Caught (27 page)

Slaney wondered if a person comes close to death, or if a person’s death is a fixed point that’s always equidistant from the present, no matter what the present happens to be.

It leaps, that’s what Slaney was thinking. Death leaps over the space between the future and the present. It was the heat in the waiting room.

Or the quaking pleasure of hearing Hearn’s voice. He was suddenly scared shitless.

We nearly died out there, man, Slaney said. And now it feels like that again.

We’re going to get you out, Hearn said. I’ll be honest. Brophy’s all we got.

There were turning points from which there could be no return, Slaney had learned. He wondered if he’d stumbled on one of those.

You didn’t tell me about the girl, he said.

What girl, Hearn said.

Carter’s girl, Slaney said. Ada.

What the hell are you talking about?

The girl, Hearn. The girl.

Get a hold of yourself, Slane. Doug. I mean Doug. You sound like a nervous wreck. You’ve got to be careful now.

I’m being careful, Slaney said. He thought of coming up from downtown St. John’s, very drunk, with Jennifer one night, a particular night, dried leaves swirling around in the park. Leaves rising up from the frost-stiff ground, twisting up in columns of wind and scattering low again across the grass.

She’d had a bottle of Baileys in her purse. They weren’t careful. There was no being careful involved in what he felt back then.

This was one of the things prison had done to him. He was full of care. Care worn.

Roy Brophy is going to meet you, Hearn said. He has a contact in the military down there. The military contacted Immigration. Brophy’s already made them an offer. That’s why they let you go. Brophy brings you the money, you give the money to the contact. You’re free to go. We hire the locals to repair the boat.

Are you kidding? Slaney asked. This guy calls off the army? You’re kidding, right? But he found himself believing it. Why not?

This is how things are handled down there, Hearn said.

You trust this guy, Slaney said.

I do, Hearn said. I believe him.

Lopez knew about the last trip, Hearn, Slaney said. He knew all about it. Took a pistol out, laid it on the table while we were having our lunch.

Get the boat ready to sail, hire some guys. Brophy will have the money for fuel and supplies. You hand over a suitcase to the authorities. That’s all you have to do.

There’s a girl here, Barlow, and she’s very young and I’m afraid she’s going to get hurt, Slaney said.

I didn’t know about the girl, Hearn said.

The Sails

Slaney saw three
men on bicycles with dining room chairs. They had removed the cushions and put their heads through the wooden frames of the seats, the legs sticking up in the air, so they could steer the bikes and pedal at the same time. Moving furniture out of the flood waters.

Two men had walked past him with a giant square of sky and cloud, a mirror they had scavenged unbroken from a restaurant. There were men laying sacks of sand against the bank of a rising river. Women sitting sideways on bikes their husbands pedalled. And men, alone, riding bikes with a flat of eggs held out on the palm of one hand. Here and there, the stink of sewage. Broken pipes spewing up from the ground.

Two days after the storm the town bakery had reopened, despite the smashed plate-glass window, and in the evenings women carried decorated cakes home from work.

Men had come in on the backs of flatbed trucks from villages farther inland to help with the reconstruction. Slaney had hired five men to fix the sails.

In the morning he and Ada were alone at the communal breakfast table.

He asked her to pass the milk.

Of course, she said. Sugar also? She passed the sugar and turned her book over beside her plate and reached for the basket of bread.

I’ve been thinking, she said. She lifted her white sunglasses to the top of her head. David? You should get out. What are you doing?

I’m getting through it, he said. He meant he was moving through time. He was starting to believe something entirely different about time. In prison he had thought time was an illusion. But now he believed time was a natural force, like the hurricane, except he believed that it could be harnessed.

He made me feel like I was special, she said. Isn’t that silly?

Carter was sleeping it off in the room over the kitchen. He slept most days until late afternoon.

We’ve got to keep going now, Slaney told her.

It was hard leaving my father, Ada said. She blinked very fast and the colour of her eyes changed. She was crying. Slaney didn’t know how to compose himself.

