Caught Page 10

  Slaney said he didn’t know either. He said he was buying a present for a little girl, a six-year-old.

  The best doll you got, he said.

  Did you think of a fire truck? the clerk asked.

  It’s a little girl, Slaney said.

  Or a Hot Wheels set?

  Slaney said he had his heart set on a doll.

  We have a fire truck you press a button the lights come on and sirens blare out all over the house.

  I never thought fire truck, Slaney said.

  How about a chemistry set? She could look at her own saliva on a little glass slide under the microscope. See all the things swimming around in her spit.

  I just thought a doll, Slaney said. That’s what I had pictured.

  All right, then, the clerk said. Fine. You want to get her a doll, that’s your business. Get her a doll.

  Slaney followed the clerk down the aisle. They turned the corner together and there was a giant display of identical dolls running the length of the back wall of the department store. There must have been hundreds of them. Each doll was in a pink box with a cellophane window and a big pink bow over the outside.

  Her name is Saucy Suzy, the clerk said. She got five or six things she says. You pull a string on the back of her neck.

  What does she talk about? Slaney asked.

  She has lots of interests, the salesclerk said. She counted the phrases off on her fingers.

  Let’s see, she says, Take me with you, and Let’s play house, Change my dress, and Let’s bake cookies. She says, Tell me a story, and Let’s do acid and fuck like bunnies.

  She’s pretty provocative, Slaney said. The doll’s hands stood out a little from her pleated skirt. The first two fingers on both hands were stuck together, but the other two fingers and the thumb fanned away from the rest. The hands gave the impression that the doll had suffered an electric shock.

  Can I see her in action? Slaney said. The girl reached up and her bangles fell down her arms and she took the display doll down off a shelf and set her on the floor.

  She pressed a button in the back of the doll, under her curls, and the eyes flicked open. The doll stared forward with bleak astonishment. There was a whirring and ticking of small parts. The doll tilted dangerously to one side. Her shocked fingers seemed to tremble. Each sausage curl quivered and she lifted her left foot. The step was part shove, part scuff. The foot dropped down and the doll tottered and the momentum lifted the other foot.

  Jennifer had been in the courtroom four years ago and she kept her eyes on Slaney for most of the trial and she watched him shuffle away in chains. She hadn’t known about the trip to Colombia until they were caught.

  Slaney had gone through the door of the courtroom to the paddy wagon in shackles. His wrists were cuffed and a chain ran through the cuffs to the heavy bands around his ankles.

  It had required a new shuffle to leave the court. It was a dance that had to be learned on the spot. That dance is a depravity they foist on you.

  The salesclerk tossed the doll up onto her shoulder and walked Slaney to the cash register with it. She rang in his purchase and took his money and slammed the register drawer shut with her hip.

  Jennifer, Juniper

  Before the first trip, they’d had their big goodbye on the sidewalk outside Jennifer’s Gower Street apartment, the Jamaican flag hanging in the upstairs window, sopping K-Mart flyers hanging out the mailbox, her tears wet on his neck while she held him.

  Jennifer had thought Alberta, not Colombia. Slaney had said he was going to Alberta for work and as soon as he landed a job he’d send for her and Crystal. He’d have a nice house set up for them and he’d buy them everything they’d ever wanted, all the furniture and clothes and toys they could imagine. Jennifer wouldn’t have to worry about money anymore.

  Slaney had bent down by the stroller and pulled out Crystal’s pacifier and kissed her and stuck it back in before she had a chance to scream for it. And Jennifer stood there on the sidewalk, one hand on the stroller, pulling it back and forth, waving with the other. She kept waving until the car had disappeared around the corner.

  He’d loved to watch her eat cereal in the morning. A drop of milk clinging to the bottom of her spoon. Reading a paperback. The book in one hand and a film of milk coating the convex side of spoon, forming a single trembling drop, clinging and letting go, falling into the bowl. Plink. Turning a page. Or she’d put the book on the table and press the heel of her hand over the centre, trying to get it to stay open.

