The Diviners
Page 14
Métis? Huh?
(Halfbreeds.)
Well, well, hm. Maybe the story didn’t go quite like I said. Let’s see.
(No. That’s cheating, Christie. Thanks for telling the story, I liked it fine. Really.)
You’re welcome. I’ll send you the bill at the end of the month.
Memorybank Movie: Down in the Valley, Act II
Early spring, and the air still has a bite in it despite the sun. The snow, so clean before, is melting dirtily, honeycombed with black patches, leaving the winter’s hidden accumulation of dogshit and tossed-away empty cigarette packets soggily soiling the streets. Slush everywhere. Maples and elms have not yet begun to bud, but out beyond town, in the valley, the pussywillows are making grey-furred beginnings.
It is also Grade Eleven, and there are a few boys in the class, but in the Grade Twelve class there are none. All in either the Army or the Airforce. One or two have recklessly joined the Navy, but the sea does not have much appeal for the prairie boys, being too distant an element.
Morag is walking home, carrying an armload of books.
“Hi, Morag.”
He has, it is clear, been waiting at the corner of Hill Street. Slouched against a telephone pole. Looking heavier than before, in his thick rough-textured khaki uniform with the badge of the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders on the sleeve. Rank–Private.
“Skinner! How come you’re here?”
“Everybody is. Overseas leave. Wanna come for some coffee?”
She has scarcely spoken to him for two years, since that day in the valley. He quit school a year ago and moved back to the Tonnerre shack. Then he joined the Army and left town. Morag is surprised at how glad she is to see him.
“Sure. But can I drop off these books first?”
“Okay by me.”
They go into the Logan house. Prin, rocking with sleep-glazed eyes, all at once looks up with what for her, these days, is enormous alertness. Which is to say, she opens her eyes, half rises, thinks better of it, and lowers her heavy obesity, her soft barrel bulk, wraparound clad, back into the safeness of the rocking chair. She hardly ever moves these days, except from rocker to table to bed. Morag gets the meals. Prin hardly ever talks any more, either. But will not see a doctor. Even Christie, who worries seldom, worries now.
“Prin–this is Skinner, I mean Jules Tonnerre. I went to school with him. He’s in the Army. You know?”
Morag feels embarrassed, adding this bit about the Army. But she is not certain Prin will notice or recognize the uniform.
“Pleased to make yer acquaintance, Mister,” Prin says, in an oddly girlish voice, formally, as though with reference to some long-forgotten formula learned in a distant past.
“Hi.” Skinner looks away.
Morag goes upstairs to change out of her school tunic, which would look dumb and kid-like beside an Army uniform. When she comes down, Christie has come in and is talking to Skinner. Christie, of late years, has taken to chewing tobacco. The spittoon of his choice, culled from his own private happy hunting grounds, is a large china chamber pot with mauve violets on it. He hawks massively into it now. Morag glowers, then thinks that whatever Christie Logan is like, he’s probably not a patch on Lazarus Tonnerre.
“Whatcha doing with yourself these days, Skinner?” Christie says.
“Fighting for King and Country. Can’t you see, Christie?”
“Yep. Well, then, boy, stay alive if you can. That’s all that matters, though why it should the Lord only knows.”
Skinner’s eyes narrow.
“I joined for the pay, Christie. I don’t aim to get hurt if I can help it.”
“That’s the spirit, boy. It’s never the generals who die, you know. Don’t let the buggers on either side get you.”
As they walk up along Main Street, towards the Parthenon Café, Skinner says something that astounds Morag.
“He’s quite a guy, that Christie.”
“I’m glad you think so.”
“Don’t you?”
“He’s never tried to do anything,” Morag says. “He thinks it’s just great now because the Town Council have bought him a beat-up old truck for work. He thinks he’s pulled a fast one on them because no one ever suspected he could drive. He learned on a Model-T years ago and he drives that truck as though it were a horse. Everybody laughs at him.”
Skinner is laughing too.
