The Lost Highway (13 page)

Two evenings later, filled with a sense of failure, he went to the store to buy cigarettes. There he saw a young girl buying some milk and bread, and as she turned to him, she smiled. He followed her outside, and she looked back and smiled once more.

That’s it, he thought.

Of course, there was no real Virgin—not at Fatima or Guadalupe (he had often written about this hypocrisy, and believed in making great jests toward it)—but still, this was the face that people might like for the Virgin. And this is what he was after. So that night he went back with a chisel and blowtorch. There the face, human and sorrowful and wondrous, was formed suddenly and completely out of the alloy of a junkyard under the frozen moon—and it was much like the face of that child.

—

T
WO DAYS LATER
A
LEX, AFTER YEARS OF BEING ALONE, SAW
Minnie as he was walking down the highway to tell the priest that the statue was finished. It happened during a snowstorm with big flakes falling down between the shadowy evening trees. She was trying to push her car, which had gotten stuck near a culvert by the church lane. Her face looked drawn and pale, her eyes tired.

Alex looked old now, and sad, his face and coarse beard. It was true that at first she did not recognize him at all. Still, his old feelings for her came back, all the deep love, the anguish, the hurt pride, her day at the churchyard. His hands were blackened and twisted from holding the blowtorches, his throat was marked by small burns. When he smiled, his teeth were gray.

Suddenly someone came out from the passenger door, saying: “I’ll help you push—you get behind the wheel, Mommy.”

It was the girl—Amy—the one he had left the seminary for, the one he had tried to be rid of. She was now about twelve or thirteen. He recognized her. She was the very girl he had used as a model for the face of Mary, Mother of God.

He was so startled he looked away, as if stung—without them seeing, but it left him shaken. He helped push and stood beside this child for the first time, her hands next to his, her various small fingernails painted green and blue and orange and pink.

Afterwards he turned and walked back through the woods path, the snow falling on his bared wet head.

He took the statue in a truck the next day, and he was very worried that the priest would not like it—call it unfinished or too modern—that the congregation, many of whom were older, would balk at it as well. That is, he was like so many artists, terrified of being rejected by the people he believed were not important. In fact, a few didn’t like it at all—but most, the priest included, thought it was wonderful. The priest gave him an invitation back to mass. He did not go. Though he thought for a moment that he might, he could not and keep his self-respect.

The grotto was placed at the front edge of our little church.

—

H
E ASKED HIS UNCLE FOR A JOB LATER THAT YEAR
. H
E HAD
no real authority, and many of the men took no orders from him. Still, he tried his best to help his uncle. Yet he hated what he perceived to be the happiness of Minnie and Sam. But it was his own unhappiness jutting out.

And as the weeks passed, he longed for a time of retribution. Every moment he had suffered, every suggestion of inadequacy, every syllable pitched against him from some flagrant mouth was remembered. He brooded, pitied himself, and longed for just one chance to do something. He taught one small course on ethics at the community college. He cherished that! But his heart was no longer in life. Once, when no one knew it, he drove to Arron Falls, stood on the bridge railing, and almost jumped onto the rocks, but could not bring himself to do so. He was lucky enough to climb down just before a truck went by. He went home confused and shattered.

Then last year it came, suddenly—a way to rid himself of Sam Patch, a way perhaps to get the business for himself once and for all, and to impress Minnie Patch once more. This in fact might be his last chance—a way, if he was brave, like those revolutionaries—to create something for himself. And then once he was rich, he would do things far better than his uncle, he would become a beneficiary to the whole highway, to the Micmac people he loved and to the poor families he had always longed to help. He thought of that Micmac boy who had saved him years ago, and said: “Yes—he will be the first I give a job to!”

He would live up to the expectations of those who once approved of him, and those whose approval he sought.

He put his blowtorch down, and listened.

Old Jim Chapman was in trouble. He had no contract to plow the shopping malls anymore and wanted the government contract to do the plowing down toward Neguac. He had been informed that he would have a chance to bid on tender. This in itself, bidding on a tender like a common business, was a slap in the face to a man of Jim Chapman’s stature. Everyone was silent about it, but everyone knew. From the moment he had lost that black book—that four-poster, as people called it—certain things had happened, occasioned by his suspicion of Sam Patch, and reinforced when bad luck and new companies began to override him.

This might be the last chance to keep the firm afloat, and he must rely upon his foreman now.

So the plowing job was meticulously researched by Sam.

