Fall on Your Knees

  “I better see you in an hour.”

  “What for?”

  James bends into the open passenger window. “I hired Leo Taylor because I knew I could trust him with merchandise, and until I’m convinced about a replacement I want you personally responsible.”

  “What are you talkin about b’y? Boutros’ll do the runs.”

  “You’ll accompany him.”

  “You trust a nigger over my boy, is that it?”

  “This is business, Jameel. I expect to see you back here in an hour or not at all.” James straightens away from the window.

  Jameel sticks his head out, “Fuck you Piper, you fuckin uppity sonofabitch, did you know you’re supplying my place with Piper pussy, eh boy? And that she’s fuckin your precious spade, Leo Taylor?”

  James glances through the windshield at Boutros, who’s still staring at him. Jameel smirks. James can’t lay a hand on him with the big fella sitting there.

  “Who are you talking about, Jameel?” he asks evenly.

  “Your daughter Frances, b’y,” with a good buddy grin.

  “I don’t have a daughter by that name.”

  Man, he’s cool.

  “If I don’t see you here in an hour, Jameel, I’ll assume our deal is terminated.”

  He turns and walks calmly towards the shack.

  Jameel is enraged, head and shoulders out the window, “Everyone’s had her b’y! Everyone but you, I guess, or have you had her too?”

  Boutros floors it and Jameel’s head cracks against the outer chrome. “Shit!” Boutros gets a row of knuckles to the ear but he doesn’t seem to notice, he’s concentrating on James in the rearview mirror disappearing into the shack.

  Inside, James has his first drink in thirteen years. He’ll get this Jameel transaction over with in a few hours. Then he’ll get hold of a rifle and go over to Leo Taylor’s place for a talk.

  “Slow down, you’ll have the Mounties on us.”

  Boutros doesn’t register the order.

  “I said slow down.”

  But Boutros takes Low Point at a steady seventy. Boutros doesn’t say a word throughout the next three runs, which makes it no fun for Jameel, who can usually count on “Yeah Pa, that’s right Pa” whenever he leaves space for a breath. Jameel sulks in the car while Boutros takes the booze from Piper, who is drunker every time and likewise dead silent. That’s how an enklese gets you, thinks Jameel, with silence. Ice, they use, they’re smart but they’re not quite human. No feelings. When it comes to his son Boutros, however, Jameel doesn’t think “silent,” he thinks “dumb”.

  Boutros is calm because he has decided that tonight is the night. He’ll take money, what he’s rightfully earned, from his father’s safe, then he’ll go get Frances and they’ll drive. Wherever she wants to go. Forget the farm, forget his mother, that was the dream of a child, the grown-up knows that he has to get Frances off this island right away. There are too many men here who need to be killed, first among them her own father. What kind of a man disowns his daughter? Frances is a diamond, passed from filthy paw to paw but never diminished. The men who handle her can leave no mark because her worth is far above them. Hard, helpless, buried. You can hear it in her voice and see it in her eyes, she is waiting for a strong and fearless miner to go way down and rescue her up to the surface where she can shine for all she’s worth.

  Boutros has to get her away tonight, before something happens, he doesn’t know what. He had a terrible feeling when his father taunted Piper about having had his own daughter. Boutros knew it must be true. For Frances to do what she does right under her father’s nose, Piper must know she’s already ruined, and he knows because he ruined her. But Boutros knows that no one is that powerful to be able to ruin something God created good. That was proven by Job. The Devil can try, but he can’t triumph.

  Why did Adelaide believe Ginger when he said he was going to square things like a man with Piper? Because she was tired of not believing him. When people get tired they sometimes do things they wouldn’t normally do. Materia went for a nap with her head in the oven. That’s not in Adelaide’s line. When she gets tired, she stops tasting for truth. In a moment of fatigue she wanted everything to be all right, but wishing never made anything right. This is what happens when Adelaide stops being tough for a second.

