The Second Son (34 page)

Mr. Campbell was probably the main reason I came out of there with a trade. My last couple of years, when I started getting day parole, he got me a job working in a big garage his brother owned in Kingston. I was seventeen by that time and there were women working in the office who kind of spoiled me — made me feel like a human being, anyway. They must have been convinced I wasn’t about to rape and murder anyone.

During all those years, the old man came almost every week. Well, every two weeks at least. If he couldn’t come, he’d arrange for some of the relatives to visit, like Aunt Sissy and Uncle Roddy. And he’d often bring Johnny Gervais with him. They would always cheer me up, those two, with their joking around and their gossip about Alexandria — such as how people in town were being nicer to the family again. I think I did forgive the old man, or at least let him forgive me for burning down the store. Probably I let him become the good part about home, the things I learned to love, now that I was deprived of it. Between the two of them, my father and Johnny kept a part of me connected to the real world. Or at least their version of it.

Eventually my father started finding ways to tell me stuff about Mom and Andrew, like when she got on full-time at the post office, or when Andrew started university in Ottawa. That’s when he told me Andrew was seeing this McEwan girl from Lancaster, who was taking the same courses as him. I was a little surprised that I didn’t mind so much, hearing about my mother, and Andrew. That’s when I wondered if my anger was subsiding. I suppose it was only natural. It was a child’s anger that put me there and it was a child’s revenge I was taking on them. It was only a matter of time before I woke up to the fact that I was paying a higher price than they were.

It wasn’t so easy, though, to let my hate go. It had deep roots that were still being fed, all the time I was locked up. I knew it had pretty much become part of who I was, because of something strange that happened in one of my English classes. Mr. Campbell hadn’t had much luck getting me to apply myself in the academic subjects. For the first two years I barely scraped by — I still connected books and studying with my brother. The only reason I started reading enough to get through my last years of school was what happened that day in my Grade 11 English class.

Mr. Guzzo was a hawk-faced, sandy-haired bully with a soldier’s buzz cut and hands the size of a catcher’s mitt. One day he wrapped one of those big hands around a textbook and motivated me to open my own book at the designated page. With my eyes still watering from the motivation, I sat there, staring at the poem he wanted us to study. Then for some reason, bored I guess, I started to read. Minutes into it I was amazed to find myself, Mike Landry, staring back at me. This simple story took all my anguish and gave it a name.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge has wither’d from the lake,

And no birds sing.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

So haggard and so woe-begone?

The squirrel’s granary is full,

And the harvest’s done.

I see a lily on thy brow

With anguish moist and fever dew,

And on thy cheeks a fading rose

Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,

Full beautiful — a faery’s child,

Her hair was long, her foot was light,

And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,

And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;

She look’d at me as she did love,

And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed,

And nothing else saw all day long,

For sidelong would she bend, and sing

A faery’s song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,

And honey wild, and manna dew,

And sure in language strange she said —

“I love thee true.”

She took me to her elfin grot,

And there she wept, and sigh’d fill sore,

And there I shut her wild eyes

With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep,

And there I dream’d — Ah! woe betide!

The latest dream I ever dream’d

On the cold hill’s side.

I saw pale kings and princes too,

Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;

They cried — ”La Belle Dame sans Merci

Hath thee in thrall!”

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,

With horrid warning gaped wide,

And I awoke and found me here,

On the cold hill’s side.

And this is why I sojourn here,

Alone and palely loitering,

Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,

And no birds sing.

It was a poem written by John Keats, back in 1842. The lure of that poem drew me to books and the ideas in them. I discovered I wasn’t the dummy I thought I was, and found refuge in the safety of their black and white pages. Pretty soon any leisure time I had was spent reading. I never told anyone what I found in that poem. It became my secret cache of understanding, giving shape and direction to what I had lived, a self-image that accommodated the emotions at war in my heart. When I read the notes in the book that said it was about “unrequited love” I felt a sudden jolt of recognition. Like I said, I looked at the words on the paper and saw myself looking back, “alone and palely loitering.” And it didn’t take a genius to realize I was the one “held in thrall,” not Andrew.

