“Yes,” Colm replies. “BSA Lightning. Time for a rebuild. Again.”
“British hog,” Ted says, and snorts as if half in laughter and half in contempt. “Got an old ‘47 hard tail. Knucklehead.” He nods his head towards his garage. “Restored her from the ground up.”
“Really,” Colm says. He has been curious about the rumble of the V-twin on Sunday afternoons. “Can I have a look?”
“Knock yourself out.” Ted takes another stick of meat from the pocket of his shorts and pokes it into the snout of the dog in his arms. “Man, this guy loves his frozen wieners. Puppy popsicles.” Doxie trots out and stands by Colm, licking her lips as she watches the little dog. The terrier stops long enough to stare back at Doxie and give a sharp bark of warning. Then it resumes eating. Colm checks Zelle to ensure she is still asleep, then walks over to the other garage.
Amid the clutter—45-gallon drums, piles of unidentifiable vehicle parts, a stack of what appears to be animal hides, a greasy couch, boxes of canning jars, several lawn mowers, the hood of a truck set on blocks to serve as a table of sorts—the motorcycle shines like a polished gem. The Knucklehead motor pancakes the classic Harley-Davidson twin-V engine design, but it looks anything but old. The bike gleams, glossy black, deep blue enamel and chrome. The big stainless coil springs under the saddle offer the only rear suspension. The saddle itself is a work of art. Black leather as polished as a cadet’s boots. Leatherwork around the rim of the seat etched in a pattern of Celtic rings. A pair of hand-tooled saddlebags straddling the rear fender shows a relief of interlocking vines and roses. The rivets in the saddle and the bags have the lustre of sterling silver. The mahogany knob on the suicide hand-shifter is burnished with the patina of both wear and care. A classic piece of motorcycle history, not chopped or channelled Easy Rider-style, but customized to preserve the lines of the original design.
“Jesus. This is fantastic,” Colm says. “You did all this work?”
Ted doesn’t look up, just shrugs as he feeds his dog. “It’s fuck-all.”
“Hardly. This belongs in a museum. An art gallery.” Colm notices a couple of Sturgis Hill Climb posters from the early eighties on the back of a red mechanic’s tool box. There’s an old movie poster of Marlon Brando from The Wild One. Someone has traced a moustache and a soul patch on his face with a grease pencil, and added a cartoon caption, so he seems to be saying: Live Free or Die. “I can imagine Lee Marvin or Brando hopping on this thing and driving away.”
“Hmph,” Ted grunts. “Not Brando, he was on English iron. Triumph T-bird. Marvin rode the HD. Brando was such a fucking wuss.”
“Do you ride much?” Colm asks. He really wants to ask: Do you know British bikes?
“Nah. Not anymore. My last steady ride was a Sportster. Some people think that’s a ladies’ bike, but man, that was a fast piece of work. I just built this one for fun.”
“Can I sit on it?”
“Like the man said, knock yourself out.” Colm swings his leg over and eases it off the kickstand. “It’s heavy,” he says. “Solid. Wow. Wide.” He pulls the front brake hand lever, slides his foot into the floorboards and toes the clutch, fingers the suicide stick. “It’s like driving a car. It’s weird having only one handlebar lever.”
“I’ll find you a brain bucket, you can take it for a spin.”
“No. I mean I’d love to, but I got my baby in the garage.”
“Baby,” Ted says. “Suit yourself.” The dog licks his fingers, sniffs around his person for more. “That’s it. You’ve had enough, ya little porker.”
“Pardon,” Colm says.
“Talking to the runt here.” He puts the dog down. Immediately it races over to Colm, snorts around his shoes, then starts to bark. It lunges towards Doxie, who stands by the open door. She backs off a couple of steps. Her tail wags, then stops. She sets her head at an angle.
Colm dismounts and looks down at Ted’s dog: “It’s okay, Doxie won’t bite you,” he says to the terrier.
Ted laughs. “Yeah right. You could hit that little furball with a hammer and he wouldn’t back down.” The terrier bares its teeth and advances. Doxie retreats across the property line and into her own garage. The dog turns and snaps its jaws at Colm.
Colm hears Zelle now, awake, responding to the barking with cries of her own. “Man, your dog barks all the time,” Colm says.