  If Adelaide weren’t in such a hurry she would run out and lose her supper into the toilet, but there isn’t time, so she walks shaky to Beel’s Grocery on the corner. “Have you seen my man tonight, missus?” is a rhetorical question. Mrs Beel goes straight to Adelaide’s house to mind the children while Adelaide takes care of her trouble. Wilfrid Beel is there with his philosophical white hair. He offers her a drive wherever she might need to go.

  “I’ll let you know, Wilf.”

  She leaves and walks to Teresa’s house.

  Earlier that evening, Ginger had just laid Carvery in the crib when he saw a light down in the garage. He went out and opened the double doors onto the blazing headlights of his truck. He stood for a moment, temporarily blinded, and heard a soft crying.

  “Hello?” he said.

  Again the soft whimper.

  It’s coming from the cab. Ginger opens the driver’s side and sees a dark shape huddled against the opposite door. A small voice says, “Don’t tell on me.”

  His gullet leaps in fear. It’s her. Instinctively he hits the lights and they go out in slow motion.

  “I’m scared,” she says, her voice muffled behind her hands.

  “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  She says something he can’t understand, barely audible and obscured by sorrow.

  “You can’t stay here, Frances.”

  The crying starts again — quiet, rhythmically regular, drained of passion. Like a child who’s already cried itself to sleep, then reawakened and is now no longer crying to be heard, having given up on that.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Soft hiccup, the voice is drenched and exhausted, “… hurt me.”

  “What?” he says, stepping up on the running-board. She rustles away from him in frightened reflex.

  “Shshsh, shsh, I’m not going to hurt you, what’s wrong?”

  “I already got hurt.”

  “What happened?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Yes you can. But Frances, you can’t stay here, come into the house.”

  “No-o-o.” Fresh terror, fresh tears.

  “How can I help you if you won’t come inside?”

  “Take me to a safe place.”

  “Where?”

  “A place I know where he can’t get me.”

  “Who?”

  “My father.”

  “Frances. Did your father hurt you?”

  No answer. Sound of a hand wiping a wet nose.

  “What did he do?”

  She sounds more grown-up now. Brave. “I made him mad.”

  “Tell me what he did to you.”

  Her voice goes cold. “It’s my own fault” — sniff — “I’m no good, he’s right. Why should anyone care about me, why should you, I’m bad for everyone.”

  Ginger has found a match in his pocket. As he lights it, she recoils and covers her face with her hands, “No!”

  He looks at her, curled up in the corner, so fragile. He reaches out, gently pries a hand away from her face and, just before the flame dies, “Oh my Lord.” He’s shocked. Who could do such a thing?

  “Don’t look at me, I’m ugly.”

  “You’re not ugly.”

  “Yes I am, go away.”

  “You’re hurt. I’m going to help you, I’m going to get my wife.”

  “No!” she hisses.

  Her life depends on this. “No one can know. I came here tonight ’cause you’re the only one I can trust. If anyone knows, if he finds out where I am, he’ll come and kill me.” She takes a deep breath. “I can understand if you’re not willing to help me, you have enough troubles, thank you anyway.” The passenger
door clunks open in the dark.

  “Wait, wait —”

  She pauses, her feet dangling.

  “— where do you need to go?”

  “It’s about five miles out of New Waterford. No one knows about it, it’s an old mine. I’ve got food and money. If I can stay there a couple of days, he’ll think I’m already off the island. Then it’ll be safe to hitch a ride to the ferry and go.”

  “Go where?”

  “Just go.”

  He hesitates.

  “Forget it,” she says. “Sorry to bother you, Mr Taylor.”

  “I’ll take you.”

  Silence.

  “I said I’ll take you there, Frances.”

  “… God bless you.”

  “Just wait here a minute.”

  Boutros is serene behind the wheel. They’re heading back to Sydney, it’s the last run of the night, the sun’s long gone, it was a too-hot day. If Frances agrees, they’ll drive to British Columbia. He wants to grow things. Cherries. And grapes, for wine. The thought of his own orchard, and Frances free and flourishing among rows of gnarly trees in bloom, full fruit, heavy vines — he pictures stuffing their own grape leaves with rice and lamb, he loves to cook, anything that consists of something wrapped around something else. Driving is a wonderful place for dreaming.

