Love for a Deaf Rebel - Derrick King (top 100 novels .txt) 📗

the house. At night, I enjoyed time with my four-legged friends in the barn.

While painting the ceiling, I fell and broke my left arm. I called the ambulance and was ferried to the hospital. When I woke up, I had a cast from my hand to my shoulder. I had horses, sheep, goats, a dog, and a cat to care for, a house to finish, a woodstove to feed, and a job to do—with one arm. I was back at work the next day, wearing short-sleeve shirts and no tie. Groggy from opioid painkillers, I did the chores and continued finishing the house with my right arm, carrying tools in my belt pouch and holding nails in my teeth.

A few evenings later, I saw Pearl on the ferry. I sat down opposite her, my arm in a cast in a sling.

“Let’s have hot chocolate,” I signed as best I could with one arm.

“Only if you promise no arguing.”

When the ferry docked, she followed me off the gangway and up the hill to the pub.

Pearl sat as stone-faced as a statue. “You sign first.”

“I broke my arm. It hurts. I have to steer the jeep with my legs while I shift gears. It’s hard to climb the hayloft ladder with one arm.”

“Everyone is looking at me. Why don’t you sign the separation agreement?”

“After you refused to take the $3,000 draft, I gave it to your lawyer, Quinn. I told him it was all we had. Now he says I told him it was only half the money. That’s why.”

Pearl sniffed back a tear. “I don’t trust hearies anymore.”

I paid the bill. We walked out, followed by curious eyes. As we stepped into the cold, I asked Pearl if I could kiss her goodnight, but she ignored me.

She walked to her blue pickup truck and drove away.

Laurent sat down next to me on the ferry.

“I’m being transferred to Toronto,” he said with a sigh. “By the way, Pearl’s accusing me of stealing her little black address book.”

“That’s my address book! I don’t have a copy, so I’ll lose some of my friends.”

“She used to wave it around in the detachment. She thought it supported her accusations. Then, she couldn’t find it anymore. She thinks I swiped it. Imagine that!”

I smiled. “Thanks, Laurent. I saw her walk off the ferry and into Luisa’s car. She’s the agent who sold us the house. I went for a drive and saw her truck parked in front of Luisa’s. That’s her third home in five months! Her wandering is heartbreaking.”

“I feel bad about Pearl. There is no way forward for her. Either she recovers, realizes what she lost, and becomes depressed, or she doesn’t recover, remains delusional, and thinks she’s a survivor.”

“Imagine how she must feel, thinking everybody is against her, even those who love her. Terrified? Betrayed? Revengeful? And to have the urges—and the advisors—that tell her that the best solution is to run away from those who love her, even though they are the people who most care for her.”

I wrote a letter to Quinn offering a fair split. He ignored me, so I paid Clifford to contact him. Clifford reported Pearl was now convinced I was hiding money, so she wanted, beside her previous demands, $20,000 plus half the meat in our freezer. Her demand for money was outrageous because she knew that if we had money, we would have finished the house.

Clifford urged me to settle because there was no telling what she would do next. He promised to include a non-molestation clause in our agreement wherein we each promised not to disturb the other, the other’s friends, family, and colleagues, and the RCMP.

Down the Road

I sold my condo to raise the money to meet Pearl’s demand and to complete the house for my parents to rent.

At the end of June, I signed two documents: our separation agreement and a petition for a no-fault divorce to be used in one year if Pearl hadn’t returned. The law had changed to permit no-fault divorce after one year, not three, as from Eugénie. I paid out Pearl. I was separated and insolvent.

I sold our camper, used once. To clear Pearl’s items from the basement, I called Bowen Freight. Two movers came. I gave them a packing list, pointed to the items, and asked them to deliver them to Pearl at Luisa’s house.

“Is this all? Do it yourself, and save fifty bucks.”

“I can’t. Our separation agreement has a non-molestation clause, and I need a receipt or a witness. Please deliver her stuff to her personally, and ask her to initial the packing list. If she refuses, be my witnesses.”

The movers took Pearl’s goods and left. A week later, I called them because I had heard nothing about the delivery.

“Where is Pearl’s stuff?”

“At Luisa’s. Pearl didn’t sign the receipt.”

“Was Pearl home when you delivered the goods?”

“Maybe. Her pickup was there, so we put her stuff in it. It was raining, so we put a tarp over it. No charge for the tarp.”

“Do you mean Pearl found her stuff sitting in the back of her truck in the rain? She’ll think I dumped it there to say, ‘Fuck you.’”

“Sorry, but we didn’t want to see her. We’ve been hearing strange stories.”

I borrowed as much as I could to finish the house. I hired the best contractor I could find to do the framing, walls, ceilings, fireplace, and concrete floor. I did the wiring and plumbing, installed electric heating, and installed a Jacuzzi. The work took four months, but everything was on time, on budget, and done well. I was getting the job done, but without Pearl, my heart was no longer in it. We had learned from our mistakes, but Pearl would never benefit from our expensive education.

As I leaned over the ferry railing, Luisa brushed past me. “Go to the smoking lounge. Wait for me.” She walked away without pausing. I walked upstairs and entered the smoking lounge.

Luisa lit a cigarette.

