Daddy Lenin and Other Stories

by Guy Vanderhaeghe

  “I’m a decent welder,” Reinie said. “If you ever need any help.”

  “Fucking A,” said Charlie.

  “Double fucking A,” said Lincoln.

  “Let’s have another beer,” said Winston.

  They did.

  Reinie came home to big, big trouble. His father was off in the pickup scouring the roads for him while his mother shouldered the task of tracking all possible leads as to his whereabouts by telephone. Of course, Mrs. Bernhardt, a charter member of the Lutheran ladies’ telegraph, had seen him – with the Pushko girl. Explanations were demanded of Reinie and his answers fell far short of being satisfactory. He kept his eyes on the floor, claiming the Pushko girl was simply a new friend he had made at school. On the spur of the moment, her mother had invited him to supper. Yes, he was sorry his thoughtlessness had caused his parents so much anxiety. No, it wouldn’t happen again.

  Then his mother smelled something suspicious on his breath. “Reinie,” she said, “have you been drinking alcohol?”

  “I had a beer.” Reinie was not an experienced liar. He quickly added, “Just one.”

  “And where did you get it?”

  “Mr. Pushko gave it to me. To have with supper.”

  “Imagine,” said Mrs. Ottenbreit, shaking her head. “Unbelievable how some people live.”

  Mabel Ottenbreit was determined to nip this in the green bud. She pointed to the key hook on the kitchen wall and told her son to hang his car keys there and not to even think about touching them for two weeks. And stay away from that Mr. Pushko. If she didn’t feel so sorry for that man’s wife, she would call the police right this minute and report him for supplying liquor to minors.

  The sullen, defiant look her son sent her before he placed the keys on the hook frightened her just a tiny bit. It was as if Reinie’s personality had altered in the blink of an eye.

  After he had slouched off to bed, Mabel Ottenbreit brewed some strong coffee and sat sipping it, waiting for Karl to return. Reinie had denied there was any funny business going on with this girl, but she wasn’t convinced. Neither she nor Karl had ever told their boys in so many words that they weren’t supposed to have girlfriends, but she had assumed that because of the opinions they had expressed on the foolishness of pairing up at an early age that their message had been received loud and clear. But then Reinie had always been slower, more backward than Edgar. Certainly what she had made absolutely clear, no ifs, ands, or buts about it, was that her children had one obligation at this stage in their life and that was to get their education. That was the danger with dating. Distractions from schoolwork. At worst, even pregnancies, God forbid. And there was no surer way to pregnancies than young people dosing themselves with alcohol. And here was Reinie, taken to guzzling beer.

  Last year, when her son had implored her to let him quit the choir and Luther League because he was falling behind in school, she had felt torn. Reinie had suggested that all the chores he had to do on the farm were cutting into his study time. Mabel Ottenbreit was a woman of her word and since she had said school came first she couldn’t backtrack. With Edgar gone off to the university, Karl had lost one pair of hands and couldn’t do without Reinie. So, reluctantly, she had agreed that her son could withdraw from church activities. Pastor Schneider had been disappointed because Reinie had a lovely voice (his one talent) and he had always been a stalwart of Luther League, not a leader certainly, but a steady attender.

  Now, with graduation in sight, it appeared that her youngest, steadiest son was on the verge of making a bad turn in life. She had expected trouble from Edgar but never Reinie. Mabel Ottenbreit would never forget the day she had found those magazines tucked under Edgar’s mattress, the ones with women sticking their rumps out like monkeys eager to be mounted. But Edgar had come around after a good talking to. What worried her now was what Karl had always said, that it’s the quiet bull that hurts you.

  The next morning when she got up for church, the car keys were no longer on the hook, and her son was nowhere to be found.

  Reinie drove the countryside aimlessly until eleven o’clock, then dropped by the Pushkos’. Darcy was still in bed, so he helped her brothers cut the box off a ’51 International half-ton. They intended to use it as a trailer. All five Pushkos praised his handiness with an acetylene torch. By mid-afternoon they had finished the job and went into the house for coffee. Darcy was up, sitting at the kitchen table in her pyjamas, smoking cigarettes. Reinie asked her if she would like to take a spin out to the lake.

