By the same author
Children of the Day
The Russländer
The Two-Headed Calf
The Chrome Suite
Agassiz, A Novel in Stories
The Missing Child
Ladies of the House
Night Travellers
For children
The Town That Floated Away
Plays
The Revival
A Prairie Boy’s Winter
Once again,
for
Jan Nowina-Zarzycki
One
IT IS EARLY MORNING WHEN Joe Beaudry awakens to a droning sound, the ceiling fan, he thinks. His father has left it going again in his room at the back of the house. But when Joe opens his eyes, the greenish light is seeping in around the edges of the blind and he remembers that he and Laurie are parked on the Walmart lot in Regina. The cold is like a hovering presence above the bed, alert and waiting for his next move.
“What time is it?” Laurie asks, and she feels the sudden tension in Joe, his surprise that she’s awake too. She sees his arm rise and the glow at his wrist lights the bottom of his stubbly face.
“You don’t want to know.” It’s near to three o’clock, Joe doesn’t say. When he came to bed around midnight unsettled by the red wine they’d drunk with supper, Laurie was already asleep. She lay completely still, hands folded and tucked under her chin, the rise and fall of her breathing barely perceptible. He’d often been jealous of that stillness, of whatever took her away. Soon after, he’d heard the clatter and dull rolling sounds of the skateboarders at the far end of the lot, and then the sweeper making its nightly pass of the shopping centre parking lot, beginning at Safeway and working its way toward them. He must have slept though, because the droning had awakened him, maybe a turboprop warming up at the airport.
He sits on the side of the bed for a moment thinking of Pauline. By now she’ll know he’s left. He didn’t call to say goodbye. He didn’t want to suggest there was more to them other than that she was sometimes lonely and he was in no hurry to go home. They found themselves agreeing to meet for a drink, to talk, Joe doing most of the talking once it became apparent that his RV business, the Happy Traveler, was failing. He turns to flip the blanket over Laurie to double its warmth, regretting their haste to leave Winnipeg, their lack of foresight in not thinking to look in the drawer under the bed to make sure there was adequate bedding, their not having hung on to the sleeping bags.
When Joe gets up and crosses the room Laurie smells the garlic—the pizza they had for supper. She fights the ache in her chest while she watches Joe in the closet mirrors, the glowing rectangle of the window lighting up the space around him, his buttocks tinged green as he bends to collect his clothes. How quickly he pulls on his jeans, T-shirt and hoodie. He leaves her without speaking.
Like Joe, she’d heard the sweeping crew, their shovels scraping up the debris the machine left behind. The noise receded when the work crew and machine went round the back of Walmart. She’d slept again, only to be awakened now by the muffled drone. The Meridian was supposed to be well insulated against the elements and noise, but it’s damp and chilly, and she hears what could be an airplane. Or it might be the city, two hundred thousand people breathing. Then comes the electric whirr of the Meridian steps unfolding, Joe opening the door, the woof of air compressing as it closes behind him.
She listens for his footsteps and hears none. She heaps his pillow onto her head to shut out the light, tells herself, Laurie, do not think. Do not think about Joe turning away from her yet again. She puts the thought in a jar, screws the lid down tight and imagines setting it on a shelf up near the ceiling.
Don’t think about the house, its vibrant rooms like a jewel box, the colours of mustard and the Mediterranean; the geranium-red kitchen only just renovated, the warm sheen of its cork floor. That about now she would be washing the winter dust from the upstairs veranda, preparing it for the summer months when they liked to leave the door from the bedroom open throughout the night and they would awake to the tap-tapping of the nuthatch daubing the inside of the gourd she’d hung in the ornamental crabapple tree. To the thick odour of the Assiniboine River rising in a cloud at the foot of the street, the smell like fish and rust.
She tries not to think of Joe’s father, Alfred, of going past Deere Lodge the evening before they left and seeing him at the window, outlined in that little square of yellow light in his little square room, among a myriad of lights along Portage Avenue. His liver-spotted coconut of a head framed by the window. She puts the thought of Alfred in a jar, screws down the lid, sets it up on the shelf. Within moments the pillow, warmed by her breath, is a cave of comfort she can safely fall asleep in.
