Homesick (32 page)

W
hen he was finally persuaded they were gone for good, Alec was torn by loneliness for his grandson and daughter. Loneliness led to a discovery. It was this: alone in his empty house he heard a voice. So loud, emphatic, and inescapable a voice that in the beginning it frightened him, even though most of what it announced was commonplace enough.
Time for a cup of tea
, it said. Or,
Looks like snow
. Of course, it was not so troubling after he recognized the voice as somehow his own, that it did not come from outside him. This did not happen at once. For a long time he was undecided. It sounded and did not sound like him. His disbelief was of the order of a man hearing, for the first time, a recording of himself speaking. Could that awful voice really belong to him?

To start with, he wondered if he might not simply be hearing himself talking to himself. He could have fallen into the habit, he supposed. It wasn’t so. Even with his lips firmly pressed together he could still hear the voice. Besides, what he was listening to was not the ordinary, familiar voice which had been his all his life – this voice was different. Not only did it fall strangely on his ears; it said strange, surprising things without warning. One day, out of the blue, it said:
Did I have a hand in it
.

Is this the sort of thing which Earl had complained of?

The night of the fire, Alec and Mr. Stutz rushed Earl back to town, leaving the hired man Dover to keep an eye on the progress of the destruction. From the first, it had been obvious that there was nothing they could do to save the crop. It was an outright loss. Fortunately, the burning field was bordered on all sides by summerfallow, either Alec’s or a neighbour’s, so the men were confident that the bare, tilled earth would contain the flames on Alec’s property and prevent them spreading. Nevertheless, when they reached Connaught Mr. Stutz was to call out the town’s fire brigade, chiefly so that the neighbours couldn’t accuse them of not having done all that was humanly possible if the fire carried, although they all knew that a single pump truck would be next to useless in such a situation. As Dover had said, “If that happens we may as well all sling out our dinks and piss – for all the good it’ll do.”

That night, however, Alec was less concerned with the fire than he was with Earl. On the way to Connaught he bombarded him with questions. “Are you hurt?” “What the hell happened back there?” His son made no response, merely sat pale and silent, watching the beams of the headlights bouncing on the rough road.

After a while, Stutz suggested there might not be any point to more questions. Perhaps Earl wasn’t speaking because he was in shock. Alec drove even faster and more recklessly when he heard this. Couldn’t people die from shock?

When he reached Connaught and saw a light showing in Dr. Dowler’s house he braked the truck, ran up the steps, banged on the door with his big, hard fist, and shouted unceremoniously up at the porch light. Mr. Stutz followed, leading Earl, who moved like a sleepwalker, by the hand. An unfamiliar young man came to the door and explained that Dr. Dowler was away on his annual two-week fishing trip up north to Lac La Ronge and he, Dr. Evans, was relieving him.

Mr. Stutz, seeing that matters were being taken in hand, sprang off the porch and hurried to raise the fire brigade as the young
doctor directed Earl and Alec to the office at the back of the house. Because of the nuisance Alec made of himself on the walk through the house, talking of shock, pointing excitedly to the blisters forming on Earl’s neck and hands, and rushing through a garbled story of a fire, the doctor discouraged him from accompanying Earl into the examining room. “Wait here, please,” he said and shut the door in his face.

For a half an hour Alec sat and watched the closed door, rubbing his hands together and stretching his face in grimaces. Then Stutz came in and took the chair beside him. “The fire truck’s off,” he said.

Alec nodded, although he had scarcely heard what he had been told.

“They still in there?”

“Yes,” said Alec. It was obvious they were. The murmur of voices could be heard behind the closed door. Alec didn’t like it. The longer it went on, the more certain he was the news would be bad. Ten minutes more, fifteen. The door handle turned and Alec was on his feet, drying his hands on his pants legs before the door swung fully open. Dr. Evans ushered Earl out. Alec saw that one of his son’s hands was swathed in gauze and that dabs of greasy ointment glistened under the electric light nearly as much as his eyes, which appeared to be filled with tears.

“Have a seat with your friend,” Dr. Evans said softly to Earl, indicating that he meant Mr. Stutz. Earl betrayed no sign that he had heard or understood the doctor, but remained where he stood, arms hanging slack at his sides. Stutz rose from his chair and guided Earl across the room by the elbow. “Here,” he whispered earnestly to the boy, “doctor means over here, Earl. Right here. See?”

Dr. Evans turned to Monkman. “Could I have a word with you?” Alec followed him into the examining room and the doctor closed the door carefully after them, leaning against it until he heard it click shut. The room was small and crowded, because of the examining table there was hardly space left over for a couple
of chairs. The two men were forced to sit face to face, their knees almost touching. The doctor breathed peppermint into Alec’s face. Alec didn’t wait for him to begin. “What’s wrong? Is Earl hurt bad somehow?” he demanded.

The doctor was relieved to find he could begin on a note of reassurance. “No, from what I can gather your son was very lucky,” he said. “Most of his injuries are pretty superficial, a few first- and second-degree burns. He’ll be all right on that score.”

“What about this shock business? That doesn’t look too hot to me.”

“In pathological terms he’s not suffering from shock at all – not shock as a result of physical trauma at any rate. I’ve checked his blood pressure for instance and it’s not depressed, all other vital signs are normal.” The young doctor realized he had lost his listener. He hadn’t been long out of medical school and medical school clung to him still. He tried again. “We don’t have to worry about shock – not that kind at any rate,” he said.

“Why don’t he talk then?” Alec asked. “Why does he look so Jesus awful then?”

