“Where are you staying?”

  “The Holiday Inn.”

  “That’s a nice hotel. It’s right down on the water.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  “You can take Bath Road all the way in. Hang a right on Princess.”

  “I know the way.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” the policeman said, and he returned Stafford’s driver’s license to him. “You’re from around here, aren’t you?”

  Stafford started his car and slowly drove away, careful not to display any anxiety in the way he pulled back onto the road. He was very cold now and he felt awful. His head ached and his throat was dry, with the taste of metal at the back of it that signaled a throat infection. Well, he was bound to get sick, he thought, and he should have anticipated that. The sore throat would turn into a head cold and then a sinus infection would set in, or maybe bronchitis. By the time he got home he would be running a fever and need antibiotics, and that would put him out of commission for weeks. He had never been a good traveler, despite all the trips he had made alone or with Agnes. He particularly disliked flying and had only managed to survive the thousands of hours he had been forced to spend on airplanes by sticking rigidly to an inflexible list of travel demands—first class, specific seats on specific airlines, no night flights, special meals, and no unknown passengers sitting near or next to him. He had been urged by others to purchase his own plane, but he refused to engage in the personal commitment of owning anything whatsoever connected to air travel.

  “Oh, you’d walk if you could, Stafford,” Agnes said. “You’re phobic.”

  “I’m a land mammal,” he would answer. “Not a bird.”

  “You’re a control freak, actually. Maybe you should buy a train.”

  “I love trains.”

  “I was kidding, Stafford, kidding!”

  Stafford was shown into his hotel room shortly after three o’clock in the morning by a sleep-deprived bellboy who dropped his bag by the bathroom door and left without a word. The room was not cold, but Stafford had begun to shiver, and a dry cough was pushing at his chest from within. He knew he should run himself a very hot bath and try to warm up, but he was too tired. Instead, he cranked up the heat and lay down on top of the bed, fully dressed. He pulled the covers up from one side of the bed, rolling over with them until he was wrapped up like a snake in a sock. Then he closed his eyes and waited, trying to control his breathing, trying not to cough, trying to be patient, and trying not to panic when he didn’t fall asleep. Sleep would come only if he didn’t move or think or remember. Sleep would come because it had to come, and it would take care of the remaining hours that lay between him and Bobby’s grandchildren.

  At three thirty, Stafford began to cough, and by four, he was coughing steadily in ragged, little grunts. By five, his feet, still encased in their tightly laced shoes, had become so cold they had begun to throb, but he was unable to get the shoes off, trapped as he was by the bedcovers. The room was far too hot now, and the dry heat from the blasting hotel furnaces filled the room with the misery of recycled air. He finally drifted off around six o’clock, despite all his discomforts, and he might have slept a little longer had Agnes not called at seven.

  “Stafford,” she said when he finally answered. “Oh my God, Stafford, is that you?”

  “Yes,” he tried to say, but his voice was so cracked with the coughing and the sore throat and the lack of sleep that he sounded like a gate pushed open against its will. “Yes,” he said again. And then he sat up and cleared his throat. “Just a minute, Agnes,” he managed. “Hang on a sec.”

  He fought his way out of the bedclothes and stumbled into the bathroom, where he poured himself a glass of water and drank it down, bitter with the taste of hotel pipes. He refilled the glass and came back to the bed. He filled his mouth again with water and swallowed it slowly before picking up the phone.

  “Stafford?”

  “Sorry, I’ve got a bit of a throat. I’m a little stuffed up.”

  “A little? You sound terrible!”

  “It’s just a cold, Agnes.”

  “Ha! When did you ever get just a cold, Stafford? And how did you get a cold, for God’s sake?”

  “It came with the room.”

  “Very funny.”

  “I’m okay, really, Agnes. It was a long flight. Maybe I should have stayed overnight in Toronto.”

  “You should have stayed in Toronto.”

  “You’re right.”

  “You’ll have to go see a doctor. Do you know any good Canadian doctors?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “But what if you get an ear infection, Stafford? You can’t fly with an ear infection.”

  “My ears are fine.”

  “What?”

  “I said my ears don’t hurt.”

  “This is a terrible line. Is it snowing there or something?”

  “No. Well, maybe. I don’t know. I’m still in bed.”

  “If it’s snowing, stay in bed.”

  “Agnes, shouldn’t you be in bed? It must be after midnight there. What time is it?”

  “It’s one o’clock in the morning, Stafford. I can’t sleep. It’s been really muggy here and the air-conditioning’s overcompensating, so now it’s too cold.”

  “I’ll be home in a few days,” Stafford said.

  “Not with an ear infection, you won’t.”

  “I have to go now, Agnes. I have to get to Napanee by nine thirty.”

  “I just wanted to see how you were, that’s all,” she said.

  “Why don’t I call you from Toronto?” he said. “I’ll be back there tonight.”

  “If you feel up to it.”

  “I will,” Stafford said, and then, with strange formality, added, “Well, goodbye, Agnes.”

  “Well, goodbye yourself, Stafford,” she replied.

