Minister Without Portfolio (26 page)

The chimney took a week to build, for you had to let the cement cure in stages. John Hynes showed him how to pin four plumb lines to the corners of the chimney to keep it straight and Henry mixed cement in a wheelbarrow and slathered the mortar on a course of bricks.

Martha: Are you going to put a light on top?

When he was tired and dirty they walked out to Kingmans Cove and fished in the dory. It was on the water he enjoyed himself. They put on their boots and coats and he carried a bucket with the jigger and they walked down the road. They fished with the tide to make the rowing easier and he did not go out so far that they were vulnerable to the weather or a change in sea. He
hid the oars up in the long grass of the hill so he did not have to carry them home.

On the last weekend of the fishery they got to the cove and there was no dory. Henry ran down the hill and checked the grass. The oars were not there. Someone had found the oars and taken the
Happy Adventure
out.

We were in it yesterday.

So they're in it now.

They checked the sea. They walked back home and Henry said he'd search the marina down in Bay Bulls. Hughie Decker was there winching up a trap skiff. He hadn't seen a dory come or go. Henry drove home and stopped in to Baxter's. Martha was already talking to him and Baxter was excited.

I heard someone say Justin King was at the Copper Kettle, Baxter said, talking about forty fish he caught last night and I thought to myself what boat has Justin got to go fishing.

Justin King took my boat?

Now where would Justin put that boat is the question.

Henry said he checked the marina.

Everyone knows your little dory. Rick Tobin's father built that. What he's done is he's tucked it away. You go around to the point in Fermeuse with a pair of binoculars and check the coves between here and the lighthouse—you'll find your dory.

You mean it's beached someplace along here?

Take my moose binoculars. Go around the point.

Henry drove to Fermeuse. What Baxter meant is you can check the cove pretty easily from the north side looking back over the water. He took the lane into Emerson Grandy's. He was out of the car before the engine stopped. Emerson was feeding the horse at a rail. He could tell something was on the go.

Henry trained the binoculars on the far shore and the first thing he saw was the stern of the
Happy Adventure
glinting in the evening sun.

She was beached on a cove halfway to the lighthouse. Just sitting there five hundred feet from his house, the first thing those binoculars picked out, like it was a cartoon show and the dory was painted on the lenses of the binoculars. He told Emerson what had happened.

You lie in wait tonight, Emerson said, they'll come back out on a quad.

You mean they're still using the boat?

They'll use it till it sinks.

But why wouldn't they hide it further along the shore or somewhere out of sight?

Thieves, Emerson Grandy said, don't like to work.

35

Martha begged him not to go but he said he'd be careful. He wouldn't get into a physical altercation—he just wanted to know who was using his boat.

Baxter said he wanted to help, in case of trouble. But Henry said he could handle it alone. He walked on out to the lighthouse and then veered off the trail in the long grass where you could see someone had climbed through to get down to a small cove. The grass went both ways as they had come back and gone down at least once. Evidence. He saw the dory. They would come back again tonight on a quad and then jump down here and use his dory and get their fish then beach her like they've done, just tied up to an old log of driftwood, look at the side of her and she's got her sternpost all beat up and the transom is cracked and one oar is fucking missing.

But what is the use of waiting now. Justin King will know as half the cove will have heard now that Emerson Grandy knows. They wouldn't be coming out now.

He heard voices.

Laughter.

It was, impossibly, a woman's voice. The feet leaving the trail, silent in the long grass. Now over the slope and roll of stone as they found their way to the beach.

He got his flashlight handy. He stepped out from the wall of rock and shone the light upon the dory, and to the hands balancing it. The faces. It was Keith Noyce and Colleen Grandy. Colleen's face was at the height of exhilaration—as the flashlight hit her, the features fell into the shock of knowing she was doing something wrong.

It's me, he said, Henry Hayward.

Oh my god, Henry, she said. I'm so sorry I'm so sorry.

There was damage here and Colleen knew it. She tried to explain but then they all heard the quad.

