Crimes Against My Brother (6 page)

“I don’t care about that,” she said.

“It’s not up to me—but if you don’t, you are stupid. That’s hundreds of thousands.”

Annette was flustered and said nothing, and looked ashamed.

It was true that Joyce Fitzroy’s money was thought to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. And Lonnie added more to the sum the more he spoke about it. During this time it obsessed him so much he was only sleeping three or four hours a night.

“I want you to find out everything, and tell me what you find out. I don’t want any mistakes—like last time,” he said. And when she looked at him apologetically, he shrugged.

A week after the funeral, Annette heard Harold talking about money at the horse haul in Lower Newcastle. He was not talking about Joyce Fitzroy’s money, but about twenty dollars he had won playing horseshoes that day. Still, she tried to get closer to see what it was he was speaking about, so that Lonnie would be pleased. She went around by the back of the large tent and came up behind him to listen. He spoke loudly and brazenly. And suddenly, turning his head, he saw she was there—only ten feet from him!

That was the day, well recorded here, when Mr. Laws’s Belgians got hyped on rum and tea and were crazy in the eyes. The handlers had a hard time bringing the team back to the pole to hook the heavy load, and most of the women and more than half of the men stood well back. As Annette herself said, she was scared “of them awful horses.” She did not say this to bring attention to herself—but it did bring attention.

“What are ya scared off? Stick with me, for I’m scared of nothing.” Harold laughed, walking over to stand close to her.

The horses’ great hooves pranced in the dirt, their eyes looked strange and startled, and their massive backs rippled as they were forced into place; and all the men around them looked ordinary—even, somehow, fragile. Annette again said she was frightened of those awful horses, and so Harold put his arm about her, and she stood where she was, Harold with his large arm hugging her.

Ian saw this. He and Sydney Henderson were the only two brave enough to hook. Hooking a team of horses to a giant slab of wood, when the team is trained to bolt as soon as the clamp is set, is as dangerous a job as one can have. By hooking, both boys were risking injury or death to win fifteen dollars.

Harold knows she is my girl, Ian thought, looking over at Annette’s wilful and beautiful and taunting face. But he was so upset he almost did
not get out of the way of the sled when the horses lunged. Afterwards, he went to the tent and sat in his place, waiting for Annette to come have dinner with him. He held the money he’d won in his hand, hoping to pay for her dinner. But she did not come. He could not eat, and when he left the tent, one of the horses had gone down with a heart attack and was lying on its side in the dirt, a half-metre away from the tonnes of wood it had been forced to haul—the tonnes of wood Ian had hooked on.

Ian looked up at the sky and cursed—but he did not know if he was cursing Harold or God. He walked all the way back to Bonny Joyce, stopping every little while to wait for Annette. The day was empty and the wind had turned cold.

Later, when he went looking for her down at Bobbi’s Dairy Bar, he heard from Mat Pit that she had left the horse haul to go swimming with Harold at Arron Falls.

Over the next few weeks, as warm rain began to spit down, Harold ignored Ian, not saying hello when he met him on the long lane by the piles and bypassing him as he walked to Annette Brideau’s house.

Ian was struck dumb by this. But Harold, one evening, said to him, “All is fair in love and war.”

Then Ian walked to Annette’s little cottage with flowers, trying to win her back. But she ran into the house and her father told him to go away. After a few days of Ian staying away, Annette asked Lonnie what to do.

“Do you want to see if he will still follow you about, if you still have some control over him? Then write him a little note,” Lonnie said, chuckling at all of it. To him, it was innocent fun—that is, he had these youngsters fighting and upset, and he loved the spectacle. So Annette wrote to Ian, with this line: “Meet me now—I will explain everything to you, but you have to come at once to Fallon’s Brook.”

Ian ran there, up past Fanny Groat’s on the Gum Road, past old Harold Tucker’s and the stretch of Arron, and into the great fields beyond. He got to Fallon at supper hour, covered in muck and brine,
filled with the scope of Annette’s majesty, her imperial beauty, her charm that erased all thoughts except that he would die for her—at once. And yet, she wasn’t there. And the day darkened little by little in the stifling afterhours. It became still in the after-supper hours and full of the scent of rain, and then the low clouds tormented the bushes.

He thought there must be some mistake—or perhaps she had hurt herself and was lost. He finally walked down the Gum Road, and around eight o’clock suddenly heard tittering like that of little blond birds at the edge of the highway, near old Jim Chapman’s grader. It was Annette—and two other girls—who had come to watch.

“There he is,” they were whispering, “there he is.”

Then Annette teased Ian when he ran down to see her swimming at the wharf. “I wouldn’t go out with you if you were the last man on the river—even if you owned the river, would I? If they said, ‘Oh my, that Ian Preston, that pipsqueak won the entire river,’ I’d say, ‘He is still a pipsqueak to me.’ ”

She knew she was being cruel but could not help it. It seemed like so much fun for everyone. Lonnie was pleased with her again, and everyone seemed to like her.

Harold did not know about Annette’s game playing or tormenting, but who knows if it would have mattered if he had. Lonnie knew, and enjoyed it. So he went on blindly, this Ian Preston, scratching himself against the surface of Annette’s soul, unable to understand or wound—and he certainly wanted to wound them all. But how can you wound someone else when you are heartsick?

We know how love tormented the lover—but must also realize how much the torment pleased the beloved. Annette said she did not wish Ian to follow her but was pleased when he did—and more pleased when her friends had to tell him to leave her alone. And so Ian did leave her alone. He went back to the small house on Swill Road and sat on the porch staring out, almost in madness, at the trees. He wandered through them from Badden Brook all the way down to where Little Hackett flowed into Glidden’s Pool—and there he hid.

And Ian did think of suicide at that moment—and eventually Annette was told this.

