Saltwater Cowboys

by Dayle Furlong

  “Join us for dessert?”

  “Okay,” he said and burped.

  “I wonder where all of your manners have gone, Peter Fifield. I truly do,” she said and picked up Susie to dress her in her finest bonnet, booties, and dress.

  “An RCMP car drove by the house,” Peter said as they sat in the truck outside the Chinook Tavern. Matted mosquitoes dried from late summer’s heat were scattered on the windshield.

  “When?” Jack asked and inhaled sharply.

  “Thursday. Wanda put Susie to bed, drew back the curtains, and he was parked outside.”

  “Do you think they know anything?” Jack whispered.

  “No. They don’t know, but they suspect something,” Peter said and the fistful of money in his hand shook.

  “We’ve got to stop,” Jack said.

  “No, we don’t. We’ll just live quietly for a while. Not spend as much,” Peter said and his eyes glazed over as he opened the duffel bag.

  “I don’t think they’ve paid us the right amount for our last shipment,” Peter said as he counted the money. “The cowboys are ripping us off. My cut isn’t enough,” he added as he counted it for the third time. He licked his fingers as he counted the bills yet again.

  “See? We are missing a few hundred. I knew they would cheat us,” Peter said.

  “We’ve got to stop. The police drove by your house. They know something,” Jack said.

  Peter kept counting.

  “Are you listening to me?” Jack asked wearily.

  Jack ran his fingers through his hair, got out of the four-by-four, and drove home.

  As he drove home his breath came in short gasps. How am I going to get out of this? I don’t know what to say to them so we can get away. I’ll tell Angela, I’ll tell her everything. She’ll know what to do, of course she will. She’ll know how to handle Peter, and she’ll even know how to handle those crooked cowboys. She’ll scare the bejeezus out of them, for chrissakes. I’ll tell her all about the money, how much we’ve got and what I plan to do with it. She’ll know what to do, she’ll know exactly what to do.

  When Jack arrived home Angela yelled at him. “You’re more interested in curling and evenings out with the boys at the bar than spending a quiet evening at home with your children.”

  Jack nodded in silent agreement and wandered to the bedroom with his sports bag.

  He heard her get in the shower. He checked on his daughters; they were asleep. Half-eaten hot dogs with ketchup stains were still on the sides of their plates, fat chunks of fried potato beside them, half-empty milk glasses with greasy half-moon lip marks on the side piled on the kitchen counter.

  Jack made his way to the bedroom and sat on the edge of the unmade bed, Angela’s pink silky pajamas on the floor, her pink slippers with the ball of fuzz on the toe discarded by the closet. Her curling iron smelled of burnt hair. It sat on the vanity with bottles of gummy hairspray, glossy and sticky, next to it. The room was a mixture of scents: the sugary smell of her in the air, the musky smell of him in the pillows, and the earthy smell of them in the sheets.

  “Angela?” he called out when the shower stopped and the pipes ceased moaning.

  “Yes?” she answered as the shower curtain scraped the metal rod.

  “I have something to tell you.”

  “I’ll be right out,” she said and blew her nose.

  Hurry up, Jack thought as he rose to check on the money in the crevices scattered around the bedroom closet, before I lose my nerve. He confirmed the new amount in his ledger.

  At the mayor’s house for drinks and card games later that night, Peter greedily downed his sixth glass of whiskey. He sucked on his lips to glean as much of the sharp, numbing liquid as he could get on his taste buds. The women watched him worriedly. Wanda spoke animatedly, waved her cards when she won a round in an attempt to deflect attention from her husband’s preoccupation with the drink and his thinly veiled despondency.

  Spencer and Tanya Ann focused on their cards. They were winning, every hand abundant and every move skillful and well thought out.

  “More coffee cake?” Tanya Ann asked.

  Wanda took another slice. She’d already gorged herself on two slices. Tanya Ann pecked at crumbs. Both women patted their stomachs, worried about their waistlines.

  “I’m going to get a boat for the cottage,” Peter said suddenly.

  Spencer looked up from his cards.

