Minister Without Portfolio (14 page)

Wayne said he didn't know he just got his instructions from Wilson Noel.

Mark turned his attention to the history of Tender's house. Old Careen his wife was after dying was it, Wayne? Then he married Nellie Morris.

Again, Wayne didn't know and it didn't matter in Wayne's mind. The past was beyond figuring out.

They drank their beer and Mark finished his cigarette. They were giving a thought up to Aubrey Morris who had built this house a hundred years ago with about as much tools as they had and now they were finally putting good electrical wiring into it.

Nothing's changed in fifty years, Wayne said. I remember my father talking about this house. He said the Morrises had money. Well I'll tell you, if they had it, they must have buried it in the yard someplace because they didn't put it in the house.

I wonder where she's buried, Martha said.

Where who's buried.

Nellie Morris. We'd like to visit her. She's not in the cemetery where Tender is.

She's in the home in Aquaforte, Wayne said.

Henry and Martha thought about those words. Those words did not mean she was dead.

Are you saying she's alive?

She was two weeks ago. My grandmother's in there. Talks to Nellie every day.

But we have her last will and testament.

Mark: You don't have to be dead for a will and testament. More than likely she just signed over authority.

37

When the brothers left, the handles of some grocery bags lifted up and fluttered. John and Silvia drove by. They had the kids. I had no idea she was still alive, Martha said. Tender never visited her. Not that I knew. He just always talked about her house.

She was opening a physiotherapy book and, as she flexed the binding, it bucked free. It sort of flitted like a small animal.

Henry: What does this mean, this fact that she's alive?

It means we have to visit her.

Does it mean we own this house.

We have to make sure she doesn't, at the last minute, change her mind about anything.

She may not be in any state to change her mind.

Someone could change it for her.

Let's think of other things.

Let's get the kids.

John was standing on the grass barefoot with washed hair in a white bathrobe, a towel over his shoulders under his robe. Silvia was in the porch brushing the dog. Clem and Sadie were making bracelets from willow branches with a boy from down the
road who was recovering from having all his teeth pulled. Wolf bolted out and Henry fell to his knees and wrestled with the dog. Martha explained they'd come to borrow the kids.

Let there be light, John said. He held an aluminum tray with four large raw steaks and he shoved the steaks on the roof of his shed and opened the shed door and wheeled out the propane barbecue which you lifted like a wheelbarrow. Stop making love to Wolf, he said.

Henry: I'm so horny for your dog.

You with a woman over there and you're after our dog.

He has so much love to give, Martha said.

As though there was a relationship between them. Silvia asked where did you put the steaks and John had forgotten where the steaks were and when they all saw them on the roof of the shed John acted perplexed on how they had gotten up there. Blame the dog, Henry said. John had to stand on tiptoes to get the steaks and then he laid them on top of his car and donned an oven mitt to lift the lid on the barbecue and turned the nozzle on the propane clockwise, it was threaded so you had to consciously want the propane on. John and Henry had spent five hours one afternoon putting this barbecue together. Men trained in precise technical instruments were on their knees howling with tears of rage at the barbecue installation instructions.

They told them what they had learned from the brothers Poole.

Live in the house, occupy the house, do not give up one inch of territory to the enemy, John said.

You heard the propane coursing through the rubber pipe and belting out the burners full bore and John struck the match
with the oven mitt on and threw the match towards the grate of the barbecue and a blue curtain of flame shot up with a terrific whump of force, a sound you almost felt on your legs and eyelashes as you sat in your Adirondack chairs with an open beer, then the flames behaved themselves and knelt under the grate and conspired patiently, waiting their chance to kill the meat except John was once again looking for where he'd put the goddamned steaks.

