Minister Without Portfolio (11 page)

He made sandwiches and saw Colleen in her bright windbreaker walking up the road and she stopped in to say hello. Her hair was tied back savagely and she was excited about Tender's house and what did he think.

Well come in and have a look at it, he said.

I'm in the middle of my walk, she said.

You'll be walking the entire time. You can march on the spot, like a soldier.

But she stood still and soon understood the condition of it. With her hair pulled back it gave her face an abnormal intensity. Yes it requires a little work, she said. She turned and, guiding
Henry's elbows as though pushing a toy boat in water, stood him in the middle of the parlour.

I feel like some photograph from an earlier time.

She said, You could live in it until it falls down around your ears. She clapped her hands together then and twisted her wrist to the face of a watch.

What a walker, he thought. And wondered about her and Larry Noyce in bed. The thought shocked him. He felt a fizzle in his skin when he realized he was alone now, a condition he often wished for. But as soon as he had it another force arose from the hills: a sense of dread at his own company.

He watched Colleen head over the road and, two hours later, after he'd ripped a wall down to studs, he saw through the window that she had returned to drop in on Silvia. So he went over too. He was, he realized, becoming a busybody.

Look at him, Colleen said. He wants to stay home and take care of his hundred people.

Henry looked at her. What does that mean, he said. And how do you know.

It's written all over you.

Colleen marched off to her house, the snow recently ploughed from her frozen yard so it could be graded by heavy machinery, ready for a spring sowing of grass. The Poole brothers from the Goulds, men Henry was trying to get to okay the wiring in the house, were out there right now stringing a roll of ten-two through a new shed that had been built over the winter. They watched Colleen's arms pump hard as she turned into the concrete path before her house. What do you call that, Henry said.

Silvia: Her constitutional.

31

Take care of my hundred people. Was she mocking me? Am I a fraud? All he was doing in Afghanistan was escaping a city that had become Nora's city. It was John's idea—a good idea.

He drove to Wilson Noel's to buy traps and steel wool to plug holes in the Morris house as he found them. In the spring he'd have to cut away the grass sod from around the house.

On the way back he slowed down for a young man with a gas can hitchhiking. He pushed the paper sack with the traps from off the front seat for him.

Henry: Where are you broken down.

I don't have a car. It's a lot easier to get a ride if you have a gas can. I'm going to saw this baby in half and screw two hinges to it so I can carry my sandwiches.

You've got it all figured out.

He realized who the boy was, the American's son. He had long blond hair and blue eyes. He was staying in the lightkeeper's house. He was wearing a snowboarding jacket and had a stud in his ear. He smelled of pot.

You're Keith, Henry said.

I'm taking a pause from school, the boy said.

Henry thought about what that meant. This kid isn't going back to school. He has nothing with him in the way of supplies. Living on his own is the beginning of his manhood.

They talked about where Keith was from and what he was doing here in the middle of winter—hunting with Justin King, he said. Hunting what, Henry asked. Birds, Keith wasn't sure. Henry tried to sew together what might happen in the woods with guns.

It's been a while since I hunted, Henry said.

You want to come?

There's no room on one skidoo.

You can take the one next door to you, Keith said.

You know John Hynes?

I know what he's got in his shed.

The boy moved, with his leg, the bag of steel wool and traps. You got a couple of mice living with you?

You have to kill the enemy, Henry said. And stop their movement—that's what they taught us in Afghanistan and you deal with rodents the same way.

You were in the army?

Henry told him what he did.

If you don't mind me saying sir that's a pretty radical description of human life. That comparison to a mouse. I mean, you're back in civilization now.

Henry drove him into the cove—they passed Colleen walking and he waved—down to the lightkeeper's house.

Thanks a lot, the boy said.

I tell you what, Henry said. If you see a skidoo tomorrow morning you'll know it's me.

The boy didn't wave, just walked into the house and turned on the electric heat. There was a note under the door from Justin King. He'd come by with the truck in the morning.