  The men talked about whether the price of motorboats would rise this season as the women laid down their cards and rose to make a fresh pot of tea. Wanda was embarrassed by her husband. This was the third time tonight he’d interrupted their game with impromptu discussions about purchases he planned to make. It was humiliating watching him plunge deeper into the proffered drink while playing a lackadaisical game of cards. One or two glasses would have been acceptable but they were at the mayor’s house, not the Chinook Tavern.

  In her bright kitchen Tanya Ann filled the red kettle. Wanda surveyed the décor. Tanya Ann had modern tastes. Her phone, placements, mixing bowls, and baking utensils were all a bright apple red. Her furniture was made of high-grade solid oak. Her walls were painted a perfect chip-free white.

  Wanda helped her carry porcelain cups and saucers to the dining-room table. Tanya Ann chattered on about the difficulty of shipping goods to the north and how Papineau’s grocery store rarely had anything she liked.

  “Iced cakes are half-price near closing time,” Wanda said. She instantly regretted speaking. She quietly sensed that half-priced cakes weren’t at all what Tanya Ann had meant.

  “Sometimes they get gouda cheese,” Wanda mumbled.

  “The wife doesn’t work there anymore,” Peter said. He was slurring every word now that he’d obliterated himself through half-emptying the bottle of whiskey. Spencer watched them both over the rim of his reading glasses, perched low on his nose.

  “My son Tyger works long and hard hours and he can’t afford a boat this season. The world doesn’t take to kindly to cheaters,” Spencer said and coughed.

  The women sat silently and sipped their tea.

  “Sooner or later the world wants its money back. Believe me, I know, my white collar is filthier than you’d expect, so I don’t hold it against you. All the same, though, the world demands that those of us with ill-gotten means pay the price. You can’t climb the ladder on the back of a snake for too long, now can you?” Spencer said.

  Wanda reddened as Peter hauled the bottle toward himself and tipped it up to his mouth to drain the last few drops. She glared at him disdainfully.

  “More tea?” Tanya Ann asked weakly.

  “How could you put us in this much danger?” Angela demanded.

  “I thought this would keep us safe,” Jack mumbled.

  “How can we be safe in all of this? They aren’t cowboys who shepherd cattle on the foothills of Alberta. These are men who traffic stolen gold.”

  She rose from the bed and tripped over her slippers. She yanked open the yellow curtains and steadied herself with a hand on her hip. The summer sun had finally set. Night had coaxed out the stars and turned the wispy clouds charcoal. They looked like Persian cats scuttling across the sky, fluffy and whimsical. In the hour that she’d stood there the non-threatening cat-like clouds had thickened. Thunderclaps were the preface to the power of a northern storm, lightning bolts an epilogue.

  “It’s raining,” Angela said as the drops fell sideways on the glass, long, jagged streaks that ripped the summer dust free. She crossed to the other side of the window and pulled mercilessly at the other half of the curtain. The curtain and rod fell on the orange carpet, a pile of white and yellow polyester at her feet. Her eyes twitched, bloodless lips tightened, and she pounded the backs of her hands on her temples.

  Jack jumped up to fix the curtains. “Don’t bother,” she said slowly. “We’re leaving, Jack, we’re going back home.” She turned to look out the window. “The day you told me you were laid off it was raining, do you remember
? I remember the smell of the rain — as pure as glass. My kitchen air was sweet with the smells of salty cooked vegetables and homemade bread. When we go back, Jack McCarthy, you better get us that again, that rain better be there, the smell of that food, or there’s no use going back at all. How much money do we have?”

  “A few hundred thousand,” Jack said.

  “We have that much money?”

  He nodded as his face reddened.

  “We better go soon and we better be quiet about it. That’s an awful lot of money,” she said and sank to the floor in the pile of curtains. She wept as hard as the clouds that roared above the trailer, her face growing a deeper and deeper grey as outside their window the rumbling clouds with blackened bottoms piled quickly on top of one another.

  Jack pulled a tissue from the box on the night table. He leaned down, tilted her chin in his hands, and wiped her eyes and nose in measured little dabs.

