Morrow laughed his snorting, squeaking piglet laugh.
“Not to worry,” he said. “Not to worry.” Then he turned and began to gather his charges.
Bull watched as the strange crowd gathered around Morrow, swarming toward him as if he were a guru. He couldn’t make out what was said, but heads nodded in unison as if an understanding had been reached. With another wave of his arms, Morrow had the rabble moving en masse along Forsythe Street toward the stores.
Halfway down the block, Morrow stopped and turned back to face Bull, who still hadn’t moved from where he stood. Morrow cupped his thin hands around his mouth and hollered in his piping pubescent voice:
“I forgot to tell you. I called the media.”
Media? What media? Bull thought, but said nothing, already uncomfortable under the stares of his fellow citizens.
Bull is breathing heavily. The burning that has become commonplace in his belly has moved into his chest. His first thought is heart attack, and with it comes a brief but horrifying wave of terror. But his fright passes quickly as he recognizes the pain, recollects it as he would the face of a long-absent friend. It is the pain of exertion, the pleasant discomfort of athleticism. It has been years since he’s felt it; many more years than he cares to admit. It belongs to a time of wind sprints and tackling dummies, of running stairs and hefting weights, of shouting crowds and sweetly curved cheerleaders. In his head the surging blood beats in time with the chant toro, toro. He wants to tell Darryl, but he’s too far ahead, moving through the nighttime forest with an ease of which Bull is jealous.
They have left the truck about a mile up the road, pulled far off onto the shoulder, very nearly in the ditch. It was Darryl who suggested it, saying it would look less suspicious that way. Bull had wanted to ask his son why it was that they needed to avoid suspicion, wanted to know exactly what it was that they were planning to do, but he held his tongue. Before they’d left the house, after Bull had changed into his clothes and promised Marlene that he was just going out for a late-night, sleep-inducing stroll, Darryl had placed his hand on Bull’s shoulder and said, “Trust me, Pop.”
And Bull wanted to. His son had never asked this of him before, and he’d been touched. To have said anything after they pulled the truck over would have compromised that trust. So he remained silent and followed.
“So explain it to me again,” Marlene said, the serving spoon loaded with mashed potatoes hovering above her plate. “Tell me why there’s a busload of hippies tramping through town?”
Bull swallowed carefully, easing the not-quite-chewed carrots down his throat. But Marlene slapped her potatoes down beside her roast beef and pointed the spoon at him before he could speak.
“Don’t bother,” she said. “The less I understand the better. That way when people come up to me on the street or, God forbid, when I’m at the A&P doing the shopping, I can just look at them and shrug. I can say, ‘I don’t know. I really don’t. I think that maybe Bull has gone over the edge. If you ask me, I’d think twice when it comes around to the next election.’ And I’ll say that Bull. Don’t think I won’t.”
He couldn’t eat any more. Two bites into his dinner and he couldn’t stomach the thought of even one more forkful. His belly was on fire. He looked toward the kitchen counter, to the bottle of Maalox, and wondered if this wasn’t how a drunk felt, an addict: willing to pass on the opportunity of sustenance for the cool comfort of vice.
He’d tried his best to explain the arrival of the bus, of Morrow and his merry band. He told Marlene about the fish, the Jericho trout. He’d recounted, as best he could, the story Morrow had read to him from the aging text in his office. About Sir Holyfield Lewis and his unfortunate demise. About the effect unbridled progress had on delicate ecosystems. About Billy Finnegan and the planned cordon. But all he’d received in return were blank stares. From Marlene, Darlene and Darryl. And it ruined his appetite and left him with an unquenchable thirst for his antacid.
“Are they real hippies?” Darlene asked, pushing her meat to the side of her plate. “I mean, like real honest-to-God hippies?”
“I don’t know,” Bull said, trying to smile.
“Because,” she went on, “they told us that there aren’t any hippies any more.”
“Who told you that?” Marlene said through narrowed eyes.
