David Adams Richards - Mercy Among the Children

Terrieux lived in a small apartment on the fourth floor of a rooming house in the south end of Saint John, New Brunswick. One day in November of 1997 a man was waiting for him in the entranceway. His name was Lyle Henderson. He had a watchful look the kind that came, Terrieux suspected, from being big when young and having had bigger, older boys and men challenge him; or perhaps from being an adult to children when he was no more than a child himself.

He was about twenty-five, dressed in a white winter coat, blue sports jacket, and a pair of blue dress pants. He wore a ring on the index finger of his right hand, which could be used in any street fight and added to his appearance of a tavern bouncer.

Terrieuxs place was away from the city centre, among the newly renovated waterfront buildings and down a half-hidden alleyway, in an area that smelled of the docks and Irving pulp mill. There was a smell of diesel, and a shapeless conglomerate of depressed buildings and houses that ran off around a corner, where there was posted a Pepsi sign over an old convenience store, faded cigarette advertisements, and a newer advertisement for sanitary napkins. The door was open and cold air hung at the entrance.

Terrieux had retired as a police officer years ago, to join the Canadian navy. He had been a naval officer for some seven years. Then, feeling betrayed in a way by Canada, or by the failure of his marriage that came about because of his position, he had resigned and drifted to the States, where he had worked in New Orleans on the docks and in the Gulf of Mexico on an oil rig. He was heavy-set and strong enough that neither the work nor the rough life bothered him. He knew how to handle himself, something that showed on his face, the expression of which was an unapprehensive certainty in himself.

But, feeling displaced, he had come back to the Maritimes, with short stops in Virginia and Maryland, in 1995. His wife had gone years before, and was remarried to an accountant with W.P. and Maine. He sometimes saw her again and even now he felt a resentment from her that he would give anything to overcome. It was the sad look of a woman of forty-nine who had in her life dreams unfulfilled, and would blame forever her first love for this.

Now at fifty-seven he stood between fathers and their children, parolees and the parole board, a buffer between out-of-fashion men and those who wished to change the life of those men. He knew the men, because he was one of them. He knew the lives they led, lives no better or worse than others he had dealt with. And he was cynical of change in a way most intelligent people tend to be. That is, he was not cynical of change so much as cynical of those who would in fashion conscience alone commit themselves to it.

Lyle Henderson had a story to tell, perhaps about this very thing, and he was hoping Terrieux would listen. This was not an unusual request from the men that Terrieux knew, but was unusual for a boy of Lyles age and demeanour. The demeanour was something seen only in youth, a kind of hopefulness in spite of it all. In spite of the blast of misfortune that would crumble lives to powder. It seemed as if Lyle understood this, without benefit of much in his life. Perhaps while standing here in the doorway of the Empire Hotel he understood how much the man he was talking to had himself suffered. Perhaps they were reflections of each other, in youth and middle age, a mirror into the past and future of rural men caught in the worlds great new web.

Terrieux nodded, smiled, and invited Lyle upstairs.

Down below as they climbed toward the third landing they could see traffic and hear students getting on a bus to the university. The walls of the old wooden house, inside and out, were grey, with paint from a job done eleven years before. After a time they came to Terrieuxs small apartment at the back of the house.

In the yellow rooms with a portable television, a couch, and a few chairs scattered about the kitchen, Lyles face suddenly had a tenderness. To Terrieux it seemed a face that said it probably deserved much more tenderness than it had ever received and had given more also. Saying, even more, that tenderness was a commodity of valiant people. This is what Terrieux understood by Lyles look, which was almost, somehow, entirely compassionate.

Did you ever hear of a man named Mat Pit ? Lyle said, taking a deep breath. Or perhaps he took the breath just before he had asked (which would, Terrieux knew, give a different