Lauchlin of the Bad Heart (28 page)

“I’ve got to come this far, Lauchlin, for a look at you anymore,” Carrie said, after they had bustled themselves into chairs.

“Couldn’t you just recollect me? I looked better then.”

“I’d settle for you just as you are. Wouldn’t you, Rita?”

“I wouldn’t kick him out of bed, dear.”

“I didn’t know you all knew each other,” Tena said.

“Oh, my,” said Carrie, but catching Lauchlin’s look, she just raised her eyebrows at him.

Tena tolerated the swirl of their talk, she could herself stay quiet in the eye of it, listening, glad to be diverted. Lauchlin soon took refuge in them too as they urged stories out of each other inspired by Clement’s disappearance, people they’d known who went off and didn’t come back for a while, But come back they did, Rita assured her, maybe not exactly as they’d left, but what the hell, safe home is the main thing, now isn’t it, Tena? Rita had waited twenty-three years for her husband
to
disappear and thank the Lord he hadn’t returned,
yet,
but you love your man, Tena, dear, and that’s what matters. Carrie had a fresh bottle of rye in her big handbag but Tena refused a drink, smiling, she told them, Go ahead yourselves, girls, glasses in the cupboard. Lauchlin, standing near the door, accepted one himself, wanted it in fact even as he wished to get away now, beset as he was by the bicycle…He’d
heard
it first, the sound so harmless really, a sprocket ratcheting along, the slap of a slack chain, it had to be a bike and not a sleek weekend one either, and that made him expect someone young, coming under the jaundiced light of the streetlamp, and so he had not been ready for the cyclist he did see, it knocked him back a little, the man had become now like a smudged figure in a poor photo, something in his dad’s album or one of Frank’s from Harris, a helmet, a washed-out shirt, weak light, face diluted in shadow, but even so a sensation—stronger now—of sound sweeping past him nonetheless, the hoarse breath of a tiring man, and that too had lessened any menace, hadn’t it? The poor devil, Lauchlin had thought, he’ll be dead before he gets home, he’s on the heavy side as it is, and then, yes, that’s not a kid’s backside swaying above the seat, then a tail reflector winked faintly and he was gone. And yet not. Wasn’t that bicycle still on the road somewhere, and
others too were seeing its rider, had seen him, and would report the sight of him, if they thought it necessary? But of course the man had reached his destination long since, or he would have been heard about, stranger to the road or not. It seemed to Lauchlin as if the cyclist had ridden onto a stage, as in a play, and exited, an impression that would deepen over the days in his mind, the bike getting slower and slower, like it weighed a ton, as if bike and rider would never get past that eerie island of light in front of the store while Lauchlin stood immobile, transfixed, watching.

Lauchlin took the rye in one warm swallow, stayed on to hear Nelda, apple cheeks already flushed when she came in the door, go into a tale about Tommy the Horn from Glen Tosh who’d disappeared on his way to church many years ago. Turned out he’d been picked up hitchhiking, some Quebecers, tourists,
Je me souviens,
I buy souvenirs, him in his black Sunday suit, poor soul, pew-seat shiny, and he ended up in Saint John, for God’s sake, imagine, that far away, he didn’t know who he was, it came on him so sudden like, senility or something, you see. Tommy wasn’t that sharp to begin with, Nelda said, but he did know his church was at South Haven, not in New Brunswick. Why did they call him The Horn anyway, Rita, you know? Rita laughed a stream of cigarette smoke, It had a twist in it, dear, is what I heard, and they all laughed themselves into tears until Carrie nodded toward Tena and they calmed quickly, wiping their eyes and lapsing into those indrawn sighs of affirmation and concern you’d always hear in a sombre kitchen. Well, Tommy doesn’t apply here anyway, Rita said, Clement wasn’t on the road with his thumb out, now was he, he was in his fish truck. Nothing wrong with his brain either, Nelda said soberly. No, but I mean, Rita insisted, you just never really know, do you? Strange things go on. Oh listen, Carrie said, Tena doesn’t want to hear this, do you, dear? Don’t worry about it, girls, Tena said, it’s the truth. That’s what we’re all waiting for, isn’t it? I don’t want anything but the truth.

