Deluded Your Sailors (41 page)

Just as a Ranger pulled up, coming to ask respected community businessman Peter Seabright about his annual donation to the volunteer fire department.

Trying hard to root out whatever it was in him that so angered his father, and keeping to himself, Seth had spent his grade eleven year, the year the moratorium came down, in a reform school. In June, the school returned his wallet and explained they'd informed his parents he'd been released but had received no reply. The school gave him a bus ticket. An American schoolbus, bare of other passengers, ferried him home. Seth recognized the driver, friend of a cousin, but the driver said nothing until he announced Flannery Point. Stopping first at a bank machine and then the liquor counter of one of his father's stores, silently daring the clerk to ask his age, Seth returned to the old family premises. He got in through a door he'd damaged at fourteen; his father had either never noticed or never bothered to fix it. After three days, Pete came into the premises to hurl curses at the rafters and discuss a kiting scheme with his brother, only to spy Seth curled up in the corner where the pins had landed, half-starved, unwashed, holding an empty forty-ouncer by the neck. Pete had said nothing to his son, only clapped his brother on the shoulder and suggested they go for a drive. Rick Seabright agreed; he hadn't seen Seth.

Seth's mother and aunt fed him and washed his clothes in exchange for repairs to the fence, to the door, the roof, the walls, work now ignored by Pete and Rick Seabright. All that man stuff Seth had supposedly learnt. He actually could fix almost anything.

Just give him an hour or so to study the problem and some half-decent tools, and then it was all best kind, less some grime, sweat and profanity. He'd lived in the premises while the summer held, hiring himself out. A handyman can't make much in a dying town, but he'd earned enough to finance working out his first major role:

the town drunk. A bit young for it, maybe, but a man's got to start somewhere. Sometimes he wrote stories or letters to no one, jamming them into bottles and throwing them into the sea. Then, nights getting too cold to sleep in the premises, he disappeared.

Escaped, really, to St John's, with the envelope of cash his mother had hidden in a box of maxi-pads. His father received a serve-on-weekends sentence for cheque fraud. That done, Pete left the island for work in Labrador, hauling his wife along with him. Flannery Point, steadily losing population and finally even the postal counter and last convenience store in 1999, fell in on itself, like Pete Seabright's too-big, cheaply built and neglected house.

Ten years later, Seth haunted the place. He'd been darting out for visits when he had the gas money, shocked each time, despite knowledge, by boards on windows, slowly collapsing sheds, caved-in lawns over septic tanks, tree-obscured driveways and overgrown graveyards. He broke into abandoned houses and woke the ghosts.

His father's premises. Empty now, rafters bowing, birds living near the ceiling and fouling the place with guano so badly that Seth's eyes burned. But he stood there. The population of his weird dreams since the meeting in Port au Mal stopped jabbering. Even Lieutenant Kelly fell mute beneath the filthy net.

One of
those
Seabrights.

It got so dark out home. Not like St John's, full of streetlights, though still dim by Google Earth standards. No: honest dark out here, proper night.

Seth departed the premises and returned to his Grandmother Clatney's house. Boarded-up windows let in only shreds of fading light. Rats scattered. A baby ghost cried, someone shouted, and someone else dropped a heavy knife. Spooked, Seth fled to the back yard, stopping at the edge of the woods.

Jesus, settle down, b'y. It's not like this is the only abandoned town
the world.

He unscrewed a bottle. Drunk, sure. But that meant nothing.

Explained nothing. Bit of local colour, that's all. Brown, specifically, dark rum in one of those gorgeous square old-fashioned glasses his father had kept set up and polished on the home bar. The colour of the old wooden frame round his grandmother's mirror, the one he defaced with a fine black marker and very small letters: S Solam S Tattler S Echongornder Gemataur. The priest knew what that meant and lectured Seth on the hazards of the occult. They made a pact never to tell Seth's grandmother. Great priest. Got transferred further up the shore when another parish's Father Diddler finally got arrested.

Where's that mirror to now?

Seth knelt, then lay face down in the wild grass. He dug his nails into the wet ground, knowing quite well he'd run off and drink and come back and run again. Regardless, he prayed for the strength to hang on, hold fast.

That was yesterday.