I more or less ran away, she said. Cyril promised me a house after the trip. I didn’t care about the house. I just wanted to be in love. My father was so proud of my music. He came to all my performances. I just couldn’t keep playing, David. That was the thing. I started to hate it. And it was the only thing I loved. I didn’t want to hate it.

She had no control over her mouth and it stretched slowly so her teeth and gums showed and the lump of wet bread and then she pulled her mouth shut. Her chin trembled. Her shoulders drooped and shook a bit. There was no other sound from her while this happened.

It was a mistake, she said.

I’m sorry, Slaney said. Then she giggled. She was laughing at her predicament.

The things you see in retrospect, she said. He’s bald, for Christ’s sake. You don’t understand it, you couldn’t.

You think I haven’t been in love? Slaney said.

It is ridiculous to imagine you matter, she said. She waved at the room and the ocean beyond the room with the butter knife.

You matter, Slaney said. He thought it was true. She was only six years younger than he was, but it seemed like there were decades between them. He’d made mistakes too. He was living out the mistakes he’d made, doing it over, or trying to fix it, and look at him — he still mattered. He mattered very much.

It’s impossible, she said. He figured she meant the hurricane and the money they stood to lose and Carter, almost catatonic for hours at a time. Carter demanding they let him go home to his wife. We’ll have you back in a jiffy, Slaney kept telling him.

Just to love someone, Ada said.

I don’t believe you ever loved him, Slaney said.

The whole thing is impossible, she said. She wiped her nose by flicking the bone of her wrist under it. Then she reached for the marmalade. It was just out of reach.

She brought the dish of marmalade across the table by sticking her knife into it. The little white bowl skittered across the table toward her under the knife tip. Slaney knew that he would never see this side of her again.

You’re going to make it out of this, he said.

I’m getting a tan, she said. That’s what I’m going to do.

She put the piece of bread down on the side plate and balanced the knife on the marmalade bowl and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. Then she pulled her fingers through her hair, patted it down. She threw back her shoulders. Slaney could see the print of her teeth in the piece of bread. He didn’t try to touch her; he let her keep going.

You are probably in love with me, she said.

I’m not in love with you, Slaney said. Then Slaney told her. He didn’t know what he was going to say before he said it. He told her about Jennifer and the kid, and how she was gone.

It had to do with the kid, he said. She wanted to feel secure. He said he had believed, for a while, that he was doing the trip for Jennifer. But that wasn’t true at all.

He said how there were things you could make happen and he was good at that. It seemed that there was nothing he could not animate.

But there were things that just happened to you, he told Ada. Things you couldn’t see coming. There were things that could knock you out. He’d already ended up in jail once and he might very well have fallen in love with Ada except he thought she was cold. He told her that.

If he had fallen in love with her it was something he would work his way out of as fast as he could, he said.

Cyril has a wife, he said. He’s got youngsters. A family he’s temporarily abandoned. But men don’t leave their wives. They don’t leave their kids. You’re his Maserati. He’s a lush. The two of you will probably be the end of me.

Probably, she said.

I am already in too deep, he said. Do you know that feeling?

Get out, she said. Why don’t you get out?

Slaney had been forced to listen to them every night on the boat. There had been giggles and thumping and some cries that sounded authentic and he’d had to go up on deck and wait it out.

Did you ever get blamed for something you didn’t do? Ada asked. She told him about a nun who taught her piano. The wooden ruler Sister Consilio used to count the beats as she paced behind Ada’s back, listening to her bang out Mozart. The nun kept saying Ada wasn’t trying hard enough.

I don’t think I ever did, Slaney said.

After a while you decide you might as well do the things you’re blamed for, she said.

I did them from the start, Slaney said. Otherwise there would have been a lot of catching up to do.

My father was a prisoner of war, she said. Being in the navy required a lot of him. They shot him in the leg, left him with a limp.

So he is brave, Slaney said. He’ll be okay.

Whatever he gave, he didn’t get it back, she said. Don’t count on me, David. I’m warning you.

But I am counting on you, he said.

You can hollow yourself out, she said. Then it’s too late. Do you believe that?

