Agassiz Stories

by Sandra Birdsell

  “Sit yourself down,” he said. “Make yourself homelier, I won’t be long.” And he went out into the back yard to hang clothes on the line.

  The basket of clothing bounced against his stomach as he carried it through the garden to the back yard where the clotheslines were strung between two trees. He stumbled and wet laundry slid down from the top of the pile onto the dirt. He swore, picked it up and shook it. He set the basket of laundry down on the hull of his nearly finished boat. He was breathing heavily; the effort of carrying the basket up the stairs and across the yard made his heartbeat rise. He felt the lack of oxygen in his cramped calf muscles. His body had become awkward, did not respond the way it should. He dropped things, walked into walls, felt like a drunk man. He leaned against the boat and rested until his breathing became even.

  Night was falling in the garden. He heard the sound of the town coming alive for a Friday evening. He no longer felt the pull of the town, though. He preferred now to do his drinking alone. He closed his eyes to the dots and bright flashes of light that danced in the air in front of him and saw old Henry Roy, lying in the narrow cot in the hotel room that had been his home, flesh falling away from his bones slowly. He saw the picture of a man locked inside a body that had given out on him; a living death. He shuddered and opened his eyes. What would be worse? He pulled the trigger and felt the hot path of metal through the roof of his mouth. The choice was his.

  “What time do you think Mom will be home?” Truda asked.

  “Eh?”

  “Here, let me,” Truda said and took the basket of laundry from him.

  He felt foolish. She’d found him standing with his mouth open, staring into the neighbouring yard. He was aware of her hard look and conscious of his stomach, a ripe pumpkin straining the buttons on his shirt. His hair was still thick and black, but he was getting old. He talked to himself, for instance, aloud. He blurted out parts of sentences in French, inexplicably, to no one in particular. “Je ne sais pas. …,” he often said. He was unsettled by this because he had always thought he knew what was necessary to know.

  Truda flicked a towel and hung it on the line. “I picked up the papers for you,” she said. “I thought we might get started on them tonight.”

  Papers. What papers? “Oh, I see.”

  “You managed to get a copy of your birth certificate then?”

  “Ah, what papers might that be?”

  She turned and looked at him, a frown creasing the skin above her nose. “Your application for the old age security. We talked about it last weekend. Mom told me to pick the papers up for you.”

  He was irritated, first that he’d forgotten and then at Mika, for taking care of his business. “What did she want to go and do that for?” he asked. “It’s a waste of time. I don’t need old age security. I got security, I’ve got my work.”

  “What about after, when you can’t work?”

  He’d never allowed himself to think seriously about that. He knew he would have to quit eventually in some far-off time. He’d spend his days fishing, golfing or reading, although he did none of those things presently.

  “I’ll die with my boots on,” he said. “They’ll carry me out of the shop, feet first. Then I’ll be pushing up the daisies. I don’t need security.” He saw old man Roy’s eyes, the terrible lucidity in them, a fly crawling across an unshaven cheek, a hand frozen against a blanket, the short-circuiting of the brain freezing his body.

  Two hundred and thirty-five pounds, the doctor whistled. Cholesterol count out of sight. What are you going to do about it? What happened to the diet? With proper drugs and weight loss, you never know. What would you do? Maurice asked. If you were me? The doctor walked away from the examining table. If I were in the shape you’re in, I think I’d kill myself.

  “You’re going to be sixty-five this year,” Truda said. “You’re entitled to the pension.”

  “Let them give it to those that need it.” Sometimes he felt as though he was building a monument.

  “You’ve paid taxes all these years, why shouldn’t you collect now? Look at it as being a kind of a refund.”

  A refund for living? Money given back to you, just before you died, as a kind of reward? Maurice sensed Truda’s frustration and he softened. He realized that it was her attempt to look after him, provide for him. There was a time when he’d thought Truda was more flawed than the other children, the way she had stayed behind after they’d scattered and gone their separate ways. He knew her deep fear of being alone. “I guess that’s one way of looking at it,” he said. “I could just bank it, save it for my old age.” He laughed.

