Blackstrap Hawco (99 page)

Stood there, thinking of unbuckling his belt, he watches his wife's mean eyes. He kneels there on the bed again and holds the sides of her head. He watches her face flinch, the burst of his tear against her chapped lips. Her eyes open, seeing him above her.

He leans closer to kiss. The fluid of his tears moistening her lips, making the kiss easy, warm and salty.

Patsy's eyes fully open, her lips not kissing back. But no fingernails in him now.

He drops his weight onto her. Holds on. Holding and squeezing and kissing the side of her neck. Holding on for dear life.

A shivering whisper from her: ‘Wha's da matter, Blacky?' Knowing nothing like this of him through their years.

She reaches down to tug up her pants. ‘Junior might come in,' she says, a heart-sick warning.

Blackstrap takes hold of her hips, rolls her over on top of him. Light as a feather. He stares up at her face. Not even bothering to wipe the wetness from his eyes and cheeks. The tears that have pooled in the scar on his cheek.

‘Wha's da matter?' she asks again, her body beginning to tremble from the fright. Tears in her own eyes now.

Husband and wife.

‘Wha', Blacky?'

But nothing. Not a word worth the breath of it.

The bedroom door open a crack and Junior watching through the slit.

 

Ten minutes later the RCMP car pulls into the paved driveway. From his father's front window, Blackstrap watches the two policemen step out of their cruiser. The sound of two car doors closing. They walk up the concrete steps that lead to Karen's bungalow. He recognizes one of the men from months ago when Karen went missing. The man from Quebec who came asking questions. The man who had found her. And kept her for himself.

Blackstrap turns away from the window, looks at Patsy sitting on the old grey couch. Her worried eyes fixed on him. Ruth right there on a blanket sleeping. Junior out in the back yard. As long as he stays there and does not see. But then he is mortally discouraged when Junior comes out from alongside the house, wandering near the sleek car that means danger.

‘Call Junior in here and put'm in the room,' Blackstrap says sharply.

‘Wha' fer?' Immediately, Patsy stands to look out the window.

Stepping toward Ruth, Blackstrap picks up his daughter and holds her sleeping body against his shoulder. His free hand straightens the material on the back of her pink and white top. He begins making shushing sounds, until Ruth wakes and looks at him, laughs sleepily and shoves two fingers into her mouth. Sucking and staring at him.

‘Da!' Her small fingers on his face.

The knock on the front door.

Ruth laughing and making a sound with her mouth shaped like a surprised O.

Patsy at the window.

Blackstrap's eyes on Patsy, not knowing what to do. Either one of them. Run, thinks Blackstrap.

The knock louder. The door opening. Junior calling out.

‘Cops're here.' The boy moving down the hallway to stand by his father's side.

Ruth in Blackstrap's arms, her perfect eyes and lips. Junior at his side. He faces the two RCMP officers.

Patsy steps up behind.

Checking over his shoulder, Blackstrap then turns and hands his daughter to his wife, carefully allowing the transfer. One look at the sweet, little face. The loss of that enough to mangle him.

Patsy not fully understanding.

‘Is all,' he says. Nodding, he steps toward the men, thinking of something to pass on to Junior. Something for his son. And for Patsy. So they will not believe him to be a horrible man. But he cannot think in the midst of such shame. Cannot look at the faces behind him. Not in his memory. Not to live with them for years. Wishing his life away. That's what he has done. A life not his. Not ever his, but he in it. Not knowing any better. He walks with deliberateness, past the officers and out into the front yard, so that one of the officers makes a noise like a protest.

The woods across the dirt road. The way the light is filtered through the branches. The way it touches the evergreen boughs. He has not been seeing this, but now it comes at him in full force.

‘Are you Alphonsus Hawco?' the policeman from Quebec asks, stepping up beside him.

Blackstrap thinks of saying ‘That's not my name' but, instead, says nothing. With his back to them, he lets them put the handcuffs on as Patsy bursts into tears. The sound that will not draw his attention. Ruth in her arms who starts crying now too. Screeching ‘Da-da' as Blackstrap is led toward the RCMP car.

No one coming near him, then the sound of rushing in his direction. His family. Patsy with Ruth in her arms. Junior. The sounds of them following after him, drawn like magnets. Footsteps over grass and the beachrock path.

He will not look.

An order from the man from Quebec: ‘No, please. You go no closer now.'

 

(
February, 1993
)

Flat on his bed, Blackstrap sleeps the hours away. Not a muscle in his body knows how to move with the new weight upon him. He has been given a private cell for the time being. The long-haired lawyer from the government comes to see him. Blackstrap could not afford his own. The lawyer wonders what he thinks of the private cell. The lawyer says: ‘It's because you're a Newfoundland hero.' A cell to himself despite the overcrowding. For now, the superintendent agrees to the luxury. ‘We'll see how it goes,' the superintendent tells Blackstrap.

The trial in two weeks.

Not premeditated, says the lawyer, although there are men from Wilf 's New Place, ones who might say different. Blackstrap remembers the conversations, plays them in his head, unable to change the words or sequence of events.

How to live in here without sleeping, his eyes on the seams in the cinder blocks?

The other men watch him to know who he is.

He stares.

He vanishes.

He comes back.

Not a morsel in his mouth.

A cave that he sails into.

A crack in a rock the shape of him.

 

In the courtroom, Blackstrap's lawyer talks death: the recent death of his client's father, the death of his friend, the accident in Wreckhouse, medical reports, injuries to the head, the hoof of a moose, and the disappearance of his common-law wife, Karen. Mental strain. Post-traumatic stress disorder. The sole survivor of the
Ocean Ranger
. Blackstrap Hawco. A man who struggled to save another man while he, in great peril himself, was being pulled toward the safety of the supply boat, risking his own salvation, jeopardizing his own survival for the life of another man, a man who slips from his grip, from his frozen fingers.

