Twenty-Six (44 page)

His legs have gone to sleep on him, and as he moves his heels up and down as noiselessly as he can to bring back the feeling, he becomes aware that others in the room have succumbed to boredom. Almost everyone is slumped over in their seat. Someone right up front is reading a magazine.

Glancing down at his watch, Ziv notices that it is now just after three. He folds shut the small notebook he carries and puts the pen in his shirt pocket. He is already dressed for work and, if he leaves now, he’ll just have time to walk comfortably to Zellers. He is just inside the front doors of the Miner’s Museum building, zipping his parka and looking out at the large, sparse flakes of wafting snow, when a serious-looking man with blond hair and a
full beard comes in.

“Hello, Ziv,” the man says. Ziv recognizes the eyes, but the beard is disguising the face. He puts out a hand and says, “Hello.”

“It’s Ken Morrison,” the man says. “Alec Morrison’s brother.”

“Jesus, Ken! I didn’t recognize you behind that beard.”

Ken rubs a hand back and forth across his chin. “Someone told me I’d find you down here. I thought it might be your father that was taking such an interest in something like this.”

“The old man? No, he wouldn’t be caught dead at one of these hearings.” Ziv notices a change come over Ken’s face and he realizes he should not have spoken of his father that way. “You came here looking for me?” he says, hoping to steer the conversation back in Ken’s direction.

“I’m only home for a few days,” Ken says. “I’m in law school now in Ontario.”

“Good for you, man. Jesus! Good for you!”

“Anyway, I’m not able to take a holiday over Christmas, like most normal people. I have to go back tomorrow to try to catch up on some school work and I thought if I could see you for just a few minutes, I would.”

“I haven’t seen you in years,” Ziv says. He feels awkward that Ken has come seeking him out. “You look good. That beard makes you look some old, though.”

“I tried to get in touch with you right after the explosion, you know. I was in Toronto. I did call, but couldn’t get through.”

“Oh well,” Ziv says and looks down at his shoes.

“I guess I should have kept trying,” Ken goes on. “Anyway, I just wanted to explain something. I wanted to say that I know what it’s like to lose a brother.” He pauses a moment and takes a breath.

“Here,” Ziv says. He motions toward a padded bench against a far wall. “Let’s sit down for a minute.” They walk over and sit side by side on the bench.

“I don’t want to take your time,” Ken says.

“I’m just off to work,” says Ziv, “but I’ve got a minute or two.”

Ken is white and a little shakey, as though he is standing on a stage before an audience with a speech he’s been trying to commit to memory. “There is something else I’ve been wanting to say to you. Ever since Alec died.”

“That’s a long time ago, now,” Ziv says. “How are your parents doing?”

“I felt guilty for years about Alec’s death. I still feel it. But what I’ve been wanting to say to you is, if the rest of us in my family treated Alec as well as you did, he’d probably still be alive.”

“Nobody knows why Alec killed himself. For a long time I asked myself why I couldn’t have done something to stop him. But in the end, Alec killed himself and that’s all you can say.” Ziv observes Ken’s face for a reaction to what he’s just said. He meant the comment to reassure Ken that he did not blame Alec’s family for his suicide, but he realizes now that the statement may have sounded harsh or unkind.

Ken carries on. “You were a better brother to Alec than I ever was. Arvel was lucky to have you.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Ziv says and stands up. “Ken, listen, I have to go now.”

“I mean it,” Ken says. “I just wanted to tell you.” He gets to his feet. “Well, nice seeing you, Ziv.”

“You too, Ken. Good luck with the law-school business, eh? I guess the next time I see you you’ll be wearing pinstripes, no doubt.” Ziv gives a friendly laugh.

“Ya, thanks. Take care.”

They step outside the door and turn in opposite directions as Ken heads into the parking lot and Ziv makes for Foord Street.

Ziv stops at the top of the drive. The Miner’s Museum sign points to where he’s just come from. There is a space between houses here and he can see down across a field to a place where two branches of the river meet. Beyond this, the silos of Eastyard Coal stand silent and brooding, as though facing each other defiantly against the shifting pattern of grey and blue sky behind them.

In a magazine article he saw some time ago, there was a cutaway drawing of the Eastyard mine. The picture showed approximate depths and equivalent surface distances. There was a red dot to mark the place where most of the recovered bodies were found and another to show where company records, “shockingly inadequate,” according to the article, indicated the remaining fifteen bodies might be located. It would take someone who knew a lot more about maps to locate that spot on the surface of the ground. But as Ziv looks out across the landscape, he strains to see the tunnels as they would be now, black and burnt and airless, Arvel’s body decomposing on the floor. The body that in life seemed so hulking and large, crushed and puny beneath countless tons of earth.

Ziv remembers a geometrical figure he studied in Grade 12 math. It is called a hyperbola. It consists of two curves that never intersect, that move endlessly away from each other. As a student, it took him several days to grasp the idea that these two curves that never touch are not two objects, but that they form one shape, a shape that can be expressed in a single formula. This is what brothers are: non-intersecting curves that form a single
entity. With Arvel gone, Ziv is half of something whose wholeness has ceased to exist.

The next morning Ziv gets up at nine to find a letter from Meta sitting on the kitchen table. His father has obviously been to the post office already. Today’s
Chronicle-Herald
is folded up near the letter. As he moves the paper out of the way, he notices a small article at the bottom of page 1. The headline reads “Brother of Killed Miner Battles Government, Families Group for Memorial.” He scans the first two paragraphs quickly. The Eastyard families’ group has apparently issued a news release taking Jeff Willis to task. To many in the group, the silos are an unnecessarily painful reminder of an event they will in any case never forget. Passing through Pictou County on the Trans-Canada, they are unignorable, one of the most visible landmarks in the province. They are a symbol of all that’s wrong with Nova Scotia’s political and economic life.