Sam knew the men could do it—and Jim was willing to bid what Sam Patch told him to. Patch worked on the numbers for well over a month, decided he and the men, to save the company, would take only three-quarters pay, and said they should bid $120,000 for the winter. Old Chapman was in a position he had never been in before—that is, he was no longer assured of anything, and must bid like a company in business for a month. That is why he needed Sam to arrive at a dollar figure for this contract.

“No one will be able to go lower,” Sam said. “It’s a long, tough job—and will be hard on the plows. Think of eighteen definite plow days, working eighteen hours a day. If we get this done, we will have other opportunities—we can do down to the French side, and Fouy can do it back toward us.”

This was Cid Fouy, the man with the Corvette so long ago, that made all those childish seminarians rush up the lane expectantly into the twilight for a drive.

What Alex saw (yet he offered no helping hand himself) was that this man Sam working for twenty years had never had a credible salary or any good benefits—no dental plan, and little paid vacation—and yet he worked for the tyrant because it was the only thing he knew. And this tyrant depended on him, and loved him more than he loved Alex. This tyrant was the one obstacle preventing Alex from doing something for the people he cared for. What Alex knew, though he couldn’t imagine it was for the same reasons, is that the paid employees at the university had no dental plan and very little pension plan themselves, and he had neglected to concern himself with it as he was seeking the comfort of being a professor.

Alex did have legitimate concerns here, however. He needed to know the business would be solvent in five to ten years. If not, his hope of being left a legacy and helping who he wanted to was moot. And he wanted to be left the legacy, if for anything, for his mother’s memory. He wanted to live his middle age in comfort and write a book on all of the things he had suffered, or a historical book on the First Nations. The tyrant would no doubt ruin his plans.

Except for teaching his little course on ethics, his life had been set in stone.

So Alex went to Patch and spoke about these concerns in the little office on a quiet night. He could smell new paint in the backroom, and some flies buzzed here and there, and a gold string hung from the lone light bulb. Sam, a year or so older than Alex, was about three inches shorter and thirty pounds heavier. He was hard of hearing, and had huge shoulders that sloped forward, like his forehead did. His hair was curly black and he kept it short. He had the charm of personal comfort, knew who he was, and therefore was never offended by those who did not have comfort with themselves but only showed a kind of perplexity.

“If there are real storms this year, Uncle Jim will be in trouble—he will lose money—maybe everything he has worked for,” Alex said, looking away as he spoke.

“I know, but you must then pray,” Sam said, simplistically just like his wife, “for he needs this contract.” He scratched his nose and smiled.

Sam had learned this piety from his wife, who he tried to emulate because he admired her, although he sensed that she did not love him but someone from her past. (For everyone’s talk and gossip and assertions, he did not know she had loved Alex Chapman. He always believed it was some other boy perhaps.)

Although Alex had made his own estimation of $155,000 (which was still low) his uncle did not take him seriously, and said he had long relied upon Sammy Patch, and that almost any advice Alex gave had no meaning at this moment.

“I don’t think you have the wisdom to offer a bid—you haven’t been here, yous was never on a loader—you wasn’t on the road, not even as my flagger when we had to redo the bridge, so what are you coming up so big feelinged now,” he declared in front of all the men there. Alex, who had worked on his own figures for six days, couldn’t look at them as he walked away, but could feel all of their eyes on his back.

Alex was coughing now, continually. His body was weak, and his back stooped when he walked. He told his uncle that if it was a bad winter, they would lose money and perhaps the business.

He went back to his cabin and thought of what to do. And then made his soup of beets and corn.

Alex believed the tender was far too low, if there was any amount of snow—that was the catch. One must have faith that this winter wouldn’t be too severe when they bid on the job. That is, the less they plowed the more money they made in the end. If they came out on top they were considered shrewd. And that was part of what Alex disliked about this process: they were relying on chance—or what was worse, fate—to be called shrewd and have a good year! This was the way the baffled highway worked.

The next day he complained about this to Sam, and Patch did something that to him was obscene. Sam Patch, to stop his worry, took him into the woods beyond Arron Brook Falls, to see where the bees had built their hives, and delighted in showing him that they were close to the ground, which was the true sign of temperate weather.

He then tried to put Alex’s mind at rest: “If God is with us,” Sam Patch said, “then we’ll be okay—why don’t you light a candle to the Virgin you carved?”

Thinking he was being made fun of, Alex roared at him, and turned away in the mud and rain, leaving Sam to wipe his nose with his sleeve and watch his old friend walk off.

