Elizabeth and After (38 page)

When he got home, Adam took out his mother’s typewriter and began pounding out the message of the graveyard:

Hope, yes. The mastermind had been at work but aside from fate and what fate had willed him to do, there was also hope. Hope in the purest sense. His desperate and unfounded hope that Fred, Carl and Luke might suddenly resolve their differences, open their hearts, submit to the harmonies of peace and love. A hope unsupported by reason, reality or even faith. Faith! “I hope I’ve taught you faith,” his mother had said to him when he left West Gull for university, and ever since Adam had been puzzling over her meaning. Belief in the scriptures? In God? In the triumph of good over evil? At the time he had wondered how anyone of any education or experience could possibly have faith in such things. But when he began distributing his messages, he thought his mother would approve of his efforts in discipleship. And now the triumph of good over evil had become his sole and overwhelming task. Justice was his to render. Justice! He sat at the typewriter euphorically pounding out his optimistic prophecy at the same time that he was perfecting the last details of the most masterly of his master plans.

One night when Lizzie was in Carl’s care, Adam would park the car on the road outside Chrissy’s. From there—this he had already checked—he would be able to see Chrissy and Fred eating dinner, framed by the light, their heads bobbing up and down from their plates like birds at a birdbath. They always sat down at exactly seven o’clock, half an hour after Fred got home. Using his cellphone Adam would telephone Chrissy. She would go into the kitchen to take the call. Beneath the kitchen, another detail he had verified, there was no basement because it had been a late addition. The basement was beneath the dining and living rooms, the oil tank exactly under the table where they ate. When he saw Chrissy rise from her place at the table and come into the kitchen, Adam would know it was safe to press the button that would set off the explosion in the oil tank. Oh yes, he had worked the whole thing out: the location of the tank; where he could buy the remote-controlled detonator; how he could set it in place while Chrissy was in town and Fred at work. Baroque but simple: like all complex problems its solution was just a question of understanding and acceptance. He had understood the opportunity fate had offered to save his son and he had accepted the challenge. It required only patience, careful planning and deception, surely his strongest qualities. Let someone try to unravel that. On the appointed night, just to make sure Carl was beyond any suspicion, he and Lizzie would be at a play in Kingston, thanks to the tickets Adam had already bought.

When he had finished typing Adam brought his stack of paper into the living room so he could work on the envelopes while watching the news. Then he took out a bottle of single malt Scotch, which he sometimes treated himself to, poured himself a drink. All this masterminding took him back to the
times he’d connived with Elizabeth, and remembering their delight in their childish deceptions, he raised his glass to that vague spot in the heavens, a little west of the North Pole where he liked to think she lived.

When Adam turned on the television, the national news was over and they were just announcing that following a few messages, there would be a local news special on Fred Verghoers—“a man who was making waves in his bid to become reeve of a small township in the north country.” Fred’s sudden emergence as a public figure had taken everyone by surprise. In the interviews following his first television appearance, he took such a strong stand against “government pampering” and “hotel prisons” that a syndicated newspaper columnist in Ottawa hailed him as one of the “rising breed of young merchant princes eager to transform the Canadian federation from a navel-gazing former British colony to a full participant in the American reality,” and he had been profiled in newspapers across the province.

The local news began with two columnists—one from Kingston and the other from Toronto—discussing what was now apparently called the Fred Verghoers phenomenon. Since that first documentary letters of support had come in from across the province. Here was a new clip of Fred. He was shown at Allnew again explaining that he saw himself as nothing special, just an honest man looking to serve his community as best he could.

“But why do you think you’ve drawn so much attention to yourself? What makes you so different?”

The camera zoomed in. Fred’s face was clear and squarish, his brown hair neatly combed. He was wearing his Allnew vest. He smiled and exposed his strong even teeth, the same “I’m ready for anything” grin he’d worn as he got up from the
ice. “To tell you the truth,” he began—and the viewer had only to look at those round open eyes, that boyish grin, those solid arms, that modest yet assured set of his mouth to know that he or she could count on this stranger, that he would never tell anything but the truth because truth was all he could know—“to tell you the truth, ma’am, I don’t really understand the fuss myself.”

