"On my honour I'd have to tell," Rudy said.

"On your honour - your honour? You know all those rumours about you - if one got back to yer wife - and her sick - why should I protect you?"

"I don't want you to talk about Gladys like that."

"Of course not," Mathew said quickly, with feigned respect. "But think what will happen if the bridge is sabotaged - no more Porier. It will help you when it comes time for our -your - manna. Then you will hire me as your foreman - and I will do a better job than anyone. If the bridge goes they will have to point the finger at someone - Sydney, say - then we are really in the clear for ever and ever! No one would accuse you of anything after that! I don't mean to get you scared - but just to let you know our bind is not over - not right yet. Before you came to me yesterday I didn't consider doing the bridge a smart move. But now I see it is our only option. We got to do things now fast - set the snare - because already Sydney has gone up to the cops."

"He has?"

"Well - think! For cripes sake - what would you have done if yer wife was accused?"

"I'd go to the cops."

"There -" Mathew sniffed. "So now is the time to do something else - to make sure - that's all I am attempting to do, make sure - for yer sake, not mine! I never give a damn for myself. Set the snare now - set it now. Who is on the bridge all the time doing all the shit jobs? Sydney. Well, maybe he got tired of doing them - maybe he wanted to get back at Leo - I think that's probably how it is! After the sabotage Leo has no one to turn to - Porier is fired - you come in, straighten this business out - what more could a person ask? You hire me as foreman as I say! All of a sudden Sydney goes to jail, and Elly begins to see you for who you really are -Gladys is still your wife - and she is a good woman - but look who you will have on the side."

Rudy drank more water. He knew that if at any time until his life was over Mathew Pit found him disposable, the loyalty he believed he had built up would dissipate in a whiff of blue autumn sky. And he also knew this conversation was absolute proof of it. This in fact was what Mathew was telling him. Mathew's talk was always underscored with conditions that made people as diverse as Rudy and the Sheppard brothers fear him. There was no mention of blackmail, but Rudy had put his trust in a man who had no real feelings toward him. And this was the story of Rudy's life, because he was a weak man who allowed others to dictate to him what life should be. The bridge would be sabotaged to keep Rudy in line as much as anything. So who really was the snare being set for?

"I don't care what happens to the bridge - but if it goes down, there will be hell to pay," he said as gruffly as he could, hoping that this comment alone would be enough to dissuade Mathew.

"Oh, that's what makes it fun," Mathew said, his light blue eyes unnerving.

Rudy stood, put on his white down winter coat that gave his face the youthful appearance of a red-cheeked teenager, and headed for the door, with the salt-and-pepper hat on his head. Lights shone out on the snowbanks and made everything warm, and from behind him there was the odour of gin, which Cynthia loved, and marijuana, on which Mathew planned to spend the five hundred dollars after Christmas.

Mathew followed him, begging him to stay (for he was worried about what Rudy might do or say), and at the last minute called for Cynthia. She came into the kitchen just in time.

"Rudy," Cynthia said. She waved a tiny bag of cocaine.

Rudy sheepishly climbed the outdoor steps again, almost slip ping on the black ice. He pretended he was angry and had business on his mind, and did not want to see her. He pretended (as he had with my mother) that he was important but did not know he was important. He pretended that he could resist her. Yet in the light her legs were bare. She was wearing a pink nightie and smelled of bath oil. She looked hurt when he told her he wasn't going to stay. But when she turned away, he lifted her nightie. Except for bikini panties she was naked underneath.

"Oh, you always do this," she said, quickly running her tongue over her teeth, and pressing her body against his.

He tried to turn away, but her words made that impossible. Cynthia kissed him with her tongue, opened her eyes while his were still closed, glanced at her brother, and winked.

THIRTEEN.

After Rudy went home Mathew left the old house. In the dark with its two pointed gables the house looked sinister, desolate as it was, and far away from town. The fire that my grandfather and later my father were blamed for had caused a black veil of trees and uprooted stumps, and dark-watered ditches surrounded them.

People would pass this house on the way to other jurisdictions and other lives. Linguistic professors from the university in Fredericton would not know that Cynthia could do a crossword puzzle in ten minutes; nor computer analysts know that Mathew knew the size of every truck and car engine by the sound of a one-second rev of that engine. That did not matter to people passing by a house with junked cars and cannibalized engines in the back yard.