  He lay back down on the bed, the half-filled glass of water resting on his chest, cupped by both hands. There was no point in trying to go back to sleep now, he thought, not with everything he had to accomplish by noon. He had too many things to do and too little energy to squander and he did not want to spend an extra night in Kingston under any circumstances. He decided he would give each task equal time but no more than necessary, and he made a list in his mind of what he would do, calmed by the methodical breakdown of his duties. He would give himself half an hour to shower, dress, and have breakfast. He would allow half an hour to get to Napanee. He would give the Shepherds’ lawyer an hour of his time. He would allocate half an hour for the necessary phone calls—to Uncle Christy and young Chris, perhaps, and a few of the older cousins on his mother’s side who would want to hear from him. And then he would spend half an hour trying to track down Emmett who, while no longer an inmate at any of the local jails, would let himself be found quickly or not at all.

  CHAPTER 16

  Judgment

  To know what is just and what is unjust requires men think.

  —Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

  EMMETT WENT TO COLLINS Bay Penitentiary when Stafford was sixteen. He had shown up at their uncle Christy’s farm late at night, drunk and on foot, with a loaded gun. He said he only came for the horse, but things got out of hand the way they usually did with Emmett. The horse was shot, the family traumatized, and Emmett’s half-hearted suicide attempt failed when the bullet he tried to fire into his own head missed the mark.

  Their father was dead by then and the Hopkins farm sold. Their mother had returned to her family in Guelph, her wild Brennan roots reclaiming her in the end, and with nowhere else to go that long first year, Stafford was living on his uncle Christy’s farm. The Shepherds wanted him to live with them, but Stafford refused. He was ashamed of too many things by then, and it was too hard to be around Bobby, who had, to everyone’s surprise, fallen in love with a girl who didn’t seem to mind an ugly boy with bad skin.

  Stafford tried to visit Emmett at Collins Bay on several occasions, showing up regularly on visitor days well before the appointed hour, but each time he was turned away. His brother would not see him, and Stafford was asked to stop coming.

  In the buildup to Collins Bay, though, in the years before Emmett shot the horse, he went mostly to local jails, and that was because he got drunk often and easily and it was better to let him dry out in a local jail cell than at home. But nobody ever called that jail. Nobody ever said that Stafford’s brother was in jail. Emmett was away or had gone off the rails or had a little trouble somewhere else and wouldn’t be home for a day or two. Stafford knew these were code words and he dreaded hearing them, knowing that Emmett’s away times were events he was not supposed to acknowledge. He was to pretend that they weren’t happening at all, that he hadn’t noticed any trouble between his parents or the absence of a brother. He was to do his homework on time and be quick about taking his dish to the sink when supper was done. He was to get the eggs from the henhouse without anyone reminding him about it. And he was to leave the room when his mother cried and not ask for special treats or favors from anyone until Emmett came home, at which point things would settle down until it happened again.

  But when Stafford was ten, Emmett went to real jail when he was arrested and formal charges were laid, which made the family’s shame a public event, public enough that even Stafford was not expected to pretend that nothing had happened.

  It seemed that Emmett had got into an argument with someone at a local bar, and when he was asked to leave, he took a hammer from the back of his truck and began smashing in the windows of the cars parked outside the bar. He was beaten up by two men who took it upon themselves to intervene, and by the time the police arrived, he was missing three teeth and his cheek had been torn open by the heavy iron ring one of the men was wearing. Emmett would spend the next six weeks at a detention center in Napanee, recovering as best he could, while his parents, the police, and the courts came to a decision about his future.

  “Maybe he should stay there awhile, Mary-Jean,” Michael Hopkins said. “Maybe it’ll knock some sense into him.”

  “Maybe he’ll get another tooth knocked out too,” she answered. “He got drunk and in a fight is all. I don’t see the other men sitting in jail, do you?”

  “The other fellows didn’t smash up a row of car windows!”

  “That’s not important now, Michael,” she answered.

  “Not important? How about the cost of replacing all those car windows? Who’s going to pay for them if we don’t? And where’s that money going to come from? Because that’s the business here, Mary-Jean. We put up for the damages and Emmett gets off easy. Otherwise, he stays in—which might be the best thing in the long run.”

  “The best thing is we get him home! We can’t—Stafford, what are you doing sneaking up on me like that? Go on upstairs and finish your homework.”

  “I finished already.”

  “Then go do something else.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. Just go!”

  “Don’t yell at the boy. He’s not the problem.”

  “Can I go to Bobby’s house?” Stafford asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Can I stay the night?”

  “Well, that’s up to them, not me, Stafford.”

  “They’ll say yes,” Stafford said. “They always say yes.”

  “All right, then, you can stay over. But you have to be back for morning milking.”

  “Why?”

  “Because your brother’s not here to help, that’s why!”

  “I’ll do the milking,” Stafford’s father said. “You go on now, Stafford. Have some fun. Go on.”

  “Okay,” Stafford said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “You call us when you get there. Ask them if you can use the telephone.”

  “I will. Bye, Mum. Bye, Father.”

  “I think he spends too much time over there.”

  “They’re good to him. That’s what counts. And Bobby’s a good boy.”

