The Ravine (29 page)

It was a small cemetery, crowded although not crammed. Most of the local population is of Finnish descent, followed in numbers by the dour Scottish Presbyterians—the muted Anglicanism of the Canadian United Church is not a going concern in here. The stones in the graveyard were mostly old, green with tiny but tenacious lichen.

Jay had told me none of what he’d found out, saying that I needed more surprises in my life. So I stared at the orderly cenotaphs and asked, “Is he dead?”

Before Jay could answer, a man rose from behind one of the stone markers. There was first a blinding glint of light as the sun bounced off his bald head—it took a moment or two for my eyes to clear. By then he was standing up, wiping dirt from his hands onto a brown gardener’s apron. He noticed us, looked first at my brother, then at me.

“Jay? Phil?”

Jay spoke first. “Hi, Norman.”

Yes, gone were the golden tresses. All that remained was a band of curly white hair that embraced both of his ears. Otherwise Norman Kitchen seemed unchanged. His eyes were still half-hidden behind dark folds of skin, his lips were still pale and puckered. Oddly,
his body had not run to fat. As a boy Norman had been quite plump, but as a man he was lean, even a bit muscular. And he was tall, too, well over six feet.

He lifted his heavy eyelids, nodded in our direction. “And these are…?”

“Oh,” I answered, “these are my daughters. Currer and Ellis.”

“Did you just bury a dead guy?”

“No, no. I was just looking after the site. The man resting here has no family, except his wife, and she’s very ill. So.” Norman looked at us all, for a long moment, obviously trying to decide what to do. He arrived at a decision. “Let’s eat!”

Norman’s wife—Norman’s wife!!—was a lovely woman named Elspeth. Elspeth had the kind of lean, hardened body that I associate with long-distance running, although it was easy enough to surmise whence she derived her exercise. There were no fewer than five Kitchen offspring, and although three were out of the house (two sons at the local high school, the eldest daughter at university in the Maritimes), the two who had come home from school for lunch were more than workout enough. The girl, Catherine, was eleven, and she kept her mother hopping by having a life so complicated that it made my mind whirl. Over lunch, much had to be organized: her participation in a soccer match, her costuming for the school Christmas pageant, her attendance at a party honouring the tenth birthday of one of her friends.

As for the youngest, a boy, Elspeth said, “Hamish, stop that.” A lot. And Hamish never did stop that, whatever it was.

He was nine years old, and I don’t think it’s any exaggeration to say that he was devil spawn. Well, maybe a bit of an exaggeration. But honestly, you have never seen the like. It’s not that he was hyper-kinetic, he wasn’t—there was even a deceptive languor to Hamish.
There was this deep smouldering energy source, which reminded me of the fierce heat that lies at the heart of compost. The kind of thing he was constantly being told to stop doing was, say, picking up a spoon and banging it against the side of a cup, banging it with a relentless stateliness, as though he were counting cadence for a funeral march. “Stop that, Hamish.” Another example: by doing something with his tongue and inner cheek, Hamish could produce a high-pitched, bubbly little whistle. It sounded like a miniature teakettle boiling. Or, more to the point, it sounded like a young greaser squeezing the life out of that thing many years ago, the small monster that was neither tadpole nor frog.

The most interesting thing about Hamish, to me, was that he looked exactly as his father had at nine. He had the nose that angled out like a snowman’s carrot, he had the mouth that pursed as though some unseen being were trying to force-feed him manure. And yes, he had the hair, the bangs, curls and locks. Hamish had made some concessions to his times—he already wore an earring, for example, and there were tints of odd colours in his hair—but that didn’t prevent him looking (as his daddy had) like Little Lord Ponce. So I’m writing this as kind of an argument for nature, because I suppose what my brother, Norman and I are about to discuss involves the nature/nurture argument.

What we are about to discuss is the nature of evil.

We left the manse (my daughters were enthralled with Catherine and under constant attack from Hamish, so I knew they would be occupied for at least an hour) and wandered into the church proper. We sat in the rearmost pew. A shaft of light drove through a stained-glass window, but missed us by a few feet.

“What did those boys do to you?” Jay asks.

“Oh. Yes. Those boys.”

“So you know what we’re talking about?”

“Of course I do.”

