Minister Without Portfolio (24 page)

This land here was given up for a parcel in that field next to John Hynes.

Emerson tapped the paper with a hook and straightened up. He took off his glasses and closed the temples with his chin.

My wife didn't know who you were when you come for the stove. She said she wasn't going to matter about it as long as Nellie Morris was involved. But since there's been a change on that score.

You mean she passed away.

He agreed that was the change. So I'm having to tell you that my wife owns the land.

The land we bought from the Careen brothers.

Yes sir that's correct.

We've been fixing the place up, Henry said. You've seen us here.

I don't get over this way very often.

Martha: You don't spend any time in Baxter's barn.

I don't have occasion to look over this way is what I'm saying.

We've been working like dogs. There's money gone into it.

My wife is not claiming to own the house. The house is yours to keep, she wouldn't want anyone to say I ever said that.

It's not her house.

Aubrey Morris built this house and he sold his lot to Melvin Careen. That was the Careen house what you bought from the sons. But Aubrey had a sister you see. Aubrey built this house for his sister. Then their father remarried and had kids and moved into it. And the sister had to stay in the old house. But she was given the land—

Emerson Grandy, realizing they were standing in the house in question: This house over us now. But what's underfoot isn't Aubrey's. They swapped gardens you can see it here.

You've been seeing me and didn't say a word.

To be honest I didn't know my wife had any fingers over on this side of the cove. I married into it. And it's not her, it's more her sisters and brothers. You saw one of them on the chesterfield. It was her really that made a commotion. You see, Aubrey's sister she had nine children. And all of them have children. She says herself she don't want to interfere. We don't know if you're acting on Nellie's behalf or whatnot.

Martha: What you're saying is I'm allowed in the house but not on the land.

Carol has no trouble with that. You could probably make an arrangement with her. The way it was with the house you see we all figured Leonard King would tear it down one day case closed. The other way is more difficult I can see what you're thinking in terms of going further and buying the land.

We weren't thinking that. I was thinking I've already bought this land twice over what with Martha here involved.

And my wife appreciates you have a situation over here with a child on the way. But you see there's a lot of her family and they're scattered and not all of them would agree I can guarantee you that to sell off this parcel.

Let me say again we weren't thinking of buying anything.

Carol now she'd be up for it but I know there's other brothers and sisters too and I'm afraid you'd be best off concentrating on the land you own—

I like the idea of concentrating.

Which is over that fence there on that little rise. It's a good piece of land if I say so myself. There's a garden there.

That's the land where they buried the well with chimney bricks.

That's what I'm after saying.

And you thought it best to come over, seeing as you have no part in the land.

My wife's family can get upset, son. She's not upset on her own behalf but the family expect her to keep an eye on things. I saw the bucket of Leonard's machine going to work and I thought it best to intervene. It was the wife who got in a twist over that. A well that means a septic system and a lot of permanent things in the ground. I said I'd speak it out.

Something in Emerson realized the story was unfair to Henry, especially with Martha in the condition she was in. But they knew Martha had a house in town, it wasn't like they were telling a pregnant woman to go homeless just a few weeks before she was due. And it compelled him to come up with another thing. I was after having a heart attack, Emerson said. I felt it in both arms, right up to the elbow. This was ten years ago. I thought I was going to be sick, that I had a bug. I was telling
this to Rick Tobin as we were laying down this cement well in Aquaforte. I was to guide a length of pipe to join up with the one I had my hands on. But I had my head turned to talk to Rick and my hands were resting on the lip of the pipe. Down it come right on my hands. Rick drove me to the hospital. And I came home wearing these.

27

He had two weeks to make things right. When the baby came he would have to retract and take care of the centre. The chaos before him made him wild. They went upstairs and checked the ammunition box that was full of the letters he'd rescued from the garbage. Martha found the legal letters. The threats from the Careen family. She read out the letterhead and the lawyers involved: Gardner Coombs. And there, on the bottom of the page, the associate attorney: William Wiseman.

Bill Wiseman removed his mouth from the straw and swivelled in his chair to open a folder in a cabinet behind his desk. Melvin Careen, he said. He died before the matrimonial property act.

There was an open hamburger on his desk. No plate.

Henry: You're saying they have a point.

They don't have a point. They have the entire law on their side. Every sentence, the whole dimension is theirs, Henry. A deed! They have a very old piece of paper signed by a magistrate that says the land is theirs.

Martha found a letter. From you. Thirty years ago. Trying to get Nellie Morris out of that house.

Thirty years ago I was not much more than a typist. You could have come clean with me on this.

You remember my words?

I'll never forget them: this deal is not going to fly.

Some would say that's more than clean.

BAXTER STOOD IN THE SPACE
where there used to be a piano by the wall when he was a boy. Nellie didn't have a right to pass the land down to Patrick Morris. The Careens is just going along with it to get the house off their hands. Nellie had a child who died—that was out of wedlock.

I met Nellie. She told me her daughter married.

Her daughter never got old enough to marry. Nellie worked in McMurdo's in St John's. That's where Melvin Careen met her. He'd been married, his first wife died. Melvin Careen showed me a deck of cards once—he found them in his dead wife's sewing machine table. They had three boys.

The Careens. I think they were playing cards with that very deck.

You met them. It's good you bought them out. House was built by Aubrey, but wasn't finished when Aubrey went away. Maybe there was a trade of gardens. If Emerson Grandy says his wife's family has a deed then that must be what happened.

I saw the paper.

You seen the paper. An agreement until the aunt passes away.

No—that was only verbal.

Last time I met Nellie, Baxter said, she was standing in the
pantry right where you are, combing her long hair into a paper bag.

All this, in speech, was impossible to follow. It had to be written down. That's why people wrote things down. Or they didn't.