Today he prayed for enough change to buy something to ease his headache. So far, twelve cents taunted him from the fiddle case.

Preparing to start ‘Jack Was Every Inch a Sailor,' Seth looked up the street. He spied a woman walking his way, a bit thinner than the last time he'd seen her, a woman around whom way too much weird shit happened.

God, B'y, what are Ya at? I pray for relief, and you send me
Nichole Wright?

Nichole stood before Seth and waited for him to finish his tune, her patience positively bovine. He watched his fingering by way of excuse not to look at her – he just did not have the strength, not today. He really, really hoped she'd just get the fuck away from him.

She didn't.

—Seth, I never got a chance to thank you.

—For wha?

—Going with me to the hospital.

—Was nothin. You look like hell.

—So do you.

Seth pointed his bow at her. —Keep that up, and you'll hurt my feelins. You know you're damaged, right? I mean, deeply and fundamentally cracked. Someone molest you when you were a kid?

Light refracted strangely and bounced around the thickening fog, and Nichole's patience abandoned her. —Charming, Seabright. And you are? Hey? Who the fuck are you to say that to me, you who grew up safe, because you were a boy?

—Yeah, that's right, safe. Because I was a boy. Listen, now. You need this.

And he played again, Apocalyptica this time, hauling a melody line up from cello to fiddle and squeal-out crucifying ‘I'm Not Jesus.'

Something fell in the fiddle case and made the pennies jump, and Seth shouted lyrics of abuse and recognition as Nichole walked away.

On the other side of the street, Gabriel Furey watched this scene play out in a store window as he pretended to study the souvenirs placed in the lap of a sou'westered mannequin. The mannequin had a Styrofoam head, eyes drawn with marker and mouth cut with a knife – someone had jammed a cigarette into it.

Gabriel turned and crossed, getting angrier with each step. He tossed a twenty in the fiddle case. —You're a piece of work, my son. One of God's own fools.

Seth kept playing, kept singing, and drove off Gabriel, too.

Well done, Seabright.

Fuck it, fog's comin in.

Seth lowered his fiddle and bow and looked at what Nichole had dropped in the case: a knife, chipped onyx handle, decent blade, but old enough to get lost in a museum.

Cut loose one of God's own hungover fools?

The fog thickened and blotted out sunshine and landmarks.

Each street seemed to be the edge of the earth.

Very good, then.

Gabriel, worn out, tried to take a nap on the floor near the biggest clay study for his
Sea Sentry
sculpture, but his dead daughter wouldn't let him sleep. He dreamt of beating great big gulls away from her with a broom and a chainsaw. Crows and ravens hovered further off. Not worried about the birds, Claire turned into her seven-year-old self, drawing intently in a sketchbook Gabriel had given her one day when she was sick and feverish. Claire tugged on Gabriel's sleeve and tapped the sketchbook, trying to show him something. He saw only a blank page. He finally figured out what she was saying.

—Daddy, go out. Go. Just go.

Only half-aware of petty details like crosswalks and cars, Gabriel turned sharp angles and wound through little private lanes to a residential area. Spent gardens bowed, limp, and the foghorn's warning echoed off rocks and buildings. He kept walking. The front yards changed, shrank to little strips of supermarket potted flowers or dying grass. People closed heavy windows; the temperature had dropped seven degrees in the last few hours. Rowhouses and dilapidated squares, and even the designated Heritage Buildings, brightly painted and well-kept by government subsidies, looked mean. Tired in a way a week of sleep would not soothe, Gabriel permitted tears to mingle with the fog on his face.

Seth finished his study of the Wikipedia article and then set to gathering tools. First he got the jerrycan. He'd followed a hyperlink to an article on jerrycans, too, grimly amused to learn that the practical and ubiquitous container was a relic of Nazi engineering.

He also noted how a traveller might carry one jerrycan filled with precious gasoline and another with precious water. Say your Jeep breaks down in the desert. Which do you cherish: gas or water? Say your body roots to a rock in the north Atlantic. Which do you fear:

oil or water?

He walked the short length to the nearest gas station, ignoring Dorinda Masterson as she filled up her SUV, pre-paid for twenty dollars' worth of gas, and with great care filled the red jerrycan.

