Broken Man on a Halifax Pier Read online

  “I thought that was you,” he said. “Want a ride?”

  “Yes, please,” I said.

  I got in and took a deep breath. The back seat was filled with weight-lifting equipment. “I just got off my shift,” he said. “Thank God that was over. Hey, thanks for helping me back there. I really appreciate it.”

  “No problem,” I said. “Thanks for stopping.”

  “Weren’t you with a woman?”

  “Was.”

  “Oh.” He decided not to ask anything further about her. He looked over at me for a quick second and then back at the windshield. “Hey, you won’t tell anyone what happened back there?”

  “Not a soul,” I said.

  “Thanks. It was just those eyes. The deer was looking straight at me. I couldn’t do it.”

  “I understand.”

  “Made me think maybe I’d chosen the wrong line of work.”

  “Yours is a tough job. You must see all kinds of shit.”

  “Sometimes. Mostly family troubles. Husbands and wives arguing. Kids vandalizing things. Drunk drivers, of course. Lots of drunk drivers.”

  “Guess you don’t usually have to shoot many of them.” Maybe that came out a little too sarcastic.

  “Oh, I could shoot a criminal if I had to. Stop him dead in his tracks. That would be different.”

  Again I was struck by how young this guy was. But then all kinds of people in authority seemed young to me these days. “How old are you? Twenty-two?”

  “Twenty-six,” he said. “But I look young for my age.”

  “I did once too,” I said. “That’ll change. Where you from?”

  Like many Nova Scotians, I often asked people where they were from. We want to be able to label people based on who their family is or where they grew up.

  “Liscomb,” he said. That wasn’t far from Stewart Harbour.

  “Yeah, I’m from down that way myself.”

  “I’m Tom, by the way. What’s your name?”

  “Charles. Charles Howard.”

  He scratched his youthful jaw and scrunched up his forehead. “You related to Desmond Howard?”

  “That would be my father,” I said.

  “Really, the guy that tore down his own house?”

  “That’s him.”

  “What ever became of him, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “He died,” I said.

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “It’s been a while.”

  “They say you never really get over the death of a parent.”

  “You don’t. I’ve lost both.”

  “Sorry again.”

  There wasn’t much traffic as we were headed down a long open hill. Coming our way was a car. A black car. At first I thought it was an illusion, my feeble mind playing tricks, but as it got closer, I was pretty sure it was a black Lexus. I knew there could be more than one black Lexus on the road but you didn’t see a lot of them. Tom looked over at me as I leaned forward and peered out the front window. “Holy fuck,” I must have said out loud.

  “What is it?”

  I turned my head as the car shot past us. It was her. Ramona was driving back.

  “Tom,” I suddenly shouted. “We gotta turn around.”

  Tom looked rattled. He was realizing he had picked up a crazy man, a crazy man he had once loaned his revolver to. “Just turn around, please!” I blurted out.

  Tom hit the brakes, pulled into a driveway, backed out and in a second we were back headed east. “Why are we doing this?” he asked.

  “The woman,” I said. “That was her. I think she was coming back for me.”

  “And that’s good, right?” he asked, now sounding more like a little boy than ever.

  “That’s damn good,” I said. “Damn good.”

  Tom smiled then. A weird, crooked, what-the-fuck-is-going-on kind of smile, as he tromped on the gas.

  The Lexus was stopped on the side of the road where the deer had been shot. Ramona was standing there looking at the bloodstain on the pavement. Tom pulled up behind. I opened the door.

  “You want me to wait?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “Thanks, brother. Thanks.”

  He held out his hand for me to shake. “Good luck,” he said, smiling. And he pressed a business card into my other hand. “Let me know if I can ever return the favour.”

  I took his card and shoved it in my pants pocket.

  I think he would have liked to stick around for the rest of the story, but, instead, he dutifully began to turn his car around again and head west.

