Just Beneath My Skin (14 page)

IN THE CAR ON THE
way back to his house, Reverend McNeil says he wouldn't mind going to see Mom for a little bit.

“What for?” I ask him.

“I want to talk to her,” Jake's dad says. “I want to make sure that's she's okay with you going to Halifax with Jake. What do you think of that?”

“Can I stay in Middlebridge?” I ask him.

“I think,” says Jake's dad, “it would be better if you came with me, and we talked to her together.”

I don't say anything. I stare out at the river and the houses as we drive by. After a while Jake's dad turns on the radio, and we listen to gospel music. The song they are playing is “Amazing Grace.” I know it, because Irene Lang sings it to me sometimes when I visit her house in the afternoons after school.

JOHNNY'S PLACE LOOKS DESERTED. THE
Pinto is sitting where I left it in the driveway, and the curtains in the cabin are drawn. The sun is shining through the trees and the water is rushing down over the falls. It seems so peaceful.

Except Johnny could be standing behind any one of those windows with his twelve-gauge shotgun pointed at my head and I wouldn't know it. I step into Johnny's yard and stop again, waiting for the blast. It doesn't come.

Maybe he's asleep, I think.

I take another step. And another. And I am almost to the car when I realize something.

I don't have the keys.

They're still in the pocket of my jacket, and my jacket is in Johnny's cabin on the sofa where I left it.

PART III

MY GRANDAD WAS IN THE
war after he married my grandmother. He didn't talk about it, other than to say it was a tangledup-mess-of-goddamned misery.

He had a Nazi flag he'd taken when he marched into BergenBelsen with the Allied soldiers. He brought it home to burn, but didn't get around to it. My father said he found it once in the attic, and it had blood stains on it. My father also said he had seen a documentary about Bergen-Belsen on
TV
when he was a teenager. He knew from his mother my grandfather had been there, but when he asked about it my grandfather refused to talk.

“Consider yourself lucky,” he said, “that you never have to see what I've seen. That devil you and your mother talk about ain't got nothing on what those people were up to. The day I got down back to Canada I kissed the ground outside the train station and swore I would never leave Nova Scotia again.”

He didn't, either.

I didn't ask my grandfather about Bergen-Belsen.

I didn't ask him about the Nazi flag either, though my father told me about it and when I was sixteen I went up into the attic to see if I could find it.

I couldn't. Maybe he finally burned it after all.

When he died the following year his casket was draped in a Canadian flag, because he was a veteran and there were a bunch of legion members in uniform at his service. My grandfather was not buried in his uniform, though. He told my grandmother he didn't want it.

“Last thing I want,” my father told me he said, “is to be reminded of that goddamned place, even after I'm dead.”

My father performed his service at the Middlebridge church. My grandmother gave the eulogy, though she was seventy-five. She died herself six months later. I was a pallbearer.

The last time I saw him alive he was sick and pale in his bed. I sat with him while Nana McNeil made him some soup for supper and he told me stories about the farm. The drought in '
54
and the year there were so many wireworms the potatoes came out of the ground half eaten to nothing.

We both knew he was going to die, but he didn't mention it. “You get past your father and be whatever you want to be,” was one of the last things he told me. “Don't let them talk you into being a preacher. That life is fine for some, Jacob. But you and I see into things the way they don't. There's two ways of reading the world. Through a book, or through your own eyes. Ain't nothing wrong with either, but we all gotta figure out which way is good for us.”

A few hours later he died, though I wasn't in the room.

A few years after I also saw a special on Bergen-Belsen and the concentration camps and for the first time saw some of what my granddad might have seen. No wonder he didn't want to talk about it.

Only once in all his long years did he mention it, when he and my father were arguing about the Bible when I was twelve in my Nana's kitchen and my grandfather said, “If it were an eye for an eye we'd go over there and turn every one of those damn Germans into lamps.”

My father only shook his head. “It's not an eye for an eye. Jesus changed all that.”

“He didn't change very goddamned much,” said my grandfather. “Not very goddamned much at all.”

“Hush now,” said Nana. “We'll have none of that talk in this house.”

My grandfather only mumbled under his breath, but he didn't say any more. When the two of us went into the barn after lunch to pitch hay he said to me, “Jacob? How old are you now?”

