Punishment (22 page)

But after that lunch, just outside her office door, she took my hand and said softly, “I love the time I spend with you, Tony. I only wish …” I kissed her on the lips then and she put her arms
around me and we stood for the longest time, recklessly clinging to each other.

Turning away from her, reluctantly, I saw Tommy Steele approaching. He seemed to be reading from a file, seemed surprised to notice me. “I guess we aren’t supposed to talk,” he said. “But good luck tomorrow.” Nodded at Sophie who had stepped back from me, arms now folded.

“You too,” I replied, studying his face and his expression for insincerity. I couldn’t shake the uneasiness all that afternoon.

After my testimony the next day I felt redeemed, exhausted but somehow refreshed. Steele was waiting just outside the boardroom. He was to be the final witness.

“Well?” he said, as I walked by.

I said nothing and he grabbed my arm. “Well, well, well,” he said. “You can’t even look me in the eye.”

“Let go of the arm,” I said. He let go, hit my shoulder lightly with the heel of his hand as if brushing something off my jacket. It might have been a shove.

He was nodding his head as if confirming a sudden private insight. “Get a good night’s sleep, Tony. We got some hard days ahead.”

The inquiry, when all the paperwork was done, recommended reprimands for Meredith and Wilson. For Tommy Steele, demotion and a transfer out of Kingston. I knew the question everyone was asking: “How come Breau got off?” I could see the answer in the eyes of my fellow officers.

——

I woke in the hotel room feeling grim and I remembered that my little happy pills were back at home. I checked the time. Ten o’clock, near the check-out deadline. The thought of the long drive home and my arrival there made me want to throw up. And then I did, gagging over the toilet bowl. I realized as the persistent slime dangled from my lips that I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast the day before, and retched again.
Hair o’ the dog
, we used to say. The magic bullet. And there was surprising comfort in the prospect of a drink of something stronger than coffee. The dog, I thought, will survive another day with Mary. I stood, splashed water on my face. Then called the front desk and informed them that I planned to stay another night.

There was a Ford dealership across the street from the liquor store. With my bottles safely stowed in the trunk of the car I stopped in front of it to peer in through the showroom window. But the day was sunny and the light reflected off the glass, making it difficult to see. So I went inside, maybe out of boredom, or maybe it was the cautious instinct to forestall the return to the hotel room. Whatever. I went in and was instantly buoyed by the new-car fragrance as a large, well-dressed salesman bore down on me with a predatory smile.

“I’m just having a look,” I told him, but he was anxious to assist me anyway. “We don’t have a whole lot in just now,” he was saying. “The ’03 stock went pretty fast in the fall. What were you thinking of?”

“I remembered that growing up we had a Ford half-ton.”

“What year would that be?”

“I recall it was a 1955.”

“Yes,” he said, clapping his hands together. “Just between you and me, the best Fords ever made were ’50 to, say, ’56. The cars in ’49 were pretty good. But for quality and style, my year would have been ’54.”

“I wouldn’t have thought you’d be old enough to remember,” I said.

“That’s the thing,” he said. “They were made to last. My dad had a ’54 Monarch that he drove up into the eighties. Took better care of it than me.” He laughed. “I still have it. Keep it in the barn under a tarp. Mint condition. Only take it out for the odd homecoming parade. Now what can I show you?”

“Ah, I’m probably just looking.”

“And what are you driving, yourself? Just now.”

“Actually it’s a Toyota …”

“Great car,” he said enthusiastically. “What year?”

“Well, it’s only three years old,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “They last and last, those Japanese cars. The thing is, though, just between you and me, the motors in them are so great that people keep them for a long time. Eh? Not so much turnover. So the dealers have to make the money somewhere, right?”

“Right,” I said. “On service.”

“You got it,” he said. “Engines last forever, but everything else goes for a shit with normal wear and tear. You’re going to notice from now on, every time you take it in they’ll find something. Big, big service bills, and getting bigger as time goes by.”

We’d stopped beside a blue pickup. I peered inside. Console like a jumbo jet. Stick shift. Knobs and buttons. Smell of leather. “They don’t make half-tons like they used to,” I said.

“You can say that again. But don’t be fooled. This thing here is rugged as a bulldozer. F-250. Built for work, though I agree you’d never know to look at it.”

