Black Otter Bay (5 page)

His father's drunken behavior and manic mood swings had crashed through their lives like an ill-tempered bull moose. And it never got any better, even after he quit drinking. If anything, without the alcohol to deaden some of the violent tirades, he became even scarier to the little boy sitting across the table.

The morning his father swore off drinking, the two boys and their mother were leaving for church. Matthew had been only five years old at the time, but Daniel, eight years older and a big kid for his age, had already begun showing some of the bullying traits inherited from his father. It was a frigid Sunday, with a blinding sun reflecting off a couple feet of snow. A northeast wind off Lake Superior whipped up whitecaps and six-foot breakers along the shore. The old man's pickup truck sat in the driveway, and as the boys drew near, they saw their father's face pressed up against the window where he'd fallen asleep after driving home after closing time at the bar. The windows were completely fogged over from his breath, with just a small clearing near his nose and mouth where he slept against the driver's side door.

Matthew hadn't even understood the significance of what they were looking at before Daniel ran up to the window and pounded on the glass. The old man jumped straight upright, a half-pint of Snowshoe Grog falling from his lap to the floor.
Daniel ran away laughing, but Matthew paused to look in at his father. A crusty layer of vomit spotted his faded, heavy woolen jacket. The boy worried that his father might freeze to death, but his mother quickly grabbed his arm and led him away.

Upon their return from church, the pickup truck was gone, and it was Matthew who spied the emptied bottle of grog in the crotch of a small birch tree in the front yard. The bottle remained there for years, no one daring to remove it. In one of his saner moments, his father told Matthew that he put it in the tree as a visible reminder to himself.

But the lack of alcohol didn't do anything to alter the old man's behavior. Looking back on it, Matt conceded that actual physical violence had been rare, but the constant threat of it had been very real, and anger and outrage were the main character traits Matt carried in his memories of his father. That, and the unpredictability of the old man's temper. He might come home from work singing at the top of his voice, or slam through the door swearing up a blue streak, but there was nothing anyone could do to either predict his behavior or change it. If Matt and his brother kept quiet and out of their father's range, he was likely to yell at them to quit sneaking around the house. And he'd just as likely ignore their loud fighting or roughhousing.

But for Matt, the hardest part had been listening to the late-night arguments between his mother and father. He'd lie in bed for what seemed like hours while the battles raged in the kitchen beneath his bedroom. Their old clapboard house had been built in a traditional North Shore style, with small rooms and low ceilings to better facilitate heating during the long winter months. Windows were at a premium for the same reason, so with the bedroom door shut tight against the loud voices, darkness was almost absolute.

Daniel shared the bedroom with Matt, sleeping against the opposite wall, but he claimed he never heard any of the arguing
from below. His father's individual words were generally indistinguishable to Matt, but the malicious intent was obvious. Unable to sleep, he listened with alternating feelings of fear and anger.

One night, after a particularly loud and vicious fight, Matt heard the front door slam as his father stalked out. Daniel rolled over in his sleep at the slamming of the door, but soon a deep silence settled over the house. Matt listened to the dark, afraid to move should he miss something. He thought of the first few seconds after a shotgun blast, how his ears rang with the sudden absence of sound waves. He listened for his mother. She would be in the kitchen nook, where she often took breaks from the household chores to drink a cup of tea. He wondered if she'd be crying, or flushed with anger, or simply stunned into a catatonic silence.

When the isolation of his thoughts and fears became too much, he crept out of his room, down the dark, narrow wooden staircase, to find his mother sitting in profile in the kitchen, her chair tucked in, hands folded in front of her on the table. A low-watt bulb over the stove emitted a meager glow, casting a dark shadow across her face. For a long moment he stood in the kitchen doorway, wondering if she could be praying. Then she turned to look at him, and at first her dry eyes were a relief, until he understood her shell-shocked expression of despair. He felt his own tears then, and she reached out a hand to her son.

