by Thomas King
The man in the suit who had been in the room with Erleen motioned to the policeman sitting on the desk. “Would you escort Mrs. Gulley and her friend to their car?”
“I can find my own way,” said Erleen.
“The store is closed now,” said the man. “We’ll have to let you out.”
Erleen ran her hands over her hips. “I think you owe Rose here an apology.”
“I’m sure we do,” said the man.
“You sure as hell owe me one.”
“I think we’ve settled that.”
“In a pig’s eye.”
The policeman led us through the store and let us out a back door. Our car was the only one left in the lot. Erleen unlocked the door, and I got in the back. Erleen stood in front of the car for a moment and then turned and flipped up the back of her dress and stuck out her butt. On the way home, she couldn’t stop talking.
“What a bunch of jerks. I always put nylons and cosmetics and stuff like that in my purse. Keeps them separate from the food. You know I do that.”
“That’s right,” my mother said.
“Lots of people do that. And when I get to the check-out stand, I get them out and pay for them.”
“That’s right.”
“That snot-nosed clerk was just trying to make a name for herself. She was just mad because the last time we were here, I told her she’d be a good-looking woman if she lost a few pounds.”
“Was she the same one?”
“I was just trying to help. Take it from me, I told her. You put on weight when you’re young, and you carry it around with you the rest of your life.”
“You’re not fat.”
“Not as fat as that blonde pimple.” And Erleen started to laugh. “Would you believe it? Didn’t even give me a chance to take that stuff out of my purse like I was going to do when I got to the check-out stand.”
“They’ll probably fire that clerk,” said my mother.
“It took that cute cop almost two hours to calm me down. I was really mad. Maybe I should sue them.”
“You should get a thousand dollars or so.”
“They do it because we’re women, you know. You’ll never see them treat a man that way.”
We got all the way home before we remembered the groceries. “Those groceries are probably still sitting in that cart. By tomorrow, the meat will be starting to rot.” And the two of them burst into waves of giggles. “And they’ll make that fat clerk clean it up.”
Erleen dropped us off at the apartment. Mom looked tired, and you could tell she didn’t want to talk. But I did.
“Was Erleen taking stuff?”
“Just a mistake.”
“Did they arrest her?”
“Nothing but a silly mistake.”
“Is she going to jail?”
“Like she said, that manager was embarrassed.”
Erleen came by the next Thursday as usual, but this time, they left me home.
* * *
—
I DIDN’T SEE HARLEN for about two weeks, and you know, I felt bad about not giving him some credit for bringing Big John and Eddie together. After all, it was his idea to invite them to that bone game, and it was his idea that being related was more important than some small difference of opinion or a little name-calling. So when he came to the studio on Tuesday, I felt obligated to say something complimentary.
“Harlen,” I said, “you know, I’ve been thinking, you get some good ideas sometimes. Sometimes you really surprise me.” Which wasn’t exactly the way I had practised saying it, but the more I practised saying it, the more I remembered some of the ideas that he had had that weren’t very good.
Harlen didn’t look in the mood for compliments. “Will,” he said, “you remember that idea you had about Big John and Eddie?”
“What idea?”
“The one about their being kin and all and good friends, too.”
“That was your idea.”
“Don’t think it was a good idea, Will.”
“Big John and Eddie…again?”
“You ever see Big John’s poodle? Big black one. Damn, you know that dog can jump up as high as your arm. You ever see one of those dogs, Will? Can do all sorts of tricks, too. You ever see Big John’s dog do her tricks?”
I could see Harlen spreading his wings.
“Got that poodle maybe four years ago. Called her Licorice. Not the kind of dog for a grown man.”
“Harlen, I’ve got an appointment with the bank in two hours.”
“Doesn’t even look like a dog. Big John got her shaved like one of those hedges in front of the museum. Wouldn’t have a dog like that. Bertha said it wouldn’t even make a good stew. But can it do tricks. Sits up real good.”
“Harlen…”
“You know what Eddie said when he saw that choker?”
“What choker?”
“The choker that Eddie gave Big John, you know, his good bone choker.”
I was going to be late.
“Will, Big John went and tied that bone choker around that poodle’s neck. Brought it down to the centre to show it off. It was pretty sad, Will. You know, I knew there would be trouble. I told Eddie not to wear that ribbon shirt.”
There’s no point in rushing Harlen. We sat there and drifted together. Harlen floated around lazily touching on this and then on that. Eddie had had a new ribbon shirt made up, and he had cut up Big John’s duck tie for the ribbons. And he wore it to the centre—all those little silk ducks cut into thin strips like jerky and hanging off Eddie’s chest and shoulders.
“Will, Big John gave that poodle a new name, too. Indian way of doing things, he told Eddie. Weasel—that’s the dog’s new name. Do you believe that, Will? Weasel, because she sits up and begs whenever she wants attention. What do you think?”
I didn’t think anything. But I tried to imagine Eddie sitting at his desk stroking those silk strips and Big John getting Weasel to jump up and down so the choker around her neck would rattle.
