I picked up the gas-hammer and followed him. "Well then, what is it?"
"Do yeh have to be liked by everybody yeh know?" he asked.
"If someone doesn't like me, I'd like to know why," I said. "If I'm doing something wrong, I'd like to know, so I can stop doing it."
"You're just like all Americans," he said. "You're too worried about who likes you, and not enough concerned with gettin' the job done."
I thought about that.
Maybe he was right. But maybe not. I thought I was more concerned with results than with making friends. Certainly, I'd had my share of arguments to prove it.
"I don't think that's so," I said. "We're out here doing this job right now because I pressured Betty-John. And I don't think she likes me very much anymore because of it."
"Yeh," he acknowledged. "That's the other side of it. When yeh do finally decide to work for results, yeh don't care who yeh walk over."
I decided that Jack didn't have a very clear-cut philosophy behind his argument. He was just going to say whatever he needed to say to justify his dislike for me, and if the facts disagreed with his opinions, he wouldn't alter his opinion; he'd alter his justification.
We worked in silence for a while. It was hard work shooting the anchoring spikes into the ground; even with the gas-hammer. Abruptly, Jack said, "Yeh never properly mourned your mum, did yeh?"
"What's it to you?" I snapped.
Jack shook his head. "Nuthin'."
And then, the nickel dropped. I straightened and looked across at him. His expression was dark and unpleasant.
"You were sleeping with her, weren't you?" I asked.
He didn't answer. He was wrestling with the coil of razor-ribbon. But I knew it was the truth by the way he ignored me. There was something Jason had said, something about how to get the truth out of people. "Most people don't tell the truth, not really," Jason had said. "They've been trained not to. If you want to get the truth out of them, you have to startle them or get them angry. Most people only tell the truth when they get angry. So if you want to get the truth out of someone, you have to upset them first. It almost always works; the only drawback is that you'll have a really angry person on your hands for a while."
Hmm.
I said to Jack, "Did she give you a bargain rate? She did that for steady customers." I said it with deliberate calm.
Jack didn't flinch. I had to give him that much.
He laid down the roll of ribbon, straightened, brushed off his hands, and looked around for the boys. Dove and Tommy were a ways away, carefully unpacking the rest of the spikes.
Jack turned back to me. "Did yeh have to study to be an asshole or does it come naturally to yeh, Jim?" Colored by the musical lilt of his Welsh accent, the words were as pretty to listen to as they were mean.
"She was a whore!" I said.
"Mebbe so," he agreed, startling me. "We've all done some terrible things since this whole bad business began." He pulled off a glove and ran his hand roughly through his wavy hair, as if he was puzzling out the best way to say what he thought. "But there's still a difference between doin' terrible things and bein' a terrible person. Your mum was a fine lady, but she was lonely for your dad, and if she took her comfort where she could find it, who're yeh to sit in holy judgment? Your mum had a lot of love for these children here, and she did a lot of good things for them, and I don't much like listenin' to you spittin' on her good name."
"You think she was good? I can tell you stories-"
"Sure, and so can I. For every bad story yeh tell me, I could probably tell yeh six good ones to counter it."
"You know why she had so much love to give these kids?" I could feel the blood rushing to my face. "Because she sure as hell didn't waste any of it on her own. I'll tell you how much love she had! My sister moved off to Australia, she couldn't stand my mother's silence. And I was so pissed off at finding a different man in her bed every time I saw her, I finally stopped going to see her. You know she divorced me."
"You divorced her. She needed you, lad."
"That's what she said, too. She needed. Didn't you ever notice that everything was always about her and her loss, and what she needed now. She needed us to take care of her now. That's what she said. But who was going to take care of us? She wouldn't. All she did was demand. She screamed at me, every day-it was all my fault that nothing worked anymore, why couldn't I be a better son? She wouldn't leave me alone. She was driving me crazy. Why do you think I went into the army? I could have pleaded exemption, but it was the fastest way I could think of to get away from her."
"She was grievin', lad-"
"So was I! And she wasn't there for me, so why should I have been there for her!"
"It's not the same, lad. You lost your dad, and that's a hard one to handle for anybody. But what she lost is so much greater than what you lost that there's no comparison. She lost her lover, her mate, her friend, her companion, her partner. You lost your dad, but she lost her whole reason for living. Everything she ever did, she did for your Dad. She was so alone without him-yeh never noticed that, did yeh? The poor woman was in such pain."
"How do you know all this?" I demanded. I was holding one of the spikes like a club.
"She told me, she did," Jack said. "And no, I never did sleep with her. I could have. Lots of men did. She was a lovely lady-and a lady in every sense of the word-but they'd get up in the morning and they'd leave her. And she'd be alone again. Nah, it wasn't good. But they never sat with her and listened to her, never let her say all that she had to say. She reached out for yeh, Jim. Yeh and your sister. But Maggie was mourning the loss of her children and yeh were so wrapped up in yourself that neither of yeh were hearing. She needed yeh, that's why she plucked and pulled so hard. She was goin' down without a life jacket. And then, when she needed yeh the most, yeh ran away from her. What was she to do? She started grabbing for any man who would hold her, if even for a little while. The same way any drownin' person grabs for any piece of flotsam. Yeh only saw the grabbing. Yeh never saw the person drownin'." He snorted. "Probably, because it would have meant yeh would have had to stop worryin' about your own drownin' for a while."
"You son of a bitch," I said coldly. "You don't know what I've been through."
"You're right. And I don't rightly care to know, either. I think you're a selfish spoiled brat and I don't care to spend much time with yeh. I'm puttin' up these fences because Betty-John asked me to help yeh; that's the only reason." And then he added, "And mebbe a little out of respect for your mum. Now, are yeh going to hit me with that spike in your hand, or are yeh going to put it in the ground and get on with the job?"
I threw it down at his feet. That was stupid.
Jack just looked at me.
So I picked it up again and jammed it into the ground, anchoring a loop of razor-ribbon. I drove the spike in hard with the gas-hammer. And the next six too.
Jason was right. Getting a person angry was very enlightening. And then I stopped in frustration.
"What's the matter, son?" Jack asked abruptly.
"Nothing," I snapped back at him. "Everything. Dammit, I hate being wrong." I stood there with the gas-hammer poised over the seventh spike and I didn't have the strength to squeeze the trigger. I felt suddenly exhausted and sank to my knees. "I keep trying to do my best and it's never good enough for anybody."
I stopped myself from saying more. My throat hurt. My eyes hurt.