Mercy Among the Children (21 page)

For more than two months everyone on the river had believed Mathew was a hero. People from far and wide wrote him letters, sent cards and money. They drew nooses on these cards and letters and called radio programs to talk about the reinstatement of the death penalty.

He received money from Maritimers and Miramichers as far away as Calgary and Edmonton. And many wanted action against my father. Many said they would gladly come home for target practice. My father’s death would be seen as a legitimate form of reprisal. I had heard this myself, and in some terrible way believed it.

But Mathew was not doing as well as he could have. He feared Rudy would break under the pressure very soon. Worse, Connie Devlin could blackmail him.

And recently he had made a fundamental mistake, the same mistake he had been making since he was sixteen. He
had taken three gallons of gas without paying for it. The news about this had spread, and people heard that he had used his favourable position to act as his old self. He had tried to make up for it, but the manager of the gas bar wouldn’t take money for the gas and looked disappointed. Both he and Cynthia had felt a coolness toward them since the three gallons of gas.

TWO

Mathew sat on a hard-backed kitchen chair and spoke to his sister. He told her he was preparing to file suit against the McVicer construction company. He said this was suggested to him as a possible avenue to justice by a number of people, and he knew a lawyer to handle it. It was the best thing to do to receive compensation. But what he actually wanted more than anything else was to be talked into it, not only by the lawyer but by Cynthia as well. For if she did not go for it, it would be because she sensed too much danger.

“What kind of compensation would change Trenton’s death?” Cynthia asked quickly. She wanted to hear from his lips the amount he might be seeking.

“I know nothing will ever change his death — as I told Mom — still, we have a good case —” Then he added, “No, never mind it — I’m not going to cheapen his death by no fuckin’ money.” He looked at her under his eyebrows, with his pale blue eyes. Then he shifted his gaze minutely, staring into the corner. Finally she lighted a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and turning her head to blow away the smoke, said: “When?”

“When what?”

“When did you speak to the lawyer?”

“In the bar yesterday — told us to go and see him. But never mind it. I’m done with it. I decided. I want no more to do with it. I decided. I will go and kill Sydney and have done with it. They can take me away in handcuffs.” As he said this, he glanced at the window sill. He rubbed his nose and looked away.

For the last month Mathew had been conferring with Connie Devlin in the hope that Connie would shoot Sydney for him. Mathew’s hope was that it would be looked upon as an internal dispute, that Connie as night watchman would be considered culpable in Sydney’s schemes and was willing to shoot him to keep him silent. That would put Mathew in the clear.

Cynthia looked at him with her clear and brilliant eyes. He glanced at her and glanced away.

“When does he want us to go and see him?” she asked.

“Who?” he said as if distracted.

“The fuckin’ lawyer,” Cynthia said.

“Tomorrow,” he said, as if the very nature of the word “tomorrow” was tormenting him because of its endless pettiness. He looked at the knuckle of his left hand and rubbed it against the fabric of the couch.

But Cynthia, like him in so many ways, understood him better than he knew. She knew they were running out of options. They must sue now or forget the whole thing, and to kill Sydney would prove to the people how tormented her brother was.

In a way it was completely logical. In a way Cynthia realized she must play the cards remaining to her in perfect order. Not to sue or attempt to injure Sydney would be a subtle admission, and people would begin to view them as fraudulent. But what she realized more than anything was Connie Devlin’s reticence in helping them any more; that he wanted payment
for everything now, the four thousand he somehow believed he was owed. She told Mathew he had one option.

“To shoot through Sydney’s door and hit the fucker —”

He hesitated. “I know — but still everyone will know it was me.”

“That’s the point,” Cynthia said. “Don’t you turn into a gutless puke on me — he won’t even get the cops — and people will hear about it. More important, Connie Devlin will
fear
you again — he doesn’t now. And the lawyer will hear of it too, and treat you with more respect. All of this will be in your general favour.”

This plan to Cynthia was both brilliant and ruefully truthful.

“I’m not questioning it,” he said, “but things might get tricky.”