  Crystal slept in his old army jacket, the silver stripes on the sleeves that glowed in the dark. Slaney smoothing the little girl’s damp golden curls off her forehead while she slept.

  Touching his nose to the child’s soft neck and the smell of her. Dried breast milk, slightly soured and sweet, like cotton candy, and the clean Velour sleepers with the feet in them.

  He’d sung the Donovan song to Jennifer, after they made love: Jennifer, Juniper. Whispering a bit of the song into her hair.

  They’d go to Topsail Beach on his motorcycle, the child between them, riding under the trees near the railway bed, everything splotches of sun and shadow.

  The noise Jennifer made in bed. She didn’t care who heard, or she didn’t know how loud she was.

  She often said thank you after sex. She thanked him. He couldn’t get used to that. He would say thank you right back. She always called out to God in the middle of it. She told Slaney she loved him over and over when they were fucking and he forgot to say it back. Sometimes she would sulk afterwards and it would take him a while to figure out what was wrong, then he’d say he loved her and she’d wrap her arms around his neck, nearly choking him.

  Slaney had grown up with her. But she became new to him when she was sixteen.

  He’d started seeing her around downtown and it confused him. The look she gave him when he came into Lar’s Fruit Store that day in August after her baby was born.

  Slaney had known Jennifer Baker since kindergarten. There were vast swathes of time when he hadn’t thought of her at all.

  But there were also the bright burning stars of her: she had played basketball (weaving through the thrash of girls, all elbows and knees, down the court, the sneakers squeaking to a halt, everyone turning at once, thundering down the court after her, and her leap, one knee up, arm raised over her head, the ball balanced on her fingertips, suspended in the air for a long, still moment, before tipping the ball through the hoop). She’d come to his door one Halloween and how earnest in her homemade Wonder Woman costume, a bodice of tinfoil and construction paper, matching wrist cuffs, a lasso spray-painted gold.

  They’d both placed in the grade eight public speaking contest, he for the boys’ school and she for the girls’. He’d argued that there was life on Mars and had the place in an uproar of laughter; she said it was wrong to dissect frogs and won without a single joke.

  Neighbourhood baseball, and street hockey, water balloon fights, spotlight, spin the bottle, smoking pot behind Woolworth’s and her uniform at the new A&W.

  But she was like a stranger that day in August at Lar’s Fruit Store. She had asked for a custard cone and she was blushing and she’d stumbled over her words. The first time he’d seen her since she’d had the baby. The ice cream had been soft and toppled off the cone even as she raised it to her mouth. She stood there holding the empty cone out with the ice cream on the floor at her feet.

  Now my hand is all sticky, she said.

  It’s the heat, Slaney said. The woman behind the counter said she was going to get Jennifer another ice cream.

  You just hold on there, the woman said. I can fix this situation. She wet a dishrag and handed it over the counter to Slaney, who got down on the floor and tried to scoop up the mess. The woman said the weather was making everything melt. She said she was run off her feet.

  Slaney said that if
it were raining they’d be complaining about that. And the woman said he was right. If it wasn’t one thing it was another. And she turned around with a new cone held up like a beacon.

  Slaney had no idea what could have happened to Jennifer over the last couple of months. She seemed so changed. When he tried to imagine her giving birth he only saw white enamel bowls of blood-soaked towels, a nursery with row upon row of babies.

  There you go, my love, the woman said. You enjoy that ice cream.

  Thank you, Jennifer said. You didn’t have to do that. Slaney handed the woman back the sopping dishrag.

  I’ll tell you what, the woman said. There won’t be too many days like this. Mark my words.

  Tomorrow is supposed to be beautiful too, Slaney said. He had looked straight into Jennifer’s eyes when he said it.

  We’ll pay for it later, the woman said.

