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Authors: David Adams Richards

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BOOK: Mercy Among the Children
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All of us gathered about the table, and I postured my indifference to what the letter would say (while my heart raced). But exoneration of any kind was not the case. It was a letter saying that my father and mother owed some seventeen thousand dollars in back taxes plus interest, from the time he was in business digging wells. My father had not filed taxes because he had in his entire life earned so little he had no idea about taxes, no matter how well read he was. He was now penalized for not filing his income taxes during a three- or four-year period. It was done, as all things are done today, by computer from Ottawa. The local tax department had not even handled the case.

Father had to travel back and forth to town seeing people about his taxes. Jay Beard drove him. The clerk told Dad to write a letter to the senior collection officer, which he did. He waited four weeks. The letter he received verified that they had put a lien on his house, and they would expect payment within the year or they would determine the reason for noncompliance. That they would obtain securities, monitor his accounts to ensure commitments were maintained; they would
also liaise with Sheriff Bulgar, and other parties if need be, and maintain the
integrity
of the tax legislation.

Neither my mother nor I understood this language, nor did my father understand it well. He only told me that he did not have a bank account, so what would they monitor? I knew that for him this was a staggering amount of money. A Ms. Hardwicke at the local tax office told my mother and father that if it were up to her, she would relieve them of this burden.

“I thought it
was
up to you,” my father said.

“It was computed,” Ms. Hardwicke said. “The charge came out of the new profiling we do by computer. The computer found your earnings, evaluated a fine, and compounded it because of penalty. It is up to the senior officer to dismiss the burden.”

“Well, can the senior officer do so?” Mother asked.

“No. I have your file — it was sent to me. I can only encourage you to pay it. But as I say, it is up to the senior officer — do you understand? She has many backlogged cases and is new to the department.”

Dad came back from visiting Ms. Hardwicke one day in March and told us that in spite of him conveying how little we had, the lien was not only on our home but had been extended to the few scrub acres we owned, so that our mature stand of wood, which he had hoped to cut, could be taken if we cut it.

“Will we be forced to sell the house?” my mother asked (as if anyone would buy our house).

“No — I won’t sell what I have — but if I cut the wood and sold it, they would claim the profit.”

We sat around the table. For the first time I felt that their eyes were on me, as if they were looking to me for an answer. And so I gave them one.

“Move everything out of the house — and take your
chainsaw to it — cut the walls down — cut the wood, burn it — leave this place for somewhere else — for some other country —”

Autumn looked at me and grinned.

My father gave me a startled, remarkable look. Then he smiled at Mother. He had another scenario. Oh boys, his was a great plan, let me tell you!

My father’s ingenious plan was not to fight anyone, not to chop the house up, but to
comply
with the tax department’s wishes.

“I will leave for the powerline they are putting through up north of the province. I will live there and earn my way out of this debt — I’ve lived in camps before, and I can again. There is good money.”

He went on to say it would take him two or three years to free us of this burden but he was physically and mentally fit. He told me he would send half of his pay to us, keep a little, and send the rest to the tax department.

“I’ve always enjoyed a spartan life. When I grew up I had very little — but I did not lack for anything. I fished trout and kept a chicken or two. When my father couldn’t find steady work, he hunted. I spent extra money on books. At seventeen I was reading Euripides.”

“Who’s Euripides?” Autumn asked, for she was reading everything she could, and wanted to be a writer.

“An American,” my mother answered. Father looked at me cautiously. In her gentle heart Mother always thought everyone important was an American. My father once said, “Well so do they — so there is no harm.”

“I will pay it all,” he said now. And he told me I would have to become the head of the house. I already felt that I was.

His plan was absurd, I told him. Still, I knew that his going would leave me freer and relieve our family of any more serious trouble.

“It’s Mathew Pit’s fault,” I blurted. “If it takes forever I will crush him and Connie Devlin under me!”

Autumn looked at me, and her eyes closed shyly because she did not believe what I was saying. Besides, she always felt I was bringing her bad luck when I spoke this way.

