A Trick of the Light

Gamache considered. Maybe a doctor. More likely a therapist. An addictions counselor who was responsible for this gathering of alcoholics. The Chief wanted to have a word with him when the meeting was over.

The president had just introduced his secretary, who was reading endless announcements, most of which were out-of-date, and trying to find papers she seemed to have lost.

“God,” whispered Beauvoir. “No wonder people drink. This’s about as much fun as drowning.”

“Shhh,” said Bob, and gave Gamache a warning look.

The president introduced the speaker for that evening, mentioning something about “sponsor.” Beside him Beauvoir groaned and looked at his watch. He seemed fidgety.

A young man slouched to the front of the room. His head was shaved and there were tattoos around his skull. One was a hand with the finger up. “Fuck You” was tattooed across his forehead.

His entire face was pierced. Nose, brows, lips, tongue, ears. The Chief didn’t know if it was fashion or self-mutilation.

He glanced at Bob, who was sitting placidly beside him as though his grandfather had just walked to the front of the room.

Absolutely no alarm.

Perhaps, thought Gamache, he had wet-brain. Gone soft in the head by too much drinking and had lost all judgment. All ability to recognize danger. Because if anyone screamed warning, this young man at the front did.

The Chief looked at the president, sitting at the head table, keenly watching the young man. He at least seemed alert. Taking everything in.

And he would, thought Gamache, if he was sponsoring this boy who looked capable of doing anything.

“My name’s Brian and I’m an alcoholic and addict.”

“Hi, Brian,” they all said. Except Gamache and Beauvoir.

Brian spoke for thirty minutes. He told them about growing up in Griffintown, below the tracks in Montréal. Born to a crack-addicted mother and a meth-addicted grandmother. No father. The gang became his father, his brothers, his teachers.

His talk was littered with swear words.

He told them about robbing pharmacies, about robbing homes, about even breaking into his own home one night. And robbing it.

The room erupted into laughter. Indeed, people laughed all the way through. When Brian told them about being in the psych ward and having his doctor ask how much he drank, and he told him a beer a day, the place went hysterical with laughter.

Gamache and Beauvoir exchanged looks. Even the president was amused.

Brian had been given shock treatment, had slept on park benches, had woken up one day and found himself in Denver. He still couldn’t explain that one.

More hilarity.

Brian had run a child down with a stolen car.

And fled the scene.

Brian had been fourteen. The child had died. As did the laughter.

“And even then I didn’t stop drinking and using,” admitted Brian. “It was the kid’s fault. The mother’s fault. But it wasn’t my fault.”

There was silence in the room.

“But finally there weren’t enough fucking drugs in the world to make me forget what I’d done,” he said.

There was complete silence now.

Brian looked at the president, who held the young man’s stare, then nodded slightly.

“Do you know what finally brought me to my knees?” Brian asked the gathering.

No one answered.

“I wish I could say it was guilt, or a conscience, but it wasn’t. It was loneliness.”

Beside Gamache, Bob nodded. People in front nodded, slowly. As though bowing their heads under a great weight. And lifting them again.

“I was so fucking lonely. All of my life.”

He lowered his head, showing a huge black swastika tattooed there.

Then he lifted it again and looked at all of them. Looked straight at Gamache, before his gaze moved on.

They were sad eyes. But there was something else there. A gleam. Of madness? Gamache wondered.

“But no more,” said Brian. “All my life I looked for a family. Who’d have thought it’d be you fuckers?”

The place burst into uproarious laughter. With the exception of Gamache and Beauvoir. Then Brian stopped laughing, and he looked out at the crowd.

“This is where I belong.” He spoke quietly. “In a shit-hole church basement. With you.”

He bowed slightly, awkwardly, and for a moment he looked like the boy he really was, or could have been. Young, barely twenty. Shy, handsome. Even with the scarring of tattoos and piercing and loneliness.

There was applause. Finally the president stood and picked up a coin from his desk. Holding it up, he spoke.

“This is a beginner’s chip. It has a camel on one side because if a camel can go twenty-four hours without a drink, so can you. We can show you how to stop drinking, one day at a time. Are there any newcomers here who’d like to take one?”

He held it up, as though it was a host, a magic wafer.

And he looked directly at Armand Gamache.

In that instant Gamache knew exactly who the man running the meeting was, and why he looked so familiar. This man wasn’t a therapist or a doctor. He was Chief Justice Thierry Pineault, of the Québec Supreme Court.

And Mr. Justice Pineault had obviously recognized him.