  Boutros doesn’t enjoy violence. It’s just the job he’s always done for his father. Mostly it consists of walking into other men’s violence and turning it off for them, like groping for a switch in a dark cluttered basement. To do this he often has to hurt them. He rarely gets angry. Though he got angry last night with Taylor on the rail tracks. Boutros spared him for Mrs Taylor’s sake. She’s a hard-working woman and doesn’t deserve to be a widow. And Taylor seems to have learned his lesson and backed off.

  “Slow the Jesus down, ya moron!” Jameel’s nerves are shot.

  Up ahead comes Leo Taylor’s truck. It whizzes past them on the land side of the Shore Road. The one-second aperture of his headlights has taken a picture for Boutros which is just now coming up in black and white through the film on his eyes: Frances in the cab, looking straight at him, her face a battered mess. Taylor at the wheel, laughing at her.

  “What the fuck are you doing!” Jameel grabs the dashboard and goes slamming into the passenger door as glass collides in the back — “Shit!” — and the Kissel fishtails out of the U-turn, speeding after the truck in a wake of rye whiskey.

  “Leo Taylor’s got Frances.”

  Jameel screams, “So what the fuck what?” and begins slapping Boutros.

  Boutros puts up a hand to keep his line of vision clear, they’re gaining on the truck.

  “She’s my cousin.”

  “She’s a whore!”

  “Don’t talk about her like that.”

  Jameel starts laughing. Boutros trembles.

  “You sweet on her, b’y? Eh? You sweet on the whore? You smelt her? Ha ha.”

  Boutros blinks hard.

  “You gonna cry now, crybaby?” Boutros does have tears in his eyes. “Eh little sissy-boy, sooky-baby, eh, little mama’s boy gonna cry now, eh? Go ahead, go on —”

  The windshield explodes with Jameel’s head, shattering Boutros’s view of the road. He sticks his face out the window just in time to swerve out of the way of an oncoming carload of nuns. His hand is still around the back of his father’s neck as the Kissel hurtles off the road, over the ruts and along the cliff at eighty till the terrain changes abruptly to silent air. Jameel is dead before they hit the rocks below.

  The nuns turn around and drive back, dropping off three of their number to investigate while the other three drive back to New Waterford to get an ambulance. By the time the rugger-playing one picks her way down to the water’s edge, there is only one man, his neck all but severed. The other man is found the next day. The engineer didn’t quite manage to stop the coal-train in time, but the big man lying on the tracks was already dead.

  “I’ll just talk to Piper and turn right round and come home,” Ginger had told Adelaide just after nine.

  “I love you….”

  It gave him a twinge when she said his private name, but he wasn’t lying for his own sake, and this time there was a reason — to protect that poor beat-up girl waiting for him in the truck. In a couple of days she’d be gone right off this rock, and that gave him a light feeling even as he told the lie.

  It’s a cloudy night but Ginger gets a good look at Frances as they pass the fires of the steel plant. There’s blood crusting her nose and filling the gully that meets her upper lip. The lip is split and fat on the left side. Her left eye is likewise puffy and blacked. That Piper is more than just a negligent father. This explains everything.

  “What happened to you?” she asks, and for a second he isn’t sure what she means because he’s been concentrating on her injuries.

  “Last night,” he says, “fella got me.” He feels himself blushing. “I was following you home, along the tracks. I wanted to ask you something.”

  “What?”

  “Well I know the answer now, I was just going to ask you why you kept coming around me.”

  “Because you’re the only good man I know.”

  Ginger feels ashamed. Sydney is behind them now. He picks up speed on the Shore Road.

  “I’m sorry I ignored you at the picture-house,” she says. “It’s better for Lily’s sake if she doesn’t know anything.”

  “That’s your little sister?”

  He turns. There’s just enough dark to swallow her wounds and light her eyes. She gives him a calm, knowing look. It’s like an invitation to rest — it says, don’t try any more, stop fighting, I know. I understand something that’s so deep you think it’s behind you. But it isn’t. It’s inside you. Let me touch it.