THE BOY SLEPT THAT NIGHT
in his father's bed. It was a better bed and you could see the ocean from this side of the house. He slept in his socks and T-shirt. He woke up with Justin King staring down at him. It was ten in the morning.

Before we go, Justin said, let's have a bowl of cereal.

It was two o'clock before they got their gear together and loaded the machine. Justin was eating one of his prepared sandwiches when they heard a snowmobile bombing down the road.

Who's he? Justin said. And Keith explained.

I'll follow you guys, Henry said.

No odds to me. You got some grub?

I made a lunch, Henry said.

We're staying overnight.

In the open?

In my uncle's cabin.

Let's roll.

THEY DROVE THEIR MACHINES
into Kingmans Cove and turned into the soft powder of a woods trail through a cutover that was filled with new snow. These were Wilson Noel's woods. They had to be careful with the snowfall about getting out again. Henry followed the boys. He hadn't, in the end, set the traps. The boy had gotten to him. He realized he had to be careful how the world shapes your opinion. He'd spent the morning hauling the heavy tarp off John's machine and checking the oil and rocking it out of
the ice and dry-starting it in the field between the two houses. It was a good machine. That decided things.

They pulled in where the power lines cut through a hillside. Snowmobiles had used the power line into the cabins. Some families even walked in on snowshoes with canvas sacks of provisions and dogs and their wives and children, Justin said. After this hunting trip he was on his way to the Burin to do his second block of sheet metal.

Keith cracked open a box of Black Horse beer and pulled out three bottles.

Having a few rips of horse, Justin said.

Henry joined them in a beer. And he got in tune with his younger self—the man he'd been before Nora Power. When he went to trade school with John and Tender and they all worked construction for Rick. But these boys were not like John and Tender. They were a new generation and they were preoccupied with different things. They started up the skidoos again and Keith got on the back behind Justin. They had to keep to the trail other machines had made, with the two of them on, Justin said. Too easy to get bogged down in the powder. They slung their machines under the wide branches of fir and spruce and across a frozen white bog and up a little incline. They stopped to ice-fish at a pond, and when it was starting to get dark, they turned on their ignitions. After about eight miles they lost the fresh track and had to push through, hoping they had kept to the high part of the trail. Henry got a little worried about the dark. John's snowmobile had a headlight, but barely. Justin was good, though. He knew the way. After an hour he called out over the engine and said the cabin was up ahead. And then on a rise Henry saw a hut sheathed entirely in realty signs. The signs lit
up as their headlight passed over it. That's Wilson Noel's cabin, Justin said. We're almost there.

It was a blizzard now but there was hardly any new snow underfoot. It was as if snow only flew horizontally in this region and came to rest in other places. They zipped up their jackets and tugged down their hoods and Keith lit his pipe.

Take one last hoot on this, he said.

Henry: That stuff is too strong for me.

Keith passed it over to Justin who had his flashlight out trying to find his uncle's cabin. The flashlight was dazzling: big fat flakes that confused his eyelashes. There was a smaller, flakeless snow too that did not melt and then what felt like a third type—a hail of pellets that beat against your jacket and legs.

It's back this way, Justin said. It's terrible to be cold, travelling in the dark, and tired. But Henry had a pound of bacon in the knapsack and he knew how happy the boys would be to hear it sizzle in the camp, best sound in the world. His knapsack was full of food and he could feel a can of corned beef nudging his shoulder blade.

We're going to get tangly as fuck tonight, Justin said. And then remembered Henry. He stepped down from the grade of the track and fell through a shell of ice into a brook of water.

Justin was up to his waist in water and he looked a little shocked at the cold. His face was pale. He wasn't dressed for wind—denim is one of the coldest things you can wear.

Get his arm, Henry said.

He and Keith pulled him out and Henry was worried about hypothermia.

Where's the fucking cabin, he said.

The storm was constant and you got used to it. If you looked
up, through the stream of snow, you saw the stars and the milky way. The storm was living in the first twenty feet of air.

