Juliet in August

by Dianne Warren

  “Seven hundred pennies,” Belinda says to the boy. “What a lot of money. I wonder if you’d like to take your pennies home and wrap them for me in these paper wrappers. That would be fun, wouldn’t it?”

  “If it’s all the same to you,” the mother says, “we’d rather not.”

  “But I really can’t take all those pennies if they’re not wrapped,” Belinda says. “I’m sorry, but that’s our policy.”

  “Well then,” the woman says, “I’d like to speak to the manager about that policy.”

  The manager. That’s him, Norval Birch. Norval sighs so loudly, he worries that Marsha and Belinda and the woman and her son can hear him. What is wrong with him, he wonders, this feeling that he’s not handling things? He’d blame it on Dale Patterson, or Kyle passed out in the backyard, or Lila and her list, except that this feeling has been here from the moment he woke up in the dark with thoughts of a tree falling on the house.

  Or maybe it began five years ago when he and Marsha were spread-eagled on the bank floor, the smell of floor wax in his nostrils, his eye fixed on a toothpick that someone had dropped, and he’d marveled at the workmanship, the smooth surface and the perfect points on each end, all that work for something you get free from the counter of any coffee shop. What a crazy thing to think about while you’re being robbed.

  Or maybe the feeling set in before that—long before—when he stood with Lila in a parking lot in the city, his chest swelling with the thought of himself as her savior. He’d brazenly led her to believe that he was capable, that he had a road map to their future, and that he knew how to read it. Twenty-five years ago that was. Such foolish confidence. Now long gone—and what has replaced it? Nothing. A gaping hole for the wind and sand to blow through.

  She’s in his doorway now, the woman with the penny complaint. She doesn’t wait for an invitation to speak.

  “We have a problem, Mr. Birch,” she says.

  Crush

  Through the waves of heat rising from the surface of the packed roadbed, Blaine Dolson studies Justine, the flag girl. He sees her scan down the road for traffic, and when none appears to be coming, she heads for the portable john. She’s supposed to wait for the scheduled breaks, but the foreman appears to be dozing in the cab of his truck. Blaine watches as she leans her flag against the bright blue biffy and steps inside and closes the door.

  It’s ridiculous, this obsession he has with Justine, but he tells himself it’s a fatherly kind of concern. She’s the only female on the crew. The other flagman is a boy so shy you can hardly get a word out of him. Blaine doesn’t know which of the two gets it worse: Justine because she’s a girl, or the other kid because he’s so timid. He doesn’t care about the boy’s whereabouts, though, just Justine’s. He watches her all the time. When the packer is facing east, she’s there in front of him, and when he has to go the other direction, he anticipates the end of the stretch so he can turn his rig around and get her in his line of sight again, her white T-shirt catching the sun. It’s as though he’s thirteen years old with a crush, only she’s not much older than Shiloh and he’s definitely old enough to know better.

  Where Justine is concerned, Blaine doesn’t trust the intentions of a single man on this crew (with the exception of the shy kid, and maybe not even him). Every one of them leers openly at her. Blaine thinks of his wife, and his daughters when they get to be Justine’s age. If these men acted the way they talked, they’d all be in jail. And because they’ve noticed that Justine is friendly toward Blaine, they’ve taken to making vulgar suggestions in his presence about what she really wants. He ignores them as best he can. He doesn’t like any of these men, but he knows enough not to let that show. Justine needs a guardian out here—at least that’s what he tells himself.

  The foreman is no help. A committed alcoholic, he spends most of the time in the cab of his truck either not-so-secretly drinking or trying to recover from the night before. Every once in a while he crawls out and gets ugly with someone who looks at him the wrong way through the cab window. He’s downright cruel to the timid kid, and he tore a strip off Justine a few days ago for being late. She’d had car trouble and the foreman himself had got stuck holding the yellow SLOW sign for half an hour. When Justine pulled up, the rest of the crew—at least those close enough—waited to see what would happen, getting some kind of sadistic pleasure out of watching the foreman’s angry posture, imagining amid the roar of machinery the words he was shouting at Justine, anticipating her humiliation and the tears that were bound to come. But Blaine, who was nearby on the packer, saw Justine’s chin go up and her back straighten, and he saw that she was actually taller than the foreman. She didn’t seem fazed by whatever it was he said to her, and later at lunch she told Blaine—looking right at the foreman holed up in his truck alone—that she felt sorry for him because he was so short and a pathetic alcoholic to boot. The foreman would have fired her on the spot if he’d overheard that.

