Free Minister Without Portfolio by Michael Winter Page A

it on the electric stove and found powdered milk in the cupboard along with half a bag of cookies and scraped the frost from a window and stared across the dark white field at what must be Tender Morris’s house. Dark against a dark sky and field. It was hardly there. It wasn’t there except he knew it to be there. Drinking John’s tea and eating his cookies made him feel like he was John looking out at this house he’d only heard of while on manoeuvres in Afghanistan. There had been a woman living in Tender’s house, right up until she died a dozen years ago. An older woman. All alone—like me, Henry thought. This was Tender’s great-aunt. John had seen her a few times when he was a teenager, walking down to the back of the property with a bucket. A house promised to Tender Morris. These houses all along the shore had been lived in for a hundredyears by families but now they were being torn down by the dozen or only used in the summer because this generation has gone soft. John Hynes only came out to turn off the water in October and then maybe once more to fire up the snowmobile and say, bravely, that he’d been skidooing. The house—Tender’s house— was probably a wreck but his family wanted five thousand dollars for it, which is what the land is worth. He was buying land.

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    In the morning he found a pry bar in John’s shed and hooked it into the tongue of the yellow padlock but the lock wouldn’t give. What he ended up doing was wrenching the latch and screws from the frame of the storm door. Tender’s house, inside, smelled good. You could see your breath. He stood there in the kitchen, wondering about being there. He felt like an intruder. Over the back of a chair was a woman’s wool coat. In the parlour a sifted hill of snow—it was part of a larger snowbank that had come in through the front porch. The wind had blown snow particles under the door and into the parlour. It was pointing itself towards the chimney. Snow lived here now. Tender Morris had never spent a night here. He had inherited this house and, while he had plans for it, the truth is he wasn’t going to get around to those plans. Tender had admitted that himself. This house required an energy too large for the type of life Tender Morris was planning on living. Martha Groves lived in town and Tender would be in the army until he turned fifty-five. There was no chance of much attention finding its way to this place. Unless they had a kid.
    Pregnant. Silvia said she’s pregnant. What do you think of that, Tender Morris? Dead three months now thanks to me and your wife pregnant.
    He opened the hall door and swung it in his hands. A heavy well-hung door. He walked to the staircase and stroked the varnished newel post. He took the stairs and they did not creak. He had to lower his head to enter the bedrooms. The ceilings were low and the wallpaper was peeling off in thick sheets.
    He was trying to connect to the impulse he had to be here. He felt like he was starting a new life, venturing into new but old places.
    Newsprint and flour paste sleeping under the wallpaper. He searched for dates and found them, between the world wars. He read of fashion and baked beans and the religious judgment of loose behaviour. There were beds that were thirty years old and expensive when they were new. The aunt had a taste for the modern. The laminate bubbling off because of the damp. On a hook behind the door were hung three dresses. A pair of lady’s pumps. Under a seat cushion a leather pouch. A letter. It was typed, from an American military fellow on board a ship docked in St John’s: Dear Nellie. Her name was Nellie Morris.
    On the back of the pale blue paper a red mark—lipstick. It was a mouth. He read the letter. The letter was asking for a walk.
    He stood there in the room, utterly alone, and looked out the window. Others had looked out this window but how long ago and who. What was