by Lynn Coady
“I’m happy to drive,” says Schofield after a moment.
“Maybe we should just wait it out a little bit.”
He looks at his watch. I can’t believe the guy is looking at his watch with us sitting here surrounded by the bleached void. It’s like tumbling through space and wondering what the temperature is outside your spacesuit.
“Lots of time to the reading,” he pronounces, leaning back as if into an armchair in front of a fireplace. It’s a thing with burly men—they look cozy, no matter where they are. The only time they appear to be uncomfortable is standing up, having to sustain all that mass on their own.
I lean back as well, gazing out the window, which is dumb, because there’s nothing to gaze at. I’m play-acting for Schofield, like, dum-de-dum, why, look at all the stuff that’s going on out there. He must think I’m a fool. I lurch forward to turn on the radio.
It’s imperative to stay off the roads this evening, scolds the announcer in a Lorne Green baritone.
And then tinkling piano. Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. I swallow, sigh. Another snowplow rumbles past like some kind of leftover ice-age leviathan.
“Are the headlights on?” asks Schofield.
“Um,” I check. “No.”
“Maybe we should keep them on. High beams.”
I have this conviction that I should contradict Schofield. That it’s important he understands who is in charge here. Not to let him see me sweat, as it were. No chinks in said armour. Thinking this, I nod and flick on the high beams.
Then my right leg is heavier than my left. The catcher’s mitt is resting on it. Oh no. Oh no. This man equals five of me.
“Larry,” says Schofield.
I stare straight ahead. I make a nose like eeyore.
Schofield pats me. On the leg. Once. “Listen,” he says. “Don’t worry about it. All right?”
I look down at my leg. Nothing but worn-in Woolworth’s jeans adorning it now. I deflate, and make myself look Schofield in the glasses. Smile. “All right.”
“Okay,” says Schofield smiling back in a grandfatherly sort of way. “We still have quite a bit of time.”
“You must be hungry,” I say. This occurs to me because in fact I am hungry myself.
“The milkshake will hold me.”
I wish I smoked or something. We’d have something friendly to do to pass the time.
“Do you smoke?” I ask the poet.
Schofield shakes his head. “Afraid not. You?”
“No.”
“Hm,” says Schofield.
We stare out the window. The white is darkening, turning bluish. Getting late. Seconds roar past.
“The thing is,” I say without really knowing it’s coming, “I’m not a very experienced driver.”
Schofield purses his lips and nods.
“I got my licence a couple of years ago, but, you know. All I ever did was drive around the back roads. I never even went into Charlottetown.”
“I see,” says Schofield. “You’re from PEI?”
“Yes!” I’m happy about this turn in the conversation. It feels like this is going somewhere.
“I love PEI,” the poet tells me. “We spent some summers there when I was a boy.”
“I’m from near Summerside,” I say. “Have you ever been to Summerside?”
“I love Summerside,” Schofield rejoins. “It’s beautiful.”
“It is beautiful,” I enthuse. I think about Summerside. The very name of the place. You can scarcely imagine it buried in a snowstorm. I wish I were there right now.
I glance over at Schofield. There’s silence again. It seems we have both fallen into melancholy thinking of Summerside.
“So anyway,” I continue—and realize as I do that Schofield had interrupted as a means of excusing me from continuing. “I guess this kind of driving is pretty new to me.”
Schofield’s pursing and nodding again.
“And—ah—” I add, “I’m sorry.”
Jim would smack me if he were here. Or, no. He doesn’t do that. He doesn’t have to. He looks at you. He folds his arms. He manoeuvres his eyebrows in just such a way as to make you feel impaled. You are showing weakness, Larry. You are letting him see you sweat. You’re nothing but a big chink-riddled suit of armour.
“I’ve got an idea,” says Schofield. His voice is reedy again. Jocular.
I look at him. “You do?”
The catcher’s mitt dabs at my leg a second time. “Why don’t I try driving for a bit?” He smiles. “You can tell me where to go.”