  Blaine admires Justine’s spunk. She’s completely different from Vicki, who was so innocent and naive at Justine’s age. Vicki even liked to be tickled—still does—and reminded Blaine of a little girl. He remembers the day they were married in the United church in Juliet, how an overwhelming feeling of protectiveness for Vicki sprang out of nowhere as he watched her walk toward him up the aisle in her long white dress. She was not especially delicate, but she was small and she had blue eyes and a mass of curly blond hair. In those days, the way she deferred to him on everything made him feel like marriage was the best medicine going for a man’s ego, and that he was doing his job as her husband. He remembers the time shortly after the wedding that she had a flat tire three miles from home and she sat by the side of the road in her car and waited for him to come looking for her, even though she could have walked home in less time than it took for him to realize she was missing. He’d thought it was funny, and told the story often. It was an example of how Vicki liked to need him, and he liked to look after her. But as the children came, Shiloh and then the others, he felt the same feeling of protectiveness for them, and as more children arrived there was less and less of it to go around, and he began to grow irritated with Vicki. Sometimes she actually seemed incompetent as the house gathered dust and supper was late and the dishes piled up in the sink until she felt like doing them. Her innocence began to look like an act, a pretense that he thought she should give up.

  So why, Blaine wonders, with the sounds of heavy machinery droning through his protective headphones, if he wants Vicki to be more independent, does he not want her to get a job in town? He has nothing against women working. He admires Justine’s ability to stand out here in the sun all day and deal with this crew of men who don’t really believe in her right to be here. Would he want Vicki working as a flag girl on a road crew? Definitely not. But why not as a clerk in the grocery store, or a receptionist in the insurance office? These are both possibilities that she’s raised with him. He uses the kids as his excuse for not being in favor of her working, and it’s a legitimate excuse when you consider the cost of babysitting. But the kids aren’t the real reason he’s so opposed. It all goes back to the responsibility he accepted when they were married, his promise to look after Vicki and whatever family they might have, and his inability to admit that he’s failed, that he can’t look after them anymore, and that he needs his wife to help put the food on the table.

  What would his father think if he were still alive? Blaine knew his father was in the dark ages long after a lot of men had crawled out, but he’d always told Blaine that a woman working was a sure sign of a weak husband. Blaine can well imagine what his father would say about the situation he’s in today. He doesn’t know himself how he got here, except that he’d let the debt accumulate in good years and was stuck with it when the times turned. Even when Blaine first took over the farm, his father had been there every day telling him he was doing things wrong if Blaine attempted to change anything at al
l. If he were alive, he’d have his proof. Blaine knows it’s not that simple, you can’t keep doing things the same way forever, but even if his father was wrong in the nature of his criticisms, Blaine obviously had done something wrong to get so far under. It kills him that there’s nothing left for his sons, especially Shiloh. He knows he acts sometimes as though Vicki is to blame, like this morning when he was so impatient with her, but he also knows she’s not responsible. The real blame goes to culprits so abstract he can’t put a face to them—trade agreements and government subsidies and corporate monopolies. He’s no economist, and that’s what you have to be these days to understand what’s going on.