“Pearl was living with me. I wanted to help her, and she could babysit my kids for free. But she’s out of her goddamn mind!” The others in the lounge pretended not to listen. “Holy Jesus, she’s nuts! She threatened my kid’s eye with a pencil! I shouted at her to get the fuck out of my house. I don’t want her crazy shit near my kids. I told her to take all her crap and go.”

It hurt me to picture the scene and hear Pearl was so lost, always running down the road, always away from danger, never finding sanctuary.

Gus asked me to join his Bowen Island Pentathlon team in a relay race for riding, running, swimming, canoeing, and cycling. He was the rider; I was the runner. I called Eugénie and invited her to Bowen Island to see the race. Our team came in last. Eugénie enjoyed the event and my jeep tour and was impressed by the property. The woman I once loved was visiting me, yet the woman I still loved was avoiding me.

The Bowen Island Country Fair marked the end of summer, and it was my father’s sixty-fifth birthday. My parents, brother, sister-in-law, and their baby visited for the occasion. It was a perfect, sunny day. Children had their faces painted while adults browsed stalls and played tug-of-war.

We were eating at a picnic table when my mother shouted, “Oh, my God! Derrick! Look behind you!”

I saw Pearl in the distance, alone. When she saw me, she stopped and stared at me with a faraway look on her face.

“I haven’t seen Pearl since she moved off the island a few months ago.”

My mother waved to her. “I must talk to her.”

Pearl walked toward us but stopped several meters away.

Mother walked to Pearl and hugged her. “Don’t do this,” my mother signed and said, struggling to remember the ASL she studied. “Derrick loves you. We all love you. Come back home.”

“Stop!” Pearl shook her head and walked away.

Mother returned to our table. “That’s not the Pearl I knew.”

“What’s she doing here?” said Father.

“I haven’t a clue. She has no friends left on Bowen.”

About an hour later, as we were standing by the bandstand listening to a jazz quintet, we saw Pearl in the crowd, still alone. None of us dared to wave. She walked toward us and, as she passed by my brother’s stroller, leaned forward to see her first niece. For her baby’s safety, my sister-in-law instinctively shoved the stroller beyond Pearl’s reach.

Pearl became manic.

“Psychological abuse! You gave me psychological abuse! I understand what you did to me! I’m so mad!”

We stared at her, as did other fair-goers. We were, for the first time, afraid to be near her.

Pearl turned and stormed off.

It was 27 August 1988. We never saw each other again.

The police called. “This is Corporal Argue from North Vancouver RCMP. Your wife is still coming in and harassing us about being in the drug trade. She never mentions you anymore; now she’s after us. We’d like to help her. Do you know anyone who can guide her to a mental health practitioner? Her doctor, a friend, a relative? How can we contact her parents?”

“Her mother lives on East Fourth, around the corner from you.”

“She told us her mother lives in Alberta!”

“She’s lying. Call me if there’s anything I can do.”

A couple of weeks later, I called Leo and asked him to search Pearl and me in the police databases.

He reported, “You have two records: when your dog was impounded and your wife tried to have you arrested. Pearl has a large file. She was recently arrested under Section 27.”

“What’s ‘Section 27’?”

“Section 27 of the Mental Health Act is for involuntary admission to a psychiatric facility for up to three days. Pearl accused her neighbors of theft and threatened them. The RCMP decided she was a hazard to herself or others, so she was admitted for examination. The record doesn’t say what happened after that because the police were no longer involved.”

“What impression does her file make?”

“Loony but harmless, not to be taken seriously. I saw her in the gym last week. Gold’s Gym is expensive—how can she afford it? I smiled, but she scowled and ignored me.”

My departure day grew closer. I savored each remaining day as the damp autumn grayness returned and the clocks were turned back to winter time. Every time I drove onto the Howe Sound Queen, I tried to be first so I could park at the bow, where I had an unobstructed view of the mountains and the stars over Howe Sound on clear nights while the ferry gently rolled. It was magic. I hated to leave. Pearl should have been with me.

I drove to Eagle Cliff and walked up to Stanley’s house, but the house had vanished as if it had never existed. Their trailer had been vandalized and was surrounded by weeds.

Alan and Rose took the sheep and goats to auction. As they led Mothergoat and Scapegoat away, Dream smashed through the barn door and ran after them; only the electrified gate stopped him from following his beloved caprine friends.

Dream’s owner came to walk him away. In two years, she never rode him once. I refilled the cat food, switched off the fence, and swept out the barn, now deserted except for the cat. I stared at the DE MAL EN PIS sign over the barn door, From Bad to Worse; how prophetic it had been.

I gave Whisky and the kittens away and sold the surplus fodder. Trout Lake Farm had earned $12,000 from horse boarding plus $5,000 from meat and hay, less $4,000 in expenses. It had consumed thirty tons of hay and grain, all of it handled by Pearl and me. It had been satisfying, unforgettable fun.

The finishing touch to the house was secondhand broadloom laid by a hippie who lived in a geodesic dome, drove a truck with a cedar-shake roof, and gave his customers marijuana.

My parents moved into the house and cared for it as if it were their own. They adopted the cat, had her spayed, and kept her on the porch near them instead of alone in the barn.

Bowen Freight shipped my goods. I walked around the property for the last time. I walked around the empty barn and listened to my footsteps on the concrete. I realized I hadn’t heard my footsteps in the barn for years because the sound had been masked by bleating, neighing, and grunting, and by the clatter of horseshoes.

At the