So as he ate his corn and beet soup, Alex, in a very deliberate way, was prepared to save his company by giving up the bid. Taking the amount—secret from everyone except him, Sam Patch, and his uncle—to his uncle’s main competition. If his uncle did not get the bid, he would have to take desperate action, and finally call on him, Alex, to save him, and Alex had a plan with which to save him, and would save him when he was called on. But first he must destroy the old man’s faith in one person: Sam Patch. He did not look upon this as revenge but as business acumen.

Deciding such, Alex went downriver for the first time in years, along the cold broken highway of his youth. He was struggling through a great sadness when he saw the same potholes and ruts along the road he had seen as a child, and the same trees bent forward in the summer wind.

He made a call from the phone booth, and made an appointment with someone. The only man he knew, down here, who would meet him. He was now in a fight for his very existence, and so had to rely upon someone from his past.

That night at a place called the Old Seminary where he had once studied Saint Augustine and which was now a nightclub and a strip bar, in the haze of late summer he met a man very low on the totem pole at Geru Fouy Construction. Alex was forced to trust him, he decided after he had met with him.

The man was Leo Bourque.

Leo, who had survived many difficulties. Leo, the boy who had bullied Alex but then wanted to be his friend when Alex had his name in the paper about his bird drawings, and who had written him a postcard. Leo, who had asked him to be best man at his wedding, thinking he would impress everyone if Alex Chapman, who wrote columns, turned up to be his best man!

Leo was ecstatic to meet with him, and had prepared what he would say. But it came out a garbled profusion of big words. He also wanted to show his authority by ordering drinks and snapping his fingers. This appalled Alex, but he was in no position to say so.

Leo wore a summer shirt which showed his strong chest and heavy, muscled forearms, each with a tattoo.

“A hundred and twenty—that’s pretty low for such a highway,” Leo said. But he was interested in this bid, and Alex found himself thinking, in passing, that this was a man who would never be a threat or concern to him anymore—

“So you are giving this to me to take to Fouy?”

Alex nodded.

“Why?” Leo asked.

Alex bent forward and spoke softly. He told Leo he wanted to save his uncle from the disaster of bidding on a plowing job that might cost him everything. But this was not at all the case—or not all the case.

Bourque reached over and grabbed his arm, and said: “But you think Fouy should then go lower.” For he believed that he had made a mistake about Alex, who had proven himself, and now he wanted to respect him.

“I am trying to have this work out for everyone. I am only saying if you want the bid, bid lower—even a thousand dollars, that will stop Chapman. You already have the French side, so your losses could be offset. I want to stop my uncle just this once. Next year I’ll take over and we can work something out—maybe you can work for me.”

“That would be something,” Leo said, very pleased at this unexpected change of fortune.

Bourque tried to think of something to say which would reflect his intellectual reason, but then shrugged. He had thought a lot about the world and his place in it, and in the last two years he had been trying desperately to hold on to his marriage by proving he was as bright as Cid Fouy, who he knew his wife was somewhat interested in.

This, then, might be the one last chance he had to do it.

In truth Mr. Bourque was far more intelligent in these things and had known men like Patch and Alex’s uncle all his life. He was, however, a simple man, he had had no advantage that Alex himself had. You could see in his face that he was perplexed by what Alex was doing. (And then, of course, not perplexed.)

“I will see—but I don’t know—this is a big thing to do,” Bourque said, suddenly looking cunning, like he had on that school bus. “I mean, sometimes you do something like this, and if it backfires you are in trouble.”

“How could it backfire?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think of how good things will be for you if you do it,” Alex said, positively. “You’ll be something like a hero!”

“Sure I will. But if I do it, and it does backfire, will you help?”

“Of course,” Alex said. “Why, of course.”

They parted like old friends. And, in fact, they were.

—

B
UT ON THE WAY HOME
, A
LEX HIMSELF STARTED TO SHAKE
. God, whoever it was, was playing with him. For the first time in his life he sensed this. And yet what nonsense. When he got home, he walked by his uncle’s house and saw Old Chapman calmly reading the paper, calmly drinking his evening tea. Later, Young Chapman hid his face in the pillow. Why had he decided this? Out of some terrible spite!

For once let me have some spite, he thought.

He did not sleep all night. Like others, he gathered at the office two days later to discover if they had got the tender. Some of the men walked outside with their hands behind their backs, staring at half-dried clay-caked puddles. Others leaned against the trucks and loaders, their whole lives teaching them that it was better to be resigned.

Down at Geru Fouy, Bourque went through with it, worried if he did, and more worried if he didn’t. Alex was the one boy he had written to when he was in the Far North, and he felt strangely that he had a camaraderie with him. Whether he did or did not would be borne out soon enough.