  “We need to leave. And we need to give the money back. I don’t care to who, Peter or the cowboys, but we need to give it back. Next weekend is Canada Day. We’ll go to the fair and we’ll pretend nothing is amiss. You’ll sign over the trailer to the realtor and give the money to Pete, and we’ll take what’s in the bank account, but only the money you’ve earned. We’ll give the car to Pete. We’ll take the bus as far away as we can get. We’ll go to Boston and visit your uncle, and we’ll spend the rest of the summer there in case anyone is trailing along behind us. We’ll return to Brighton in the fall, in time for school. I’ll pack this week, but we’ll leave the big stuff, the beds and all that. I’ll call Olive when we’re in Edmonton, give her permission to take our things. We’ll be back east in a week.”

  She woke up to the shrill hiss of the teakettle, the smell of salty bacon, warm toast, and freshly sliced oranges. The light on her face was dull, refracted by the misty morning dew as it gathered on the fringes of the windowpane. A sweet breast of thick, milky vapour — white as a dove — swirled around the trailer.

  She hauled her panties up over her hips, pulled down her crumpled white T-shirt, smoothed the front over her circular pouting belly, white as raw dough, and she slithered out of bed. She passed Jack in the kitchen and wordlessly opened the window. She walked down the hall to the children’s rooms; they’d all piled in the top bunk in Katie and Maggie’s room. The sheets were twisted and splayed; they’d roped them together and used them as climbing vines. The pillows and sheets stacked, tent-like, a white cave in which the two of them huddled.

  Angela opened their curtains and inhaled sharply. She turned to shake the girls awake. “Katie, Maggie, wake up, look,” she said as they batted her hands away and snuggled closer together. She tickled their damp necks and dry feet so they would get up.

  “What?” Katie snapped as she leaned over the edge of the bunk bed to look out the window. She sighed in awe as Maggie crawled over to look. The rainbow’s reflection appeared to fall directly over their backyard. It shone like emeralds, rubies, and yellow gold. It sparkled right through the mist, and a miniature version reflected in each of their little pupils.

  “It’s just like Daddy promised,” Katie said and smiled broadly.

  Chapter Fifteen

  All week Angela had been packing quietly, stocking away valuables, photos, report cards, and favourite toys. All things purchased with stolen money were bagged up and marked for donation, to UNICEF, the hospital, to whomever she could give it to. She’d considered all stolen items soiled.

  “Everything’s in order?” she’d asked him this morning, the children asleep, hot tea steaming before them.

  “Yes,” he answered meekly and sipped his tea. He clamped his left hand between his thighs and jiggled his foot.

  “Good, Uncle Pat know we’re coming?”

  “Uh-huh,” he said and nodded.

  “When will you see Peter?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Good, I’ll wake the girls. We should go to the pancake breakfast,” she said and rose to wake and bathe the girls.

  The sun was up. A dry heat wave cocooned the town. Swathes of robin’s-egg blue feathered the sky. Soon the rest of the town would arrive for the pancake breakfast. Then there would be a barbecue, games, and fireworks at dusk for Canada Day.

  A few miners had hoisted the Canadian flag and set up picnic tables. The volunteer firefighters had set up fireworks, ready to ignite them as the sun set. There was pork to be barbecued, buns to be buttered, corn on the cob to be boiled. Someone had to fill the canoe with ice and hundreds of bottles for the beer garden. A children’s tent needed to be put up. There was plenty to do and many in the community had been out setting up: Watson and his wife, Wisnoski and his wife, the mayor and his family, the grocer Papineau, Olive and her husband. They’d been working as a team for the last few days, determined to put on a spectacular community Canada Day Fair.

  They’d wheeled out the carnival equipment from the battered white trucks rented from Edmonton. The driver, a squat man in jeans, beer-ad T-shirt, and baseball cap brought out the popcorn and candy-apple machines and the small plastic rides for the children.

  A few men had set up a stage. The miners had screwed a few flats together and rigged sound. A fireman had prepared the barbecue. Last night he’d scrubbed the rusted grates and spread a layer of black charcoal evenly on the grey ash that had scarred the bottom. This morning the kindergarten teacher had fussed with the tablecloth and tied the ends to the picnic tables with metal clamps. She arranged for fruit to be sliced and filled up barrels with water for the corn.

