David had to turn her over so he could carry her without getting the rawness of her on him. I fished up the fox coat from the back seat. David held her. Then he put her in the trunk. Dave made a low groan that sounded like his organs were talking. The force of his emotion made me quiet, though I was in shock. We sat in the car a bit, then Dave drove around. I felt worthless and alive.

We drove up to Crow Hill and got out and looked down at the city. We were idiots. Or I was an idiot when I was with David. He’s actually a bad guy, a disaster. I needed to love David less.

We need to bury her, he said.

We drove to my father’s workshop. I knew where the key was and how the door is deadbolted with a bar from the inside. I flicked on the lights and the pipes shone in the rafters like veins of copper, like you could mine it. Excellent plumbing. Everything my father made was excellent, and everything I did was mediocre or half-assed.

David found a spade and a pick.

We drove out of the city past St Judes. Then through the new real estate David had purchased for IKW, to build condos for wealthy tourists. We drove past this and into the poorer region of the basin. Deep into Hurley territory. We took her out here because we wanted a place that was undisturbed but also a place where we wouldnt get caught. A road down near the bridge before the powerhouse in Deer Lake. We followed that in to the end where there’s crown land and the watershed. We passed lengths of culvert being used to reroute water. We wrapped the dog in her fox coat, I could feel the shaved-down edges of bone. We dug a hole and buried her. We were both disgusted with ourselves, but relieved we could get away with such a horrendous act. We realized we werent going to mention it any more. It was like shipping your garbage to a foreign country.

W
E CARRIED OUR JACKETS
to a bar in the corner of the mall to meet Gwen Hurley. The jackets were a shell for the rain and they reminded us that Bucephalus was with her coat in the ground and we could very easily be buried in these jackets too. We let Gwen sit by the window. She wanted to talk of love. She’d been with Jason Linegar for five years. When they married he said he wanted to live in a town, population fifty.

I married him, she said, to get out of a town population fifty.

Now he’s a cook on board a trawler. Population fifty.

Corner Brook, she said, was too big for Jason.

So it was more the type of life than the person.

He was the luckiest man I ever met, she said. He should have got behind a counter and sold me a lottery ticket.

Where’d you meet.

Right in this bar. I didnt notice for a long time that he was short. I just loved the colour of his skin. I always think I’m taller than I am. I can’t go out with this guy because he’s not six foot two. Is that silly? Small of me?

Gwen worked on building sites all through the Maritimes. She inspects their safety. Now moving into sites that blow up. She had all the gear in a truck with six wheels.

We passed it outside, I said.

You noticed it.

Gwen Hurley was on a site in Stephenville last week. And a guy fell sixty feet just a few yards from her. Blood coming out of his ears and mouth. On his back.

I held his hand, she said. Called 911. They have their own internal ambulance service on sites like this. Saw the guy wasnt breathing, put my fingers down his throat and up came clots of blood. Then did CPR on him. Still nothing. Ambulance hauled in and they used a hand pump, he came back. Next day a woman calls. It’s the guy’s wife. To tell me he’s dead.

Gwen: I dont care about stereotypes. I’ll be a stereotype if you want, I dont give a fuck.

David:Youre kind of lighthearted.

Been through a hard year. When Jason left I thought about killing myself.

She put her hand around David’s and repeated, I thought about killing myself.

She knew by now what David was doing, that her brother Anthony was David’s half-brother. And that David was in town to talk to Gerard and Anthony about his own father. She laughed about the suicide thought, to make it into a joke. But David wanted to stand at the bar, his beer in a plastic cup. He removed himself from Gwen’s arm and stood with crates of recycling on the floor beside him. The Hurleys were into recycling now and waste management. Then David made for the door. I’ll be outside, he said. Behind him, as the door swung shut, one city bus, flashing by empty.

Gwen:You probably think I’m a little odd.

Me: Is there some expression I’m giving?

Gwen: I had long hair and a leather coat and people thought I was a freak. Jason didnt but people did. I roomed in a house with the toughest fucker in Halifax. I looked heavy metal but I was a punk rocker deep inside. I thought I could get any man.

You destroyed your wealth, I said. You let your emotions rule.

Gwen began talking as though she had never married, or that Jason Linegar was insignificant.

She asked if we wanted to go to Maggie’s. She had to meet Maggie Pettipaw.

We took her behemoth truck. David was leaning up against it. The self is under attack, he said. There is a self but there may not always be a self. Right now the self is a mongrel.

We’re a pack of mongrels, Gwen said. She had heard about Bucephalus.

The pressure, David said, is to make us all the same.

Me: Perhaps we are at risk of having the self lost to sameness.

Maggie’s place was a tight little two-storey in behind the hospital, but Maggie wasnt home. Gwen called Maggie. She’d be right over.

My father is in there, David said. He pointed to the roof of the hospital where they were still hovering a heavy item a hundred feet in the air. He told Gwen the story of his father without mentioning names.

