Matt Lennox - The Carpenter

— Jesus, said Pete.

— What?

— Nothing. Never mind.

— Well, I figured I’d let Chuck and Simon know that your ma wasn’t interested in them. I saw Simon one time at a party and I let him know he didn’t need to have anything to do with her. Ha. A week later I was pretty drunk, coming out of a dance hall, or maybe the bowling alley, and Chuck and Simon and a few of their pals were waiting for me. They stomped my ass into the ground pretty good. I guess they figured a greaser hood like me shouldn’t be speaking up for his sister.

He’d taken to studying the tabletop again. After a moment, he went on: I’d been on a real tear for a few days, way out on Indian River. Me, Speedy Simmons, Jimmy Robichaud, a couple others. It was maybe September. I came back to the boarding house at night. I wasn’t supposed to be living there any more-I was in my twenties-but I couldn’t hold a job down for real long, and I’d been evicted from the place I was living. I remember that night because it was late, eleven o’clock. I had Jimmy Robichaud’s dad’s Buick, which we all just kind of used when we needed to. Anyways there I was near the house and that fucking T-Bird is going the other way real fast, and I thought, there’s the Gradys cruising again. But when I got to the house, your mom, she was just sitting outside on the porch. She … she had no shoes on. She was barefoot. Her legs were all scratched up.

Lee peeled the label off his beer bottle. Pete’s mouth was bone dry.

— I never figured out why those two guys thought she’d just keep her mouth shut, said Lee. I thought about it a long time. But you know? They were right. She did. Far as I know I’m the only person she ever told it to, and I think it was on account of I saw their car and I saw her sitting there on the porch. The only time she said a word of it was to me that night. How she was walking home from the grocery store where she worked. How they came by and saw her and picked her up, she said, and this was maybe nine o’clock at night in the fall, so it was full dark, and then they didn’t drive her straight home. She didn’t talk a lot more about what happened after that. Not to me. Not even when she got called up as a witness for the defence, and I was sitting there with those charges laid on me. She just looked at the floor when the lawyer asked her. Did you know Charles or Simon Grady? She said, no, sir. Not at all, sir. I guess they all knew a lot more about shame than I ever did, which is why they knew she wouldn’t say anything. I don’t know what Chuck and Simon did when they went back into town, and after that night Simon was never able to talk clearly anyway. He couldn’t even be called as a witness. See, I don’t know where they went after they left her. I only know I got to their house before they did. When they got home it was around midnight and I was there already.

Pete started to get up from the table. He felt queasy.

— Sit down, said Lee.

— I have to go.

— Sit your ass down, Peter. You wanted me to start talking about this, well, I am. The Crown wanted to hang me for it. You can’t duck out now.

Pete sank into the chair.

— Jimmy’s dad was a framer on a building crew, said Lee. He had a framing hammer in the trunk of the car. It was twenty-two ounces. I didn’t say nothing to Chuck or Simon and they never got any words out themselves. The whole thing was done and over in less than a minute and I drove away. I threw the hammer down a creek. But the thing is, Simon Grady was still alive. That’s something I didn’t think of at the time. When I left them, they both had their heads pretty messed up. I … I know I used the claw a couple of times, anyway. But I was also young and pissed off and drunk. Stupid. Simon Grady was still alive, but he was all messed up. He never got right again.

— I feel like I’m going to throw up.

— They gave me twenty years. They talked about some of the chicken-shit stuff I’d been picked up for before, and they called a few witnesses who said I had prior history with the Gradys. And me, us, whatever you want to call it, I just told the court I didn’t like them bothering my sister. If she couldn’t talk about what they’d done to her, I couldn’t speak for her. Mom knew, and I think some people in town might of had the idea, but it never come out in the newspaper. Just how the local hockey hero got murdered in cold blood. They called it envy. The first chaplain, when I was inside, he called it covetousness, and he showed me in the Bible what that was.

Pete stood up again. He was unsteady and feeling sick to his stomach. He said: I don’t understand at all why you … why you’d come back here. Why you’d do that to us.

— To us, said Lee. Is that right? You’re the man of the family now? You’re the big man?

— I’ve got to go.

— Well, one more thing, big man. I’m sorry you had to find out from me, like this. I’m sorry your mother won’t say nothing, specially when I think of all the time I sat in jail. I’m sorry for all that wasted time. I’m sorry for what’s gone down since I got out, like Bud, for example. I’m sorry that Simon Grady is a halfwit because I didn’t have the sense to make sure I finished it. But I’m not sorry for what I did. I never will be. I can see that. Clear as anything.

— What gave you the idea you could decide that?

— What gave you the idea I couldn’t?

He drove the streets. He hadn’t eaten all day. He clenched the wheel until his hands hurt. The flame in his gut had turned into a fire, and it was spreading through every part of him. Every thought in his head was a wordless, desperate scream. In the late evening he pulled up a few doors down from Nancy’s house. He could see the cars in the driveway, the station wagon among them, and all the lights in the windows, and people moving about on the porch. He got out of his car and crossed the yard.

Pete went into Nancy’s living room. There had to be fifty people there and it was hot and cloudy with smoke. Nancy must have seen him as soon as he came in, because she appeared almost immediately.

— What are you doing here?

— I’m looking for somebody.

— Emily’s not here.

— I’m not looking for her. I won’t be long.

— Hey, said Nancy. Look …

He brushed past her. She grasped his arm and he pulled away. He walked through the kitchen and the dining room. Nancy fell into step behind him.

He found Roger in the den at the back, the same place he’d been when they first exchanged words. He was with a few of his friends and some girls. They were playing quarters on the coffee table.

Roger’s head turned. He looked drunk.

Pete kicked the chair out from under him. Roger went down and Pete jumped on top of him. He pinned him down with his knees. Roger had his arms raised to fend the blows as they came. Around them, voices cried out. Pete felt a hand grasp a mittful of his collar and he half turned and punched somebody in the testicles. He was punched hard in the side of the forehead. The world spun. He was hauled backwards. He could see Roger crawling away on his elbows, crablike. Roger’s nose was bleeding onto his shirt.

Pete was on his knees and he was up and down and up again. He held his own. In the end, he was dragged out of the house. He staggered off through the front yard and paused under a street light. Roger came out and stood on the porch, crying out that he would kill Pete. There were neighbours peering out their windows and doors. Pete didn’t say anything. He walked back to his car and got in and turned the key in the ignition.

Streets rolled out in front of him. He drove along the lakeshore. He drove up the hill, drove past Galilee Tabernacle, drove out to the CIL factory, to the shopping mall, drove back down the hill, sped along River Street. He saw the place where Emily had told him he’d better kiss her. He kept going, but there was only so far you could drive before you were covering the same streets again. He was shaking coldly, seeing the red and green lights around windows, the store signboards saying MERRY CHRISTMAS, the wooden creches out front of the churches. Everything seemed cheap and cruel. He hadn’t balanced any account, and he couldn’t possibly go home.