  Ramona studied me as I walked toward her. I didn’t have a clue what I should say. So I didn’t say anything at all. As I got closer, she reached out and touched my face and kept her hand there, warm and soft on my cheekbone. I must have closed my eyes, afraid to move. When I opened them, I discovered she was about to kiss me. There was nothing for me to do but let it happen.

  5

  I have to admit it wasn’t exactly like a lover’s kiss, more like that of a mother after her little boy had fallen off his bike and scraped his knee. But it was a kiss, nonetheless.

  “I’m sorry I drove off,” Ramona said.

  “I’m glad you came back.”

  “Why? Why did you take the gun and shoot?”

  “I don’t know. It’s what my father would have wanted me to do. Put the poor thing out of its pain.”

  “Did you always do what you thought your father wanted you to do?”

  “Hardly ever. But look, I’m truly sorry I scared you like that.”

  “Promise not to touch any more firearms for the rest of the day?”

  “Yeah, I promise.”

  “Good. Shall we resume the pilgrimage?”

  “Please.”

  She handed me the keys again. We were back on track. At least I was hoping so. We drove along in silence for several miles, passing an abandoned bowling alley, a closed Chinese restaurant, a junkyard, and mile after mile of spindly spruce forest. It wasn’t exactly the scenic route.

  “Funny, I’ve lived in Nova Scotia most of my life but I’ve never been down this way.”

  “That’s the Eastern Shore, for ya. Not much reason for most folks to trek down here. But wait until we get to the Harbour. I think you’ll like it. It’s another world.”

  “I like the sound of that.”

  “Hey,” I said, feeling suddenly a tad more bold, trying to regain some of the confidence I imagined that I’d once possessed. “How come you kissed me back there?”

  “You looked like you needed kissing. Besides, I didn’t know what to say to you just then.”

  “Actions speak louder than words. It was a good choice. You do a lot of kissing as an actress?”

  “Some. It’s harder than you think to fake a good kiss.”

  “I never really thought about it. But I guess you’re right. Kiss anybody famous?”

  “Tom Hanks.”

  “Bullshit. Really?”

  “I had a small part. It was one scene in a bar. I’m not particularly proud of it.”

  “Still, not everyone can say they kissed Tom Hanks. Did you spend any time with him?”

  “No, Tom Hanks wasn’t one of my boyfriends. I’m not sure he even knew who I was. Just another dumb girl with a small role in a film.”

  “Okay, so what about the real men in your life? How many serious relationships have you had?” I was pushing things, I knew, but I was curious.

  She looked away from me just then, out the window of the car at the scrubby forest. “Diving into the deep end of the pool, are you?”

  “How deep is it?”

  “Well, let’s just say, I’ve had a lot of lovers. Not sure exactly how to divvy them up into serious and not-so-serious.”

  “Give it a try.”

  I thought she wasn’t going to answer but then I saw her counting on her fingers. I almost laughed out loud.

  “Nine,” she finally said. “Maybe ten.”

  “That’s a lot of men.” />
  “They weren’t all men.”

  I guess my own sudden silence freaked her out a bit.

  “Well, only one wasn’t. I was in L.A. I had just broken up with a creep. Selina was my friend at first and then she wanted to get serious. I said, why not?”

  “And how did that go?”

  “It wasn’t the best and it wasn’t the worst. We were almost like college roommates, but we were, um, intimate.”

  “I can understand why women are more fun to be around than men. Men have such limited interests and all they do is drink beer and watch sports on TV.”

  “Do you do that?”

  “Never. I was just trying to say something in defence of you trying out alternate relationships.”

  “Alternate relationships? That’s a nice polite phrase. You want to know what was the best thing about having a girl for a girlfriend?”

  “Should I be afraid to ask?”

  She slapped my arm in a playful way. “Shopping, silly. We had great fun shopping.”

  “And I thought men were shallow.”

  “I broke it off with Selina when I found out she was fooling around with another woman, an accountant from Laguna Beach.”

  “So that leaves you with eight or nine others to tell me about.”

