Sundowner Ubunta (32 page)

“You see, Clement couldn’t understand it, why his boy, the apple of his eye, suddenly became a stranger. He had been such a sweet child, you understand, so it didn’t make sense to us.” A coughing spell interrupted her. She gave in to it wholeheartedly, then continued. “It was the summer after he finished grade ten when it happened. And just like that, our lives were ruined. Our name was ruined. Our reputation was dirt.”

This was something new. I held my tongue and waited for the story to come out.

“Our name was in the paper every day. All you had to do was mention the name Ridge and people looked at you differently. It was as if we’d all done it, not just Matthew, as if we were all guilty of what he did.” She stopped there and coughed again, a smoker’s cough I guessed, at least a pack-a-day habit.

“Saskatoon is too small a city to go unnoticed after something like that. There was no escaping it. We had to leave Saskatoon to get away from it.” She coughed some more.

I was perplexed. Petty thievery and drugs? That was the big news story that drove the Ridges away from their home, their city, their business, their son? “I’m sorry, Mrs. Ridge, but was there something
in
particular
that happened the summer after Matthew finished grade ten that caused you to leave Saskatoon?”

Another brief silence. “You don’t know?”

This was going to be good, I could tell. “No, I don’t think I do. The woman I talked to told me that your husband kicked Matthew out of the house when he was sixteen, and eventually Matthew was sent to reform school because of some minor problems with the law, and that you never saw him again after that.”

“I suppose most of that’s true, Mr. Quant, except that the last bit of trouble Matthew got into wasn’t a minor problem with the law. You see, they sent Matthew away because he beat up another boy. He beat that boy so bad he almost died.”

Errall Strane is a friend. There, I’ve said it. She’s also a colleague, my lawyer, my landlord, and a regular pain in the ass but a trusted confidante when it comes to my cases. We’ve come a long way, she and I, from tolerating each other simply because we had a person in common whom we both loved (the newly reappeared Kelly), to tolerating each other because I rent my office space from her and work in the same building, to tolerating each other because we seem to hang out with some of the same people, to tolerating each other because…well, just because we kind of enjoy tolerating each other. Make sense? Nope. I don’t think so either, but there it is.

143 of 170

3/15/2011 11:02 PM

After getting off the phone following a rather lengthy conversation with the real Clara Ridge, I found myself thumping down the staircase that leads to the first floor of PWC where Errall takes up over half the square footage with her spacious and pretentiously decorated one-woman law office. I found Errall hard at work behind the war-room sized piece of metal and glass that acts as her desk, surrounded by a collection of thick lawyer-ish tomes, file folders brimming with reams of paper, and a long empty, lipstick-stained Starbucks cup. Errall’s dark hair was loose around her shoulders and looked as if it had been run through with her fingers many times over during the last few hours. Although it was a Saturday afternoon, she was still wearing one of her smart and severe business suits, but she’d given in to weekend slack by leaving her blouse unbuttoned to a rather daring low point, low enough for me to see she wasn’t wearing a bra.

“So who was this kid that Matthew Ridge almost killed?” Errall asked after I dumped myself into a chair in front of her desk, declared myself immoveable, and caught her up with my baffling case of client/no client.

“Robin Haywood. He was another student at the same school Matthew attended. Apparently Matthew-along with many of the other students-decided he was gay.”

“Gawd, you can just hear it, can’t you, with a name like that?” Errall responded with a sympathetic tone, yanking her reading glasses off her nose and tossing them to one side of the desk top. “I’d bet you a hundred bucks they called him Robin Gaywood. ‘Who’d like to suck my dick? I think Robin Gay would!’” She gave her neck a rub. “Kids are such cruel bastards.”

I flicked Errall a questioning look. She seemed a bit too familiar with the activity of childhood taunting.

I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out she herself was a bit of a “cruel bastard” in her formative years.

“Anyway,” I moved us along, “Robin was a quiet kid, bookish, an easy target for a boy like Matthew.

They were adversaries for years.” I stopped there and reconsidered my choice of words. “Well, no.

Adversaries makes it seem as if they were on equal ground, which, by the sounds of it, they certainly were not. Matthew, the big, sturdy, athletic, girl-magnet was the tormentor, and Robin was his unwilling, long-suffering victim.”