“Of course they’ll get tricky — so tricky — but you don’t really have a choice — damned if you do, maybe, but damned if you don’t. If Devlin ever says he saw you, or that he knew of what you were doing — or if the robbery at Leo’s is investigated and Rudy cracks — it’s all over. You can’t tell me for certain that no one saw you,” Cynthia said, “but if we can keep our cool, things can still turn out. It will get tricky if you kill Sydney — but not if you wound him —”

He realized she was right.

Then she said, “Connie Devlin is a danger to us, so we will have to think of him as well. If he’s lumped in with the company in our lawsuit, he won’t be on our side — he’ll turn against us. The best thing to do is to make it very clear how you feel about him.”

Mathew sat down again. “What do you mean?”

“I mean this. We have a window of opportunity, but it could backfire. The company might sue Connie Devlin for breach of responsibility — he should have reported the truck on the span — the lousy rebar pulled up, the bolts hacked off! He will then turn on us in a second.”

Mathew blanched white. “I don’t want to do it then,” he said.

“You silly fuck — you have no choice now,” she said. “You have to act this out in one way or the other. Fear is a good keeper-quieter. And Connie will fear you if you are ruthless.”

The fact that lies had forced him into this was apparent to them both.

Again they were silent. The night was still, and cars passed on the highway. The moon sat over the house, and its light flooded the yard.

Cynthia knew he had robbed Leo McVicer — she had watched him go into the house through the back door. But more worrisome was the possibility that others had seen him near the house that night.

More importantly she knew he had loosened the bolts on the buckled steel. Though she did not see him pull the truck up to the abutment, she knew he had three sticks of dynamite, and now there were two.

But if this information came out, it would break her mother’s heart — and Cynthia had much to lose as well. So she played out her remaining options. One was to take definite action against Connie Devlin — which would tie him and Sydney together.

The other worry was Rudy Bellanger.

She had told Rudy when he came to see her last week that unless he kept quiet, he would lose everything, every hope and dream he ever had entertained in the last ten years. He had smiled and said, “You’re crazy — I want no more to do with either of you — I can go to the police and take my chances with them.”

But then she played her ace. And he realized in her sullen face that she had kept it for just such a moment.

“Why am I crazy?” she said, looking through him. “Remember that night near Christmas when you visited Mat, and I came
downstairs after my bath in my nightie — well, you had to have me, didn’t you. I struggled. I tried to protest, remember? And I couldn’t resist. Well, I’m knocked up, and I need payment for the child.”

“It can’t be mine,” Rudy said, his lower lip trembling.

“What do you take me for — can’t be mine? Who in hell’s is it? Some goddamn Indian’s from Burnt Church? Can be mine will land you in court — can’t be mine will land you in prison — ha! You blew your load in ten seconds — can’t be mine, try it — just try it. What will little Gladys think of that!”

Now that Rudy was vulnerable and in too deep to find an avenue to escape she allowed him none. None of this was done with conscious malice. It simply happened, suddenly — like her pregnancy. She would see an opening and dive in. There always came a moment when she thought it better not to continue, but then her eyes would burn like brilliant dark stars, her beauty would turn suddenly vulgar and wanton, and she would tell people to
dare
her.

She was not overly brave, nor fatalistically ambitious. Yet she played her cards at opportune times and believed that everything she did was thought out beforehand.

Now with Rudy’s ill and sad wife she felt as a woman does who has just made a four non trump bid against an opponent who once ridiculed her play. She remembered how Gladys condescended to her as a girl. Now, she had been
knocked up
by Gladys’s husband. This gave her a leverage with the rich. She felt powerful. The machinations and worry of men had always given her power.

Because of this pregnancy, she felt equal to every person in town, to self-appointed professor Scone who spoke in the papers and, most important and ominous of all, to Leopold McVicer. The thing that neither Diedre nor Dr. Scone seemed to understand was that
anyone
could be self-appointed. And
Cynthia had thought of grander things than her brother; or even of Diedre and David Scone. Both those people were slaves of public opinion, which in a way was a greater impediment than moral law. The vast number of self-appointed archangels were usually slaves of public opinion. Cynthia did not necessarily have that problem.

