Liar (21 page)

Months after Sam’s death, China still mourned occasionally for the love that had been so powerful, so doomed. She understood so much more, now that it was too late. Perhaps, it was always too late for Sam. At first she didn’t understand why, after reading all her intimate secrets, he didn’t use them to love her better. Now she knew that her fierceness, her pride, and her demanding honesty had overwhelmed him. He didn’t even try to change because he knew he couldn’t. He just waited miserably for her to finally get fed up and leave.

In her life with Sam, she was understanding, full of fun and crystal clear in what she needed. In her daily loving she forgave his transgressions. There was no forgiveness in her journals. Just an angry litany of his lies and her oft repeated ultimatum that she would leave if he didn’t shape up.

Did he lie more to see what he could get away with? Did he then check in the diary to see if she had discovered him? Did he crow with secret glee when he had fooled her once again? Did he go that far in his manipulation, or not? Was he suddenly happy when he read a passionate account of how much she loved him? He didn’t read much of that in the later journals. He must have seen the loving China in his arms meld with the angry woman in the journals. He had waited helplessly, with great cowardice, for her to realize that no amount of scribbling, or loving, would change him.

He didn’t have the energy or belief to become the man that was promised at his birth. He had manufactured the image, which had drained him of all his resources, but it was false. He searched out strong women to give him life. Women were biologically attracted to his big, strong body, and erotic charm, believing that his physical strength would protect them, but then his kind of love inevitably disappointed them when they found out how weak he was.

She now believed that he lied every which way. He lied, carelessly, weakly, unconsciously, and sometimes, maybe often, he lied with real, manipulative intent. He was evil incarnate clothed in handsome and charm. A lying devil, and the devil had possessed her. He was the demon lover who still entered her fantasies and made her shake with desire.

China knew from past experience that the only way to get rid of one lover was to find another, but she seriously doubted she’d ever fall in love again. She didn’t even want to entertain the idea of losing herself again. China hoped she’d find an easier way of exorcizing Sam from her mind and body forever.

June 17/99

The only way I knew how to love a man was to put aside my will. I believe that’s what many women do. The DNA of surrender is programmed into our hearts and bodies. Except that my total surrender never lasted very long - usually about three years. The time it took to fall out of love with them, and back in love with myself. It was a very gradual process, but every now and then my men would sense that I was not the biddable creature they thought I was. I ensnared them with my gentle, loving ways and occasionally they’d catch a glimpse of my intellect and formidable will. When this happened they thwarted me or put me down. If I had shown them who I really was right from the beginning, we would never have lasted a year.

With a few men, I showed my true self, independent, smart and willful, but only because I didn’t want them. Yet with the three I chose, I slipped into a pattern even I didn’t recognize. I now believe these relationships were karmic and I repeated the memory of who I was in a past life in order to live with them. How they must have been shocked when the new China surfaced.

It was different with Sam because my will surfaced very quickly, in the journals, fueled by his endless lies. He thought he’d found a woman who lied as much as he did, the huge difference being that I was lying only to myself and because he read it, felt that I was lying to him. How ironic that a man who lied so much about everything would marry a lie detector. What a macabre dance we led each other, locked in an erotic embrace of lies and discovery, our only neutral ground, a mattress.

China closed her journal and looked thoughtfully at Sam’s lovely cedar coffin for a long time. Then she called a friend of hers who welded iron and steel into beautiful candelabra and shelves and told him what she wanted. She waited a few days, did some carving, made plane reservations and ferry reservations, and went to pick up her special order.

China walked onto the ferry to Grimshaw Island wearing a black wig and large sunglasses. She asked the taxi driver to take her to Seal Beach, where Bear’s wrecked boat had been found. The driver was still the inevitable Eddie, who never spoke unless spoken to first, and China didn’t speak except to tell Eddie her destination and ask him to pick her up two hours later. He looked at her curiously, then shrugged and nodded and drove away.

She walked down the empty beach with her heavy duffle bag and set it down when she could no longer carry it. She looked around remembering all the lovely, lonely times she had tramped this beach. The memory of the white shoe came unbidden and for a moment she regretted that she hadn’t given the shoe to the RCMP. Perhaps the family would have been pleased to have a memory of the daughter, or sister whose body had never been recovered. Perhaps not. They had plenty of other memories of her. Why would they want the death debris memory of her struggle with her last cold Atlantic breath?

China gathered together a few dead branches, threw some kerosene on the wood and fed the fire until she had a nice blaze going. She spread open the bag to reveal Sam’s coffin, took out the branding iron, made by her friend, and heated it in the fire until it was red hot. She then pressed the iron into the lid of the coffin, burning the word LIAR forever into the wood.

She took out all her Sam journals, threw them on the fire and watched the flames devour her tormented life with Sam. She considered cremating Sam and his coffin but she didn’t want to go so far as to tamper with tradition. The Grimshaw Indians believed in reincarnation and also believed that they could only return as Grimshaw Indians. Once a Grimshaw, always a Grimshaw. The bones had to be buried on the island so their spirits would know where to return. The buried bones sent out a homing beacon so to speak. Made perfect sense to China.

She doused the fire, left the branding iron on the sand to cool, picked up her bag and walked into the trees above the water line. She found a mossy clearing, took out her small shovel and dug a hole deep enough to bury Sam. She pried the lid off the coffin and looked at her last Sam doll. She had carved a perfect likeness of his face, a perfect, miniature Sam doll, only eight inches tall, which was the height of his penis in full erection. Sam’s penis had actually had different heights, depending on his mood, and how much booze he had imbibed. It was always effective no matter the inches but China preferred eight. She picked up the small wooden stake she had carved, and the sledge hammer, and drove the wooden stake right into Sam’s lying little wooden heart. A tremor ran threw her body as she pounded. Was it Sam’s spirit, the last sigh of her love being expelled, or was it simply a tremor of great satisfaction?

She reached into her pocket, withdrew a piece of paper and read Sam’s
“Epitaph.”

You creep into my thoughts

that ought by now

have scorned you,

yet you wield a ghostly power

that makes me yield

to your embrace,

Like a wraith you glide

into my dreams, and laugh

at my closed face;

I would have my subconscious

put you to rest. Here,

lies a fellow poet

who inveigled me

in deceptions

But I had eyes too wise

to see the cloak

that hid his duplicity,

He didn’t like

my bull’s-eye arrows

that punctured his skin

with little stings,

He slowly crumpled,

a deflated balloon

and my very womb

rejected him;

To love a man

with nothing but pity

soon finds

the heart’s contempt.

China placed Sam’s Epitaph in the little coffin, nailed the lid back on, and shoved it into the grave. She filled in the grave and jumped on the earth to tamp it down. She scattered old, dead branches and handfuls of moss over the fresh earth and in a couple of minutes even she couldn’t find where Sam was buried.

She still had half an hour left before Eddie’s return so she gathered some shells and a few small pieces of driftwood. Her bag soon looked as heavy when she left the beach as when she had arrived. China loved practical solutions to difficult problems. It had been a very expensive solution, but worth every penny. She walked towards Eddie’s taxi with a jaunty step and a smile on her face.

All of a sudden her steps slowed and a horrible thought slipped her smile upside down. What if Sam, the master of deceit, wasn’t really dead? His body had never been found. What if he planned his death and was lying somewhere with another woman, poor thing, and the proof of perjury now a pile of ashes waiting for high tide? China felt a strange mixture of fear and laughter.
Oh well,
she thought,
I’ve done all I can do to stop him. The rest is up to fate.

China waved as she approached Eddie’s taxi.

China Collins had said her final goodbye to Sam Eagle.

THE END