  “I’m not even sure I remember all their names. I know that sounds awful.”

  “Maybe just give me the Coles Notes version as best you can.”

  “Well, for starters, I was always the one to break the relationships off. Sometimes I started them; sometimes it was the other way around. But I always ended them.”

  “I’m sure there was always a reason. Like with Selina, for example. You can’t stay with someone bonking an accountant from Laguna Beach.”

  “Bonking?”

  “Or whatever. But why do you think it’s you who always ends things?”

  “The truth is, I think I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not capable of a long-term relationship. In my own defence, I’d like to say it’s more like serial monogamy.”

  “That sounds like something you eat at breakfast.”

  “Fuck off.”

  We were driving through Sheet Harbour now. I was pretty sure we needed coffee so I pulled into a Tim Hortons. “I’ll get us something to drink,” I said.

  “Isn’t it a little early?”

  “I meant coffee.”

  “Oh. Sure. Latte light with soy milk.”

  “You fuck off now. This is Tims. Double double or what?”

  “Black. Just black.”

  “Coming up.”

  She seemed to be content to sit in the car while I got the coffee because she pulled down the visor and studied her beautiful face in the mirror, traced a finger across her lips, the lips that had kissed me. Walking into Tim Hortons, I felt buoyant, I felt grand, I felt better than I’d felt in a dog’s age. The feeling was so alien that it was almost like an out-of-body experience.

  When I went to pay for the coffees, I was suddenly reminded that I was broke. I pulled out the change I had and, strangely enough, I had enough to pay for the two coffees. What was left of my cash, and there wasn’t much more than a couple of dimes and nickels, I left as a tip.

  People in the place were watching me as I laughed out loud at my poverty and walked my coffees out the door. They kept looking as I got into the expensive car and sat down beside Ramona. I think it was at that moment that I finally returned to my own body, realized this was real, and not a dream or a movie. I was sitting beside a beautiful woman in a black car outside the Tim Hortons in Sheet Harbour without a penny to my name. And I felt like the happiest man alive.

  6

  We sipped our coffee and drove on. “You realize I just spent my last cent on you. My last red cent as they used to say. I could barely cover the tab.”

  “I forgot. You’re broke. But it couldn’t have been your last cent. We don’t have pennies anymore here in Canada, remember?”

  “Well, my last nickel.”

  “But you’re smiling.”

  “You noticed.”

  “What was that line from the opening of the Henry Miller novel?”

  “Henry Miller? The sex fiend? I could quote you Hemingway maybe but not Miller.”

  “He said, ‘I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.’”

  “My sentiment exactly, but this is not Paris. It’s the Eastern Shore Tim Hortons version of it. And I do have a glimmer of hope.”

  Ramona graced me with a smile. And a great smile it was. “So I’m still trying to figure you out. Trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together. You grew up on the Eastern Shore, far from civilization, is that correct?”

  “Well, we had some form of civilization. But only one channel on TV.”

  “What about the gun thing? You looked like you knew what you were doing.”

  “I grew up around guns. My father had them, but he didn’t like to shoot anything but tin cans and beer bottles. He taught me how to shoot when I was about twelve. I killed more Moosehead beer bottles and Campbell’s tomato soup cans than any boy alive. But, don’t worry, I’m not packing.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  I turned off the main road and onto the bumpy little road leading to Stewart Harbour. “It’s been a long while since I’ve been here. A really long time.”

  “Why so long?”

  “No reason really to come back. Parents both gone. Brother living in Fort McMurray.”

  “Where exactly are we going? Your old home still there?”

  “No, not the house. That’s a story I need to tell you, but not now. My father’s old fish shack is still there near the wharf. At least I hope it’s still there. He was a fisherman. The real McCoy. Up before dawn, out on a rough sea, living a rough life. And loving it. Well, mostly.”

  The pavement gave out and I slowed the Lexus. “Car like this isn’t much good on a road with so many potholes.”

