Crimes Against My Brother (48 page)

The physics teacher had told him this might be good in theory, but was it practical to think a mill would even care?

“Those who are left to clean up the mess might,” Liam said.

But he was given no indication that this was a very significant invention, and the teacher talked about it as just one of the many toys men brought forward when they were whiling away the time.

The teacher held it up to the light and smiled, saying, “I see your father is quite the little gadget maker,” with the scent of chalk dust in the afternoon air.

Now Liam did not know where that cylinder was, and now it did not
matter anymore, and the secret, secret bond it had made between him and his dad had gone away.

Liam would walk at night, alone. Sometimes until almost morning. His hands were scarred from trying to protect his father’s signs, and he often had to keep them warm against his body, and at times, because the skin was thin, they did not warm and tears would bright his eyes. Yet he would take the streets or climb trees or run along the walls near the convent—no one knew where, in fact, he would be.

Once, some boys saw him in the park at the top limb of an oak tree, eighty feet in the air. They called Sara Robb to please come and tell him to get down.

He would climb the storm drain and slip into his window at the top of his house.

Annette planned her book. She went to the bookstore and asked if they would buy copies from her, and they asked her who her publisher was.

“Oh, they are all after it right now,” she said nervously. “But I haven’t chosen one yet.”

She bought herself champagne to celebrate this book, and even bought a computer and set it up in the den.

Now the weather was changing and the smell of spring was in the winter soil. Easter had come.

At three in the afternoon, Liam walked through the desolate town. He may or may not have remembered his father had predicted this and had fought against the company coming in, and had destroyed what was left of his life doing so. But it was not the company, it was his father who was heroic.

So Liam had taken three drinks of rum from Harold.

“You’re a smart little fellow,” Harold said, “but do you still love your dad—Ian? Do you still love him after all he did to ruin your life? You
should hear what people say about him now. Can you love a man like that, that he beat you and your mom? Do you love him?”

“Heart and soul,” Liam said, tears flooding his eyes. “Heart and soul.”

They had tried to take him away—Ms. Spalding and the social worker, Melissa Sapp—when his mom and dad were being pulled apart; but he would not go—he hid, sometimes in the big garbage bin on the second floor at the back of the school. What was wrong with those nice people like Ms. Spalding and Melissa Sapp, Harold asked him now; what was wrong with their concern?

“They have the concern any vulture has over an animal it is waiting on to die! They are ironic and sarcastic to all, and both of those things lessen their souls,” Liam said, looking up from under his eyebrows because he was giving away his brilliance and did not wish to have it exposed.

Harold only shrugged. “You are a strange boy—I’m sure if they went and got degrees from university, they want to help people!”

“Well, I’m sure they say they do!” Liam said.

This was the time of the great foreclosures on houses and businesses and certain other places that dotted the river. Old families like the Conners had been debilitated, and their huge nineteenth-century houses sat bleak and uncared for. This was happening more as more people fled the area, and as sons and daughters no longer came home but travelled west or south to the cities of Fredericton or Moncton. The streets had been patched and paved twenty times, and the docks lay bare and empty.

Harold would go with Kyle and Spenser in the back of the truck to those houses—they would start as early as seven in the morning, rifling through things that old men and women wanted to sell.

“Inspect that. No, that has an added arm—you see, it’d fetch almost nothing. Here is what we want—I’ll offer thirty for this and won’t go higher than forty-five.” And he would send the boys to do the deal with
the elderly couple peering at them with dull eyes from the door. But he kept Liam with him when they went through the real stuff—the libraries of certain places, for example. The libraries might be those set up by a daughter or son, and forgotten sometimes for forty years. Harold would go through these happily and meticulously, because many times he would find money, or even the number and contents of a safety deposit box—and once he found a will. Liam would bring him the books.

“No, God—throw that one out—this book and this book, not that—no, this—yes, that one too—we can sell those.”

At first Liam believed that the books Harold kept were the ones people would pay to read.

“Read? Who in fuck says anything about reading? No one reads—look!” He would show that each book he had chosen had old prints or maps inside them or were collectible because of when they were printed—that is all he was after—that is what the owners of those books never knew to value. Harold Dew, in fact, was very bright—he might never have read D. H. Lawrence, but when he found an original first edition of
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
, he guarded it, knowing it would bring him money. In fact, it brought him four thousand dollars at auction. He gave Liam three hundred dollars from this windfall.

Sometimes he could get two hundred or three for a print, or even four hundred for a map. The prints and maps were always worth money to collectors in Fredericton or Saint John, who would buy such artifacts.