Joe stands in the parking lot taking in the dazzle of frost scalloping out from the bases of the concrete parking stops and light standards, emerging on the side of a nearby garbage container, while the Meridian remains untouched. When they’d arrived in Regina three days ago, he’d parked where the manager suggested, at the front of the lot and close to its perimeter, parallel to Gibson Road. By the end of that first day a couple of employees had erected a chain-link enclosure nearby.
It’s filled now with bales of gardening supplies, bags of soil, containers of herbicides and pesticides, chemicals he sometimes gets whiffs of. The enclosure is the source of the greenish light, while above Joe, the orange glow of the sodium vapour lights obliterates the stars. He thinks of the Happy Traveler lot, how in the early years the rows of trailers and RVs were lit by a single light, until he came upon the remains of a bonfire in a thicket behind the storage Quonset and installed a security camera and two more lights. He regretted having done that when it came time to take the Meridian, which was parked inside the Quonset near the gate, the shortest distance between his need for wheels and a place to live.
He’d carried his .22 rifle in a duffle bag. Worried that it looked suspiciously light, he’d waited until the taxi merged with the glowing stream of tail lights going into the city before setting off along the road bordering the industrial park. He felt dwarfed by the security fences around the sprawling complexes, some of those lit-up yards as large as two city blocks and filled with long-distance hauling rigs and trailers. He passed by ATCO and its mountains of prefab office structures and workforce housing; a pipeline and drilling company, it was a major supplier to the oil patch and several Arab states. Then the newest complex, the company making Portakabins, the trailers that were used by the military at the Canadian base at Doha during Desert Storm and now in Afghanistan.
When he reached the most northerly section of the park he turned onto the dirt service road and then veered into the ditch, cursing as he plunged through a film of ice and his tassel loafers filled with frigid water. The bank was slippery underfoot and he grabbed at dried weeds to haul himself up the slope. The barbed wire fence bordering the field behind his yard was alive with shredded plastic bags, like tethered dogs leaping and snapping at his face when he stepped down on the bottom strand and swung the duffle bag through the space onto the frozen ground. Then he ducked between the wires and carried the bag toward a clump of bushes whose crown was clotted with more plastic that rippled in the wind. He was still in the business suit he’d put on in the morning for his meeting with the loans manager of the credit union, hardly dressed for the bite of spring on the northwesterly edge of Winnipeg.
There was a hollowed-out space inside the bushes where branches were broken off, and the ground was lined with cardboard. He dropped to his knees and slid the bag inside, thinking that someone had called the bushes home. Could be the man in the oil-stained parka, whom Joe had caught picking through the garbage at Pauline’s restaurant. He’d swung round at Joe as though he expecte
d to be chased off and was prepared to object. The skin on his hands looked smoked and thick, his feral eyes like a windstorm. That man in the thicket, watching Joe shut down in increments, his four employees gone, one after the other. By the time winter arrived, only Joe going about the yard, the air hazed with snow sifting off the motorhomes and trailers, the roofs growing higher each day with perfectly shaped domes of snow that he’d had to punch through before he could clear them off.
The cold penetrated through the cardboard where he sat in the hollowed-out bushes, his knees drawn up, trench coat pulled tightly around him, hands shoved into its sleeves for warmth while he waited for the lights in Pauline’s to go out. For Pauline to lock up her diner, get into her van and drive off to her acreage in the south end of the city where she kept horses. He didn’t want Pauline to have to lie, to say she wasn’t aware of anything unusual happening next door, even though she’d made it clear that he was welcome to store whatever he wanted in the shed at the back of her property. She wouldn’t talk, he knew, although people were talking, the men in the diner going quiet whenever he came in, the bank clerks avoiding eye contact with him.
The Winchester .22 that Joe cradled against his chest was his father’s gift to him on his sixteenth birthday, but like most of what Alfred had given him, he’d seldom had a use for it. This morning when Joe got up, Alfred had been awake, sitting at the kitchen table over a mug of tea. He’d been unable to sleep through the night, he’d said, and Joe heard it as an accusation, that it was his fault Alfred had been up and knocking about his bedroom at the end of the hall. His father knew something was in the air and Joe knew he would soon need to tell him about the arrangements he’d made for him to take up residence at Deere Lodge.