“Well, let them. You don’t like him being the Scavenger, do you? What if nobody would do it, eh? He’s worth a damn sight more than a lawyer–all those guys do is screw things up.”
At the Parthenon they sit in a booth and drink coffee. Now they are both suspicious of each other again. Skinner is looking hard at her, studying her face as though trying to read what lies behind her eyes, inside her skull. Is she trying to do the same with him? If so, neither of them seems to be getting very far. For a while they don’t speak. Is there too little to say or too much?
“Why’d you leave the Pearls’ place and go back to the valley?” Morag asks finally.
He reaches out and puts one of his long thin hands on hers. Only for a second. Then he takes it away.
“Really want to know? I guess Simon Pearl didn’t spread it around, then, eh?”
“No.”
“Well, it was this way. I got some fancy notion I’d like to be a lawyer, see, on account of if you’ve always been screwed by people it seemed a good idea to do some of the damage yourself for a change. Right? So I asked old Simon how a guy would get to be a lawyer. He didn’t actually laugh out loud, but he kinda covered his mouth with his hand to hide the smile. Then he tells me it’s a fine thing to get an education, but a person like me might do well to set their sights a bit lower, and he will ask Macpherson at the BA Garage to take me on as an apprentice mechanic after Grade Eleven. So I walked out. I thought of breaking his jaw, but then I thought it’d only land me in the clink and it wasn’t worth it. So I went back to the valley. My old man never batted an eye. Just said, You’re back, eh? Well, give us a hand with this barrel–it’s about ready to be put in the jugs. We had a hell of a party, just him and me. Sat around with me singing and him playing out of tune on the mouth organ till near morning. He’s not such a bad guy. He didn’t give a fuck when I joined the Army, but he’d never turn me out. He’d never turn any of us out. He don’t care if we leave, but we can stay if we want to.”
“I’m sorry,” Morag says. “I mean about Simon–”
“There’s no call to be. I don’t give a damn. I never have and I never will.”
“Where’s your sister these days?”
“You mean Piquette? She took off as soon as her leg was okay. She had TB of the bone as a kid–maybe you remember. She’s married to a guy in Winnipeg. Al Cummings. I think she’s got herself a first-rate no-good, but that’s her business. He’ll leave her one day. I hope to christ she leaves him first.”
“How do you know? You can’t tell.”
“I can tell. He’ll never look you in the eye. Also, he’s always telling Piquette what a lousy housekeeper she is. It’s quite true, she is. But he’s a dirty bugger himself. It don’t help much.”
The Parthenon begins to fill up with the saddle-shoe gang, girls in long loose sloppy-joe sweaters and plaid skirts, boys in grey flannels and smart tweed jackets. All the kids. The jukebox.
“C’mon,” Skinner says brusquely. “Let’s go.”
No one says anything as they walk out. Miklos thoughtfully holds the door open, relieved to see them go. To Miklos, the word Tonnerre spells only one thing, Trouble. There will, of course, be plenty of comments after they’ve left. They both know this, and walk stiffly, not speaking.
“Jesus, I hate this town,” Skinner says finally.
“Me too.”
“Hey, Morag, come down to my place and meet my old man?”
She glances at him. They both know. She feels nauseated with indecision. Then doesn’t care.
“Sure,” she says. “Why not?”
“What’s the joke?” he says.
“Nothing. I just feel okay again, that’s all.”
“Hey, that’s good.”
He stops and breaks off a couple of twigs of pussywillows. Hands them to her.
“Orchids,” he says.
“My, that is the first time anybody ever gave me orchids. Thanks.”
“Well, there’s a first time for everything,” Skinner says.
He hasn’t meant to say that, probably. Then, of course, they both fall silent again.
The Tonnerre shack is really a collection of shacks. The original one has now decayed and is used as a chicken house. The main shack has been put together with old planks, tarpaper, the lids of wooden crates, some shingles and flattened pieces of tin. Around it lie old tires, a roll of chickenwire, the chassis of a rusted car, and an assortment of discarded farm machinery. The backhouse stands at a slight distance. There is also a small shack, built in the same manner as the main one, but newer. Skinner steers her towards this one.