  “Lord,” she said. “Use it to finish this boat. Hanging clothes around this beast is not the easiest. No wonder Mom complains. Do you think it’ll be finished soon?”

  The others had all stopped asking that question; even Mika had more or less resigned herself to the idea that he might never finish it, that the boat, overturned on two saw-horses at the back of the yard, would become a permanent fixture. He wished Truda would stop asking as well. He ran his hand down the spine of the craft. “By cracky,” he said. “All it needs now is the last gel coat and it’ll be finished. Put an Evinrude on back of this baby and you won’t catch me this summer, no siree. It’ll be finished by the centennial celebrations.”

  He waited until Truda had finished hanging the clothes and they went back into the house. Truda set her knapsack on the kitchen table and took out a bottle of whiskey. Maurice was surprised. Truda drank?

  “Do you mind?” she asked.

  “Not so long as you pour one for me too,” he said, and got two jelly jars down from the cupboard. Mika’s shelves were lined with expensive glassware but Maurice still preferred the heavy squat shape of the jelly jar. He tried to be casual. He sensed that something was wrong. He’d been aware of all his children’s problems coming inevitably in one shape or another over the years, and never without feeling guilty, of somehow being responsible. Because of this, he had never interfered with what Mika did when it came to the children.

  Truda poured the drinks and Maurice made two thick corned beef sandwiches. Despite having eaten a large meal, he found that he had an appetite. He began to fill Truda in on the latest family news, retelling events he’d told her last weekend. And then something new, as though he’d only just remembered.

  “They’re going to change the name of this street. The street we live on. For the town’s hundredth anniversary. What do you think it’ll be?”

  “Let me guess,” Truda said. “They’re going to name the street Rue Montreal, or Diefenbaker Place.”

  “Lafrenière,” Maurice said. He swilled the rye about in his glass before tipping it up and finishing it. The heat of it in his stomach felt good.

  “Well, hey, that’s great. Can you believe it?”

  “I haven’t told your mother yet,” Maurice said. “It’s no big deal.” He saw the moisture in Truda’s eyes.

  “When did this all come about?”

  “At Christmas. Just before, I think. They told me their plans.”

  “I think it’s a big deal. Imagine, Lafrenière Street after my old man.”

  “Not exactly after me,” Maurice said. He poured himself another drink. “According to the history of this place, a Lafrenière was one of three names on the original incorporation of Agassiz as a town. They looked it up. It’s in the records. But shoot, I don’t mind. I’ll take what I can get. Lafrenière’s a good name.” He chuckled softly. His father had no relatives; at least that’s what he’d been told all those years when they’d lived as a family in the house, no, don’t call it a house. It was more like a shack.

  “Je ne sais pas,” Maurice said. Whether any of this matters or not. But pictures from his past kept rearing up and he was compelled to look at them against his will and there he was again, only thirteen years old, walking through the bush, stopping to look at a pocket watch.

  Seven o’clock. It didn’t matter. All he had was time. Soon he’d be swadd
led in a damp blanket of cool air and, coming with nightfall, a chilling frost and he had nowhere to sleep, not yet. He’d raided the house once again for warmer clothing. There were weeds pushing through the cracks in the shack behind the house and he thought of his parents in the cemetery, only three weeks and already the weeds were growing upon their mounds of earth. He found nothing left behind in the house. Everything had been taken. The windows were broken, not even the smell of his family remained, just the overpowering smell of wood rotting. But in the rafters of the shack was his father’s .22 and a box of shells wrapped in heavy wax paper. He cut away from the house knowing he would never go back to it. He walked unseeing, a sleepwalker adrift in the real world. Heard a voice again today, he told himself, recording as in a journal. It was like I was being followed; it was like a hand reaching to touch me. He stopped, looked over his shoulder. Nothing but the leaves flipping gently, their thousand different autumn colours in the waning light. He blew his nose between his fingers. His hands smelled smoky to him, like the smell of a wild rabbit he’d snared that day.

