For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down (7 page)

Bines paused and lit a cigarette. He smiled and touched the boy lightly on the knee once more.

“What happened?” Ralphie asked.

Bines drew on the cigarette and looked about.

“Everyone knows what happened,” Bines said. “It has been passed down from generation to generation to all the smart deer in the woods.”

“What happened?” Willie asked.

“The hunter aimed his rifle, and suddenly the ground moved – the ground under him – and the buck come up, from its hiding place under the snow, right under the hunter’s feet – under his feet – everyone knows that – and snorting and roaring ran onto the river. The doe turned and jumped away, and led her fawn to safety.

“And the hunter made a mistake, mistake there – hunters always do sooner or later – I mean make a mistake there. He was so angry he didn’t think straight.

“‘I got you now,’ he yelled, and he ran onto the river too.

“Now, that river could hold the buck, and it could hold the hunter. But it could not hold both together. And the buck turned and stood, waiting for him to come further out. The old buck never moved. And if he was scared he never showed it.

“And when the hunter got close the buck smiled – and the ice broke, and both of them went together – down together into the wild rapids – clinging to each other as they were swept away. And this story was passed down. It’s a passed-down story.

“Now the end is going to come – in one fashion or another,” Bines said, softly, and again he turned to Ralphie and smiled. “We all know, the end will come. You either face your hunters or run from them.”

After the boy was asleep Bines began to ask Ralphie questions. He asked about Ralphie’s assets – the shop. He wanted to know how much the computers Ralphie sold cost. He knew Ralphie’s family had been wealthy, and it was a wealth Bines could not fathom.

“You mean yer dad just bought that sailboat, like that?”

“Yes,” Ralphie admitted. “Just before he died, he bought a huge sailboat and left it downriver. He never used it. And it rotted. Mom never wanted it, nor would
she let me sell it or use it. After much indecision, she gave it to Vera. But Vera couldn’t stand to look at it – Vera thinks all of these things are a part of privilege and doesn’t want them. Besides Vera didn’t like Dad. I may as well tell you that.”

Bines reflected on this a moment.

“My old man was a cook on the tug for a while,” he said, nodding. “And I got to go on a ride one day – one day.” He smiled. He then thought of something else.

He said that he liked Vera, that she was the smartest person he had ever met. “So if she didn’t want to use that sailboat – she must be right,” he said.

“She’s very bright,” Ralphie agreed.

Bines then said, “I don’t like Nevin though – he’s said things against me.”

There was an uncomfortable pause.

“You wouldn’t bother Nevin?” Ralphie said.

Bines stared at Ralphie a moment, quizzically.

“I’ll never bother Nevin – I promise,” he said. “Nevin has a lot of money too, does he?”

“I don’t think he has very much of anything, any more,” Ralphie said. “He once had about fifty thousand. But I think all of that is gone.”

Bines was quiet for a moment. Then he smiled. He said he wanted to know why Ralphie played bridge, why was it considered such a good game, and who played it with him. When Ralphie told him why he thought it was the one great card game and the names of some of the
people who played with him, Bines said, “I bet you could teach me to play, Ralphie – I could learn. Loretta’d be some surprised at that – me playing bridge.”

He looked at Ralphie, as if Ralphie should be as surprised and happy at this new idea as he seemed to be. Ralphie smiled, but he know the smile gave him away.

“So,” Bines said, his tone just slightly less enthusiastic, “when could you teach me?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Ralphie said. “I play on Saturday nights. I’m pretty busy with things – I have new computers coming into the shop – I mean soon. But I could teach you.”

“Sure,” Bines said, without flinching, “I could come down to see you on Thursday night – and learn to play bridge – and meet yer other friends. I never learned much – I hear it’s a good pastime. A good pastime, anyway.”

And then he nodded to no one at all.

In the middle of the night Jerry left the house, and his son. He moved along the road in his truck, and felt the late dark cold upon his skin. The river was silent, ice and gravel in the ditches.

At 2:00 he was at the house of his friend, Vincent Paul.

Vincent was still up, sitting in the living room, and one of the women was in the kitchen. There was a young man on the floor in the corner.

When Jerry came in Vincent looked at his wife. Vincent had a huge beer gut, his hands were huge, and he wore a bracelet on his left wrist.

Vincent spoke Micmac to the young man in the corner, who looked about suddenly.

Then the woman said something in a merry, humorous voice.

For years Vincent and he had been friends, selling moose meat and deer and thousands of pounds of salmon taken from Indian nets the government couldn’t control. Jerry did not care that Vincent slaughtered out of season in the name of moral retribution.

