Mercy (3 page)

As for passion, she’s witnessed it only once in her life. Her aunt had let her keep the window seat all the way from Winnipeg, though she’d scolded when Mathilda left a nose print on the glass. As they slowed to a halt at Mercy station, Mathilda was careful to hold her face close to but not touching the pane. A freight train stood motionless on the next set of tracks. Framed between two cars—one golden with flower spots of rust, the other watery blue—two people were jammed up in a tangle against a corrugated shed. The man was slender inside his dark coveralls, his black hair oiled and combed, his gloved hand kneading the woman’s breast. She was taller than him, broad-shouldered, sturdy-legged. Her pale braid kicked as they twisted their two faces into one.

Thomas sighs in his sleep, sending a blast of hot breath across Mathilda’s cheek. She might as well be bleeding. She feels tender and sick all the same.

S
hambling through the bog, Castor can feel it—the whole seething mess—not so much around him as inside. It inhabits him, from the tops of its knobby trees, down deep through the peat to the lake that lies dying below. The green stink of its slow, sodden growth. He hates it.

Then suddenly, achingly, he loves it. His beautiful bog, all puffy-lipped orchids, flying squirrels and feasting shrews. In winter, a hidden city of trails under snow. In summer, a chorus of wings.

Either way he ends up thirsty, lumbering back to his glinting cave.

“Ain’t I a big baby,” he says to no one. “Just stick me on a bottle and I quiet right down.”

Sometimes he sees things.

Sometimes he just drinks, muttering sweet nonsense until he passes out blissfully cold.

Thomas stands alone in his shop. Half an hour until opening—plenty of time to finish up with his knives.

He’s been alone since the day began. True, Mathilda left everything ready for him, laid out his clothing, his breakfast, called out to wake him as she left for the church. He shouldn’t find fault. After all, she’s only doing her duty by her aunt. As for her other duties— He stops himself. She can’t help it if it’s her time. His mother’s washed-out face flashes before him, the old man’s brute hands on her shoulders, shoving her before him into their room.
Never
. Not him, not Thomas. He’d do anything rather than force her.

He runs a hand down the belly of his apron. Snowy white, the starch just right. He smiles. Can’t fault her on laundry either.

He casts an eye over the tools of his trade—the boning knife with its slender blade, the simple butcher knife, the cleaver on its silver side. His gaze comes to rest on the favourite. Limber and strong, it’s the most well-balanced, most versatile, the butcher’s best friend. His skinning knife, curved like a six-inch smile.

Thomas’s hands become strangely formal, the left reaching precisely for the steel, the right retreating to smooth the white tail of his coat. He takes up the skinning knife, feels it tilt in his fist as he lays its heel behind the tip of the steel. He holds the pose a moment, then relaxes his wrist, inhales sharply and lets fly, drawing the blade swiftly downward until its tip meets the hilt of the steel. Lift to the near side and begin again, a single stroke from heel to tip.
Behind the steel, before the steel, pressure unerring, steady and light. It’s hypnotic—the angle just so, the edge bevelling, coming up true. He closes his eyes as the steel begins softly to sing.

Like many lonely children, August took notice of the natural world. And because he felt himself somehow earth-bound, he paid particular attention to birds.

For a time there was a bounty on crows. Older boys shot them mid-flight or mid-hop, small boys pilfered eggs. It was the first time August thought of earning money, of returning to his mother with coins in his palm. Climbing to the high black nests was the least of his concerns—he had a native understanding of trees, being all twigs himself. He knew the parent birds would dive-bomb, so he wore his forest-green cap with the visor angled down over his eyes.

Black-winged bodies exploded from the tree the moment he hauled himself up off the ground. As he gained branch after branch, the crows folded themselves and fell at him, cursing. Reaching for the final bough, he felt a flight feather brush his cheek, a curl of claws at the nape of his neck.

There were three eggs, olive-green with chocolatey spots, huddled together in the dark bundle of sticks. The grownups screeched as August ran a finger over the closest shell, finding it silky and warm to the touch.

“It’s all right,” he told the crows, then repeated to the eggs, “It’s all right.”

