The Boy Page 10

  “I know,” she whispered. And she vowed that she would do her damnedest to see Dan that way, as a brother, not as a threat.

  They plan to wait a month or two to tell Daniel about the new baby they are expecting, but now that Phyllis knows and Marcy will be coming over after school, he needs to be in the loop. By the time Jake walks through the door for supper, it’s past eight, and blessedly, Jon is asleep and likely to last through the night. The school has called again, and an RCMP officer has dropped by to let them know that if Dan is caught stealing cigarettes again, the woman who owns the coffee shop is going to ask for charges to be laid.

  “I’ll look after it,” Jake says, and thuds down the basement stairs to the corner they’ve carpeted and furnished with a sofa and television for Dan and the friends who’ve never appeared.

  Now the pizza Jake picked up on the way home has been on hold in the oven for so long, the kitchen so rank with the smell of cheese, Louise has to stand on the back step and breathe the cold night to keep even the weak tea she’s sipping from rising in her throat. When she hears the scraping of kitchen chairs, she steps back inside.

  Jake and Daniel are silently chewing the rubbery cheese. Both of them look up at her as though the misery of this moment might be her doing. Or so it feels to her. She pulls her chair far enough from the table that she doesn’t have to look at the pizza sweating its grease onto the paper napkins they’ve thrown down instead of plates.

  Jake swallows, mops his lips with the napkin and leans back in his chair. “Okay, we’ve got this sorted out. There’s going to be no more shenanigans. Right, Dan?” The boy ducks his chin. This will have to pass for a nod. “What do you have to say to Louise?”

  Daniel grabs up another piece of pizza and crams half of it into his mouth, chewing with his eyes on Louise, his lips shiny with grease. Mouth still half full, he mumbles, “Sorry I embarrassed you by getting in trouble.”

  “Embarrassed me? This is not about me, Daniel.” She looks to Jake for help, but how can he, when this seems to be coming from him?

  “All right then.” Jake stands up and brings a mug and the pot of lukewarm tea to the table. “Now, Dan, we’ve got some other news here. All the more reason for you to behave. You’re going to have another little brother or sister in the summer.”

  It’s all she can do to keep from groaning and covering her face with her hands. How can a man with the impeccable timing that makes him a top salesman miss all the cues at his own table?

  Daniel spits a chewed mouthful of pizza into his hand, tosses it onto the cardboard tray and pushes away from the table. The raw mix of disgust and fury on the boy’s face hits her like a fist. His lip curls and he is looking only at her. “Great. You can just be fat and ugly forever that way. Can’t you guys find anything else to do?”

  Jake is out of his chair so fast, Louise grabs his arm. But he’s stopped, just as she is, by the sudden crumpling of Danny’s face. The boy is up the stairs and almost to his room before they hear a choking sound halfway between a sob and a shout. Then the bedroom door slams.

  Jake, surprisingly calm, begins to clear the table, shoving pizza box, leftover slices and all into the garbage. “He’ll get it over it,” he says. “He’s still new at being the big brother. He’ll learn.”

  By the time Lauren is born, the big brother is no longer living with them. Daniel is on probation, and has been literally farmed out to another of Jake’s kin, this one the brother of Phyllis’s husband, Paul. These relatives have grown children, all of them off living in the city, and it’s been agreed that it would benefit both them and Daniel if he lived with them and provided an extra hand around the place. Their farm is twenty miles from town, and Dan has not been allowed to take his bike or skateboard with him. Once school starts, the trips into town and back on the school bus every day will be his only outings for the next four months, except for Sunday dinners at home, for which Jake will pick him up. This is the arrangement Jake came up with without even talking to Louise. She didn’t attend the pre-court visit with the social worker, but she can imagine the cold white cast of Jake’s face when he agreed to the foster home arrangement. Louise doesn’t doubt for a minute that her presence as

  “stepmother” is considered an obstacle to Dan’s rehabilitation, treatment, whatever the hell these people feel he needs to stop him stealing. And lying. And spying. She wonders if the social worker knows that all of this began long before Louise’s entry into the family. But then why would Jake offer that information, unless someone specifically asked? Jake volunteers nothing. He hates these people peering into his home, taking charge of his son.