“Mine,” he says. “I built it when I came back down here.”
Inside it is warm because there is still a fire going in the stove which has been made out of an old oil-drum, bricked around at the bottom. Wooden boxes are the chairs. There is a bucket of water and a dipper, an enamel basin and a slop bucket. A coal-oil lamp hangs from a nail. There is a wooden chest, with a padlock. And Skinner’s books from school. On the walls, pin-ups of movie stars, women with big breasts and carmine mouths. Also the pelt of a skunk, black and white.
“Make yourself at home,” Skinner says.
By this time they really do both know.
“You remember that time at the bridge, Morag?”
“Yes.”
“I scared you, I guess. I was sorry, but I couldn’t say, after.”
“It’s okay.”
“And all that I told you, about Ina Spettigue, was a pack of lies,” Skinner says. “She wouldn’t have given me the time of day, then. She would now, but the hell with her. Anyway, I just wanted to clear that up. Could you do without those glasses, there?”
Then they kiss for a long time, his tongue delicately exploring the inside of her mouth. His hands stroking her breasts. She has wanted this, it seems, now, for a long time. He is lying on top of her, and through all their clumsy layers of clothing she can feel his cock, long and hard.
“C’mon,” he says. “We can’t leave all these clothes on, eh?”
She hesitates, although only momentarily.
“Skinner–what if somebody, you know, barges in?”
“They won’t,” he says grimly. “They know better.”
She believes him. She is astonished to find she is not scared. What if it hurts? Well, so what? And anyway it won’t. She takes her clothes off quickly, expertly, as though she has been accustomed for years to doing so in front of a man. She feels no shyness at all. Only the need to feel him all over her, to feel all of his skin. Her own body, her breasts and long legs and flat stomach, all these seem suddenly in her own eyes beautiful to her, and she wants him to see her.
Then she looks up at him, above her on the bed. She never knew before that a man would look so beautiful, his shoulder bones showing under the skin, his narrow hips, the big ribcage, the warm smooth brown skin, the black hair between his legs, the long tense hard muscles along his legs and his arms, his long hardsoft cock nuzzling her. She thrusts up at him, locks her legs around his. As though she has always known what to do.
“Easy, easy,” he says. “Oh God–not so quick, Morag. I can’t–”
And goes off on her belly before he can get inside her.
“Oh hell,” he says, after a moment, still not breathing steady. “I’m sorry.”
But she clings to him. Still moving towards him, holding his shoulders desperately in her arms.
“Please. Don’t go away.”
Then he realizes, and helps her.
“Hey, that’s fine. You’re gonna come all over me.”
And she does. The pulsing between her legs spreads and suffuses all of her. The throbbing goes on and on, and she does not realize her voice has spoken until it stops, and then she does not know if she has spoken words or only cried out somewhere in someplace beyond language.
Silence. He is very lightly stroking her shoulders, her face, her closed eyelids. She opens her eyes. They smile, then, at each other. Like strangers who have now met. Like conspirators.
“That wasn’t so bad for you, after all,” he says.
“It was–oh Skinner–”
“Hey, could you call me by my real name, eh?”
As though now it were necessary to do this. By right. Does she understand what he means? Is this what he means? What is he really thinking, in there? But you have to take it on faith, she now sees. You can’t ever be sure. She nods.
“Okay. I will. Jules.”
He laughs.
“You say it kind of funny. Jewels.”
“How, then?”
“Jules.”
“Jewels.”
“You better learn French, kid.”
“Do you know it?”
“No. Not that much, any more. Not that much, ever. Just a bit, mostly swear words. I guess we used to know a few things when we were kids, but it’s mostly gone now. My old man grew up speaking quite a bit of French-Cree, but he’s lost most of it now. You got nice legs, even if you do say my name wrong.”
