planning to leave, too. Somehow, her husband got wind of those plans.
The day after the barn burning, the town constable, the insurance man and the fire marshal came to poke around and ask some questions. They all said there was no sense to things like this. Just plain fool bad luck. The insurance man asked if there was any motive for his good friend Bill Bowles to burn down his own barn. Matthew held his breath and stared at the man real hard, so he would know that hell, yes, there was a motive and just give him a moment alone without his father around and he’d sure tell him what it was. But then the insurance man shrugged, said, “There’s just no figuring,” and the men all looked solemn. A little later they had a drink together, Bill and Bill, Jr., and the constable and the fire marshal and the insurance man, and then the three men got back in the constable’s car and went away, beeping the horn in a friendly way as they turned onto the main road.
Later the man from the county came to haul away the animal carcasses. The air was still thick with the smell of burned horseflesh; all his life Matthew would be haunted by the image of the black, bloated bodies hanging from a back leg as the knacker man winched them onto the back of his truck. And then the knacker man, too, was gone and the three Bowles men were left alone in the yard, amidst the smoulder and the stench.
Bill Bowles spit on the ground and then turned to look up at his wife’s ashen face, staring down at them from the upstairs window. “Nobody goes anywhere,” he said. “Not on my fucking watch.” And although it was not clear whether his mother could hear the words or not, the message was indisputably clear. Bill Bowles Senior held the reins of power and he was not going to give them up. The curtain fell and Matthew’s mother’s face disappeared.
After that, his mother remained in her room, mostly. She did what she was told and said little and cried not at all, not after that first night. The two or three friends she had from church came by from time to time, but his mother refused to see them, and so gradually the intervals between visits lengthened and then they stopped all together. His mother did not wash and she didn’t eat, or hardly anything, and then only when her husband threatened to force-feed her.
She was bent on dying. Had her mind set on getting out. One day she called Matthew into her room where she lay on the bed, a stick-doll under a faded quilt. “Get out now,” she said to him, trailing her finger along the most recent bruise colouring his face. “Don’t wait.”
But he could not, of course. Not as long as she was left behind.
It took her a long time to die.
A week after she had been laid in the ground Matthew packed his duffle bag and, closing the door softly behind him in the middle of the night, headed for Halifax and whatever fate he found, vowing he would spend his life pointing a finger at the brutal tyrants of the world. He would make people listen. He would make them see. He would make them do something.
And what has he done?
People see. People know. And so what? They do not care. They cannot care. It would rock their view of the world too much. People think that if it is true, what he and others like him have to say about the world, then the world is too horrible, too terrifying to continue living in. And so they look, but do not see. Hear, but do not listen. Know, but will not admit. Admit. To let in. To permit access to. Like light.
Matthew rolls over, buries his face in the pillow and weeps. He weeps for a long time, and when he is done he reaches for the sleeping pills he keeps handy and takes more than he should.
Matthew has developed a loose pattern to his days, one divided into blocks of time. He sleeps in the mornings, tries to write in the afternoons, and generally fails. Late afternoons are for Chez Elias, when he feels calm and friendly. Evenings are for the Bok-Bok. Unless he is in what he almost laughingly calls The Emotionally Hopeless Forest. Then it’s alone in his apartment with the phone off the hook. Now he is on his way to the Bok-Bok. Or at least he was, until the phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Matthew!” Brent. Only Brent pronounces his name “Mat-you.”
“Hey, Brent.”
“Don’t hey me. What did you write today?”
“I’m working.”
“So send me something.”
“Fine, I’ll send you something.”
“You said that last week.”
“And I sent you a chapter.”
“I didn’t get it. Big surprise. You didn’t overnight it.”
“French mail is whimsical.”
“I’m laughing.”
“I like to make you happy.”
Brent heaves a huge sigh. “Listen, Matthew. Listen to me. You got an advance. A very nice advance. Your editor is expecting to see something from this. You are not an international charity. If you don’t start producing—”
“I am producing. I’m just not ready to show anything yet.”
“This isn’t fiction, Matthew, where timing doesn’t matter. Timing matters. You’re hot for only so long and then somebody else comes along and does something else that everybody’s talking about and nobody remembers you. If nobody remembers you, nobody buys the book, get it?”
It is Matthew’s turn to sigh. “I get it. I get it, Brent. And really, I am working. It’s just a little rough yet. I want to impress them, you know?” His insincerity is like thistles in his throat.
“Impress the hell out of us. Write something.”
“I have to go.”
“Don’t make me come over there, Matthew.”
“See you, Brent. I’ll get you something in the next couple of days.”
All the way over to the 20th on the metro, Matthew mutters to himself about avaricious agents and bloodsucking publishers. The seat next to him remains empty.
When he arrives at the bar, someone calls out to him. “Hey Matthew, over here!”
His eyes have not adjusted and he cannot make out the face, but he knows Jack’s voice.
“Hey,” he says, blinking and squinting into the smoky gloom. Soon he can make out Jack’s bulk, sitting at his usual table with his back to the wall. “I’ll get a drink. You want one?”
“Draught,” says Jack. “And bring a Coke for my pal, Anthony.”
“Hey,” says another voice.
“Fair enough.”
Matthew orders two beers and a Coke from Dan who pours them into thick glass mugs and hands them over without saying a word. There is a tired-looking woman sitting at the end of the bar, her blond wig slightly askew. Matthew nods and she smiles back. It takes him a moment to realize it is Suzi, the girl wearing the black wig the first time he came to the Bok-Bok. “Nice look for you,” he says. “I like it.”
“You’re sweet. You buy me a drink, too?” She pats the seat next to her.
“Get Suzi whatever she wants, okay, Dan?”
Suzi gets up and comes over to him. Although he has lied about how flattering the wig is, it strikes him, not for the first time, what a pretty woman she is. Her eyes are huge and look even larger because of the dark circles underneath. Her mouth is very small, and overall she looks like a girl from another time, from the twenties, perhaps, when Betty Boop was the It girl.
“Coupe de champagne,” she says. “You join me, yes?”
“Maybe later, okay? I have to deliver drinks to the boys.”
“Let me know, Matthew.” She pronounces it in the French way, Matte-u—which, although similar to Brent’s pronunciation is infinitely more pleasing to the ear. She runs her green painted fingernail under his chin. “Merci,” she says