Deluded Your Sailors (39 page)

Nichole made introductions. Evan politely complimented Seth on his last book while looking at him pretty hard; Seth thanked him.

Then Seth gave a long study to Nichole, as though trying to decide whether to strike her or hug her. He finally sat down, slouching with restrained drama. Hideously conscious of the weird silence he'd caused just by turning up, Seth scrambled for words.

—TCR's programmin content now? Didn't take you for a policy-wonk there, Rideout. Thought you had a pair.

—B'ys, it's government. The way they see it, it's their money, and–—It's our money. We pay the taxes.

—
Everybody's
money, Seabright. Government's the steward.

Seth changed tack. —So everyone involved in this today lives in St John's, yet we're all after drivin out to Port au Mal for this meetin?

—The Rural Business Schedule Quota. All departments need to hold so many meetins a year outside St John's.

—Rural BS is right. Fine stewardship of our money. Right up there with goin out on the fuckin north Atlantic to suck oil out of the seabed. I don't know which money is gonna be after ruinin us first, tourism or oil.

Evan stood up quickly, scraping his chair hard on the floor.
I'm
just gonna keep quiet now about Jackman suggestin Nichole throw a

few Beothuks into the script.
—Move your legs there, Seabright. I'll go find a kettle.

—Find some balls, while you're at it.

Nichole rolled her eyes. —Seth, give it up. Evan's a nice guy.

—We're all ‘nice guys.' You haven't asked me how I'm feelin.

—How are you feeling?

—Like a drink.

—What happened with the stings after?

—Slept for three days, they pumped that much Benadryl into me. Woke up from that hung over like slut on Sunday mornin.

Then they kept me in there for a detox.

—Are you okay now?

—Told ya, I feel like a drink. Or like somethin fuckin drunk me and pissed me out against the wall. Listen, Nichole, I – here he comes, tourism's Sir Galahad.

Evan passed Nichole a steaming Styrofoam cup of stale Golden Pheasant, its malty sharpness almost an assault —Found a few tea bags and one of those hot water spigots. Sorry, Seabright, I couldn't carry back three.

Seth stared out the window. If he jumped out of it, he'd fall on the whitecapped water. He heard bells.

Nichole took a thick envelope from her backpack and slapped it over her copy of the script.—So tell me, Evan, is all this null and void? Hey? Are you going to tell me that the narrative in Cannard's ledger doesn't matter?

Evan put his copy down and carefully, slowly, opened the envelope. Discovering regular white paper, he rapidly flicked through the sheets. —You photocopied Cannard's ledger? You stuck an early eighteenth-century document on the fuckin Xerox machine?

The shock, anger and little spark of glee in Evan's voice caught Seth's attention.

Nichole smiled sweetly.—Every page. Before I handed it over.

Before I even showed it to you. It's not a great copy. Bits didn't come out. And where's Cannard's ledger now, Ev?

—In a climate-controlled case in the Rare Documents collection until Thomas Wright formally presents it to Chris Jackman on September 19.

—Locked up in Rare Docs, wherever they are this week, where no one can see it!
And
where it will probably catch fire.

—Nichole, I can't believe – all the curator trainin I've given you – the potential damage!

—Desperate times, Evan. What's happened to you? When I first started at the Admiral's Rooms, you kept telling me about the responsibility we had, not as arbiters or gatekeepers but interpreters of history.

Evan heard his grandfather complaining about the whiskers he grew for the Tattoo.
If it's history you need, my old man's straight
razor's up in the attic.
He said nothing.

Seth drummed his fingers on the boardroom table. Driving out around a particularly grim bay for a Saturday afternoon meeting in a stuffy old Orange Lodge to discuss a play that now looked like it wasn't even going ahead? Stuck listening to a couple of academic townies bitching about history while they all waited for a board of directors' meeting to start?
Yes b'y, fine way to spend
the day. Fuckin grand.

Seth tried to interrupt. —Your Lieutenant Kelly character.

Have you thought about writin this from his point of view?

Evan spoke before Nichole could. —Nichole, I also told you and told you and
told you
about responsibility to old documents!