My father only sighed.

“You’re right about one thing,” he said. “It is strange how my life has turned out. It is strange the power that has been used against me. It is strange that save for Isabel Young and Jay Beard no one has helped us. But if you saw what I saw in my childhood, you would know why I do and say as I do.”

This was the first indication that there ever was a reason behind his logic. Though I believed he was using his childhood to shirk his responsibility to
our
childhood. Though I had found out that indifference to him was the safest way for Autumn and me, I was still determined to kill someone in revenge. I told him he did not have the right to mention Jay Beard’s name, because Jay Beard was brave and stood his ground. I told him that Jay Beard often came to check on us in the middle of the winter.

“I know that, son,” Sydney said.

“Then you should be ashamed of yourself,” I yelled.

The next afternoon I went to see Mr. McVicer. He was sitting in his office at the rear of his house. There were two phones on his desk. This impressed me more than anything else. Behind him was a topographical map of our region — Arron Brook, of our woodlots, his land, his mill, and all the families that worked for him. I stood before him, in an old pair of miner’s boots and torn winter coat and a toque with a hole in the top.

“I need a loan,” I said. My legs were trembling.

He stared at me. He didn’t say a thing. In a glass case on his left were four or five rifles. On his right was a picture of him in a canoe, flyfishing at the Arron Brook Forks — the place of destitution for our family. He stared at me so long I began to hang my head, but I managed not to.

“I need a loan,” I said.

“I heard you,” he said, biting on his pipe and talking through his teeth. The phone rang but he didn’t answer it. He stared at me instead. “What do you need — I’ve been thinking — I pay you twenty-five on the weekends — you haven’t bought a thing for yerself yet — you have taken good care of Autumn. So I’m thinking you want something — a rifle — a fishing rod — how much?”

“Seventeen thousand dollars,” I said.

The phone rang again and still looking at me he picked it up. He listened, then said, without raising his voice:

“I don’t give a fiddler’s fuck how you get that road opened, Abby, the plows are there, and you open the cocksucker by tomorrow — I want in there by tomorrow night. I have equipment in there.”

He slammed down the phone. And turned his gaze on me again.

“That’s a lot of money,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“How could you pay it back?”

“I would go to work —”

“Where?”

I held my breath and then I said, “I bet I could open up that road for you.”

He smiled, finally.

“Oh, I know you could — in ten years — but not now. I’ll tell you what I will do — you get through high school, and you come to see me — and you will never have to worry about
a job again. Now I’m no Prof. David Scone or any of his ilk —
they who teach and don’t know
— I don’t care for learning — but I care for knowledge. You give me the knowledge that you can get through school — that you can be more than your dad — who I never disliked, mind you — and I’ll pay you thirty thousand dollars the first year you work for me — that’s thirty thousand dollars when you are eighteen. More than that, I will see to Autumn’s university.”

I stared. I could say nothing. I saw on the map behind his head the small thick wood where I trapped my mink marked in red with my name and the number 15. That’s how many mink I had taken that year. He knew everything!

“Best I can do,” he said, kindly. “Best anyone will ever do for you.”

FOURTEEN

The next morning I walked to school with the ambition to graduate, and struck a teacher, Mr. Neile from Chatham, who had just suspended Cheryl Voteur. She had come to me for help. No one else would have done it. It was the only thing my conscience allowed. My punch grazed his face, and he half-dragged me to the door of the principal’s office. I saw blood on his mouth. I truly felt ashamed. But when the principal mentioned my father as the root of this problem, I told them I would never ever go back.

That night my father tried to speak to me, but I would not listen.

“At least I’m not gutless — at least I fight back — but you — everyone still thinks you done it.” My eyes blurred with tears, as Percy watched me.

“I think Trenton’s death was preordained,” my father said.

“Christ almighty — for what?”

