For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down (12 page)

Snow was falling against the old slanted roof in big wet sleepy flakes. The road outside was indistinguishable from the rest of the landscape, and only identifiable by the cars that now and then cut a track through on their way into town. A huge ship lay off to the left with its deck lights giving a faint glimmer, as if it were a mile or more away.

In the room Alvin had put him in, there was a pile of boxes in the corner, a torn magazine or two, an old pink necklace lying on a dust-covered table, and a grade-six mathematics book with the cover torn and marked with an orange crayon. He spent the day staring out the window and smoking cigarettes. At nightfall he would come downstairs. “Call him,” he would say.

“I have,” Alvin would say, twisting his body about in the chair. “He’s not home.”

“Well, when will he be home?”

“I don’t know. His wife said he was seeing to his boy – so he’ll be around.”

“What’s wrong with his boy?”

“I don’t know–”

Rils was becoming more impatient with this.

“Well, I’m going to sell your jewellery,” Alvin said.

“Don’t sell the bracelets for less than two hundred dollars apiece, or the watch,” Rils said. “No one could get stuff like that around here.”

“I know,” Alvin said, looking up at him cautiously, “but we’ll see what I can get.”

Whenever Rils mentioned Jerry he would say “he.” He would start with “he” – or in the middle of a sentence about something obscure the pronoun “he” would come into play, and everyone would know he was speaking about Jerry.

Gary Percy Rils asked if Lucy could get him a shotgun.

“No,” she said, “but probably Jerry could.”

“He probably could, ya – probably could.” And the very fact that Jerry could get him a shotgun seemed particularly disturbing to him.

Lucy looked at him quietly.

“I will be gone for a little while, and you won’t see me,” Jerry had said, “I just have things to do – in a little while I’ll be back.”

So she waited patiently, listening for his truck in the middle of the night.

Bines had gotten home and kept his grandmother upstairs. He moved about the house like he was on his tiptoes, going from window to window.

He would never be included into that group of men and women which he deceived himself into thinking that he could belong to. He had almost willed himself to be with them. Almost had succeeded in making a good impression.

He went and sat in the porch. His whole left side was numb and his eyes were sore.

“It don’t matter,” he thought. “Don’t matter.”

He did not like Rils, and though he believed he was not frightened of him he could see Rils in his mind’s eye.
“If I don’t get him off the river he’ll end up killing someone,” he thought.

For some men, to think of murder and blood would be horrid and preposterous. For Bines it was simply a matter of fact. And he knew also Rils would pick on someone weak –

“Someone like Willie or Gram,” he thought suddenly, and he threw his right arm out and a lamp went crashing into the wall. When he stood he staggered.

“What’s wrong?” his grandmother asked. “Derry – Derry – Derry – Derry!”

“Nothin, Gram – you stay up there.”

He took out the bottle of Aspirin he had in his pocket and he chewed a few of them. He felt strangely angered. He realized that he couldn’t be admitted to the hospital. He feared that Rils would come after his wife and child.

He went into the living room and sat in the chair that Ralphie had first seen him in two months before.

“Whether she wants to go or not,” he said, thinking of his wife, “she and the boy will have to go somewhere – get them off the river – get them somewhere.”

He put the cap back on his bottle of Aspirin and placed it into his vest, the way one would place a pocket-watch.

He had gone to visit Vera every day for the last two weeks. But she was frightened of him, and Ralphie was also. He did not understand why they would be but they were. Still he clung to the idea that they were not, and that everything would resolve itself.

“I got him the chairs” he thought. “That’s good though – that’s good.”

And he nodded and looked about the room.

He stood up and put his parka on and looked outside.

When he was young his father and he would go out to the Salvation Army for Christmas dinner. Now that it was the third week in December he thought of this. He thought of what would happen to Willie if he was no longer here.

“I am the true vine – no one comes to the Father except by me,” he remembered suddenly.

It was strange to have been told that. He had never been told anything like that before.

And suddenly he picked up the shotgun and blew a hole in the wall.

He left the house and went to visit Vera. It was for one thing only. He wanted her help in changing the boy’s name. To make the boy anonymous in the place he had to live. Bines had been thinking about this for months but Vera thought that it had all come about because of her positive influence over him.

“It’d be better for Willie if his name was changed,” he said.

Of course it would,” she said. “He should really have his mother’s name.