The world was fast moving on, and from these autumn skies Mathew and Cynthia saw the new information age staggering the previous ages into submission. Once or twice in their lives people from Mathew's background would have a moment where they would prick the national consciousness; they would be interviewed and condescended to, with such gaiety of dismissal it wasn't even registered by our more educated countrymen. Overall, men like Mathew were laughed at, ridiculed or feared most of their lives. If there was bigotry against First Nations they were accused of it (even though he had worked with First Nations men and women far more than those professors or writers who would accuse him). If there was intolerance they were accused, even though he had worked on roads and shared his bread with black men from Africville. Chauvinism they were accused of, even though he thought of Cynthia as his superior.

The world had gone on, and had been parcelled into manageable concerns; and this world left him and his sister out. Well, in some way it still allowed for his sister, for her gender demanded it. But he knew that now, at thirty-three years of age, time was falling away from him. If there was no money soon, he would have to go back on welfare. He hated and no longer wanted that. Just once he too would like to have people notice him. And Rudy was his key. He could do the bridge not to positively influence Leo about Rudy, but to keep Rudy, whom he was sure would someday be wealthy, under his thumb. This was his intention, and Rudy had seen it in a second. But somewhere in his heart Mathew knew he was making a mistake.

He turned with purpose and crossed the road into the dark freezing autumn wood. He walked along a worn path - worn by children, and by himself and Sydney and Connie when they were children, and by their parents when they were children - and down a slope. In the black night where others would lose their way his direction was sure and his strides bold and purposeful. His arms and legs were thick, his back broad and strong.

He stopped. There was something walking up the path, in a sway-backed meandering way. As Mathew stood still watching it the bear moved, groggy with a year's supply of fat for the winter. He waited for the bear, who had not seen him - for he had nowhere to run, and he wouldn't turn his back on it. Just when the bear got close it stopped dead, sniffed the air, and at the same moment Mathew threw out his right hand and hit the bear on the snout with a crash. The bear bleated rushing into the trees, and Mathew lighted a cigarette and continued on. They were so poor in the mid-fifties his father would kill a bear each fall, grind the meat, boil the bones for stew and the fat for soap; this is what Mathew remembered of his childhood - the old house smelling of bear fat dripping into soap, and bear stew on his plate for supper. He had never feared a bear after that. He had, however, always feared his father.

Mathew turned into Connie Devlin's lane at two o'clock in the morning after Leo had sent my mother and father from his house. He entered through the back door, by the small, well-kept kitchen, opening the lock with a Buck knife, and walked into Devlin's bedroom and woke him up with a shove.

"You want to help me out of a scrape," he said, "and get back at Sydney Henderson once and for all?"

Connie opened his eyes slowly, without fear, looked at his wristwatch, and rubbed his nose quickly. His face was beet red, like a baby having eaten jam, and he sat up.

"What kind of scrape -?"

"I want to knock the span down - it has to be replaced anyway. Sydney will get blamed - it won't take too much starch out of it - just seven or eight feet - the place you guys are worried about. They have a abutment to keep things off it - I think driving the company half-ton ahead onto it should do the trick."

"Why would he want to knock the bridge down? Why would I do that? I don't understand."

"I swear there'll be big money in it for us - it's gotta go - the span's gotta go."

"Who's paying you to do this?"

Mathew thought for a moment. "Rudy Bellanger will pay us - if it's done right -"

"But that's his own company."

"That's what makes it legal."

Connie said he had just gotten rehired after a dispute and didn't want to chance anything. He did not tell Mathew that Sydney had gotten him rehired under stringent conditions.

"It is a awful case," Mathew said. "Sydney was just caught stealing a bunch of money from Leo -"

"God, where? At the bridge?"

"No - at the house - Elly did it."

"Elly!"

"I think so - but they will try to blame it on you - just as always."

Connie looked at him curiously. "Me -?"

"Well, I can't be sure - but we'll do something very big," Mathew said. "It's a shot into the future for us both. You just help me with the span -" He produced a stick of dynamite he had had in his possession for a long time. "Just let part of a span fall into the river - and Rudy will pay us four thousand apiece."

"Four thousand apiece?"

"Yes - four thousand apiece. It'll be good for Rudy -Rudy needs our help - we love Rudy, you and I."

"Love Rudy?"

"Well, I've always had affection for Rudy - I don't know about you."

