Minister Without Portfolio (12 page)

He decided to keep things light. Nothing about pregnancy or the house. He must have appeared very distant.

I've come about the house, she said. I heard you got through to the Careens. I'm really sorry about the house, it just come to me when I saw your cheque I thought, three thousand dollars, for what. I'm not saying it should be more and I know you and Tender were close—

We weren't close. Tender was close with John Hynes and I know John. Me and John go way back.

You went to trade school with Tender.

I know Tender but I wouldn't say I was familiar with him.

You were over there together. You were the one he last saw.

And suddenly a moment returned to Henry. This was years ago. They were required, for their underwater welding, to take a scuba diving course. John was paired with their instructor so Tender was Henry's buddy in the water. They pulled on their neoprene suits and hoisted on the air tanks and masks and stepped backwards in their fins and fell ass-first into the sea. They swam out to meet their instructor. The OK to Tender. Then something happened. Henry met a ledge in the sea floor and sank towards it. He felt himself accelerate and the sea darken, he was falling but could not tell which way was up. The sea was
black. Then something tugged his arm and it was Tender Morris pointing at his chest. Tender had followed Henry down, grabbed him and gave the proper hand signal: add air to your buoyancy compensator. They rose together.

It occurred to me when I saw your cheque, Martha said, if you want a place for the summer then you can have the place but maybe I could come out here now and again. When you're not here is what I mean.

So it was all out in the open. She blurted out her intentions and he realized he was conniving. He was using cunning against Tender Morris's wife. You want to own half the house, he said.

And you're wondering which half.

He laughed. My god she was young. And yet how far from that youth was he. She was, in fact, older than him by six months. We're all youthful.

The truth is, she said. And couldn't say it.

Animate. Words in a kitchen not his own. A woman telling him this—she was trying to let him know.

Silvia, he said. She let me know about your situation.

Okay good, she said. Then you'll understand that this house is all I have left of the baby's father.

Various parts of this shocked him alive and held him against the back of a chair.

It's absurd, she said. She had refused to think it could be. You were there when he got leave.

I was, he said.

I knew as soon as it happened, she said. Tender left and I knew I wasn't alone. Then when I heard from John I just couldn't believe it. I was waiting to tell him and then two officers come to the door with a priest like I need a priest, and this feels like
something from another century. My first thought was this isn't real. He was injured, I can deal with injury. I work with it every day. You're not here to tell me what you're here to tell me.

Henry was astonished at this candour.

I'm sort of going out of my mind, she said.

Why didn't you tell me.

When would I have told you.

Perhaps before the night we had.

I didn't know that was going to happen. I mean nothing happened. Okay something happened but we were flailing with grief. Well, I was.

It was very moving.

I know it was, Henry. Everything's been so crazy.

I love you, he said. I mean, if that helps. I could love you.

She looked at him knowing that he had spoken honestly.

What about Nora, she said.

It's been a year. More than a year.

I don't think you can love me and her at the same time.

Do you still love Tender Morris?

Tender is dead. And I've seen the way you look at me.

I'll say it again, he said. I could love you.

It was as true as the way he had said it to Nora when she asked him to leave. Something he was proud of saying, but also surprised by.

I'm not sure we know what we're doing, Martha said.

So let's just be honest. Let's be disciplined and vulnerable and absorb punishment and try to be generous.

She breathed out. She was taking little breaths in but mainly expelling air. Then she looked across the street and got up. She straightened herself out.

I'm going to keep the house, she said. Or a part of it. In case you change your crazy mind.

Because of the baby.

Letting it go feels wrong. Perhaps we can split it.

I'll take the kitchen and the parlour. You can have—

He pointed up the stairs.