“He talked to me,” said Dr. Evans.

“Earl never said a word to me or Stutz on the way in – you can ask Stutz.”

“I don’t doubt he didn’t,” said the doctor. He paused before taking the next step. “Mr. Monkman,” he asked, “has your son ever mentioned anything to you about hearing voices?”

Monkman gave the doctor an uncomprehending stare. It was clear he didn’t grasp the question. “How do you mean – voices?”

“Voices which aren’t there. Voices with nobody speaking them. Voices that urge him to do things. Things like happened tonight.”

“Christ.” There was no place for Alec to turn his eyes. The doctor was too close to him to avoid looking at.

“No signs of anything like this before? No auditory hallucinations?” He rephrased the question. “I mean to say, he’s never
heard things that weren’t there, or seen things that didn’t exist?”

“No.” No sooner had he said that than Alec recollected Earl’s complaining of his mother banging cupboard doors and walking through the house after she was buried. Still, he was just a child at the time. It was nothing more than imagination and shouldn’t count. Yet the memory made him compromise. Guiltily he retreated, but only so far. “I’m not sure. Maybe. I haven’t seen much of him this summer.”

“Let me ask you something else then. Has Earl ever tried to harm himself before tonight?”

“Who says he tried to harm himself tonight?”

Dr. Evans disregarded the challenge. “I know this isn’t a pleasant discussion – but I want you to tell me if he’s ever tried to hurt himself. He’s never burned himself with matches, or stuck himself with pins, has he? Nothing like that? Any exhibition of self-destructive behaviour before?”

“On purpose, you mean?” asked Alec, astounded.

“Yes, on purpose.”

“If I had, I’d have self-destructed him. I’d have kicked his arse until he barked like a bloody fox,” asserted Monkman, shaken by outrage at the very idea. Imagine Earl, his gentle boy, ever doing such a thing!

Dr. Evans tapped his jaw with the barrel of a fountain-pen. “It’s not, as you say, a question of ‘kicking him in the arse,’ ” he said severely. “That’s not how sick people are made better.” He paused to let his statement sink in. “And after what your boy has told me, I have no doubt he’s sick.”

“He’s worn out with all the work he done this summer. He needs building up.”

“He needs more than building up to get better.”

“Whatever he needs, give it to him.”

“It’s beyond me what he needs. I’m not equipped to give it to him. Neither is Dr. Dowler. No
G.P.
is. But there is a place he can go for treatment.”

“What you’re talking about is the Mental, isn’t it?” said Monkman.

“If you mean the Provincial Mental Hospital – yes, that’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

“Fuck that noise. My Earl’s not going anywhere near that place.”

Young Dr. Evans had expected as much. They had been warned at medical school to expect such reactions from families. “Listen,” he said, choosing his words carefully so that the man sitting across from him could comprehend, “there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Mental illness is an illness like any other, like pneumonia or appendicitis, say. If your boy had appendicitis you wouldn’t deny him treatment, would you? No, you’d say, ‘Do whatever needs to be done to make him well.’ That’s what you’d say, wouldn’t you? And another thing. It’s not the way it used to be there. Forget the old stories you may have heard. Most of them weren’t true anyway. There are new treatments now. Patients get well. They come back to their families and homes. You must understand. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

Alec wasn’t ashamed. How to explain to the doctor? He clenched and unclenched his fists. “I couldn’t do it to him,” he said. “I couldn’t put him in a place like that, full of strangers, without a face he knows. He’s too shy. He isn’t capable. Ever since he was a little one, all he wanted was to be with his own, his family. Know what his sister called him? ‘Home-sticker.’ Because he wouldn’t play any place but his own yard. He was that timid, you see? All he wanted was home.”

Alec hoped that what he said would make the doctor understand. He searched for some change in his manner, for some sign that he was no longer so sure. Monkman knew that otherwise he would have to give way. A simple, uneducated man like him could not, in the end, resist medical arguments, medical authority.

The doctor’s face was implacable.

It was Stutz and Alec who delivered Earl with the necessary papers. A long, exhausting drive with stretches of indescribably bad road. The men commented on the progress of the harvest to distract their minds from what they were doing.

At one point in the trip Alec said to Stutz, “If anybody asks where Earl’s at – he went east to visit his sister and maybe to look for work. When he comes back better, he won’t need this as common knowledge.” Earl’s complete and unbroken silence had already caused his father to fall into the habit of talking about him as if he wasn’t present.

Stutz pursed his lips disapprovingly. “That’s a lie.”

Alec lost his temper, something he seldom did with Stutz. “If you’re too goddamn pure to tell a lie – then refer them to me. I can tell enough lies for the both of us if I need to. Just promise me to keep quiet. Can you do that much?”

Quiet they both kept.

17

A
lthough Vera had come to a decision, for nearly two weeks she held her cards close to her vest and gave no hint of what she was thinking, even when Stutz went fishing by reminding her that his offer still stood. She was behaving exactly as she had done years before when she joined the Army without taking anyone into her confidence. There’s many a slip betwixt cup and lip, Vera was fond of telling herself.

That was part of it, but not all. She didn’t want to leave the impression of being desperate by grabbing at the money too quickly. It was undignified. A respectable delay between offer and cautious acceptance gave the whole transaction more of a business-like air and made it feel less like charity. There were reasons of pleasure, too. Vera liked the tease of anticipation, the slow boil of excitement that came with knowing she was going to shake and throw the dice. Last of all, she was not inclined to rush headlong into this because she half-expected to one day soon find her father on her doorstep, prepared to apologize. The great man himself, not Stutz.