He darted back into the station to wash his hands. Figuring he had nothing left to lose, he acknowledged Dorinda, who was in the cash queue, and let her drive him home. She smelled great, like she had first thing in the morning once, before putting on perfume.

She told him he looked terrible. He stared out the windshield, jerrycan on the vehicle's floor between his feet.

Out behind the decrepit rowhouse where he rented two rooms, Seth studied his Zippo lighter. Dorinda had given it to him last winter. Nice weight to it. Felt like a weapon, like something that mattered. In his right hand he picked up the knife from Nichole.
Why did I talk to you like that? And why, in the name of
God, did you give me a fuckin knife?
Then he noticed a small hole in the handle, good for threading a line. He took up a stray bit of soft rope, frayed it enough to pluck out a strand, and used that to tie the knife to the belt loop over his right hip. His own knife hung over his left hip, in easy reach. He considered using it to hack off some of his hair, but he didn't have the energy.

First he stood, but then he knelt, reasoning he'd fall otherwise.

He removed the medal of St Jerome Emiliani from round his neck–
can't forget that
– and, broken asphalt galling his aching knees, unscrewed the cap of the jerrycan and hoisted the hard weight of it over his head. Arms paining as though he still hung from his father's net, Seth held his breath and poured the gas. Over himself. Someone called out from the sidewalk, a male voice he vaguely recognized, but no time for that now. He patted the knives, and he picked up the lighter. Flicked it open, the familiarity of the sound pleasing him.

God's own fool.

Gabriel Furey, that Zippo rasp guiding him, tackled Seth from behind. Roughly the same size, they rolled hard into the wall of the house, away from gas spill, but what soaked Seth soaked Gabriel. The Zippo, still in Seth's left hand, could spark any second, could ignite if dropped or if Seth moved his wet fingers quickly enough. The Christian Brothers had beaten Gabriel until he learnt to make letters with his right hand, but he drew and painted with his left. Now he pried at Seth's fingers with his left hand. Seth struggled, lashing like some huge and dangerous fish within Gabriel's embrace, and Gabriel nearly lost him. Seth thumbed at the switch; Gabriel reached over Seth's shoulder, grabbed two of Seth's fingers and broke them. Crying out, Seth dropped the Zippo; Gabriel caught it, not knowing how he did so, and flung it into the street. It clattered and clinked but did not spark. Seth slipped out of Gabriel's hold and made for the lighter, but Gabriel blocked him. Staggering, Gabriel wrapped his arms around Seth and held him hard, drops of gasoline raining down as Seth writhed and screamed. The screaming had a rhythm to it, almost a pulse, and, losing himself in it, Gabriel recognized that Seth was crying.

Bawling, like a betrayed and violated youngster, choking on snot, gas and salt. He collapsed against Gabriel's chest.

At St Clare's hospital, Nichole took her hand back from just above Seth's hair as he said her name. She answered him quietly, looking nervous. —Morning, Seabright.

—What the fuck are you doin here, after the way I spoke to you?

She didn't answer right away. —Not sure. Gabriel called me – said you were in here. I know my way around hospitals, and I know these curtains. So I had to come and check on you. I mean, I didn't know what I'd say if your family was here. But it was just you, so I sat down.

Seth made to shake his head but barely moved.
Makin as much
sense as ever.
He still smelled and tasted gasoline, but also the bitter disinfectant used on hospital sheets. An intravenous dripped calming glue into a vein in his right hand. Foam-lined splints cradled the two broken fingers on his left.

Nichole spoke again. —Can you tell me why?

—Where's my lighter?

—Gabriel's got it.

—The fellah who – —Yeah.

—Very good, then.

He drifted into a dream of fighting cold salt water, of someone hauling him out by his long hair. And how much it hurt.

Her voice woke him. —Seth, I'm getting tired of this hospital yo-yo thing we've got going. I mean, for two people who hardly know each other – —I know, girl.

—I've got to go to work. But I'll come back. If that's all right?

He thought it over. —I'll be here.

Nichole smiled. —Good.

Chatting with her cousins Lewis and Matt Wright and sneaking glances at their father, Thomas, who now walked quite stiffly, Nichole slowly ate some baked Alaska, putting down her plate after a few bites. Tonight she would not binge and purge. God knew she wanted to, but no, tonight she'd permit feeling and memory.