Colleen and Keith scrabbled over the rocks to hide. Baxter was looking over the embankment and Henry shook his head so only Emerson came over and down the hill to the boat. Colleen and Keith were hiding around the cove of rock.

You going to wait it out?

Henry told him his thinking.

Well let's get her around back to the cove.

There's only one oar.

No matter we can get her around on that.

Emerson jumped aboard and Henry put one foot in and pushed them off and Emerson took the oar and guided them around a sunker and, gripping the oar with both hooks, paddled them along into Kingmans Cove. Henry shone the flashlight on the rocks. Emerson was in the front of the dory but he used the oar the way a gondola oarsman would handle it, high and
long. The strength came from Emerson's wrists and forearms, strength that poured in from his feet. Baxter was waiting for them at the beach on his idling quad. Its headlight shining right on them.

36

Leonard King was down there with a sump pump all morning arranging the footing out of flat rocks so that a twelve-foot length of thirty-six-inch polyethylene tube could sit on it. Okay, Leonard said, time for a favour. My nephew is a good boy. You can leave your shed door open and he'll borrow a tool and it will come back. He wouldn't take no one's boat in the middle of the night.

He'd like Henry to stop whatever rumour was going around that Justin King had stolen a boat. Justin has a job with Wilson Noel and he's already after burning down his land so he don't need to hear he's a thief too.

I'll go over and apologize to him.

Although he knew now, from Keith, that it had been him and Justin who had taken the dory the night before. They'd gone to try fishing at ten at night and got greedy and the weather turned on them and they had to ditch the boat early. Anywhere they could find shore. They did their best to tie the boat on and then they hauled their fish home on the trike. Keith had wanted to bring the dory back to the cove and then he thought it would be
fun to do it with Colleen. She had no idea what he had in mind. Until they hit the shore.

What are you going to do about it all, Henry said to her.

About Rick, you mean.

About any repercussions that are being set up.

My god don't tell Rick is all I'm asking, Colleen said.

You think he doesn't know?

It's one thing to suspect something, she said. He can live with that.

You're wrong, Henry said.

LEONARD DISAPPEARED DOWN
the hole and Henry fired up the wand and rolled out the torch-on on his roof. He worked for an hour then ran out of propane and climbed down the ladder with the empty bottle. He looked down the hole. Leonard was leaning awkwardly against the metal ladder, his head against a rung of the ladder staring down at his feet.

Are you okay?

Leonard made a gurgling sound but it was not comprehensible. Was he concentrating on something down there. Leonard was unable to raise his head. Henry unplugged the orange extension cord and the sump pump stopped and Leonard rose himself off the ladder, his neck and head and shoulders all came to life and his head was like a flower to the sun. His eyes wide open. He shook his shoulders and climbed up the ladder. He was laughing and twisting his neck. I was electrocuted, he said. I couldn't get my head off the ladder.

Leonard stood at the top of the ladder very bright now and alive again and whipped his head back and forth like a swimmer and laughed and wiped his eyes clear. I was stuck on the ladder.
Had one hand on the sump pump and it was running up my arm and shoulder and out my head.

Henry got him a glass of water and he drank it off and tossed the cup onto the grass and banged his chest solid and said, They say it's good for the heart.

Then he went back down the hole.

Leonard you can't go back at it.

Work to do.

Henry tried to coax him out but he said fire up that pump. I know what not to touch now.

THAT NIGHT THEY WALKED
into Kingmans Cove, the abandoned community that they both liked to imagine still existed. It would be one of the last times before the baby came. The
Happy Adventure
. The foundations of old houses. The cellar. As they walked Martha said that Colleen had asked her to be a helper during the ceremony Larry was planning. To be there for her, she said.

What kind of ceremony.

A drinking of a herb. A vine or root.

That chanting thing he does.

They will be intoxicated.

Henry wasn't sure she should witness that.

I should be there. It'll be safe and it might be something wonderful. It could be a ceremony for the birth. I guess what I was thinking is you might want to do it.