  Louise and Lauren have been home from the hospital for two days when Jake drives out to the farm to pick up Daniel for his Sunday visit. Louise, exhausted from feeding Lauren every two hours, puts Jon in the playpen with a pile of toys and curls up on the sofa with the baby. Fortunately, Jonathan is a placid child, still content to crawl, to sit for long periods quietly examining the toys around him. Daniel is the one who can elicit the most enthusiasm from the wee boy, but his interest in Jon seldom lasts through more than five minutes of rolling a ball across the floor. Still, he asked for a picture of his little brother and Louise knows, from emptying the pockets of his jeans to do laundry, that he carries it in his back pocket in a plastic folder with the learner’s permit Jake reluctantly agreed to the day after Dan’s fourteenth birthday. The thought of Daniel

  driving, even with adult supervision, horrifies Louise, but she kept her mouth shut. Always, it seems, it’s the stepmother protesting. And really, the piece of paper makes no difference. Permit or not, supervised by an adult or not, it’s only a question of time and opportunity. Dan has already been allowed to drive the tractor at the farm, and is pressing to practice on the truck. That, Marvin, his “foster father,” told him, is a privilege he can earn by staying out of trouble for two months. What are the odds? Louise wonders.

  She hears the slam of the car door, and sits up on the sofa, pulling down her t-shirt, tucking her daughter’s small fists into the receiving blanket. Daniel comes through the door and straight to Jon. He lifts his little brother, tosses him into the air. And barely catches him.

  “Hey, careful there!” Jake shouts. Danny shrugs.

  “He’s getting big. I didn’t expect him to be so heavy.” Awkwardly, he lowers Jon back into the playpen, and starts toward the hall, but Jake takes his arm and turns him toward Louise.

  “Aren’t you going to say hello to your sister?”

  An exaggerated pause, then Dan takes three steps forward and leans in to peer at the swaddled bundle in Louise’s arms.

  He looks bigger, Louise thinks. Since last Sunday, his jaw and forehead seem heavier, more masculine. But surely it’s just the contrast with the baby’s button nose and rosebud mouth.

  “Cute,” he mutters. He folds his arms. “How come you’re calling her Lorne. That’s a boy’s name.”

  “Lauren,” Louise says. She smiles, trying to inject the welcome she is not feeling into the moment. “L-a-u-r-e-n. You’re right, she’ll probably have trouble with that. We didn’t even think about people hearing it wrong.”

  “You could give her a nickname,” Danny says.

  “Laurie?”

  He squints at the baby. Comes closer still. Lauren opens her eyes suddenly, her tiny mouth puckering into what looks for all the world like a kiss. Danny grins. “Sweetie,” he says.

  Louise hears Jake’s sigh of relief, can almost see him relax, feels the tension in the room melt. Jake claps a hand on Dan’s shoulder. “I like that one,” he says. He nods at the playpen. “Bring your brother. We boys will make lunch.”

  In the afternoon, Danny rattles his skateboard up and down the driveway. The sound of the wheels and the slam of the board each time he tricks and catches the board wears on Louise’s nerves after five minutes, and she retreats to the bedroom and clo
ses the window. Still she can hear the noise. Any minute now, Henry from next door will come out and shout at Dan. In fact, she suspects this is Dan’s goal.

  Finally, Jake calls to him. “Put that thing away, and let’s go for a milkshake.” Over and over again, Jake takes Dan into the places the boy has ripped off, to show the locals that his son has a good side. Sometimes he succeeds. Louise has been assured by several kind people in town that this is just a phase, boys being boys, and with their patience he’ll get over it. Heck, these boys often turn out to be the real successes, the ones who take risks and make something out of nothing. She just nods, no point in telling these people she isn’t holding her breath for the miracle.

