He’d found a place in town. A small townhouse on the end of a row. It backed onto a long grove of trees on the edge of the golf course. He could take the dog walking. He could leave the house on Echo Point for what it was, timber and stone and nothing more. He thought he could.
He also thought about the affairs over the last several months, but he did not dwell on them as much as he had expected he would. Frank had congratulated and thanked him in a civic ceremony, but had almost nothing to say about it in private. They had, however, gone fishing a few times-just the two of them, and at Frank’s invitation-after trout season opened in April. Dick Shannon, who’d also been part of the civic commendation, had put in his retirement paperwork a week later.
The incident itself-the robbery at the National Trust and the bloodshed that had followed-wasn’t something that could be put to rest simply by awarding civic commendations, or by telling and retelling it in newspapers and on the national news. The incident defied categorization. Sometimes what came back to Stan was sitting at the roadhouse with the man who’d called himself Colin Gilmore, Gilmore leaning back against the bar, saying, You think up some more questions if you want, before he got up and disappeared. The truth was, Stan hadn’t known what to ask the man then, or what to say to him. He didn’t know any better now.
And Leland King, who’d survived, had nothing to say. Nothing by way of explanation, nothing in his own defence. Maybe Lee thought the world had finished listening to him a long time ago. He was probably right.
Lastly, there was the question of Judy Lacroix, whether she had or hadn’t taken her own life. Nobody would ever know, and nobody could ever make it right. But it didn’t trouble Stan as much as it had in the fall, even though he still thought about her. And he still thought, every day, about her uncle Darien, turning at the bottom of the hangman’s rope. He knew that Darien Lacroix would be his to think about, no matter what, for as long as he had thoughts in his head.
But he’d done what he could, and that had to stand for something, in his own heart if nowhere else. He’d even had supper on two occasions with Eleanor Lacroix and Tommy Spencer. Eleanor was pregnant.
The breeze stirred and moved the hyacinth blossoms and turned the water that had run from his eyes down the seams of his face cold. He lifted a hand and rubbed back the tears and he told Edna so long for this week.
He walked back down the gravelled footpath to where his truck was parked in the lane and as he came close to it, Cassius sat up in the bed and looked at him. He opened the door and got in and turned on the truck. He was about to put it into gear but he didn’t. He got out again. He went around to the tailgate and lowered it and told the dog to get down. The dog hopped down and stretched and then looked at him.
Stan closed the tailgate and walked up to the passenger door and opened it.
— Get in.
The dog looked at him.
— Get in, you stubborn bastard.
The dog whined once and then sat back.
— Look. I can’t lift you any more.
It took some coaxing and patting the seat before Cassius stood back up and reared and jumped and scrabbled his way into the cab. He got up onto the seat and turned around and looked at Stan for further guidance, unaccustomed as he was to the front of the truck, but Stan only closed the door and came around and got back in the driver side and closed his own door. Then he put the truck into gear and carried on with his afternoon.
To look at the sky above the cemetery, you might think it had never been any different.
FIVEJUNE 1981
It was the slow onset of a summer evening when he watched the announcement on the evening news. He was sitting in a restaurant at the Pine Tree Motor Inn in Marten River. This, the first evening of his journey. He was eating a hamburger and french fries. The news came on the black-and-white television behind the counter and the newsman first said good evening and then he said Terry Fox had died that day in the early morning hours. The woman behind the counter did not stop what she was doing, cleaning silverware with a vinegar-soaked cloth. On the television a nurse at a B.C. hospital gave a statement. Then a doctor spoke and then they returned to the newsman and to other affairs. The woman behind the counter went to rub a spot off a glass cakebell.
Later that night, Pete lay in the back of his car listening to rain drum on the roof. He’d parked at the edge of a farm field and it was very dark outside, but for a purple stutter of lightning. He found he was listening for some sound or sign of something. Maybe for the radio to come on spontaneously.
Many nights, now, he lay awake. He’d very nearly suffocated, between the broken nose and the tape over his mouth. The back of his throat had filled with blood. Sometimes he had nightmares: the sledgehammer falling above him. The nightmares came and went and he woke gagging for breath and clawing at whatever part of the sheet had fallen over his face.
But this night on the farm field outside Marten River was different. He was not disturbed at all. He just was. And maybe he was awake to consider that.
The girl said her name was Veda and she was a few years older than he was. Whatever she was travelling with was packed into a nylon World Famous knapsack with leather straps. When he first saw her, he thought she was good-looking. When he saw her close up, he saw how her fingernails were chewed down and ragged. Her legs were long and brown. She was wearing tennis shoes.
He met her in a laundromat in New Liskeard. The radiator in his car had cracked earlier. It could be repaired that day but it was going to take a few hours. He was anguished at the hole the repair made in his wallet. Then he gathered some clothes to wash. It seemed premature to be doing laundry this early into the trip. He’d only set off from home at noon yesterday.
He saw her when he came in, loading clothes into a washing machine. Then she went out of the laundromat without looking at him. Half an hour later she came back. She was carrying a big soft drink cup. The only other person in the laundromat was an old woman dozing by the front window. He’d caught a slight reek of cooking wine when he walked past her.
The girl set down her soft drink and took her clothes out of the washer and loaded them into a dryer. Then she was looking at him. He looked back down at his book. When she’d loaded the dryer she moseyed over his way, chewing on the straw in her soft drink cup. She came with casual boldness, as if they’d been familiar all along.
— It’s fucking hot outside.
— I know it, said Pete.
— Listen, can you tell me where the bus station is?
— I don’t know. I’m not from here.
— Well, isn’t that my luck.
She dragged over a plastic chair and sank down into it. She did so as if suddenly exhausted, as if she’d just climbed a hill. She sat with one leg over the armrest. Hesitantly, Pete introduced himself.
— Hi, Pete. I’m Veda.
— Veda …
— You say it like you never heard it before.
— I don’t know if I have.
— Well, my dad was a hometown kind of a guy. But my mom, she’s a woman of the world. It’s the kind of thing she knows about.
— Veda. Okay.
He liked the way her name sounded.
They made conversation for thirty minutes, waiting on their clothes and then lingering after their clothes were finished drying. She spoke a little about university in Montreal. He could tell she was making tracks from something, but what this was, he couldn’t put together yet. She’d apparently arrived in New Liskeard yesterday afternoon, when he was still on the road to Marten River. He had the sense she was out of money.