community called Clonmel where an old girlfriend of his had grown up. He had spent one summer there working with a church theater group and had become a part of her family. They always welcomed him with fried fish, buttered hardo bread, and milk. They asked no questions. Mr. Robertson was a plump, cheerful man who worked for the Education Ministry, but farmed in St. Mary. His wife was a retired schoolteacher who still ran the small primary school built on their property. All their daughters, seven of them, were either in boarding school, at the university, working in Kingston, or abroad. The parents lived alone and welcomed Ferron’s visits. He would stay for several days, and they would let him stay aloof, go for long walks, or simply talk about anything at all. Nobody knew where he was. Nobody needed to know.
There was one farther destination he would use when he did not want to see anyone at all. He’d used it when his need to write had been greatest—or his need to make sense of his life. There was something about this place—like a place of punishment. Whenever he felt he’d hurt someone, or failed himself, he’d go there to wallow in self-pity, to suffer from the fear of being alone in the woods, with fantasies of being attacked or killed by some wandering person. The plyboard shack was in an open lot somewhere in Jack’s Hill. He’d discovered it when he was going on a long hike into the hills. Someone must have intended to live there, but changed their mind. They had probably thought better of such seclusion. It was stark, had scarcely any furniture but was quite dry. He’d made a mental note to return there when he needed to. One evening, on a whim, he decided to take the chance. It had been after an argument with Lucas, or something painful like that; he found the hut and spent the night. The fear nearly destroyed him, but he left the next morning feeling somewhat cleansed by the ordeal. He spent three more nights there during the very difficult period of examinations and final assignments; then it became a writing retreat. Nobody, as far as he could tell, knew about the hut, nobody except one of his hallmates. He thought he needed to let at least one person know, so that if he died there, the body would not be left to rot to nothing.
The last time he’d been there was when the wedding to Delores was in its first incarnation. Two weeks before the event, he’d panicked. He was also working on several postgraduate assignments. At home he grew silent. He could feel heaviness and gloom consuming him. It was not long before he knew he was going to go into the hills to wait out the wedding. He watched friends and relatives planning everything. The old man asked him what was wrong. He did not answer. The old man said laughingly, “You’re going to bolt, aren’t you?” Ferron laughed, and the two just sat there laughing, and nothing else was said.
He’d bolted the next night. It was that escape to the Jack’s Hill hideaway that now most occupied his thoughts . . .
* * *
When his sister and Delores eventually found the hut and tried to bring him home, he’d been there for several days. There were clothes strewn all over the bed and sweat-stained socks stank in a pile behind the door. Books and letters were scattered where he had left them after a frantic search for a lost chapter of his thesis. This document supposedly contained the secret to the completion of the project he was working on. He’d found it, but was wrong. The writing was weak and the only relevant aspect of the paper was a sentence that was in itself a naive misinterpretation. He stopped working on the assignment. He’d brought several packs of beer with him and stayed indoors drinking. After the beer he went hungry; he had no more money.
He’d spent hours standing at the window looking out into the woodlot. The earth was parched. Whatever grass survived the onslaught of the tractor tires was withered. Huge tire marks crisscrossed through the dried mud. The trees started uncertainly a few chains away from the building. There were stumps and felled trunks tangled among the hardy bramble. Gradually the forest assumed a sturdier character. Beyond that was darkness.
He’d seen the sky purple gently above the treeline, heard the faint sound of traffic on the highway about a mile away. It would get dark soon. Acid burned in his stomach. He’d felt hungry and worried, certain he had an ulcer, but the pink antacid fluid had dried up in the bottle that lay on its side on the floor. He couldn’t afford another bottle. Probably couldn’t even make it out to the highway . . .
* * *
The food was finished but that hadn’t worried him. Hunger would draw something out of him. It produced a mediocre poem about writing. The creative secretions stopped.
He went to bed early and did not sleep until it got light. No clear moment of structured thought came to him during the night. In the afternoon, when he could think clearly, he could not recall his thoughts of the night before. He burned the poem and placed another sheet of paper in the machine.
His eyes began to ache again. He rubbed them and winced at the pain. They felt heavy and watery. A grating irritation, like a tiny grain of gravel under the eyelid, cut into one eyeball. He held the eye open until it dripped tears. He hoped that would wash out the particle. When he let the lid fall, the pain was still there. He dragged the lamp with its naked bulb into the bathroom. He stared into the mirror, the light blazing under his chin. The image was grotesque. There were sunken holes on his eye sockets, his cheeks, and under his lip. He pulled open the damaged eye again, raised the lamp to the side, and winced as the glare pierced into his cornea. It was bloodshot, but there was no foreign particle in the eye. He blinked and blinked again. The eye still hurt. He put down the lamp and doused both eyes with water. His nose was flowing. The irritation got worse. He thought of rubbing the eye until the pain became so unbearable the eye would grow numb. He resisted the urge.
* * *
He must have fallen asleep because he did not hear the car drive up, nor for a time hear the two women whispering outside the door. He heard the knocking and the calling. He didn’t move. Nobody was supposed to know where he was. They continued to call. The knocking stopped. There was a long period of silence. Perhaps they feared that he was ignoring them in anger. Then it must have struck them that perhaps he was dying inside the room, so the knocking became more insistent. He did not move. He wanted them to go away.
He could hear them walking around the house. Clarice did most of the talking. She kept calling his name and then she started to shout. She was silent for a few seconds, then she sent Delores to check the back for a door. Delores said she could find no entry. Perhaps he wasn’t there and Harry was wrong. Was there another cottage nearby? Delores thought it better that they left. Clarice wouldn’t leave. She said he could be dying inside and in need of help. Delores didn’t say anything. Clarice began to knock on the door again. She kept calling his name.
He stayed still. His eyes were open now. He thought about what he must look like. His shorts were filthy but he had already worn the red ones so much that it became painful to put them on. He had grown used to the smell of his body. He made sure to keep a clean shirt and trousers in his bag for his return trip to town. He’d have to hitchhike home so it was important that he at least looked decent. His hair and beard hadn’t been combed for days. The knots were tight and hard. He didn’t want them to see him like that.
Clarice had started to push against the door. He thought of getting up to open it, but his body did not respond. He just lay there smiling and wondering whether she would manage to break it down. Clarice was a determined woman. Delores’s attempts at discouraging her were futile. Delores said that perhaps somebody else lived there and it could be very dangerous if they came home and found two women trying to break in. Clarice told her to either shut up and help or just go and sit in the car. Delores shut up and helped.
The door was rotten so after a few blows it cracked and Clarice got her hand through to unlock it. The room was filled with glaring white light. They had parked the car directly in front of the door and the headlights were on. He turned his head and squinted into the glare. Clarice stood with her legs slightly apart, silhouetted by the light. She was wearing a light skirt and her legs were outlined through the fabric. She whispered his name with caution. He kept
