Mercy Among the Children (23 page)

“Please, Mat,” the man said. “How long has I known ya, boy — these bastards don’t get away with it —”

“I feel I have to kill Connie Devlin,” Mat told them. “Connie — you know he shoulda looked out for Trenton, but he wasn’t
even there — he wasn’t even there! And them floodlights was off. Why was they off? He must be in league with Sydney all along. They pulled it off together. Connie and that bastard.” He looked from one to the other with a look of stupefied revelation.

“I know, but you have to think of your mom,” the woman said. “What will that do to her, a good woman like that? Everyone admires you — you just have to be strong. There are people here on this road — who have decided that they won’t let that man leave his house again. They will stand guard outside the house waiting for him —”

“They want me to sue — a whole bunch of lawyers is after me to sue Leo McVicer. But I don’t even want the money and if I get a million dollars I might just burn it all up in a pile on the bridge.” He then took five dollars from his pocket and burned it, and saw that it had the effect Cynthia told him it would.

Late the next day Devlin went to the Pit house and asked to see Mathew. He was ushered into the back room, a room with spotted red wallpaper and deep leather chairs, where Mathew had a small office and kept things that had been stolen. Devlin came in certain he had the upper hand, and remained certain until he stared at Mathew’s face. Suddenly his nerve failed, and he began to tremble.

“Why did you say that I deserved to die?” he asked, fidgeting. “People are saying the Sheppards are going to get me — what did I do?”

“Why weren’t you there to protect Trenton,” Mathew said, “like I begged you to be when I knew Sydney was trying to lure him away? Why didn’t you protect him — why did you leave those lights off!”

“But you told me to stay at home — you promised me four thousand dollars if I left the lights off.”

“Four thousand dollars! Stay at home! I told you?” Mathew said, jumping to his feet and slapping Connie’s face. “I told you? That’s a lie! I already got one confession — I’ll get yours too — if you don’t watch it.”

Connie stared at Mat and then at Cynthia.

“Yer right,” he said finally. “I’m not thinkin’ good.”

“Not one penny —” Cynthia said. “Yer our cousin, we take care of you — but if we find you and Sydney were in this together — to make money — stinkin’ money on a child’s death — you understand — it would break Alvina’s heart even more to know that her brother’s son was in on this!”

Connie, realizing the precariousness of his position, smiled like a hurt child. “I’m on yer side, Alvina knows,” he whispered. “You know that too — you do — Cynthia — I’m not asking for nothing.” He smiled again, his face white, and asked if there was anything they needed, or what errand he could run, and when he left them he looked as though he was walking on eggs.

FIVE

My father was put to bed and sweated off the drunk like he used to do as a young man. He asked me to take his clothes away and bind his wrists to the headboard, and I did what he asked. I hid his clothes in the hole behind my bed, all of them.

His eyes were black. I thought he had been beaten after he got drunk. I did not know he had been beaten so they could set him drunk. But he had not died — and those who had beaten him took this as proof of how evil he was.

Father called me to him. It was important to him that I know he did not drink intentionally or in any way confess to hurting Trenton, as was now being said by everyone. He only confessed to his
conceit
— that he should not have tried to help the boy. But what kind of weakness in a man would make him confess to such a conceit as that?

His mouth was cut by the bottle because he had broken it with his teeth when he had tried to stop them. He told me he had left the ice field about three that afternoon. He was met by a man who said he wanted to speak to him about a job. My father was not gullible, but we were in desperate need of money.

“Come with me,” the man said. “We’ll give you forty bucks for piling on some eight-foot for us today. We know you can pile it as well as anyone on the river.”

Dad was like a child. Forty dollars for loading a truck. Even though he knew he might be in danger, he also needed the money for Autumn, who needed new glasses.

They walked along the path together. Not Father’s usual path, but one that skirted below the Pits’ property. Father was again suspicious about walking down this way (where would the truck be here?) and he slowed down and looked back over his shoulder. And then two other men came out of the woods behind him.

“Was Mathew one?” I asked.

“No,” he said firmly.