  It’s dripping, Slaney said. And Jennifer’s tongue licked up the drip and she told Slaney to have some and she held out the cone and he put his hand over her hand to steady it and he licked it up the side.

  She’d had a baby with somebody and she wasn’t saying the father. After a while nobody would bring up who’s the father. At least not in her presence. Even Slaney knew better than to ask.

  I guess I’ll see you around, David, Jennifer said. She said it like she was going somewhere but she just stood there in the middle of Lar’s like she didn’t know where she was going.

  That was the summer they had all the beautiful weather. She was on welfare and set up in public housing on the west end of Gower Street and he slept over every night but left through the back door because they had to watch out for the welfare cops.

  She was still breast-feeding when Crystal was two and her breasts would squirt little threads of milk all over him when they made love. Oh God. God. God. God. God.

  Now she was married to somebody else.

  Don’t Call

  Did you order a sundae in a snack bar back in New Brunswick? Hearn asked. The phone had rung near Slaney’s head and he’d slapped around on the bedside table and knocked the receiver to the floor and pulled it up by the cord and said hello.

  Somebody phoned the cops, Hearn said. It was in the papers. “Eyewitness Identifies Escaped Prisoner at Local Snack Bar.”

  I was with a girl, Slaney said.

  You were identified.

  Slaney hauled himself out of bed to the window. Across the street at ground level a man was dressing a window with silver stars and mannequins in diaphanous evening gowns.

  Every time the window dresser adjusted the fold of a gown or a dummy’s arm he stood back with his hands on his hips, taking in the effect.

  Slaney’s room was empty but for the sink with rust stains flaring up from the drain and the red wool blanket over the bare striped mattress. There was a closet with a lone wire hanger and the doll Slaney had purchased the day before stood in her pink box on the only wooden chair. One drowsy eyelid had fallen down.

  You don’t use your own name, Hearn said.

  A girl picked me up hitchhiking. I went back to her place. What was it, three days ago.

  We got to get you out of there, Hearn said. They’re on you, man. Somebody saw you. Called it in. So there’s been an adjustment to the plan. I’m going to tell you the plan and then I don’t want to hear from you.

  You’re hurting my feelings, man.

  Hearn said, Do me a favour.

  I won’t call you, Slaney said.

  Don’t call me.

  I won’t, Slaney said.

  You are underestimating, Hearn said. How much they want to get us. Don’t call. Don’t use your name.

  I won’t.

  You have to get a new name.

  I’m on it.

  They want to set an example.

  I won’t even think about you.

  You think I’m kidding? I’m telling you.

  I was ordering fish and chips from a snack bar, Slaney said. I gave the woman my name and she called it out all over the parking lot. I was with a girl.

  Why would you say your name?

  I said Dave is what I said, Slaney told him. There are a lot of Daves. Plenty of Daves.

  Somebody put two and two.

  I’ll lie low, Slaney said.

  Keep a low profile.

  How are you?

  How the hell are you, man?

  I’m on my way.

  You have to see the man, Hearn said. Lefevre is ready to see you.

  Go there tonight, Hearn said. Around nine o’clock. And in the meantime.

  I’ll stay out of the limelight, Slaney said.

  You go see Lefevre and he’ll give you the backing. Then you get the hell out of Montreal. We got a cabin set up for you outside of town. You wait for a passport.

  That’s at least five, six weeks for a passport, Slaney said.

  A place called Mansonville.

  Five weeks?

  You wait for the passport. You go to this cabin, Slane, and you stay in it. You’ve been spotted now, we need to be careful. You don’t want to lead them here. You lie low, don’t go out except to get supplies.

  Five weeks, what? Practising tai chi? Jesus, Hearn.

  The boat leaves from here, takes six weeks, more or less, to get to Mexico. There’s a crew hired to sail her down with the owner. Beaver Noseworthy is going to sail her down, a few other guys. They’ll fly home from Mexico.