His pockets empty, he backed his way down to the ground.

“Witchery witchery witchery,” the yellowthroat sang as it flitted up out of the brush.

August knelt motionless nearby, the lucky green cap twisted sideways on his head. He was making up his mind to shuffle forward for a better look when the thicket rustled again. The cowbird landed hard on a switch that overarched the yellowthroat’s nest. It stole a look both ways, opened its wings like a cape, and dropped. A smudge of brownish grey, it all but disappeared among the woven weed stalks, grass and hair. August leaned closer. The cowbird was crouching, bobbing every so slightly over the yellowthroat’s four dark eggs.

“Glug,” it said, “glug glug,” and it nailed him with a glassy stare. A moment more and it lifted like dust on an updraft, picked a course through the branches and was gone.

August gasped. The cowbird’s abandoned egg was pale, speckled a dozen shades of brown. He couldn’t see how it would pass for a second, let alone survive long enough to hatch.

August tells himself it’s Thomas Rose’s recent conversion that’s prompted him to place the newlywed couple first on his list of parish rounds, and to some extent this is true.
Something in the butcher’s dull gaze puts him in mind of a renegade ram, one that joins the flock solely to mate, then follows its horns away.

At least he needn’t worry about the soul of the young wife. He learned a little about Mathilda at the reception, though no one seemed to know her well. She was raised by the Grey Nuns at St. Joseph’s until her aunt finally managed to track her down. You can tell, too—she has something of a novitiate’s way about her. So different from her aunt. Such grace, such natural piety. August lengthens his stride, his mind’s eye lingering on her bowed before him, the crown of her luminous head.

Rose’s Fine Meats is closed for the evening, but August knocks on the glass door all the same, unaware of the kitchen entrance round back.

“Over here.” The butcher’s great block of a head appears from a doorway further down, beyond the storefront, in what appears to be a garage. “Father Day.” His broad face moves slowly into a smile. “I’m a little tied up here, but you’re welcome.” He disappears, leaving the door swinging open.

August pokes his head in just as the butcher tears loose the offal from a hoisted beast, letting it roll forward to land with a slap in a white enamel tub. Thomas looks up from the mess with a grin. “I’d shake hands with you, Father, but—” As if in mock surrender, he holds up his bloodied palms.

August’s head swims. His eyes fix on the butcher’s rubber boots, two black tree trunks grown up from a bright red field.

“Mucky business, eh?” says Thomas.

The carcass swings gently, hung from its hind legs, sawn and spread open wide. August nods speechlessly.

“To tell you the truth, Father, I love the butchering, but the slaughtering I could do without. I reckon the Indians knew what they were about with those buffalo jumps. No fuss, no muss, and nothing but meat for a mile.”

“The Gadarene swine,” August murmurs.

“How’s that, Father?” The butcher bends again to his task.

“I see your knowledge of the Gospel could use some work.” August clears his throat, adopting a biblical tone. “The miracle of the Gadarene swine. Our Lord and Saviour cast the demons from two men who were possessed, sending them into a nearby herd of swine.” His eyes glaze over with glory. “The swine ran mad. They thundered off a cliff into the sea.”

“Into the sea?”

“That’s right, Thomas.”

The butcher shakes his head. “Terrible waste of pork.”

August’s expression sours.

“And another thing, Father, why a whole herd of pigs for only two men? Why not two pigs, an eye for an eye?”

August collects himself. “I suppose that would have something to do with the vast spiritual difference between we who are made in His image and the common beasts of the field.”

Thomas lays his knife on a nearby table and turns, proffering an enormous heart. “Are you telling me that couldn’t hold a man’s demons?”

August takes a stumbling step back. It’s vascular and crude, an oversized portion of meat. He presses a hand to his chest. Somehow he’s always imagined his own as an alpine pool, crystalline, rocky and cold.

The butcher lowers the heart into a basin of clean water, massaging it, giving it a good rinse. “Hey, looks like we’re
in the same business, eh, Father?” He laughs. “Washing out hearts.”