  She watches them leave, Jake pushing Jon in his stroller, Dan on his bike. Lauren is asleep in her arms and when tears drip onto the pink blanket, Louise is astonished to realize that they are her own. Hormones, she thinks. Because really, what on earth does she have to cry about?

  So she was busy with those babies who kept coming one right after the other, I imagine. Didn’t have much time to worry about her stepson. Daisy I’m talking about here.

  Once he left when he was fourteen, he really never came back again.

  Out of sight, out of mind? Doesn’t work that way, I’ll have you know. Sometimes it’s even scarier if you can only imagine what they’re doing.

  Roads Back

  Robert Cook’s record of incarcerations was, in Jack Pecover’s words, “a dreary recital.” After the first sentence of eighteen months in the Lethbridge jail, he rejoined the family briefly, but then was sent by Social Services to live with foster parents. The first family moved to British Columbia, and Robert was moved to another home, another farm family. When Jack Pecover talked to that second foster mother, Mrs. Henry Stucke, she told him in her heavy German accent, that Bobby Cook was a good boy. Another boy had spoiled things for him—another boy from jail placed on a farm near theirs. The two boys stole money and stole a car and left for the States. She and her husband would have happily taken Bobby back when he was apprehended, she said, but he was sent to jail.

  “I can’t say one wrong word about him. If I told him to do something, he’d do it. We could hardly stand it that he should be hung. My son died four years ago; he was caught in a

  cultivator and bled to death before they could get him to the hospital. It wasn’t as hard as when Bobby died.” (The Work of Justice pg. 167)

  Bobby Cook’s first foster family, the Larsons, who had moved to B.C., felt equally sure that he could not have committed the crime for which he died. Their daughter, Lila, became Robert Raymond Cook’s advocate when he was sentenced to death.

  In December, 1953, when he was sixteen years old, Robert Cook was charged with car theft in Winnipeg and sentenced to one year in the provincial jail, but after an additional three charges of breaking and entering were added, he graduated and went directly to the federal penitentiary at Stony Mountain for two years. He was barely out again, and charged with breaking and entering and theft in Hanna,

  Alberta, sentenced to two years in the Saskatchewan Penitentiary at Prince Albert. From there he was in and out of Prince Albert, caught in a revolving door of repetitive crime. Nineteen offenses in all in those years from 1951 to 1957. Although Cook told the RCMP later that for every offense for which he was sentenced, he had committed at least four more.

  Meanwhile, back at home?

  More babies. Christopher was born while Bobby was in foster care. Then two little girls born in 1954 and 1956, Kathy and Linda.

  I don’t imagine they looked forward to his visits home. I know I wouldn’t.

  No. You wouldn’t. But there are conflicting stories about how Daisy and Ray felt about Bobby. Or mostly about how Daisy felt. Ray seemed to maintain a strong loyalty to his delinquent son.

  In jail, exactly as he did outside, Robert Cook seemed to impress some, to leave others with Clark Hoskins’ assessment that he was an affable liar. But a liar nonetheless. From the Manitoba Penitentiary classification officer’s report of May 9, 1955:

  This young man… has failed to improve sufficiently to warrant a parole. His general conduct and attitude towards his work is not too good. He is still quite the smart Alex type with big ideas of getting even sooner or later. (The Work of Justice pg. 35)

  A report by another prison official recorded the same day:

  This man is a quiet inoffensive worker, tries hard, does the best according to his ability. His instructor advises that he is a good worker. The young man appears to be a good risk re a ticket of leave. (The Work of Justice pg. 35)

  The classification officer’s report trumped the other, and parole was refused.

  Then a classification report from June 27, 1957:

  Cook has been in attendance [in vocational education] 43 days so far this term. His work, especially in math, is good. He isn’t particularly interested in English subjects, but is nevertheless doing fair work in this subject. He is cooperative, reacts to kindness, and has never given any trouble in class. He has the ability and is capable of learning any shop math he will require. (The Work of Justice pgs. 35-36)

  Jack Pecover recorded other reports which together form an impression of a young man who was occasionally fractious, generally cooperative, but by no one’s estimation a hopeful prospect for rehabilitation. There is no doubt, though, throughout the reading of The Work of Justice, that as he uncovered this portrait of Robert Raymond Cook, Pecover’s sympathy grew.

