Hold Fast (18 page)

That was brilliant on my part, wasn't it? Shit, sometimes I haven't got a clue.

I didn't try any more of the wise stuff. Even though I didn't much enjoy having him just lying there like that, I kept quiet and left things as they was. I knew what it's like being mad and people bugging you. The radio was on. I tried to settle down and listen to that.

After a long time, he turned over all of a sudden and spoke to me. “It's just that I don't know what's going to happen.” It came out the same as if we'd never stopped the conversation at all.

I knew anything I said I had to be careful. “Is it because you're scared of your father?”

“No.” Very quick.

“You sure?”

“No, I'm not scared. I think now it's like I got something to show that he can't always control everything I do anymore. And if he does get mad and turn savage on me, then he'll know that maybe I'll try running off again. I think I can stand up to him and say just what I think.”

“Then whata ya worried about?”

“How things are going to turn out. What's going to happen between Mom and him. How we're all going to get along once I go back.”

“It'll work out,” I told him.

“Maybe.”

“Sure you're not scared anymore. You'll face up to en, that's the main thing.”

“No, it's not the main thing. If we're still not going to get along, what bloody difference will it make if I ever go back.” The way he was saying it so fast, I could tell he must a been thinking about it for a long time. “If I still can never talk to him except to fight and argue, then I might as well stay here and rot in these goddamn woods. Not being scared — it's not the main friggin thing at all.”

We wasn't long in the sleeping bags, once I knew it was daylight. I wanted an early start. The sooner we got away and the less people that seen me driving the car the better.

Overnight it had turned off even milder and rained. The rain left most of the campground bare except for the scattered patches of snow under the trees. By the time it got light, the rain had stopped, but the sky was still dull and miserable. A good time to leave. Poor weather sending the campers home.

It took us fifteen minutes and we had everything cleared away and our knapsacks in the car. A few cookies and the last of the hard bread done for something to eat, a few mouthfuls of water for something to wash it down with.

The one rabbit left hanging up in the shelter — I hauled it down to go with us. I wasn't about to leave it there so that it would never be of any use to anyone. The rabbit slips could stay where they was. Strung out like that, they couldn't do any harm. Some mainlander camping there next summer would find them perhaps and tell
a park warden and they'd be complaining about it for a few days and then it'd all be forgot.

That was it then. We had cleaned up around. We left the place pretty much like we found it. Going off in a rush because our minds wasn't on being there anymore.

Back on the highway there wasn't many cars on the go. Some came up from behind and passed, but not many head on to us. Like before too, the beanie pulled down over the head, the sunglasses on. I done around forty-five most of the way. On long stretches with nothing coming, a bit more. But no fancy stuff. You can't relax when you're driving and still have two and a half years to go to get your licence.

Only thing really on my mind was the time taking to get the car back where it belonged. In one piece. Back so that it could be parked there just like it never went anywhere in the first place. That it wasn't stole, just borrowed.

There I was — at it again. Trying to cover it up.

“Who we tryin to kid about stealin, Curtis?”

“What?” A far-off what.

“Never mind.”

He was all in his own world. I felt sorry for the fellow. I knew what was going through his mind. I thought I knew what I would do in his place. Then, I was thinking, that's all right for you to say. You won't have to put up with it anymore. You haven't got to go back and face what's going to be there for him to face.

We made it, turned off the highway and down the road to the airport. Only thing was I fooled up on the last of it
and went into the parking lot the wrong way. I drove in the exit. Darn it and all the arrows pointing at us. I had to stop, whip her in reverse and back up out of the parking lot, then go around and come in the right way. And then what, but the stupid spot where the car was left before was taken up. I had to squeeze her into the nearest one I could find. After a couple of weeks in England, though, Mrs. McKay wouldn't remember a little thing like where her car had been parked exactly.

Would you believe it? I banged into the rear of the car parked ahead of me. After going about a hundred miles and then to smack into someone on the last three inches. There was no dent or nothing on his bumper because we was going too slow. We checked. But just the idea of the thing — to fool it up on the last three inches.

We wasn't about to hang around the car for very long. We hauled out the knapsacks and put them on the ground. Then I dug out a scrap of paper from the glove compartment and wrote off a note saying that the key would be inside the terminal at the information desk. I put the note on the dash by the driver's side so that when she came she'd see it through the windshield.

What to do with the rabbit was the next question. No way could we take it with us, and you don't go around to strangers saying, “Hey you, you want a rabbit, a dead one?”

What I done was left it there in plain sight on the bonnet of Mrs. McKay's Volkswagen. Probably after we'd gone, someone came along and took it. Or maybe nobody did and maybe he rotted there on the hood of the car. Who knows. Maybe it rained and his fur got all matted
together and he looked as ugly as sin crumpled up there. Maybe that's the way it happened and everyone who walked past the car was wondering what the hell this ugly rabbit carcass was doing on somebody's car. Looking and stinking like a pile of shit. Someone might a complained to the guard and he came out and scraped it off into a plastic bag. Turned the poor bugger of a rabbit right into a proper nuisance.

The key to the car I brought to the information desk. I told them it belonged to a Mrs. McKay and I made sure they wrote it down. I told them she would be coming in on a flight from England some time next week and she'd be coming to pick it up. Anybody might walk along and read the note in the car, so I said to buddy make sure the person's got an I.D.

We came right on then. No more fooling around. We'd run into the same security guard again if we wasn't careful. We walked the mile and a half to the highway and stuck out our thumbs, both of us anxious to get the last of it over.

It's tough to say just how I felt as the last car we got a ride with kept getting closer and closer to Marten. It was some kind of happiness about being back, but along with that was mixed up a whole lot of other things.

