The Island Walkers (57 page)

He went on up Bridge past the mound of the arena and came to the bridge, where he stopped and leaned on the rail. A hundred yards away, Bannerman’s dam made a thick, white, churning line, in a deep shush of falling water.

He felt tired, too tired to move. He thought of smoking a cigarette, but even this seemed too much effort, so he went on staring at the river, his forearms braced on the rail, in a kind of hopelessness. He spat, and watched the fleck fall in a long curve, under the bridge.

The car arrived soundlessly behind him. He heard only the hush — like a nearer emissary of the dam itself — of a window sliding down. The dark-blue Fleetwood seemed darker than black could be, in the feeble street light.

He stooped to the open window. Prince was leaning towards him across the seat, smiling affably as if whatever had passed between them in the past had left only a residue of casual goodwill. The executive’s handsome face, over the open collar of his shirt, shone a little in the glow from the instrument panel.

“I was wondering if we could talk?”

Alf experienced a moment of triumph, realizing he was beyond the man’s power.
I was wondering if
.

“The union,” Prince said. “I may have a deal.”

Doyle had warned him this might happen, he recalled. If the company felt they were going to lose, they might offer to let the union in unopposed, for considerations.

“I’m not the boss,” Alf said, not bothering to hide a note of hostility. “I don’t have the authority.”

“For this you do.”

“What is ‘this’?”

“Why don’t you get in? Probably not too good for either of us if we’re seen together.”

Glancing up and down the street, Alf got in. He knew he shouldn’t, but he was curious to see what Prince had up his sleeve, and at the same time, he hardly cared. Before him, the wide windshield framed the main intersection where a red light glowed. Just beyond, a man in a baseball cap, oddly familiar, ducked into the porch of the Vimy House. Prince swung to the right and they began to rise into the North End. “Got some kind of ping under the hood,” Prince said, apropos of nothing. “The garage can’t seem to find it.” They swept past the grey bulk of the Bannerman mansion, like a grim fairy-tale castle set back on its sloping lawns, and so down the maple-shaded avenue.

Passing the high school and the hospital, Prince turned down Golf Links Road. He drove with his head up, with that sense of easy nobility that emanated from him so naturally, two fingers lightly touching the bottom of the wheel. He talked about sports — he had been to see a softball game behind the arena, and the quality of play had impressed him, he said. “I was shortstop myself. Loved not having a base to cover, you know? That sense of freedom.” Alf said nothing. The air conditioning made him feel he was enclosed in a bubble, removed from the night. Even the road itself felt far away, its imperfections smoothed by the magnificent carriage of the Fleetwood. They floated past the high hills of the golf course, past a mink farm crowded with long pens, past old trees that for a moment
grew huge in the sweeping scrutiny of the Fleetwood’s headlights. Off to the right, a darkness watched by silent groups of cedars, the Shade ran towards town.

“So what’s the deal?” Alf said, bestirring himself. Already he regretted coming.

“Well, Alf, I hope I’m not out of place here, but I want to make you an offer.”

Alf let a beat pass, as he looked away at a paddock of churned mud, blazing under a floodlight. “I’m not too fond of your offers.”

A few seconds passed. Objects materialized in the dream world outside. In a weedy field, a white horse bolted, its neck flattening. “We made a mess of that,” Prince said at last. He sounded genuinely aggrieved, sorry. “You know, I really did want you for that foreman’s job. But I was under pressure to bring new people in.”

“I’m not interested.”

“I can’t blame you for being teed off, Alf. Seeing someone walk in and take the job that belonged to you. I’d like to make amends if I can.” Prince paused, and seemed to be considering his next step. In the headlights the asphalt gave way to washboard, a distant rumble. “How would you like to be assistant manager of the sweater mill?”

To Alf, Prince’s words seemed as unreal as the countryside startled by their lights.

“As you’ve probably heard, Gordie Henderson’s left. You could start right away.”

“You must think I’m one eager whore.”

