Whatever Lola Wants (44 page)

Carney nodded.

“Mother's mother was Mi'kmaq from Restigouche up near the New Brunswick border.”

Carney listened to stories about birds, and farming, and fishing. And the garage. It turned out Ti-Jean was afraid of motors. He had to drive a truck but he wouldn't work on its motor.

“How small?”

“Largest size a motor should be, five horses.”

“Oh?” Carney's own sense was ten, especially for an outboard, the extra power safer for a good-size lake. Bigger caused water displacement and undermined the shoreline. “Why five?”

Ti-Jean looked to Feasie. Her smile seemed to say, Whatever you want. Without looking Carney's way he said, “Biggest demon I can handle.”

“Demon?”

“That's it.”

Feasie tore at a cuticle. Carney shook his head. “I don't understand.”

“Demon. You know. Like a monster. A devil.”

“A motor's a demon?”

“Not the motor itself. Inside it.”

“Like, in the gas tank? In the cylinders?”

“No. In the motor. In the steel, all the parts. What gets it to work?”

“But in steel?” Ti-Jean Seymour, animist in an age of machines. Why not, for this one evening? Wine helps you see clearly. Carney nodded. “I like that.”

Ti-Jean looked over to Carney. In his right eye, the glint. “There's demons in all machines. I've worked with machines my whole life.”

A common-sense man, Ti-Jean? “These demons, they're, uh, dangerous?”

“Yes.”

They sat, and thought about the dangers.

“Has one, a demon, ever tried hurt you?”

He spoke slowly. “At a gas station I had. Small garage. With another guy. He got killed.”

Carney waited.

Feasie said, “His little brother, Jacques.”

“Was this on the job?”

“In the garage. A Buick, it started up. He was under.”

“Somebody started it and didn't know he was there?”

Feasie said, “It started itself.”

“Is that possible?”

“A demon.” Ti-Jean nodded, six-seven-eight times.

“A demon starting a car?”

“Jacques believed in them. He told me about them. I didn't believe him.”

Carney thought, the man isn't arguing. For him this is fact.

Feasie said, “Four times it's happened to Ti-Jean.”

“What?”

“Some—demon tried to, well, at least harm him.”

“How?”

“First time, he walked away for a wrench. Engine turned over, the car ran forward.”

“I looked at the ignition. The key was there, I leave it there. But always on lock.”

“No one else there, Carney.” She sipped her wine. “And once he was leaning over a motor and it started up. His hand was against the fly-wheel, the belt came down and around, must've gone around dozens of times before he got his hand away.”

“That's it. I was holding the wheel with them, a bolt in the others.” Ti-Jean grinned, held up his left hand. “Could've been the whole hand.”

On the pinky and ring finger, two missing knuckles. Carney had never noticed.

“Once a chainsaw cut the toe off his shoe. The flesh down to the bone. Started by itself?”

“The last time it wasn't the motor but the hood.”

“He was bent over the motor sideways and the hood crashed down on him. Front end slammed into his hip bone, lucky he has long legs.” She put her hand on his. “His shoulder must've taken some of the weight, lots of bruises. Lucky. He couldn't sit for a week.” Feasie giggled. “Never work with big machines again. Wouldn't touch one with a plugged nickel.”

“Construction's better, more outdoors work.”

“I do the books and I make deliveries too. Anyway Ginette takes over soon.” She scowled. “She's no intellectual but she's smart.”

“That's it.”

Demons. In-lawed to Theresa Bonneherbe Magnussen, philosopher of rationalism abiding. People find lots of ways of making pieces of their realities fit together. He sipped his wine. A private mythology, a way of forging life. From a successful garage, to a construction company they'd soon be opting out of, to the Grange. Progress of a sort.

6.

Priscilla Ayer Cochan, heading south,
accelerated her Dodge across a flat stretch, seventy, eighty, eighty-five. Johnnie would be home this evening, she'd be back early, have pepper-pocket steaks ready, he liked that, and he would tell her about his success with the bank. Johnnie always succeeded. Except in the one thing, and he blamed himself so. But it wasn't Johnnie's fault, none of it, none! Damn it, she too loved Benjie, nursed him, how many thousands of hugs? Played with him just as much as Johnnie did. More. But she had let go of the pain. Not the grief. Had she loved Benjie less? If Benjie were alive would she be living this other life? Yes, yes. Was she still mourning? Of course. But not this lamentation.