At six years old, Matt considered himself too big and old for coddling, but he sat on her lap that night anyway. They didn't speak for a long time, until finally his mother said, “Matthew.” It wasn't uttered as a question, but rather as a statement, and Matt thought he must have misunderstood. Pulling back to look at her, he was surprised to see that she still wasn't crying. She said, “We really got it right when we named you.”

Matthew's expression went blank. He had no idea what she meant, but her tender smile calmed his young nerves, so that once again he rested his head against her shoulder.

Using a hand to brush hair off his forehead, she said, “In Sunday school classes—remember reading about the disciple Matthew?”

He didn't answer, didn't move from the comfortable closeness of his mother's shoulder.

“Anyway,” she continued, “Matthew was a tax collector. Now, back in those days, there were many tax collectors. It was a good job. Steady. And you needed an education, which not too many people had back then.”

Matt listened to his mother's soft voice, accompanied by the familiar hum of the refrigerator across the room. He couldn't remember ever hearing about the disciple Matthew, but then, he didn't pay much attention in Sunday school, and he seldom read the Bible at all. It was too grown up and boring. So he couldn't say if his mother's story was a fairy tale she'd made up or not, but sitting in her lap, her soft voice next to his ear, he wished the story and the moment would last a while longer.

She continued, “Jesus picked Matthew to be one of his disciples because he knew a tax collector had to be a smart man. And Matthew had integrity. Do you know what that is?”

Again, Matt didn't answer. He didn't want to know about integrity or the disciples.

“It meant that Matthew was loyal. Jesus would eventually be mistreated and betrayed, but not by the tax collector. Jesus knew that through it all he could rely on Matthew, because he was loyal, honest, and sweet. Just like my little man here.” She kissed him on the forehead.

That late-night talk in the little kitchen nook became a defining moment for Matt. So much of his life could be summed up in those few words from his mother. While Daniel spent his whole life escaping from the family and Black Otter Bay, Matt stuck around to help his mother maintain a semblance of order in the household. He wouldn't have called it loyalty. After all, someone had to mow the lawn and shovel the
snow. And later, after the old man died suddenly of heart disease, he taught himself how to replace leaking pipes and to rewire broken fixtures. Matt didn't see how loyalty had anything to do with it. His mother couldn't fix the car, and Daniel had been long gone by the time their father died.

Matt spent the summer of his tenth year scraping and repainting their small clapboard house. Daniel had proven himself useless for these kinds of jobs, preferring to chase around the countryside with his pals, and Matt's father spent his time either driving Euclids down at the taconite plant or lugging an auxiliary oxygen tank for his emphysema around the house. One morning, the town woke up to some new artwork.

Situated somewhat precariously on the face of the ridge behind town, a huge wooden water tower boldly proclaimed this to be the realm of B
LACK
O
TTER
B
AY
. In bright blue paint, someone had added the word S
UCKS
. From a distance, the blue paint blended in nicely with the black block letters on the tower, so it took a couple of days for someone to comment that the blue paint matched the new trim on the Simon house.

When Marlon Fastwater, just a part-time cop in town at the time, stopped by to ask Matthew's father about the artwork, even the old man knew his youngest son couldn't be responsible. By the end of the summer, Daniel had enlisted in the U.S. Army, and he never looked back.

After his discharge, he worked the fishing fleets in Alaska for a few years, about as far from Black Otter Bay as he could get. He still came through town every two or three years. Each visit would usually find him accompanied by a different woman. He'd stay just long enough for the walls of the small town to close in on him, long enough to attract the attention of Sheriff Fastwater again. Then, without a parting word to anyone, he'd be gone, just like the first time he'd left to join the army.

But the comings and goings of his brother meant very little to Matthew. They'd never been close due to the eight-year gap in their ages, as well as the distinct differences in their personalities.
In truth, he seldom considered his brother's welfare at all. If he had been the type to contemplate such things, he may have wondered why he gave so little thought to his own brother, but cared so deeply for these two children in his life.