“But wait a second,” Errall said, as always, quick as a whip at an S&M party. “I thought you told me that during your investigation into Matthew Ridge aka Matthew Moxley, you found out that he had male lovers. So, if I remember my studies correctly, doesn’t that make
him
the gay one?”

I gave her a nod. “Typical of bullies and bashers.”

“He doth protest too much?”

“Exactly. It happens a lot, especially with young men who suspect they themselves might be gay. These guys hate the thought of who they are so much that all they want to do is strike out against it, destroy it, beat it to a pulp. It’s either that or, if the self-loathing is strong enough, they hurt or kill themselves.

Unfortunately for poor little Robin Haywood, Matthew Ridge saw in him the worst of himself and wanted to punish him for it.”

“What happened?”

“It was summer,” I began the account as told to me by Matthew’s mother. “Matthew and his buddies came upon Robin in a neighbourhood park. They were drunk and high. They confronted Robin, and without the constraints of high school, and brave and cocky from drugs and alcohol, they began to taunt him, then jab at him, and eventually it led to an all-out bashing.”

“Shit,” Errall declared. “How frightened that boy must have been. The assholes!”

“According to Mrs. Ridge, upon questioning the other boys, all of them agreed that things got out of hand pretty quickly. They eventually realized Robin could get seriously hurt and decided to stop. But 144 of 170

3/15/2011 11:02 PM

Matthew kept at him, yelling at him, screaming, bawling him out, and calling him names, kicking him, pummelling him. They finally got it together enough to pull Matthew off of Robin. One of them said that when they did, he was crying.”

“Of course he was.”

“Not Robin,” I told her. “Matthew.”

“Oh.”

“And then they ran off.”

“They just left him there?” She was rightfully incensed at the thought.

I nodded sadly. “A guy walking his dog later that night found Robin, all crumpled up. He barely survived. He spent months recovering at RUH.”

Errall’s eyes opened into two wide pools of blue. “Wait a minute. Wait a minute! I remember this. The names were unusual. Normally they wouldn’t even release the names of minors, but it was all over the news long before criminal charges were laid. The newspapers were full of the story for months. Yeah, I remember this; they referred to him as Robin with the broken wing. I was just a teenager myself, but it was a big deal; one teenager almost killing another was huge news in Saskatoon, still would be, I suppose.

I remember going back to school the fall after it happened; it was a real hot topic, out of the classroom and in.”

“I guess I missed all that,” I said. “We didn’t read a lot of city newspapers, living on a farm. If it wasn’t about Four-H or grain prices, it wasn’t news.”

Errall kept on as if she hadn’t heard me. “I remember one story; to this day I remember it, it was that vivid. It was about those two boys-Matthew and Robin-they made it sound as if they were the closest of schoolboy chums, best buddies who grew apart, and ended up mortal enemies on a bloody battlefield, in a duel to near death. So fucking melodramatic! Can you stand it? I’m not making this up, Russell,” she added when she saw my skeptical face. “I remember it like it was yesterday. I think one of the girls in my class even did an essay on the whole thing. It was a very big deal in this city for a long, long time.”

I nodded, finally coming to a clearer understanding of how the Ridge family might have suffered the level of stigma Clara Ridge described to me.

“I always wondered what happened to those boys,” Errall said.

“Matthew Ridge was sent to reform school,” I told her, “but the other boys who took part in the incident didn’t get more than a slap on the wrist.” My guess was that they testified against Matthew in exchange for leniency.
“
After Matthew got out, his parents lost track of him.”

“Oh come on,” Errall cried out, indignant. “No one just loses track of a kid. Unless you want to.”

I had to agree, but I had nothing with which to measure the shame the elder Ridges must have felt at having to face the fact that their child perpetrated such a heinous crime. According to Clara, the Ridges had their supporters at the time-mostly religious extremists who lauded Matthew’s actions as a necessary evil to help stamp out those they considered deviant, aberrations of nature-people they ended up wanting to escape just as badly as the disgrace attached to the Ridge name.

“But you still have no answers as to who it really was who hired you and why?” Errall asked.

