Road Ends (14 page)

“Now
that
is a ten!” he said. “No way is that not a ten.”

Robert nodded and took a swig. “Whaddya think he means by that?” he said.

“By what?”

“The bit about those less fortunate looking up to me because of
who I am
. Who am I?”

“Good question,” Tom said. “Always wondered that myself.”

He took a mere taste from the bottle and passed it back. He was about as drunk as he allowed himself to get.

Robert found a stone and gave a mighty sling but missed the lake altogether and sat down hard. He didn’t bother trying to get up after that, just sat, cradling the bottle in both hands, looking out over the lake. Every now and then a streak of lightning flashed beneath the dark belly of the clouds.

“Guess it doesn’t matter,” Robert said. “Because what he really means is who
he
is. People look up to me because I am his son—that’s what he means. Not because I’m me, why would anybody look up to me because I’m me, for Christ’s sake? But if I get drunk, he looks bad. Embarrasses him. That’s the only reason he gives a shit, nothing to do with other people becoming drunks. He’s such a fucking hypocrite. If he’d just be honest for once, if he’d just say it embarrasses him, I’d quit. Swear to God. I’d respect him for it, and I’d quit.”

They watched the storm approaching, lightning forking down, thunder rumbling away like doomsday. Tom thought about his own father, wondered why he was so mad all the time.

“He says he has great faith in me,” Robert said after a while. “Great faith. Knows I’m a fine person at heart.” He took a long swig from the bottle. “Makes me want to puke.”

That was the only time he’d been so forthcoming about his father but Tom had the distinct impression that his opinions hadn’t changed in the intervening years. The drinking certainly didn’t change; Rob spent most of his undergraduate years in an alcoholic haze, though at least the booze was easier to come by on campus and he didn’t have to steal it.

He was a good-natured drunk and everyone liked him. And he was very smart, with a near-photographic memory, so his grades didn’t suffer. Tom’s course was heavier and he didn’t fool around as much, so he was generally working in their room when Rob was delivered back to the residence at the end of an evening out. A couple of friends would haul him up the stairs, dump him on the bed, nod blearily at Tom and weave their way out again. Before going to bed himself, Tom would station the plastic waste-paper basket beside the bed in case Rob decided to throw up in the middle of the night, and sling a blanket over him. It was all
part of the normal routine of student life and neither of them gave it a thought.

When they were doing their master’s degrees they had single rooms and saw less of each other than before, but they still got together a couple of times a week and Rob was always his same old irreverent self. Which was why it came as such a surprise when they met for a drink one night and Rob, holding a bottle of Coke, of all things, announced that he’d had a long talk with his father over the summer, as a consequence of which he’d decided to go into the ministry. And then added that as a first step he’d given up booze.

“So that you don’t influence those less fortunate?” Tom had said in the seconds before he realized Rob was serious.

Rob looked slightly taken aback but then smiled and said, “That’s right. ‘I am my brother’s keeper’ and all that.”

Tom had been so embarrassed for him he didn’t know what to say.

He needn’t have worried, though. Partway through the year Robert started backsliding on a regular basis and by the following summer, although in theory he was still studying theology, he was pretty much himself again. Both of them had summer jobs at the lumber mill that year but in the evenings they’d get together, generally down on the beach, and everything proceeded more or less as it had always done until the day of the car accident, when everything changed.

Out along Crow River Road Tom stopped the snowplough, switched off the engine and got out and stamped about a bit to restore the circulation to his feet. He dug out the Hershey bar from the pocket of his parka, unscrewed the top of the Thermos and stood looking out across the snow-covered landscape. Everything monochrome, shades of white and grey. Snake fences
tacking their way down the edges of the fields, every rung neatly capped with snow. Dark, snow-laden trees beyond the fields. Sky a flat and endless grey. All around him snow stretched pure and clean and untouched apart from the path of the snowplough, a scar across a perfect face. Now and then a couple of crows lifted from the trees like scraps of charred paper, floated for a moment in the still air, cawing harshly to each other, then dropped back into the woods. No other sound.

He finished his coffee, relieved himself at the side of the road, the urine drilling a strangely obscene hole in the snowbank, then climbed back into the cab and set off once more, working his way down the side roads. The final section of his route was along Whitewater Road. It was pure bad luck that it came last; he would have done it first if he could, to get it over with, but that would have involved retracing his route, which would make no sense. When he started the job he’d imagined that in time he would cease to dread or even to notice the turnoff to the ravine. It was so narrow, no more than a track, really. You’d never spot it if you weren’t aware of its existence.

But he was acutely aware of its existence. Always, as he got close, he could feel the tension building inside him and no matter how hard he tried to focus on the road ahead he couldn’t help seeing it at the periphery of his vision, a narrow ribbon of white leading off into the woods. It had become overgrown again, but only with small stuff. A car would still be able to get down there if the snow weren’t too deep. With the snowplough he’d be able to get through now. Sometimes he wanted to. Sometimes the pull of that narrow track was so strong it scared him.

But then it would be behind him and ahead there were simply more roads to plough, the home stretch and then a hot beef sandwich and fries at Harper’s, reading the paper, which he would continue to read when he got home. That
would take him up to bedtime and he’d have made it through another day.