“I hardly think so,” August says weakly, then thinks viciously,
philistine
, the word soothing him, lending him strength. He draws himself up. “I’ll be off now.”

“Okay, Father.” Thomas pats the rump of his kill. “Mathilda’ll be sorry she missed your visit.”

August flinches ever so slightly at the mention of her name.

“Unless you’ve already seen her,” Thomas adds.

“No. Why would you—why do you say that?”

“Just seems she’s down at the church more often than not.” The butcher’s smile betrays a hint of chagrin. “Makes sense, I guess, her having lived half her life at the rectory. Keeps going back like a bear to its hole.”

“Very colourfully put. I shouldn’t like to think you regretted your wife’s devotion to God and His Church, Thomas. Nor to her aging aunt, for that matter.”

“Oh—no. No, Father, I didn’t mean—”

August turns his back. “I trust I’ll see you on Sunday, Thomas.” He closes the door firmly and righteously on his way out.

Father Day
, Mathilda mouths, wide awake beside her husband’s snoring form. She’s spoken it only once during the course of the day, and once doesn’t seem nearly enough.

“Excuse me, Father Day.” She said it softly, poking her head in through his office door. “My aunt says to tell you your lunch is getting cold.”

“Yes, yes, all right.”

She lingered for several seconds, but he refused to look up from his desk.

“Father Day.” She whispers it aloud now, but it’s his Christian name she really craves, the one his mother must’ve uttered when she first held him in her arms. Mathilda holds her breath, resisting for as long as humanly possible before giving in.

“August.”
It slips out as she’s forced to exhale. A ripe-eared field unfolds in her chest. The butcher saws on at her side.

With the housekeeper finally quiet above him in her room, August ceases pacing and spreads out his arms. His bedroom is too big. Seminary life has shaped him for narrow sleep—seven years in a room three paces by five—not to mention his bedroom at home, hardly more than a closet, with its rattling window and paper-thin walls.

He reaches distractedly for his bible. Perhaps
Proverbia
. Crossing to the window, he thumbs to a random verse.

Numquid potest homo abscondere ignem in sino suo, Ut vestimenta illius non ardeant? Can a man hide fire in his bosom, and his garments not burn?

He lets the book fall shut, trapping his thin finger in place. The crown of her head. Her creamy lace veil and, beneath it, the part in her auburn hair. It seemed so innocent somehow, that milk-white line of scalp.

He cracks the Old Testament again, skips back to a previous passage, his finger skimming for instruction, the comfort of a judicial tone.

Sit vena tua benedicta— Let thy vein be blessed, and rejoice with the wife of thy youth: Let her be thy dearest hind, and most agreeable fawn: let her breasts inebriate thee at all times—

He sits down hard on his over-plump bed, feeling it swell up to smother his thighs. A shadow rises up at the back of his mind.
Fine words from Solomon
, it asserts darkly.
Three hundred concubines and twice as many wives
.

T
he first Saturday, the penitents come out in droves, confession spanning the long afternoon, the lineup snaking slowly through the box. August is snug in his shadowy half—nodding, murmuring, raising his bony hand. So far, so good. Already he’s plotting a map of the parish, charting weak spots and fortresses, soul by sinning soul.

Between two voices he presses his eye to the slit in the confessional door. The nave is a mosaic of light. At least a dozen are still waiting, not counting the lone woman seated in a pew, a triangle of head scarf bent in prayer. August squints hard. Is it—?

As if in answer, Mathilda shifts in her seat, drops gracefully down to the kneeler and, in a brief, fluid gesture, holds her rosary up to the light. The palest of pale blue glass. Like beads of water suspended from her hand.

“Bless me Father for I have sinned—” A boy’s small voice comes filtering through the screen. “Father? Are you there?”

After the boy, a series of nameless transgressors. August has trouble following their breathy admissions, finds himself counting,
six down, six to go
. Finally,
glimpsed again through his peephole, Mathilda rises.

The moment she draws the confessional door shut, he finds himself swamped by a familiar smell. It’s not her meadowy wedding scent. Today she exudes dark spices and silvery herbs, rubbed together with plenty of fat.