  “May as well,” she answered with her usual indifference.

  Darcy didn’t appreciate the lake much but she liked the amusement park. They played minigolf and later Reinie watched her bounce on a trampoline until all his cash was gone. After that, they sat in the car before the dark blue lake splendidly enamelled with Indian summer sunshine, watching the crisp waves roll up onto the beach. The Chevy was parked under a big cottonwood and its shade gave the place a twilight, romantic air, which encouraged Reinie to screw up his courage and ask Darcy for a kiss.

  She shrugged and said, “I don’t care.” Her matter-of-fact tone excited him more than any expression of eagerness or ardour could have done. He liked her not caring. It allowed her to lip off Mrs. Bernhardt when she was caught red-handed committing mischief, or to tell Lincoln to go fuck his hat right in front of her parents, or to smoke like a fiend. It made her brave, mysterious, dangerous, unpredictable.

  Kissing a girl for the first time was a clumsy, fumbling affair. He kept his eyes wide open so as to inscribe the moment in his mind. He wanted to stamp and hold it there for all time: the sight of Darcy’s tightly closed eyes, shuttered in green; the feel of her soft mouth working against his, the smell of her – sweat and cheap drugstore perfume.

  At last, she jerked away from him. “Enough’s enough, eh?” was her only comment.

  That momentous Sunday kiss emboldened Reinie to stand up to his parents for the first time in his life. When his mother demanded he hand over the keys to the Chevy for safekeeping, he flatly refused.

  Mabel Ottenbreit could scarcely credit things could come to such a predicament in her family. Even more distressing, she saw no recourse to this unexpected defiance. What could they do? Was Karl supposed to tackle Reinie, pin him to the floor while she fished around in his pockets for the keys?

  “Nothing doing,” her son repeated over and over. “Nothing doing. I paid for that car with my own money. It’s mine.”

  Eventually the standoff led Mrs. Ottenbreit to break down and weep, something no one in her family had ever witnessed before. It terrified her husband, made him anxiously wring his big-knuckled hands and blink. He forgot all about his duty to discipline Reinie when she stumbled off to the bedroom to cry her eyes out. He trailed after her, plaintively calling, “Mother? Mother? You all right?”

  On Monday, Reinie had the effrontery to drive to school. Once again his parents were powerless to stop him. Of course, Mabel Ottenbreit blamed the influence of the Pushko girl for this. She did her best to banish thoughts of Darcy from her mind, but the girl had lodged herself there like a sick headache. To Mabel’s horror, she sometimes imagined Darcy presenting her buttocks to Reinie, peeking over her shoulder at him exactly in the lewd way those women in Edgar’s magazines had.

  Darcy made no bones about letting Reinie know how much she despised being cooped up on the school bus with those dorks. So each and every day he picked her up for school and delivered her home. Often Darcy overslept or wasn’t finished applying her makeup and he had to sit around the kitchen listening to her mother yell for her to shift her precious little ass, don’t keep nice Reinie waiting. He was late for school any number of times and got called to the office for a good talking-to from the vice-principal, Mr. Hector.

  A talking- to from Mr. Hector was a small price to pay to please Darcy. Life had fallen into a new routine. After school Darcy insisted they go straight to Wong’s Café for an hour or two, where she plugged Reinie’s quarter
s into the jukebox, sang along to the latest hits, and turned the air blue with cigarette smoke. Only then did she consent to drive to some secluded spot where she permitted Reinie to press his lips to hers, to stroke her forearm with his thumb. That was all; he required nothing more.

  November rolled around and with it Darcy’s fifteenth birthday. Reinie bought her a ring that he presented to her in the Chevy. To Reinie, the grey light of the wintry day lent the moment the same intimate, sheltered feeling that the shade of the cottonwood had provided for their first kiss. By the way Darcy bit her bottom lip and appraisingly waggled her finger, trying to make the tiny stone spark in the dim light, he could tell she was pleased by his gift.

  “It’s real nice.” There was a long, considered pause. Darcy turned to him. “So, do you want a jerk?”

  “Jerk?” said Reinie.

