What They Wanted (35 page)

It was on this note that Ben headed out of the restaurant to get smokes at the shop next door. Ernie held up two fingers for two packages of Player’s, and Trapp held up his package of Export As. Ben sauntered out the door, leaving his bag with the drug money on the chair beside Trapp.

Ben’s speech quickened as he went through what happened next, as though spitting the distasteful words out of his mouth. The girl behind the counter was cute, with a flashy smile and full of chat. He lingered, he played himself up, she played back. A few minutes of bantering and he remembered why he was there, so he paid for the smokes and with a cheery wave left the shop. The guy bringing the coke had already arrived. Ben saw the back of his head through the restaurant window, sitting across from Trapp and beside Ernie. At that moment the cops moved in—four of them, two in uniform, two in plainclothes. He stood, riveted, watching the cops already entering the door. He saw Trapp get to his feet, then Ernie. Ernie bolted for the washroom; two cops chased him. Another two had Trapp spread over the table, cuffing his hands. The “connection,” the guy who’d brought the coke, was leading Trapp outside. An undercover. A setup. Trapp caught Ben’s eye, gave a slight shake of his head, warning him off. And so Ben stood, arms dangling helplessly by his side, still clutching the three packs of smokes, and watched Trapp and Ernie being led off. They found out later that the guy with the scraggly reddish ponytail back at the bar in St. John’s was an undercover narc.

“Trapp and Ernie went down for two years in the federal pen.”

Ben rested his forehead in his hands, rubbing his temples with his thumbs. He was quiet for some time, then looked to me for some words, some reaction. Getting none, he started talking again.

“You asked me once why Trapp was so disdainful towards you—after we ran into you in Grande Prairie. Well—” Ben paused. “He thought you might’ve talked. Remember the day in the corridor at university—we ran into you and Moya, or Myrah, whatever her name is. You accidentally seen my ticket, and Trapp freaked. He thought you might’ve talked, might’ve said something—the wrong person heard it—he knows differently now, of course. Was just something that stuck with him. Just—thought I’d tell you that—why he was a bit derisive towards you.”

He ran his fingers through his hair, scratching at the back of his head. “He swore me to secrecy—about the whole bust. I betrayed him once, I couldn’t a second time. I stayed as close as I could, roughnecking. Kept bringing them smokes, cash. Mailed their letters. I tried to serve them. Will you talk?” he pleaded.

I tried to speak. My mouth was dry as chalk. I ran my tongue over my lips but could think of nothing to say. It felt so remote—those things he was saying. So remote. Like he was talking about some TV movie he’d seen. Such a simple story. So blatant, why hadn’t I thought of it? A drug-related offence, the time already served—something of a relief in a sense. For deep inside I’d felt it was something more, much more, something real crazy, like Trapp had killed somebody or something and that it was still unknown, yet to be discovered.

“I’m sorry, Ben. I wish I’d known. Wish I’d known at least something of it.”

“I promised him. Else I would’ve told you. You believe that, Sylvie? I would’ve called you,” he said earnestly.

I opened my mouth to speak but couldn’t, had no knowing of what to say, how to express the feeling of jealousy that was welling up inside of me. It felt as though the stream Ben, Chris, and I were swimming in had suddenly forked, with Ben swimming after Trapp in one, and me and Chris swimming up the other, the two becoming farther and farther apart as we swam.

“People get busted all the time,” I said. “They get past it.”

“He didn’t do good time, Sylvie. He’s not exactly Mr. Personality—not a fucking week he didn’t get a shit knocking. Jeezes.” He ran his hands through his hair again. “Wish the fuck it had been me, I’ve wished the oceans dry it had been me.”

“No doubt. You would’ve had your time done by now. I don’t understand—not truly. I mean, why is this going so deep? Trapp’s no youngster, he made the decision to fly with you—he made himself part of it—it’s not all your fault, and yet you carry it so—so
deep
.”