“Blood kin and good friends too. What are we going to do?”
* * *
—
ERLEEN MOVED to Edmonton to be near her daughter. “Peggy divorced that one bum and married another,” Erleen told us. “The good news is this bum’s rich.”
“Edmonton can get real cold,” my mother said.
“I got my own room and a colour television.”
“Sometimes those winters last until June or so.”
“I figure they want me to help out with the kids, but that’s okay.”
Then the two of them started to cry, and James and me headed for the basement. We heard from Erleen regular, and every so often, she’d drive down to take my mother shopping. Erleen would wait at the kitchen table and smoke cigarettes and shout out stories, while my mother got dressed up. Then they would go clacking down the stairs in their high heels. James and me could watch them from the window, as they got in the car and roared off for the supermarkets.
The next year, Erleen’s daughter called to say that Erleen had had a stroke and wouldn’t be coming down for a while. She died before Mom had a chance to get up north to see her.
* * *
—
WE DIDN’T DO ANYTHING. Eddie stopped wearing that shirt. Said the ribbons didn’t hang right, that that was what happened when you used polyester. Big John took the choker off Weasel. Said it hurt her neck and it made her look cheap.
The following week, things were pretty much back to normal. Big John was wearing another of those club ties with the ducks on it, a blue one, and Eddie was wearing another bone choker. All of which made Harlen happy, because it was his idea that got Big John and Eddie back together and that was the way it should be, Harlen told me, with good friends and blood kin.
6
I was standing under the basket trying to catch my breath when Raymond Little Buffalo split Frankie’s head open. The two of them were going after a rebound. Frankie dove for the ball, and Ray jumped on top of him, cocke
d his arm and threw an elbow into Frankie’s face.
Ray was all apologies. He got a towel and told Frankie to hold it against his head. He even drove Frankie to the emergency room and waited while they put fifteen stitches in the gash above Frankie’s eye. The whole time Ray stood around telling jokes, offering encouragements and rubbing his elbow as though it hurt.
“Ray used to be a regular,” Harlen told me. “Then he got that job in Calgary. Big oil company. Should have seen the car they gave him. And all those credit cards. Ray took me to lunch once. You know, it cost sixty-five dollars. And the soup was cold. You believe that, Will? Ray said that’s the way they do it.”
I tried to stay out of Ray’s way. On the court, he was unpredictable. He’d slap you on the back and tell you what a great move you had made to get by him. The next time he’d put a knee in your thigh or try to catch you in the face with the back of his head.
“Should have seen him, Will, skinny and fast. He got a little fat sitting at that desk in Calgary.”
Most of the time, I got to guard Ray. He wasn’t fast any more, but you had to be careful when everyone got crowded in the paint.
“People who start off skinny,” Harlen told me, “have a tough time being fat because they haven’t had time to develop the muscle to carry the extra weight.”
Ray still had some good moves, and I generally played off him out of range of his head and elbows and took the rebounds off his missed shots as they came my way.
“People may think you’re a little heavy, Will. But you been like that all your life so you got the muscle to manage it.”
Off the court, Ray was as friendly as a puppy. Watching him sitting around after practice at Tino’s Pizza, laughing, drinking beer, telling the boys about the time he wasn’t looking and caught a basketball with his face or the time he had to sleep on the floor in a motel in Medicine Hat because Floyd was in the only bed with two women and how one of the women rolled off the bed in the middle of the night and landed on top of him, you’d never know this was the same Raymond Little Buffalo who forty-five minutes earlier had tried to put you in the hospital.
Harlen, who could always find allowances lying around, said that Ray was still angry about losing that job. “Oil bust put a lot of people out of work. Ray’s working for Canada Packers in town now. Must have been hard to give up that Lincoln.” Along with allowances, Harlen always had a pocketful of suggestions. “Maybe you could talk him into coming out and playing regular, Will. Ray likes you. Basketball is a great way to forget your problems.”
I never said a word to Ray about that. He’d come out about once or twice a month and play, and that was plenty.
I suppose if you don’t like someone, you’re willing to go looking for faults that most people wouldn’t ever see. For instance, Floyd smoked, but I liked Floyd, so I never said much. Ray smoked too, and whenever he’d light up, even if he was clear across the table from me, I’d snort and cough and wave my hand around.
Most of the boys bragged on themselves from time to time: the games they had won with last-minute shots, the women they had slept with, the times they had outrun the cops, the amount of beer they could drink before they passed out. We’d all laugh as though we believed every story. But with Ray it was different. Anything you had done, Ray had done it before and had done it better. If Floyd had a story about a woman with large breasts, Ray would have a story about another woman with huge breasts. If Elwood told about the time the cops threw him in jail in Browning and someone in the drunk tank stole his new sneakers, Ray would have a story about the time he was in jail in Penticton and someone stole all his clothes, and when he woke up the next morning, he was bare-assed naked.
Whenever Ray would start in on one of his stories, I’d snort and cough and wave my hand around.