He bought his paper at the drugstore and took it into Harper’s with him. It was past lunchtime and the place was empty apart from a couple of men wearing Ontario Hydro jackets in a booth by the window. Tom went straight to his favourite half-booth at the back, removed his coat, hat, gloves and scarf, settled himself into his seat, spread out the paper and scanned the front page. No major disasters. No plagues, no new wars. Prime Minister Trudeau had danced until 2:30 in the morning at the Quebec Winter Carnival, a dozen Mounties dogging his steps. Had the Mounties danced? It didn’t say.

There was an interview with Frank Borman. Apparently the men on the Apollo 8 moon mission had given themselves an eighty percent chance of surviving the trip. NASA scientists had said ninety percent, but the astronauts themselves thought it was more like eighty. Frank Borman had laughed when asked if they’d been provided with poison capsules to take if the spacecraft were lost in space, and said no. No, they hadn’t.

Tom thought about it. Wondered how much the risk had worried them. Probably not much. In any case they wouldn’t allow themselves to dwell on such things. There would be a rigorous selection procedure for astronauts and anyone given to lying awake at night imagining his own death—anyone like himself, for instance—would be screened out at an early stage.

But how could you help it? Given the disaster of Apollo 1 they must have thought about it. They must surely have imagined possible scenarios: if not another explosion on takeoff, then a malfunction, a miscalculation by someone at mission control, a faulty connection. An explosion at least would be quick. But the other possibilities … unless you ran out of air first, it could take
weeks. Weeks, drifting in utter darkness, simply waiting for the end.

He wondered about “the end.” After it there was nothing, presumably, in the same way that there was nothing before you were conceived. And that was fine, there was nothing to fear from nothing. But the moment of death itself—the time between being and not being—that was the bit that was beyond comprehension. What was it like? Was it a fading away, a soft rope slipping through your fingers, your grasp on it so light, so gentle, that in “the end” you couldn’t tell if you were still holding it or not? Or was it like the flick of a switch? Alive—dead. Like that. Alive—dead. Nothing.

In the case of a violent death—Robert’s, for instance, because all deaths came back to Robert’s now—it must have been the latter. Instantaneous. “Mercifully quick.” Which was good, of course, except that the thing he couldn’t get around in Robert’s case, the thing he couldn’t bear to think about but thought about all the time, was the falling. The horror of those final seconds. When you dreamed you were falling the sensation was so terrifying it woke you up. How long had that lasted, for Rob? It would be simple to work out the actual time, the height of the drop, the speed of the fall accelerating at thirty-two feet per second per second, but how about the
perceived
time, because time was relative, and quite conceivably a split second could seem to last an eternity. An eternity of terror.

Abruptly, a glass of iced water appeared in front of him. Tom stared at it, disoriented. For a minute he didn’t know where he was. A knife and fork appeared. Jesus, he thought. Pull yourself together.

There were two waitresses, Jenny Bates and Carol Stubbs, who worked alternate shifts. This was Jenny. He knew by her hands, which were thin and long-fingered, the nails short and neatly filed. Carol’s hands were fat and white, with perpetually chipped nail polish. Both women were in their thirties so hadn’t
been in school with him, but he knew them because he’d always known them—they’d been at Harper’s forever.

Jenny vanished. She didn’t have to ask what he wanted. His heart was banging about in his chest. He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. Jenny reappeared and set the hot beef sandwich and fries down in front of him, the whole lot swimming in gravy. “Plate’s hot,” she warned, as she always did.

Tom cleared his throat. “Thanks,” he said, still without looking up. To his relief his voice sounded normal.

But she didn’t leave. She stood beside his table, which she never did. Reluctantly, he looked at her.

“I just wanted to say goodbye,” Jenny said. Her tone was apologetic, as if she knew he wasn’t to be spoken to. “This is my last day. There’ll be a new girl starting tomorrow. We’re moving to Calgary.”

“Oh,” Tom said. Something more seemed to be called for, so he tacked on, “Well, good luck.”

“Thanks,” she said. “And you.” She hesitated and then added, “I hope things work out for you, Tom.”

He felt himself flush and looked down. She knew the story, then. Of course she did. This was Struan: everybody knew everything. No doubt they talked about him behind his back. Used words like “breakdown.” Phrases like “life must go on.”

He was afraid Jenny might say something more, but she didn’t. She just rested her fingers on the table for a minute and then went back to the till.

It was quiet after that. He spent an hour over his paper, Jenny refilling his cup from time to time without being asked. When he finished he left a good tip by way of thanks and to show that he held no grudge against her for speaking to him, tucked the paper under his arm and made his way home through the snow.

Sherry Rutledge was in the kitchen when he got in. She wasn’t supposed to be; she was supposed to come in the mornings and to be finished by lunchtime. Mrs. Whatever was still sick and no one seemed to know when she’d be back, so Sherry was filling in, helping with the housework. Tom knew her slightly from school. They were the same age but she had been several grades below him due to having a brain the size of a baked bean. She was also, in his opinion, a slut of the first order and kept flirting with him. Tom erected a wall of ice around himself to freeze her out—never looked at her, never spoke, never acknowledged her presence in any way—but Sherry was so dumb she didn’t notice.