By the time we hung up, I had been gone from the barn for ten minutes and my fear mounted. What was Brassard doing in there? I ran back out and was relieved to find him sitting where I’d left him.
I had no script for this. At the legal aid office, we had often dealt with alcohol-fueled domestic abuse or street crime or car accidents, but I always had a desk and a wall of paperwork to protect me from my clients. I never got close enough to their lives to get my hands dirty. I had no experience with the murky ambivalences and painful betrayals and family-shattering choices they faced. I could recommend interventions, rehabilitations, restraining orders, custody transfers, but I had never implemented them or enforced them, never saw how they played out, face-to-face, in real people’s lives.
At a loss, I knelt down in front of Brassard and put my hands on his knees and stared into his face as if, by force of will, I could wake him from this awful spell.
He looked at me with blurry affection. Then he said, pleased at the revelation, “I know what it is. My daughter. Jane. Sometimes you look a little like her, Annie. Same age, about. Hair, same. Pretty girl, Jane. That’s what it is.”
“Let’s go to the house.”
“Broke my heart she and Diz couldn’t get along. Couldn’t talk sense to either of em. Damn Diz anyhow.”
“Let’s go. Get up now.”
He shook his head, no, mimed a pugilistic pout of resistance. His affect had changed: A sly humor crept into his expressions and gestures.
“You’re not going near the gas, Jim. You’re not going out of this room except to the house.”
He tried to lean back against the workbench, but it was farther than he’d expected and his shoulders fell hard against it. He reclined there, legs spread wide, boots planted flat, apparently comfortable despite the awkwardness of his position. I hated seeing him like this, pathetic and visibly slackening.
“What did Diz do? When this happened before? Your drinking.”
“That business back when?” He yawned. “Yes, Diz. Didn’t want to cross that gal. No, you did not!” He chuckled at the very thought.
I realized that whatever Diz had done, I couldn’t do it. I could argue, I could threaten, but I’d never be able to strike at someone I loved. Of course I held a pocket of anger deep in me, that awful pit where every resentment and hurt lodges, but couldn’t imagine turning it against someone I cared for, even for the best of reasons. Diz could, had.
“Get up,” I said. “We’re going to the house.”
“I’m fine right here. You go on ahead.” Still being clever, a disobedient boy. The booze was hitting him hard now.
Without planning it, I stood and with all my strength lifted his big feet up off the floor. His weight shifted and his shoulders slid past the edge of the workbench so that he toppled back under it, clattering into the haphazard buckets, tools, and odd machine parts that had collected there. He lay there for a moment, confused, lower body still up on the bale, shoulders and head tangled in gear. Then he twisted and thrashed, clanking, trying to right himself. He couldn’t do it and after a moment lay back, flummoxed.
With a series of jerks, I got the hay bale out from beneath him so that his body slid to the floor. That allowed him to get his arms under him, and he half rolled and curled forward to get his head clear of the workbench top. I took one arm and heaved to help him up. He leaned unsteadily against the workbench as I swiped dirty hay off his clothes.
I gripped his hand and pulled him back to the house. He had passed the point of resistance. His affect of sly humor had vanished and left no emotion or attitude at all in its place. He was simply flat, void. I sat him on the mudroom bench, pulled off his boots, and wrestled him out of his wool jacket.
“Go to the bathroom,” I told him. I led him to the door and pushed him inside.
I heard him peeing, then the water running in the sink as he reflexively washed his hands.
When he tottered out, I led him to his recliner and positioned him and let him fall into its embrace, a dead weight. I pulled the lever so that he was almost horizontal, deep between the chair’s overstuffed arms. He wasn’t asleep, just flaccid, a man made of melting plastic.
I checked the answering machine, but nobody had called while I was out retrieving Brassard. The problem was that I had cows to deal with. They would be milling into the paddock. I had to get some hay to them, and I needed to run water to the drinking troughs out there. And fifteen other chores to do before evening milking. The day’s cycle was relentless, and I couldn’t stay in the house to make sure Brassard didn’t get up and do something dangerous. I waited a few minutes hoping that Will or Erik would call, then gave up and went to rummage in the chest of drawers in the kitchen. I found some duct tape that I used to attach the chair’s lift lever to its frame. He wouldn’t be able to pull it back to sitting position and, I hoped, wouldn’t be able to stand up.
Will returned as Lynn and Robin and I were doing the afternoon milking. I heard his car rev in the farmyard and ran out to greet him. He threw open