This is true. Morag has got nice legs, and has always wondered if anyone else would ever think so.
The fire has died, and the shack is cold. They dress. He does up her dress for her, and she helps him on with his Army jacket. They laugh a lot, now, over nothing, over everything. Nothing bad will ever happen again, not ever again. Nothing can ever touch them. This is their house. They are safe, here.
Then she remembers.
“When’re you going, Jules? How long a leave you got?”
He lies back on the bed, alone, smoking.
“I gotta go back to camp tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Yeh. We’re coming back to town tomorrow. Dress parade. Wait’ll you see me in a kilt, kid. A Tonnerre in a kilt is some sight, I can tell you. In the First War they used to call the Scots regiments the Ladies from Hell. I feel like a twerp in that getup, to tell you the truth. Thank christ we don’t have to put it on that often.”
“Why’re they doing that? Tomorrow?”
“Because the Cameron Highlanders got so many Manawaka boys, is why.”
“I see.”
“C’mon, let’s go over to my old man’s. He’ll have some home-brew or at least some tea.”
The main shack has a bigger stove but with shakier looking stovepipes. Val, Jules’ younger sister, isn’t home. The two younger boys, Paul and Jacques, are hopping around like sparrows, but when they see Morag they grow quiet and watchful, and take up silent positions in corners. There are some bunk beds, a mattress on the floor, cooking pots and pans on wooden boxes, a table containing half a loaf of bread and a quart pail of peanut butter. On one wall there is a calendar from two years back, with a colour picture of spruce trees at Galloping Mountain, black against a setting sun, and on another wall Jesus with a Bleeding Heart, his chest open and displaying a valentine-shaped heart pierced with a spiky thorn and dripping blood in neat little drops.
Lazarus is sitting in the room’s one easy chair which looks like it has been garnered from the Nuisance Grounds, springs protruding at the bottom of the seat. Morag has not seen Lazarus for a long time, and then only on Main Street on a Saturday night. Once he must have been a very large man, taller than Jules, and broader, but now he looks a bit shrunken, his bell
y fat and loose, but his ribs bending in upon themselves. He has the vestige of a handsome face, bonily handsome in the way Jules’ face is now. The same lanky black hair as Jules.
Now everything is changed. Morag feels uncertain again. Scared. What is she doing here? Do they feel she is intruding? She looks at Jules and sees that things are now changed for him, too.
“Who the hell are you?” Lazarus says.
Morag is unable to say anything. Jules scowls at his father.
“She’s Morag Gunn,” he says. “You know. From over at Christie Logan’s place.”
“Oh. Yeh. I know now.”
Lazarus begins coughing and keeps on until it seems he will retch. There is a glass full of brown sour-smelling liquid, with bits of white floating scum on it, on the floor beside her chair. He reaches for it. Stops coughing at last. Then he rises and stretches. Pulls in his belly. Looks Morag up and down. The same look on his face as on Skinner’s, before. Morag is shocked. Lazarus–an old man. How revolting. Yet she feels his man-energy burning out towards her, all the same, so strongly that for a second it almost draws her in.
Jules knows, too, and puts his arm around her shoulders. Definitely. And, towards Lazarus, menacingly. Lazarus laughs, showing several upper front teeth missing. Refills his glass from a bottle, and holds up the bottle.
“My woman,” he grunts. “This here is my woman, now.”
“I’ll be going now, Dad,” Jules growls.
For an instant Lazarus looks–how? Stricken.
“You gotta go now, Skinner?”
“Yeh. There’s an Army truck waiting at the bus station to pick us all up.”
Lazarus makes as though to move towards his son. Then changes his mind.
“Well, you look out, eh?” he says. “You just look out, there, eh?”
“Yeh. Don’t worry. I will.”
Jules says goodbye to his young brothers, and then he and Morag leave. He does not look back.
Walking up the hill and through the back streets of the town, now nearly dark, they are both silent. Then Jules begins talking.
“How old you think my old man is, Morag?”
“I dunno. How old?”