  “Well, I don’t like all the cats. Cats in the living room. Cats all over the house. I should have told him to take his own pillow. He’ll get worms.”

  “He’ll be fine.”

  “How are you going to milk twelve cows, Michael?”

  “One at a time.”

  “It’ll take you the whole morning.”

  “It won’t.”

  “Twenty minutes a cow times twelve cows. That’s how long it’ll take you.”

  “I can milk a cow in ten minutes.”

  “You cannot.”

  “Twelve, then.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “You can say whatever you want about it.”

  “I’ll help you in the morning. I can milk a cow in fifteen minutes if I warm up my hands. I’m a fast milker.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  “Some girl.”

  “Now, Mary-Jean, don’t fall apart on me. It won’t help.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’ll get yourself into a state. You’ll make yourself sick. Come over here. Come here. There. That’s better. That’s my girl.”

  “What’s wrong with him? Why does he do these things?”

  “I don’t know why. Maybe we’re too hard on him.”

  “Or too easy. Or too this! Or too that!”

  “Mary-Jean.”

  “I can’t help it. I can’t! I’m afraid all the time. I’m afraid of what’s going to happen next. I thought he’d get a girl and get married, and we’d get the old shed all done up for a new family. He’s twenty-five next month. You know, Michael, we could make a nice house out there for Emmett and his family. He likes the view over the road. He told me that. And instead, here it is. Jail and getting drunk and into fights and him with his beautiful teeth gone and everything else. I’m afraid of what’s coming next, Michael. I’m afraid all the time.”

  “Of course you are. I know that. But it’ll work out. It’ll all turn out in the long run. He’ll meet some steady girl and settle down.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “I do. That’s the way things go. Now stop crying. Come on, give me a smile. There’s my old girl.”

  “Oh, so I’m an old girl now, am I?”

  “Not too old.”

  “I want him home, Michael.”

  Emmett did not go to real jail again until he shot the horse, at which point he went to the Collins Bay Penitentiary, where he served two years less a day. He was arrested regularly before then, though, mostly for drunken brawls or driving drunk up the highway, sometimes alone and sometimes with Stafford sitting next to him, silent and afraid, until Michael and Mary-Jean put a stop to Emmett driving Stafford anywhere. But on each of these occasions, Emmett was only held overnight by the local police, who released him quietly into his father’s care the next morning. Michael Hopkins was respected and pitied by too many members of the local community to subject him to further anguish.

  By the time Stafford started high school, he was familiar with the pattern of living with a family drunk. A couple of good days meant a bad one was coming, and hangover days were the best days to have a friend over. All public events were preceded by dread and followed by shame. Normal was a word for other people, and there was no value in explaining the secrets of family life to outsiders. Pretense was everything. If you didn’t talk about it, it wouldn’t hurt as much.

  And there were worse things than a brother who drank. Worse things in the world that lay outside the perimeters of your own farmyard. If you felt the fear rising in your throat on the nights when a brother didn’t come home and a father with a bad heart stood alone outside, smoking cigarette after cigarette, waiting for the sound of a truck in the distance, you would learn, as Stafford did, that it was safer to think about the misfortunes of others than your own. Stafford’s mother was a master at this, and in the summer of 1959, an event took place that gave her all the protection she needed.

  “You think we’ve got troubles, Michael. Well, take a look at this.”

  “What are you talking about? What troubles?”

  “Oh, you’ve been going on about Emmett all morning. He didn’t do this. He didn’t do that. He’s no good, you said. You said so at breakfast, right in front of him. No good. Well, you want to know what no good is? Well, there’s no good for you, and the name I’m seeing is Steven Truscott, not Emmett Hopkins.”

  Stafford’s mother always read the newspaper before anyone else, walking down the lane to the main road just before lunch to collect the mail and the two newspapers left in the Hopkinses’ blue metal mailbox. The smaller paper, the Napanee Beaver, she saved until later, preferring to read about local matters when the supper dishes were done and she could sit, she said, in peace. But the big newspaper, the Kingston Whig-Standard, she read immediately because, while she had never traveled beyond the borders of her own province, she had an interest in the news of the world, finding comfort in the sorrows of other people. When the story broke that a boy in a distant Ontario community had been arrested for the rape and murder of a classmate, she seized upon it immediately, a life raft of hope that a son who drank and smashed up cars was infinitely preferable to a son who killed his classmates.

  “How’d you like to be in their shoes?” she said.

  “What shoes? What are you talking about, Mary-Jean?”

  “It’s in the paper, Father,” Stafford said. “It’s all over the radio.”

  “Well, maybe I don’t have time to sit around listening to the radio and reading the newspaper, Stafford. Maybe I’ve got a few dry fields to worry about and not enough help with the new calves.”

  “They’ve got the man who did it, Michael.”

  “Did what?”

  “Killed that little girl. They caught him. His name is Steven Truscott. Oh my.”

  “What?”

  “It says here—it says he’s only fourteen.”

  “That can’t be right.”

  “Well, read it yourself then.”

  “I don’t want to read about it, Mary-Jean. I don’t even want to think about it.”