Willis is sensitive to those family members who want the silos removed. But according to the article, he’s critical of the Nova Scotia government for the way it is pushing through its plans. “They’re trying to sweep the history of this event under the rug. And the death of my brother along with it,” the paper quotes Willis as saying. “My brother is buried at Eastyard Coal. Until his body is recovered, those silos are his gravestones. To tear them down would be as disrespectful as the desecration of any cemetery.”

Ziv gets up and goes to the window. The sun is up now, and Bundy Burgess stands squinting in his backyard, shielding his eyes with his hand. He’s got the shaft of an old hockey stick in the
other hand and he’s knocking big icicles off the eaves of his house with it. Ziv turns back to the room and pours himself the half-cup of lukewarm coffee his father left in the machine. When he settles back down at the table he opens Meta’s letter.

Ziv folds the letter up and puts it back inside the envelope. He examines the outside of the envelope, looking for something else from it, something that might help him comprehend not just the words of the letter, but a feeling he can sense beneath the words.
He’s not sure what he’s looking for, perhaps some further sign of Meta’s state of mind when she was sending it, maybe even some last-minute postscript she wrote on the way to the mailbox. But there is nothing but a Japanese stamp and the coloured markings of an airmail envelope.

He resolves to write to her. He wants to tell her he misses her. He wants to tell her to come home, that this is where she belongs.

“Somebody told me the Morrison boy was around.”

Ziv startles at the sound of his father’s voice. Ennis has entered the kitchen without Ziv’s having heard him.

“Ken Morrison,” Ziv says. He turns to his father, who is busying himself with something in the cupboards. “He said he was surprised you weren’t attending the inquiry hearings.”

There is no reply from his father for an instant, then he says, “What? Who?” as though he’s just been roused from a dream and has no idea where he is.

“Ken Morrison said he was surprised you weren’t attending the inquiry hearings.”

“The commissioner’s going to reach the same conclusion whether or not I attend the goddamn hearing.” Ennis has fixed himself a bowl of something. He begins making his way into the living room with it.

“Don’t you think …” Ziv stops in mid-sentence. Ennis has walked right past him and out of the kitchen. Ziv feels like calling after his father. He feels like giving him hell for his apathy about everything since Arvel died. He feels like chasing the old man into the front room and shaking him until his false teeth fall out.

He picks up the
Chronicle-Herald
from the table and follows his father into the living room. “Look at this!” he says. He dangles the paper from one hand so the full front page is in view.
His father looks up at him with a peculiar, puzzled look.

“A few months ago this paper would already be torn up with holes. There’s a bag of clippings up in your bedroom, stuffed full of information. Turning newspapers into confetti is next to useless, but you’ve given even that up now.”

“What do you want me to do? What the
hell
can I do? Can I bring my son back from the dead? Tell me that, eh?”

“Look at this Willis guy, here,” Ziv points at the article on the front page of the paper. “He’s
doing
something. He’s fighting to get the mine silos declared a memorial. We can’t bring Arvel back, but we can make sure nobody is allowed to forget what happened to him. Go on outside and take a look at those silos. They’ll make the biggest memorial to workers killed on the job in the country.”

Ennis shakes his head. “Those silos are coming down in the spring. Haven’t you even read that article? The government has already made the decision. It’s a foregone conclusion. It’s over.”

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this from you.” Ziv throws the newspaper on the floor and walks into the front room, where he stands in front of Ennis’s plaques hanging again on the wall. “According to this stuff, these so-called plaques of recognition,” he turns to look back at his father, “you actually had some guts at one point in your life. But you’re a coward now. Your whole life has come apart, your son is dead, your wife is gone, she pasted your face to the back of your fucking skull for you before she left. And
you
don’t have the guts to try to put it all back together. Look at this.” Ziv takes the picture of Ennis and Tommy Douglas off its hook on the wall.

“Take a look at this!” he says, walking up to his father, “You with your arm around one of the greatest men this country ever produced. You don’t deserve to be in the same room with him
now. You should be ashamed.”

Ennis’s arms are twitching at his sides. “Give me that picture,” he says.

Ziv recognizes the fury in his father’s eyes and backs away from it.

“I said give me that Jesus picture or I’ll snap you in two.”

Ziv holds out the framed photo, and Ennis grabs it from him.

“Don’t you tell me how I should feel,” Ennis says. “You haven’t lived my goddamned life. You don’t have to tell me I’m not the man Douglas was. Maybe I’ve made mistakes with my life and maybe I’ve got regrets, but you have to do something before you can make a mistake. And you haven’t done a fucking thing. Take a look at yourself, man, if you can stand to do it. What have
you
ever done that’s changed anything?”

His father glares at Ziv an instant, picks up the bowl of cereal from the floor, and brushes quickly past Ziv to the kitchen. He sets the bowl he has not yet eaten from on the table and goes into the porch where he begins putting on his boots and coat to go outside.

“Go ahead,” Ziv says after him. He feels sick in the pit of his stomach, as though he’s been kicked. “Run away. What difference will it make? Bury your damn head in the sand.”

His father slams the door on his way out and Ziv goes to the window. He watches him walk between the banks of snow shovelled up on either side of the driveway, past his own car, and into the street.

“To hell with you,” Ziv says aloud. He picks Meta’s letter from the kitchen table and storms back through the house and up the stairs to his bedroom.

His father’s words have stung him. He lies down heavily on top of his bed. His thoughts are reeling. When he was a boy he
always looked up to his father. His father was the one, he thought, who would protect what was right, the one who would fix whatever might be broken. Then it all changed, and for as long as he could remember after that, there was anger spilling into everything between them, as if when they looked at each other, they saw themselves.