“La belle dame sans merci” gave new meaning to my obsession, becoming this woven embodiment of Lorna Landry and Gail MacDonald, together as one unreachable desire. This futile love became the reality I clung to — along with my determination that my brother would pay for what he had done to me and the girl who put her trust in the Landry brothers that fatal afternoon. But as my confinement wore on, I could see that my power over the family was dissipating, that the idea of punishing myself to get at them had lost its glow. I would soon have to start making a life for myself, including some kind of relationship with these people.

I gradually started responding more to my mother when she came to visit, listening as she plied me with pleasant tales of home and invited me to share my plans for the future. I let slide her little hints about Andrew, who was still eating up the world, as I tested my ability to resume a normal life. Except there was one constant theme in all the conversations we had during those visits of the later years, right up to the last one. My parents had lots to say about education and occupations, and the joys of making my own way in the big world. But any talk of where I might live always focused on all the great places in Canada where I might get a fresh start. Not once did they raise the issue, or even broach the possibility, that I might be coming home.

Oh sure, neither one of them ever said, “you can’t come home, Mike.” Yet I knew, as sure as they were sitting across from me in the visitors’ room in the Kingston Reform School, that they were not preparing a place for me in Alexandria. That’s why it wasn’t hard to keep my hate alive, simmering on the back burner, while I remained on the edge of their world, “alone and palely loitering.”

I was nineteen when I got out for good. My Uncle Angus got me a job with him on the D.E.W. Line. I’m not sure how much my parents had to do with that, but he was pretty smart, old Angus. He said it would be a good way to ease back into society, in the closed little world they have on a base like that. He wasn’t dumb, either, about the big difference between him and a nineteen-year-old. He booked a room for me in this big hotel in Edmonton, where people coming in and out of the North used to stay. Then he made arrangements for a sweet young working girl to spend two weeks with me. Told me it was the only way I’d be able to handle six months back in isolation. I will admit I was glad about it, at first. Then I started thinking about Gail. It didn’t seem right, somehow. I was out. She was still dead. I sent the girl away after the first week. I didn’t tell Angus.

I lasted two years on the Line, four six-month stretches with three weeks’ leave between each. I saved a pile of money and finished off my apprenticeship. The day I got my mechanic’s licence I thought of my father and the old Model A. I sent him a copy. After that, two years became the pattern for a lot of my life. That’s about the longest I ever lasted with a woman. They had this thing about me having to talk to them on occasion. I imagine that’s why they stayed on the pill. Probably they were afraid they’d get a kid who wouldn’t talk to them.

It went pretty much the same way with jobs. There’s just so much time you can spend around the same people without starting to make a connection. As far as home and family went, I missed my father and Alexandria enough to go back every few years — at times I even convinced myself I missed my mother and brother. Not for long, though. A couple of days in their company and my hate was back in play. Sure, I wanted to lighten the burden on my father, who kept urging me to forgive and forget. Except I couldn’t get past that sense of debt to Gail MacDonald, that need to make them pay. So I circled round them, neither in nor out, for years. The passing of relatives marked those years — my grandparents, Aunt Sophie, Grandma Bessie, Angus, Aunt Gertie — yet the relationships never improved. I was still the second son, who only did funerals.

May 1987

I STAYED BEHIND THAT MORNING
and made my way between the rows of stones to the south end of the graveyard, where I knew Gail was. She had the biggest marker in the cemetery, a large block of pink granite with a white marble angel kneeling on top, and a simple inscription.

Gail Anne MacDonald

Daughter of Donald and Marjorie MacDonald

Born April 14, 1944 – Died July 1, 1958

I studied the kneeling angel, trying to conjure up Gail’s face. But she hung back, locked in that hard white marble. I closed my eyes and longed for her spirit as I touched my hand to that place on my chest where I kept her name. All I felt was guilt, digging its claws into my shoulder.