She rolled the window down, breathed in hot road air, leaned her head over to dry her face. The dreadful night before he left, nothing worked, not her gentlest, her most sensuous. True, he had tried. But there'd been no connection, between his mind and her desire an unsounded chasm. And his terrible whisper, too late, too late. What is, Johnnie? He'd breathed it again, Too late— He crept away from the bed, lay in the guest room, not even Benjie's room.

She'd knelt beside that bed, by Johnnie, for who knew how long. To his slow breath, she talked: Too late for some things, Johnnie, not for others, we can try, Johnnie, we can. From him the one phrase, nothing other, Too late.

She went to her own bed, their bed. Hours she'd lain awake, scared by no longer feeling pain like his. The old ache, that was there, and she knew it would never leave her, a part of her as Benjie had been part, still was in that way. As the new one was, would be.

She'd stared at stars through the skylight. She'd not felt a heartache like the anguish in his words, this iron stretch of his guilt, since the weeks after the accident. He'd said, “From here we'll make our history, and the world's.” She wanted this too. She wanted to rebuild the farmhouse right there, that spot. Now she could think as he used to say, If only we'd put it up farther from the stream. She'd shushed him. Or if they'd still lived in Boston, or moved into Richmond sooner, what then? Car crashes, maiming them all. Some maniac murdering them in their beds as they lay. Yes, the chance was tiny. Like that of a boy slipping down a water chute. She squeezed her eyes shut to make the image go away. A child long months dead—

She heard wheels on gravel, opened her eyes, yank-swung the wheel, the car lurched left, right, foot off gas, the brake and an uphill slope slowed her. Her heart slammed at her ribs. Not good for the unborn one. She accelerated, at the top of the rise slowed, pulled to the shoulder. The gravel now gave a calming crunch. She stopped and turned off the engine.

The time since the accident. His occasional impotence, when did it begin? After the accident. Of course after, she unable to make love too, who could want to? Later he'd been all right sometimes, in the winter, the spring. Soon it'd be a year, couple of weeks— Was that it? The anniversary!

She'd be late for her appointment. She started the car. After the accident. Days, weeks of haze. Before? Unlikely. What was before, early last June?

Think hard, Priscilla. Remember.

•

It's true: their stories go on without Lola beside me. I have to go on. It's as if I'm shouting it all down to her. Except I don't see her, haven't since her visit to Theresa. I don't want to see her down there. I don't want her to be down there.

•

7.

Mid-morning. John Cochan picked up
the Saab at the Burlington airport and headed into town; he needed more coffee. Getting back early was good. He'd go first to the cemetery, sit a while with Benjie, tell him what would happen in the evening.

Already too hot. Johnnie would spend half an hour at that little restaurant by the lakeshore, cooler, loosen his tie, take off his jacket, stare at the water. Plenty of time.

Thinking all this, he saw what was surely Priscilla's Dodge pull out of a driveway. A happy coincidence. Her doctor's office, old green frame house, he recognized it from when they'd gone there together. He had approved of Dr. Rachel Ryan, smart woman, no nonsense. Glad Priscilla found her. Who told her about this doctor? Right, that friend what was her name the one she always had lunch with. The woman had two kids. Ryan was her doctor too.

He'd catch up, apologize for Sunday night. He needed to grab hold of his moods. Damn, she was through the yellow light. He concentrated: don't lose her. Caught at a light ahead, good. Green, and he took off. But he was plugged up now, two old ladies ahead, one per lane. He saw the Dodge turn west, toward the lake. She'd get stuck behind something slow somewhere. They'd talk. At the corner, turning, way ahead, there she was. A hundred yards before the two lanes became one he accelerated, across the center line, and back in. Not an old woman, an old man. He couldn't catch the Dodge. She was speeding along too. A Toyota pulled out of a drive between him and the Dodge. Just keep her in sight. Looked like she was heading out of town. Did her friend—Tina, that was it—live out this way?