They had to be careful with their swearing and with talk of horny dogs and usurping house ownership for this road out to the lighthouse was a Catholic road with many gravestones dating back to the 1700s, graves that were groomed and clipped out and lilac bushes trimmed back once a year by relatives who now lived in other parts of the world, but the old-timers who still lived on the road did not like curse words and they eschewed vulgarity and what was considered vulgar was very mild indeed. Their friend Tender Morris was living in the graveyard now so they had some licence to be themselves. They had paid the price and the older generation like Baxter Penney heard their silly ways, the inane almost pathetic ways of the young and the wayward—for they were all wayward, this generation, even if they knew how walls were wired and cement mixed and a rotting sill replaced.

Henry drank his beer and Martha sat on the arm of the Adirondack chair and they watched with great pleasure as John Hynes scraped the barbecue then sprayed a non-stick product onto the grill. There was a whiff of the spray. The steaks were now, inconceivably, in a plastic bag tied in a half hitch and hanging from the clothesline.

Sadie was too deep into the bracelets so Henry took Clem's small, warm hand and they walked him over the path in the field
between the two houses, a path that families had been using as a shortcut for a hundred years. A little bone in Clem's wrist clicked and suddenly Henry felt grown-up. He had a responsibility that was not of his own choosing. Baxter Penney was across the road and what would he think of him and Martha with this little boy in tow. Baxter, recovering from the neglect of his cows. A hot power was pushing through Clem's wrist into Henry's arm like an electrical pulse and it was all he could do to let go of the hand when they'd cleared the tall grass and reached the back of the house. His best friend's son. It is impossible for any of us to understand everything these days and the way these days are marching it will become even harder for one of us to even specialize in a field, for fields are being divided into narrow drills and it is difficult for a person to raise their chin from the crop they are sowing to see what is being broadcast from afar.

Martha showed Clem the light switch and asked him to do the honour.

Ta-da!

The old days are over, Henry said. And Clem ran from room to room, flicking on lights. Henry turned on the new radio and the first electrical song was opera.

Clem: Is that a hockey game singer?

Let's go outside, Henry said.

They stood in the backyard and looked. Each window neatly lit against the side of the house. A house with the hum of electrical components.

38

Come on, coat, he said.

They drove up the shore to Aquaforte. It was right on the road and had a little verandah with three chairs and the chairs were occupied with women watching the traffic go by. He carried the garbage bag in and Martha asked at the little window for a Nellie Morris. She's after having her lunch, the woman said. She'll be in her room.

They walked down to number 17 and knocked. A man in a white outfit in the hall said he'd help. The man opened the door and called in, Nellie? You have company.

She was sitting in a chair beside her bed.

We're living in your house, Henry said.

She said, Of course you are.

We brought you your coat, Martha said.

And Henry removed the coat from the bag.

That'll be good for the winter, she said. Just hang it in the closet over there. Behind the door.

They sat with her and remembered she was ninety-eight years
old. There had been newspapers on the walls from when the
Titanic
sank, and she was alive for that.

We came to ask about the well, he said. If there's a well that works.

A well, she said.

A well to go with the house.

I recall that voice, she said. You were at the funeral. Patrick's funeral.

Yes, Henry said. We were both there.

You left early. I was on my own with Gertrude Poole. I had to go to the bar to get a shot of screech. Did you see those boys up there sitting by the casket?

Martha: They were his nephews.

They wanted it open to see if uncle was in there. But he was all broken up. Did you get married?

We're not married. But we're together.

My daughter was married. She had two weddings. Just like my own. I had one in St John's and one in Renews. We brought our own liquor—there was an open bar at both. It was the wintertime and they pulled us there in a sled. My father had a banner put over the road with our names on it. But now my daughter's wedding they had this mountain of lobster, scallops, crab—more than what Dermot Ivany will land this year. The salad had something tasty thrown on it.

Did she know who they were? Was she just talking to talk? She had worked at McMurdo's pharmacy in town. Then married Melvin Careen. She had a daughter but the daughter died young.

Melvin Careen was my husband, she said. He was a Newfoundlander born in Brooklyn. His father was high steel—
the building going on up there. Have you been upalong? The money. All the doodads.