  In the morning the air smelled spicy from a forest fire that had been blazing south of Peace River for almost four days now. It smelt like sweetgrass, the stuff Olive was always burning in her trailer, Angela thought. The air was warm with haze. She thought they would get trapped and burn to death. Nonsense, Jack had said, and she had looked at him and shaken her head; she had very little faith or trust in his judgment these days.

  Angela made her way through the forked crowd of people. They were standing in bloated lines at concession stands, huddling around simple duck squirt games, ball toss, dart throws, and horseshoe pits. Blasts of heat from the bottom of the candy machines scorched her ankles and travelled up her shins. She passed the beer tent, a handful of slumped bodies already sluggish, drowned in drink; they sang lazily, cracked open beers, and slapped them together festively. A woman hopped around and grabbed a man by the waist. Her lobster-red skin was pinched in an aqua-coloured terrycloth tube top, a tan line straight above her lobster-meat-white breasts that poked out from the loose elastic. An anchor pendant on a gold chain rested in her ample cleavage. She was raucously singing a Maritime folk song.

  Within an hour, everything was set up at the barbecue; pork roasted slowly on the spit. Hot dogs and hamburgers for the children sizzled noisily. Jack and Peter had volunteered to tend the meat for a few hours. Angela shrank at the sight of them. Her lips curled and her eyebrows and skin clumped into knots above her forehead. She crossed her arms and watched them. They looked like a couple of gentlemen volunteering for the community picnic. How phony the pair of them are, she thought.

  After they were done volunteering at the grill, Jack joined his family. He watched Lily run around on the grass until her dress got caught on a twig. He sat her on a picnic table and knelt to pull her dress out from under her armpits. He smoothed the little skirt and took a shiny blue plastic clip from her dark hair, flattened her bangs to one side, and re-fastened it. He loved her so much; his heart broke at the sight of her thick ebony hair, sharp blue eyes, and tiny face. He gave her a quick kiss and set her on the ground again.

  Maggie tugged at the pocket of his jeans and begged for change for the amusements. Jack gazed into the eyes in a face not much different to his own and tried not to let the fact that she was his favourite child show. He felt like a bad parent, but it was true, she was the apple of his eye, always had been and always would be. He handed her a five-dollar bill and told her to go quickly now and spend it
on what she could.

  A big fat bee was hounding Katie, its lower end sagging and swirling in the heat as it bounced against her ears and hair, trying to land. She screamed and batted wildly at it — For a kid who loves science, Jack thought, she can’t stand bees — until it rose and soared away lazily. He asked Katie if she was alright. Dumb question, she was always alright. That kid is more together than all of us combined, he thought and gave her some money for the games.

  Angela wiped the sweat from her forehead, neck, and chin and dipped the piece of cotton between her breasts to gather moisture that had dripped down between the swell of her flesh onto her belly, quietly watching her husband.

  Katie took Maggie by the hand to the cotton candy machine. Lily continued to play at their feet, picking flowers and throwing sand at the ants, stomping on the little holes in the ground that swallowed their bloated bead-like bodies.

  “Hi there!” a loud, forced voice sang out.

  Wanda, impenetrable in layers of white billowing cotton, strode toward them as if she were gentry, come to bestow her best. “Beautiful day!” she said, smiling as she shifted Susie from hip to hip.

  “Where’s Peter?” Jack asked.

  “He had to run home and take care of something.”

  Angela nodded at Jack quickly and he rose perfunctorily. “Excuse me, I’ve got to run home for a minute.”

  They’d agreed that Jack would tell Peter that he was leaving Foxville while Peter was at home. It would be easier, they’d agreed, less chance of Peter retaliating and causing a scene.

  Wanda did not wait for anything else to be said. She walked away, fumbling over the train of her sullied white dress, murmuring words of comfort to a screeching Susie as she moved on toward the mayor’s wife, Tanya Ann Cooper, and her family at a picnic table close to the water. Angela stood alone with mouth agape, her face grey and crumpled like an exposed snail looking for its shell.