Pauline’s van started up and backed off the diner lot, its headlights sweeping across the bushes as she passed by. When she reached the gravel road she turned and sped away. She had gone bankrupt twice, it was not a big deal, she told him, her cigarette rising in an arc above the bed. The first time, her husband had left her with three small kids and a pile of debts, the second was a business venture, the Chocolate Shop, a downtown café that offered tarot readings, tea and chocolates. There are ways around it, she said. Both times her credit was restored within a few years.
“I don’t know,” Joe said, staring into the chasm of air that had opened up inside him. He was alone now. Alone as anyone could be who had once believed that nothing happened to him without it being part of the grand design.
Within weeks, perhaps a month, people would come to take an inventory of his business and he didn’t want there to be any video evidence of him driving away in the Meridian. It was the last of the high-end Class C motorhomes he’d sold, to a farmer who’d used it once and had been storing it with him ever since. Even after the several eviction notices he’d received, Joe had been electrified the morning he came to work and saw the notice posted on the door and discovered that all the locks on the main building had been changed. But not the lock on the yard gate, however, and he knew immediately how to make use of that oversight. He shouldered the rifle and sighted the security camera at the corner of the building under the eaves. The thin sharp crack, the sound of the camera shattering were covered by the rising swirl of wind and the roar of shredded plastic lashing out from the fence and in the air above his head. Three lights, three more cracks, and the Happy Traveler yard fell into darkness.
“I don’t know,” Joe says now as he paces along the perimeter of the Walmart parking lot, gazing at the bungalows across Albert Street. All the windows of the houses are dark, except the glow of one front-door fanlight. He imagines the light is left burning for a kid. Just as the light was always left on for him. He wants to call home and reaches for his cell, knowing there’s nowhere for him to call. He turns away from the thought only to be confronted by the gleaming hulk of the Meridian.
He could call Alfred. Not even the threat of a sensor pad being installed on his bed has stopped his father’s nightly wandering at Deere Lodge. But it is too late. His scalp throbs with his rising pulse as he enters a number. When Maryanne Lewis answers he can only say, “It’s me. Joe.”
“Oh, I had a feeling it was you. You’ve been on my mind for days. I said to Ken, ‘We’re going to hear from Joe.’”
Joe leans into Maryanne’s familiar voice, wants to sink into it.
“I’ve been meaning to get in touch with you for ages,” he says. It’s his way of acknowledging that he’s not replied to their many telephone and email messages; the years of silence passing between them.
“It’s Joe,” she calls out, and Joe hears a phone being picked up.
“Joe,” Pastor Ken exclaims. “How’s it going, little brother?”
Joe listens for disappointment or regret and fails to detect either. “What time is it there?” he asks. They sound as though they’ve been asleep, and he realizes that even with the time difference, it’s past midnight in Vancouver.
“Listen, Joe, any time you want to call is the right time,” Pastor Ken says.
“I’ve lost my business.” Joe gets it out there before he can’t. I’ve lost the house, my father.
Lost, as though the Happy Traveler, his home, his dad, wandered off and he’s been unable to find them.
“Joe. Oh, no,” Maryanne says.
“How?” Pastor Ken jumps in to ask.
“It’s been coming for a while now. Last year business was really bad, but ever since 9/11, things haven’t been great.”
“People stopped travelling then,” Pastor Ken says.
“Yes.” Joe does not say that although he’d incorporated, when the business began to falter he’d taken out a mortgage on the house. The small property Laurie had inherited from her grandmother, along with a time-share in a townhouse in Tofino, had gone as collateral against his line of credit.
He does not say he’d driven past the entrance to the industrial park on some mornings to head out along the highway, his eyes following the zinging arc of the frost-silvered hydro wires as they dipped down and up from poles, driving out a bit farther each time. Sometimes he would pull over and sit for a moment before heading back, watch for the doe and her yearling to emerge from the scrub bush near the city dump.
