John Moss - Grave doubts

“You drive,” he said, and got out of the car. When they had exchanged places, he explained, without being in the least defensive. “You’re better at winter driving than me. You enjoy it. I don’t.”

It was true, she liked to drive, even in bad conditions. He was not a nervous passenger, nor particularly a nervous driver, just not a very good one. Having grown up in a family without a car, he could never relate to men who measured their manhood by their prowess behind the wheel.

“If you do something, anything, just to prove you’re a man,” his father had said, “then you’re not.”

When he was eight years old, his father taught him to box. Not because it’s a manly sport. “Hammering someone into unconsciousness, boy, that’s nothing to be proud of. But the world’s a tough place; you’ve gotta be tough to survive.”

The boxing lesson came after a kid about ten years old had pinned Morgan down and cuffed him on the head until tears filled his eyes. He wasn’t crying. It was an involuntary response. The kid wouldn’t stop, so Morgan flailed wildly and landed a smack straight on the kid’s nose. He broke his nose.

His father had been called in and had to take half a day off work. The boxing lesson was the only repercussion at home or at school.

His father made boxing gloves out of socks, folding one sock across the knuckles between layers over and under it, securing each makeshift affair with duct tape at the wrist.

“Make a fist, not around your thumb. Relax your thumbs,” he said.

He got down on his knees so that he was the same height as his son. “Now let’s see you punch. Punch me, David.”

“I don’t want to,” Morgan said.

“Punch into my hand, hard as you can.”

Morgan did what he was told. His blows met with little resistance as his father’s hand gave way to the force. This wasn’t like the kids fighting at school.

“What do they do?”

“They rassle. We don’t really hit each other. Mostly we rassle ’til someone says ‘Uncle.’ Sometimes you have t’say ‘Give.’ Then they stop.”

“And what if there’s a bully who won’t stop?”

Morgan didn’t have an answer.

“Now try to hit my face,” he said. “That’s it, punch, punch, thrust, punch, break through. Good boy. Watch what I do.”

To Morgan’s surprise, his father parried against his gloves then slipped through his defence and hit him on the side of the chin. Morgan’s hands dropped to his side. His father had never hit him before, and he had never even been spanked.

“Now hit me back, David. Come on, come on,” he taunted.

Morgan watched his opponent’s hands jabbing the air, waited, then struck. To his surprise, his small fist broke through his adversary’s guard and landed square on his nose. His father reeled back on his knees, shook his head to clear the buzz, looked at his son through glistening moisture released by the jarring of his tear ducts.

“Damn me, boy. What the hell are you doing?”

Morgan was appalled. “I’m sorry, Daddy,” he said. It was the only time he had ever called him that.

He wanted to hug his father, to forgive him for making him do it.

“Don’t be sorry,” his father said. Then to Morgan’s surprise he started jabbing away at his son’s instinctively raised fists. They were adversaries again.

“What’s my name, boy?”

His father never called him “boy.”

“Fred!”

“That’s right, David. Know who you’re fighting. Always know.”

With sudden deliberation he reached through and landed a glancing blow against the side of his son’s head, but leaving himself open, so that Morgan rolled with the punch and came up underneath with a solid blow to his father’s chin.

“Good God, David. You’re a little bugger.”

Morgan stared at him sullenly, daring him to strike back. His father got up off his knees, rising to his full height. Morgan stared up at him. This was his father again.

“And never lose your temper. If you do, you’ve lost the fight.”

When his father reached out to tousle his hair, Morgan flinched infinitesimally.

“Now get the hell out of here,” his father said as he stripped off the socks from his son’s clenched fists. “Go out and save the world from bullies.”

Morgan remembered his father standing tall and powerful in the middle of the living room, but he also remembered the terrible sounds of him wheezing and coughing up tobacco-soaked phlegm as Morgan strutted out the front door.

While they were stopped at the Yonge and Eglinton intersection, Miranda glanced over to see if he was going to break. He seemed relaxed.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay, tell me what’s going on, Morgan. You win.”

“Win what?”

“Whatever. You can’t set the rules if you don’t know the game.”

“My goodness,” he said. “You only coin cliches when you’re riled up about something.”

“Aphorisms. You can coin an aphorism. I’m not riled up.”

“But you would like an explanation.”

“No.”

“No?”

“They’re not old, are they! They’re recently deceased. The whole thing was a set-up, wasn’t it? A gruesome illusion, a joke? Right?”

“You’ve got it.”

“You’re kidding!”

“For sure.”

“Is it our case?”

“It is.”

“Oh, well done, Morgan.”

“I dropped into the forensic pathology lab this morning.”

“Because you had nothing better to do on a Saturday off?”

“I wanted to talk to Dr. Hubbard.”

“Come on, Morgan. She’s got cantilevered tits and Olive Oyl hair. Not your type at all.”

“No?”

“She looks like a raunchy popsicle.”

“I can’t picture it.”

“Morgan, if she ever let her hair down, her cheeks would sag to her chin.”

He had never known Miranda to be so bitchy. She had good instincts, and she didn’t hesitate to judge by appearance, but usually she was subtle. A cocked eyebrow, the trace of a smile. She was incisive but seldom unkind. And she was usually right. He, in contrast, saw neither what people wanted others to see, nor what they wanted to hide. He did not believe in the concept of self as a coherent entity. He saw personality as process, something revealed over time.

Often their conclusions converged, although his were less static than hers, and while they evolved slowly they were more open to revision.

“Is something bothering you?” he asked.

“Why?”

“You don’t seem yourself.”

“Do I ever?” she grinned. “I was looking forward to lazing in bed,” she said. “Dreaming good dreams, spending a lovely while on my own.” She continued to smile, without looking over at him. She had awakened blissfully distracted, like she had made love through the night, but her phantom lover had departed, and she could not remember his name. “So, what’s going on?” she asked.

“We missed it. They missed it. The medical examiner missed it. We were royally duped — by a master of the macabre. It’s all very Gothic.”

“Damn it,” she said. “I knew the clothes fit too well.”

By the time he explained as much as he knew, they had pulled up in front of the house in Hogg’s Hollow, which looked more dilapidated by daylight, somehow more sad, as if shunned by the neighbouring houses. There was a van parked slightly askew in the driveway. The name “Alexander Pope” in exquisite hand-script on the driver’s door proclaimed the owner a person of profoundly good taste, either too modest to add a line declaring his profession or so confident it was not deemed necessary.

As they walked by, Morgan peered through the side windows and saw, lying in casual disarray, odds and ends of antique paraphernalia. There was a pair of hand-forged fire irons, were three or four swing arms from the inside of fireplaces, and a couple of iron pots and a kettle. There was a copper cauldron from central Sweden, an old import. There were cardboard boxes brim-filled with ancient nails, a brace of decoys, part of a dry sink, a box of door latches and hinges, and random lengths of painted pine. There were shadows and colours and contours Morgan would have loved to have explored. He was a natural at rummaging through obsolete treasures.