Wayne realized how often he had seen his father reading. He knew there were books in his trapping hut, and there were always books beside his bed at home. He had not thought about the books as having the ability to help his father orient himself in St. John’s, or in any strange city. The thought was new to Wayne. His father might have become lost on the way to the Forest Road Apartments, but he was not lost in the world of terrazzo flooring or German clocks, or the history of his ancestors, and it was because he read.
“I’ve had a lot more time than you have had to read. And I’ve had a lot less to contend with in my life than you have had in yours. What I’d like to know now, Wayne, is the name of the person who attacked you.”
“Derek Warford. Why?”
“Because I might like to have a word with him. And I would like to see the place where it happened. This Deadman’s Pond that Thomasina told me about.”
“Dad.”
“As a matter of fact, I’d like you to show it to me now. But before we go up Signal Hill I’d like to go to a grocery store and I’d like to buy a really nice orange.”
Wayne took his father to the Parade Street Dominion and then they walked down Harvey Road and took the steps to Long’s Hill. They walked along Gower Street, and while they were walking in front of the chain-link fence outside Powers’ Salvage on the east end of Duckworth Street, Treadway handed Wayne the bank book. There was no one to witness this but the gulls that circled the city’s sewage outlet. They stood near the giant pyramid of salt that the city was storing to put on the roads next winter, and there was a smell of seaweed. The fog was coming in but had not come in yet, and the sounds were gulls and cranes and containers echoing as they landed down on the docks, with the squeaking of pulleys and now and then a man shouting. The men were tiny in the distance in their hard hats. Wayne watched them through the fence, and he did not know why his father had handed him a bank book until his father explained — it was the gold.
“The gold you always had in your closet?”
“I want you to have it. Put it in your pocket and we’ll go to the credit union tomorrow and I’m going to sign that account over to you. And you, I want you to use it to do something with yourself. I don’t care what it is but I want you to think about it. Go and visit different places if you want, places where they can teach you something you want to know how to do. It has to be something you have an interest in. And this thing here” — he gave Wayne an envelope — “is a ticket Thomasina Baikie gave me to give you.”
Wayne put the bank book in his pocket and unwrapped the ticket. It was a ticket for a performance of American folk songs by the Boston Downtown Community Choir. The ticket had cost five dollars and the date on it was August the twenty-fifth, which was in six weeks’ time.
“Thomasina wants you to see your old friend. The trip won’t cost much, and even if it did, what else is money for?”
“Dad, I don’t want to take your gold.”
“As I said, son, you’ve had a lot more to contend with than I have ever had. I want you to take that. Your mother and I want you to have it and we want you to do something with it that will mean we don’t have to worry about how you are going to make a living. It’s pure selfishness on our part.”
“Does my mother know?”
“Does she know what, son?”
“Does she know I’ve gone off the drugs? And what about what Derek Warford did? She doesn’t know about that?”
“No. I didn’t say a word about Derek Warford. Your mother would not have been able to stand hearing that.”
“I know.”
“But she knows about the drugs. Your mother has always — part of her — wanted you to be who you are now. She has always been the one who felt the drugs might not be the right thing. Ever since you were little. So yes, I told her about that. And she was happy.”
They were at the intersection that led up Signal Hill and, to the east, along the Battery.
“She was happy?”
“Well she cried, but she said she was happy. And I almost forgot to give you this. I hope to God it’s not bent. She’ll kill me if I’ve bent it.” Treadway took a small square out of his pocket. It was two pieces of cardboard measuring no more than two by three inches and held together by a rubber band, and when Wayne took the band off, he saw it was a photograph. There had been a newspaper clipping that showed the moment Elizaveta Kirilovna had won her gold medal for synchronized swimming, when Wayne was eight years old. Jacinta had clipped it at the time, and they had looked at it together and felt Elizaveta Kirilovna’s joy.
“But this is not newsprint,” Wayne said. “It’s a real photograph.” Elizaveta Kirilovna was waving and her face was wet. You could see a drop of swimming pool water on her mouth. Wayne had, when he was eight, told Jacinta he could almost imagine that Elizaveta Kirilovna was waving to him personally.
“Your mother took it to Sooter’s in Goose Bay and asked them to reprint it on photo paper. They do that now. They can make a poster if you want it. But your mother wanted it small. She asked me to go into S. O. Steele on Water Street and have it put in a sterling silver frame for you, but I didn’t get around to it. Could you do that yourself, son? Your mother doesn’t need to know. I don’t tell her everything, and I sometimes have the feeling there are details she keeps from me.”
They walked past the convent and past the coloured houses that straggled up the hill and petered out before you got to the Battery Hotel, the front all white on the hillside like a cruise ship, though it was dilapidated at the back. Then came the hill’s steepest bend and around it emerged Cabot Tower.
“Deadman’s Pond is in here,” Wayne pointed into the bushes. There were blueberry bushes that had flowers on them: modest pink bells and new green and white and pale purple berries, and on a few, one or two berries that had turned blue. Water peeped through the bushes and they saw the worn-down shrubs where people had driven vehicles to get closer to the pond. Wayne did not know why his father wanted to come here, and he felt uneasy. He had not walked up here since his attack, and he did not want to see the pond.
“I want you to leave me here.”
“Why?” Wayne was afraid someone might come and challenge his father. He knew Derek Warford was unlikely to come here in the daytime but he pictured it anyway. He did not know what his father planned to do and he did not like leaving him here alone.
“I want to have a careful look at the place and I have something I want to do here by myself. I’ve got the key you gave me and I’ll use it to get back in the apartment when I’m done.”
He knew Wayne had to go to work. It was late afternoon. Wayne stood on the side of the road and watched his father walk into the bushes and stoop down and eat a few blueberries as he would have done in the blueberry bushes around home. He saw that his father’s hands were big around the berries, but his thumb and finger had no problem aiming for the delicate berry and picking it.
“All right, Dad.” Wayne did not move.
“Go on, son.”
Once Wayne had turned to go back down into the city he did not look back at his father, though he wanted to, and his back felt exposed and sensitive as if it were a naked screen and the image of his father alone at Deadman’s Pond was projected on it.
33
Red Hawk
THE GROUND UNDER THE BLUEBERRY bushes was, Treadway thought, drier than ground under similar bushes in Labrador, and the berries had a different perfume. But the pond was like a pond he knew back home called Bottomless Pond. This one was called Deadman’s Pond, he figured, because a dead man could disappear in it for a good long time. Of course Bottomless Pond at home had a bottom, and so did this pond, but it was a deep bottom. Treadway could tell how deep from the contours of the pond, from the sediments he saw between the shrub roots and the surface, and from its colour.