Hero (24 page)

“Ha! Just two weeks ago we put him on an ice pan no more than twenty yards from shore, club in his hand, knife in his belt, a family of seals no more than fifteen paces away.”

“Here he goes again,” said Noah, rolling his eyes.

I tried to catch his eye but his face had turned, seeking refuge from the stove.

“Just like Father at fourteen, just like me, except the task was far simpler. We leave him to it with instructions to bring home flippers and hide.”

“Stop it,” I said. Fred locked eyes with me for a moment, but the interruption had merely served to infuriate him more.

“He snuck back in two hours later with nothing.”

Fred rose from the table, taking his newspaper, his face twisted in an odd kind of triumph, aimed—I thought at the time—in my direction. “That's the kind of man he is, the kind that can never support a family.”

“What do you know?” hissed Noah, shoulders hunched like those of a dog caught between flight and defence. “I did kill a seal.”

“Where is it then?” Fred stood over us, his newspaper rolled up in his hand.

“It slipped off into the water before I could fetch it back.” Fred was motionless for a second, his rolled newspaper wavering. He watched his younger brother for signs of deception. The aggression had gone from Noah, and he sunk upon his crossed legs, deeply ashamed. For a moment there was a glimmer of something new on Fred's face, a suggestion of approval.

“I'm going out to meet Michael and Jimmy again,” he said, turning to the door. “Maybe we'll even get one before supper!” The door opened and slammed. “Man's work, Noah!” The exclamation died off into the dusk.

The battle between the brothers had arisen during my stay. As tonight was my last before returning to St. John's, this was the final shot I was to witness. It didn't trouble me so much because I would soon be home and within the orbit of Jack, the auburn-haired young man who had begun turning up with the unexplained regularity that promised a long and reliable courtship. I assumed that for Fred and Noah the tensions between them would die away once I left.

Now I wonder whether I had been flattering myself all along. Family relationships are like spiders' webs, vastly more complex than they at first appear. A twitch upon a thread will cause a movement in an unexpected place. Were Noah and Fred fighting over me? Or were Fred and I locked in battle over Noah's soul? Now, in the dark, rendered lonelier than solitude by a husband's tortured breathing, this second explanation seems more likely.

“Did you really kill a seal?” I asked in a tone more excited and more breathless than I really meant. I wanted to purge him of Fred's disparagement, to add a woman's encouragement to the goading of a man.

He raised his head. The eyes that met mine were moist with some passion I couldn't name.

“Would that impress you?” he asked. Each syllable was stealthy, like footfalls upon pine needles. It passed through my mind even then that he seemed almost afraid of the answer.

“Of course it would!” I said, touching his arm warmly.

Of course it would
, I repeat to the rhythm of the curtain, rising and falling with the breeze. Fred groans again from the bed behind me. What I would not give to return to the Evanses' hearth and draw those words back into myself.

It seems all my life I've been searching for a villain. Kean was the latest. Haig was one of the first. But Fred has been in my sights too, at least since our marriage. Fred humiliated his young brother into the hunt. After the ceremony at the memorial twenty-two years ago, he made me believe he was feeling the same as I. It was not so. But I didn't imagine the aura of sadness when I met him after the laying of the wreath, and melancholy has a way of demanding forgiveness. Fred's unhappiness ensured he would always escape my final condemnation. So my search for a villain continued, and now at last it seems I have found her. Noah might be alive today had I not spoken as I did.

And who else?
whispers the hem of the curtain against the window ledge. Night and silence are merciless and they have sensed there are many hours until dawn and nothing to interrupt their work.

Mysteriously, from Fred's wheezing the sound of a cheering crowd unfolds. I stand hunched, reliving the hurrahs of the young men on the banks of Quidi Vidi Lake. Through what subtle means might I have communicated that tingle of pride I felt? How might the light in my eyes, the admiration and excitement I felt, have forbidden second thoughts in my husband and brothers?

I see a flash of orange hair on a bright summer day, a shining track, and the dark bumper of a steam engine, feel again the urgent tug of air in my lungs as I drop to the shingle and leap for Lucy's rag doll. Was it Lucy, the unhappy child, Noah, Jack, or my brothers I was saving? Or someone else? Which creature of my acquaintance could have been brought to mind by a lifeless doll overwhelmed by the vastness around her? Who is that one human being whose likeness might compel me to risk my own life? Every question leads to the same answer, a pinprick of vanity, a single star of self-interest. The tiny, fearful light continues to burn regardless of a black–ened cosmos that surrounds it; it has to burn because without it there is nothing.

So I continue both dead and alive, just as Fred, my lean, aging wolfhound of a husband continues, just as Simon and Sarah Jenson and their unhappy Lucy must have continued when I left their service. But I am wrong to foist my defeat upon them. They, at least, were still young, and they did have one child with another on the way. Something had happened that day in Ipswich too, when Mr. Jenson threw poor Mr. Smith down the stairs and when I almost made off with Lucy. They did not become happy, but grief ceased to rage with such intemperate, uncontrollable flames. I wonder what became of them all.

“Elsa.”

My heart stops at the sound of my name in the darkness. Two beats skip into one and, stiffly, my head begins to turn.

“What are you doing?”

I hear the sigh of sheets on skin and I know my husband is sitting.

“Thinking about Noah,” I say. Did I mean that as a deterrent? If so, it was not planned.

“Me too,” he says, and the unexpectedness of it prickles the hairs on the back of my neck. I turn around fully and see an outline of Fred's neck and jaw in the moonlight, the blueness and his sinews reminding me for a moment of the war memorial. “I dreamed about Noah on the ice.” His voice is soft and uneven and the thought slips into me that this is what happens: Men must turn themselves into stone under the all-seeing eye of the sun and then in the darkness of dreams must sink into jelly. I remember a scream in the night more than twenty years ago.

