The Retreat (26 page)

Nelson was at the cabin. He was sitting on the swing and when they pulled up he raised his head and watched them. They went to him and Raymond said he’d hit a cop, Earl Hart, and that Hart would probably be coming after him. He looked over his shoulder, back down the road, and he said that he thought he should pack and leave.

He went to the truck and took three beers from the case in the back. He found a screwdriver in the cab, popped one cap, and gave the bottle to Lizzy. He did the same for Nelson. Then he opened his own beer, drank, and said that there might be a convoy of police cruisers coming down the road any time.

“I don’t think so,” Nelson said. “You’re not that important.”

“What’ll I do?” Raymond asked. He was leaning towards his brother, who waved a hand and patted the seat beside him and said, “Sit, relax. If he comes, he comes, but he won’t come. Isn’t that right, Lizzy?”

Lizzy squinted and looked away and thought that she should be back at the Retreat with Fish and William. Down by the pond. Getting ready for dinner. Margaret would be calling for them right about now.

Nelson lit a cigarette and handed it to Raymond. They sat side by side, with Lizzy standing and facing them. Raymond told the story again, as if by retelling it the facts might
change, but they didn’t, and as he spoke the sun dropped behind the cabin and then below the trees. Then, as if rising from a deep sleep, Raymond sat up straight and said, “We gotta go. Now.” And he stood and went into the cabin. When he returned he sat down again and by the time dusk arrived he was well into his fourth beer. He appeared to have shrugged off what had transpired on the highway and the conversation had turned to alcohol and its comforts and dangers. Raymond said that he was not a happy drinker, and that it would be wise for Lizzy to leave before things turned wild. Nelson could drive her home. But no one made any move to rise, and Lizzy understood that she remained outside of the world these two brothers inhabited.

For the next while she tried to convince Raymond that he should turn himself in. She said that she would vouch for him.

Nelson laughed and said, “Vouch for him? Maybe you could write up some sort of warranty promising that he will behave, and that he is in no way dangerous, and that the world would be a better place if we had more boys like Raymond.” He raised his beer bottle and pointed it at Lizzy. “Who do you think you are?”

“Leave her the fuck alone,” Raymond said.

Lizzy ducked her head and stood. With the sun having set, the air was cooler and she felt the cold on her back. She shivered and went inside. She sat down and rested her elbows on the table and watched the flame bend and waver in the smoky glass of the lamp. She heard Raymond and Nelson talking, their voices rising and falling. She laid her head on her arms, and she must have fallen asleep because when she opened her
eyes Raymond was standing beside her. He put his hand on her back and said that he was worried about her. He would drive her home, okay? She stood and studied him and said he couldn’t drive, he’d been drinking too much, and besides, Hart would be looking for him. She would walk back by herself. He began to protest, but she waved him away and said it would be safer to walk.

She went outside, past the swing where Nelson still sat. He watched her walk by but he said nothing. She walked down the trail beyond the pickup and into the dark corridor of trees that led to the main road and then down that road. The noises of the night were all around her, the sounds of animals scurrying in the ditches, the call of night birds. At one point, she saw an arc of light from an approaching vehicle. She slipped down into the ditch and crouched there and when the vehicle passed she saw that it was a police cruiser. She watched the tail lights disappear and she considered returning to where she had come from, but the possibility of what she would find there frightened her, and so she turned and continued down the road towards the Retreat.

H
art arrived from the rear. He had parked a hundred yards down the trail, got out of the cruiser, and worked his way through the bush up towards the cabin. He approached the Seymour boys from the back, as they sat side by side in their piece-of-shit swing, admiring their pitiful rifle. He laid the muzzle of his pistol against the back of Raymond’s neck and he said, “Slow, boys. No sudden movements.” To Nelson, he said, “Empty the chamber of the rifle and then lay it down on the ground.”

Nelson began to turn, but Hart swung his pistol away from Raymond’s spinal cord and caught Nelson across the cheekbone. Nelson swore. “Do as I say,” Hart said.

Nelson dropped the shells he was holding onto the ground and then laid the gun at his feet. He spoke then, sidelong to his brother, in a voice that revealed no fear, no anger. “This would be Hart, then,” he said. He turned and saw the man holding the gun. In the darkness, he looked him up and down, and he laughed.