“Like your kid,” Ted says.
“Pardon?”
Ted shrugs. “My dog barks. Your kid cries. Same difference.”
“Hardly the same, I think,” Colm says.
“Sure it is. Calling for attention. Just different species. It’s in their nature.”
“No, it’s different. A child isn’t some species. She’s a person. She cries when she needs something.”
“Whatever, man. All’s I’m saying is, doesn’t all that whining get under your skin? Does that brat ever shut up?” The dog runs in circles now, barking, barking, barking.
“What did you say?” Colm is at the door, his body angled towards his own place and to the sounds of his daughter, but he hesitates.
“You heard me. Or is that the problem? The rugrat cries and you’re deaf to it.”
“I’ve got to go see my child.”
“Yeah. Go. Put a plug in it while you’re at it.”
Colm picks up Zelle from her seat and rocks her against him. Next door the Knucklehead Harley roars to life. The throbbing twin-V, barely muffled, echoes through the lane and the windows rattle. Zelle cries even harder, and Colm can hear Doxie join in the barking as he rushes to the house.
Zelle @ 3 weeks
“I never thought I’d own a house.”
“I never thought I’d want to own a house.”
“Do you?”
“What?”
“Want to own? Are we making a mistake?”
“Yes. No. This is what we talked about. A safe place for our family.”
“Roots. Stability.”
“Better than paying rent.”
“We’re not paying rent now.”
“Zelle can’t grow up at her grandmother’s. Neither can we.”
“We need our space.”
“It’s so final. A commitment.”
“And Zelle’s not?”
“It’s not the same thing. A house is not a baby. We’ll never just be able to pick up and go. We used to pick up and go places.”
“You used to do that.”
“You too.”
“Buying a house seems like a failure somehow.”
“A failure of what?”
“Ideas. Conviction. Ideals. A sell-out of ideals.”
“So now you’re a revolutionary?”
“I guess so.”
“We talked about this. We wanted a garden and flowers and a place for Zelle and Doxie to play and an outdoor shower. We need to figure a way we can walk around nude in the backyard so nobody sees.”
“I just thought I’d never be one of those people. I hated those people.”
“Who?”
“The bad people. People who own things. People who want to abolish Medicare and ban books. People who never read books. People in motorhomes towing sport utility vehicles with boats on top. People who care about lawn fertilizer.”
“Wow.”
“Those people all own houses.”
“We’re not those people. I’m not those people.”
“I hope so.”
Zelle @ 10 weeks
[The Ice Cream Man speaks]
I bring Ted ice cream Tuesdays and Fridays, but I never make new customer visits on Fridays, so it’s a Tuesday. I’ve been delivering to Ted for years. So I know it’s gotta be a Tuesday the first time I ring their bell. They’ve just moved in. The house next door is exactly the same as Ted’s, it was his uncle’s or something. I’ve seen the For Sale sign, so I’m hopeful. New people. New customers.
So this one day, a Tuesday like I said, I’m bringing Ted his ice cream. I bring him two buckets a week—he li
kes it twice. Vanilla every Tuesday, and that’s when he orders whatever for Friday. Chocolate Crunch, Butterscotch, Spumoni, Pralines’n’Cream. I never know what he’s going to come up with. I tried to get him once to go for a single delivery, saves me a trip, but he insists. Hey, the customer’s always right.
His dog is going nuts as usual. He yells at his dog. His dog just barks. It’s so excited it’s like it’s gonna explode. That dog’s gotta learn how to relax or it’s a goner. Ted tells me they moved in next door.
So I go back to my truck, get my clipboard, a few flyers. Everybody thinks of us, the big yellow trucks, they think ice cream, but we do more than ice cream. Steaks, chicken cordon blue, cheesecake. We’ve even got those cocktail sausages for parties. Eggs. Frozen omelettes. Stick ’em in the microwave, instant breakfast. Ted tells me they’re a young couple, a kid that’s always bawling. Perfect customers, I think. These people need me. I check myself in the outside rearview, make sure I don’t have any spinach stuck in my teeth. My uniform’s clean, it’s a good uniform we’ve got. Like something a milkman would wear in one of those old Saturday Evening Post magazines. People like it. I’ve got my pens and thermometer and flashlight nicely arranged in my pocket. I’m ready.