At least she’s not alone, I finally told myself. Her father was there beside her. I’d heard that, I recalled. I thought of her mother. For some reason I could picture her more clearly than Gail, out in the back yard hanging out her laundry, dressed in shorts, dark hair pulled back in a ponytail like one of the girls. She laughed a lot, I remembered, and was always so kind to me. I thought again of the promise I had made her daughter.

I had long since put aside the easy logic of the child who had promised Gail revenge. Yet I knew the loneliness that brought me back was tied up, somehow, with my debt to the girl who was buried here. I couldn’t let it go, anymore than I could stop hating Andrew and my mother for their betrayal. I knew my father was right. I should forgive them. I just couldn’t figure out how I could do that — without forsaking Gail. Besides, I was convinced that my commitment to her was the only thing keeping me whole. Suddenly I found myself wishing I could cry, then feeling guilty because I couldn’t. Such a short-lived victory, I was thinking as I left the graveyard.

That’s why I envied my cousin Gerry, just a half hour later. She was Johnny Gervais’ sister, married to a Donnelly from Toronto. We had just arrived for the reception up at Aunt Sissy’s place and Gerry’s mind was still on the service. She started talking to me about the church. “You know,” she said, “I left this damn town when I was fifteen. And the only time I miss it is when I’m back in the cathedral. All those beautiful stained-glass windows and paintings, even the smell of it, the old wood and the incense, just the same as it was forty years ago, makes me feel like a kid again, sitting in church with my mother and father. And the next thing I know I’m bawling like a baby.”

Johnny came up behind her. “That’s just the Gervais waterworks kicking in. Isn’t that right, Mike?” He patted me on the back and I wondered how I ever got along without these people.

“That’s right, Johnny. But the women have it worse than the men.” Johnny laughed and nodded his agreement.

“They do not,” Gerry protested as she wiped her eyes with a Kleenex and gave Johnny a friendly punch on the arm. “I seen you cry over spilt beer, you big baby.”

“Now there’s an idea,” I said as I body-englished them toward the house.

I had been pleased when the priest announced that everyone would be welcome up at the farm after the funeral. It was a great place for a gathering — a big brick house sitting on a rise a hundred yards back from the road, approached through two rows of black spruces that Bessie’s grandfather had planted to break the snow. There was a flat piece of well-drained pasture at the side of the barn where everyone could leave their cars and go in through the back-kitchen door. I smiled when I saw that the old back porch had been replaced with a cement pad and a new building. No room under those steps for the ghost of Dougal to bite the ankles of the Frenchmen.

Jean and the kids were already there, helping my mother and Aunt Sissy. The two McRae sisters were back in their element, supervising the kitchen and getting a big spread laid out. When I saw the commotion I let the others go in without me. I turned and went back outside for a smoke. That’s when I noticed Andrew and a couple of the McEwans had stayed out in the yard to greet people as they arrived. I found a spot in the shadows and watched them, wondering how Bessie McRae would have felt about those pushy McEwans using her place to campaign for a Landry. I smiled as I recalled the old lady’s quickness to accuse people of putting on airs, a deadly sin in old Glengarry.

Now that I was over the urge to cry, I was in a better mood, quietly contemplating my plans for Andrew. Watching him and the McEwans at work was stirring me up pretty good. What drives these people, I asked myself, these good-looking, well-dressed professionals on the make? There was something about that word, professional, that always got to me. Why do they need to run everything? Did somebody put the idea in their heads when they were kids, that God had chosen them to wield the power in this world? The chosen ones. Is there a more destructive concept in the universe? Is that what my mother did to Andrew? Convince him he had been chosen? Is that why he was always so forceful with people, so good at getting his way, because he believed he had no choice, that some higher power had chosen him to go to the front of the line?