They held him down, pried open his mouth, and poured alcohol down his throat. He bit and swallowed the glass. He asked me if I was ashamed of him. I said of course not, but for minutes I did not look his way. His big thick glasses had been broken, the lenses lost in the snow, and he couldn’t read his books without them.

We did not tell Mother what had happened. He told her he had a relapse. It would be terrible for Mom to know that
men, actual living breathing men, had done this to him; yet it was as bad for me
not
to believe him. He remained in bed and asked for Jay Beard. Jay came, and went in to see my father for an hour.

When Jay came out I had a chance to talk to him. I see myself now as a skinny kid in a dirty white shirt and a pair of dress pants too large for me.

“Is he telling the truth?” I asked. I looked up at him with such expectation I started to shiver.

Jay just shook his head. He held Dad’s broken glasses. He had found the lenses. He would take them home and try to repair them.

“I don’t know if he is or isn’t,” he said. “Perhaps that is what having faith means — I just don’t know, boy. But there is one thing — the Sheppard boys are gone away — they’re hiding from something — that means something is not right.”

I got bandages and gauze and wrapped Dad’s hands. I bathed his mouth every few hours with a swab.

I was numb and could not think. And for days I could not go outside or attend school. Here is the list I managed to write down at this time. I called it the Seven Deadly Sins, and though I kept it out of sight, both Mom and Autumn knew about it.

• 1) Refuses blood test and denies he is father of Cynthia’s child — child dies while in Father’s arms.
  

• 2) Mother works at McVicer’s — Father and Mother accused of robbery.
  

• 3) Job on the bridge — bridge collapses.
  

• 4) Says wants to take care of Trenton — Trenton dies.
  

• 5) Says he didn’t influence or harm boy — boy’s body covered with stolen money.
  

• 6) Trenton dies at night — Father predicts as much.
  

• 7) Father doesn’t drink — Father gets drunk and confesses.
  

SIX

Our house was silent. The days were once again frigid sharp and clear, and our small house sat out in this brilliant cold surrounded by empty air and snow. We could hear the boards creak when night fell, and we could hear men, one or two and then more sneaking up to our place and throwing objects at the door. They were the shadows of my youth. We did not go out. We were silent. We did not contact the police.

Four or five days after Dad came home drunk, Autumn and I were finally sent to the gas bar for a loaf of bread, for there was no longer food to eat. But the woman (the woman who had spoken to Mathew) said the store was closed. The air smelled of ash and grey cloud. I banged on the door until her husband came out and chased us away with a certain amount of weary duty. Because of his look, I then made up my mind. To protect my family, by any means. My father read Aristotle and spoke of civility and equality — but Aristotle was the teacher of Alexander the Great — there were other options —

We walked back from the store, without our bread, in the last echoes of daylight, and watched the sun linger down over the hard tamarack trees. Both of us were famished and felt
emptiness gnaw at the pit of our stomachs. I took Autumn’s hand, and she looked up at me and blinked, and smiled.

I had been thinking since the trial that there was a far greater need and reason for revenge. Simply put, Autumn had been happy to see her picture in the paper during the inquest, but we as a family never spoke of it. Her picture was in the paper because she was a delicate little creature with white skin and white hair. She did not understand then that they were using her looks against us. The picture on its own pleased her. I thought of this as we walked home and as she held my hand.

When we got home our mother was lying on the cot near the stove. She was now four or five months’ pregnant. My father was pacing back and forth, his face pale, lips trembling. He asked us if we got the bread. I said no. He asked us if anyone was outside. I said I didn’t think there was. He nodded, and looked at Mother. His mouth was healing. His face was calm, the injuries, so I thought, were mending. Then he sat down.

Neither said anything, about the bullet hole through the side wall that had busted through Dad’s library and smashed a picture of Saint Therese of the child Jesus in the opposite room and caused a flesh wound on his arm that dripped blood like a tap. I think I was angrier at
them
than at whoever shot the rifle.

“What are you going to do?” I said to Dad. “Phone the police?”