"Sure," Connie Devlin said, and wiggling his toes in his big red socks (he always slept with socks on like he had as a child because of cold toes) sneezed and coughed. He said sure, because he didn't want to chance what would happen if he said no. He was Mathew's first cousin. He had usually been in on things of this sort, in one fashion or another. Just by Mathew's face, he knew Elly had done no such thing as rob the house. Mathew had.

And this showed the difference between Mathew and his two friends. Connie had as much on Mathew as Mathew ever had on Rudy Bellanger. But what Connie knew kept him both faithful and silent; what Mathew knew about Rudy kept him arrogant and dangerous.

Connie Devlin listened to these plans. He would turn out the lights the night Mathew drove the truck across the abutment and threw the dynamite. Mathew knew nothing about explosives, but he knew Sydney did. It would be considered Sydney's fault. Everything would work from that.

Cynthia had disapproved of the robbery because everything Mathew had done so far had failed. Then tonight, before Rudy visited, she told him that he soon better prove that he could do things right or she would think of him as others did.

"And how is that - how do others think of me?"

"Well - a bigmouth blowhard," she said, "but underneath - a gutless fool."

His eyes jumped slightly when he looked at her. Still, had she not said this to him, he would never have rethought the dynamite or the bridge.

Now he left Connie and started his trek toward home.

Cynthia had been envious of the rich and powerful she saw as a child. Politicians and mavericks from all walks of life, some who owned cottages along the bay shore. Families from places like Montreal and Oshawa, Ottawa and Toronto. People so adept at dismissing these wide-eyed children in those small fishing houses. She wanted more than anything to be like them.

Mathew was her sole resource, but her mind was brilliant enough to see avenues where Mathew did not go. Right to McVicer himself, if need be.

She did not know that her remarks about Mathew had caused a change in him - and that he would take a chance on the bridge just for hellery.

It was on her part a rather significant mistake.

FOURTEEN.

As news of the robbery spread, my father was looked upon with more suspicion, and men stayed away from him. A week or so after Connie Devlin was allowed back onsite I took Dad's dinner to him, carrying it as if I was a waiter, in joy that I had something to deliver my dad. My father came to meet me, patted my head, and went to sit with Connie to eat his lunch. Devlin turned and said loudly: "I ain't no robber rubberhead - go sit yerself somewhere else before ya contamp-inate me with yer robber germs -"

He got a great laugh out of this, which is what he was hoping for. I trembled with rage. My father sat with his eyes down the longest time, and then looked over at me.

"Get along to school, son," he said.

Autumn and I did not know about the robbery until we heard about it at school. And my first reaction was how ordinary it was for us to be blamed for this.

I always wore a tie to school - it was as if my mother wanted to isolate me even more. A tie, a heavy white shirt, old suit pants, and black shoes. Autumn always wore a dress, white stockings, and a pair of black patent leather shoes that had once belonged to Mother herself. Her eyes were red, her eyelashes thin and weak. One day after she was teased she whispered in my ear: "I will someday have eyes to stare the world in the face -and my eyes, Lyle dear - well, my eyes will be Autumn blue."

Still, we were dressed the way my mother believed children should be dressed to go out, It was genteelly countrified. That I did not know how to throw a punch to protect us made it dangerous. The boys of my youth valiantly tried to get me to fight - two or three of them at a time, calling me "little Lord Fauntleroy."

Autumn stood behind me when they teased her. Did I hit them back? No - because my father had drilled into me the vanity and falseness of violence. So I turned away ashamed, and endured with my sister the callous and chronic idiocy of others. My mother was called a thief, and then a whore. They told me she drank gin at Polly's and had her panties taken off by Rudy Bellanger.

Across the brook the days got shorter and the wind blew the substance of hard snow over the tufts of hard broken fields. I would go home and stare at my mother in strange agony. I could not ask her if this was true.

I was usually up before breakfast because I would stoke the stove, or sometimes Autumn and I would be sent out to meet the milk truck at the top of the lane. Autumn did well in school and I did not. Nor did I do that well in sports. But I did do well in the woods. Already I had explored the woods and surrounding area, and I had seen where the salmon would run close to shore on their journey into our waters.