“To set in motion my test and to in the end be blessed. I am far the better for it now — and I don’t want to be the better for it on the back of some poor child’s death. But there are multiple factors involved in someone’s life — and it had to be. I have been tempered by fire — just like I knew I would be that day on the church roof. I know what is owed us and what has been paid, and I say to you, Lyle, that much is owed us and little has been paid. That is far better than the other way around. Have much owing you, instead of owing much!”

For the first time, I did not want my father in the house. A wind was blowing from the bay; the temperature had dropped. Autumn had gone out to her school play rehearsal. It was time to state my case.

“Take this,” I said, showing him the hunting knife I had bought with the money Rudy Bellanger gave me, having hidden it under my bed and in my sweater for over two years, “and protect yourself — instead of getting Jay Beard to do it.”

“No —” He laughed. I couldn’t stand that he laughed at me, but now I realize he laughed not at me but at himself and the terrible way he had failed me.

“Do you really think that the truth matters?” I asked. “They know
nothing
about you. They care nothing about you. But they would kill you.” I was shaking.

“You’ll get up to the powerline, they will find out who you are, and the men won’t want to help you. You’ll get in trouble and die! Christ!”

“I will die no matter.” Father smiled. “And so will they. There is nothing I can do. I cannot change anyone. For me to go to
McVicer and say, ‘Mr. McVicer, you have treated my father immorally — for he scouted this land for you in 1938 — you once tried to escape paying for the clean-up of the Oyster River fire — and have balked at your duty toward my family and fought the environmental study. You hired Gerald Dove to use him, and do not want him to tell you the truth. Elly did not rob you, and I could no more harm a child than destroy a bridge I took pride in working on.’ What if I did say that? It is what I know, yet I have no right to force others to feel it.”

“Because of Trenton’s death you have turned in one direction, Mathew and Cynthia in the other,” I said. “They are getting more and more powerful and you are getting weaker and weaker. Mat hangs about with the Sheppards, who are as bad as he is.”

“Well, that has nothing to do with me,” Sydney said. “It has to do with Mathew himself. He has set out on a course quite different from mine. What do you want, son? For me to join them in order to be safe — or perhaps with that knife you intend something? If they destroy us they destroy themselves — not one breath of air comes against us that does not harm them as well — if you have read
The Forged Coupon
by Tolstoy you know this.”

“You are a fool!” I shouted.

He nodded like an accused criminal told to stand on scales next to the sandbags that would snap his neck in the morning. I think my calling him a fool hurt him that much. He had a right not to expect that from me.

I told him he was mean to my mother, and he had done nothing for us, and people were right to suspect him. He may as well have fucked Cynthia and have beaten my mother for the good he was! I told him I could take care of the house. I asked him to leave to go up north to put up the powerline like he said he would.

“Why shouldn’t you go? As long as you’re here there is trouble — as soon as you go everything will be fine — I get along with everyone. And your books — what good do they do — nothing,” I yelled, “not a damn thing. But look, if someone hurts us again — look what I got for them.” I flashed my knife again, and he tried to grab it from me. I yanked it away and blood spurted from his palm.

“You don’t understand,” I cried. “Mom will die, I know. Autumn is alone, she tries to be brave but still she is frightened — and she is already getting finger fucked by boys because she doesn’t think she is pretty enough to have a real date. People make fun of her. Why do you think they used her picture in the paper — to show we were
inbred
, to have everyone laughing at us — and she knows this — she does. And it’s McVicer’s fault she is a squinty-eyed albino!”

My father shook his head as if pleading with me to stop speaking, while he wrapped a cloth around his hand. But I did not. I could not. I believed I had to tell him the truth.

“She’s a damn albino — that’s why her picture was used — and I have to lug her about everywhere and try to keep the fingers off her pussy, do you understand?”

Father shook his head again, shyly, blood seeping through the cloth. His eyes were shining. But he was not looking at me — but behind me. I turned and saw Autumn. Autumn, who I thought had left for her school play practice, had heard what I had said. Autumn, whom I loved. Autumn, whom I would die for!

BOOK: Mercy Among the Children
10.53Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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