Jesus, anyone finds out you put a Rare Doc on the photocopier – tell me you at least wore the white cotton gloves.

—I cut the fingers out of them. You know what I photocopied?

Yeah, you know. Proof, Ev, quill-scratched, ink-blobbed, bloody
proof
that Port au Mal had settlers before 1760. Well before. Sure, it was you who showed me the matching correspondence from Salem.

Evan very nearly remarked to Seth about the hazards of literate women but chose instead to swallow some tea. It scalded his oesophagus.
God, I hate tea.
—Nichole, you're like grapeshot at close range. I'm already stressed to the nines with my grandfather, and Jackman tryna fuck with the
Peril on the Sea
exhibit, and now you pull this stunt on me?

Embarrassed for Evan and Nichole, Seth tried again. —You mean John Cannard in the play, right? That ledger: are Kelly's notes still there?

Nichole showed him the photocopy of Kelly's notes.

Pleased and impressed, Seth nodded. —Very good, then. Can I take a look at that? And what about those letters from Newman Head?

Evan spilled tea all over his chest.
Sealskin packet hidden away
with Pop's ammo. I fuckin smuggled history.

Seth, digging in his pocket and then passing Evan a wad of fraying tissues, noticed, but decided not to comment on, Evan's developing erection.
Takes all kinds.
—B'ys, I got to ask you about this Lieutenant Kelly – that air conditionin's got some cold.

Evan sneered. —No AC in here, Seabright. Can't retrofit a Heritage Buildin. Who the hell is that?

Reverend Elias Winslow was playing with the dart scoreboards as though dialling up a launch code. The door clicked shut, despite being out of anyone's reach. The cool air collided with the stuffy sunned-up air, and threads of fog coalesced round Winslow's head.

—Ms Wright, Mr Seabright. Back again?

Nichole introduced Evan to Reverend Winslow, each recognizing the other's name from correspondence between HARC and TCR. Nichole had not seen nor heard from Winslow since the night he told her the Finn story she'd used for her play.

She had no certainty that visit actually took place. An escort of coyotes? Puked bezoars and stolen knives?

Winslow straightened his robe. —Dorinda Masterson and the rest of the ACHE board will be late. I need to speak to you three before they get here, because I just remembered something I need to do.

Softly, softly.

He gently blew cold air at them. Evan, Seth and Nichole tried to stand up, but those hard plastic chairs felt as warm and soft as beds. As though Nan had just placed her homemade afghan over your shoulders as you sat near the woodstove, as though fever imprisoned you and forced you to keep still.

Eyes sad, Reverend Winslow raised his hands in benediction and exhaled again. —Please. Tell yourselves the truth.

Pop with the gun and Pop won't go to the doctor and Pop courtin
Mrs Dunphy, Pop raisin me from age six and teachin me the old songs
and stories and down to the Folk Festival every single summer and
out round the bay every chance we got and bringin me up to Signal
Hill for the Tattoo performances and then takin all those pictures the
first time I came home in Tattoo costume and then takin more when
I came home in the proper costume, the late eighteenth-century one.

Not sayin boo when the girlfriend spent the night, and now can't
drive, can't hardly see. Jesus. Can't remember. Jackman keeps

promisin me he'll fast-track Pop into one of the good Homes, and I love
him, owe him, want him looked after, but I can't stand havin him in
the house. First time in my life, I'm afraid of him. Get him out, get
him out –
One of those Seabrights? We knows all about you, my son, yes, we
sees ya up there. Your mother and your aunt there tried to make a go
of dinner theatre in the 60s and 70s, gave it up when the youngsters
came along. Both of them stunned enough to get tangled up with Pete
and Ricky Seabright. The manly art of cheque fraud, now, and where
are those two big men these days? Both women gone skinny and grey –
still got those scarves round their heads? Your aunt still wearin curlers,
never takin em out, and your father? Don't be talkin. If you even
amounts to half of him – that's what he always said: You'll never be
half the man I am, Seth. Think you're gonna climb down from that?

Foxe hardly the worst. Foxe just sniffed me out. Damaged goods.