“Mr Robertson, at school. My history teacher. He told us that there is no such thing as hippies any more. And that when there was hippies they were only in the United States and not in Canada.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Darryl said through a mouthful of boiled cabbage.
“Well,” Darlene shot back, “that’s what he said.”
“Since when have teachers known anything?” Darryl replied, refilling his mouth.
“So,” Darlene said, looking at Bull. “Are they real hippies or not?”
“I don’t know, honey,” Bull said, feeling somewhat better that at least his family was having a conversation at the dinner table, even if it was somewhat fraught. “I don’t think so.”
Marlene huffed and let her fork clatter against her plate. She drew herself straight up in her chair and set her hands in her lap.
“Phyllis Richmond told me,” she said, her voice clear and confident, “that they had bongo drums and guitars. If that doesn’t make them real hippies, I don’t know what does. And if you ask me, I think they should be rounded up and sent packing. And believe you me, I’m not the only one.”
Through the trees he sees the familiar shape of the Streamliner, its burnished aluminum shell catching the faint moonlight and illuminating the small clearing in which it sits. Bull sits down on a stump to catch his breath. He’s somewhat embarrassed. Not by his now-apparent unhealthiness, though it has come as something of a surprise to him. He always considered himself to be in fair condition. Sure, some of his youthful muscle had gone to fat, but that was to be expected with age. Still, most of his bulk remained firm, and his arms were thick in the biceps, not flabby but hard. The work he did in the garden kept them that way. He understands now, though, his hands clutching his knees, his shaking forearms supporting the heft of his upper body, that his weight is simply that: weight.
This, however, is not what has brought about the humiliation he can now feel colouring his cheeks. It’s the sight of Billy Finnegan’s trailer. From the moment they stepped into the inky woods at the roadside—the whole while he followed Darryl, tried to keep pace with him, with his head pounding and his sweat pouring, with his mind turning back on itself to a time when it and his body were both fresh and innocent, prepared to face a future of promise together— Bull had no idea where he was. And now, sitting on his stump, sucking in the cool night air like a greedy child, he feels foolish. He once knew the forest as intimately as he did the fine veins of Marlene’s breasts. He no longer knows either.
“Pop. Hey, Pop?”
He hears Darryl’s call, but cannot yet respond. A few more deep breaths.
“You okay there, Pop?” Darryl asks, coming up beside him and laying a gentle hand on the top of Bull’s head.
“Sure, son,” Bull pants. “Just a little winded, is all.”
Not even breathing hard, he thinks. I can hardly move and he’s not even breathing hard. Bull decides that he may have underestimated his son, and finds the thought pleasing.
“Well, come on then,” Darryl says and takes Bull by the arm and helps him to his feet.
They move together across the brief clearing, Bull propped against Darryl, a wounded soldier in need of his comrade’s assistance.
At the door of the trailer Darryl lets go of his father’s arm, steadies him and offers him a look of condolence. An apology, it seems to Bull, for the strain he’s put him through, but also for the strain that is to come. There is kindness in the boy’s face and Bull wonders where exactly that comes from. Then Darryl turns to the door and knocks three times on the shiny metal. Three echoing reports that suggest a completely hollow interior.
The
door opens without the least sound of movement from inside, as if Billy Finnegan was standing behind it, expecting visitors. Billy is wearing cut-off jean shorts and a slightly soiled dark green John Deere T-shirt. His short hair is mussed, but Bull can’t tell whether from sleep or lack of combing. He suspects the latter.
“Hey there, Darryl,” Finnegan says, as if a knock at his door in the middle of the night is normal.
“Billy.”
“Howya doin’, Bull?”
“Fine, Billy,” Bull manages, his wind finally returning.
“Good to hear,” Billy smiles. “What can I do for you boys?”
Even with his breath back, Bull feels a desperate need to sit down again, but there is something about the situation that keeps him from saying as much. He holds no rank in the circumstance, is very much the third party, standing on the fringe, waiting for an invitation to participate.
“Billy,” Darryl says, his tone confidential, “you don’t still have any of that stuff you salvaged from the old quarry depot, do you?”