  Darcy made a fist and, very business-like, pumped it briskly up and down.

  Reinie was scorched by embarrassment. The blood thudded so violently in his body he felt about to faint. He couldn’t face her, shifted his eyes to the odometer. It registered 83,599 miles.

  “Fine,” he heard her say. “You don’t want to, it’s no skin off my ass.”

  He managed to choke out two words. “Yes, please.”

  “Okay,” said Darcy. “Fish it out.”

  Troubles in the Ottenbreit household continued. His father resented the hours he spent with Darcy, the hours he spent tinkering on the Pushko brothers’ decrepit vehicles. He harped about the slipshod fashion that Reinie performed his chores, even going so far as to signal his displeasure by docking his pay.

  Reinie was running short on spending money; girlfriends were an expensive proposition. He felt squeezed on every side. His mother never missed a chance to make scathing, unchristian remarks about the Pushkos. Once she even screeched at him, “Don’t forget that your grandfathers Klinger and Ottenbreit were volksdeutsche, Reinie. They had the good sense to get out of places like Russia and Romania to get away from drunken, lazy, thieving bohunks, and now all you want to do is hang around with them!”

  It never stopped. One Saturday in February, Reinie spent three hours on the tractor, buffeted by an icy wind that cut him to the bone while he plowed snow from the driveway and opened the trail to the haystacks. When he was done, his father sourly remarked, “I’d call that a sloppy job, Reinie. If you don’t straighten up pretty soon, I’ll have to rethink our plans.”

  A blackmailer’s hint. A threat to break the arrangement that they would farm together next year. It was the only thing his parents had said to him that gave Reinie a fright, gave him something to think about. Because Reinie had his own plan, and that was to make Darcy Pushko his bride whatever his mother might think and say about girls that the government ought to be sterilizing before they could breed and make more of their kind.

  Of course, Reinie did not mean to wed Darcy right away. She was only fifteen and Reinie wasn’t sure if it was legal to marry a girl that young. Unless he got her pregnant and then nobody would try to stop them. But that wasn’t going to happen because Darcy wouldn’t even let him touch her bubbies. The night he gave her the hair drier and the deluxe makeup kit for Christmas, she did volunteer to take off her sweater and brassiere. But he had to swear no touching. The sight of Darcy, her little pink nipples jiggling up and down to the maniacal tempo of the hand job she was performing, had brought him off in a flash, had slammed him back against the car seat with an ecstatic groan. Darcy had giggled and said, “Wow. Maybe you better put windshield wipers on the inside of this car.” Learning how quickly matters were brought to a head when she was topless, Darcy did it all the time now.

  During the months of March, April, and May, Reinie Ottenbreit wore the look of a long-married, middle-aged man oppressed by the responsibilities owed to a wife and children. All this was in the future, but it was nonetheless very real to him. After his father’s warning, he grew more diligent. There was plenty to be diligent about. Spring was a busy time on the farm. First came calving, then tune-ups to the farm machinery, tilling the fields, and finally seeding. It grew difficult for him to steal even a few spare hours on the weekends to take Darcy to a movie and, later, to see her bubbies do their merry dance in the glow of the Chevy’s interior light.

  May brought a more pressing worry. The graduation ceremony and dance were to be held on the last weekend of the month. Darcy would be on his arm for the occasion and this meant bringing her face to face with his parents. Some sort of blow up was likely, a setback just when things were on the mend with his father. Only a week before, Karl Ottenbreit had commended his son for the hard work he had been doing lately. Reinie would have liked to drop a word or two to Darcy about being on her best behaviour when she met his parents, to be particularly polite to his mother, but that might do more damage than good. He had learned this about Darcy – if she thought anybody was trying to push her around, she could turn downright nasty. Right now she was under a two-week suspension for refusing to do calisthenics in Mr. Head’s gym class. With the daily drive to school also suspended, Reinie saw even less of her.

  Darcy was slated to resume classes on the third Monday of May. When Reinie arrived at the Pushkos to pick her up, Mrs. Pushko said she had left already – on the bus. Reinie drove all the way to school with the gas pedal mashed to the floor. After a frantic search of the hallways, he found her loitering outside her homeroom.