  They’re looking for you in airports in the east now, Slaney. You get the passport, then you get the train out here. Five, six weeks, things have cooled down in the airports. We fly you to Mexico from here, you meet up with the boat, head on to Colombia, just you and the captain. You got to get the new passport.

  There had been a lesson in New Brunswick, Slaney thought, and it was that he had no name. He had left his name behind or he had passed through it.

  You got it, Slane?

  I got it.

  Did you get any? Hearn said.

  Pardon me? Slaney said.

  The girl, the girl. At the snack bar with the sundae. Were you getting some?

  I’ll be seeing you, Hearn.

  What did she look like?

  Hearn, I’m not going to indulge.

  Tits?

  I’m hearing about feminism, Slaney said.

  Don’t mind that, Hearn said.

  Some of them aren’t shaving their underarms, Slaney said. They aren’t shaving their legs.

  But they have their own rubbers, Hearn said. They’re sleeping with whomsoever they please.

  I’m going to have to get a handle on it, Slaney said.

  I Got Your Number

  A young man stood in a display window with a giant silver star held out before him. Mannequins crowded around him, glancing in different directions; one had an arm raised, as if to flag a taxi.

  They’d put the tap on the phone in Slaney’s bedsit the day he arrived and they were waiting for Hearn to call. Once they’d located Hearn, Patterson would fly out to the coast and infiltrate the operation. He’d offer financing, get to know Hearn.

  He turned on the car to give the wipers a flick. The rain hit the roof and the wind wrinkled the thick coat of water sluicing over the glass. Patterson gave the wipers a single sweep and the slurring world was put straight. He had hoped there’d be time to visit his brother on the way across the country. He wanted to sit with him in the sunny visitors’ lounge, or to walk in the gardens holding his hand.

  Patterson had met his brother for the first time when they were both eight. A second family had shown up for Patterson’s father’s funeral, more than three decades ago, in the small town of Portage la Prairie.

  They’d come to the service, a boy and his mother, by bus and then cab and they arrived late. The door of the church screeching open in the middle o
f the ceremony, the sound of the rain coming in with them. They’d taken seats in the last pew, causing everyone to crane their necks around when the boy yelled out, an ungovernable, eerie noise like weather, followed by a hard slap on the wrist that interrupted the priest’s homily. Everyone reached for the hymn books.

  The church had filled with the rustling of pages so thin the print of both sides showed through them. The organ sent out a phlegmatic, vibrating wheeze. People began to sing, and above all the voices there was a new soprano.

  A voice chilly and transparent, full of unapologetic power, precise in pitch.

  Patterson’s mother had known nothing about the woman, whose name was Clarice Connors, and who worked as a charwoman. She was fifteen years younger than Patterson’s mother and she looked fast and drawn in a worn, wet coat with a fur collar, a hat with black netting over the brim.

  What Patterson remembered most of Miss Connors on that day was the red, red lipstick, wet and dark. The lipstick set the woman apart from his mother in every way.

  Patterson’s mother was earnest and finicky. She took offence easily and without outward sign. Her judgements were arrived at instantly, and once conceived, rarely altered.

  Patterson had grown up in a house that was helplessly clean, where good taste was expressed in a showy lack of ornamentation. The silence in a room was guarded with a vigilance that caused them to cringe when their cutlery scraped the china. The rustle of a log burning in the wood stove made do for conversation.

  The lipstick, Patterson knew, even at the age of eight, was fantastic. It meant that Clarice Connors did not care what other people thought of her.

  He became aware that day, watching his mother under the trees with his father’s mistress, that people were motivated by two distinct and opposing forces. There was the desire for truth and there was the need to conceal it. Of course he couldn’t have put it into words when he was eight. But he came to know that if a truth were lying out in the open for anyone to trip over, there must be something at stake.

  Alphonse was Clarice Connors’s only child, and he was Patterson’s age, almost to the day. The boy looked just like him except that everything soft in his half-brother was hard in Patterson.