  Meanwhile, it’s hard to imagine that Ray and Daisy, back home, looked forward to Bobby’s next release. After the murders, the information about a plan Ray had to buy a service station was conflicting. The Hoskinses said Ray and Daisy had their house listed for sale and talked about relocating, but there was no indication that they were going anywhere immediately. Someone in Ray Cook’s family claimed that they were intending to slip away without telling Robert they were leaving, but were taken by surprise when he was released early.

  But the surprise was not sudden. They knew about the amnesty well enough in advance that Daisy sent a new red tie and a pair of yellow socks for the journey home. The day he arrived back in Stettler, Leona and Jim Hoskins stopped in for a visit and later said the mood in the house was upbeat, everyone looking forward to Bobby’s arrival, wondering what could be taking him so long. Yet surely they were wondering how long this bit of freedom would last, and what disgrace he would leave them to deal with when he was gone again. According to Lila Larson, Bobby’s foster sister for a short period, “he loved his dad, but didn’t like his stepmother.” According to Mrs. Henry Stucke, at his second foster home, he “said that Daisy was all for her children and he was nothing in her eyes.”

  The transcript of a psychiatric evaluation dated March 15, 1960, says that Robert Cook stated: “My father he was remarried in 1949, I think it was 1949 to Daisy Gasper. She was my school teacher. Oh she was good. She was just the same as Mother. I called her Mum. Couldn’t have treated me better.”

  Right. He was on trial for murder. He’d admit to bitter resentment of the woman and children who usurped his place with his father? The victims?

  From what I’ve found about him so far, I doubt he was smart enough to have thought that strategy through. Maybe he did have positive feelings for Daisy.

  But what about Daisy, what did she feel for him?

  A member of Ray’s family, Mrs. Mae Reamsbottom (who told the RCMP officer who interviewed her that she had never liked Ray’s son) said she was sure Daisy was afraid of Bobby, even though she had never exactly said so. She maintained that Ray and Daisy were making plans to leave Alberta in order to get away from Bobby. That Daisy was trying to get Ray to understand that Bobby could not come near the house nor the children because he had ruined their reputation wherever they went. That Daisy feared that Bobby was going to wind up killing someone.

  Mrs. Joe Reilly, sist
er of Marion Anderson with whom I spoke, told Jack Pecover that in spite of the fact that Bobby had stolen $100 from Daisy’s trunk when she and Ray were first married, she said, “We get along fine. He babysits for me and Ray. He’s real good to the kids.”

  After Bobby hit the big time and was sent to the federal penitentiary in Manitoba, Ray and Daisy lost track of him, and he was seven months into his sentence by the time his dad tracked him and wrote one of the few letters that he sent to his son. According to Pecover that letter did not survive, but Bobby’s reply said:

  “You also asked me to come home which makes me feel wonderful and love you all the more after all the trouble I’ve given you.”

  And indeed he did go home, after a brief foray into the world of professional boxing. Bobby Cook had his first

  boxing experience in Hanna when a man who owned a local gym spotted a boy he felt was bound for trouble. When Bobby wandered into Gordon Russell’s gym one day, Russell decided to take him in hand:

  “I encouraged him because I thought he could use it. He seemed to me to be emotionally troubled; emotionally there was something wrong with Bobby. He was beating up on kids 13 and 14; when he got them down he would take the boots to them. He was a mean, small kid. Perhaps he did it because of his size, I don’t know, but he was tough. Yet none of the guys he beat up seemed to bear him any grudges. They all liked him.” (The Work of Justice pg. 40)

  Ray Cook, however, was not pleased with this new activity and when Bobby came home from the gym one night with a black eye, he visited Russell and told him that Bobby was not to be allowed back at the gym.

  “That was the end of it. I think if he’d been allowed to stay he wouldn’t be [dead] today. Even then I could see he was a natural…He would have made a good pro.” (The Work of Justice pg. 40)