I look away from him, mirroring Schofield’s signature gesture—the nodding, the pursing. It’s a good gesture, I realize as I perform it. Respectful, while not giving anything away. A face-saving gesture, which I have need of right now. Unspoken: We’ll just pretend like he didn’t make the same suggestion five minutes ago. I open my door. The wind wrenches it out of my hand.
“But we’ll just creep,” I hear Schofield call from somewhere behind me. “We’ll creep like you said before.”
I stagger to the other side of the car, blasted by ice-white and freezing nothing.
The Crowfeather Inn has no record of a reservation for a Dermot Schofield.
“Really?” I keep saying, over and over again. “Really?”
“I’m so sorry,” says the man behind the desk.
“Surely you have a room available?” prods Schofield.
Let me handle this, Dermot, I want to say. I’ve grown up in the motel business. I know how to deal with these people. But actually I’m intimidated, because the Crowfeather is nothing like my parents’ place, called the Highwayman. (“We rob ya blind!” my father will joke counterintuitively to tourists.)
The Crowfeather does that turn-of-the-century thing with its decor, like the English Department but without all the dust and burnt coffee smell. Plush chairs, velvet drapes, gilded wallpaper, sumptuous tones, whereas the Highwayman has buoys and driftwood hanging on the walls of the lobby. Nobody I know likes the Crowfeather in particular. Apparently a couple of American hippies emerged from the woods one day where they had been living in a commune since the mid-sixties. Most of the hippies left after a couple of years, rumour has it, because they were developing scurvy during the winters. The current proprietors of the Crowfeather stuck it out, however, hitchhiking back and forth into town for vitamin supplements and other sundries—back and forth, back and forth—until finally they realized they were spending more time in town than at the commune. So then they sold the commune and bought an ostentatious yet shambling Victorian home on the edge of town whose ancient owner—a Grayson, no surprise—had freshly died. It was revealed at that point that the two American hippies were rich—had more money than they knew what to do with. The commune had been like a hobby to them, and now starting up the Crowfeather was their hobby. This annoyed locals, who were further annoyed to see how well the inn did. People made fun of it initially, just as they had made fun of the commune. But the hippies took out ads in Harper’s magazine and The New Yorker. They made Timperly, New Brunswick, a summer holiday destination—something no home-grown entrepreneur had ever accomplished. Still, locals disdain the place, say that it is “big-feeling.” They feel obliquely ripped off by the Crowfeather Inn somehow. It’s the Westcock crowd that keeps the place going—sucking up the antiques, the opulence. It’s the only fancy place to eat in town. The dining room is every student’s first choice whenever their parents come to take them out. It’s constantly booked for graduation dinners and small, tasteful wedding parties, and to entertain visiting dignitaries like Dermot Schofield.
I’m wondering if I should call Jim, admit defeat, when the man behind the desk says, “Oh, absolutely, sir. Absolutely we have rooms,” and I release my breath. Schofield’s enormous shoulders shift beneath his parka. He seizes a pen in his catcher’s mitt and begins to fill in the paperwork.
“How long will you be staying, sir?”
“Just the one night.”
“On your way
somewhere for Christmas?”
“To Nova Scotia, yes.”
I peer at the desk guy to see if he’s an American hippie. But he’s leaning on his counter, getting comfortable, prepared in that Maritime way to talk all night long about geography and weather systems.
“Where in Nova Scotia, now?” His accent grows folksy now that he knows he’s not dealing with an Upper Canadian or someone from the States. “I’ve got a sister up in Yarmouth,” he proffers.
“Down Antigonish way,” Schofield obliges.
“The Highland Heart of Nova Scotia,” recites the desk guy, quoting some tourist brochure from days gone by.
“That’s right,” smiles Schofield, passing the pen and paper back across the counter. The man scrutinizes it.
“Now, Schofield’s not a Scottish name, is it?” he inquires, nearly scolding. “I thought it was all Scotsmen up that way.”