You think we’re going to get caught, he said. She said she did think that. She was certain of it.

Then why don’t you leave? Slaney said.

Because I’m going to make sure nothing happens to Cyril. He’s helpless.

The hurricane threw us off, Slaney said. We can’t let a little thing like a hurricane get in our way.

The Bull

Patterson was at
the Plaza de Toros, in Acapulco, for the meeting with Hernandez. He had arrived early and the sun was high and the band of his hat cut into his forehead. The hat was white with a black ribbon at the crown and a very small red feather. He’d bought it off a revolving rack outside a shop that catered to tourists.

There’d been a rack of sharks’ teeth beside the hats, the upper and lower jaws attached by a film of cartilage, and all the rows of teeth, pointing inward, very white and small. He’d tried on the hat and looked at himself in the tiny cracked mirror that hung from a piece of twine on a nail.

Hernandez would find him; he just had to wait. It was important to appear unhurried. He removed the hat and saw it was coated with dust. The dust gummed up and felt gritty and he saw that the hat was whiter than he had thought.

A speckled feather: he’d let the guy charge him a fortune because he’d needed to cover his head. There was a thing that happened to him in Mexico: he could be persuaded by a burst of colour. Everything was red and aqua blue and lime green and orange; you didn’t see this in Canada, where it was all earth tones, dun and charcoal. There was nothing wrong with a feather. It was a nice touch. A person could get away with little touches of elegance in a hot climate.

The bull galloped into the arena and kicked and jackknifed. It was maddened and desultory by turns. The shine and muscle awed Patterson and became ordinary and awed him again. The bull embodied unsustainable awe.

A cloud of dust was settling. His shirt stuck to his back and his pant legs tugged at him. The ribbing of his acrylic sock imprinted on his damp leg.

Hearn had called him: I need someone to talk to, man. He’d given Hearn a day. He had figured he’d give Hearn a day to call him before he tried to make contact himself. O’Neill hadn’t wanted him to wait but screw O’Neill.

Come over, man, have a drink, Hearn said. Patterson was going to get the promotion. The promotion was a sure thing now.

He would visit Alphonse when he got back. He’d pay the bill in full. Sometimes he was afraid Alphonse would forget him between visits, but he never did. What if something happened to him while he was on the job? Who would explain Patterson’s absence? His brother would feel abandoned.

He felt a drip of sweat move down his face, and another and another. Who would take care of Alphonse?

The matador looked like a china doll, prissy and brave. There was gold brocade crusted on the man’s shoulders and chest and climbing up the legs of his stockings. The red cape flapped out and the bull charged through, kicking up dust. The matador twisted his hip to the side. He seemed to rise on his toes. Then he turned and ran like a cartoon stick-man.

The bull was full of pent-up violence and a sly heaviness.

And there, at last, was Hernandez. He made his way toward Patterson through the crowd. He was dressed in a screaming red shirt and white suit.

The Mexicans could do that, Patterson had observed. They could keep a bright linen suit crisp-looking in any kind of heat. Hernandez was not wearing a hat. A black ponytail hung down his back. He cut a figure.

Hernandez stopped and spoke to a young woman in a black dress. He wanted to show Patterson that he could be languid. He wanted Patterson to understand that he would decide on the formalities. The woman stood and gestured toward her children. Three young boys stood up beside her. Hernandez took her hand while he spoke to her. Then he made his way to Patterson.

Señor Hernandez, buenos días, Patterson said. He shook the man’s hand. Both men turned to the arena. They pretended to scrutinize the work of the matador.

You have to be tolerant, Hernandez said. He gestured toward the bull. Patterson was not interested in philosophizing about the bull. He found it a dull dance. There were lags. There was despondence. Currents could pulse through the crowd but there could be long moments when nothing happened.

Hernandez had worked his way up, as Patterson understood it. He had bought beach property for nothing at the right moment near Puerto Vallarta. Richard Burton and Ava Gardner had made a movie and Burton had bought Elizabeth Taylor a place and a cluster of hotels went up and Hernandez had invested.