“My God,” she said, somewhat thrilled. “I don’t want anyone to kill themselves over me.”

“Why not?” Lonnie said, and pontificated on life, liberty and love: “It’s the way of the world—it’s all in how you move your sweet little ass.” Two years previously, he would never have been able to talk to her so freely—but two years is a long time. And during those two years Annette was continually told she must get from the world what she could; that people were out to use her, so she must use them. Now, it seemed, she had everyone on a string, and it was a beautiful string. It arced out like her body against the pale evening sunlight, wearing a light summer dress. The string moved, and the young boys danced. And Lonnie sat with his cigar, the tip of it wet with his spit, and listened to the tapping feet against the hardwood floor.

So, for a time, Ian went away from the other two boys, and those two became closer to each other than Ian was to either—for Harold said that Ian’s jealousy was not his concern; it was, in fact, only one person’s concern: Ian’s alone. Besides, Annette did not love Ian and had made that clear—and Harold said that since this was clear, Ian should not harbour a grudge.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” Harold would say to Lonnie Sullivan, in a bragging fashion. “He should soon get over it, shouldn’t he? I’d never be caught harbouring no grudge over a woman!”

“You are by far the best lad for her,” Lonnie would say. “I always said you was.”

And Ian was alone.

This is how it came about that one night Ian got close to the Sheppard brothers, who were going to raid Sydney Henderson’s store. By this I do not mean a retail store, I mean Sydney’s store of smelt nets in his shed. The brothers wanted to take them and sell them to Lonnie Sullivan, who would sell them again to his friend downriver. Still, when
it came to it, something prevented Ian from doing what he’d told the Sheppard boys he would do. He remembered Sydney working with him and Harold and Evan, and sharing his Thermos of tea—and he’d also heard that Sydney’s wife, Elly, had been accused of theft. Now, people who knew her said she couldn’t have done it—and yet, much was to be gained in gossip and fun by saying she had.

“No,” Ian said to the Sheppard brothers that night, “it is not right. Sydney has a wife and a boy and girl over there, and is just making do. His wife probably didn’t steal McVicer’s money, anyway.”

“He’s an enemy of ours.”

“That means nothing to me. You aren’t doing it, and I will stand at his store all night to make sure.” Ian did not know why he said that; he did not have anything but contempt for a man who would not protect himself. But still, it is what he did say.

The next day he took his fishing rod and went to upper Hackett to catch trout. He had been alone—that is, without his friends—for five weeks now. He could not speak to Harold, nor did he want to see Evan. So he was alone, and he came to the river’s bend—called Toe—in the late afternoon. There were raindrops on the water and he walked down over the shale bank to Lion’s Den Pool. He was alone in the midst of all his agony, and yet he soon had two fish. He laid them up on the shore, keeping an eye out for mink that would steal them. He was changing his leader when a man moved downriver toward him, and he realized it was Sydney Henderson—the man who had made a pact with God, an idiot making a pact with the vespers of an idiot.

Ian wasn’t planning to speak, but Sydney did—he came over to Ian, and exclaimed, “You are lucky—two nice trout!” He said this even though he had more fish than Ian in his own basket. He watched Ian work his way down through Lion’s Den and then come back, and he sat with him a moment.

“So God keeps putting you out, don’t he?” Ian said. “Your goddamn Catholic God. Elly herself is now being accused. I’d go after anyone who accused my wife—I would tear them apart.”

Sydney laughed. “Elly did nothing and I know that. And those who accused her do too. You will have hardship in your life, as well as me—and even more, I do think … though I am not so sure, and don’t want to presume.”

“Presume what?”

“Oh, I have made a pact with God, or at least people say so. And people say it is an impossible one.” Sydney laughed. “Some lads even stole my smelt nets to see if I would attack them.” Here he smiled and sniffed, and looked down at the clump of weeds growing up through the rocks. “But you have made a worse pact—a pact that is virtually impossible to keep, really. You have made a pact with men. Yes, I have heard about that too—up on Good Friday in the snow. And I do not know which of us is in the more difficult position, but we will see, we will see. I know this God business is a terrible responsibility—almost impossible, Joseph Conrad said. But this man business—this blood-brother business—it’s like making a pact with a shadow of smoke. And your wife someday will be accused of thievery too.”

“By who?”

Sydney did not answer.

“By who?” Ian said, grabbing him, and suddenly realizing how strong the man actually was.

“By you,” Sydney said.

Ian watched as Sydney worked the pool and hooked a fish up against the far bank where Ian wasn’t able to cast and then asked Ian if he wanted it.

“No.”

“But you were in this pool first, so I do not mind.”

“No—of course, not at all. Go on down.”

Yet Sydney released the fish anyway. He said, “It is most awful to be betrayed, and it is just as bad to be accused of betraying friends when you did not. Life is hard enough without that.”

Ian would remember this conversation years later, when Sydney Henderson died. And he would think then, how right Sydney was. But none of that mattered in the moment.

Ian went home filled with envy—envy over Harold and Annette, and envy that Evan and Harold were still such friends, while he seemed to be on the outside. In this desolate moment he thought of what Henderson had said. And he felt he had no blood brothers at all.

“Lucky” is what Henderson had called him—but in what way?

I knew when I was at Yale about all of these events—in dribs and drabs news came to me, as if by whimsy, and I would suddenly hear that Harold had got into a fight at the station, and Evan was seeing Molly Thorn. But during this time in my life I had dined out so much on being understanding and progressive toward everyone except those I had once known, I simply sniffed when I heard anything to do with my remote and tedious birthplace far to the north, a place many of my new colleagues did not know existed, nor ever care to know. I have come to accept my foolishness, to realize that no one was more intolerant than many of the academics I met during those long-ago days. But back then, I believed I was the one in the know. And that those three boys were not.