“Twelve,” I said, not without pride.

“When you get to thirteen, remind me to tell you the secret of living.”

“Why not tell me now?”

“I said when you're thirteen.”

“I'll be thirteen in two months,” I said. “It's not very far off.”

“In that case,” said my grandfather, stopping and leaning on his pitchfork, “I'll tell you. The secret of the world is not an eye for an eye or turn the other cheek. The secret of the world is not to get in any goddamned trouble in the first place.”

With that he grunted, went back to pitching hay, and didn't speak to me for the rest of the afternoon.

WE DRIVE ALL THE WAY
from Middlebridge to North River and Mom's. I don't say a word to Jake's dad. All he does is listen to the radio. I think it's a pretty bad idea to go see Mom, especially 'cause she's probably still in a mood over Jake. But I can kind of tell when it won't do any good to try and talk somebody out of something. So I stay quiet.

When we turn onto Harmony Lake Road I wish I could jump out of the car and go running back up the road to Johnny Lang's and see if I can find Jake, and the two of us could leave for Halifax right now. But the car is moving too fast and I have my seat belt on like Jake's dad told me. If I do jump out and run away he'll come after me, so there doesn't seem to be a point. But when we pull into the yard by the house, Mom doesn't come running out to see us. I sit in the car while Jake's dad undoes his seat belt and gets out.

“Are you coming, Nathan?” he says to me.

“No, sir,” I say.

“You don't want to see your own mother?”

“I saw her last night,” I say. I think of the place in my side where she kicked me. It still hurts this morning, and when I looked at it before I got dressed it'd changed from blue to purple-yellow. “I'll stay here.”

“You come on,” says Jake's dad. “I want you to be there when I ask your mom some questions.”

“What kind of questions?”

“Like if she really wants my son to be taking care of you, and all of the things Jake told me last night.”

“Mom don't like questions much,” I tell the Reverend. “Sometimes she gets mad when you ask them.”

“Don't worry about that,” he says. “She won't get mad at me. Now come on and get out of that car.”

I do as Jake's dad asks, but I really don't want to. I'm afraid Mom'll make me stay with her, and not go with Jake to Halifax. We go to the door, and Jake's dad knocks. Nothing happens.

“I guess she isn't there,” I say.

“Now give it a minute,” Jake's dad says. He knocks again.

I am starting to think maybe we're lucky, and Mom really isn't there, when we hear her shout from inside. “Who in the fuck is it?” we hear her say.

“Carla Whynot?” says Jake's dad. There's an I-mean-whatI-say in his voice. But he isn't yelling. “It's the Reverend McNeil. Jake McNeil's father. I want to talk to you for a minute about your son.”

For the longest while I just stand there, holding my breath, hoping she won't come to the door. I'm hoping the earth will open up and swallow us whole like Irene Lang says will happen on Judgment Day when Jesus comes. Anything to keep my mom from opening the door and seeing me and the Reverend McNeil standing there on the steps like little children come to suffer unto Him.

THERE ARE TWO WAYS TO
get into Johnny's house. The first is by the side door into the kitchen, and the second the patio doors in the front of the house overlooking the river.

I choose the patio doors. I figure I can look in and see if Johnny is around before I go barging in looking for my jacket. I walk around the side of house carefully, ready to run in a second if I need to. I make it nearly the whole way around when a plane flies overhead. I don't know what it is at first, and it scares me. I stand at the corner of the cabin and wait for it to pass. It's a small plane, must be from the airport in Black River. I wonder as it flies overhead if they can look down through the trees and see Johnny's cabin sitting on the edge of the river. I'd give anything to be in a plane like that right now, away from all of this.

When it passes, I walk softly up the steps to the patio doors. At first, when I look in, I can't see anything. If Johnny is there, he could shoot me right through the glass. But then my eyes adjust to the gloom and I see the living room is empty. There are the sofas, but my jacket isn't on either of them. Maybe Johnny took it? And where is Charlie? Maybe the two of them have gone out? Or maybe they're asleep in the bedrooms.

I have to make a decision. Stay out, or go in.

I decide to go in.