Alf was taut with anger. And yet there was a place in him, beyond defiance, beyond conscience, where he was still hungry for a different life, where Prince’s words had raised a ripple of excitement. Disgusted by his own weakness, he added, “Or some kind of idiot. You’re just worried we’re getting close. You’re trying to buy me off.”

“Of course there’s some truth in what you’re saying,” Prince said, after a while, “but the offer’s real. I think you’d do a good job in that office.”

“If you mean it, you’ll offer it to me
after
the union goes in.”

Prince fell silent. Alf chuckled bleakly to himself, thinking he’d scotched him.

“Take me back to town,” Alf said. “This is pointless.”

They were nearing the top of a long rise. The Fleetwood slowed as Prince guided it sharply to the left, the headlights revealing an unfenced earthen track, and a spot fringed with tall grasses where the car came to a halt. Prince turned out the headlights. They were looking over the edge of the Reid Hills, with woods at their back. Three or four miles distant, the glow of the town dusted the horizon.

The engine remained idling with a low, nearly imperceptible vibration. The air conditioner put out its steady exhalation. Alf shifted impatiently.

“If I can have a few minutes,” Prince said, “I’d like you to hear my side of things.”

Alf shrugged in the darkness, he had little choice. And besides, he was curious. It felt safe to give his curiosity play; he was impregnable in his refusal, protected by his hatred of Prince. Like the sailor in the old story, who had himself tied to the mast, he could listen to the sirens without harm.

He listened to Prince’s voice as it went on: reasonable, humorous, intelligent, self-deprecating. But there was something else there, as well, under the surface, a hardness of will not quite disguised by these other qualities. Alf felt that Prince was, in some sense, acting. Because while he seemed relaxed sitting behind the wheel of the Fleetwood, turning over ideas at random, he was in fact pushing, pushing, with a directness of purpose that irritated Alf and kept him on his guard.

“You don’t like me,” Prince said. “I can hardly blame you, not after the way things turned out. But let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that the circumstances were, in some way, beyond our control. I know that might be hard to believe, but I don’t own this company, I’m only a vice-president — one among many.” He chuckled before continuing, “But what I want to say is this: I have great respect for you. I respected you when I first met you — that day you
showed us around the floor. Later, I asked for your help in putting down the union. You balked at that, because it would have meant betraying your friends. I respect that too. Of course, I was on the other side, I had to play for keeps, but I admired you for your decision. Really, Alf, I did — I still do.”

Alf glanced at the other man. Above the vivid white of his shirt, Prince’s head seemed as much shadow as flesh. He was smiling at Alf with a strange, youthful eagerness.

“The thing is, Alf, the story of what you did, or didn’t do, is out there now. I blame myself for this. I’m afraid it’s being given a dishonest slant.”

“What are you talking about,” Alf said, suddenly alert.

“I was talking with Kit Ford, trying to demonstrate the kind of fellow you were, to show what we were up against. So I told him the story of what happened between you and me, in the motel room. To me, it showed your integrity. But Ford, I’m afraid, well, he pounced on the fact that you gave away one name. He’s spreading the story that you were a company plant. Or as you might say on your side of the line, a stooge. He’s telling people that you helped us break the union in the fall. He’s suggesting ah —” Prince paused, and went on only reluctantly, it seemed. “He’s suggesting you’re helping us break it this time too. He’s just doing his job, of course, trying to undermine your side. But I’m afraid it may leave you caught in the middle.”

Alf sat in shock. And yet he was not surprised, not entirely. This moment seemed to have been coming at him for months. He had hoped he had eluded it, but that was clearly foolish. Too many people — Woody, Prince, perhaps others — knew what he had done. He stared over the dashboard towards the distant town.

Prince went on. “So what I’m saying is, you may find — not to put too fine a point on it — that the union doesn’t want you any more. I could be wrong, of course. Maybe this will all blow over. Speaking strictly on a personal level, I hope it does, for your sake. But if it doesn’t — well, you could find yourself out on the street. And if that
happens, the assistant manager’s job is there for you, Alf. You might be glad of a place to jump to.”