They walked until Henry felt, in the darkness, the side of something. That's the cabin, Justin said, and Keith let out a little hooray. It was not a cheerful sound, he was cold too, and had gotten wet pulling Justin out. They were all a little discouraged. Henry was going to have to pull up the slack for the rest of the night. But it's Justin's turf. We'll get in there, light the stove and oil lamps, Henry said. Strip down and warm up and get that bacon on. Have a munch-out and after you guys can enjoy a few pipe tokes.

The door was padlocked but Justin found the key hanging on a nail in the eaves. Henry warmed the key in his mouth and banged off the padlock and tried the door but it was frozen shut. He pushed at it and it opened a crack. Henry shone the flashlight at the crevice and it looked like someone had pinned white canvas around the door. But Keith saw what it was. He'd been checking through the window.

The entire cabin, he said, is blocked with snow.

They pawed at the snow with their hands. The shovel was behind the door, Justin said. They were going to have to carve away the snow and get the door open and find a way around the door to the shovel and spend an hour or two just clearing out the camp. The snow was hard packed. That was when he heard a little wail coming out of Keith. He sounded like he was crying.

Wait, Justin said. He put a shell in his gun.

Henry: What the fuck are you doing.

Justin shot twice into the snowbank. The snow broke into chunks and Keith revived himself and tumbled them out. The shots alarmed Henry. He felt out of control and he knew Justin
was doing something insane. He was loading the gun again with birdshot and Henry asked him, sternly, for the gun. Justin handed it over, but as soon as Henry held it he shared in the vengeance they were having now on winter—he fired from the hip and the boys cheered and pulled out large boulders of snow. He fired again and cried out loud and tears harmed his vision. He stopped shooting and the boys did not go at the snow but stared at him in wonder. Here's some more shells, Justin said, but Henry Hayward was on his knees, sobbing.

Justin: Wow man the war kind of fucked you up didn't it. Oh, so that was the story on him. It felt, to Henry, like they had cornered an animal and were killing it bit by bit.

The cabin door wide open now. I'm sorry boys, he said. Just a little overwrought here.

He broke the gun to make sure it was empty. Then they heard, in the wind, the low chug of a small generator. Off to the east, Wilson Noel's cabin, the windows flared up from a dull orange to a bright white. Parts of FOR SALE signs, houses that had been bought and sold for many years on the Avalon. Wilson's here, Justin said. And Wilson Noel's door flung open, the shape of a man. Who's shooting at the Kings?

It's me, Justin said. Justin King.

As he said it, it registered in Henry that Wilson Noel had asked the question almost in a jocular fashion, as if he'd like to join in the fun of destroying some Kings. But Wilson Noel was only trying to understand what could prompt anyone to start firing into a house packed with snow.

32

I'm sorry, Martha said, it's so early I know I just woke up at dawn and I like to drive when no one's on the road so I came straight out but the storm door was hasped and I thought you might be in there overcome with carbon monoxide so that's why I banged until you woke up.

It was Saturday morning. Henry had spent the day before in bed. Wilson Noel had taken them into his cabin that night and, after a glass of Canadian Club and water, he'd slept in a bunk, head to foot with this man he had just met. The boys shared the other bed. The boys were embarrassed by the whole experience, the getting wet, the cabin full of snow, Henry's reaction. They did not hunt but turned back to Renews, exhausted. Henry had left his gear in the porch and climbed upstairs. And now a knock on the door.

Henry looked out the window, expecting it to be Silvia with the kids warning him she was there, but it was Martha Groves.

I have not been overcome, he said.

He let her in and put on the kettle. He could see now the pregnancy. He wasn't sure what to do about this foreign element
and his own knowledge of it but he felt a loyalty to Tender and he would defend this loyalty although he had no idea how it would be employed.

It was cold and the water was still shut off so he was refilling the blue container Colleen had given him.

I know that's bizarre that thought about the asphyxiation but when you work in a hospital you see everything and so every possibility gets into your head.