Finnegan, hands on his hips and wide smile stretching his lips, says, “You know I do.”
“Good,” Darryl says, then turns to Bull. “You wouldn’t mind if Pop and I borrowed a little something, would you?”
“Not one bit,” Finnegan says, stepping back from the door. “Come on in. What’s mine is yours.”
It hadn’t taken long for the complaints to start. At first they came by phone to Janeane Pryor at the Municipal Building. She wrote them all down, word for word, on small yellow Post-its and stuck them to Bull’s desk. First just to the top, but when that was covered, she started sticking them to the edge, and before long the desk was ringed with a yellow fringe.
Standing in the doorway to Bull’s office two weeks after Morrow and his coterie had arrived, Janeane smiled and said, “I like it. Looks a bit like a valance. Martha Stewart-ish.”
Bull, in the midst of another bout of gastric discomfort, couldn’t appreciate the humour. He’d started receiving phone calls at home, some coming late in the night, from constituents who demanded that he do something about the rabble out in the woods. Others had even come to the house and cornered him in the vegetable patch. He’d tried to convince them that what Morrow was doing was legal, that there was nothing that could be done. He’d been told as much by the sergeant at the OPP detachment in Brockton, who, after sending an officer out to check on things, told Bull that the police had better things to do with their time than harass campers.
Marlene was, of course, furious. She’d accused Bull of sitting idly by simply out of spite.
“You just want to embarrass me, don’t you,” she shouted at him the night before. “What have I done? Have I done something horrible to you? If you loved me you wouldn’t put me through this kind of humiliation.”
“Sweetheart,” Bull said as soothingly as he could, “you have to understand. There’s nothing I can do about it. I’ve tried.”
“Well, you haven’t tried hard enough.”
“There really isn’t anything —”
“What about Darlene?” Marlene interrupted, her voice gone cold. “Do you not even care about your own daughter?”
“What are you talking about?” Bull asked. “What about Darlene?”
“My God, Bull,” Marlene said to him. “Are you blind as well as stupid? She goes out with them. Out there with those hippies.”
“What do you mean? When?”
“At night. After we’re in bed.”
Bull felt like he’d been punched square in the middle of his burning belly. “How?” he wheezed. “How do you know?”
Marlene gave a contemptuous smirk and turned away from him. Over her shoulder she said, “I’m her mother. She talks to me.”
The interior of Billy Finnegan’s trailer home is impeccably tidy and Bull has trouble equating it with the slovenly man standing over the hot plate waiting for the water to boil. He half-expected fly-swarmed cases of empty beer bottles, even though he has never known Finnegan to be a drinker. He has his breath back and his chest has loosened but he still cannot get comfortable. The bench he’s sitting on is narrow and his belly is pushed up tight against the table, but that’s not it. It’s the pressed wildflowers in picture frames that hang on the walls that have him feeling slightly off balance. He wants to ask Darryl about them.
“You take sugar d’you, Bull?” Finnegan asks, a spoonful hovering over the cup of instant coffee.
“No, Billy. Just milk is fine.”
Bull notices as Finnegan adds two spoonfuls to Darryl’s coffee without asking. He accepts his own cup with a smile, and after a sip, which feels like acid in his stomach, he gestures to the picture frames on the wall across from him.
“Those are nice,” Bull says, trying to sound casual.
“Aren’t they just,” Finnegan says, looking proudly at the wall. “Darryl made them.”
Bull looks at his son, who shyly lowers his head, but not quickly enough to hide his own satisfied grin.
“They’re good, son,” Bull says awkwardly, feeling immediately guilty for his artlessness.
“I been telling him that he should try to sell them at the craft shop in town.” Finnegan smiles, handing Darryl his coffee. “But he don’t listen to me.”
Bull wants to say something else, but can’t find the words. He wants to tell Darryl yes, Finnegan is right, he should try to sell his flowers, but he knows if he does, it won’t come out right. Instead, he takes another sip of the corrosive coffee. He feels out of place here. Not unwelcome, just unprepared. Darryl rescues him with a clap on the back.