“Jeezes, Sylvie, I was responsible—”

“No, not entirely. And even if you were, we all do stupid things. So, get over it—like he’s got to. I mean, how much do you owe him—isn’t this a kind of prison?” I flashed my hand around the cookhouse, the camp. “You gonna imprison yourself to Trapp because he was unlucky enough to get busted, and you didn’t?” I fell silent for a moment, thrown by the disbelieving look on his face. “I’m not without feeling here, Ben. I mean, I can imagine how you—and Trapp—must feel. But—I don’t know, it all seems so extreme, somehow. And this camp—it just makes it seem—just keeps it extreme. You said you’d betrayed him once before. What do you mean, do you mean the shooting—the dog and the shooting? I saw it,” I said to his look of sheer astonishment.

“If fucking Mother—”

“I told you, I was there—you didn’t see me, I was visiting my grandfather, and I saw it—the whole thing.”

He drew away from me, as though I were seeing inside his most hidden self. “That was so long ago,” I said. “And you’re still blaming yourself—you didn’t shoot that dog.”

His eyes flashed with anger. He turned from me as though attempting to hide whatever parts of him that might still lie secret.

“Why do you carry it all so deeply?” I asked again in a whisper. “I don’t get it—why do you carry Trapp this way—”

“I don’t know that I do,” he said curtly, and started to rise.

“Why’re you leaving—why’re you mad? Tell it to me, tell me how you came to be friends with Trapp—after the shooting. Or, better still,” I added, straining for a lightening of his mood, “how did you get Suze to keep that one a secret for all these years?”

His face looked immovable, just the way he liked things, uncluttered with emotion. And yet he was full of the deepest feelings, so deep they threatened to bury him. I thought back to university, the drugs, booze, bars. And even now, this thing with Trapp—all those things were a parade of sorts, a channelling of his emotions, like trained students during a fire drill, all flowing the one direction through the one corridor. I looked into his eyes, his sea-grey eyes, and saw their darkened pits, saw them quivering with light, with vulnerability.

“Why do you move away from me?” I whispered. “You always move away from me.”

He lowered his eyes from mine, as though he couldn’t bear the scrutiny. “I—is that how you see it, that I move away?”

“You do.”

He was quiet for a moment, then shrugged. “Guess I just don’t see things sometimes—how I do things.”

“Tell me then. Tell me how you see things. How do you see Trapp? How did you become friends with him after the shooting? What did you do—did you go back and find him?”

He touched my hand, rubbing it for a moment, and then started rubbing at his chin, knuckling both hands through his hair in his old nervous manner.

“Yeah, I went back,” he said roughly. “Thought I’d help him bury it—bury his dog. He’d carried it up the beach—and was sitting beside it, sobbing, when I found him. It was an hour past the shooting now, and he was still sitting beside his dog, sobbing. I never heard anyone cry so hard. Felt like
I
shot his dog, I felt so bad. He didn’t even try to fight me when I went near him. He just kept on sobbing, like a river of tears were running through him, and I thought—swear to god—I thought he was gonna drown in them.

“I buried his dog. He followed behind as I carried it to this nice spot in the woods. He hardly spoke. He hardly speaks now. Can’t imagine what shit went on in that house of his— that bastard old man. Got an inkling of it once.”

I gently touched his hand. “How?“ I asked.

He shook his head, reluctant to speak.

“Tell me. Ben, please tell me.”

“Trapp’s old man,” he began quietly, “he never let no one in his house—but I chanced to see inside once—Trapp’s mother was sitting in the rocking chair, coaxing Trapp to sit in her lap and be rocked. He looked shamed seeing me standing there, hearing his mother coaxing him into her lap to be rocked. She was skinny, not much bigger than Trapp himself. She had this crazy look in her eyes, like she was gonna start screaming if Trapp didn’t go to her. He told me she was always sitting in her rocker, always calling out to him, always wanting to rock him. I think—I think he must’ve let her—let her rock him— lots of times.” He faltered, leaning on his knees. No doubt he was too young for the outright memory of his mother forcing him to her breast well past the appropriate age. And yet, from the wincing on his face I well understood how the body remembers such things, and how it was remembering for him right now the smothering, hovering presence of his mother.

Neither of us spoke for a moment. “Do you—do you think she handled him too much?” I asked, resorting to Mother’s word.

He said nothing. He nodded, and then rubbed at his face. “Yeah. I think. I dunno. She was crazy for sure.”