“Phil didn’t remember squat about it until he was in his twenties.”

“That’s interesting.”

“Not really. Phil squelches and squashes.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“That’s how he deals with emotional shit. Sits his big fat ass down on it, that’s the last daylight that particular feeling is ever going to see.”

“Father Norman, I keep sensing this
anger
coming from my brother.”

“Is that so?” snaps Jay angrily. “Well then, you better get to squelching and squashing.”

“What happened to make you remember it in your twenties, Phil?”

“Jay reminded me.”

“Point of clarification. I made a reference to the event, which is something I had been doing on a regular basis for many, many years. In this particular case, Phil was drunk and momentarily let down his defences. By the way, we’re both alcoholics.”

“I see.”

“But I have to admit,” continues Jay, “even I can’t remember
exactly
what happened. I mean, we worked out mostly what happened, together we can sort of piece it together. We tried to escape, they chased us, they tied us to trees. Oh, and by the way, thanks a mill, Phil.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask.

“What knot did you use on Norman? An Irish Sheepshank. What knot did you use on me?”

I ignore my brother. “Norman—?”

“What knot did you use on
me?”

“Norman, what did they do to you?”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t? Why the fuck not? Sorry, Father Kitchen.”

“It’s all right, Jay. You may speak however you wish to speak. The walls of the church are not going to come tumbling down. And guys, it’s not
Father
Kitchen. You could call me
Reverend
Kitchen if you really felt like it, but you can always just call me
Norm
like you used to.”

“But…”

“Yes?”

“We never called you
Norm
, Norman.”

“Oh. I seem to recall you calling me
Norm.”

“Norman. Please. What did they do to you?”

“They didn’t do anything to me, Phil.”

“What?”

“They didn’t do anything to
me.
Whatever they did, they did to a ten-year-old boy. That boy is gone forever.”

“Well, how did
that
happen?”

“Excuse me, Jay?”

“That’s quite the stunt. Because Phil and I, man, we’re the same kids that ran screaming out of that ravine.”

“Surely not. You’re quite an accomplished musician, Phil is a well-known writer. By the way, I enjoyed
Padre
quite a bit. It reminded me of a movie I saw at the Galaxy Odeon one time,
The Cross and the Bullet.”

“It was
The Bullet and the Cross.
Anyway, Reverend Norm, we’re not really successful. I mean, Jay plays in a little fern bar called Birds of a Feather. He
lives
there, for chrissake, and he’s kind of afraid to go outside.”

“And Phil isn’t a writer.”

“I am so a writer.”

“Phil, you’re not a writer like you wanted to be a writer when you were a kid. You don’t write novels. You write shit for teevee, simplistic shit that really should be shot in black and white, that’s how hackneyed it is. Christ, you stole your biggest idea from a movie we saw at the Galaxy Odeon!”

“I’m aware that I fall short of whatever mark you’ve set for me, Jay. I’m aware that I have fucked up. I’m a shit and a moral wash-up. I get it. But what I don’t get is why you keep throwing it in my face. Why do you want me to live in a constant state of guilt?”

“Umm … it’s not so much that I want you to, I guess. You
do
live in a constant state of guilt. And I suppose that sometimes I take advantage of that fact. But, another point of clarification, it’s not really
guilt
, it’s more like free-floating self-hatred. It’s, um, general auto-damnation.”

“Where does this shit come from?”

“It comes from the
ravine.
It only goes to prove the point, what happened down in the ravine has fucked us over profoundly. Look at Norman! He’s a goddam priest!”

“I’m a minister, Jay.”

“The point is, we weren’t really looking for you, all those years ago, to become a man of the cloth. Then the thing happened.”

“The incident.”

“Phil likes to call it
the incident.
He likes to give things names. So,
the incident
happened, and now little Norman Kitchen is a minister. Coincidence? I think not.”

“No. You’re right, Jay. It’s not a coincidence.”

“What did they do to you, Norman?”

“Phil, you
know
what they did to me.”

“Okay. Okay, I guess maybe there was part of me that was
hoping, you know, that maybe they just, I don’t know, had done something less severe.”

“It was very severe.”

“You know, Reverend Norm, right now you seem a little pissed off. For a reverend,” Jay says.