Grandfather softened me up, groomed me photo after photo, every time
a new camera came on the market I'd get excited, and damn it, there's
the fuckery: I'd get excited. Special special special, all grown up if I'd
just pose right and then suck him off, and I know now, I know I know
I know all wrong depraved and shameful ho ho ho shame, you want
shame, wrap my throat in shame and pull taut, because I felt kicked but
loved at the same time. With Foxe I didn't like it, no, can honestly say
that, not one shard of pleasure in that numb time, just that gnawing
need for – what, to make sense of the past? Love? Sins sins sins –
Nichole struggled against her tight throat and jaw, forced words out: —Sins of the fathers?

Winslow's knees buckled. Nichole tried to reach over and help him up, but she remained trapped in her chair.

Winslow panted, looked up at Nichole. —I stole the secret knife. Nichole tried to respond, if only to ask
What the fuck
?

—I stole it. I started off singing, and somewhere, I stumbled and fell, and then I knew cold. And watched a father abandon his daughter to the cold ocean. He hacked off her fingers as she clung to the kayak. One by one, he cut away his own daughter's fingers, because he feared how much she might eat and what offspring she might bear. But necessary, Nichole, do you understand? All that suffering and love, necessary...

Nichole wrenched her lower jaw down again: —I...

It came out
Ah
.

Winslow crouched, shoulders rippling, and showed his teeth.

—You do understand.

—Ffff-ray well.

—Free will? When senility, addiction and abuse gnaw and tear at the three of you? Currents and decay. I was sure this world would end in 1974, quite certain. I dreamt it, you see. I should have dissipated years ago. Died. I flitted round Port au Mal, darted in and out of groundwalkers' lives. I love to watch, but I am created for something else. Nichole, my dear, keep struggling like that and you'll have a stroke. I stole the knife from that obscure woman in 1734. Now you know. I could not quite walk, could not quite be seen, but I swear she felt me, knew I lifted the knife from around her neck, and I fed off her anger. A poisonous meal, to be sure, but her anger, hatred and guilt enlivened me for another two hundred and seventy-five years. It drew me back, Nichole. Back to what? Forgiveness? God? My own bones warped the goodness.

Being human. Like Sedna's fingers, knife wounds in salt water, all that pain for a reason... surely, there are reasons? Nichole, keep still.

God, I had so much to tell you, but it just seeps out my skull and dries up. I've forgotten. Wait – history damns us, but you must fuck your history. No, that's not the right word. Be fucked by history. God, no! What am I trying to say?

Nichole rolled her eyes left and then right. Evan and Seth both sat forward, elbows on knees, staring at the floor. They breathed softly, as though asleep.

Winslow pried open Nichole's clenched fingers and placed an ancient onyx-handled knife on her palm. —Deny it. No no no –
defy
it. Fray well.

Nichole clamped her fingers round Winslow's, squeezing them against the knife. Suddenly, she could stand, and she did, backing away from Winslow, falling over her chair and barking her head off the hot water radiator. No pain yet, just that horrid stunning, like when a wasp first stings – that brief reprieve before true knowledge.

Allied Cultural and Heritage Enterprises

Board of Directors Meeting

Saturday 29 August 2009

Fisherman's Stop Motel, Cannard's Point, Port au Mal

Present at Fisherman's Stop Motel:

Dorinda Masterson, President

Lewis Wright, Secretary/Treasurer

Evan Rideout, Assistant to Mr Jackman (taking minutes)

Reverend Elias Winslow, representing HARC.

Present via conference call:

Linda Gillingham, Eastern/Central Representative

Cissy Dawe, Western/Labrador Representative

Regrets: Vice-President / Avalon Representative Johnny Malone, Government Representative Chris Jackman. Addition-al regrets: Nichole Wright, commissioned playwright for Settlement 250; Seth Seabright, commissioned actor for the Settlement 250 play.

Meeting called to order at eleven am by Dorinda. She notes that the meeting was moved to the motel because the Orange Lodge is not accessible for her, on crutches.

A motion was made to adopt the agenda by Lewis Wright.

Cissy seconded the motion.

A motion was made to adopt the minutes from the last meeting by Linda. Lewis seconded.

SETTLEMENT 250