Once last summer Leo was putting some flowers in his back yard beds, and she, being bored, had wandered through the back woods, beyond those huge enclosed fields and out along his dusty back lane. She passed some of his graders and tractors, a few of his gravel trucks. The smell of mud gave her a slightly erotic sensation. She was wearing a loose halter top and tight shorts. He smiled upon her, wearing an old hat and khaki pants. She walked straight up to him, but realized his daughter, Gladys, was inside the porch on one of the old wicker chairs, painting, in her straw hat and heavy print dress. So she did not stay, even though he asked her to come into the house for a drink of lemonade.

“No, not today,” she had said, clicking her tongue. She knew he would remember her, would remember the clicking of her tongue, because she wanted him, too.

Still, this did not make her loyal to him if money could come through a lawsuit against him. But also it did not make her loyal to Mathew if the lawsuit were to fail and Leo showed interest again.

Though she was sorry her poor innocent brother was dead (and she was very sorry), she was left daily indications that life would be much better for her because of it. Cynthia knew the one way to prove outrage was action, and she had to prod Mathew into taking it.

“It is Connie we have to get — you should never have allowed him to know
anything
about you,” she now said. “You cannot trust a man. I am very different from you — I have already
planned my life, and I will do something every bit as big as anyone on the river.” She smiled at this, like a slave might.

The fact was, far from being free, Cynthia had always been institutional in her thoughts.

Cynthia knew and used the same language as Diedre did, the language of a social contract that mattered so little in true human affairs. That is, Cynthia could easily talk about dispossessed, and marginal, and traumatized, and underprivileged, and emancipation, and victims, and family unit in the jargon of the social worker whenever it was to her advantage. And she could drop it in a second when it wasn’t.

Cynthia knew how the police worked, how the social services worked, because she had been a product of them. She knew about welfare, and she knew how to make these programs work in her favour. She had always been able to get money for her mother when others failed.

Tonight she did not like to admit that the death of her brother had become a game in which she was deciding how to dupe those authorities who had taken an interest in her, yet she could not deny its appeal. Her conversation with Mathew never suggested this, even though both of them felt the same sensation; this would allow them to
prosper.
No matter that she did not want to recognize this internal and provocative truth, she was stuck within the core of its veracity.

“First we go to the lawyer,” Mathew said. He did not look at her when he said this. “There is a chance at a good deal of money. The lawyer said it wouldn’t even have to go to trial — that Leo is vulnerable now and would be willing to settle. It’s not for us, it’s for Mom,” he added. “It’s for Trenton’s memory.”

“For how much?” Cynthia asked, rolling a toke and looking at him, hands on her knees, and her knees spread.

“Anywhere from fifty to a hundred thousand.”

“Trenton was worth more than that,” she said. “That’s the first thing.”

But $100,000 was an enormous amount for her.

Cynthia sat up, threw the blanket off, and asked him to hand her her jeans. She asked him again what money would be worth the child’s life. He said, his voice genuinely breaking, that he didn’t know.

THREE

The next morning Mathew dressed in the frigid air of his bedroom, and covered himself with his best clothes. His best clothes were five years out of date, a button was split, and he wore a pair of cowboy boots that gave his pants a ridge at the calf.

Cynthia knew lawyers fascinated Mathew Pit because they allowed him entrance into a world of jurisprudence where everyone was supposedly equal. More than that, that world allowed him in a legal way to be superior to those who had condescended to him, and allowed him to show a regal bearing that the law granted the “marginalized.” Although he hadn’t considered including Cynthia or his mother in his quest for money, he realized he must now. That he relied on Cynthia day in and day out was something both of them knew.

Therefore he and Cynthia went to a lawyer, as representatives from their family. They were going to sue the construction company and Leo McVicer himself. This is what pleased Cynthia — the idea that she could sue “Leo McVicer himself.”