Crimes Against My Brother (28 page)

At Ian’s house the men were still talking about the fight, and how Ripp was right to do what he did, when Ian made his way downstairs to where Ethel had taken Liam.

Ethel had closed the pressed-board door and the two were sitting together, hiding from all the noise and confusion upstairs, with three or four of Liam’s toys, a small piece of birthday cake and a candle that he was going to light by himself. Ian came in and sat down on an old wicker rocking chair, holding his cane and trying to think above the commotion, but nonetheless listening to Annette’s feet as they moved to and from the back door, and looking up at the cross beams. Now and again he smiled at his son.

Ethel had been telling a story to Liam about a miracle that had happened to her when she was very little, younger than Liam himself. Annette had told her not to tell this story because it was superstitious. Yet the story involved Sara’s heroic action, and this is what Annette secretly deplored. And so Ethel had stopped telling it when Ian came into the room.

The only friend Liam had was Ethel. He told her he was going to a party next week, and this party was for Sherry Mittens. No one talked to Ethel more about Sherry Mittens than Liam did. He had saved $7.32 for a present for Sherry Mittens, and wanted Ethel to help him buy it.

The huge basement was unfinished and smelled of oil and pressed wallboard. Ian had had great hopes of finishing it but never had. Other obligations always got in the way. The cottage was being redone, and he had spent close to twenty-five thousand dollars on that although he never went there—and Ripp lived in it half the time, and the bills for the phone and electric heat came to the house for Ian to pay.

He now heard Annette laugh upstairs like a little girl. He said he wanted to hear Ethel’s story—although in fact what he wanted was to hear about Sara.

So Ethel continued on: “How did it happen that old Mr. Fitzroy just happened to come around the corner at that time? If he had not, my sister and I would have drowned—and he wasn’t supposed to come that way for another week. He told us this later. Yet he had decided to go into the woods at just that time. Out of the blue he got up from his table and started walking—for no apparent reason! And Sara, in spite of her leg being twisted and in pain, kept holding my head above water. If she had let go of me, she could have saved herself—but even though the pain was unbearable, and remains unbearable even now at times, she did not let my head go. She would not. Besides that, neither of us froze when freezing would have been easy. And so even the doctors—and she went to dozens—asked how in the world she managed. And she could not say, except that it was the help of the Virgin.” Ethel finished, while loud and long laughter could be heard from the stairs and the snow fell over the green window.

“But what about all of those who aren’t saved, and who do die in accidents day in and day out?” Ian asked. “Like Evan’s little boy?”

“Well, perhaps those are miracles in another way,” Ethel said. “Perhaps there are miracles in tragedy as well.”

Ian, who always felt he was far brighter than Ethel, could never seem to win an argument with her. So he said nothing more. Down here in the far corner were his books—he had dozens of novels and histories that he read in his spare time. In fact, each time he heard of a certain book and thought that Sara might like it, he bought it.

A bang came from above, and a thud when something fell. He heard shouting.

He went back upstairs slowly. He looked at Annette, and was about to plead with her not to go—it was on the tip of his tongue—but talk suddenly turned to Evan Young, who someone had seen pass by when Ian was downstairs, and how his child had died on this date. “Didn’t he die on this date? He did, didn’t he?”

“Yes, he did! But then, sometimes there are miracles where people are saved,” Ian said, for some reason, out of the blue.

“What are you talking about—miracles!” Diane asked. “What do you mean by miracles?” And she stirred her drink and looked at the others, wanting them to acknowledge what a provocative question she had asked.

Ian suddenly felt hot and confused, and spoke hurriedly: “Well, think of Ethel being alive today—because of Sara,” he said, and he looked here and there.

“Yes.” DD laughed. “That’s quite a miracle—anything to do with Sara. Right, Annette? Quite a miracle indeed!”

“Shut up, all of you—please, for Christ’s sake,” Annette said. “Please, let’s all just shut up about Sara and about everyone else.”

And so no one said anything more for a while.

Evan stood at the side of Ian’s store in miserable weather, with no one at all around. Far down the street white snow fell over someone’s troubled aluminum shovel in a yard. It was Ian, he thought, that he and Harold must seek revenge from. Why should they fight each other? Harold had spoken about this as a way to keep the bond of their own brotherhood together—that is, they must relinquish the one brother and make a new pact. And this had been in the back of Evan’s mind all the way to town.

Sooner or later a man must act against he who has cursed him; the pact they had made on the mountaintop all those years ago said as much. What did the pact say? It said they would not be sheep and abide in a Lord who did not believe in them. And yes, Evan had had no money to pay for his child’s funeral, and people as poor as he had come with money and food to help. The night before Jamie was buried a man had come up the drive holding an envelope in his large dark hand. Evan had not gone to the door, although Sydney knocked twice. So Sydney just left the envelope on the porch steps. In that envelope—from a man Evan had ridiculed, just because everyone else had—was forty-five dollars. This from a man who had nothing.

What Evan had to do now was put out of his mind the faces of all kind people and the thoughts of any redemption, and he had to say: “It’s because of what Ian did to me!” And this was easy to do, except for one thing—it was exactly what Henderson had told them would happen, because a pact between men was a pact with the wind. This angered Evan even more.