He started to pass. A huge grill barreled toward him, back in quick scarily near to impact, goddamn truck! He wouldn't interrupt her morning, a couple of minutes. A curve and, far ahead beyond a pickup now, the Dodge. Faster. He pulled around the Toyota and gave an angry blast. Two minutes later he passed the pickup too.

But her car had disappeared. Turned off? Not to the right, just cottages there, and the lake. He slowed. Now the pickup was dead on his tail, ten feet back, damned if he'd pull over. Or go faster, he had to scan the right and watch for a road to the left. A horn blast from behind. Bastard. For an instant he glimpsed, left, a road up the hill, blind entry. He sped ahead, pulled off right, turned, headed back. At the roadway he swung uphill. No Dodge. He took the right. Now the land lay flatter, a plateau. New houses. On the right they overlooked the lake. Again the road forked, he took the left. Homes, no Dodge. A four-corners. He took a right. He drove a quarter mile, not many houses now, ahead it looked like only woods. He stopped, got out—

Ridiculous. His place this morning was at the cemetery, he'd worked half the night to leave Boston early. He turned around and headed back. The road forked. He turned right, drove a few hundred yards. Houses again, a road to the left, he'd catch the other fork. Except it ran uphill. Strange, he thought he'd reached the bluff. An open space now. Far below, the lake reflected hot dead gray-blue. Burlington lay ahead, easy to wend a way down. He and Priscilla could talk this evening. Maybe he'd take her out to dinner. Slowed at a curve, started down— Slammed on his brakes.

On the up side of the hill, protected by a low ridge of stone, a driveway. Down along it stood their Dodge, and beyond it a gray Volvo, Tina's probably. He glanced at his watch. He backed into the drive.

The two-story stone house had a large wooden door. He rang the doorbell. Voices? And rang again. Silence. She had to be here, the car was here, had they gone for a walk? He stood back, looked in the window, a living room but no one in there.

The door opened. A man stood there. In a bathrobe. “Yes?”

A dozen lightning details converged— Cochan lunged at him and knocked him down, smashed by him. He tore open the door on the left, a study, on the floor a man's pants, shirt, a woman's shoes; no one. He ran to the back of the house, a kitchen, no one, a bathroom, no one, a cellar, no. The fatface man the Magnussen son, same goddamn cheeks and eyes— Back to the staircase, up, a door, a bedroom, no one, another door another bedroom— There. Naked, white, a bedsheet like a web around her, waiting in the middle, waiting.

“Hello, Johnnie.”

“No.”

“Let me tell you, Johnnie, please?”

“No!”

“I want to. You have to let me—”

“You let him—let that fucking—that shitprick—into you!”

“Johnnie! No!”

He was on top of her, holding her down by the neck, bashing her shoulders, breasts, his knee in her belly, again, again—

“No-o-o-o!”

Karl slammed him on the head with a lamp. It shattered.

FISH

In springs and ponds, in the mill race:

micro-organism, phytoplankton, water-beetle, dace.

Rainbows, smallmouth, musky

wait. Red gills close, open, dusky.

The sun and moon, ready.

The season waiting, sore.

The hour dark, unsteady.

No mercy more.

The world bursts.

Lighter than a firefly hatch,

richer than a flashing storm,

A roar of plenteous grandeur. A mighty feast.

R.F., July 6, 2003

7.

“Your brother-in-law hates machines.” Carney
sipped beer from the bottle.

Sarah said, “He even hates driving.”

“He thinks some cars are possessed. By demons.”

“He tries to be good to demons. He says some he can never deal with.” They reached the edge of the pond. “I tell him, if there are demons, you can't buy them off, big or small.”

“Sure, that's consistent.”

“I think he's crazy.”

Carney glanced at her, she turned to him, and they burst out laughing.

Her smile fell away. “You do get all kinds of people to trust you.”

“You trust me?”

A moment—“No”—and she turned away.

A breeze made tiny waves, splashed at the bank.

“I'm not saying he's completely wrong.”

“Ti-Jean?”

“There's a revenge building up. Draughts and earthquakes, demons, plagues of locusts.”

“You sound like Theresa.”

She shrugged. “Who knows. Something's pending.” A moment later she added, “Milton told me you learned Cochan's building in caverns extending under our land.”