“Why don’t you write down for me what you can
about your feelings for your wife and child,” she said, “and also about your father. I think if you did that then I might be able to help you out – well, at least we might be able to get some feeling for what is going on.”

“It’d be better for Willie,” he said, “better if his name was changed.”

That is all he said.

“You came from a dysfunctional family,” Vera said, looking at him seriously.

“I don’t know – don’t know that there,” Bines said.

Vera took the time, over three hours, to explain to him exactly where she thought he had come from.

Bines sat listening to this. Yes, it was all true, in a way. And he had never met a person like Vera before, who was so sure of herself when it came to someone else. He was only certain that in a way it was true.

And it was at this time that Bines, who was beset by pain in his left side, which he tried to hide even from himself, wrote his own story.

Vera published it later as part of her text, almost verbatim.

I was born in 1963. And there was a storm. Dad brought the horse up to put my mom in the sleigh. Then we went across the river. At the time there wasn’t a bridge until you went five miles or more and the car won’t go in a storm –

Some people were born in the hospital that night but I was born in the sleigh by Dr. Hennessey. My father was three sheets to the wind at the time as far as I was told
about it. And had a big party. That he asked people to see me. Like the three wise men. (ha)

My old man was wounded in Korea and had a plate in his head that was as big as a saucer.

I think he was scared for my mom at the time, and didn’t know what road to take or what to do.

And to please Vera he wrote:

I come from a dysfunctional family. I got mixed up in a lot a trouble.

I liked to hurt people for a long time. I was that way.

My mother was Joe Walsh’s sister. And she was the prettiest girl my old man said about it.

I used to sing for men who came to the house. And I could walk across the table filled with wine bottles and ketchup and not touch one – and I had a trick where I could jump to the counter and get a beer out of the fridge and come back, without touching the floor. That was my best trick in those days.

I have a little boy who is sick. And now I see.

The story went on for another three pages, written in big looping handwriting with words misspelled, crossed out, and written over.

And when Bines brought this story to her he was very pleased – to please her.

One of the words he had written and crossed out and rewritten was “unconditional” because this is what Frances had said to him about his love for his father. But since he never mentioned the word “love,” Vera took this to mean that his family didn’t love – and that love
was replaced by the violence of a domineering father. Which proved her case in a way about the things she at this moment believed – that the idea of love comes with being able to articulate love, which to Vera was part of the prominent lexicon of progressive thought.

But, the man told Andrew, slowly and by degrees, something happened. And Bines did not speak to Ralphie in the same way – that selfless way he had of atoning for himself.

“Look,” he said to Ralphie one afternoon, “if you dislike the mill – if it pollutes us – I can get some dynamite and you can blow a few pipes up. That will shut it down for a month or so. We can go there tonight.”

Ralphie was too amazed to say anything. He sat in his shop with his lips pressed together. Yet with Bines standing over him, he felt that this was some kind of a test. He did not know how this was, but he saw the cold sheets of snow on the roof of the building across the street – and when a moment ago he had been delighted to look out the window, now the atmosphere had changed to a drab and sunless afternoon.

There was silence as Bines waited for an answer.

“Well, it’s a suggestion you should think of,” Bines said. “Think of — if people do things to you, do things to them. That’s not my rule, that’s God’s rule or somethin, isn’t it?”

He seemed angry, so Ralphie didn’t press him. But he had begun to see something, like the other side of a leaf, and the curious patterns therein.

The next afternoon Bines came back and said that he had not been thinking right – that he missed Joe Walsh – and he smiled again in the same selfless way, and Ralphie felt relieved. He said that he was pressured by something, and had to think things through. And before when he had to think things through he often went to Joe Walsh and they would talk.

His voice had a kindness in it – and Ralphie only smiled slightly, as if he was afraid he might have said something wrong.

But Bines no longer conferred respect over “important topics” such as the environment. When once he listened to Ralphie, now he no longer was the same. And Ralphie was frightened to argue with him, and Bines knew this.

“I don’t agree,” he would say calmly when Ralphie was explaining something.

“You don’t?”

Bines would shrug and turn away, while Ralphie would become flustered and smile.

Ralphie would sit at home trying to think of how to get about this – how to avoid Bines’ arguments without getting into trouble.

And when he looked at Adele, he knew that she sensed this.