  “Lily,” he says. “That’s a pretty name.” He sounds foolish to himself. Something has hit his stomach like a fiery drink and it’s spreading out through his limbs. He shakes it off. “You and me make a fine team, eh?” he chuckles.

  “What do you mean?”

  Her voice is so grown-up he feels callow but he presses on. “I mean the two of us with our wracked-up faces, what a sight.” He turns to her and laughs, and she smiles slightly, as he’s glad to see by the light of an oncoming car. Frances keeps one eye on the road as the headlights of the Kissel slice by the truck.

  “Can this thing go any faster?” she wants to know.

  At Teresa’s house, Hector rocks quietly by the kitchen stove and follows the conversation with his eyes. Adelaide is sick with worry.

  “I have to go out there, Teresa, she’s got him, oh my God,” she leans over and holds her stomach.

  “Settle down now, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do, Addy. First we’re going to find out if she’s home, ’cause if she is there’s nothing to be worried about — we’ll get Wilf Beel to drive us out and, okay, here’s what we’re going to do, listen now: I’ll go up to the door and say old Mahmoud is dying and wants to see his granddaughters at the last minute, and if Piper says forget it, I let him know there could be money in the will, you know? And then I say Mahmoud also says for them all to come or none, so we’ll know if Frances isn’t there — what’re you doing, girl, sit down.”

  “Where’s Hector’s gun?”

  “What do you want with it?”

  “Don’t ask foolish questions and shutup with your foolish ideas.”

  Hector stares wide-eyed at Adelaide and points a finger at the top cupboard. Adelaide climbs onto the kitchen counter and Teresa seizes her ’round the knees.

  “I’m warning you, Trese.”

  “Addy, come on now —”

  Woomph, a back-foot to the stomach. “I’m sorry, dear.” Adelaide fishes the rifle from on top of the cabinet. “Thank you, Hector.”

  “That thing doesn’t even work any more,” says Teresa, still on the floor.

  Adelaide fires it into the ceiling, Teresa screams.

  “It works.” Adelaide hops down from
the counter, calm the way people are when they’ve gone over the edge.

  Teresa talks fast. “All right, Addy, we’ll get Wilf and we’ll drive till we find them, no point going out to their house, you’re right, she’s not there, she’s with him, so let’s calm down and go get a ride.”

  By the time the Jameels left with their last load, James was stone-cold drunk. He climbed into his immaculate 1932 close-coupled Buick sedan and started it up. It’s a tan colour. Gangsters have black cars. He drove at a moderate speed back to New Waterford. He had decided not to bother finding a rifle. The best close-up killing is done with a bayonet. A rifle is really just an appendage, useful if the blade gets stuck in the ribs and you have to shoot free. But once you’ve been around for a while you know how to avoid making noise. Under and up.

  “Stop.”

  Pine branches bend and squeak against Ginger’s truck. This isn’t even a road. He cuts the engine.

  “We have to walk from here,” Frances says. “Take my hand.”

  He does. It’s necessary, after all she knows the way, he doesn’t and it’s such a dark night. Such a slim soft hand.

  Mercedes is dusting the piano. She has taken all the figurines and doilies off it and she is about to apply the lemon oil when Daddy comes in, “Give me the keys to the hope chest, Mercedes.”

  He reeks of liquor. Mercedes is scared.

  “What’s wrong, Daddy?” But she knows enough to have the keys in her outstretched hand while asking.

  “Don’t worry, my dear, I won’t be long.”

  He takes the stairs two at a time without hurrying. Mercedes screws the lid back on the lemon oil, wipes her hands and follows him up two flights to the attic. He’s on his knees with the contents of the hope chest scattered over the floor.

  “What happened to The Old-Fashioned Girl?” he asks gently, holding it in his hand.

  “I knocked her over while dusting, Daddy, I didn’t want to hurt you by saying so.”

  “I’ll get you a new doll, Mercedes.” He goes back to rummaging. “I’m sorry about this mess.”

  Trixie hops down from the window ledge and hugs the wall on her way out. Mercedes feels icy cold. He sounds so strange, just two inches off to the side of his normal self, how does it add up with how drunk he must be? The smell reminds her of how sick she always feels even when she’s feeling fine.