— I hope not. Now come on. You know Mary doesn’t like supper to be kept waiting. She’s just like her mother in that way.
— Yes, said Stan.
Frank got up and opened the patio door and went inside the house. Stan followed.
Stan tried to put the conversation with Frank out of his head, but a few days after Thanksgiving his telephone rang. A woman’s voice was on the other end.
— Is this Mr. Maitland?
— Yes, this is Stan Maitland here.
— Mr. Maitland, this is Ellie Lacroix calling. I wondered if you’d still want to speak with me.
He met with her at one o’clock that afternoon. They went to the Owl Cafe and sat in a booth halfway to the back. He had a roast beef sandwich and a cup of tea, and Eleanor Lacroix had a bowl of the day’s soup. She just moved her spoon around in it.
— I apologize, Mr. Maitland.
— Call me Stan, and I don’t know what you’re apologizing for.
— How I spoke to you when you came to see me.
He put his sandwich on the plate and sat back.
— I know this has been a real upset to you, Ellie, but I also know that that’s not why you weren’t so quick to chat with me.
— That’s true.
— I knew your family for a long time. It’s only been the last twenty years or so, which at your age would seem a lot longer to you than it does to me, that I haven’t had much of an eye on you.
— I don’t know how old we were, said Eleanor. Maybe six or seven. You and another cop arrested my dad one night. We, me and Judy, we didn’t even know what to think about that. We thought you were taking him to jail but when we got up the next morning he was there at the breakfast table. He looked like he hadn’t slept all night.
— Your dad didn’t sleep that night, you’re right about that. He had a long walk back from where we dropped him off.
— Why would you do something like that, Mr. Maitland?
— Your dad, Aurel, he liked to have a drink, didn’t he.
— He drank. But he never laid a finger on Judy or me.
— You can’t say the same about how he was with your mother, can you.
Eleanor had the soup spoon closed in her fist. She lifted it in a strange way, as though to emphasize something, and then she put it on the table.
— I … No, I can’t say that.
— That particular night he got very rough with your mother, said Stan. I don’t know how much of this you might of known about or not, mind, but the neighbours called us. It was me and Dick Shannon who went over to your place. Ellie, I was a cop for a long time. I did things, I don’t know now if I was right or wrong or what-all, but I did things in a certain way that I thought was right. I didn’t always care to see a man go to jail when I thought I could maybe help him come around to a better way of seeing things.
— So you hauled my dad out to some back road and kicked the hell out of him.
— No, Ellie. I never once had any kind of a battle with your dad. All I did was, I had a long talk with him and then gave him a good walk home to think it over. Do you remember him getting rough with your mother after that night?
— No, said Eleanor. I don’t. Look, Mr. Maitland-Stan. My dad had a lot of problems. He used to have nightmares, from the war, I guess, although that was something he never talked about. I know he got shelled pretty bad and there were some scars on his leg. Anyway, he drank too much. He had a lot of trouble keeping a job. I know. I know. But the first thing I remember in my whole life, me and Judy are sitting on my dad’s knee, and he’s telling us the story of Baptiste and the Devil, my favourite. He could tell it better than anybody else. He talked French so fast you could barely understand him. I loved my dad.
Eleanor looked out the window. Stan took a bite of his sandwich.
— I never had much reason to come see your dad after that night. Which is why I didn’t see you or your sister grow up.
— You want to talk about my sister, is that right?
— Yes.
— Don’t you think I’ve answered all the questions the police had for me?
— Well, the only person’s behalf I’m asking on is my own.
She nodded and said: Okay. But I want to know some things first, Stan. I want to hear your side. My dad used to say you had it out for our whole family.
— Is that what he said?
— He told me what happened with his older brothers. What do you have to say?
Stan put his hands together under the table. He thought how to weigh his response, then it came to him how they were in the wrong place for it altogether.
— It’s a nice day, Ellie. A little bit chilly but not so bad if you’re moving. Would you care to go for a walk?
At the corner of Bayview Street and Chippewa Avenue was a three-storey brown-brick. Stan and Eleanor stood across the street. He pointed to the row of windows along the second floor.
— I had a boxing clubhouse up there. The parish priest, this was Father O’Leary, signed a lease on the room. Me and him, we both thought if we could give the boys from town some better things to do it would keep them out of trouble. I was twenty-four years old and I’d just finished my own boxing career and I came back here and I got hired as a constable pretty quick. When I wasn’t being a cop, I was up there with O’Leary, who’d been a decent welterweight in the seminary. I was up there with him teaching boys from around town how to box. I don’t know how it works for girls, but I think with a boy, he pretty near can’t help it- when he’s changing from boy to man, he’s got a certain taste for breaking things. If you show him how to do it right, then it’s a good way for him and his chums to have a couple go-rounds in the ring and get all that out of them, instead of later on that same night busting chairs or bottles over each other’s heads. You see?
She looked speculative, said: Maybe. I don’t remember me or Judy ever wanting to break bottles on people’s heads.
— That’s why I don’t know how it is for girls. Anyhow, your uncle Darien was one of the best natural fighters I ever saw. Your uncle Remi was good too, but Darien was something. He was just barely a middleweight. They didn’t have a whole lot to eat out at your grandmother’s place, and your uncles never filled out right, but Darien still classed as a middleweight. He could throw these hooks like a machine gun. A lot of the other boys in the club quit sparring with him.
— I never met my uncles.
— I know you didn’t. They’ve been gone a long time. Would you walk a ways with me? I guess you’re not working at the bank today.
— No. Not today.
Stan took a last look at the windows where he’d trained local boys in the art of boxing. Then he and Eleanor walked along Chippewa in the direction of the river.
— I thought Darien had the makings of a professional fighter. He’d of been, oh, maybe seventeen at the time. Those were pretty lean years. Your uncle made a bit of a name for himself. The men on relief, they had a lot of love for a kid like Darien who came from nothing. They’d come out by the dozens, fifty of them, a hundred, to see him fight. We couldn’t fit them in the clubhouse any more. Anyway, we got going so as I was coach and trainer and Father O’Leary was the manager. We brought on my old cut-man. For a little while things were pretty good. Pretty good. Then there was this fight at the Orangemen’s Hall in Orillia.
— Orillia, said Eleanor. Yes. My dad talked about that a little bit.
— Jack Watts, said Stan. He wasn’t any kind of goddamn middleweight but he made the weigh-in for it. He had this haymaker he’d throw. I should of known better. It got to the fourth round and your uncle Darien was on the
