Eleanor looked out the window. Stan took a bite of his sandwich.
— I never had much reason to come see your dad after that night. Which is why I didn’t see you or your sister grow up.
— You want to talk about my sister, is that right?
— Yes.
— Don’t you think I’ve answered all the questions the police had for me?
— Well, the only person’s behalf I’m asking on is my own.
She nodded and said: Okay. But I want to know some things first, Stan. I want to hear your side. My dad used to say you had it out for our whole family.
— Is that what he said?
— He told me what happened with his older brothers. What do you have to say?
Stan put his hands together under the table. He thought how to weigh his response, then it came to him how they were in the wrong place for it altogether.
— It’s a nice day, Ellie. A little bit chilly but not so bad if you’re moving. Would you care to go for a walk?
At the corner of Bayview Street and Chippewa Avenue was a three-storey brown-brick. Stan and Eleanor stood across the street. He pointed to the row of windows along the second floor.
— I had a boxing clubhouse up there. The parish priest, this was Father O’Leary, signed a lease on the room. Me and him, we both thought if we could give the boys from town some better things to do it would keep them out of trouble. I was twenty-four years old and I’d just finished my own boxing career and I came back here and I got hired as a constable pretty quick. When I wasn’t being a cop, I was up there with O’Leary, who’d been a decent welterweight in the seminary. I was up there with him teaching boys from around town how to box. I don’t know how it works for girls, but I think with a boy, he pretty near can’t help it- when he’s changing from boy to man, he’s got a certain taste for breaking things. If you show him how to do it right, then it’s a good way for him and his chums to have a couple go-rounds in the ring and get all that out of them, instead of later on that same night busting chairs or bottles over each other’s heads. You see?
She looked speculative, said: Maybe. I don’t remember me or Judy ever wanting to break bottles on people’s heads.
— That’s why I don’t know how it is for girls. Anyhow, your uncle Darien was one of the best natural fighters I ever saw. Your uncle Remi was good too, but Darien was something. He was just barely a middleweight. They didn’t have a whole lot to eat out at your grandmother’s place, and your uncles never filled out right, but Darien still classed as a middleweight. He could throw these hooks like a machine gun. A lot of the other boys in the club quit sparring with him.
— I never met my uncles.
— I know you didn’t. They’ve been gone a long time. Would you walk a ways with me? I guess you’re not working at the bank today.
— No. Not today.
Stan took a last look at the windows where he’d trained local boys in the art of boxing. Then he and Eleanor walked along Chippewa in the direction of the river.
— I thought Darien had the makings of a professional fighter. He’d of been, oh, maybe seventeen at the time. Those were pretty lean years. Your uncle made a bit of a name for himself. The men on relief, they had a lot of love for a kid like Darien who came from nothing. They’d come out by the dozens, fifty of them, a hundred, to see him fight. We couldn’t fit them in the clubhouse any more. Anyway, we got going so as I was coach and trainer and Father O’Leary was the manager. We brought on my old cut-man. For a little while things were pretty good. Pretty good. Then there was this fight at the Orangemen’s Hall in Orillia.
— Orillia, said Eleanor. Yes. My dad talked about that a little bit.
— Jack Watts, said Stan. He wasn’t any kind of goddamn middleweight but he made the weigh-in for it. He had this haymaker he’d throw. I should of known better. It got to the fourth round and your uncle Darien was on the ropes and he dropped his guard. Just for a second. Watts hit him so hard he … well, that was the fight. The trouble was, your uncle got hit a lot harder than any of us knew at the time. He was never really right after that. I should of known better, Ellie. But I was thinking about winning. I guess maybe I wished it was me in the ring again.
They’d turned onto River Street and were passing Victory Appliances. On the other side of the street was the library. It was a squat building, with walls of thick limestone blocks and deeply recessed windows. A plaque describing the building’s history was fixed to the wall beside the entryway. They crossed over and Stan led them up the stone steps and through the doors. The interior of the library smelled like dusty books. A directory was mounted on a pedestal just past the front doors. Stan consulted it, squinting, tracing his finger along it. He led Eleanor down a flight of stairs. They came into a room with filing cabinets and a row of microfiche viewers. He brought them as far as a door marked STAFF ONLY.
— We used to have our offices on the other side of this door. The holding cells were just past that.
They went back up to the main floor and found a reading room behind the fiction stacks. There was a window looking out of the back of the building. A short downslope to the river. He told her how there used to be a yard enclosed by a block wall out there. At one time it had been stables and then the yard was converted to a vehicle compound for the patrol cars.
— They used that yard, said Stan.
— What do you mean?
— For your uncle.
— When he died. And you were there.
— I didn’t kill your uncles, Eleanor, I didn’t. There were some hard years. The boxing clubhouse didn’t last long after that fight in Orillia. Father O’Leary moved to a different parish and the man who replaced him didn’t have any interest in boxing. I don’t think we were two more months at it after that. The farm where your dad lived, your grandmother, your aunts, Darien, Remi, they couldn’t afford to keep it going. They were in some money trouble. There was this one night Darien and Remi got into a fight with some boys at a dance. I brought them in. They came with me easy enough because they knew me. They got locked up in the holding cells. I was on the beat that night so I went back out. What ended up happening here was some kind of dust-up. Your uncles got out, and Darien, he shot the cop who was on duty. Charlie Rayfield was his name. Darien shot him with his own pistol. I don’t know how much of this you might know.
— Some, she said. I know some of it. But this is different. Hearing it from you.
— Well, Darien shot this policeman and he and Remi walked right out the door. Pretty quick it was two boys who were in a hell of a lot more trouble than they’d thought of. It wasn’t much more than a day or so before a half-dozen Provincial cops were up here from the city. They took over from us town cops. They hired on a bunch of local boys-men I knew, friends of mine-to help them track down Darien and Remi. There was one thing that the inspector figured out. Charlie Rayfield had a little.22 pistol he wore on his ankle and he’d fired a few shots off. The Provincial inspector, he figured maybe Remi or Darien had gotten shot on the way out, and if that was the case, maybe they didn’t get so far as everybody thought.
— My dad used to say it was you.
— I know what your dad would of said. Thing was, I knew your uncles pretty well. I didn’t want it to end in more shooting, and I figured with the Provincials looking for them, that’s what would happen. So I went over to an old bootlegger’s place I knew of, where your uncles used to like to go to have a drink. And sure enough, that’s where they were. The inspector was right, Remi was shot. He was in bad shape, Ellie. He had a.22 bullet in his stomach.