“Tonight,” the presenter explained, “we were going to try to crack the Fred Verghoers mystery. We were going to spend a quiet evening at his home where he lives with his partner, Christine, and her daughter, Lizzie. That was our plan. A nice domestic profile. Instead I think you’ll agree that what you’re about to see is one of the most amazing demonstrations of grace under fire you’re ever likely to witness.”

Onto the screen came Chrissy in her kitchen, whipping up cookie batter in a big bowl just as though it were half a century ago. And beside her, wearing a flowered apron, was Lizzie.

Adam had not yet stuffed even the first of his
THE LION SHALL LIE DOWN WITH THE LAMB
flyers. He started folding while Chrissy explained that Fred was a man who liked his cookies but that she had almost killed him the first time he came to dinner; he had a near-fatal allergy to chocolate and she’d had to rush him to hospital after dessert. Hearing this information the master criminal with the mastermind, the very one who had realized he could fulfil his fate only by staying in character, began weaving a back-up plan that involved him inviting Chrissy and Fred for dinner, then serving a strongly flavoured stew heavily laced with unsweetened cocoa.

On television Chrissy—who in life seemed so unpredictably explosive—looked pert, blonde, vivacious but not entirely sure of herself. Lizzie was the perfect touch. She appeared
to be entirely unconscious of the cameras, gave them endearing gap-toothed smiles while rolling out the dough and cutting the cookies into animal shapes while her mother watched proudly and explained that Lizzie liked animals so much she hoped to be a veterinarian when she grew up.

Then the scene switched to the front lawn. It was dark outside; Fred was coming home and Chrissy and Lizzie were going out to meet him. The camera showed Fred opening the car door and emerging into the bright television lights, his eyes blinking. “There’s been a huge reaction to your statements on abortion today,” an interviewer began. “Can you tell us what you mean by the township withdrawing funds from the local hospital?”

Just as Fred was about to answer, shouts of “Fraud! You bastard! Tell the truth!” came from the edge of the light. The camera swung along an unplanned path past a group of technicians until it stopped at Ned Richardson. He was holding up a plastic bag. “Do you want me to show them what’s here? Do you want me to—,” he shouted and suddenly started to pull something from the bag.

Later Adam would find out that black something was not a gun, as it first appeared, but a video cassette. But at the time it seemed that Ned Richardson was pulling a gun on Fred and that Fred, a true frontier sheriff-in-the-making, had thrown himself on the boy to disarm him and protect his family and the onlookers. There was a wild scramble, the camera veered as though someone had been shot, then Fred’s rugged and determined face came into focus. He had Ned Richardson on the ground with his arm twisted behind his back.

“Well,” said the presenter, “a day in the life of Fred Verghoers, family man, lumber-yard manager, would-be reeve and apparently bulletproof hero. I have a feeling we’re going
to be seeing a lot more of Fred Verghoers.” He paused, looking at a sheet of paper he had just been handed, while the background screen showed images of police cruisers arriving at Fred Verghoers’ place and Ned Richardson being led away in handcuffs.

“This just in,” the presenter now continued. “The name of the young man subdued by Fred Verghoers is Ned Richardson, the son of Luke Richardson, Mr. Verghoers’ opponent in the race for reeve of West Gull township. In a very magnanimous gesture, Fred Verghoers has stated that he will not be pressing charges against Ned Richardson, whom he says must have been carried away by family feelings in the fervour of a heated campaign. Mr. Richardson, who has now been released from custody, can consider himself a very lucky young man. We also have, also just in, a statement from Luke Richardson, Ned’s father. I’ll read it in its entirety. ‘I wish to announce at this time, following the regrettable incidents of this evening, that I am withdrawing my name and will no longer be standing for the West Gull reeveship. On behalf of my son, myself and my wife, I wish to extend our deepest apologies to Fred Verghoers for this uncalled-for incident. We all would also like to wish Mr. Verghoers the best of luck in his political career. Mr. Verghoers has all the qualities required to lead our township into the future and he may count upon my support in the months and years to come.’ ”

Adam poured himself more Scotch,
A STAR IS BORN
was the message he should have been printing.

The sweetness of October. The first frost on the window. The crisp smell of autumn nights. The scent of burning maple hanging over the villages.