“Don’t do that,” Raymond said.

“Let’s go.” Hart gestured at the cabin, the open door. They walked, the three of them forming a triangle, towards the cabin. Inside, the flame of the lamp fluttered and danced and
in that dancing Raymond saw the darkness at the corners of the room. He moved over towards his brother, who was leaning against the far wall. He felt sluggish and weary.

Hart held the pistol at chest level and moved it back and forth, from boy to boy. He asked where the girl was.

“What girl?” Nelson said.

Hart pushed his chin out at Raymond. “You know the one. Liz something. Bird.”

“She flew away.” This was Nelson again. He wouldn’t stand still and he wouldn’t shut up and this seemed to make Hart nervous.

Hart looked around, motioned at the bedroom and said, “What’s in there?” He stepped backwards and looked into the room and then at the boys. “Regular palace you got here.”

Then he said that Raymond had made the wrong decision that afternoon. He said all he had wanted was a show of respect. And now look where he was. “Stuck in a shit-hole cabin, looking down the barrel of a gun.” He said that he had come alone. “Wanted to deal with this myself. My way.”

He looked at Nelson and asked him his name.

“Geronimo,” Nelson said.

Hart nodded. He reached down to his belt and unlatched the handcuffs there and held them in his left hand. He said that he wanted Raymond to put them on. He didn’t want any more trouble. Things could go from bad to worse or they could get better. He reached out with the hand that held the cuffs and asked Raymond to move away from the wall, to put his hands behind his back. He said, “Geronimo, you back over towards the door.”

Neither of the boys moved. A low groan rose from Raymond’s belly and went up his chest and floated out his mouth. It was like the sound of a boat grinding against its mooring, and as the sound erupted, Nelson turned to his brother and saw that Raymond’s shoulders were shaking and his chest was heaving.

Nelson stepped towards his brother, who waved him away. Nelson told Hart that his brother wasn’t interested in handcuffs. And where would he take his brother, in any case? Back out to that island? He said that this time anywhere his brother went, he would go as well. “Take me,” Nelson said, and he hunched towards Hart and held out his wrists. Hart, wary, moved to snap on the cuffs, and as he did so, Nelson swung outwards with his left fist and caught Hart’s gun hand, on the meaty part of the palm. The gun fired and the bullet went through the ceiling and the gun landed in a corner of the room. He jabbed with his right hand at Hart’s mouth and caught his ear because the man had ducked, then kicked at Nelson’s feet. Nelson went over and fell hard on his back and he felt the air go out of him. He heard Raymond cry out, and he saw Hart’s boot coming at his head, and he knew the man was quicker than he’d thought and that he could not avoid the blow. He pulled backwards to lessen the impact and Hart’s heel caught him across the jaw. The pain stunned him briefly and then he rolled sideways, scrambling around the legs of the table, rocking the lamp, which stayed upright and remained burning, a flickering and unholy light that cast long shadows. Hart chased him, calling him a nasty little motherfucker who had all kinds of suffering coming his way. Then,
as if he were a magician, he produced a club in his right hand and a knife in his left. Raymond moved in and Nelson told him to get back. Nelson feinted and dodged, aware of his brother’s voice dropping down on him as if from a great distance. He saw Hart’s small forehead and the round nose, the half-closed eyes, which in turn watched his own. The two men circled the room, alert to each other’s movements and the initiation of fear; enacting a dance that was age-old and final. Nelson felt no fear. The purity of this act, the notion that you could strip down to this one single purpose. Hart jabbed with the club and then his other arm arced and the knife passed across Nelson’s chest and opened him up, just below the nipples. His shirt blossomed with blood. He looked down and saw the blood and he heard his own small grunt and the larger “Ahhh” of Hart’s voice. Raymond made a keening noise. Hart pounced forward, sure of himself now, driving the knife towards Nelson’s throat, his face full of anticipation, just as Raymond leapt onto Hart’s back, wrapping his arms around his face. Hart stumbled and bellowed with rage. The knife fell to the floor and Hart flailed with his club at the heavy burr stuck to his back. Nelson, seizing the advantage, reached for the knife just as Hart, still carrying Raymond, lunged at him. Nelson held the knife out, and Hart, blinded by Raymond’s grasp, fell forward and the blade went deep into his chest. He gave a slow, long moan.