All my family are black sheep, Gwen said. I’m the fucking white sheep.

What about Joe.

Living white sheep.

Maggie arrived wearing a white leather coat she bought in England two years ago. It had one missing button that she carried in her pocket. She showed it to us.

Gwen: I would never let two years go by before I sewed back on a button.

David:You just have to, every couple of weeks, sew on your buttons.

That sounds like a motto.

On Maggie’s fridge was a drinks recipe list. The last line was “add more tequila.”

It began to rain. You could hear it on the roofs of cars parked out back. I love the rain, David said. Doesnt matter where I am or whose rain it is.

You laugh, Gwen said, even though you dont have a sense of humour.

How you doing.

I’m living a dream, mister.

Maggie: I’ve got a story to tell you but you wouldnt believe it.

Oh come on tell us.

No, you wouldnt believe it. Otherwise I’d tell you.

We’ll believe it.

The reason I went out with Gerard was so I could hang out with Gwen.

Speaking of Gerard, David said. How do we get ahold of him.

FIVE

I
DROVE DOWN
to St Judes alone. I wanted to talk to Loyola Hurley the way that I talked to him when we were alone on the river. It was a compulsion to use youthful connections. If David was with me another type of conversation would happen. Gerard was staying at home with Loyola, Gwen said. Gerard worked for the plumbing business, that was his front.

I knew Mr Hurley from those early mornings on the Humber River. I called him Mr Hurley. Perhaps it was the time of day and the place where we met, but he seemed to be a person then. He tied his own flies, as I did, and if we met before sun-up he’d share his flask of black tea and unclasp his case of flies. I liked the cup on the top of the flask, it was tin, and I’d never had tea without milk before. My father liked the Hurleys. He taught them, and he knew of Mr Hurley in the woods. My father preferred these families, the ones who were directly from the bay, rather than the families who had moved to Corner Brook eighty years before, to exploit the paper mill. There is something different in the character, he said. There is something safe and conservative about the paper-mill workers, the shelter of a boring and cautious union. That caution helps build infrastructure, like regional hospitals. We are all born now in regional hospitals. We die in them too.

I slowed through St Judes, which is built along the highway. Once, someone had painted a crosswalk. For laughs. Then I saw the Hurley house, the new addition and the white van in front. I slowed down and parked on the grade. I didnt want to park on Hurley property, or get boxed in.

I stood there and looked at the Hurleys’. I looked at the white van. The dented moose bar on the grille. Behind the van was an open garage door and beside the house was a scarecrow in a field of potatoes, an early crop that was dying back already, others still dark and healthy. The scarecrow was sitting in a chair, as if the Hurleys were trying to make him comfortable. But then it wasnt a scarecrow. It was Loyola Hurley in a wheelchair.

I crossed the highway and walked into the yard and then up to the potato field.

I lost a foot, he said, to diabetes.

But he wasnt letting the wheelchair slow him down. He was getting around as good as ever.

They swiped two kitchen sinks off me, he said. So now I have Loyola Hurley written on the fridge in blue paint. With a phone number on the side.

I helped him into the kitchen where Gerard Hurley was sitting drinking a beer. He had a reciprocating saw on the table in front of him. He was taking it apart and staring at each part with his bright blue eyes. Cold. He looked less masculine. Something about less hair on his face, a weak chin. I opened the fridge. It had the scent of mould. It was warm inside.

Gerard: How much is a water pump, Dad? Sixty?

Loyola: Sixty? Try sixty and sixty and sixty and sixty and sixty.

Me:Why is your fridge not working.

I unplugged it, Loyola said. It was making too much noise.

Me: Didnt there used to be a basketball court out here?

That attracted every kid in St Judes, Loyola said. I didnt need to hear the language.

Then he knew I must have a nervous sense about me, with Gerard in the room. He said, I feel bad for David’s father, for what happened to him. Accident as it was. I was hit last year by three teenagers on drugs.

With sticks, Gerard said.

Police asked me questions like, had I at all enticed the boys during the summer.

Well they paid for that, Gerard said.

Loyola wheeled over to the sink and put a net bag of potatoes in there to rinse. They had laid out the garden so he could get in there with his wheelchair. He found a cutworm. It had an orange shell. He smashed it in his hand and a yellow puss sluiced out. They attack the peas, Loyola said. Even though theyre in the potatoes.

My neighbour, Loyola said, he’s a lawyer. His wife too. Two lawyers. He came over to me last month, said if I put that tree out City Hall would take it away. It was the Christmas tree from last year. It had blown up against the fence and I’d been meaning to cut it up and burn it. So fuck off, I said. Well the boys here got on a tear. And one night after I’d gone to bed Gerard hooked up lights and dressed up the tree right here in the yard. Next afternoon I was taking it all down and the neighbour comes home. He says Loyola, you know what you are? Youre like something out of
Pippi Longstocking
. What? I said. She would do that, have Christmas in July.