  Maurice sat staring, unblinking, into the jelly jar. Truda sloshed more whiskey into it.

  “Cheers,” she said and lifted her glass.

  “Here’s mud in your eyes.”

  “Okay, so when does this happen?” Truda asked. “When does this glorious name change take place?”

  “Next month, during the homecoming. They’re planning to have a boat regatta and a street dance.”

  “That only gives you a month to finish the boat,” Truda said.

  “It’ll be ready. Old Man River is going to show those buggers what a boat really is. Take me a ride to the lake and back.”

  There was the sound of tires on gravel as Mika arrived home from work. They both gulped the remainder of their drinks and then laughed self-consciously over the fact that Mika still had this effect on them so that even now they felt guilty, had the urge to hide things rather than confront her. Maurice put the bottle into the cupboard.

  Mika entered the kitchen carrying several packages. “Oh, you did come out,” Mika said when she saw Truda. “Good, I’ve brought enough chicken and chips for three.”

  Maurice saw Truda about to protest and winked at her. “You don’t say, chicken,” he said. “That’ll sure hit the old spot.”

  Mika unpacked the boxes of chicken and chips and set plates on the table. She switched the radio on and sat down to eat with them. Gospel music filled the room.

  I come to the garden alone,

  While the dew is still on the roses,

  And the voice I hear, falling on my ear,

  The Son of God discloses,

  And He walks with me …

  The intimacy Maurice had felt changed instantly to something heavy and thick.

  “I was hoping you’d make it out,” Mika said. “I sure could use a hand. Roxanne Penner is getting married tomorrow, four bridesmaids’ bouquets to be put together before two. Heard from Brian these days?” she asked Truda.

  Maurice saw the blood rise in Truda’s cheeks. She’d broken the news several weeks ago. Truda had decided to go to university instead of Flin Flon where Brian had been transferred as branch manager of a bank.

  Mika chewed at a chicken wing. “I still don’t think he’ll wait four years,” she said.

  “I don’t expect him to.”

  Mika pushed her plate aside. “What are you saying now?” she asked. “That you’ve changed your mind?” She reached for Truda’s hand. “Where’s your ring?”

  “I’ve decided that I can’t do both. I can’t live in Flin Flon and go to university at the same time.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Mika said. “You have to get married. You’ve practically lived with him for a year. I had to get married and so you have to, too.”

  Maurice was astonished at Mika’s remark. Their eyes met. Mika leapt up from the table and began filling the sink with water. “What I meant to say was, we can’t always do what we want,” she said. “If your Dad and I had always done what we wanted, where would we be now?”

  Far away, Maurice thought. With a bow ploughing the waves clean through. Out of the twisting shallow river into the clearer blue waters of the giant lake. The desire to do this had been strong, a ballooning pocket on the mainstream of his life. But, what will be, will be, he’d often told himself. It kept him from making decisions. He took what came.

  … and He talks with me

  and He tells me I am his own,

  and the voice I hear falling on my ear,

  none other, has ever known.

  The women’s voices and the nasal tones of the gospel singers grated, like stone against stone. He’d like to pull the plug and stop that damned depressing poor excuse for music.

  “Education is fine and good,” Mika said, “but small comfort on a cold night.”

  Maurice saw defiance coupled with fear in Truda’s face. He got up and turned the radio down so low that the music was hardly audible.

  “Mind your own business,” Maurice said. “Can’t you see the girl’s made up her mind?”

  Mika’s jaw dropped. Maurice reached around her, took out the whiskey and plunked it down in the middle of the table. “Want a shot?” he asked Truda. She shook her head.

  “Now, isn’t that a thing for a father to say in front of his child,” Mika said.

  “To thine own self be true,” Maurice said. “Look, what we say is neither here nor there,” he said to Truda. “You know going to art school is what you want, what you can do, so go and do it.”