Jerry sat down on the arm of the couch with the door half-opened behind him. The moon played down on the half-finished house that as yet had no front steps. The light in the kitchen was warm, and some of it splashed on Jerry’s pants. When he spoke the young man stopped laughing. “Have you heard from him?” he said.

“No, no,” Vincent said, absorbed as he was in his television program. Jerry hardly ever watched television and had never understood the fascination for it. Just as he had never understood the absorption or the fascination over hockey or baseball.

Vincent was wearing an Indian emblem about his head, in the new-found politicism that had emerged over the last few months because of aboriginal concerns in Ottawa. And this too seemed to justify a morally hurt expression on his face. But Jerry knew all the
ways there were to deceive yourself in order to trample on a friend.

He took out a pint of rum and shook it, holding it lightly in his hand, first at Vincent, then at the boy, and then at the woman. The woman took a drink. Jerry smiled. Vincent yawned. There is no moralizing like the moralizing of the damned. And Jerry knew this quite well.

When he got up to go Vincent looked sideways at him and cleared his throat.

“See you, dere, Jerry – ya, see you,” he said when Jerry left. Out in the dark he heard the boy speak and Vincent’s soft chuckle.

Jerry smiled as he had learned to do whenever he felt danger or was in pain.

There was nothing that was not calculated in Jerry Bines. He was drawn to Ralphie now – because Ralphie exhibited traits that he wished he himself had. But in the strangest way he was also naive – he thought Ralphie would not like him. So he had to try to learn how to speak about “important” things, though every time he tried to talk about these things he saw Ralphie become embarrassed, and he didn’t know what to do.

If anything bothered him, this did. Why did Ralphie look away when he mentioned he didn’t shoot the moose – or when he got him the wheelchairs for the
children? He felt, in both instances, he must have done something wrong. He had had to go to Rogersville to get the chairs and spent half the day in the police station because they wondered why he was there. Perhaps this is what Ralphie found out.

“I like children,” he’d told Ralphie. “I always have.”

Not only was this true, but he’d thought that this was the ingredient which would clear everything up. But Ralphie, for some reason, didn’t seem to believe him.

He didn’t know why, so he had invited Ralphie up to meet the boy – but again the same look of being surprised and out of place had come over him.

He had tried to glean some information about the feasibility study too – about the job consultant position Ralphie had, and late one afternoon last month he went to Moncton and waited on a side street, staring at the lights in an old stone building.

Then at about seven in the evening a man came out and walked by him. Jerry took a breath, shrugged, and got out of the truck. He grabbed him by the collar and hustled him behind the wall.

“Don’t be stealing people’s ideas – that’s worse than killin someone,” Bines had said as they moved.

The man had no idea what he was talking about. He tried to move but Jerry held him firm.

“You ruined his life,” Bines said. “You stole his ideas and ruined all his work – it all went for nothing – that’s no good at all.”

“Who, who?” the man said.

But Bines could not say “who,” he could only leave it at that. And so he did.

By morning it was snowing softly. It had covered the stumps at the edge of his property and Jerry was looking out the window and contemplating something. His little boy sat at the table eating his cereal.

Bines was in his pants and T-shirt, which showed him to be far stronger than he looked with his shirt on. There was a frown on his face as he watched the snow coming down and being drawn away in white circular wisps by the wind.

“Yer mother still go to that church?” he asked.

“Yes,” William said. William was shy of him also, and he knew this. Though he had never touched the boy or laid a hand on him the boy had heard so many stories about him that Bines would sometimes see his boy shaking slightly when he walked up to him.

And it didn’t matter if he made him the wagon or got him the sprocket for the bicycle, or, sometimes, though only on occasion, patted his head.

“I got ya some Freezies on a deal – I got a deal on Freezies – you want a Freezie?” Bines said.

The boy looked at him a second. Freezies were for the summer, but Bines didn’t consider this.

The boy nodded.

“Ya, I got a Freezie for ya,” Bines said, going to the
fridge and taking one out of the freezer. He bit it open with his teeth and passed it to his son.

“There ya go – Freezie for ya,” he smiled. “Freezie for ya.”

Then he sat down at the table cautiously, and drummed his fingers up and down.

“Do you know how many planets there are – there are billions of planets,” he said. “I read that in a book – you tell yer mom.”