THEY BURIED MY MOTHER ON
a Wednesday. A preacher from Oldsport filled in for my father. My father wore a black suit and I wore my grey one from Sunday school. Afterwards, the parishioners came back to the house. They brought cakes and cookies and potato salad and egg sandwiches and boiled ears of corn. When they left my father wrapped it all up and put it in the fridge and he told me if I wanted anything to get it for myself.

“What about you?” I said.

“I'm going to bed,” my father said, though it was only seven o'clock and still light out. “Don't forget to get up and get ready for school tomorrow.”

“It's summer,” I said. “There ain't no school.”

“Isn't,” said my father.

He went to bed and didn't get up for two days.

“
WHAT'S THE MATTER,” MOM SAYS
when we come into the house. “Jake get tired of him already?”

“Carla Whynot?” says Jake's dad. “I'm Reverend Thomas McNeil.”

“I know who you are,” says Mom. “What I wanna know is what you're doing with my kid.”

I can tell Mom has been drinking again. There are beer bottles lined up on the table. She must have went to the bootlegger with Jake's money 'cause the liquor store is closed on Sundays. She's standing there looking at us with a bottle in her hand. There's a cigarette burning in the ashtray. Now that we're here, Jake's dad looks like he doesn't know what to say. We wait the longest while, looking at Mom and not saying anything. Finally Mom tells him to take a seat. He doesn't.

“So,” she says. “I'm asking you again, what you doing with Nathan here at this time of day?”

“Well,” says Jake's dad. “Jake brought Nathan over to the house last night.”

“And where is Jake now?” Mom asks.

I wait by the door, looking back and forth between Jake's dad and Mom, who is sitting at the kitchen table. Neither of them look at me.

“He's at Johnny Lang's,” Jake's dad says. “He's getting his car to drive back to Halifax.”

“Ahuh,” my mom says. “Figured as much.”

“And he says he's taking Nathan with him. I wanted to know if you agreed to that.”

“Agreed to what?” Mom says, and lights another cigarette, though there is already one on the go in the ashtray. She does that when she's drinking.

“Agreed to let Jake take your son away from you,” says Jake's dad.

Mom nods. “I agreed last night,” she says. “But I ain't so sure this morning.”

“Jake also told me,” Jake's dad says, “that he gave you some money so that he could have Nathan.”

Mom shrugs. “He only gave me what's rightfully mine. I've been living here on peanuts and ashes. It's about time Jake gave me something to keep this place going.”

“And are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Are you fine with Jake taking away your son?” says Jake's dad.

“Like I told you,” Mom says. “That was last night.”

“And this morning?”

Mom looks at me then, standing by the door, staring back at her. “I'm not sure,” she says. “Maybe I should keep him around some more, until Jake gets on his feet.”

Jake's dad looks over at me. “What do you think of that, Nathan?”

I don't say anything. Mom nods and takes another swig of her beer.

“It's a little early,” says Jake's dad, “to be drinking, isn't it?”

“Don't you tell me what to do. I ain't no relation to you, and I don't go to that church you run either.”

“I realize that,” says Jake's dad, “but —”

“No buts here,” says my mom. “I won't be having you or anyone else in my business. I can do what I like, Sunday morning or not.”

Jake's dad sighs. “I'm worried Jake is biting off a little more than he can chew here — with Nathan. He's never taken care of a child before. By himself.”

“That's what I said. He don't know from raising a kid. Kid costs a lot of money, and they need a lot of tending. How's Jake going to manage that and work a job too?”

“So you think that Jake can't take care of him?”

“I know he can't,” says Mom.

“So why did you agree to let him then?”

“I told you,” Mom says. “Last night I was in a different state of mind. If Jake wants Nathan he's gonna have to come back when he's got a bit more money to prove to me he can afford it.”

“Afford what?”

“Afford Nathan,” Mom says. “He gives me two thousand or so, and maybe I'll think about letting him take Nathan away for a while. You tell him that.”

“You mean you'll sell Nathan to him?”

“She already did,” I say, before I think about it. “Jake gave her money last night.”

The two of them look at me. Jake's dad turns back to my mother.

“I think,” he says, looking at the beer on the table, “that I'll take Nathan back to Jake and he can talk to you about all this later.”

“You're not taking him nowhere,” my mother says. “He stays with me.”