  “I’ll trade it in on a Land Rover as soon as we get back to civilization. Anywhere around here a woman can take a pee? I think the coffee wants out.”

  “I can see you must have been a good actress. You got a lot of good lines.” I stopped the car. “See that bush over there? It looks like it needs watering.”

  “Shut up,” she said playfully, but got out and went to pee behind a bush like it was no big deal. When she got back in the car she corrected me. “We don’t really use the term actress anymore. We’re all just actors. But I’m not even that now. I’m retired, remember?”

  “Retired at fifty?”

  “Yes. I had no intention of playing old crazy women. That’s what happens. One day you’re cast as the romantic lead or the sexy but ditzy dumb blond, and then, before you know it, you’re old and wrinkled and cast as a senile old woman on her deathbed.”

  “You don’t look wrinkled or senile to me.”

  “Thanks for the compliment.”

  We were coming to the end of the road now. The real end of the road. Nothing but rocks and ocean beyond there. Beside us was the familiar line of little cottage-like buildings, mostly weather-beaten, some empty. I stopped in front of the one third from last. “This is it. Pilgrimage destination.”

  Some shingles were missing from the roof and the wooden shakes on the walls were grey, worn, and mossy in places. The window frames hadn’t been painted in decades and the windows themselves were streaked with salt. But the building itself was unmolested by vandals. Out of respect for my father, I reckoned.

  We got out and I went looking for a key. Not under the mat, not under a likely stone by the door. But when I lifted the lid of the rusty mailbox nailed to the wall, there it was. With a modest amount of wrestling, it opened the padlock on the door. The door swung inward and a tidal wave of memory swept over me. The good and the bad.

  “After you,” I said.

  “Are there spiders?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Then after you.”

  I took a deep breath a
nd stepped forward into my past. Like a lot of rural kids, I had abandoned my roots, preferred not to think about how primitive a childhood it had been. As my eyes now adjusted to the dim light, I could see that everything was much like it had been when I was a kid forty years ago. The old sink with the hand pump. The bare bulb hanging down from the ceiling. An old, ratty chesterfield, plush red, with springs popping through; the tiny one-bed bedroom with a big picture window looking out over the harbour. And my father’s old knee-high rubber boots still standing in the corner.

  Ramona was quiet now, studying me, I guess. She probably saw that I was gobsmacked, the nervous energy from all that caffeine slipping out of me.

  “I like what you’ve done with the place,” she quipped. We’d quickly become quite adept at delivering our clever little lines on cue. But I’d suddenly lost myself. I wasn’t sure why I was there. And why had I brought Ramona there?

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Give me a minute,” I said. “Sorry. I wasn’t expecting to feel this way.”

  “I understand.”

  “Good, ’cause I don’t think I understand. It’s like I’m eighteen again, the last time I walked out of this place, said goodbye to my father and then never saw him again. I went away to school, to Dal. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to leave all this behind and become part of the world out there. I wanted to make my mark, somehow.” And then I swallowed hard.

  Ramona stood silently and waited for me to finish.

  “But now that I’m back here, it makes me feel like my life didn’t really add up to much. Like I was just going through the motions. I don’t think I should have stayed here. It’s not that. But I feel like I never really committed to anything. Just rolled along. I think I blew it.”

  Ramona looked at me and I recognized the pity in her eyes. Okay, so I’d lost my job, got swindled out of my money by a teenager, was living all alone in a crappy apartment in the North End, and I was broke. But it was more than that. Much more. And for the first time I truly realized just how badly I’d really fucked up.

  I walked into the small bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed. The sheets, the blankets were still on it from that morning when my father had left this place and left the world forever. I looked out at the water through that big window. Someone had given him the window. At four foot by six foot, it was totally out of place for an old fisherman’s crash pad. But he’d installed it and would often lie there and look out over the water, watch the gulls, the waves, the tide go in and out. And those were the times he was most at peace. Or so I thought.