For fifteen miles after you turns down from the highway to get to Marten there's a stretch of nothing but trees and a few ponds. It seemed like forever getting through and to make things worse, the fellow that was driving the car and his wife who was with him knew who we was. They owned a grocery store in Spencer's Harbour, and they seen my face in their store a good many times before.

They was right full of questions, neither one of which I wanted to answer. I felt like telling them that it was none of their business, but the most I done was nod my head, mumble something, and make out I was too sick to talk. That would send the rumors flying when they got back home, needn't you worry, about me being sick. The old woman's mouth wouldn't leave the phone once she got inside her house.

Curtis, next to me in the back seat, hardly said a word, just like before. Hardly so much as a grunt.

It's hard to compare it to anything, what it felt like when we started seeing houses and saying to ourselves this is it, we're here. It wasn't much like any other time I ever came home. For one thing I never was away that long before. And for another, everyone was bound to have a load of questions, just like buddy and his wife who was giving us the ride.

We passed people on the road that saw my face and I wouldn't doubt turned around and stared their eyes out of socket after we was gone by. The fellow we was in with would a let us off at the intersection if it had been any other day with any other hitchhikers. But no, not this time. Just being nosy, he turned up the other road and stopped right in brest of Aunt Flo's gate.

I tried to make it look a bit normal, getting out of the car and opening the gate. I wanted to be inside the yard, at least, before all the commotion started. But I didn't have it open and Curtis didn't even have his knapsack out of the car when I seen the curtains move across the living-room window and Brent's face show up for about two seconds behind the glass.

Then I figured it'd start — the royal fuss. I could imagine the string of yells as one told the other, the holy lot of hurrying to get out the door and run and meet me.

But there was none of that.

As I came up the walkway, I seen Aunt Flo open the front door and I could see it was going to be worse than anything I ever dreaded. Her face was red and miserable from crying. I wished to god as hard as ever I could that somehow the meeting could be different.

She didn't come running like I expected and wrap her arms around me and squeeze the guts outa me and smother me with kisses all over my face. She only stood there in the doorway and tried to smile. Brent alongside of her, saying nothing, as if I was a brother he heard about but never seen before. Both of them making it all so tough on me coming home.

When I reached the door, she took her arms and put them around my shoulders and pulled me into her. Her eyes was filled up with tears.

It was all too hard and too much pain. I grabbed hold of Brent as I broke away and went into the house. I poked a few fingers into his ribs to wipe out the stupid business of moping around. Enough was enough.

“Hey you, I'm back again. No more peace for you, buddy. Your pest of a brother is back to torment the life outa ya.”

He drew back, a bit of a smile came through, but nothing that made him look in the least bit happy.

“Oh, Michael,” Aunt Flo said, “I've been so worried about you two. Where have you been? I was so sick with
worry. Why in the world didn't you let me know you was all right? I thought you might be dead.”

“It's all right. It's all right now. You knows me better than that. You knew I'd be all right.”

“But why did you have to run away like that? Why did you have to go and not tell anybody? And Curtis, too. I spose his mother don't even know he's okay?”

“No.”

“I've got to phone right now.”

She rushed off down the hall to the telephone, leaving the three of us in the living room.

There was a stupid quiet. There was no need of it. I had to say to him, “So whata you been doin, eh Brent? Whata you been up to lately?”

“Nothin.” He said it still like he had half his senses.

“What's wrong with ya? You looks to me like you're sick.”

“Nothin.”

I thought of it then all of a sudden that Grandfather wasn't around.

“Where's Poppy?” I asked him. “Down on the wharf?”

“He's in the room, in hes bed.”

“Wha's he got — the flu?”

“No.”

“What's wrong then? Hes back bad again?”

“No…the doctor says Poppy's dying. He says maybe he's got only two or three more days to live.”

All this is dumb, friggin well dumb!

Two fellows runs away and then the best grandfather I ever could a had is dying on me.

I does stuff and not in a million friggin years do things work out. I'm forever left with something that I don't want to happen. I don't know why the hell we ever bothered to come back atall. We should a stayed in the friggin woods like Curtis said and rotted.

The whole friggin works of everything is screwed up. The whole friggin world.

And me trying to make some sense out of it. Not have myself messed up because still another person is almost dead. Trying to take it like the bloody brave ass I'm sposed to be. And how bloody far do I get?

I got nobody now here to help me. They're gone. And this is one time I don't figure there's enough of them left in me to hold fast.

Ihad seen an old person sick and dying before. It hasn't been that long since Grandmother Hodder died. But we all knew for a long time that it was going to happen.

As I walked down the hall to the door of Grandfather's room, a sick smell of liniment filled up my nostrils. I walked slower so I would get used to it. The door was partway open. I came to it, took hold of the old painted knob and pushed in. Except for the smell, the room was the way I remembered. I knew the green palms in the wallpaper where the edges in some places didn't match. Every picture on the wall I knew. The ships and the old picture of King George. And the wooden model of the schooner on the bureau.

The bed with Grandfather in it. He was coughing and his body heaved up as I went in. He didn't hear my steps. He was lying with his back to me, his white hair the only thing that could be seen above the covers. I stopped and looked. His hair was longer than ever it was before, curled up in damp clumps on the back of his neck. He laid there, moving only when the coughing forced him to. His
head sank back down on the pillow each time and he didn't stir.

I walked around the bed, to the other side where he would be able to see me. He didn't hear my footsteps still. His eyes didn't open. I looked at his face on the pillow and I seen how old and tired it was. He didn't look like the man who had me listening for hours to his stories. He wasn't the one I had seen hundreds of times heave a cast-net and haul it to shore loaded with caplin. He wasn't the same fisherman atall.