I could curl up on the floor with ennui. Give me a hippie any day over this. It’s like Todd after a couple of beers: What’s your mother’s name? Nope, Protestant, don’t approve. What’s your father’s name? Catholic, good, check. What part of Scotland, exactly? Hm, nope, a shame. If it were a mile farther south, I’d be buying your drinks.
“Just your basic English name,” admits Schofield, “with Dermot tacked on for my mother’s side of the family.”
The desk guy squints. “Irish?”
“That’s right.”
North Irish or South Irish? Black Irish or Purple Irish? Up Irish or Down Irish? I can just see the guy gearing up for a cross-examination. But the paperwork stops him. He remembers we’re here to do business.
“Of course we’ll be needing a deposit,” he tells us with a gesture of embarrassment.
“What?” I say. “What?”
“A deposit?” repeats Schofield. He’s as surprised as me.
“It’s policy,” explains the desk guy.
Schofield is nodding. I peek to see if he’s pursing too. Yes. He’s pursing.
“Excuse me,” I say. “But I—I’ve worked in the hotel industry and I’ve never heard of having to give a deposit.”
The desk guy stares as if he’s just noticed me and wonders why I haven’t been thrown out yet. “It’s pretty common these days,” he says.
“Well, it seems a little mercenary.”
He raises his eyebrows at me. “This is a business.”
I realize, with that bob of the eyebrows, that the desk guy is not going to give in. I feel hot and desperate like I’m having a poem scrutinized in class. He doesn’t see anything at all wrong with asking for a deposit.
“Well, I’d just like to know what the world is coming to,” I hear myself barking.
“You would, would you?”
“Yes,” I bark. “I would.”
“Mr. Schofield,” says the man behind the counter. “Is this your son?”
It’s the only time I’ve ever really wanted to punch someone, aside from my grandmother.
“How much?” say Schofield.
“That will be thirty dollars, please.”
“Gah!” I say.
“That’s fine,” soothes Schofield, reaching into his back pocket.
My mind is flopping around like a dying trout. How much can the room be if the deposit is thirty dollars? Did Jim know how much the room would cost when he booked it? But of course Jim never booked it. He must have forgotten in all the pre-Christmas bustle. I look down and see that I am tugging on Schofield’s arm like a child, which is pretty much what I feel like, standing beside him.
“Mr. Schofield,” I say. “Jim will cover this. I mean, the university will pay you back for everything.”
“That’s fine, Larry, really.”
“I’m so sorry,” I bleat, aware I have lost all credibility now. So much for keeping my cool. So much for showing him who’s in charge. “I wasn’t expecting any of this.”
“Larry,” says Schofield, avoiding my gaze as he hands a fistful of tens and fives over to the desk guy, who stands like he’s hearing none of this. “It’s not your fault. These things happen.” Relieved of his cash—probably all the cash he has on him—Schofield looks down at me and smiles. “Okay?” he inquires. He is waiting, patiently, for me to tell him it’s okay. It strikes me as a weirdly maternal thing to do. I wonder if he’s going to touch my leg again.
And now the man is buying me dinner at the inn.
I fought it. I demurred. And then I veered into outright reluctance when Schofield persisted. So the reluctance became balking. Still Schofield was adamant. The balks were then upped to a series of objections—I lingered there for a while—Schofield must be tired, he must be sick of me, he must want time to prepare for his reading. Soon I found myself writhing and shouting and gnashing my teeth in the Crowfeather lobby. No! It was insane! We were supposed to be his hosts! And here he was having to pay for his own hotel room! I couldn’t ask him to buy me dinner on top of all that! I almost got him killed by a snowplow!
The whole time Schofield rocked back and forth on his heels—uncomfortable standing up, uncomfortable with my discomfort. He explained to me that in fact he was tired, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t use some company. He would be reading pieces tonight he’d read dozens of times in the past. He required no time to prepare.
“I only get nervous about the reading,” Schofield told me, “when I’m left to myself. What I need is distraction. Conversation.”
But I’m a cretin, I wanted to protest. For the past hour all I’d been able to think about was getting the hell away from Schofield on the assumption that he wanted nothing more than for me to get the hell away from him. I couldn’t just let go of this conviction all at once.