The reason Bines was liked was this: in most ways in his life he had willed himself to be, and made people conform to his will – not so much by physical strength as by a brutal nature, and was surprised when they did not conform, was, in fact, puzzled if they did not. And this was something that Adele had seen and that those who had come up against him, even when he was fifteen and at Kingsclear, had seen.

A few days later he went to Vera to talk about his son.

He looked at her and smiled slightly. He asked her if she would help him get Willie to the hospital in Halifax as soon as possible – any delay was dangerous for the boy.

“I can see about it,” Vera said.

“See about it – that’s good – see about it,” he said.

“Life hasn’t treated you very well, has it?” Vera said, and suddenly she smiled, staring at his callused hands and a scar above his eyes, the tattoo of a star on the skin between his thumb and forefinger.

“No, no – not so bad,” he said.

“Well, you’ve had a much harder life than most,” Vera said.

The day was rigidly cold, the sky blue, the trees with naked branches soared above the town. The streets were bare and yet cold filthy snow clung to their edges. It was November and the colours of Christmas decorations were starting to appear about the street.

“No, no,” Bines said, “my own fault – own fault there – where’s Ralphie – huntin?”

She stared at him quietly. “No, he doesn’t hunt,” she said.

“No, don’t hunt no more very much meself – very much – see those little deer – seems a shame to shoot them.”

And Vera smiled slightly.

“Anyone to do that to a woman should be shot,” he said, lifting his right hand just slightly to the poster behind her head showing a woman and a child cowering while a man was about to strike them.

It doesn’t stop, the poster read, it just gets worse.

“Oh yes,” she said, turning to look quickly behind her. “Yes,” she said.

“Woman can’t defend herself – herself as much,” he said, contemplating the picture again. “Old man – my old man was a rough old cocksucker,” he said.

Vera was surprised he had said that word but he was so unassuming when he said it that she smiled slightly.

“Mister man,” he said but his eyes were far away, as if he was thinking of something and didn’t realize she was there.

By their meeting he found out that she had contacted the hospital but there was nothing she could do.

“Everything that can be done is being done – Mr. Bines refuses to realize this,” she was told.

When she explained this to him, Bines simply nodded.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

But he didn’t answer. And then he spoke of other things.

What he wanted to know about was Nevin. And when he found out that Vera was keeping Hadley away from him he was disturbed.

“Well, maybe you should let him see the little girl – little girl there,” Bines said to her. “Straighten him around, he’s all upset about something.”

“Nevin has to come to grips with himself,” Vera said. “I can’t help him anymore.”

“No, no,” Bines said, “I see.”

“His father was a bully patriarch who terrified him, like mine was to me, and he has to come to grips with it.”

“What’s that?” Jerry said.

“A man who dominates others,” Vera said.

“Oh ya – that’s no good,” Bines said. “No good.”

He looked away from her. And suddenly she said: “I’m afraid of what will happen to Hadley. It’s what almost happened to me.”

“What did?” Bines asked.

“Incest.”

Bines was quiet then. He looked at her a moment and said nothing, but things went over in his brain like tumblers in a safe. Incest – he wasn’t quite sure what it was. He scratched his jaw and looked about. “You stick with me,” he said, “and no one’ll ever ever bother you again.”

But he didn’t know what else to say.

“Hadley doesn’t like her father anyway – she’s frightened of men,” she said, then paused a moment. “I’m not saying your little boy is frightened of you.”

“Don’t know,” Bines said. “Hope not – hope not.” He cleared his throat and moved his hand through his hair.

She had a small display of books along one wall of her office and he looked at them. The titles to him were so obscure and grandiose. He was thinking of buying his son a book. He looked at the titles wondering if he could catch a glimpse of a title his son would like, and when she caught him doing it he lowered his eyes.

For all the times they met Bines kept his answers short and to some point he wanted to make. He would, in fact, answer either yes or no to most things.

Vera would sit opposite him, staring at him as he spoke. But slowly he felt he had given away too much information about certain things, and not enough about others, and this bothered him.

One night he gave her information the impact of which she probably did not fully grasp. He spoke about the tractor-trailer filled with cigarettes that had been stolen in 1986. He spoke about Joe Walsh being investigated because he was its driver and did not report it stolen for forty-eight hours. He spoke of Joe’s heart condition, and his losing his job.

“The man who set it up had to turn around – turn around and save Joe – couldn’t let him take the blame.”

“I see,” she said, but she was far more interested in Jerry Bines and did not know who this man was.

“What about 1977?” she said. “What started the trouble that year – your father died? In what way do you think of it, looking back.”