I saw some danger in the woods. I knew what it was like to get turned around and lost. Usually as the cold days came and the snow fell I planned for trips to snare rabbits and trap mink - things I could sell for some extra money. I did not want the money for myself. I was saving to buy Autumn contacts to make her eyes the blue she desired. I could find mink tracks, and rabbit, of course, and was beginning to notice coyote tracks as they came into our area. The coyotes here were almost the size of wolves, mating as they did with wild or running dogs.

I wore a heavy coat, a hunting vest, and lined boots, and spent my afternoons away from everyone, and could run comfortably and break a trail on snowshoes.

Trenton, Mathew's young brother, was almost nineteen but looked like a child. He wandered about the bridge worksite, and went there - in spite of people telling him to stay away - to collect nails and loose cement, putty and wire. Not only my father but Porier had to help him across the road because of the transport trucks turning toward the detour. The snow fell often that year and he was in danger of being injured.

The old woman was too tired to bother following him, as she once did, and though she sometimes kept him inside, he had enough wits to get out by himself. But my father's concern hit a snag with Mathew, who said he didn't want my father in his yard. Perhaps Mathew feared Trenton divulging something -it is only a guess. Still, Sydney started walking Trenton home. The Pits did not like this. Mathew came outside one night and told my father not to bring the boy home again. I was with them.

"But I don't mind doing it," Sydney said.

"Don't matter - stay away from the boy - stay away from him - you hear - I don't want him with you!"

"It's just that the bridge -" my father started to explain.

"The bridge," Mat piped up. "All as we hear day and night is goddamn heavy equipment on that bridge - it shouldn't be built here at all - it's all just political - we didn't have a say and don't have a cent from it. And yer as much a part of it - ya poisoned my chances at a job - yer not going to be playing about with this youngster -"

Trenton wandered to the site the next day. So Sydney decided to have a conversation with the old woman, Alvina Pit, without Mathew being there. He went across Arron Brook to the Pit house after supper on December 18, 1982. White smoke drifted out of their chimney, and fresh raw snow sat upon the aging stumps behind the house, while a glow from outside Christmas lights lighted the sky farther down the snowy road.

Alvina was outside decorating the tree. In her look, the small blunt nose, the eyes a little close together, her soft lips, my father could see Cynthia in thirty years.

Alvina looked at him the way she had been taught to, as if his rationale, since too obscure for most people, was trickery, as Mathew had warned her it would be. She was like many unthinking women who bowed to their sons.

"I think I should keep an eye on Trenton," he said. "Because once he gets out of sight of Mat and you he is on his own."

"I look out for him all he needs," she said swiftly, because she wanted him to know he was one of the people Mat and she would protect her son from. She knew all about how he humiliated Mathew. Mathew told her.

My father stared at her old coat and frayed scarf and watched her work. There was a wisping sound of snow at the back of their house, the sky had darkened, and wind had blackened the old iced-over sawhorses in the corner of the yard. Sydney looked at the upstairs window when a light went on, and saw Cynthia in the hallway.

"You don't have to run after him -" Sydney said. "I don't mind bringing him back."

"He is our responsibility, thank you very much - you don't seem to have done much for your own!" She did not look at him as she worked, but looked at the spruce tree she was trying to pin Christmas lights to.

Alvina felt justified in mistrusting him - a grown man who was mocked by the community for being odd, and was considered strange. Strange in Alvina's mind meant only one thing, though she would never say this aloud.

Grabbing my father by the coat, as if this was the way to make herself heard, she said Trenton's life was in God's hands. Trenton, she maintained, was a child of her old age, and therefore God had been wise enough to make him how he was. He brought joy to everyone.

Trenton huddled in an old man's overalls and bib beside her as Sydney took out the candy cane he had brought and handed it to him.

Alvina continued, "God has every hair on Trenton's head numbered in his great mind." (She repeated just what Father Porier had told her.) Sydney nodded. "I know he does, Alvina. But what does that matter if tomorrow night he is killed on the bridge!"

This statement frightened her. "If you go near him again I will get the police!" She walked away across the frost-bulked yard, her heavy black-seamed nylons dragging at her ankles.

Trenton turned and ran, his back bent and his legs flaying like a daddy longlegs, a candy cane in his mitten.

Dad came back home, and told us what was said, almost word for word. So, like other conversations I have heard secondhand, I have committed them to memory and now relate them to you. Sydney told my mother he was wrong in what he had just said; and it was said in a rash way to convince her.