He took five steps toward the store, and opened his buck knife to flip the latch at the back door. He knew it was easy, and knew he could carry the safe along the river where the snow scuttling across the ice would blur his tracks—in fact, crossing to the landing the day before was how he had tested this. He would open the safe at the old smelt shed where he kept some tools, take the money, push the safe down under the ice and leave before the store opened after Christmas. He thought of being in the north and living there for good (yes, and how happy he would be), but suddenly he couldn’t go any farther. No, he
would not do it. It was not in his nature to do it; something prevented him. In fact, he had not thought it through at all. It was the day of his son’s death, he told himself—so plan it and do it! But he could not.

Why did you cross the inlet yesterday if not to practise for this danger and prove you could carry the safe on your back! But he could not do what he had come to do; no matter what had happened, he could not lessen himself. So coming to the store at this moment gave his life a sudden and terrible clarity—a clarity that, for the first time, made him hate what he had become.

Clarity was such a big word for a lost man in the snow. But soon something else would happen, something that would turn his life, and all their lives, in another direction.

Corky Thorn, Ethel’s boyfriend and the half-brother of Evan’s wife, Molly, had woken two hours before in Ian Preston’s small back shed, where he had gone to get out of the wind and the terrible wet cold.

The shed rested just behind Preston’s store. For what strange reason was he there—what had propelled him to enter this old back shed, with the wisps of white snow on the hardwood floor?

He had almost frozen the night before, piling up rags and old newspapers to sleep under in the vacant building. He had been home from up north for almost the same amount of time as Evan Young. And he had made out very poorly.

The truth is, four years ago he had been working on the big staging that Evan had fallen from, but he had climbed down for a break at ten that morning. (He was not supposed to be on break until 10:45 but had gone down earlier than he was supposed to.) And he had left his wrench on the side of the catwalk. He had not even thought of it until he heard, very late in the afternoon when he was back in the trailer, that a man from his own province of New Brunswick had fallen. No one was sure how. But they said management was upset because the man wasn’t belted.

He’d heard they had airlifted the man to Edmonton. People waited and listened for news of his death, which they’d heard would come at any time. The man was in a coma and was struggling, and every hour that passed, people said would be his last. So these moments were painfully long. That night, when no one was near the staging, Corky went out and found the big wrench lying in some frozen sand. At first he thought he must turn it in, must let the company know it was his wrench the man had slipped on. Yet he hesitated a second, and then two. No one had seen it, for they went to look up on the staging for any tool that may have caused the man’s fall, and of course the wrench had fallen and landed yards away and was hidden. He knew the man had stepped on it and it had slipped out from under him and made him fall the three and a half storeys. But he decided he couldn’t admit this to anyone. So he put this large wrench in the canvas sack behind his bed.

The foreman, Arnie Petrie—also from New Brunswick—came to the trailer and asked him if he had taken an early break. Corky swore he had not.

“So you saw Evan fall?”

It was at that moment he realized it was Evan Young, his brother-in-law, who had fallen. Corky knew Evan was working here, but it was a camp with two thousand men and they had only spoken a few times—once when he had asked Evan for some money. But now that he had lied once, he continued to lie.

“See him fall? No, not really—I was at the west section.”

“What were you doing there?”

“Bolting down.”

“You weren’t supposed to be bolting down. What were you doing? You had that sheet metal here to work on.”

“I got the worksheet wrong—and when I found out, I come back.”

Corky tried to convince himself that it wasn’t his wrench that had been left on the staging, and the next day he tried to find his wrench in the tool bay—but in his heart he knew that it was in fact his wrench, and he had found it, and that Evan, his own brother-in-law, had slipped
on it. He would be fired if people found out, and disgraced as well. He was an honest man, so why was this happening to him? He’d spoken to Ethel that night by phone, and told her about Evan, and never mentioned the wrench—yet Ethel instinctively felt (and Corky knew this too) something was wrong. And later he lay on his bunk with his face to the wall and wouldn’t speak to anyone.

Then Young hovered in and out of consciousness. When he was able to speak, he said that a wrench had been where it was not supposed to be and he had slipped before he had a chance to hook on. The company said that there had been no wrench found. They maintained—especially Petrie, who disliked him—that Evan was rash and too bold, and unmindful of the conditions. Evan was also known to drink late into the night. In fact, Petrie seemed unapologetic about his feelings because he too was a New Brunswicker and had heard about Molly and the boy, and he had the idea that Evan might have poisoned his child and driven his wife to suicide.

This bothered Corky as well, for an animosity had formed against Evan within the company that now protected him. One hundred times or more, he wanted to explain what had happened so that the man could get his compensation. But each day he woke to the idea that it was another day and still no one had blamed him. And no one was treating him kinder now than Petrie himself. Evan had been warned, and now people were pleased by this. That is, like all people, they were always pleased when people not like them were shown up. And Corky listened to the talk now rising against Evan Young. The idea that he had committed a crime and was now being paid back by some higher authority was on many people’s minds. So Corky listened and said nothing. And had he planned for this? No, he had not. Worse, the fact that he had not told the truth made each day more a part of the penalty if he did tell. So he would be in far worse trouble now.