I opened the door and slid behind the wheel.

“Lots of memories about the ’55 half-ton, I imagine,” the salesman said.

“Lots of memories,” I said. And got out.

“Were you thinking of a pickup?” he asked.

“No,” I laughed. “But if it was red, I might be tempted.”

“Well, just by chance we have a red one out back. Do you want to have a look?”

Then we were in the garage amidst the clamour of mechanical activity, wheeze and rattle of pneumatic wrenches, men in coveralls moving slowly and deliberately peering under hoisted cars. Near what looked like a brand-new red half-ton, a smudged mechanic was studying a clipboard. There seemed to be a lot of wires running from a panel into the area of the engine.

“Everything’s computerized nowadays,” the salesman said. He rapped a fender with his fist. “Just got this in yesterday and he’s giving her a total check-up. She’s an ’02 model, F-150. Guy took it home last fall but unfortunately passed away at Christmas. Low, almost no, mileage. Wife can’t drive a stick shift so we took it back, gave her something more appropriate. I could give you a pretty good deal on this baby.”

“Ah, I don’t know,” I said, holding back.

“This here, the F-150 was what replaced the little F-100 you had back in the day. This is as close as you’re going to get. Jump in behind the wheel,” he said. “Then we’ll have a look at what you’re driving.” He was beaming.

——

We were reminiscing after Duncan died, Ma’s eyes red-rimmed. It was unusual, this revelation of emotion where her husband was concerned. “You probably wouldn’t remember the time he landed home with the red truck,” she was saying. “You’d have been very small.”

“I remember. I was seven.”

As if she hadn’t heard me, she said “You hadn’t been here very long, so …” And she seemed to drift, obviously forgetting that I was already five when I arrived, but in her mind, newborn.

I was nodding.

“Ah well,” she sighed. “Poor Duncan. He was never much for self-indulgence. But that was how it seemed to me when he landed home with that truck. God forgive me. We were struggling but he said, no, we needed something. And I remember saying, ‘But red?’ ” She laughed then and wiped at her eyes. “It’ll be so conspicuous. That was what I was thinking. Red. They’ll all be talking. And he just said, ‘They can talk all they want.’ He went away after that, to pay for the truck. To Elliot Lake he went. After that he was more or less back to the mines whenever things got tight financially. Which was a lot.”

And I was thinking of how they laughed at me ten years later, when I’d arrive at dances in an old red half-ton, especially in the summer when the parking lot would be full of fancy cars with plates from Michigan and Massachusetts and Ontario, smirking at my truck until the summer night when Caddy Gillis let me drive her home in it.

——

The bank was a short drive away. It took only minutes to get a draft to cover the balance outstanding after a generous offer on the trade-in. It was as if destiny ordained that I would own that truck and I was suddenly lifted by a rare excitement, Strickland, Anna, Pittman forgotten, at least for the moment.

“You can take her out of here tomorrow morning,” the salesman said, gripping my hand.

Back in the hotel room I poured a whisky to celebrate my new purchase, admitting that I felt improved. After Duncan bought the little red truck on an impulse that might well have been a lot like mine, he spent the next year working underground to pay for it. I’d gone to a bank for fifteen minutes and had drawn the money that I needed from the settlement I got when my career came crashing down around me. Odd, thinking about it: Duncan getting paid to work, Tony getting paid to quit.

Mary wasn’t at the store. Collie told me it was her day off. “You can call her at home.” I said I’d just drop by her place, that she was looking after my dog. “Yes,” said Collie. “It was all she talked about in here yesterday. The dog. That’s some rig outside. New?”

“Second hand,” I said quickly. “But new to me. Figured living in the country a fella needs a good half-ton.”

“True enough,” he said. “And they’re comfortable as cars nowadays.”

Birch was standing on his hind legs, paws against my thigh, making whining sounds, obviously glad to see me.

Mary beamed. “Will you look at him. You show up and I don’t exist anymore. Typical guy.” I squatted, scratched between his ears.

“Did you behave yourself?” I asked him.

“Settled right in, he did. Didn’t you, Birch.” And now she was squatting too, the dog delighted with the double dose of attention. “Only one little slip-up, right, doggie?”

“Oh dear,” I said. “What did he do?”

