Crimes Against My Brother (10 page)

Ian Preston worked at the big electrical appliance store for one reason: if you had no connections in town, you were dead at the mill. It was that simple. People here will deny that. But people will deny anything that makes them look weak and selfish. They will parade their paycheques and their cars, their camps on the river, and many will not take the time to think that they never managed to do one independent thing in their lives, that they were both selfish and vain, as were their wives, believing that the cheques would never stop, when in fact the thousands of acres of moulted and thrashed timber was their own death warrant.

So Ian hated the mill. He hated its smell. He hated its smoke. Everything about it irritated him. He could not stand that so many of the men who worked there, not half as bright as he, made much more money by killing the very land they were born to; and he hated that they were men who all their lives had been told what to do by outsiders and how and when to do it, and they did so without question. That they would scrape and bow and cheat in order to be the number-two man on a paper machine.

But here is why he disliked the mill even more: he disliked it because of the man who did not hire him. He could never forget that man’s smile and thin wavy hair, the picture of his wife and family on his desk, the pin that said he belonged to the Kinsmen.

What has he ever done to deserve this power over me? Ian would think. And he would dream of a day when he could pay that man back. That is, even his conservation group was formed to pay that man back. And everything he decided about how he would stop the mill was to pay that man back. He secretly knew this about himself. And twice he’d had meetings with the minister of the environment to relay his concerns about the greatest tract of timber in the north, the Bonny Joyce tract; and twice the minister had assured him that no cutting would be done along that stretch. And yet both times Ian was a little disappointed—for he actually wanted a confrontation with that man, and he wanted to tell everyone at the mill to go to hell.

Two months before Evan visited him, Ian had discovered that the family he worked for wanted to sell the store he worked at. Now all his energies were directed toward one point: Ian wanted to buy this store to prove to himself he was better than those men at the mill, to prove he was better than that man who took his application and smiled and never thought of him again.

But now, looking over the notes I have written on these three blood brothers, I will jump ahead just a bit.

The store Ian Preston soon owned refurbished second-hand appliances. It was a very good, sound business. He had many new appliances
for sale. But he also received second-hand goods twice a month, and worked to make them ready to sell. He also sold gyprock and plywood, cupboards and cedar and roofing shingles—and therefore he relied upon economic benefits from the mill he hated. This was the quagmire he was in, a quagmire that he did not admit to. And that was the flaw in his “progressive” stance. He believed the only thing he wanted was to save the river basin and the prime wood that stretched back beyond Good Friday Mountain. This is where he pulled the wool over his own eyes. And this was to become his fight with the very town he had adopted and loved.

So what happened to Ian after he and Evan went hunting?

Ian had to be back on the Friday to go to the bank and see about a loan to buy the store. And so, on that Friday, he travelled from one bank to the other. He began in the morning and ended late that afternoon. Yet, as everyone knows, he was refused in each bank.

Here is what every banker saw: This was young Ian Preston from way back on Bonny Joyce Ridge who had worked himself to exhaustion and now wanted to buy a store on his own. What would they look like giving him a loan? The store would go to ruin, and they’d be laughing stocks. Besides, he was asking for far too much money without any collateral.

As Ian sat in the offices with loan officers, all this became apparent to him. It left him desolate. And now he had to go down to Bonny Joyce and witness on Evan’s behalf to Molly Thorn. But, as bad as he felt, this is what he was prepared to do. That is, he was prepared for Evan’s and Molly’s sakes to be as joyous and as celebratory as he could be.

And then, while there in Bonny Joyce, Ian suddenly secured his loan from a man he’d never thought had any money—an old man who was just enough of a relative to say yes to the $125,000 he needed. The man wanted only to be a partner until he died.

This man, Joyce Fitzroy, lived another four years.

People later said Ian had cheated the old man, who had Alzheimer’s disease. Everyone said it; it did not matter if it was true or not. And it
was
true that the old man had Alzheimer’s—but not when Ian got the loan. Still, he had used an illiterate old man for gain—and if any of that was true, then he was a conniver. And more to the point, a Bonny Joyce conniver, which meant that he’d always been that way—that was the interpretation. It was said that he had got Joyce Fitzroy drunk and had stolen the money—though Ian himself did not drink. That fact was really the mark of Cain—it showed the calculation involved in this conniving.

Soon people became very righteous in speaking against Ian Preston. Someone so crooked shouldn’t be allowed to swagger into town with money and set himself up in business, they said. He was in a way like the robber baron they hated, or like Lord Beaverbrook himself—one day broke, and looked upon as having a trade in town; the next buying out people and reinventing himself. So Ian was distrusted after this. Especially when those who knew Joyce Fitzroy—and knew him to be a stubborn man who lived alone in a house with three rooms—saw the old man out in the winter in a frayed sweater, chopping his own wood for the wood stove that was his only source of heat.

Evan and Harold heard the rumours in the town swirling against Ian and believed them all. Evan distrusted Ian ever afterwards, and so too did Harold. Both of them became bitter in ways that were to cause enormous difficulty. Both felt betrayed in equal measure, and both felt more injured because they were Ian’s blood brothers.

“I will ruin him one day,” Harold boasted. “I will.” He said this to Annette as if she too should relish the idea of ruining Ian. But after listening to Harold rant, she would whisper to herself: He is crazy as a bag of hammers. And her knees would begin to shake. Then Harold would begin to break things around the house—once he threw an armchair down the stairs. He said he might cut Annette’s ears off; and then he said he was just fooling about cutting her ears off. “I must have been drunk when I said it—don’t believe what I say when I’m drunk!”