“I got behind on things. Behind a year on the lease of the shop. And then the bank foreclosed on the house.”
He receives their immediate outpouring of condolences, as waves swell and threaten to crash over his head. Those two lifeguards. They had rescued him at a time when he’d most needed someone to be there.
He takes a deep breath to calm his voice. “You should see the area now, you wouldn’t recognize it. They call it the Juba Industrial Park.”
When he’d first opened the Happy Traveler, it had been the largest of the single proprietorship businesses in the area, the brake and carburetor shops, sandblasting and paint garages. Then the land was sold and developed and most of those enterprises moved, or shut down. Spur rail lines bringing in tons of crushed vehicles, scrap metal being turned into gold—he couldn’t understand, get a handle on how any of this worked. But he’d stayed and incorporated. Expanded. Went into boats and ATVs, RV storage and repairs.
“You know what, Joe? It’s like you’ve lost a child,” Maryanne says. “A man’s business is like that to him. It’s his child. You’re grieving.”
The yellow light shining in the fan of the front door of the house becomes a blur, and Joe turns away, shivering now with the dampness and cold emanating from the asphalt.
“Where are you?” Pastor Ken asks and when Joe tells him, he says, “So are you heading this way, then? We’d sure love to see you, guy. It’s been far too long.”
“Well no, I wasn’t planning to. I’ve got a job right now at Canadian Tire. For a few days, anyway. Until me and another guy finish putting together the garden centre. I should have enough cash by then to get to Fort McMurray. You remember Steve? He’s living there now. I’m hoping he’ll have some leads on work.”
“Stev
e Greyeyes,” Maryanne says. “Of course we remember him.”
“I need to find a job, and fast,” Joe says, thinking of the promise he made to his father—the move to Deere Lodge is only temporary. This is the lie he also tells himself—that no matter where he is he’ll return to Winnipeg and set the record straight. When he has the means he’ll make whatever arrangements are necessary to move Alfred in with them, wherever that may be.
“Is that what you want to do, Joe? Go to Fort McMurray?” Pastor Ken asks.
“It’ll do for now,” Joe says and gives a ragged laugh.
“Remember, Joe, you’re God’s kid. He wants only the best for you,” Maryanne says, echoed by Pastor Ken’s “Amen to that.”
“Can we pray for you, Joe? Ken and I have been thinking about you so often lately. Now we know why.”
“I haven’t got much time left on this phone,” Joe says quickly, thinking they mean to begin praying now.
Maryanne laughs. “It’s okay, Joe. You don’t need to be in on this. God is, and that’s what counts.”
“Promise you’ll keep in touch,” Pastor Ken adds. “And if there’s anything we can do, all you have to do is ask, little buddy. Anything at all.”
“Thanks,” Joe says. Although he wants to hold onto their voices for a while longer, he needs the time he’s got left on the cell to stay connected to Alfred. He hangs up without saying goodbye.
He turns toward the motorhome and sees his own footprints in the sheen of frost. He can smell it, like wet sawdust and must. Like the odour of the tin-sided garage whose earth floor hadn’t been exposed to sunlight for years. The scent sometimes clung to his mother’s sweater when she’d been out there cleaning storm windows, or refinishing a piece of furniture. It is a time he can scarcely recall, although he’d lived all his life in his parents’ house on Arlington Street.
Once inside, he undresses quickly, knowing from Laurie’s stillness that she’s asleep. He climbs into bed, careful not to wake her. There’s a sudden sharp snapping, the skin of the Meridian contracting in the dropping temperature. He closes his eyes, remembering how the walls in the empty showroom would snap during winter, startling him so that he would sometimes go and see if someone had come in without him knowing. He recalls then, how in late afternoon the sunlight retreated from the land out back, the wind-sculpted snowdrifts looking like waves on a sea. That’s when the doe and her yearling would emerge from the scrub bush, like faint beige brush strokes as they minced along the deep ruts worn through heavy snow and down into the ditch beside the road where they would be sheltered from the wind. Minus thirty without the wind chill, while inside the Happy Traveler the heaters hummed and surged.
Waiting for Joe Page 1