Ben sat at Matthew's left hand, poking a fork at the mountain of taco goulash piled on his plate. Matt had suspected that something was wrong ever since the kids came home from school, and his suspicions were confirmed when the pile of food on Ben's plate didn't get any smaller.

“Not hungry tonight, Ben?” he asked.

“I guess not.”

“Is everything okay?”

Ben looked at his sister before responding. “I'm just tired.”

“I've never seen you too tired to eat taco goulash.”

Abby spoke up. “I think we're just sick of school, and anxious for summer vacation.”

Matt nodded while giving his daughter a long look. He'd noticed her reticence this evening, too, but had no idea how to get words out of her. To his way of thinking, there were events in a young woman's life of which a man his age had no concept. He certainly had no words for them.

His own childhood experiences had done nothing to prepare him for talking to his children in a meaningful way. On the other hand, he knew all about the confusion and fear that could dominate a young person's life. So, despite his inability to tell his children how much he loved them, and even though he couldn't get past the awkwardness of consoling them with hugs, he had determined from the outset to provide them a childhood free of fear and apprehension.

To Matt's practical way of thinking, it made sense that a parent should attempt to recreate the best aspects of his own childhood for his children. But there hadn't been much for him to borrow from his past. The old man had worked hard at the taconite plant, and provided good food and shelter for his family, even though Matt figured his father probably kept working
just to stay away from the house most days. But Matt followed his father's footsteps down to the plant anyway, went to work every day, and provided a security for his children that they probably didn't understand right now, but would hopefully appreciate someday.

The other thing he'd borrowed from his childhood was this tradition of sitting down to dinner together. Even though his own experiences with it had been brutal, his pragmatic view was that the concept was sound. And with Ben and Abby's eager participation, dinnertime had become a highlight of Matt's day.

“It's my turn to cook tomorrow, right?” he asked.

Abby nodded.

“I'm planning to dig the grill out of the shed out back. It's time we get our summer going, don't you think?” He looked from daughter to son, but got no response. “Any requests for the first barbeque of the season?” He felt a little foolish putting so much enthusiasm in his voice. “Come on, someone must have an idea.”

“Cheeseburgers,” Abby finally said.

“Cheeseburgers. Good call, Abby. How about you, Ben? Any requests?”

“Cheeseburgers are good.”

Looking at his son, Matt remembered last fall when Ben had found himself in some trouble in art class. The teacher had positioned herself on the edge of her desk, a book in her hands, reading to the class. The assignment had been for the students to draw a portrait of her as she read. They could use any style they wanted, from classical to cartoon. As far as she was concerned, they could put devil horns on her head or give her three eyes. The only requirement was that they couldn't show their drawings to each other while she read. They were to maintain silence and pay attention to the story.

Ben's drawing was really very good, Matt thought, except that he'd made his teacher's eyes crossed and the book in her
hands upside down. A classmate across the aisle saw Ben's picture and giggled out loud. Then others began looking and snorting, until the small cluster of students attracted the teacher's attention. She pointed out to the whole class how Ben had failed to follow instructions. Then she held his drawing up for everyone to see, and the roomful of laughter added further to his embarrassment.

A note had been sent home, accompanied by the picture. It didn't help matters when Matt burst out laughing, too. The note requested his suggestions for a suitable punishment. He replied that he saw no need for any punishment at all. Further, he added that his son should get an A on the assignment for such a well-crafted, perfectly proportioned drawing. And if the teacher didn't agree with him, he'd be happy to stop by to discuss it with her.

Ultimately, nothing more came of the incident, other than Ben moping around the house for a couple of days. The drawing hung on the refrigerator until almost Christmas, when it suddenly disappeared. Matt knew things like that happened in a young boy's life, and a few days of embarrassed silence was an acceptable outcome. Maybe that's all this was now. But then, why was Abby acting so strange, too?