“No,” Father said, and his logic here was as strangely sane as Mat Pit’s. “It can’t be proven who shot what. Everyone saw me drunk for the first time in fifteen years. Morris is now on a rampage against me again — and so too is Diedre Whyne and our compassionate Dr. David Scone. Worse than anything, it is taking me everything
not
to drink. I could not go to the police and start an investigation again
without
drinking! If I drink again I swear to Christ I will drink until I die.
They
will win.

“You do not know what your mom and I went through before with Constable Morris. And that would be your mother’s ruin. I have to think of her! Everyone on the river thinks I drank because of guilt — everyone believes that people tried to take the bottle
from
me and that’s why I got a black eye. Even our only friend, Jay Beard, has said it looks bad for me now.”

He laughed suddenly, and Autumn laughed as well. Autumn’s laugh was almost insane.

“It was them!” I yelled. “I will kill them — like they tried to do to you and Mommie.”

My father looked at me, startled at my rage. Then he spoke sternly.

“I will not tell you this again. But do you understand? They cannot do this and
not
destroy themselves. This will lead to their destruction. It is not that I want it — it is so, no matter what I want. What do
you
want me to do — shoot at them? I won’t. I can’t and I won’t.”

“Yes,” I said. “Shoot holes through the whole bunch of them — kill the cunts!” I roared — using the word I could not imagine saying two months before.

“Leave it be — and wait. The Pits are not people to fool with,” Autumn said.

“Even if he set everything in motion?” I yelled at her.

“Men don’t set things like this in motion,” Father said, “it always spirals out of control. That’s why the men are outside. And it is out of control because men do not control themselves. I don’t want to see you become involved and then lose yourself too.”

“At least we have tea,” Autumn said. “That’s better than nothing.”

When she passed by me, her face took on an urgent expression. “We’re sitting ducks,” she said. “You be Donald, I be fuckin’ Daffy.” And she burst out laughing again.

Mother (and for the only time in my life did I think she was an imbecile) suddenly asked me to go to church. “It is nearing seven o’clock,” she advised. “Please go for me — please, I cannot go tonight.”

“I am not going to church tonight,” I said, more astonished at her than at my father’s wound. “Jesus Christ, there are men standing right outside the door —”

“Please,” Mother said. “For your brother’s sake — everything will turn out if you go and pray for your brother’s sake, please. Pray for deliverance from evil.”

“I have no brother,” I said.

But Autumn whispered to me, “She’s talking about the little unseen lad.”

Just to get away from the insanity of the house, I left for church, along the old path Dad took to the smelt nets. By now there was a moon in the sky lighting the snow, and the soft smell of ashes. Halfway along this path, in a small copse of trees, I looked back and could see the light shining through the hole the bullet had made in the back tin. And just as I saw this and looked down, 1 spied the shell from a thirty-thirty and the tracks from a pair of boots. I picked the shell up, holding it with my shirt sleeve, and placed it in my pocket, thinking I had the evidence I needed. Then I continued to church in giddy confidence.

But coming to the oak doors, I balked. I turned and cursed. I waited outside. I promised myself I would not go to church again, for anyone.

“Let my fuckin’ brother die,” I said aloud. “The Virgin Mary don’t love us nohow — my mother is cursed by her.” And I spit. I spit, and looked about hoping people had seen me, and then up at the sky, which seemed to be pulsating slowly.

After eight o’clock the doors opened, and a small collection of stragglers and country-born parishioners came out
after mass. I approached Rudy Bellanger. I knew him as a man everyone respected. I showed him the thirty-thirty jacket.

“That’s what the Pits fired at us,” I said excitedly. “Someone got to help us soon — they are the ones who did all this. I think they robbed your father-in-law’s house — yes I do.” I said this so quickly spit came from my mouth. “So it isn’t right for my mother — they wounded Dad — they did.”

I was shaking all over. I do not know how often you have been in the position where you had to beg the truth, but it is a horrible feeling. You get a glimpse into the ages — into Cassandra’s hopeless moments.

Rudy looked at me. There was a gasp when he breathed air. “Please,” he said, as if he were in pain. “That isn’t true?”