Alf was silent for a long time. He could not tell if Prince was being sincere — he sounded sincere, painfully so — but in a sense it didn’t matter. What had caught him seemed more like fate than the machinations of an enemy.

Prince continued, “The thing is, the thing
you
have to remember, is that you’re a management man at heart. You have the ability, the
authority
. It’s something that can’t be taught. You’ve got it, Alf. You’re meant for better things than knocking on doors with Mr. Doyle.”

Prince paused. Outside, the night seemed far away, a few isolated lights in darkness. A reddish star throbbed faintly. “You want me to hold that job open for you, until after the union goes in? Or until the union kicks you out? I’ll do my best. But the thing is, right now I know we can bring you in. Later, who can say? But once you’re in, you can prove yourself, and what came to you under, shall we say, special circumstances, will seem perfectly natural. It’s certainly deserved.”

Silence filled the car, tempered by the steady rush of the air conditioning. Outside was the night, but it felt distant, insubstantial. The real world was here, in the comfortable bubble of the car: yes, here in the quarter-light behind the complicated, glowing instrument panel of the Fleetwood was all the world, all the future a man needed. Everything a man could desire was here, or within reach of here. Alf thought of Margaret, and a wild sensation of regret pierced from far away. He went on sitting, feeling the wash of coolness from the dash. He licked his lips and was about to speak when suddenly — a rising panic in his chest — he felt he was suffocating. He needed a cigarette. He grappled for the handle and pushed open the door. Immediately he was met by a rush of scents, warm, earthy, sharp. Some cricket was picking an out-of-tune banjo. Behind him, Prince was saying, “People respect you, Alf. Whatever you decide —”

Alf shut the door and walked a few feet from the car, sucking in the night air. He lit a cigarette and stood smoking as he looked off at the burnished horizon where the town lay. For a few moments, all
he was aware of was what touched him: the ground underfoot, the scents of the night, the faint howling of a dog, down on the plain, the burn of smoke in his lungs. He was this and only this — this tenuous infinite thing, the night, the glow of a cigarette in the night’s dark.

He started walking. He passed the Fleetwood and re-entered the road, between its high, bushy banks, striding down the hill towards town. Behind him, the Cadillac’s headlights struck out over the shadowy fields. Then the car crept up behind him, its tires crunching on gravel. A window hummed down. Prince spoke with humorous irony.

“Hey, buddy. Give you a lift?”

Alf gave no sign he was aware of Prince’s existence, but went on walking, walking and smoking, down the shadowy road.

50

WHEN MARGARET HEARD JAMIE’S CRY
, her heart slammed against her ribs, as if she, too, were struggling from nightmare. She raced to his room and gathered his wiry, trembling body in its soaked pyjamas, rocking him against her. “Was it the same dream?” she asked, and the damp, tousled head nodded fiercely. His father was driving away in the Biscayne, and Jamie, stuck in the cellar, could not run after him, because an old man with no teeth and fire in his eyes was hiding in a box by the cellar stairs, threatening to eat him. For several weeks he had been so frightened of this dream he had resisted going to bed. Margaret got him into fresh pyjamas and changed the sheets. Finally easing him to sleep — he lay as he had when he was much younger, with his knees up and his thumb in his mouth — she carried his damp things to the cellar and put them in the laundry tub to soak. Reaching for the box of Tide, she knocked over a jar of soapy water
the children had used for blowing bubbles; it tumbled off the shelf, breaking with a loud pop on the cement floor. Margaret cried out, furious, and kicked at the shards among the spreading pool. By the time she’d cleaned it up she was weeping quietly to herself. Her period wouldn’t come and she was feeling as if she’d gained twenty pounds; she was irritated with everything and everybody — especially with Alf, who had said he’d be back in time to help put the children to bed. She was set against him perpetually these days. Their fight by the roadside had changed nothing. What had happened, or not happened (or might be happening still) with Carrie Crean was still lodged in her stomach like a cold stone.