“Was she crazy—I mean, like, really crazy?”

He nodded. “Yeah. She was something. Trapp’s old man was crazy too, but a different crazy—he just kept everything going—food in the house, wood. Kept the house going, somehow—with help from the other Trapps. But he was a mean bastard, he just wouldn’t let nobody around, paranoid of everybody—like all the fucking Trapps, they all got this thing about clanning together, as though they got to protect themselves from everybody out there.”

Ben folded and unfolded his hands. He opened his mouth to speak further, but didn’t.

“And so you kept taking him home with you. Were you, were you trying to spare him—his mother rocking him and stuff?”

He kept looking to the floor.

He started jiggling his foot. He sucked in a deep breath, his chest heaving as though it were too tight to breathe. “Perhaps,” he said lowly, “perhaps. Jeezes. And then he felt like—like this thing I had inherited along the way, like a coat flung over my back that I couldn’t get rid of.”

“And you wanted to?”

Ben shrugged. “I dunno. He was—he was always looking to me—every time I went anywhere that summer he’d be standing there, looking towards me. He’d never go home unless I told him to. I ran off, sometimes, leaving him standing there. Started feeling like I was a fucking mother.” He winced again, and I wasn’t sure if his aversion was meant for Trapp or himself.

He drank deeply from his whisky, then he started talking again, his voice becoming more forceful as he told of how Trapp started following him around, going home with him— and watching, always watching, how Ben chewed his food, how he chatted, laughed with the girls, hung easily with people, hummed a tune. He was like someone first out of the cave, said Ben, seeing everything clear for the first time.

There were times he felt Trapp coveting everything that he was; times he felt Trapp wanted to be him. And yet he took nothing. Whenever Ben asked him about his family, he’d take on that look, like a dissatisfied diner handing back a platter of untouched food. But he savoured every word of Ben’s when Ben would tell him some story about himself and his old man out moose hunting, or fighting over the heart and liver from the Christmas turkey, or washing the windows in the house for his mother. Trapp reminded him of something untouched, innocent in the most bizarre way. He argued nothing, just nodded, even when he knew Ben to be wrong. The only thing he ever expressed an opinion on was drugs. He hated them. “Felt like he was my guardian those days at university,” said Ben. “Used to get a bit much sometimes, when I had a girlfriend or something. He always spooked them off. I often wondered back then what would happen when we left university, went our separate ways.”

He clasped his hands tightly around his glass of whisky, the white showing through his knuckles. He looked at me with a sad smile. Abruptly he put his glass down and got up, pulling me to him. His arms went around me and he held me tight, his face burrowing into my hair. The rest of him remained motionless. I kept myself quiet, my body, my thoughts. There was room only for him in that moment, and I knew he was simply holding me as he might’ve held himself, if he could, or that little, lost boy sobbing on the beach, the one who’d been handled so much by a needing mother that he kept cutting himself off from being loved.

“Seems we all have ghosts,” I murmured against his shoulder. I drew back, looking up into his face. He looked so strained, his mouth tight as though he were holding himself in. “That little boy—he’s more you than Trapp. Time you let him grow up, don’t you think?”

Something of a chuckle sounded in Ben’s throat. “Don’t know how you and your brother survive,” he said. “All those crooked lines by which you think, see things. I’m going to leave now. Night crew will be here soon, and—I’m beat.”

He held me for a minute longer—this time I felt it was me he was holding, and the tender manner in which he kissed my brow, my cheek, my mouth, left no doubts about that.

AT SOME POINT
that night I woke up to rain drizzling against the window and voices outside. Trapp’s. And Frederick’s. I caught words. Mud. Pressure. Arsehole Push. I burrowed beneath the sleeping bag, the rig sounding unusually loud. Finally I fell back to sleep but the jimmies followed me, their screams sounding through the woods behind Father’s house and me running up the path, searching for him, finding him standing before the screaming mouth of the old sawmill, shouting to me, his eyes filled with terror. I couldn’t hear him over the jimmies, couldn’t get closer, my legs barely moving as I struggled and struggled to run. And then I fell, waking up with a jolt to the rumbling metallic beast across the clearing.