  There is one real face to all this, though. It was Norval Birch who froze Blaine’s line of credit, and it was Norval who turned down Blaine’s refinancing plan, even as he had earlier approved—encouraged—Blaine’s accumulation of debt as a modern-day farming practice. Now the banks are making huge profits as Blaine goes broke, and who represents the bank in Juliet if not Norval? Blaine can just see him sitting behind his desk, his salary assured no matter what is happening with his loan clients. When Blaine wakes in the night and Vicki is trying to snuggle up in her flannelette nightie, reminding him of his failed promise to look after her and the kids, he seethes with anger, and he thinks of Norval. He thinks of him in a night-vision of angry colors, blood red and midnight blue. He’s always angry these days as the sun burns his neck and he smells the heat and tar and hears the rumble and whine of heavy machinery, and he thinks he’s working in the flames of hell, paying for sins he doesn’t remember committing. He’s angry with people he knows he shouldn’t be angry with, confused about men and women and what makes a good husband. Vicki tells him he is a good husband in spite of all that’s happened, but she’s fooling herself.

  From his perch on the packer, Blaine can see a car approaching, going fast. Justine’s flag is still leaning against the blue biffy. The car doesn’t appear to be slowing, and it passes the crew at a dangerous speed. The foreman jumps out of his truck, first shaking a fist after the car, and then apparently looking for Justine and shouting “Where the hell is she?” impossible for anyone to hear amid the construction noise. The biffy door opens and Justine steps out and notices the ranting foreman coming toward her. She picks up her flag and shouts something back, Blaine can’t hear what. The foreman is still yelling, stepping toward Justine, just a few feet from her now, with his arms waving and his dwarfish body bouncing with anger. There is no other crew around, Blaine is the closest, and he wonders if he should jump down and intervene.

  But then he sees Justine’s hands rise emphatically and she moves forward so aggressively that the little foreman has to step back. She actually shakes a finger in his face. It’s the funniest thing. The foreman tries to get in another lick, but once again Justine steps forward and he steps back. Blaine doesn’t know who gets the last word in, but he sees the foreman turn around and climb back into his truck cab. He watches Justine return to her position, and when he catches her eye he gives her a thumbs-up. She laughs. He wants to laugh with her. He imagines the two of them laughing, she the beer-ad girl in a white T-shirt, her brown arms testifying to health and happiness, and he the picture of strength and vitality, the independent man of the West, red-necked from outdoor work and proud of it.

  He turns his rig around even though he’s not at the end of his pass. He suddenly doesn’t want to look at her; she’s too young, and she’s just inviting trouble by being here. He even feels a moment’s anger at her, for being so careless, for taking this job in the first place among all these men who have no respect for women and resent the fact that she’s collecting another man’s salary. And then he realizes that his anger at Justine is the same as his anger at Vicki, and he’s tired of it, tired of being angry. When he gets to the end of the stretch, he turns his rig around again and drives back toward Justine. White T-shirt. Smiling. Waving at a car that slows down in response to her sign. Spinning her sign in the gravel once the car has passed.

  She looks bored. She takes off her hard hat and adjusts the ball cap she wears underneath to provide a better peak against the sun. She puts the hard hat back on and spins the sign once more. As Blaine draws closer, he can see that her lips are moving, and at first he can’t figure out what she’s doing—talking to herself?—but then she begins to bob her head and she even does a little dance step, and he realizes that she’s singing.

  Singing. Right out loud. Out here in the middle of nowhere. Like Daisy, in her own world, putting on a show for an invisible audience. He tries to look away so Justine won’t be embarrassed at being caught. Only she isn’t embarrassed. Not at all. She sees him watching her and she grins and does her little dance step again, for him this time.

  He nods his acknowledgment, and now he’s the one who is embarrassed: that he’s been so obvious in the way he watches her.

  His face is so red from the sun, no one could possibly know he’s blushing.

  So Gay

  Shiloh walks down Main Street, not really sure where he’s going, but he knows he doesn’t want to traipse around to all the stores in town with his mother. Maybe he can find someone to hang out with. Then he hears her car coming up behind him, its familiar engine knock, and Daisy calls, “Hey, Shiloh, where’re you going?” out the window, and Vicki pulls alongside him and says, “Hey, where are you off to, stranger?”

  “Nowhere,” he says without stopping.

  “Hop in, then,” Vicki says.