He pulled out his pocket knife and punctured a can of evaporated milk. He put his body in between the puncturing and Martha. She had those grey eyes and fair hair and she moved with fast gestures and she was nervous and she was mentioning Tender without emotion. She was four months pregnant. You could tell, now that you knew. She carried high. She wore boots with felt liners. She had big feet or the boots could have been Tender's— Silvia did the same with John's clothes. Had Nora ever worn his clothes? Martha took care of herself with what she had nearby. He didn't even know if they'd moved in together but what they'd done was move towards each other.

Silvia likes it out here, Henry said.

Martha didn't answer that. Martha would know Silvia's opinions on Nora and himself. Instead she asked a question of her own. Why wouldn't you say you were close? she said. To Tender.

Because it's true.

You didn't like him?

It's not that, he said.

Tender was waiting for a furlough, she said. You get a deferment or I'm not sure what it's called you'd know better than me. He was a reservist and he volunteered. He didn't have to go over. He wanted to get a medal and then work for Rick Tobin. He got me pregnant and went back to finish up his service.

I don't know any of the terms, he said.

Because you're not a soldier.

Tender Morris named what I am.

She kissed him. Then said, We shouldn't shut the curtains or Baxter Penney over there is going to talk it up.

That startled him. He told her how much help Baxter had been, and friendly. Baxter was in the police force, Martha said, he was one of the first cops along the shore here and he's very good at putting two and two together. Anyway I'll sign whatever you want. I wasn't going to live out here, not without Tender.

She left then. It was getting to be a nice day out and he walked her to her car.

33

How would he do this. Who was she to him. What did he need and what did she need. Do we need people. Parents, offspring, census reports. Marry her. It felt reassuring, that he could muster up the protection a child would need and he would be fostering love, creating something that was not his own, but marshalling up an inner strength to help what existed outside of himself. Not a hundred people, but two.

He worked on the house and thought about Martha as a mantra that lay in his jaws. He wasn't living a dangerous life, but taking care of his hundred people. Minister without portfolio!

It was spring now and it rained for eight days straight, killing all the snow. The roof leaked. Everything should be made of plastic, including the birds and animals. The cows were calving.

John had arrived, home from Alberta. Still operating a mile underground. He came up to Renews to see how Henry was doing at the house. He was cooking sausages on a barbecue in the rain.

John: What I love about that liquor store in the Goulds is how the woman at the cash she takes the neck of a whiskey bottle
and tips it upside down, flaps open a narrow paper bag, and slides the bottle in.

He paused to indicate the erotic nature of this act.

Henry: I love driving a car on the shore road. There's no anxiety. Gas. Wiper fluid. Radio. Knowing where I'm to go.

Everyone wakes up at three in the morning, Henry. No one forgets the small hours. War is just the small hours and no bigger hours.

It's always three am in the army.

Go ahead be sarcastic. I enjoy being disturbed. It makes me alive.

Henry: Are you saying everyone is at war?

Not everyone is wearing a three-point chin strap but they're still at war. They are, in fact, more vulnerable.

Because they think they're behind the front lines.

Now you're talking. Minister without portfolio right there. Don't fucking call me that.

John was hurt.

It's disparaging, Henry said.

You don't even know what it means.

It means I have no purpose and no moral compass.

It means you're so capable you're to oversee everything. Tender was judging me.

He judged you to the good.

The rain made the sausages sizzle. Baxter came over and said he needed a hand. If you have a couple of minutes. Henry got some bread and mustard and made three sausage sandwiches but Baxter wouldn't take one so they followed him in the rain to the barn. He said his cow had been labouring all yesterday and last night he went to bed, convinced she wouldn't
give birth, but in the morning the calf was hanging half out of the mother.

John: You left her there with the calf half out of her all night?

Baxter: I should have stayed up. We pulled the calf out and it was dead so I got her in the back of the truck here.

There was a shape under a canvas tarp.

The barn was dark inside. The cow lying down in the corner.

She lost power in the back legs.