We came about a doodad.

A well, Martha clarified.

Oh yes the well. You knows as well as I do Pat we always meant to get around to digging a well.

That stopped them.

What did you do for water, Martha said.

I must have woken up a married woman, all told, twenty thousand times thinking we'd have a well at the end of the day. We went to the brook.

You drank water from the brook?

You know better than that, Pat. We went down to the cove for fresh water. There's a little spring in the rocks.

In Kingmans Cove.

That's where we're all from. You're from there too.

They sat there and talked with her about the seniors complex. They knew Rick Tobin who built it. Well tell him we need more windows. And where are the boats? He promised tours. You can't see anything from these rooms.

How are the bathrooms.

Who cares about those things.

39

Martha drove back into town—she was overseeing the production of photographs of a lumbar region to supply a website image bank. The body, she explained, is no longer thought of as segments, but as a dynamic chain.

I thought it was thought of as the servant of the mind.

Henry cleaned up things and used the last of the water from the blue container. He drove down the shore to Bay Bulls. He watched the shrimp boats come in and the men gently nudge heavy tubs of shrimp in the hoist up to the wharf apron where there was a conveyor belt to transport the shrimp directly into the side of the plant. Seagulls sat along the lip of the conveyor belt. He drove into the Goulds and up to Bill Wiseman's office. He explained things to Bill Wiseman.

If you work things out with this Martha Groves, Bill Wiseman said, all you'll be getting is a quick claim deed. If no one says boo to you for fifteen years, possessory title. I can't stress this enough, buying this house is putting money into a penny stock. No one can grant you good title. All you can use is a legal term: This is the title Henry Hayward has with an understanding.

HE DROVE SLOWLY BACK TOWARDS
Renews and stopped in to Wilson Noel's and bought a set of identical padlocks and a keyed entry deadbolt. He drove down the shore road and pulled into the grass of the house he may or may not own a half of and tore the padlocks out of their packaging and slapped a lock on the front porch storm door and one on the door to the shed. He installed the deadbolt to the rear door. He left a set of keys behind a frying pan hooked on the pantry wall in John Hynes's house and crossed the street and gave a rear door key to Baxter Penney. In case Martha ever needs to get in there, he said.

PART TWO

1

Renews was an old place, a town built on the mouth of a river with wharves and fishing stages that allowed quick access to the sea—the locals speak of the
Mayflower
coming into port in 1620 to take on fresh water and slaughter animals before continuing on to Plymouth. This was their first landing in the new world, but of course the
Mayflower
hauled up its kegs filled in the river and butchered pig purchased from a Mr Morris and moved on. The pirate Peter Easton operated from here and buried his treasure beneath oak planks under several hills and peculiar rocks. After breaching Fort San Felipe del Morro in Puerto Rico—something not even Francis Drake could do—Easton settled with his two thousand tons of gold in Savoy. The French and the English marched overland in the dead of winter and blew up each other's fortifications and voluntarily burned themselves to the ground on occasion, to prevent resources from falling into enemy hands. The native Beothuk were driven inland early on, terrified of the European destruction. The masterless men followed, living illegally along the riverbanks deep into the ponds of Butterpot, refusing the authority of the British crown who hunted them
down and strung them up on the yardarm. William Jackman, a man from Renews, saved an entire crew of a Labrador shipwreck by swimming twenty-seven times out to their ship in the freezing Atlantic. He probably had a rope in his teeth. William Harding, having suffered trenchfoot, influenza, scabies and syphilis, had his intestines slung across the faces of his comrades during the third battle of Ypres.

Renews was allowed to build up several centuries of secure English access to cod, thanks to the Treaty of Utrecht, but the invention of refrigeration and the majority vote for confederation with Canada tore away any sustainable fishing practice that made sense to a small community. The only independent country in the history of the world to voluntarily give up self-rule—damn you England and to hell with you Canadian wolf.