28

Leonard King said move the house.

Can you elaborate on that.

Up on skids and push it over.

Henry had seen old photographs of houses moving. Some were floated across bays, towed across ice, moved on flatbed into different bays entirely. But then to Leonard everything could be solved with a backhoe.

Martha is going to have a baby very soon.

It'll take a morning, Leonard said. He made it sound like he did this every day before eating porridge.

What about the chimney.

Knock it down, he said. You can't fit a liner in it anyway.

And the well?

We'll dig a well over there. I'll have it done when the baby comes.

What about the well filled with chimney bricks?

Is that the land you own?

Apparently.

Leonard thought about it. He had never dug out an old well. Henry you don't know what you're getting into with an old well.

You're saying move the house but you hesitate on reopening a well.

Might be poisoned, or dry. There could be another reason for filling it. Could be car batteries down there. More than likely they used it for a while as an outhouse.

So before you abandon a home you shit in the well for a couple of years and then stuff it with chimney bricks.

You're best off with a new well.

29

Henry drove the truck for Wilson Noel, completely discouraged. What he had liked about working for Wilson was keeping an eye on the community. He wanted to oversee anything happening here. But the ground was shifting beneath him. At noon he sat in the truck and ate his sandwiches. He would move into town with Martha. It was the only way to manage things. Wilson Noel tried to cheer him up. I've hired on Justin and that fellow you mentioned, Keith. To do that clearing down in Kingmans Cove. We don't have to tell Rick. Wilson remembered what it was like to be a young man. And also a child should not be blamed for the actions of a parent. He recalled last winter, when he'd come across the three of them shooting into the King camp. At least they're industrious. And where there's trouble, try to buy the trouble and own it on your side.

Yes, Henry said. That's what you've done with me.

That Saturday morning they drove into Kingmans Cove together and Henry helped him chop out some trees and burn the tops. The boys were there, Keith and Justin. They rode in on a trike. Henry and Wilson demonstrated the operation of his
chainsaw and how to douse the bonfire. Wilson dragged his toe through the dirt around the blaze. Keep the fire within this circle, he said.

When the men drove off the dust rose up on the dirt road out of Kingmans Cove and the sky was blue and white and the trees here had been unmolested since resettlement. Keith and Justin turned to look at the work ahead of them. It hadn't rained much and Keith had to walk down to the brook to fill two five-gallon buckets which they used as a fire caution. There were some teenagers like them swimming in the pond the brook fed into. They were Noels— Wilson's kids. Morgan Noel, he didn't want to work with his father. Keith could hear Justin start the chainsaw by dropping it below his shins and pulling the cord, the dangerous way.

When Keith got back with the buckets he picked up the axe to limb the trees Justin had sawed down, just as Wilson Noel had showed him. He fed the fire the wide green branches. Justin's chainsaw bit through the wood and sawdust sprayed up and the noise of it ran through Keith's ear and buzzed the brain and he hated his job and wished he had the saw.

The flames crackled through the shiny needles. Sometimes they got ahead of themselves and had to wait for the fire to dampen before adding more brush. They sat around in their cutoff jeans and T-shirts. It was a hot day and they took off their shirts. They were thirsty.

Keith, Justin said, go get us some water.

There's water there, he said. He tapped the white emergency bucket with his foot.

I'm not drinking water from the brook.

Keith took the sheep trail down to the brook and heard the Noels in the pond horsing around, it sounded like they were
swimming and jumping off a big rock and through the trees you could see the pond and the orange rectangle of an inflatable raft with a woman sunbathing on it in a pale blue swimsuit. It was Colleen. Keith stared at her and the Noel boys that were in the water, their hair plastered back. They had boats they'd built out of old lumber, boats that sat low in the water, military boats with nails for turrets in housing that swivelled. The oldest Noel was Keith's age, and he'd told his old man no I don't want to cut brush for minimum wage. That's why Keith got the work.

Colleen Grandy on the orange inflatable raft. It was hard for him to believe what they had done together. She lay there with her long hair completely dry, the wind just pushing her inflatable raft out a little and she had on brown sunglasses and a paperback novel was open over her leg and the corner of the book touched her where the bottom of her pale blue swimsuit covered a little mound below her navel. This very nice shape and the corners of the pages pushing a little into that mound under the pale blue and white fabric as she floated in water that must have been six feet deep.

It was dark at the brook in the shade of the tall trees and he found the gallon container full of tapwater that Wilson had said was for drinking. He drank off a glass and knew Justin would want more than one glass of water.

He took the trail back and could not see him, but he heard the chainsaw and he walked deep into the trees and found him. Justin had made another fire here and was loading brush onto it. It makes sense, Justin said, to have a couple of fires going. We can burn more and we don't have to lug it all the way to the road.

Keith handed him the container and Justin drank it down while the chainsaw was still running and he pulled the butt ends
of the trees away from the fire and told Keith to run back for the axe with the orange handle and put some more brush on the old fire.

They sawed some more trees and limbed them and then the saw ran out of gas and Justin walked back to the road and refilled the chamber with the gas/oil mixture.

Are the Noels up?

Yeah.

Are they swimming?

Keith said he'd heard them through the trees.

Look, he said. And Keith peered into the open chamber where the fuel goes. The fuel was boiling.

There was a wind picking up now, it was the same wind that was slowly pushing Colleen Grandy out into the middle of the pond. Several times now the new fire, in the trees, leapt out and singed the moss and Keith stamped out the singe and added more branches. He heard Justin working in the woods. Wilson Noel had not told them to do this. But he knew Justin wanted to impress him. Justin had ideas of how to thin the woods that might not align with the way others did things. Justin was always complaining about the methods of adults. Justin's uncle Leonard King drove the car in a low gear, not letting the engine rev.