For two days they travelled up the coast, stopping in whichever small cove or bay took their fancy. They dove off the side of the boat into the cold water, swam back to the aluminum ladder, climbed up it to the deck, and got in line for another chilly plunge. They introduced the kids to face mask and snorkel. They fished for cod and cooked it on the barbecue the advertising said was portable but which had required several men to move from the pickup, down the ramp, through the marina, to the boat. The bottle of propane was easier; Colleen carried it, but, of course, she didn''t have a whack of kids'' stuff to help lug.They teased each other, played cards in the evening, ate their faces off and slept quickly and well, and on the morning of the third day started home. Their first night home, with everyone else in bed and sleeping, Al sat on the porch with a pot of tea, a package of cigarettes, and both dogs for company. He watched the clouds move across the face of the enormous-seeming red-tinged late summer moon.
After a long while he got to his feet, stretched and took the dogs to their pen. He checked the water dish, slipped each of them a biscuit from the wooden box with the hinged lid, then slowly and thoughtfully he walked the skid trail, past Colleen''s house, heading into the bush.He could have made the trip in the dark blindfolded: his feet avoided the bumps, the rocks and the ruts without any help from his head. He turned and headed into the big black hole, found a flashlight and moved to the pavilion.He ignored the grow lights, the humidity gauges, the expensive commercial greenhouse thermometers that controlled the temperatures. He even ignored the initials and names carved in the overhead beams. He spent a long time looking at the mementoes of their childhood "fort," then sighed deeply. He sat on the backside-smoothed block of wood, lit a new cigarette and smoked it slowly, then stood, rubbed his face with his hands, and moved to the entrance to what they had always called the hole- behind-the-hole.
He crawled on his belly, and as his feet left the pavilion, his arms were reaching down to the floor of the cubby. He pulled himself through, found and flipped the switch for the trouble light, then set to work.There were eight heavy cardboard boxes, thirty-two inches long, twenty-six inches across and twenty-six inches high. There had been nine, but that was before they decided to go ahead with Lindy''s house and the new motel. One by one he pushed the boxes through the short tunnel, shoving them ahead of him as he crawled his way back. He was amazed when he realized he was weeping. But dammit, he had his kids to think of, and not just Tom and Jess, there were all those other kids: Lucy''s kids who now called Singe "Dad," and Lindy''s kids who deserved better and more than Norm would ever be able to provide for them, and Dorrit, too sweet to be believed, and always Little Wil, who moved back and forth between the new house where her mom lived with Chuck to the old one, which she still called home.Al knew what it was like to grow up one of "those Lancasters.
" He''d been one of "those" all his life. They''d been left with as good as nothing when the old fool decided to take the fast lane: an enormous chunk of bushland; a house they had no idea how to keep from falling down in the wind; back taxes chewing at their heels; the welfare snooping around looking for any excuse they could find to scoop the younger ones and put them in foster homes.He and Singeon had managed, somehow, and when their unskilled labourer paycheques weren''t enough, they became what Al now considered to be ankle-biters. They peddled off the old man''s store of moonshine, and they raided two other juice-makers'' storage sheds and sold their stuff, too. They set up the first grow lights and sold nickel-and-dime bags; they headed off before dawn in the autumn and scrabbled on hands and knees in farmers'' fields, picking magic mushrooms; they did what they could and managed to stay together. They didn''t lose the property to taxes; they stayed one teeny-weeny bunny-hop ahead of the law, more by good luck than good management, and all in all he figured they''d managed to do okay by themselves and each other. There wasn''t really anything much in the past that he would change: most of it had been beyond his control, beyond Singe''s control, probably beyond the control of any and all a body would care to name. He harboured deep resentment for the old fool; he could have at least paid off the tax bill before he went ahead and left a mess for others to clean.