“Hmm. You’re right. I’m sorry. Anger is an incredibly destructive force. And when I came out of that ravine, I was a very angry boy. Weren’t you?”

“I don’t think we came out angry. Do you, Phil?”

“No. We weren’t angry, exactly, we were …”

“Afraid.”

“I was going to say
confused.”

“I was afraid,” said Jay. “Still am. Afraid of everything. Boys. Men. Women. So I came up with these lame solutions. I stayed inside a lot. Played the piano all the time. If I ever stumbled into a relationship, I made sure I scuppered it long before it could bite my ass.”

“I was confused. I liked people, and then all of a sudden people were these evil creatures, so how could I like them any more?”

Norman says, “I feel so sorry for those boys.”

“What?”

“What sort of desperation, what sort of pain and
hopelessness
, would drive them to do what they did?”

“Reverend Norm, surely as a minister you endorse the notion of evil,” I say.

“Evil is a choice.”

“Not always. Some people just pop out that way. Rabid and red-eyed.”

“I disagree. Because if you’re right, what would be the point of my vocation? I would have no influence. In your universe, the deck is stacked.”

“Hmm.”

“Reverend Norm. You came out of the ravine angry. And …?”

“And I started making everyone’s life hell. My mother’s life, especially. Other people’s lives, too, whoever I came into contact with. I was confused. I acted out quite a bit. I shoplifted. I started—this is hard to explain …”

“Go on, we’re listening.”

“I started breaking into people’s houses.”

“No!”

“Little Norman Kitchen?”

“I wouldn’t steal things,” he hastens to add. “At least, I wouldn’t steal anything big, anything that might be noticed. I might take a family photograph, or a souvenir from some vacation. I wasn’t there to rob anybody, I was there to, I don’t know, see what it felt like to live in a normal home. I’d make a sandwich, sometimes. Turn on the television, watch for a few moments. I’d always leave the television turned on. Anyway, I got caught doing that and I was sent to reform school.”

“Norman Kitchen got sent to reform school?”

“Yes. When I was fourteen. And, of course, there were many boys there like the boys in the ravine. So I thought, you know, that’s it. Game over. But then I thought, no. I’m not getting tied up to any more trees.”

“Guys. They
made
me tie you up.”

“Philip, I’ve forgiven you for that.”

“I haven’t forgiven him for that.”

“Do you think I’ve forgiven myself?”

“There was a gymnasium at the reform school …”

“Seriously,” I say, “do you think there has been one night, a single night, in my entire lifetime when I have gone to bed not feeling like the worst piece of shit on the planet?”

“Phil.”

“Yes, Norman?”

“I’m talking.”

“Okay. Sorry.”

“There was a gymnasium at the reform school. I started weight training.”

“Norman, I don’t like to sound rude, but … are you making this up?”

“I was doing the bench press one day and I lost control of the bar. I dropped it on my head and knocked myself unconscious.”

“Ah! This sounds more like it.”

“I woke up at the hospital. And there was a man there, a minister, Frank Ulmer, who became a very good friend of mine. He died a few years back … anyway, we talked about, oh, you know. Getting tied to trees.”

“And he said, let me tell you about a man who was tied to a tree.”

“Hmmm?”

“Segue to Jesus.”

“Jesus wasn’t tied to a tree, Phil. He was nailed to a cross. Big difference.”

“Even I knew that,” puts in Jay.

“But if he could forgive the people who did that to him, I figured I could forgive those boys. And here I am.”

“Well, frankly, that had never occurred to me,” says Jay. “Forgiving them, I mean.”

“It seems to me, Jay, that if you play music, you’re concentrating on one of the beautiful things that people do. And forgiving people, in general. Those boys get included in the mix.”

“I guess if I just write shit for television, I’m not really forgiving anybody.”

“You have to forgive yourself first, Philip.”

“I don’t know if that would do the trick,” I say.

“Plus, it may not be the easiest thing to do,” my brother adds.

“How’s that, Jay?”

“Well, let’s think about this, okay? Let’s just make sure we’re all on the same page, that we understand exactly what went down. You tied Norman up so he could escape. You tied me up so that I couldn’t.
You tied me to the tree.
I mean, I could have gotten away, I was pulling and yanking on my ropes, I could have gone for help or … forget it. It doesn’t matter.”