  “It’s not art school,” Truda said. “Fine Arts.”

  “Whatever.” He poured whiskey into his glass. His hand shook.

  Mika unbuttoned her suit jacket. She slipped it over the back of her chair. “That’s a selfish way of thinking,” she said. “You going to stay up all night?” she asked, not giving him the opportunity to defend himself. She looked pointedly at his glass of whiskey.

  “As long as I want to,” he said.

  “Well, that would be nice,” Mika said. “But I’ve got to get up early if I’m going to get that wedding done on time.” She left the room.

  “She was up at five this morning.” Maurice said. “She works hard.” He toyed with his glass, breathed deeply, fighting off depression. He was aware of Truda watching him too closely. “Let’s get some real music going here,” he said, forcing himself to sound jovial. “It’s Friday night, after all. What we need in this here house is some toe-tapping music.”

  He went into the living room. The floor seemed to tilt beneath his feet and he stumbled against a chair. He put on a Don Messer record. “Now that’s more like it,” he said and yanked gently on Truda’s hair as he passed by her chair. She had slumped down into it, and played with her glass in a listless way, as though she was tired, had no energy.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Truda said.

  “What don’t you know?”

  “What we’d, what I’d ever do if you weren’t here. This place … it wouldn’t be. …” She couldn’t finish.

  He was touched and pleased. “You’d go on, same as everyone else. But where would I be going? Shoot, I may get the boat in the river, but that’s about all.”

  Truda reached for her knapsack, undid the buckles and withdrew a ceramic plate and two clay figures and set them on the table in front of him. “What do you think of these?” she asked.

  “Where did you get them?”

  “I made them.”

  “You don’t say?” Maurice fingered the clay models. He picked one up. It was the figure of a small child, a young girl carrying a basket, crudely done, but the head and features looked realistic enough. “This looks like the real McCoy,” he said.

  Truda held up the plate. A bird divided the plate in half with its wing-span, one side green, the other blue, the bird stark white. “You couldn’t tell the difference between that and one in a store,” Maurice said. “This art school, do you think you’ll make much money when you’re fini
shed?” He didn’t think many people would want the things she made, even if she could make enough of them.

  “I’m having second thoughts,” Truda said. “It was an idea. The instructor seemed to think I had talent.”

  “Sure you do. It’s plain to see,” Maurice said.

  “But maybe Brian is right. I could pursue pottery as a hobby. He said he’d buy a kiln.”

  “What do you want to do?” Maurice asked.

  Truda played with a honey-coloured braid that was draped across her shoulder and hung in a thick rope across her breast. She grinned sheepishly. “Both.”

  “But you can’t do both.”

  “I know. I have to make a decision. God, I hate making decisions,” Truda said loudly, stretching suddenly, and then she got up from the table.

  “Let’s get to work.” She spread papers out on the table.

  “What have you got there?”

  “The forms. You know, for the old age security?”

  He was confused. He couldn’t remember what it was they’d said out by the clothesline. Something about a birth certificate. “Old age security. And what does that secure for me? Old age?” He was not going to fill in any bloody forms.

  “A monthly income,” she said. “So that you can retire.”

  “I’m not ready to retire.”

  She sighed. “Well I am. If Mom wants me to help with that wedding tomorrow, I’d better retire tout de suite. We’ll work on this tomorrow.”

  Maurice cleaned the table off, set their glasses into the sink. He switched the light off and stood for a moment at the kitchen window, looking out at the garden and the dark shape of his unfinished boat. It would never float. Put an Evinrude on back of that baby and she would sink to the muddy bottom. He hadn’t interpreted the instructions right. The diagrams hadn’t shown how many layers of cloth or coatings of resin to apply. But even if he’d been able to understand, the boat wouldn’t have been a success. He wasn’t a builder. The kitchen window he’d installed was crooked. All through the house where his hand had been, doors did not close properly, carpet was set down askew, walls didn’t line up. He was a failure.