Annabel - Kathleen Winter [135]
Wayne had been in Leo’s many times and had not noticed the floor. Now he looked at it.
“It’s old. Cracked,” Treadway said. “They can’t get anybody to fix it in this day and age. But beautiful.”
There were a few things Treadway wanted to do, he told Wayne, while he was in St. John’s. He was staying for three days, and he wanted to see the exhibit of Beothuk and Inuit tools and household artifacts and hunting clothes in the Newfoundland Museum on Duckworth Street. There was a carving knife he particularly wanted to see, and a child’s fur coat with part of the tail of the animal intact.
“And I’d like you to tell me,” Treadway said, “the name of the person who attacked you. And if there is a grocery store nearby, there is something I’d like to buy in it.”
It was the first mention Treadway made of why he had really come: the misery and sadness of his son. He had not said anything about Wayne’s appearance but he had taken it in, and he did not appear to be shocked or upset by it. Wayne had always appeared more graceful than other boys as far as Treadway was concerned. He had always had an air of gentleness about his face, and his shape had not been very much different from what it was now, though there had been muscle where there was now litheness. Wayne wore a plain shirt and jeans that were the kind he had always worn, and Treadway had noticed the girl’s breasts on his son before. They were not new to him, and they were small. You could miss them if you were not looking carefully. But Treadway was looking carefully.
He took his pocketknife out and used it to cut his fish, and he noticed everything around him, including the type of engine on the city bus that passed by Leo’s window, and the German make of the clock on the fire hall across Harvey Road.
“Dad, I didn’t know you knew so much about St. John’s.”
“I don’t know anything about St. John’s.”
“You do. You know what kind of stone is in the churches and where it came from, and you know about the floor here and the bus engines, and you know what exhibits are down at the museum. I didn’t even know there was a museum.”
“You would have noticed it sooner or later. And I don’t know about the stone in all the churches, just the basilica and the Anglican cathedral, and some of the churches and castles in England and Scotland, because I read about them. Anything I know about I’ve usually read, even a lot of what I know about trapping. I get a lot from books.”
Wayne realized how often he had seen his father reading. He knew there were books in his trapping hut, and there were always books beside his bed at home. He had not thought about the books as having the ability to help his father orient himself in St. John’s, or in any strange city. The thought was new to Wayne. His father might have become lost on the way to the Forest Road Apartments, but he was not lost in the world of terrazzo flooring or German clocks, or the history of his ancestors, and it was because he read.
“I’ve had a lot more time than you have had to read. And I’ve had a lot less to contend with in my life than you have had in yours. What I’d like to know now, Wayne, is the name of the person who attacked you.”
“Derek Warford. Why?”
“Because I might like to have a word with him. And I would like to see the place where it happened. This Deadman’s Pond that Thomasina told me about.”
“Dad.”
“As a matter of fact, I’d like you to show it to me now. But before we go up Signal Hill I’d like to go to a grocery store and I’d like to buy a really nice orange.”
Wayne took his father to the Parade Street Dominion and then they walked down Harvey Road and took the steps to Long’s Hill. They walked along Gower Street, and while they were walking in front of the chain-link fence outside Powers’ Salvage on the east end of Duckworth Street, Treadway handed Wayne the bank book. There was no one to witness this but the gulls that circled