From this Liam came to collect his own books and brought many home—that is when he brought the books of that other writer, books others in the town refused to read. He had heard so much of how terrible this writer was, how violent, that at first he himself wanted to throw them away. Yet he began to read this writer who people said they hated, and he lay in the upstairs room with the light shining on the obscure pages and the world of his river opening up like a terrible beautiful blossom that in its countless tragedy had hope of another bloom—and in this world of despair and darkness he saw much beauty, and many times his own mother and DD too, and the writer’s love for them in spite of endless
frivolity—and once or twice he wanted to tell his mother he had spied her in the very books she and her book club friends hated yet had never taken the time to read. Of course, he saw his father too, and he saw someone else smiling at him in the pages of those tattered books published back in the seventies and eighties: he saw the face of Harold Dew.

There were other books he kept from the old libraries—in particular,
The Diary of Anne Frank
. It too was a first edition—but he did not let on to Harold that he had it.

For a while he went along with Harold to find books. But even then he seemed always alone. Sometimes he told the darkness, the sky, the great beyond, that he loved them. He still had an open face, a worldwide grin—and a sheepish hope that the world would love him too.

When Wally moved to the alcove on the other side of the office, with his own window (which is what all enterprising office boys and girls long for) and his direct line to upper management, things started to change for Annette. She did not know why—but now, suddenly, she was no longer in Wally’s inner circle.

Wally was aloof, preoccupied, although as always, his face was still bright and juvenile. He was a man who had no point of view but all of his life greedily held the views of others.

“Try every trick,” DD said, “and you will have him. A perfect date and a perfect supper—and a perfect bed.”

For two years she had given him information, become his spy. She stayed late; she worked behind the scenes for him. Not that she got him very much information—but once he’d told her she’d hit the mother lode. That is, that Mr. Ticks had sent off a letter to the premier about how the mill was working, and he’d sent the forestry minister a private management memo also. Wally instantly reported it to head office. He saw the suspicious and dumbfounded look on Fension’s face, but Wally himself was really unaware of what was going on. Within two weeks,
Ticks was gone—gone for good. And Wally was certain he had done something beneficial in his capacity as a company man.

And that is why he now had his own window.

But Annette was saying she was thinking of writing a book. So Wally moving to the alcove was a sign that he had got whatever it was he wanted—and wanted no part of her anymore. Once again he was unaffiliated.

Yet he didn’t speak to her now. Not like before, when he had been a mentor, when he had spoken to her each noonhour about her son, who he pretended (and actually believed) he cared for. This preposterous arrogance had lasted for some time, this pretense that he cared for Annette and her son because they were vulnerable. He did not seem to see how Liam looked through him at times with bright, so bright eyes.

But now things had changed. She was no longer the Annette who he was concerned about and helped, but an office girl he had no use for, and who the company no longer needed; and of course her son, that boy, was not his concern. In fact, he disliked that boy intensely.

Three weeks passed. The supper Annette had planned did not turn out, and she was never at her desk at work. Her chair was empty.

How did I ever get mixed up with that thing! he thought. He’d tried to help her—but help could only go so far.

Then she told him what was going on. And over the following week he acted as if it was all up to her, and said it was bad timing—and that she must know it too.

“We could keep it,” he said one night as they talked in his car, “but if we did, Ian might abuse it if he found out. In fact, he is not like me or you. He has no use for children. He would really injure it, like he did Liam. We are well aware of how Liam suffered at his hands! Everyone in town was concerned about Ian hurting the boy. So this would just be another case in point. It’s best for the child to get rid of it now. That’s all I am concerned about.” He stopped speaking, abruptly.

Annette, in fact, had wanted to keep the child. But now she looked at him, and saw behind his boyish round cheeks a very different Wally: cunning, arrogant, and, in some very important ways, stupid.

Until this very moment she had actually thought they would be married. The child would be their bond of love. This is what she had imagined—and imagined a new life. It had been, in some way, her last hope.

“No—we are too mature for that!” She smiled. She then thought of adoption, quickly and hopefully. This too seemed to debilitate Wally.

“Adoption—no. That’s even worse, isn’t it? It might go to a bad family—God knows what might happen! A lot of people want to adopt just to hurt children—I know that for a fact! And besides, the new couples live for their careers. This is the best thing.” The best thing was to rid himself of it as soon as possible.

But Annette too knew that adoption was not a possibility. Why was that? Because her arch-enemy, Sara, had started a group counselling young women to give up unwanted children for adoption. The group met in Sara’s office once a month. So even if she wanted to allow a child to be put up for adoption, the idea that she would ever do Sara’s bidding was anathema to her.