“A nightmare,” I say. I meant it as a question but it comes out differently, as though I can read his thoughts.

“Yes.”

I am across the room already and clambering in bed although I scarcely know how to comfort him.

“You can tell me about it,” I say, as the mattress stops creaking.

“I was just out there with him, in the darkness, in the cold. We fell on our knees together and the ice worked its way through our skin to our bones.”

He pauses and I listen for more, letting my hand rest upon the thick down of his forearm. Then I realize he has finished, and realize also that it is enough.

I was right the first time about Fred. Another sad day, he said to me once, and I fell for him. It was real and honest, that rich seam of melancholy that ran through his spirit. I shouldn't require him to feel and think as I do. I could vent my fury and self-accusation regarding Noah, Jack, and my brothers and then wait out the chilled and wordless night that would in time give way to a day of silences and accusing stares. But what would be the point? By accident, it seems, I have snagged a thread of similarity between myself and Fred. Why not cultivate it a little? If he doesn't hate war and bloodshed as I do, he certainly hates the consequences, and perhaps in the end that amounts to the same thing, even if something crucial has been lost along the way.

“What about you?” he asks, his voice distant, indistinct. His speech has had this quality ever since my revelation this morning about being by Kean's deathbed. Fear and pleading are in there somewhere, like the voice of someone who, lost in the wilderness, spies a figure on the horizon but is afraid it may be a mirage.

“It's just sad,” I say, choosing the only statement I could think of that is both truthful and neutral.

“Yes,” he says, and I sense a touch of relief as he draws me a little closer. “It's just sad.”

Epilogue

Noah

I
ce spirals around my uncovered wrists. I have to glance down to confirm it is merely air and not bracelets of iron that squeeze so hard against my flesh. I move the club from one hand to the other, not in the stealthy way that Fred and the others describe but with an exaggerated, jagged motion like a coward hoping the man he challenges takes off in fright before blows and injuries are necessary. But the lone seal upon which I have been making ground, his companions having long since slipped off the pan, merely turns his head and stares though black and uncomprehending eyes.

I don't need to turn around to know that Fred and Father are gone. I heard their voices—yelled exhortations to bring home flippers and hide—die away upon the crisp, still air. I take a last pace towards the animal, the ice dipping only slightly under my boots, and am now close enough to strike. I can feel the coiling of muscle and sinew that would accompany the rising and bringing down of the club. The ghost of the movement passes through me and, for the moment, I am a man of steel. I can feel things and see the world as Fred and Father see it. I can smell the animal's blood and feel the special warmth of an achievement that expands the world of a man, feeding and clothing others and myself. Who would I draw into this expanding circle of mine? The question yields a pale, sparsely freckled face and a scent I carry to bed, to school, to work, through suppers when my mind is absent and I am brought abruptly into the stark Evans world by a thrown crust and the yelp of teasing voices. Elsa. Elsa and the life she and I might create between us. She is a year my senior and surely wants a man and not a boy. She will be here with her parents in two short weeks, breathing the same air, sleeping under the same roof, and we will slip into each other's thoughts as before. This is my chance. The word
chance
, the slippery sound, merges with the beast's watery black eyes, now blinking as it bobs its head for a moment then raises it up again. It is asking for deliverance. I can hardly believe this part of the task should seem so easy.

But something is wrong. The impulse to strike has left me. The coiling motion that passed through me and that I took to be a prelude now seems both the beginning and the end. The seal shakes its head. Rolls of fat undulate and ice pellets fly from its whiskers. Its nostrils expand into black tunnels then go back to slits. Its exhalation momentarily warms my left wrist.

I know I can expand my circle by killing the seal. I can almost feel the manly spring that would come into my stride. But it would be bringing death to a place where there is life, and the reason I carry Elsa's scent in my mind is because she is alive. She has a pulse and a heart, and eyes that grow moist before the fire. The circle shrinks once more, my hold upon the club loosens, and I realize I have more in common with the creature before me than I do with the kin who have led me to this place.

It's a strange feeling, this certainty that I will not act as I am expected to. I am like some sea creature grasping a rock in a swirling ocean and heaving myself onto dry land to feel for the very first time the steadiness of the earth beneath my bones. The me that is unconnected from Fred, from Father and Mother, from cousins and friends, has no wish at all to aim a blow at a seal or any other creature if I can help it. The fact that I am new and unknown to myself makes no difference to this fact. This fresh self who has been revealed to me—a person incapable of striking—is, at this moment at least, many times more firm and indomitable than the need to please or impress. It is the one true thing in the general blur of my life. I have a fleeting sense that I may have glimpsed a different kind of expanding circle, another sort of growth not gained through the smell of animal blood. It's beyond naming, but its imprint is in nature, in me, vaguely nestling inside verses half-remembered from the schoolroom and chapel. Who says I cannot draw Elsa inside this circle instead?

The seal throws up its head, keeping its neck proud and erect, and gives a hoarse, loud yelp that seems like a salutation of sorts, especially when its eyes do not leave mine.

Backing off slowly, I turn and make my way towards the shore.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I
would like to thank Patrick Murphy, my insightful yet diplomatic editor; everyone at Nimbus Publishing/Vagrant Press; the Cranfords (Garry, Jerry, and especially Margo, for an image I couldn't shake); the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council for helping to support the writing of this novel; the City of St. John's, for a writing grant; my wife, Maura, for her unstinting love and support; and my daughter, Jemma, who is an inspiration in herself.