I go up to the house. They’ve got a sheet or blanket tacked up half-assed over the window, but I figure, whatever, they just moved in. I ring the doorbell. Right away a baby starts howling. This guy answers the door, he’s got the baby kind of tucked under his arm. Like he’s holding a football with arms and legs hanging down on either side of his forearm. This kid’s head is in the crook of his elbow, and crying. I mean, wailing. I can hear Ted’s dog through the wall next door start barking again. This kid’s face is purple with crying. The guy’s rubbing the kid’s back, as if that’s gonna help.
“Hi,” I go. “Nice kid. He’s just a wee one.” I crouch to get a better look, not that I really care, but I know you gotta pay attention to the babies. “You gotta great voice, kiddo,” I say. “You’re gonna be a regular Pavarotti.”
“He’s a she,” the guy says.
“Well, that’s just great,” I say. I can see behind him into the living room. It’s gloomy in there. They’ve got one of those Japanese mattress things in the middle of the floor, and there’s this lady flat on her back, she’s got her arms flung back over her head and her kimono thing rides up almost to her hoo-hoo. She’s got her eyes wide open, but she never looks over at me, never hardly moves. She’s just looking up at the ceiling. There’s a bunch of boxes all over the place and two lawn chairs and an old TV with rabbit ears set up on a milk crate.
I try to keep from staring at the lady, so I launch into my pitch: Just making a delivery to a valued customer next door, saw a new neighbour, thought I’d check to see if you needed anything, blah, blah, blah. “We do a lot more than ice cream.” The guy cuts me off.
“Did I ask you here?” he goes.
“Pardon me,” I say.
“You heard me. I didn’t ask you here, so go away.” And he shuts the door, just like that. I mean, what a jerk. You need a tough skin for this racket, and don’t get me wrong, this guy didn’t even register on my radar. I get nine doors shut in my face for every new customer I sign, but this guy. I can hear his kid howling all the way back to the truck, and Ted’s dog is still barking his way to a freaking coronary too.
Next time I’m at Ted’s I notice there’s a sign by the guy’s door, and I check it out. It’s taped right over the doorbell, it says:
DO NOT RING OR KNOCK
BABY SLEEPING
GO AWAY
I can hear the kid screaming. Sleeping my ass. That note’s still there. I mean, it’s just something I check, I take a mental note of. I hear from Ted all the grief he’s going through with the guy over his dog and whatever, and he’s still got this sign: GO AWAY.
Zelle @ 10 months
Beverly and Colm start having sex again. Zelle stops crying for the most part, except when she is wakened in the night. Beverly spends the day with Zelle, Colm rushes home from work each afternoon. They have a half-hour before Beverly goes to the theatre for the show call. Zelle crawls back and forth between them as Beverly sits in the rocking chair in the kitchen expressing breast milk for a bedtime snack. Colm busies himself at the counter, mashing organic avocados, peas and cottage cheese, baking yams in the microwave for Zelle’s supper. Zelle laughs and laughs. She pulls herself up on Daddy’s leg. She bangs on pots and pans. She gabbles in her own language. She tastes the things she finds on the floor.
Beverly shakes the last drops of breast milk through the diaphragm of the pump. She caps the collection bottle and puts it in the fridge. “Just put the pump in the sink and I’ll boil it out after Zelle goes to bed,” Colm says.
“You’re such a mensch.” Beverly picks up Zelle and swings her in the air. “Who’s my favourite baby?” she says, “Who’s my favourite baby?” Zelle howls with delight.
“Working the baby angle,” Colm says.
“Group hug,” and the three of them come together, Zelle pressed between Mom and Dad. “Let’s have another one of these,” Beverly says.
“A whole baseball team.”
“No, really. Let’s have another one soon. We’re not getting younger.”
“We’re barely surviving this one.” Zelle makes a grab at Colm’s glasses. He turns his head and she gets a fistful of hair. “Ouch. Gentle, baby. Be gentle.” Zelle loosens her grip and pats his head. “See, she’s learning.” He looks at Beverly. “It means we’ll have to have sex.”