Raymond stumbled upwards and whispered, his voice rasping and fearful, “Did you kill him?”

“I don’t know. He just fell onto the knife.” Nelson looked at his own chest. Blood had soaked his shirt and pants and
was dripping down onto the floor. He walked to the sink and took a towel and held it to the wound, then tied a T-shirt around his chest. Raymond was standing over Hart. He was stooped slightly, looking down at the body as if he were teetering at the edge of a deep gorge and measuring its depth. “He’s breathing,” he said. He went down on his knees and touched the knife in the man’s chest.

Nelson took a chair and sat down and observed the scene. The back of his brother’s head, the policeman’s foot twisted to the left, the blood on the floor. He sat, breathing with difficulty. Raymond came over to the table. “Now what?” he asked.

“They’ll have tracker dogs and Christ knows what coming after me.” He held his palms to the ceiling as if imploring to a beneficent God. “I’m fucked.”

“He tried to kill you,” Raymond said. “He did. Try.”

Nelson said that he would have to pack clothes and food and water. He’d take the .22 and some shells. He said that Raymond should drop him off on the dump road. “I’ll hide out for the night and then find some place safer,” he said. “Don’t worry, I won’t get caught.” He said that it would be Raymond’s job to bring Hart to the hospital. No one would suspect him then. It wasn’t the best plan, but it was necessary. “We can’t have him dead. If they ask, and they will, tell them you had nothing to do with this. Can you do that?”

“They won’t believe me.”

“Just do it.”

Raymond said that he wanted to help Nelson. “I’ll come back for you.”

Nelson shook his head. “It’s better we separate. Like I said, you did nothing.”

They sat and watched Hart breathe, the knife rising and sinking in his chest. Raymond said that he’d thought Nelson was a dead man. “And if you were dead, so was I.”

Nelson stood and left the room, returning with a silver-coloured duffle bag into which he put canned goods and .22 shells and a sweater and socks and some fruit and bread. He filled several sealer jars with water, screwed on the lids, and put them in the bag. He called for Bull, and when she appeared he picked her up. She sniffed at his T-shirt and clawed his arm. He took the cat outside and pushed her into the bag. She fought and hissed but he zipped the bag shut and put it into the box of the pickup. When he came back Raymond was again bent over Hart.

“He’s barely breathing now,” Raymond said.

Together they carried Hart out to the pickup and placed him in the box, laying him down on the tarp that covered the supplies destined for the park. Hart groaned as they laid him out. Raymond climbed into the box and rearranged his position. He pushed toilet-paper rolls under his head as cushioning. He climbed out and they stood, looking down at the body.

Nelson grunted with pain.

Raymond carefully lifted his brother’s shirt, unwrapped the T-shirt he had tied around his chest, and studied the wound with the aid of a flashlight. The cut was deep and the wound was oozing blood. Raymond reapplied the T-shirt, tying it tighter this time. He went into the house and came
back with a half-full bottle of whisky and handed it to Nelson. Then he got into the cab and turned the ignition.

Nelson sat in the back of the pickup with Hart. His chest hurt. With every corner and every jolt he sucked air between his teeth and closed his eyes. When he opened them again he saw the stars in the black sky. There were multitudes and some he knew were already dead, which was a fact he had picked up in Mr. Zeiroth’s science class in grade nine. He knew too that everything inanimate was indifferent to his plight at that moment. The rocks, the trees, the stars themselves. Nothing was eternal. He had been baptized as a young teenager. He had done this willingly, believing in eternity. He had wanted to please his stepfather and he had succeeded, but his own pleasure had eventually dissipated. Nothing lasted. He looked down at Hart’s squat body and thought that the man would gladly have killed him. The desire had been there on his face and in his eyes.

At the dirt road that led to the dump, Raymond stopped and Nelson climbed from the back of the pickup. He held the rifle under his arm, lifted the duffle bag from the box, and stood by the open driver’s window.

Raymond lit a cigarette and gave the pack to Nelson, who slipped it into his jacket pocket.

“You got fire?” Raymond asked.

Nelson said yes.

“You gonna just disappear?”

Nelson shrugged, then he walked off.