—

T
HE BID, HIS UNCLE’S BID, AND
S
AMMY
P
ATCH’S GUARANTEE
, failed by $1000. Everyone turned to one another in shock and spoke about what to do. Old Chapman left the office and walked back toward the house without a sound.

The old man was too smart not to know that someone had given up the bid. For three nights he stood out in the yard, amid the swarm of gnats and blackflies, impervious to sight or sound, as he drank one bottle of wine after another. And at the height of his despair, Alex, terrified that he himself would be suspected, told his uncle that he believed it had to be Sam himself.

“Why would he do it?” Old Chapman said, lurching forward, his face coming up close to Alex’s, his breath hot and smelling of alcohol. Alex once again face to face with this tyrant, as old and as tired as he was, became as he always did, a little boy.

“I don’t know—but he was the one who guaranteed the bid, and was adamant that you bid just that amount. Why couldn’t you have bid a thousand lower—that’s what I was after!”

Of course, he had been after a bid thirty-five thousand higher.

At first the old man looked puzzled, and then furious.

The next evening he called Sam Patch, and over an hour—speaking, arguing, and haranguing—he told his foreman to go. He did it in front of men there, to show that though broken he still had authority. He said that after twenty years it might be time to find another manager. It was in fact like a general firing his commander at the end of a poor campaign.

Sam could not believe it. There was in him a feeling like the end of a marriage. He actually broke down and cried in the yard.

“I think we can get it all back,” he was saying. Out on the highway Minnie stood watching. Amy stood behind her, looking out under her arm.

Alex could not bear to watch and turned his back and shook.

Three weeks later Sam left to work out west in the oil patch north of Edmonton. It was perhaps the best thing he ever did.

Alex went to his uncle and said, penitently, that he would do what he could to save the business.

“What can you do?” the old man asked in a kind of terrible resignation, mashing his hands together.

“You will thank your stars when you see how much money Fouy loses, and next year we will be back in business.”

This, too, was the old man’s one hope: that Fouy would lose everything on the grade this winter.

——

Alex set about that late fall, reorganizing the business on much leaner terms, laying off men left and right, men who had been faithful to his uncle for years—just the very thing he had believed he himself would never do. They stood in the office bewildered and feigning a kind of imperial wisdom as they were let go.

There was just one thing: there was almost no snow all that long winter. They could have easily made a profit of about $100,000. But without the main contract the business went down. Alex Chapman was in charge.

The old man looked at him almost heartbroken.

Alex tried to forget that look and go back to sculpting. But he couldn’t. The talent he had seemed blocked. He found that he was only half as good as he once was. And that wasn’t good enough for him. The idea that Sam was blamed and he didn’t stand up for him, but in fact accused him, was a great cloud over his spirit. The last piece he had done, and was ever to do properly, was the stupid Virgin Mary.

What he had done to all those men, to his old uncle, seemed to close talent off from him.

It was twelve months ago that Muriel died in her sleep, ancient prayer beads laced in her fingers.

After this, a rumor started that Old Chapman was senile and quite dangerous to himself. People were afraid of a suicide. If Minnie had not gone to the house and fed him, people said he would not have eaten. And why would Minnie have done this? What inexorable law of self-denial or human understanding allowed her to? She simply did, for no one else did, and the business was over.

Alex hoped to get the man recognized as having diminished capacity, so he could take over what was left before it was gone. With this in mind he went to the lawyers three times in the last few months. But the three different lawyers would not take the case. For the name Jim Chapman still retained that!

—

B
UT WHAT WAS WORSE WAS STILL TO COME
. L
EO
B
OURQUE
was himself out of work. How did it happen?

In a strange way it happened exactly because he had done what Alex had asked.

One hot day, a few months ago, something terrible happened. He fell from the loader and busted his hip. His boss fired him. His wife then left him for the boss. Bourque discovered they had been waiting for some time to do this. Now that Fouy had the entire old highway in his grasp, they did not care what happened to Leo. When he got out of the hospital, she had moved out.

In the resulting family dispute his boss sided with his wife, managed to protect her from Leo’s “horrible temper.”

Fouy’s takeover from Chapman enabled him to seduce the wife, who had worked in his office.

Bourque was left reeling, stunned, and shaken. He went to Alex, looking for help. His bank account was emptied and he had nowhere to go. In his own rambling fashion he blamed Alex for his wife’s unfaithfulness, and wanted one thing: money. All the money Alex could get. At first Alex did not catch on. Then he realized it was blackmail. Bourque was taking pills because of the pain in his hip, and he was becoming addicted.