He’s a lunatic, Annette thought. I am going to marry a man who is a raving lunatic. Already a lunatic and he is only young. And he is poor
besides. I am going to marry a poor young lunatic. What happens when he gets old? I will be married to an old lunatic. In her little life, she had no one else to turn to. So, scared and defenceless, she went to speak to Lonnie.

Lonnie said nothing for the longest time. But he thought about how his plan—the plan he had to use Annette—had come to nothing. And now he was disappointed in her.

“Well, where then is the money?” Lonnie asked Annette. “Look what you got yourself into. I told you not to—I told you, didn’t I? He’s a madman. From what I heard, manic depression runs in his family.”

“Runs in his family?”

“The whole lot of them, manic-depressives. Might kill someone, that Harold. I told you one hundred times to stay away from him.”

“I don’t remember,” Annette said, leaning forward with her forehead in her hand. “But I am engaged to him, and I will see it through.”

“See it through—good for you. But I am often worried about you.”

“Worried about me?”

“Well, how will you cope down at Clare’s Longing? You think you can cope down there? Living where four generations of fuckin’ Dews have lived and died and fought over every morsel of food? That’s no way for my favourite girl to live.”

“Your favourite girl—?” Annette blushed.

“Well, who else would it be? Who is the prettiest, most—well, has the best … well, looks like a princess all the time, but you? Knows how to dress but you? Wearing white gloves to church and never without a necklace. But I want to tell you—this is between you and me—you got a nice body, so use it. What about the man down in Nova Scotia I was telling you about? Now, he owns his own gravel pit and everything. I could introduce you, if you want.”

Annette blushed.

Lonnie bit the tip off his cigar and spit it away. He looked at her as he lit it, from under his eyebrows, and smiled as he blew out the match.

But then he said this: “Oh, oh, oh—how you made fun of Ian Preston!”

“I never did!”

“You laughed in his face, didn’t you! You said he was a little nit.”

“I never in my life did. I always thought he was sweet—it’s Harold what tricked me!”

Annette suddenly realized how awful everything looked for her at this moment. “What will I do?” she asked.

“Well, you come to me again—you come to old Uncle Lonnie when things go bad. But when things are good, I’m not good enough for you. I knew what Harold was—many times I didn’t want him around here, but I allowed him here because of you. That’s a fact. But now I see—I see. Old Uncle Lonnie is nothing when you think you have no more use for him. Well, well, well. I don’t like your conniving, Annette—that’s a Brideau streak, I feel. No one else on this here river has it. I was honest, and expect others to be too. Anyways, I’m pretty much done with Charlottetown, and you should be too. Thieves and bastards and whatnot over there. Someday I’ll take you to Truro and introduce you to a real good lad. Now, he’s about my age—but he saw you last year over there, and really liked what he saw, I tell you that!”

“What does he do?” Annette asked, without any feeling.

“Owns a mortuary—has a horse or two—bides his time, likes to make pronouncements. Well, you know—big feeling, thinks he is something special, not like you or me.”

I want to be a good person, Annette said hopefully but to herself. For where had that little girl gone?

Lonnie was very upset himself by this turn of events with Ian. He had now lost the money he’d thought he could get if Joyce Fitzroy died without settling on a benefactor. He knew ways in which to move into an estate and take over—settling old back taxes was one. He was always prepared for a fight, and had assumed he’d take over Fitzroy’s house when he died. He was annoyed that Fitzroy was clever enough to keep his property taxes paid, and that too seemed like an insult.

But now it was beyond him. The money had gone to Ian Preston.

From that moment on, whenever he looked at Evan and Harold he thought of them as grown men. That is, the fact that they had allowed themselves to be betrayed made him disrespect them intensely. So there were many days when he would not call them to do jobs for him—or when they did come over, he would force an argument between them. He treated Harold worse than Evan because Harold felt the worse.

“Oh,” Lonnie would chuckle, “how is Annette ever going to get along in Clare’s Longing swamp having ten little Dews? That’s paying her dues for wanting the money, isn’t it.”

And Harold, who up until that moment had thought nothing could ever come between him and Annette, began to realize that Annette wanted in some desperate way to rescind their love and escape. Harold begged—literally begged—Lonnie for money, any money, to prove himself to her.

“To prove to her what?” Lonnie said.

“To prove to her—just to prove to her,” Harold pleaded.

“I have no money for you, Harold. You shouldn’t have bragged so much about what was coming to you. Bragging is a terrible thing—it allows for terrible things in a person’s life, and causes enormous difficulty, don’t you think? Let her go off and get screwed a couple of times by someone else. She’ll see what it’s like—one cock is good as another and she’ll be back!”

This caused Harold to go into a rage, stand up and look with blearily hateful eyes at his tormenter—but he was no match for Lonnie Sullivan then.

Lonnie chomped his White Owl cigar, and after taking out a crumpled bunch of bills put them in Harold’s hand.

“That’s the best I can do for you, boy—and I do it ’cause I liked your mom.”

“Yes, the Ridge,” I would say to my sociology class when I came back here to teach in 2001. “The Ridge is hopeless. The girls get pregnant by
seventeen on the Ridge, and their lives are set. The boys become drunks and hit their women. On the Ridge this is almost uniform policy.”

You see, I never said that the people on the Ridge were less than we were; I just indicated that they did not have the same chance, that they were disenfranchised. Those youngsters I taught always wished to compel those who were not like us to become like us. This attitude, in fact, is what people used against Ian and the others. Of course, it was some years after the events I am relating when I taught my course, but those three boyhood friends figured in the course I taught. And I want to tell you one more thing: I did not believe what I said to my students about the Ridge. I said it to see if I would get an argument. If I did—and at times I did—I would show them a picture of my house, and tell them of the years of my youth I’d spent there.