Bines had quit school in grade five. This was the first thing Vera learned that proved her stereotype. And he had turned pro at eighteen and had four fights – his weight varied from middle to above light heavy, and he fought light heavies to heavies. But he wasn’t disciplined and at least twice he entered the ring half-drunk. The
only thing he had on him that was really above average was a left hook like a Philadelphia club fighter, but he was always off balance when he threw it so the other fighter could move to his right and counter Bines on the top of the head. So he quit the ring. And, the man said, he was responsible for a number of things which he did not tell Vera about and a number of things which he did.

But surely Adele knew. And this is why, concerned for Ralphie, she finally drove up to see Bines.

The man wasn’t sure when this was. It could have been as late as the third week of December.

There was the house that she hadn’t visited since she was a little girl, and a house in some ways which she had always feared and in it a person she had always feared also.

A dog snarled in the cold night. If it had been the third week in December the shotgun hole in the wall would have been made – so it had to be that late. Because Adele asked him about it.

Bines was sitting in his sock feet by the stove, and he had the scanner on, listening to the police broadcasts.

“Oh, that,” he said, about the shotgun hole. “Well, I gotta fix that. I’m trying to quit this smoking racket – I have this gum – it don’t do a thing for me – just makes my teeth numb.” And he smiled at her. “I also got a beeper – cost me a hundred dollars. You’re only spose to smoke during the beeps – I never figured it out.”

And he took it out of his pocket and showed it to her.

“That’s what I should get,” she said.

“Here,” he said, handing it to her immediately.

“I can’t take it,” she said.

“Go on – it’s yours – yours,” he said. “Quit smokin – it’s yours.”

Then he got up to get her tea.

“I don’t need any tea,” she said shyly.

“Well, you don’t drink – so I’ll make you some tea,” he said. And he went into the kitchen.

Always one act for Bines proved his ultimately generous nature, which in the common man would never be seen as anything more than civil.

Bines was struggling at this time. Of course at this time he was almost blind in his left eye but no one knew it.

This was close to the end, so there was a lot going on that Adele did not know.

But he desperately wanted to make a good impression on her – because of Vera who he had fallen in love with as one falls in love with his teacher, as university sophomores idolize their professors.

Of course, Bines did not know quite how to make a good impression on anyone. He had qualities greater and lesser than the qualities it took to make oneself socially acceptable.

He had been beaten all his life, and beat back. He had enemies everywhere, and like most of the wounded he had always kept himself physically fit to ward off those who might come against him.

“I don’t want Ralphie to get into trouble, Jerry,” she
said haltingly, “so I’m coming to you as a favour – for Joe and Rita, if they were alive.”

“Trouble – Ralphie wouldn’t get into any trouble,” he said, and then with the same unfathomable sense of self he had, a sense of self that always in some important way disregards others, he moved his hand through his coarse hair and smiled at her.

When he went into the kitchen she noticed that his grandmother was lying on the couch, on her back.

“Is your gram sick?” she said.

The wind howled; there was snow against the window, and an old potted plant sat in the corner.

“I don’t know – check her pulse. She’s been drunk as a loon the last three days. Most likely still with us,” he said. And then he went into the corner and brought out a steel ball and joint.

“This is what they took out of her hip – and replaced it with a plastic one – lift that.”

“It’s heavy,” Adele said.

“She’s been dragging that about with her for five years – and look at this.” Here he lifted the old lady up.

“Don’t wake her,” Adele said.

“See that – she’s got a brace from her bum to her neck – if she doesn’t wear it she bends in two – it’s a sorry racket –”

When they went out into the night air, the stars had spread their canopy over the heavens above the crowded trees and furiously frozen wastes.

Jerry put his arm around her, the first time he had
done this since they were children, and pulled her toward him.

“Come here – I want to show you my pet.”

And he took her to the pen by the shed.

It was the dog that had snarled at her. But it was not a dog, it was a coyote.

“I was drivin on my Ski-doo and came across it eating on a fawn, so I run it over and brought it home – and it gets up and starts to walk away – so I grabbed it by the tail and threw it in here. I don’t know what to do with it.”

“Why don’t you let it go?”

“Let it go,” he said.

Adele nodded, her scarf wrapped about her face, so that only her eyes could be seen.

Bines opened the pen, and the coyote slouched on its belly as all coyotes do and then dashed towards the field.

“There ya go, Delly,” he said. “There ya go.”

And Adele could not help but feel what so many others felt when they met him, that she was in the presence of an extraordinary man. For what reason she would never really discover.