“Nothing at all,” she said. “It was my fault anyway. First time I let him out to pee he streaked for the woods toward Strickland’s place. I thought I’d lost him but he was only gone a minute. He came right back. You’re a good boy, Birch, aren’t you?” He licked her hand, nuzzled my face.

“You got a treat for that, didn’t you?” He whined briefly. “No. No treats now, not until your next visit.”

“Treats?” I said.

“Our little secret,” she said. “Just between himself and Mary.”

When we were leaving she said, “You can drop him here with me any time you want. Hey, is that a new rig?”

“New to me,” I said.

Sitting at my old desk, sorting through the mail I thought: Maybe I’ve turned a corner. Maybe the truck is symbolic, an emphatic line between who I was before and who I’ll be for the long haul. Maybe I owe it all to Strickland, this awakening. Good things often emerge from the debris of what feels like a disaster. And suddenly I felt like calling Anna and saying, “Hey, guess what.
I don’t give a shit. I really, really don’t give a shit. I don’t
care that you were screwing Strickland behind my back. You’re both pathetic. So carry on, whatever
.”

I swung my chair and faced the filing cabinet, opened the drawer and pulled out the legal file and the fat folder marked “Anna.” Affidavits, lawyers’ letters. Some faded faxes. And I remembered how she’d call on a Sunday night to tell me that she planned to stay a few more days in Warkworth for meetings with some inmate clients there. It never occurred to me to complain, or pry. Absences became the norm. Trust pre-empts anxiety, habit reinforces trust. Dutifully I’d ask about the old folks. Dutifully she’d explain. I suspected not a thing.

Time to get rid of this, I thought. Maybe tomorrow or maybe next week—a little bonfire out back. Time for new beginnings.

“Hey, Caddy. What are you doing?”

“What am I doing? Let me see,” she said. “I’m sitting in my hot tub, sipping champagne and reading
Vogue
. How about you?”

“I didn’t know you had a hot tub.”

“You poor guy. Everybody in St. Ninian has a hot tub. But actually—do you really want to know the truth?”

“Of course.”

“I’m knitting.”

“Knitting?”

“What’s wrong with knitting?”

“I didn’t say …”

“It was in your tone of voice.”

“Look, can I come by? I have a surprise.”

“A surprise?”

“Something I bought. I want to show it to you.”

She walked slowly around the front of my new truck with her arms folded. “Red,” she said at last. “It’ll sure stand out.”

“It’s a Ford,” I said. “A red Ford half-ton.”

She was nodding. “So I see.”

Then I realized that she was freezing. We were standing outside in the dim light of an evening at the end of January and she was wearing a light sweater. “Jump in and I’ll turn the heat on,” I said. She opened the truck door.

“Well,” she said. “This is lovely. I love the new-car smell.”

“It’s actually second hand. Hardly driven. The first owner died shortly after he got it.”

“I hope it isn’t the
buidseachd
,” she said. “I should go in and get the holy water. Wasn’t that what the old people used to do? Sprinkle holy water for luck. And put a little cross from Palm Sunday up on the sun visor.”

And I felt a sudden welling up, looking at her there, listening to her as she teased. “Let’s celebrate,” I said. “Let me buy you dinner.”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Come on,” I said. “Enough of the hot tub. It’ll just wrinkle you up anyway.”

She laughed. “Let me get my coat.”

——

Driving through that early winter evening, the western sky in flames, low pink clouds hovering above a claret sea, I felt balanced in a way that had become unfamiliar. Anna exorcised, Caddy beside me in a red truck. Maybe it was just a moment, but I wasn’t going to quibble.

I hadn’t forgotten Strickland but my anger was gone, though God knows I now hoped the courts would nail him and throw him back into the shark tank where he belonged. That old cliché was running through my mind. “What goes around, comes around.”

As if she were following my mental conversation, Caddy said, “I had a call today from the prosecution. The preliminary hearing starts next week. I’ll be testifying.”

I said, “It’ll be good for you, a kind of closure if there is such a thing.”

“I’m not looking forward to rehashing a lot of stuff I’m trying to put behind me.”

“I can see that. But it’s important that they hear from you.”

She didn’t respond. I glanced in her direction but she was staring out the side window at the darkening sea.