  He ignores her.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Shiloh,” Vicki says. “Since when did I become the enemy?”

  “I don’t want to be dragged all over town on some dumb shopping trip.”

  “All right. Fair enough,” Vicki says. “Why don’t you meet us at the swimming pool. In what . . . an hour?”

  She waits for him to answer, so he doesn’t. He just keeps on walking, but she won’t go away; she follows alongside.

  “Okay, okay,” he finally says, just to get rid of them.

  “I want to go with Shiloh,” Martin says.

  “Well, you can’t,” Shiloh says. “So get that out of your damn head right now.” He knows he sounds just like Blaine.

  “Shiloh’s growing up and he wants to be left alone,” Vicki says to Martin. Then she says to Shiloh, “Watch your language when you’re talking to the little ones, mister. There’s no excuse for being rude.”

  He hates almost every single thing she says these days, and then he feels bad.

  “One hour,” she says. “Don’t keep us waiting.”

  “Two hours,” he argues. He knows she won’t be ready in an hour, anyway.

  “No, Shiloh,” Vicki says. “We have to get home.”

  “An hour and a half, then.”

  Vicki looks at her watch. “Okay,” she says. “An hour and a half, but don’t be late.”

  After she’s gone, Shiloh sits on the curb and gloats. It’s so easy to get his own way with his mother. Then he realizes he has to find something to do for the next hour and a half. There are a few town kids that he doesn’t mind—Mark Matheson and Brad Weibe are okay—but Mark’s family has a cottage and they go there for pretty much the whole summer, and he thinks Brad’s away at a hockey camp. He doesn’t usually see much of the other kids during the summer, and so he feels funny just dropping by someone’s house. He decides to wander around town, hoping a plan will reveal itself.

  He walks up Main Street, but the only familiar person he sees is Brittney Vass, who is coming toward him with her mother. He just about dies, and would cross the street to get away, but it’s too late. Brittney’s father has the insurance business in town and they have money. He knows the other girls think she has the best clothes, and she’s good at sports and won the girls’ athletic award at the end of the school year, even though she was only in grade seven. Once, when Shiloh missed the bus after school, he watched th
e girls’ basketball team play—or more correctly, he watched Brittney Vass play—while he waited for his mother to come and pick him up. There were several boys from his class watching, but they were boys who played on sports teams, too, which meant they were all town kids. Shiloh stood by the gym door, and when Brad Weibe saw him and waved him over to the bleachers, Shiloh pretended he didn’t see him. Still, he couldn’t help but see the other boys look his way and laugh. When he got to school the next day, someone had written in chalk on the wall of the school SHILOH DOLSON IS SO GAY. Again, he pretended he didn’t notice and by recess it was gone, or at least rubbed out so you couldn’t read it.

  Shiloh notices how much taller Brittney is than him, and as she and her mother come closer on the sidewalk he tries to pull himself up and at least give the impression of tall. He sees that Brittney is wearing lipstick. When they pass, she doesn’t even give him a glance. You’d think she’d never seen him before in her life. He hears her mother ask, “Wasn’t that the Dolson boy?” but he can’t hear Brittney’s answer. There might not have been one.

  Anyway, he hates her. He hates all the girls in his class, but at the same time he wants to do a U-turn and watch Brittney walk down the sidewalk. He tries to think up some excuse to turn around and go the other way after her, toward the hardware store maybe, or the post office. But it would be so obvious. She’d know and she’d call up her friends, the other cool girls, and tell them he was following her around, stalking her even; that’s how girls are. She’d get on the phone as soon as she got home and they’d rip him apart, talk about how short he is, or how funny his voice sounds. So instead of following Brittney, he goes to the schoolyard. He searches the ground for a soft rock, the kind that you can write with, and he scrawls BRITTNEY IS SO GAY on the brick wall and, as an afterthought, GIRLS ARE SO FUCKING GAY. Then he goes to the little kids’ playground, drops his backpack in the grass, and sits on a swing and scratches the letters in Brittney’s name with his foot in the dirt, and rubs them out, and writes them again.