“How about we show Pop here the box, Billy.”
“Sure thing,” Finnegan says, setting his own cup on the table. “Got it right over here.”
Finnegan goes to the far end of the trailer and pulls back the thin curtain that conceals the bed. Pushing the covers back, he grabs hold of the edge of the mattress and folds it over. He then lifts the lid of the storage well beneath and reaches in, taking out a small wooden crate, which he sets on the floor. After he’s rearranged the bed, tucking the covers neatly under the mattress, he lifts the crate and places it gently on top.
“Well,” he says brightly, “don’t just sit there. C’mon over and have a peek.”
Bull was sitting in his office peeling Post-its from his lamp when Janeane came in. She didn’t knock, which was unusual. Even though Bull kept his door open, Janeane would always give a knock and wait for him to give her permission to enter.
Her just walking in and the strained look on her face told Bull that something was very wrong.
“What’s up, Janeane?” Bull asked, hoping, though he felt guilty for doing so, that it was some Pryor family trauma.
“TV people,” she said, her complexion blanched. “From the news. And that scientist fella.”
“Oh, God. Where?”
Janeane walked quickly across the room to the window. With a quick jerk of the cord she pulled up the venetian blinds and pointed down to the front steps of the Municipal Building.
Bull did not want to get out of his chair, felt almost as if he couldn’t. His legs like lead weights. But he pushed himself to his feet and went and stood behind Janeane and looked over her shoulder.
The steps below were crowded with Morrow’s people, most of them lounging about, a few kicking a beanbag back and forth between them. On the sidewalk a short distance away, a small group of townsfolk were beginning to gather, looking with disgust between the scraggly haired bodies collected on the steps and the battered bus parked against the curb. How could he not have heard it pull up? Bull wondered. Then he noticed the white van from the television station parked behind the bus.
“They want you to go down,” Janeane said, her voice no more than a whisper.
Bull took a deep breath and shrugged.
“Well, I guess I’d better,” he sighed. “Who knows, maybe I’ll become a star.”
Janeane did not laugh, but followed him silently out of
the office and toward the stairwell. Halfway down to the foyer she stopped him and straightened his collar and smoothed down his hair. Bull felt like a little boy on his way to get his class picture taken.
“Tell me, Janeane,” he said. “What do you make of all this?”
She shook her head. “Fun’s fun.” She frowned. “But we don’t need this.”
“No, we don’t,” Bull agreed.
“And all over some silly fish.”
“Yes,” Bull said, turning back down the stairs. “A silly goddamn fish.”
Morrow met him at the front door, his arms spread wide as if he was going to embrace him. Bull shrank back slightly, then Morrow clapped his hands together and rubbed them vigorously.
“It’s wonderful, Mr Mayor. Absolutely wonderful.” He looked quickly out toward the steps. “Of course I would have liked a somewhat larger media presence, but it’s early days yet.”
“I really don’t know about this, Dr Morrow,” Bull said sheepishly.
“Oh, don’t be nervous, Mr Mayor,” the professor chirped. “It’ll be a piece of cake. You might even like it. Besides, if you don’t mind, I’ll do most of the talking. You know, scientific expertise and all that.”
As Bull walked out onto the front steps of the Municipal Building he could feel the eyes settle upon him, especially those of his constituents, who, he could tell, even from a distance, were anything but pleased.
A woman in a close-fitting red jacket and skirt approached him and he immediately recognized her from the television. She smiled and introduced herself and Bull couldn’t help but notice the heaviness of her makeup. Her hair also looked too dark to be natural. Behind her stood a slightly overweight man in a pair of oily jeans and a sweatshirt with the university’s logo; he wore a baseball cap turned backward and balanced a large video camera on his shoulder. The reporter, who was still talking, though Bull hadn’t heard a word she’d said, took him by the shoulders and shifted him slightly closer to Morrow, then she turned to the cameraman.
“Is that good?”
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