It had taken him all summer to get used to the water.
Make the oars of his rowboat so they wouldn’t wiggle and slip. Get his sunglasses right so he didn’t come back with light trapped in his brain, hammering all night to get out. Sleep deeply for a few hours then wake up early enough to catch a string of fish. Find whatever it was, that feeling that the clock was ticking
inside
of him, ticking to his own pulse. Getting old, yes, he was getting old. Dying even, soon. But he wanted to die easy and smooth, slide into it prow first, a graceful glide, not be knocked off the cliff backwards, arms and legs and brain flailing like some crazy fool. Die on an evening like this when he was sitting calm and peaceful smoking a cigarette and looking out at Dead Swede Lake. The way Dead Swede Lake looked on this particular October evening. Dark and purply, full of the coming winter, little black-purple wavelets rippling with the cold whippy breeze, the sky a big goose highway south.

Finally he walked up to the house. These days it seemed to Gerald Boyce that dense shadows had taken over the planet which, like a top that has been spinning too long, had suddenly started to wobble. “Earth Falls Flat on Its Face,” they’d soon be saying on the news, followed by one of those hot-shot politicians who sound so dumb you’d think they must have flunked out of kindergarten.

When the news was over Gerald Boyce turned off his television set and went to sit outside. Fall nights. Put on a thick coat and a wool cap and you could sit outside all night so long as you had a bottle of brandy in your hand. Watch the constellations rising as the sky turns black. Smell the crisp sweet maple smoke.

He rolled himself a cigarette. Despite the television, nights could be lonely. Having McKelvey visit had settled on him. He had even considered going to the R&R and asking
McKelvey if he wanted to move in with him for a few months. But he couldn’t face the prospect of always being aware of that big body, all that snoring and coughing and worrying about how many cups of coffee he drank in the morning. He had thought of asking him to come fishing but he hadn’t got around to that either. Maybe in the winter. There was nothing like winter fishing when Dead Swede Lake was a refrigerator waiting to be raided. While Vernon was alive, as soon as the ice was thick enough, always by New Year, they would drag out the fishing hut, bore a hole in the ice, start pulling in the pike. A lot of times McKelvey had snowshoed across the lake to join them. Before he went to war. He could still see him the day he came round to say goodbye. Big raw-boned William McKelvey looking almost like a grown-up man in his khakis except for the foolish grin on his face that said, “Look what I got myself into.” Even fishing he’d always been a bit off-balance. As though he couldn’t quite stand whatever was already boiling away inside. Never able to sit still for more than a few minutes. Never able to settle into himself.

Gerald stood up, stretched his back, walked slowly towards the road. A truck approached and he waved at the headlights. When it stopped Carl McKelvey got out.

“Speak of the devil.”

“Thought I’d say hello,” Carl said, “since you were standing there, trying to get run over.”

Gerald looked down. The truth was, he
had
been standing in the middle of the road without quite knowing it.

“I was thinking about your father,” Gerald Boyce said.

“Me too,” said Carl. It had taken him only a few minutes to get away from the television lights and the voices. By the time he reached the cornfield he could have been anyone,
anywhere—himself a hundred years ago, a hunter from another planet, a strange creature drifting through fields thick with the smell of raw earth and rotting corn. These fields. This earth. This sweet sour smell of decay. And he’d dropped to his knees just to feel the earth soaking into his pants, pushed his hands into the damp ground, spread it on his face. He wanted to howl, to cry, to fill the sky with his gratitude, his happiness at having been finally released from Chrissy. That was when his mind had gone to his father, the way after Elizabeth died, he’d sometimes disappear on foot during the morning and not show up again until hours after dark.

Carl spent hours wandering through the cedar and the maple, filling his lungs, rubbing his face and his body against the bark, bending to drink at every little stream and pond. Until finally he got to the old collapsed barn he’d dreamed of so often and so deeply for so many years.
Chrissy loves Fred
, he said to himself.
Chrissy loves Fred
. He took out his hunting knife and carved a big heart into one of the splintered posts. In the centre of the heart he carved an F and then a C and then he gashed a big arrow through them.
Chrissy loves Fred
. Whatever that meant, it was true.