He was enmeshed now in Bines’ power. In the dark bolt-black eyes.

This side of Bines’ nature seemed to have come through.

A new fact began to emerge. Bines was jealous of Ralphie’s other friends.

“Why do you hang around with them?” he would say. “They wouldn’t do anything for ya – anything for ya–”

“I just play bridge with them on Saturday nights.”

“Ya, bridge – well – they’d do nothin for ya.”

One of the men Ralphie played bridge with was the man who took out Andrew’s mother. And he remembered both Ralphie and Bines at this time. He remembered Bines driving past them one night when they were leaving the rec centre after a game of bridge – a game Ralphie played exceptionally well.

Bines made a U-turn near the garage and came into the lot.

“What are you doing?” he said to Ralphie.

Ralphie smiled and looked about. The sky above them was black and empty – and pitiless in knowing all the things we do not know.

“I just had a game of cards,” Ralphie said.

Bines looked at him, then at the other men.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Ralphie said to Bines, as if to appease him.

But Bines just drove off, scattering ice in the dark.

Andrew did not care so much about this anecdote at first, but slowly, like all anecdotes about Bines, it had a peculiar aspect to it which showed the total character.

Andrew had learned all of this from the man: Bines had struggled to ease the pain in his left arm by taking Aspirin all the time.

Then he went to meet Rils. He arrived in a snowstorm and came into the room. Now that he was here, Rils was almost shocked to see him.

“Where were you?” he said.

“Busy,” he said.

Gary Percy Rils, who Bines had first met in Calgary.

“Damn stupid to meet him –” Bines often said.

Rils had always in a way been Bines’ provider when he was out west, and therefore Bines was obligated to help him. He was obligated to help him also because Bines was a powerful man, and this made
him
a powerful man, and those at the prison were watching and waiting to see what would happen.

“I can get ya off the river,” Bines said, sitting down. “But I can’t promise ya nothing.”

“Ya, well, I want to go back out west – it’s no fun here,” Rils said.

“No fun – no, don’t suppose it is,” Bines said. “Don’t suppose it is –”

Bines’ look had changed from when Lucy last saw
him. Neither Vera nor Ralphie would recognize his look now – it was filled with hatred. His eyes were bolt-black and filled with darkness, which he must have delighted in. His expression was one of fundamental nonlife.

Rils did not look at him, however. He took on the aspect of bored disinterest in what Bines was saying. “I need a shotgun, I need a walkie-talkie, I need a scanner. I need a coat and boots and hat – I want a knife.”

“Sure,” Bines said. “Ya’ll be well-camouflaged with that–”

“I can’t go downtown without a shotgun,” Rils said, staring at Lucy.

“No, you shouldn’t go walking around town without one. That’s no good, is it?”

Rils looked at him quickly.

“Ya can’t have my shotgun – but I’ll see about one,” Bines said. “See if I can get you one.”

He said nothing more while Rils told his story of being in Kingston penitentiary.

The only problem now was money, could Bines get him some money.

“I don’t know if I can get ya no money,” Bines said.

But there was all this jewellery that he had. He had a thousand dollars’ worth of jewellery – some of it was broken but most of it was good, and he would give it to Bines for six hundred dollars.

“Don’t want it,” Jerry said.

Sparks flew out of a chimney two or three houses down and snapped off in the air.

“A bargain – a bargain,” Rils said, his voice carrying a tone of being stung.

“Don’t want it,” Bines said.

“Don’t trust me?”

“Don’t want it.”

“Why don’t you – I was your friend when you needed one – I was there when you needed me!”

“Don’t want it.”

Bines had met him in Calgary. For when you go anywhere, in the middle of the night, who do you go to but to those who will have you.

Alvin had been going back and forth carting things to Rils and the old dog followed him up and down stairs, and now sat wagging its tail at the door. It would hobble back downstairs when Alvin went, clicking its long nails on the tile. Alvin doted on it and fed it toast and jam and called it “sugar foot.” And no matter how deeply it slept, once Alvin left the room it would lift itself up and hobble behind him, only to lie down again where Alvin sat.

That the old dog did this, hopping along on its lame feet and wagging its matted tail, looking up shamefully from one person to another as if trying to find a human it could understand, bothered Bines. That is, he could
not stand to think that Rils would torment Alvin in front of his old lame dog, or the dog in front of Alvin.