They finished their sandwiches and ducked into the low door. There was a man at the rail and he had hooks for hands. This was Colleen's father, Emerson Grandy. Henry remembered the story Rick told of him losing his hands. You heard, loudly, the rain on the roof. The wood rails and walls for the pens had a polished oily sheen as if many animals have brushed up against this wood over the past century. The lack of electricity made it feel like you were walking into a timeless zone. The rafters were dry and clear and the floor was dirt and Emerson Grandy was sucking on a cigarette and staring at the cow with no affection. The cow was sitting on the ground. She won't get up, Baxter said. I'm afraid she's after cutting off the circulation. We got to move her over but she's heavy.

John walked around the cow. Have you milked her?

Didn't think to, Baxter said. John knelt down and lifted the hind leg away and the udder was swollen and sore.

Her milk is in, so that's painful.

He started milking the cow. The milk sprayed seven feet out towards the men standing at the rail. Get me a bucket, John said. Baxter left the barn and came in with an empty riblet pail from the house. Emerson kept smoking and not looking at what was going on in front of him. His cigarette and the riblet pail were the
only modern things. John held the pail and aimed the teat at it. The cow was interested for a second and then returned to staring straight ahead. John pushed on the udder and pulled the teat in and out and got the milk flowing and filled up the pail and that got Emerson's attention.

Let's try lifting the side of her, John said. Henry came in the pen with him and they knelt and John said to Emerson, Take her head. Emerson spat out his cigarette and took her head with his elbows and Henry and John lifted and Henry could feel the man's elbows near his head and he thought of how he'd lost his hands with that five-ton cement pipe coming down onto his wrists, the hands must have sat by themselves somewhere like a pair of gloves.

The cow repositioned her front feet and lowered her nose. Let's try the other side, John said. The trouble was the long hind leg splayed out like that and you couldn't lift her without it acting like a lever against them.

You got a rope, John said.

Baxter searched his head for rope.

They looked around in the barn, into the rafters, looking for ten feet of rope. I'll check my shed, John said.

They walked across the road to John's. The shed was full of tools from when John worked construction. His sledgehammer at the door—what Rick called John's persuader. He's got nothing over there, John said.

What do you mean.

That barn, there's not even a stick of wood. They're poor people.

Baxter gave me a kerosene heater.

That's the last thing he had.

They tied a pulley under a beam and threaded a rope through and used a come-along to winch up the cow around the midriff. Henry and John under one of the haunches and they'd convinced Emerson Grandy to push in the extended hind leg as the cow was raised. At first the rope sort of tightened and was collected through the come-along to no appreciable movement. Then the cow was lifted. Baxter yanked the cow's tail. They had the cow half up but she still wasn't on her feet and the winch rope was tied into her gut. The cow's eyes were bulging with shock as she teetered, her hindquarters high in the air with no purchase. Boys you're busting her up, Baxter said, and it was true, John had to let her down but at least she was sitting now on her other leg. She looked like she knew what she was doing.

I'm going to have to kill her, Baxter said. He was disgusted with himself for having slept through the night.

You can't shoot an animal that still eats and drinks, John said. A hundred-dollar fine.

Emerson: I lost a horse once in a barn. Had to tear the wall out to get the horse through.

Baxter: And they won't use her for beef. Have to bury her in Aquaforte. You're not allowed to bury her on your property.

Feed is twenty dollars a sack, Emerson said. Seven sacks all winter I fed the goat. Now they want me to give it away.

Baxter: Nothing's no good no more. You can't make a living in animals.

He threw an armload of hay at the cow's head and she started munching. As they left the barn John stopped and turned and rubbed the bridge of his broken nose and launched himself once more at the cow. He slid on his knees into the soiled hay and slammed his face into the cow. With a tremendous heave he lifted
the cow up singlehandedly onto her feet. She staggered and fell against the back wall and righted herself and shook John off her legs and steadied her bearing. John's face was purple, his chest hoovering air. He held the rail and caught his breath. His fingers were trembling. Emerson Grandy laughed and shook his head. That was something, he said.