Do what.

The herb.

That juice in his cellar.

I think so.

There was a load of fill now over the Morris garbage. The hillside burnt to cinders. But there was something else different. It was Martha who noticed it: the profile of the cellar was caving in—rocks had been disturbed. Someone had removed rock. There was a heavy quad track. Some idiot with no sense of the sacred.

Jesus there's rock everywhere on this coast.

They could harvest rock from the new highway.

No Martha, they have to come all the way out here with a quad and rip rock out of a hundred-year-old cellar.

They both were astonished at the effort.

They followed the track and the quad joined up to the side road and must have gone right past Tender's house.

Baxter, Martha said, would have seen who came by with a quad and trailer.

Yes, Baxter would know.

He sees everything.

Though I'm half afraid Baxter might be involved.

Ask him in a neutral tone, Martha said.

When they got to Baxter's he knocked on the storm door. He explained the situation and Baxter waited to hear more. The side of the cellar, it's been carved right off. You never saw a quad come along here with rock, did you.

Baxter was puzzled. You mean besides Leonard King, Baxter said. He took what you wanted for your well. That rock is in the bottom of your well now.

They crossed the road and Martha said aloud, So Kingmans Cove is full of modern garbage, it's burnt over and the cellar's torn out and thrown into the bottom of a well. She put her hand on her stomach. The past will never be resurrected.

37

Silvia and Clem and Sadie were out picking the tiny strawberries and the kids were bored with the work. I'll meet you at the beach, he said to Martha. Come on kids. We're going to give your parents the afternoon off.

Henry walked down to the dory with this truth. He was in charge of things now. It was all up to him, finally. He loaded up the
Happy Adventure
with a picnic and when Martha came down he got the two kids aboard with life jackets and he pushed the boat out and jumped into the bow and Martha gently rowed across the bay to a beach they'd only ever seen but never stepped on. A dory full of kids, Henry said. And you, eight and a half months pregnant, rowing a boat. Now this is my way of a ceremony for the youngster.

It feels good, this, Martha said. I should have been rowing all summer.

They got close to the far shore and Martha shipped the oars and Henry jumped over the gunwale and steered the nose in to the calm beach.

Henry pumped the Coleman stove and boiled the flat-arsed
kettle. Pull out the whiskey, he said, and Clem got out the tube that a bottle of scotch goes in and inside the tube Henry had a roll of paper and markers. On a quilt they all drew pictures of the coastline they had just come from, out to the lighthouse, clear pictures that even included John's truck as they saw him arrive.

When's the baby coming, Sadie asked.

In about ten days, Martha said. Not this Sunday but next Sunday.

Henry was having that feeling he'd had in the dory: that it was good to look back on the land you lived on. It gives you perspective, Martha said.

You realize you can easily leave it, the way we all at some point have or will. That something will be waiting for you once you leave, something you had never imagined but, once possessed, would not ever be rescinded.

He told Martha how wounded he felt about the cellar.

You're as spiritual as Larry Noyce, she said.

I don't need his ceremony.

I'm still going to do it.

As long as there's nothing in the air. There's no smoke is there. I'll take care of myself.

The kids had finished their pictures and rolled them back into the whiskey tube. They boiled the kettle and ate their sandwiches and decided to head back. A bit of mist is coming into the bay, Martha said. It'll be okay, Henry said. Clem and Sadie were nervous that the boat was going to float away on them. Get in, they said, get in.

We have to have a discussion about the fog, Martha said.

It's a direct row across the bay. I timed it. It'll take fifteen minutes.

They got in and pushed off and Henry told the kids they had to stay in the stern and not move around. He laid into the rowing. He was facing the back of the boat and Martha was in the bow looking into the fog. I don't like this, she said. I can't see any land.

But Henry could see the land they had left. He kept this land to the back of the boat so he knew he was rowing straight across. He checked his watch. After ten minutes the kids announced that they couldn't see any land now, anywhere.