“Actually,” I said as a scheme began to take shape in my head, “I think I have a pretty good theory.

And you’ve just given me a good idea how to confirm it.”

145 of 170

3/15/2011 11:02 PM

“What? What idea? What did I say?” Errall demanded to know.

But I was already out the door and heading for my car, barely hearing her reference to intended actions to diminish my manhood should I not return immediately with an answer.

Saskatoon ’s main library, named after Frances Morrison, an employee for thirty-seven years (most as chief librarian), and one of the first women department heads in the city, is only a few blocks away from PWC. In no time I was microfiching my way through old
StarPhoenix
newspaper articles until I found exactly what I was looking for. Once back in my car I dialled a now-familiar phone number on my cellphone.

“Mrs. Ridge,” I said in answer to the answering machine request to leave a message, “It’s Russell Quant. I’m back in Saskatoon. And I have your son with me.”

146 of 170

3/15/2011 11:02 PM

Hospital visiting hours end at eight p.m. and I made it to Ethan Ash’s room seconds under the wire. I peered into the dim space just in time to see a tall figure lean over the bed, gently push aside a swath of Ethan’s brown hair and place a delicate kiss on his forehead. It was Frank, one of the octogenarians who lived in the care home run by Ethan and who, it was quite obvious to me, loved Ethan a great deal.

Whether it was warm affection for a caregiver or a crush, I wasn’t quite sure. I debated going in. My few interactions with Frank had revealed a rather brusque, manly character who might not be comfortable being seen in this tender light, so I turned to go but came to an abrupt halt when I spotted someone else I knew coming down the hallway toward me.

Anthony Gatt gave me a tight hug and a kiss on each cheek. “Puppy, how wonderful to see you. I wish you’d call whenever you get back from these world travels of yours. Some of us worry about you, you know. How was it?”

“It was complicated. I’m sorry I didn’t call. Alex is here, and between this case I’m on, and sleeping off jet lag, I haven’t had much time. But I need to talk to you.” My uncomfortable meeting with Jared several days ago had been at the back of my mind ever since. It was bothering me a lot, mostly I think, because I had no idea what to do about it.

“Of course.”

“But…why are you here?”

“Same reason as you, I suspect. To visit Ethan.”

“You know each other?” Ridiculous question. Anthony knows everyone who has ever set foot in Saskatoon.

“Of course.” He threaded an arm through mine and led me back to the room. “Shall we?”

We met Frank just as he was leaving.

“Frank,” Anthony greeted the man as if he’d known him forever. “How are you?”

As we shook hands, Frank eyed me warily before responding to Anthony with a slight grimace. “Well, most everything aches, and what doesn’t ache doesn’t work anymore.”

Anthony gave him a manly slap on the shoulder and one of his Robert Redford smile-and-wink combinations. “Atta boy.”

“I’m just on my way home,” Frank said, blushing at the attention from Anthony. “Simon likes it when I’m there. She sure misses her father.”

“How is she doing through all this?”

The older man smiled, obviously fond of the girl. “She’s a pip that one. She pretends she’s okay, but I know better. We all do. We’re giving her lots of attention. And she gets to visit her dad every day. She’ll be okay.”

Anthony tilted his head toward the hospital room door. “Ethan sleeping?”

“He’s dozing,” Frank answered. “But you should go in. He always wants to see you.” He turned to me, nodded once-just barely-then tottered off to the elevator bank.

“Is it me,” I whispered to Anthony, “or does that man not like me very much?”

147 of 170

3/15/2011 11:02 PM

Anthony’s eyes told me I should very well know the answer to my own question, and if I didn’t he certainly wasn’t about to answer it for me. He began pulling off his jacket. “Come,” he said, “let’s be presentable when we walk in.”

Underneath Anthony’s overcoat was a light V-neck sweater, in a purple so deep it might have been black, which showed off his sculpted torso to its best. I pulled off my leather bomber to reveal a boxy looking, off-white, cable knit job that had seen better days. Jeepers, why does this always happen when Anthony is around? I have nice sweaters, compliments of Anthony’s store, but no, today I had to go for this comfy but moth-eaten sack. Always the embodiment of graciousness (when in public), Anthony merely fingered the ink stain on my chest and smiled indulgently.