THERE WERE STILL A FEW CUSTOMERS
visible in the big window, Shane behind the counter, when Lauchlin pulled in by the gas pumps. He had passed Jamie Campbell on the road jogging doggedly in the other direction, shirtless, perspiring, his face tight, drawn, as if he were not training but fleeing. Lauchlin was not surprised that Johanna had left the store: she wouldn’t want to listen to the gab about Clement, there was no good news for her, just rumours and the kind of interest that heats when something awful might be in the air, and some people would be embellishing their speculations or a scrap of information that had blown across their paths. Lauchlin sat in his truck, gathering the will to go in. Shane, smiling and garrulous, seemed to be enjoying himself, the old radio on the shelf loud behind him through the screen door as he extended a bag of chips toward an outstretched hand. Give that boy a microphone. Voices mingled in a steady hum. Hamilton Sims, his face shadowed under the ceiling light, was inclining a courteous ear to Alice Mulvaney, her speech animated by her shockingly frizzy hair, Hamilton smiling patiently: Alice expressed strong opinions on any subject and the less she knew about it, the stronger they were. Hamilton was a kind man, quiet and discreet, probably gay, he stayed weekends in a new summer cottage up at the Head. There was Barbara Hanigan, a schoolteacher home from Quebec, and Ronny Bulgur who operated dozers and backdiggers, talking away by the cooler, demonstrating some sliding or skidding actions with both hands. And Sandy MacInnis, the church organist, he lived west of Lauchlin and Johanna’s house where he kept a big electric organ of his own just off the parlour and sometimes sent solemn tones of Bach gliding across the fields. And Malcolm in his chair, nodding at someone out of sight. But who was that coming out the door, was that Maddy?

Lauchlin got out and met her by her car. She was dressed in white jeans and a silk turquoise blouse, the natural curls of her dark hair
brushed up and shining. She smiled at him, took a last drag on her cigarette before crushing it under a black high-heeled sandal.

“What a pleasant sight you are,” Lauchlin said.

“My timing’s not so good as yours, I guess.”

“Timing’s out of my hands these days, Maddy.”

“You don’t mind me stopping by here, do you?”

“Great to see you anywhere, Mad. But we’ve got a local crisis here, and I’m kind of in the middle of it. The store, I mean.”

“So the old fella in there was telling me. What is it with you and helicopters, Lauch? You seem to attract them.”

“Did you come to see me, Maddy, or were you on your way somewhere?”

“Both. But I didn’t buy anything. That way I’ll have to come back for it sometime.”

“You do that, Mad, sometime.”

She touched his shoulder. “You okay, Lauch? I don’t like your colour.”

“You liked it last time.”

She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “I will again, I hope, when this is over. Try phoning me. You just press the buttons, you know, and presto, there I am on the other end.”

“Take care of yourself, Mad.” He opened the car door and watched while she arranged herself in the seat, shot a look at her lips in the mirror. He wondered where she was headed, looking so fine, but he didn’t ask. Things had always been so simple and direct with her, pure pleasure. She waved as she drove off, not in the direction of her cottage.

Myrtle MacKenzie was waiting in her car for gas. Lauchlin leaned at her window when she beckoned him.

“Anything on Clement MacTavish?” she said. Lauchlin said he’d heard nothing new. “Well listen,” she said, pulling him closer as she lowered her voice, “Charlie Drohan, you know Charlie, from over
Baddeck Bay, drives the dump truck? He was on the Trans-Can this morning, heading for the bridge, and he seen Clement’s fish truck pass, going up the mountain. Still foggy, see, so he paid it no mind. He hardly knows Clement anyway, just the truck, and that he peddles fish out of it and that. But he called the Mounties when he heard the man was missing. What do you think, Lauchlin? My God, what’s gone wrong for that poor fella? It’s after getting dark.”

“I’d say he’s had an accident, Myrtle, somewhere off the track. We’ll find him soon. Diesel?”

MIDNIGHT HAD GONE BY
and Lauchlin lay on his bedcovers in his shorts, one hand palm-down on his chest, the extra phone moved within reach on the night table. His heart skipped erratically along, nothing to worry about, these missed beats came and went, the heart seemed to swell and freeze for a moment as if it had forgotten what to do and then kicked hard into gear again. In his other hand the worrystone Morag had given to him years ago, a small egg of red granite she’d found on the beach behind her house. He was to work it inside his fist whenever he felt tense or anxious, not just about an upcoming match but about anything, anyone, even her. See how nice it feels? she’d said. Knead it in your palm, warm it, it’s calming, you’ll feel better before a fight. Find me a bigger one, he said, I’ll stuff it inside my glove. Anyway, I’d rather warm my hands on you. That wouldn’t calm you down though, would it? she said.

St. Clement. He was not religious, as far as Lauchlin knew. Today he’d been peddling fish, somewhere, not blessing them. He hoped Clement was not praying either.