“Think about it,” I pleaded. “You don’t want to sit around talking to me before your reading. My God, you’ve done that for the last hour on the drive over here.”
“This is different, Larry. Now we can relax. Have a bite to eat and some wine and relive our triumph over the elements.”
Agonized, I looked around the lobby for a pay phone. “I could call Jim for you.”
Why can’t I be rich, I was whining internally. Why must I be poor. I don’t even have money for Christmas presents. Why can’t I be a hippie from the States with nothing to do but buy up patches of New Brunswick. Why can’t I be the one lavishing money on the visiting poet instead of the other way around.
Schofield started laughing then. I could tell it was from a kind of frustration. “Larry,” he said. “You’re here. For the love of God, man, just come and have a bite to eat with me. Are you going to make me beg?”
Schofield asks if I like white wine or red and, because I don’t like either, I toss a mental coin and say red. It comes and we sip. All of a sudden I am tired. I am thoroughly tired, having driven myself on fumes and nerves for the past few hours. A basket of bread arrives. Schofield takes one bun, cuts it in half with his knife. Butters it, eats it in small bites. Meanwhile I have polished off the rest of the basket.
“Sorry,” I say, idly shaking the basket.
“Growing boy,” remarks Schofield.
That word again.
The nice thing about being this tired is, I don’t have the energy to be nervous anymore. After a few more sips of wine, the nervousness drains away. I don’t even feel bad about eating all the bread. The wine tastes like nothing to me—dusty nothing. It tastes like the English Department. I seem to be experiencing it somewhere inside of my nose instead of my palate.
“So you’re a student of Arsenault’s,” says my host. With that word, with that Arsenault, my defence system attempts to creak back into gear. Am I dining with the enemy here? Was this some kind of plan—wear a guy down, invite him to dinner, pour wine down his throat, and then—
“Yeah. Yes. I’m in Jim’s poetry seminar.”
“How are you liking it?”
“It’s absolutely wonderful,” I enunciate.
“I’m sure,” says Schofield.
“Absolutely. Wonderful,”
I repeat, looking him in the eye, trying to penetrate my gaze through the thick lenses of his glasses. I wonder if they’re the kind of glasses that make your eyes look bigger. If so, Schofield’s eyes must be pinpricks. Beady little pinpricks.
Suddenly the word pinprick appeals to me so much I have to dig out my journal, making apologies to Schofield as I do. I realize, as I envision it on the page, my preference seems to be for words that are meant to be two but that become more interesting merged into one. Deadwood. Showdogs. Pinpricks. It seems to intensify yet open up the meaning all at once.
Schofield watches me write, for lack of anything else to do. He doesn’t say anything, just waits.
“I get these words in my head,” I explain, feeling that it’s my job to break the silence. “It’s not like I ever get ideas for entire concepts or phrases. It’s just these single words that I like. And I don’t even know why I like them. My journal is full of words, all by themselves.”
“That’s valid,” says Schofield. I don’t know what to make of his response. Is he being condescending? I peer at him. His glasses flicker in the candlelight.
“Anyway,” I shrug, stuffing my journal away, “I go with it.”
“Some poets are word-oriented,” says Schofield, dipping his head like a sage, “and some are image-oriented. I’m word-oriented, like you. I see the words on the page before I write them.”
“Yes!” I say, leaning forward.
“Arsenault is image-oriented,” adds Schofield.
I sit back again at the mention of Arsenault.
“Well, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that,” I say.
“Certainly not,” agrees Schofield.
“I mean, have you read any of Jim’s work?”
“I’ve read a great deal of Arsenault’s work,” is Schofield’s reply. “I’m his biggest fan.”
This confuses me. It confuses me because Jim clearly hates Schofield, and I assumed there had to be a good reason why. But after reading Schofield’s poetry and meeting him, the only logical reason left for Jim’s dislike is that Schofield must dislike Jim every bit as much—or at least his poetry, which, let’s face it, amounts to the same thing.