“Ooh, ick. Will I have to kiss you?”
She kisses him, playfully, then again, a longer deeper one.
“Wow. Okay.” Zelle laughs and reaches over to tug at her mom’s lip.
She comes home from the theatre after eleven, and for four nights running they make love.
“Hey, you’re good at this. Have you been practising?”
“Just on my own.”
“On your own! You devil. Seed spiller.”
“You’re not so bad yourself.”
“Like riding a bicycle.”
Exhausted by their days, their nights, themselves, they pillow-talk each other to sleep.
“She’s so amazing.”
“We haven’t wrecked her. Yet.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s still so pure.”
“How do other people do it?”
“Do what?”
“It. This. Have five kids. Work three jobs each. Keep a neat home. Throw dinner parties. Restore antiques. Embroider doilies. Keep the grass cut. Shovel the walks. Balance their chequebook. Volunteer for the Food Bank. Lobby for world peace.”
“Hush up and ravish me.”
On the fifth night, Colm has just finished tasting the sweet milk from Beverly’s nipple (“Is that a turn-on?” “Just an occupational hazard.”) and is tracing a line of kisses down her breastbone and over her navel when the dog starts to bark.
“Damn,” Colm says. His shoulders stiffen and he lifts his head.
“Ignore it, Colm.”
“That damn dog.” He can hear Doxie in the kitchen as she stirs and returns a soft growl back to the neighbour’s terrier. The dog barks.
“For god’s sake, Colm, let it go.” She reaches for him, but he pulls free.
“He does it on purpose. It’s one o’clock in the bloody morning and he does it on purpose. Listen to that. He’s egging it on.” Along with the barking of the terrier they can hear Ted’s voice as he yells at Fuckface, the rottweiler. Colm pulls on a robe and storms out of the bedroom into the small den that serves as an office. He finds a form titled Barking Dog Complaint Log, grabs a pen and goes to the window that faces the neighbour’s yard.
Zelle @ 0 to three months
When Beverly was pregnant, they moved into Gaddie’s condo while she went to Africa on a mission. They sold or gave away all their stuff, and concentrated on erasing their debts. While Gaddie was away, they acquired:
☐ A
two-year-old chocolate-brown Labrador retriever, Doxie, whose breeder-owners had concluded she did not conform; Doxie was purchased as protection for Beverly after she let a man into the condo
☐ A five-year-old Toyota four-door sedan with low mileage
☐ A line of credit
Three weeks after Zelle was born, they closed the deal on the bungalow, but didn’t take possession until she was two-and-a-half months old. The house came equipped with:
☐ A garage with door opener
☐ Seven appliances and a gas barbecue
Before they moved in, Colm scrubbed and painted the smallest bedroom for Zelle, then repainted one wall because Beverly insisted it needed a complementary colour opposite the window. When he was done, Colm acknowledged that she was right. As a house-warming gift, Gaddie equipped the nursery:
☐ A crib with Winnie-the-Pooh decorations, and a matching chest of drawers full of clothes
☐ A specialized no-fuss no-smell diaper pail
☐ A Winnie-the-Pooh mobile to hang over the crib
Zelle @ 13 months
Over three months, Colm maintains a continual Barking Dog Log. Every Monday, he phones the Animal Services Bylaw Enforcement to lay his complaint. The visits by the dogcatcher become part of the routine of the neighbourhood.
The barking gets worse. Ted goes out into the yard at all hours, plays fetch with a glow-in-the-dark mini-Frisbee. The terrier’s yapping incites Doxie to growl and whine. Zelle cries in the night.
By the middle of May, the bylaw enforcement officer has taken to parking a couple of houses up the street between his dispatches. Colm watches from the front window as he delivers yet another ticket to Ted. “He must owe thousands in fines.”
“I wish you’d just drop it.”
“Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma,” Zelle says. She cruises from couch to table to chair, walking but hanging on to the furniture. She stops. A jack-in-the-box with a cock-a-doodling rooster is in the middle of the floor. She lets go of the chair and stands, reaching both hands to the rooster. “Ma-ma-ma.”
“Too bad they just can’t seize the dog.” He had researched the bylaw on the Internet.
Knucklehead & Other Stories Page 12