Lauchlin had stayed in the store long after he’d urged the last customer out the door, and finally Malcolm as well. Wherever that man is now, Malcolm said at the bottom of the steps, God bless him, they won’t find him till daylight. Lauchlin had turned off the store
lights except for the single ceiling bulb in the backroom. He didn’t need much light to hit the bag, he jabbed it, circling it casually, stinging the leather, forward, back, sideways, crisp combinations, power delivered, absorbed, no feeling like it, the fist stops just right, you don’t punch a man, you punch
through
a man, and there’d been just the sound of the bag in the room’s dim disarray of boxes and shelves, and of breathing and blows and the slide of shoe leather on wood. His clothes felt clammy now, the skin of his back salty, he could taste salt on his lip. He’d stayed on with Tena until the girls left. She said to him at the door that Lorna Matheson would be over later to sit with her a while and then she’d go to bed when Lorna went home, she was bone-tired, a call might come in the night and she didn’t want people clucking around her anymore today, no more hens, please.

But he wanted to be there with her, to sit in that kitchen all night long so she could sleep. He’d felt a strange emptiness in the house, beyond the fact of Clement’s absence. It was agonizing to think of her there now, dark falling upon dark, Clement not home yet. Not home yet—shopworn words, spoken hundreds of times in a life. A son not home from school, a daughter not home from a dance. Dad not home yet, stopped in at the tavern maybe, late from the field, late from the mine, he’ll be along. But that simple line could take on such weight, get heavier with ice hour by hour…That fine story of D. H. Lawrence’s, “Odour of Chrysanthemums,” the miner’s wife waiting for her husband, late from the pit, her irritation and grievances toward him slowly turning to alarm. Her stoic fear, her grudging love, his coming alive in her mind as a man as she realizes, but won’t yield to, the real possibility of his death. Several times Lauchlin had tried to teach that story in his classes but had to give up, he could never get his students to understand what the woman was feeling or why, it was beyond them and maybe him too, and who cared about a miner and his wife anyway in the English Midlands, back in the 1890s. Taking them back in time was always difficult, and he hadn’t
the gift of making them want the journey. Maybe it was too easy to want it himself…

There were nights when he used to look across the road at the store and think, That’s it, that’s as far now as I will ever go, I’m sunk in deep as a fencepost, nothing left but to weather down. Maybe he was over that, just another truth to live with. Tena, she herself was a distance he never thought he’d travel, she was like the air of another country. Yet, if he’d been with his brother on Harris, taken in what Frank did, might he not have come back stronger, wiser in how he measured his own world?

But Jesus, what would Frank do with a cyclist who kept pedalling across his mind? Call up the Mounties and dump this bit of disconnected information in their laps? No, it was mere oddness, coincidence, and why share the details with anyone just now? If Lauchlin had not wandered down to the road at that hour, the man would have passed invisibly, neither he nor his bike would matter to anyone. Over and over Lauchlin had peered into that obscure face beneath the absurd helmet and, though it disturbed him now, it made no sense.

The floor of the hall creaked. Johanna was at his door. “I’m not sure I ever heard it so quiet,” she said, “too quiet for sleep.” His mother rarely came into his room anymore but she passed the foot of his bed to the north window that looked storeward. “She waits, but she cannot watch. She won’t be at a window. It must be terrible to wait without sight, oh, so much worse. Did you ever wish you could pray for him? For her? That you had that kind of strength to give her?”

Lauchlin raised his head. Her unpinned hair fell down her back, silver against her purple bathrobe. “I just wish Clement would show up,” he said. “That’s what I wish. I’ll leave the praying to you.”

“When you were a boy you prayed. On your knees, right by that bed.”

“I lost that, Ma. You know that.”

“God help him. I have such a terrible feeling about him. I can’t sleep.”

Lauchlin swung out of bed, his back to her. He stared at his pale feet on the floor, unshod they seemed large to him, clownish.
Such a different landscape from home, Lauch, all but treeless, open hills, coastal meadows. Beautiful beaches, rival the Caribbean. Chilly water? Oh God. I wandered over the white sands, didn’t meet a soul. No women basking in bikinis. Not in the mood if there were. You’d be, wouldn’t you? Instead a clean wind scouring my mind. Just about conquered the jet lag, no narcosis today. Calum likes boxing. I told Calum about you, but not the bad parts. My brother was a boxer, I said. My, was he? said Marsail. A man of primal urges—but I left that out.