Marcel Theroux - Far North

‘Now that’s something I rarely do. I’m still pretty quick and I’d back myself against any man in a grapple, but without my sight I’m at a disadvantage. I have to be careful how I do business. So I had him patted down again and sent my bodyguards out of the room.

‘There was a long silence. I told him I was pressed for time. Still nothing. Finally he blurted it out. He said he wanted me to forgive him. He said I’d taken the blame for something he’d done. I told him not to mind it, the past never weighed on me that heavy in any case and besides, I couldn’t imagine Rudi doing anything so bad it could stir his conscience.’

I knew otherwise but I said nothing.

‘Rudi said this thing had been preying on his mind. He was keen for me to know in detail and whether I forgave him or not, that was up to me. Confession’s a powerful thing.

‘He said it was him that had broken into the Hatfield residence that night with a gang of men he’d hired down by the old fire-house. He’d had to pay them half up front to get a deal, and they were drunk when he went to meet them. He had a bad feeling about it, but he went ahead anyway. The men were out of control. He lost a grip on things as son as they got to the house. You know the rest.

‘I told him it was your forgiveness that he needed, but for my part, I could see his remorse was genuine and it wasn’t up to me to judge him.

‘He seemed pretty happy with that answer and left soon afterwards. It didn’t rest so easy there with me, though. It didn’t feel quite right. I knew Rudi once, and it didn’t sound like the kind of thing he would do. We have all had to adapt, but for Rudi to break in and steal? It got to bothering me so much that I had some of my men follow him.

‘They said he was living with some distant relative of his in a street full of crippled houses that were sliding into their own foundations. He spent most of each day in bed in this wonky room, not a straight angle left in it, coughing up into a bucket.

‘So finally I went to see him. I said, “Rudi, something’s bothering me about the story you told. And don’t for a second think that I don’t forgive you, because I do — and in a way I ought to thank you, for if they’d never run me out of town, perhaps I would never have made it here like I have” — and I thought to myself, maybe it would have been me in this crooked room, preparing to die. “But what’s bothering me is this: I just don’t believe that you, on your own, would have decided to rob James Hatfield.”

‘And he said, in his rattling voice, “I didn’t.”

‘“If that’s the case, why did you do it?”

‘“Someone sent me,” he said.

‘“And who was that?” I asked.

‘“James Hatfield.”

‘For a moment, I thought I’d misheard or the consumption had reached his brain. But then, just after, it was like a big light going on in my head.

‘What do lawyers say?’ Eben went on. ‘ Cui bono ? We got fit up. Your father was running out of friends. Turning the other cheek sounded grand, but it wasn’t practical. He knew that — but how could he climb down from his mountain top and say he’d changed his mind? A man as rigid as him.

‘A wiser man would have known how to move with the times. He could have thrown his hands up and said: “I was wrong. This thing’s out of control. Mike Callard has the right idea. We need to arm ourselves and protect what we have here.” But the thing about your old man is he had no humility. He had to be right, even when he was wrong.

‘And what made it galling for him was my father, a newcomer to the town, who’d depended on your father’s charity, winning over all those wavering souls. Your father must have wrestled with himself, seeing the corner he was in. Yes, he had an uncomfortable choice to make.

‘Rudi said your father came to him and laid things out. He told him he needed a provocation. Rudi was supposed to break into your house with a gang of men, rough the place up a bit. No one was to be harmed, just smash up this and that. Enough for him to blame us for it, run us out of town and use it to excuse a change of heart on carrying arms. I can almost hear your father’s voice saying it: “Why even Simon Peter raised his sword to defend our Lord!”

‘Rudi didn’t want paying himself. He was doing it out of respect for your old man. Your father had given him a little money as wages for the men, but he didn’t take any. He was very particular that I know that. It was never meant to go as far as it did. Things got out of hand. That’s the tragedy. Rudi said your father couldn’t live with it and the remorse killed him.

‘He said he never felt anything but admiration for you. And he was sorry how it had changed you. He said you kind of went into yourself after it happened. You were always so outgoing, couldn’t keep still, always moving, like a ball in a bagatelle. You had big dreams, I remember. Move out east. The States. You never had the spirit of a small-town girl. He said there was a time when there was just a handful of you all living in the rubble of Evangeline like refugees. He said he’d see you every day, circling the place on horseback, like a — what’s the word he used? — a wraith. Said it depressed the hell out of him to see what had become of you. I remember how you were too, Makepeace, bright as a button. You were a pretty thing too. A lot of us were sweet on Makepeace Hatfield.

‘I understand why you lied to me about the Zone. But we’re not enemies. Look at me. Time hasn’t been kind to me. But two hops and you can be out of here. Take us to where those flasks are and we can ride that plane to Barrow. You’d love the place. People live very well. It’s like it was here in the old days. Very neighbourly. Very respectful. And bit by bit we’re building something we can leave our children. Not all fathers are like yours, Makepeace.’

He stood up and took something out of his pocket. ‘I brought you dessert,’ he said, putting it on the table in front of me.

‘I’m sorry if what I said has hurt you, but I thought it was better for you to know.’

He called to the guard to see him out of the room. There was a step down to manage on the way out, and he wobbled somewhat as he took it, but aside from that, you would never guess his eyes had gone.

*

The guard loosened my hands.

I thought at first he’d left me behind an apple, but I soon knew what it was. The first I’d ever seen. An orange. I scraped the skin with my nail and it let out a smell that seemed to have flowers and mint and burned sugar in it. After a moment, I could smell sea spray too. But I couldn’t bring myself to eat the thing.

*

There was an electrical storm that night, as big as any I can remember. It kicked off with a drum roll of thunder way out to the east of us, towards the coast, towards Evangeline. Then the sky darkened and flashed, throwing down chunks of ice so big that I thought we were under attack. It pounded the yard, and rustled the trees, and slammed the tin roofs of the prisoners’ barracks.

*

I spent all my life with people whose whole task on earth was bound up with acting rightly and I guess I got the habit of it in spite of myself.

Now I had found myself standing in a world where right had perisnd flaI had always believed that right was like north to my father: a thing as real as sunlight, a place on the map, the arrow on a compass. It was the unalterable facts of duty, love, and conscience. But our world had gone so far north that the compass could make no sense of it, could only spin hopelessly in its binnacle. North had melted right off the map. North was every which way. North was nowhere. For so long the plane had been my north. And in a strange way, so had Eben Callard. I was anchored by the bad thing just as by the hope that in a distant city some semblance of order, of right, was giving meaning to my world. But we were long past that place. I was stood in the dark trying to make sense of a room that was lit by flashes of light through a keyhole.