All he''d done for the six months prior to his explosive end was plop himself in his big chair and sulk. All that shine! He could have sold it and paid off the debts. Things might have been different if he had.Well, he hadn''t, the old bugger, and he didn''t have to take the old woman with him, either. All she''d done was work like hell all her life; a person shouldn''t get a death sentence for that. She hadn''t been perfect-hell, Norm was proof of that. But everyone needs a bit of fun once in a while, a whirl around the dance floor, a sip of store-bought, some laughter and soft feelings. The old bugger had left enough of his own unacknowledged offspring, it was only fair he wind up feeding someone else''s since plenty of others were feeding his.
And it hadn''t been the obvious, the on-the-surface grinding hardship. It was that other thing, the beast that for years didn''t get named, the placid expectation on the part of just about anybody he could name that "those" Lancasters would have been rangytangs no matter what: they had been born of hooligans, to be just another generation of the same, rough and tough and my god what will that family think of next, the messes they get into, make a body wonder what else they''ve got planned.Singe had ignored it, and god knows how he managed. Al dove into it, although Singe had warned him often enough. When they finally caught him, it was like the fulfillment of something he''d been expecting. Singe offered to get him a lawyer, but Al said no, he''d take his lumps. And they had been lumps! School of hard knocks, they called it. But, by god, he got an education.
When he got out after three years he was one helluva lot smarter than he''d been when he went behind the walls. No more ankle-biting for Al.And here he was, here they all were, and it felt too much like it had felt just before he got busted that first time. One shoe had fallen, and if he paid attention he might never hear the other; if he ignored the feeling, he might not hear anything at all ever again. And it had to be something those fish-eyed friends of Brady''s couldn''t dispute.He was scared of them. There wasn''t much in life had scared him to the point he felt as if he was about to pee down his leg. The first week in the slammer that first time: his body bruised, his face marked, his backside throbbing and sending hot flashes of agonizing pain up inside him that had scared him.
Scared him about half as much as the fear he now felt. They probably wouldn''t be satisfied with just offing him. He''d heard stories about how they would systematically slice at every member of the family and make you watch before they slit your throat. He believed the stories.The thing with the bust and what he and Tony had hauled off the bottom was straightened out: they accepted what they were told whether they fully believed it or not. It helped that not one rock had been taken, everything was tickety-boo down to the last fraction of a fraction of weight. But it had been too close. Get caught handling that stuff, and everything you had would wind up confiscated, proceeds of criminal activity, and law''d take it all, the land, the houses, even the damned dogs, because they''d been thwarted in the past, because they were worse than the legendary elephants, never forgetting, never relaxing.
They''d uproot lily beds till the cows came home, no longer caring if they actually found proof of anything, doing it for spite. Al was sure the biggest difference between them and Brady''s friends was the Yank contingent was into free enterprise and those other lugans expected the taxpayers to pay for the bullets.One by one he got the boxes through the hidey-hole in the ceiling, and one by one he packed them to the box-car-sized rusted tank that had been his own special hiding place, the one he had never shared with anyone, not even Singe. He wondered where Singe''s special place was. Everyone had one, a place all their own, where sobs went unheard and a person could curl up in misery and just let the eyes leak until the pressure was gone from the chest.He rolled the rock out of the way, remembering the story his mother had tried to teach them, about rolling away the rock at the mouth of the tomb or finding it rolled away or something. He pushed the boxes through the rusty gap one at a time, and then, grunting, got the rock shoved back in place. Good enough as a temporary measure, but he''d have to figure out something better.
Maybe something as simple as renting one of those storage lockers. Who''d know? What kind of records did they keep?He walked away from the drum, wondering what in hell it had ever been used for in the first place. The old bugger used to joke that one of these frosty Fridays he was going to clean it out and use it in his shine business. Hold a lake of it, he''d said; instead of bothering with the BS of jugs and stoppers we just take their money and let them swim in it, haul ''em back out when they start to float face down. They''d all joked about how if the heart wasn''t beating very well they could always just hook ''em up to the jumper cables, like old what''s-''is-name, and rev the truck a bit. Send ''em home glowing in the dark with their hair standing on end and sparks coming from their eyeballs.The key to the powder shed hung around his neck, and the moonlight was bright enough that he could see.