  “I went to pick you up,” he said. “Where were you?”

  Darcy made a scornful face.

  “I came by your house, your mother said you were already gone.”

  “Yeah. Obvious.”

  “I need to talk to you about the corsage for your dress. What you want and all. For graduation.”

  “I’m not going to no ignorant graduation,” she said. “Bill Aiken’s asked me to go to his sister’s wedding with him. It’s the same day.”

  “But –”

  “Too late. You didn’t invite me. He did. A week ago.”

  Reinie was desperately attempting to summon up a picture of Bill Aiken. It came to him. Bill Aiken worked for the phone company. He was twenty-five if he was a day. All Reinie could say was, “How’d you meet him?”

  “Came by to hook our phone back up.”

  “You can’t do this to me,” said Reinie. “We’re going steady. I won’t let you.”

  “You and whose army won’t let me?”

  Darcy was squinting at him furiously, her eyes more bewitchingly cat-like than he had ever seen them. In a humble voice, he implored her, “Please, Darcy. Please.” Reaching out, he took her by the shoulder. Darcy squirmed out from under his hand. “Piss off,” she said, ducking inside the classroom.

  Now that he knew the Pushkos were back on the line, Reinie made frequent calls, but Darcy wouldn’t come to the phone. He waylaid her in school, but she only stuck her nose in the air and kept walking. Several times he went to her house, but she refused to come out of her room to speak to him. Mrs. Pushko was sympathetic to his plight but not optimistic that anything could be done to mend the situation. “Well, Reinie, I guess she got mad at you because you wasn’t showing her enough attention lately. Darcy needs plenty of attention.” It was a Sunday afternoon; the Pushko boys were occupied rehabilitating doomed automobiles out in the yard, and the man of the house was snoring on the couch in the living room. Mrs. Pushko had tactfully informed Reinie that Darcy was out. He knew with whom.

  “He’s too old for her,” he complained to Mrs. Pushko.

  “No argument there. But Darcy has always had a mind of her own. I never knew what to do with her.”

  “I treated her nice. I don’t know why she’s doing this to me.”

  “I guess Aiken suits her better.”

  Reinie had done his research. “He’s got a Dodge Charger.”

  “Oh, I don’t think it’s just the car,” Mrs. Pushko said with authority. “Aiken is more her personality. She can fight with him. They already had a couple big fights.”

&
nbsp; Reinie was bewildered. “Fights?”

  “Darcy likes something to bump up against. Like I said, it’s her personality.”

  Something was happening to him. One day while pushing the grain augur to an oat bin, he found himself watching the power line overhead come nearer and nearer with every step he took. The augur hadn’t been cranked down as his father always insisted it should be before shifting it. In a trance, Reinie walked on. If the metal tube of the augur touched that wire, alive and buzzing with thousands of volts of electricity, all his problems would be over, everything taken care of. Inches short of the humming line, he halted, shuddering, sweating.

  Eating was an ordeal; his mother’s food stuck in his throat like chunks of gravel. His parents guessed there was trouble between him and Darcy. It made them happy, they gloated over the breakup. It was difficult for him to sleep and harder still to get out of bed in the morning. Two or three times he had to pull the Chevy over to the side of the road, rest his forehead on the steering wheel, and sob.

  The morning of graduation day, he lay in bed, unable to move, listening to his mother and father bustle about the house. They were cheerful because his brother, Edgar, was coming down from Saskatoon for the big occasion. The photographer’s studio was booked for noon. A family portrait was going to be taken of the four proud, happy Ottenbreits. Edgar was expected any minute. Reinie glanced at the clock. Eleven. It was getting late.

  He heard a tap on his door. “Reinie,” his mother said, “you have to get up, take a shower and dress. Edgar will want the bathroom when he gets here so he can freshen up.”

  He didn’t reply.

  “Dear, are you awake?” Reinie rolled over, turned his face to the wall. The door creaked open.

  “Reinie? What’s the matter? Aren’t you feeling well?” His mother took him by the shoulder and gave him a shake. Getting no response, she called out, her voice stitched with panic. “Karl! Karl! Something’s the matter with Reinie!”