How true is any of it? To hear it spoken aloud sickens him.

Blackstrap Hawco. A man who stood up to foreign fishing in this
province, in Newfoundland where the people have been downtrodden for centuries, where the island's riches have been stolen or given away for a pittance.

This man sitting here before you, a hero in countless people's eyes.

Blackstrap Hawco.

Stupidity, he thinks. All of it pure stupidity.

The courtroom is nothing like he expected, nothing fancy, a room that smells of bodies, old paper and wood. The people gathered there to watch. They sit in the pews mostly dressed in plain clothes. Some of them not even in suits. A room full of people having nothing to do with him, like they just came in off the street. Common people out for entertainment. He imagines them eating popcorn from a bag. And remembers what the lawyer said days ago. ‘It would've been better if you weren't a hero. Once upon a time that would've worked to your benefit, got you off with anything. I'm not too sure about now. About today. They like to see the hero cut down to size. The media lives for that sort of thing. But it's worth a shot…Our only hope.'

Our only hope. Fucked.

The faces in the seats studying him. A creature on display. No longer one of them.

Blackstrap has no idea what any of this has to do with the accident or the death of Isaac Tuttle. He wonders about the funeral. Who might have attended. He does not care for the way this system works. How they must know everything about a man, but learn absolutely nothing of the cause of things. How they will judge him on what is said. He stares at the judge. The way the man is sizing him up. A life of condemning other men. His seat up higher than everyone else. Everyone told to rise when he comes and goes. Lord over everything. Bullshit perched above bullshit. A man who goes home in a car, eats dinner, goes to sleep. And that man sleeping while other men hate him because he has judged them and been paid to do it.

Blackstrap's lawyer touches his shoulder, squeezes gently to silence him. What was he doing? Making a noise? The lawyer had wanted to call Karen as a witness, after hearing rumours from people in Cutland Junction. How it was said that she had been raped by Isaac Tuttle.

Blackstrap will hear nothing of it.

‘No,' Blackstrap said. ‘That'd be no good.'

‘For who?'

‘Her.'

The lawyer then glanced at a copy of Blackstrap's statement, a full confession.

‘You're illiterate, right?'

Blackstrap gave no answer.

‘I don't know if that can work for or against us.'

Blackstrap's thoughts on Karen. None of his business now. His thoughts on Agnes. He looks over his shoulder for a face that might be hers. Eyes on him as he scans the crowd to find no one he knows.

The judge keeps watching him while listening to a witness, a middle-aged woman who saw the entire episode. A woman from a cabin, not from out his way. A townie capable of explaining exactly what went on. The judge thinking and staring at Blackstrap who stares back. Face giving nothing away. Which one of them knows more about the other. The judge does not like the look. What a man is made of. Blackstrap will not show him.

After the preliminary hearing, Blackstrap is taken to a room where he sits in private with his lawyer. His lawyer tells him it would be best to opt for trial by jury.

Blackstrap nods, his hands joined on the tabletop.

‘You have to help me here, Mr. Hawco. You're not helping me at all. We have to introduce the fact that Karen Hawco might've been raped by Isaac Tuttle. Even if it's thrown out.'

‘No.' Blackstrap slams the table with both palms, catching the attention of the guard. Loudly: ‘No one needs ta know it, ya hear me.'

‘Yes, people do need to know. Yes, they do, for your sake. It might be the truth, after all.' The lawyer smiles kindly, then sighs when he sees the smile carries no weight, shaking his head as he sets the papers one by one back into his case. He glances at Blackstrap as he closes the top and clicks the latches shut. ‘Do you understand the gravity of the situation?'

Blackstrap looks away, pressing his lips together, his breath raspy from his nostrils. ‘I'm from a family,' he says, not really knowing what that has to do with anything.

‘We're all from families,' the lawyer says, standing. ‘All of us. That's how it works.'

Blackstrap gazes at the lawyer.

‘I've got a family,' the lawyer says, setting his fingertips against his tie.

‘A family dat looks after its own.'

‘My family looked after me.'

‘And where're they from?' Blackstrap asks.

‘West coast.'

‘Corner Brook?'

‘Pulp and paper people.'

‘Not anymore,' Blackstrap says, sizing up the lawyer's suit. ‘They're legal people now.'

‘That's called change, Mr. Hawco. People change. Just because my father worked in a mill, doesn't mean I want to work there. That's nonsense. I wanted to be a lawyer.'

‘Good fer you. Ya got yer wish.'

‘And how exactly are you looking after your family, if you're locked away? Answer me that.'

Blackstrap stands from the table, leaning near the lawyer. One face inches away from another.

‘Okay, boys,' says the guard. ‘Recess time is over.'

 

Blackstrap is sentenced to ten years. His lawyer is disappointed. It might have been much less, if only they could have put Karen on the stand.

Bygones be bygones.

Blackstrap understood little of what was being said. The language used. The lawyers asking questions that seemed to have no true purpose, leading up to what? No answer. He couldn't get the gist of it. People inspecting him, then studying other people. Who worth what? Who to believe? He'd lower his eyes. He'd look away. The courtroom crowded. Standing room only. All sorts of people interested in what was going on, sitting there and watching. That's what they seemed to do, just there to watch and listen. Didn't they have lives to attend to?

‘I did the best I could, really. Considering.'

Ten years in a cage for killing a man who raped his woman.

The judge had stood from his bench. No expression on his face. They all had to stand and keep silent until the man left the room.

The old man must be rolling over in his grave, Blackstrap's only thought.