The stories that Ray liked to tell best were the ones where he won basketball games with incredible last-second shots. Harlen didn’t help.
“I remember that alright,” Harlen would say. “You were a great player, Ray. Should come back out. Look at Will. Will wasn’t too good when he started, but look at him now.”
“Ain’t no Clyde Whiteman.”
“That’s for sure. But he’s got a pretty good hook.”
“Ain’t no Clyde Whiteman.”
* * *
—
I CAN REMEMBER exactly when it started. I was flying back to Toronto. I hate flying, and whenever the plane hit a bump, I’d grab the seat in front of me. There was an older woman sitting across the aisle.
“I have a son who hates to fly, too,” she told me. “And when he flies, he gets just like you. And then, sometimes, he throws up.”
I laughed and told her I didn’t think I’d throw up, and we started to talk. She told me about her husband, Morris, and her children. Her daughter was a doctor in Victoria, and her son was a dancer in Winnipeg. I told her I had a brother who was an artist. And then she asked me what my father did.
Maybe it was the way she asked the question, smiling, expecting that I had a father and that what he did was worth talking about. Like Morris.
“My father is a senior engineer with Petro-Canada.”
“That’s wonderful,” said the woman. “Morris teaches at the university. English. You must be very proud of your father.”
“He’s gone a lot of the time. Engineers have to travel around.”
“I’m sure he thinks about you and your brother all the time.” And she took a plastic folder from her purse and stretched it out on her lap. There was Morris and Laura and William and Pooch the cat.
* * *
—
RAY GOT HIMSELF ELECTED to the Native Friendship Centre board. He was popular, and it didn’t hurt that he had had all that executive experience in Calgary. We didn’t see him at practice for about two months after that, but when he did come out, he was driving a brand-new Lincoln.
“Didn’t know the centre paid that well,” said Floyd.
“Didn’t know the centre paid at all,” said Ray.
“No wonder you ain’t been playing with us,” said Elwood. “Been too busy collecting bottles and cans from behind the American.”
Ray was all smiles. “Once you drive one of these babies,” he said, “you can never go back to Fords or Chevys.” Ray opened all four doors and turned on the stereo. “You can’t buy a home system that sounds any better. Put your head in there. What you smell is leather.”
It was a nice car if you liked that kind of thing.
“The salesman is still picking horse shit off his shoes. Poor bastard didn’t know what hit him.” Ray put his arm around my shoulder and gestured with his chin towards the car. “You still driving that truck?”
Ray said he’d drive the boys over for pizza. Harlen was going to ride with me, but Ray insisted that there was enough room. “You can ride shotgun,” he told Harlen. “You can pick the first tape, too. We’ll meet you over there, Will.”
I had to stop for gas, and when I got to the pizza parlour, Ray’s car wasn’t in the parking lot. I sat in my truck and waited for half an hour, and then I went home.
* * *
—
I MEAN, I WASN’T A KID. I was at least twenty-five when I told that woman on the plane that my father was a senior engineer. And there was no reason to do that. I didn’t miss him. I didn’t even think about him. I had never known the man.
So, I began to invent him.
“My father’s a pilot. He flies the big jets for Air Canada.
“Dad’s in stocks and bonds.
“He’s a career diplomat.
“He’s a photographer.
“He’s a doctor.
“He’s a lawyer.”
He was never a rodeo cowboy, and out of consideration for Morris, he was never a university professor either.
Sometimes I’d sit in my apartment and try to think up new professions for my father. And then I’d tell myself to quit fooling around. I’d laugh at myself, shake my head in disgust, promise that I’d s
top the whole stupid business. What if I got caught? What if someone back home heard about my father being a rich opal miner in Australia?
* * *
—
RAY STOPPED PRACTISING with the team altogether, which was okay with me. Instead he started going to the American Hotel. The American was the local Indian bar, a tall, skinny, brick building wedged in by a surplus clothing store on one side and by an old wood-floored Kresge’s on the other. The two floors above the bar were rooms that no one ever rented overnight.
The place had a lot of character. The original owner had been something of a collector, and the walls were hung with Indian artifacts from the 1920s. Before he died, he told Harlen that he had been offered almost a million for his Indian stuff by some big museum back east, but he had told the museum people to piss off, he was going to give it all back to the Indians.
The new owner, a businessman from Edmonton whom no one had ever seen, left everything the same. Tony Balonca ran the place, and most of us thought he owned it, until the night he got a little drunk and told Floyd that if the bar were his, he’d take down the beads and feathers and the rest of the shit and put up a big mural of the Italian coast. Harlen said he’d take the stuff away for Tony, no charge, but Tony said no, the owner liked the quaintness. When Tony said quaint, he curled his lips so you could see his teeth.
I didn’t go to the American much, and I wasn’t particularly interested in what was happening to Ray. But Harlen’s theory on information was that the more you had, the more you knew, which made good sense as far as it went.
“Will, did you hear about Ray?”
“They repossess his Lincoln?”
“His Lincoln? Why would they do that? Where did you hear that, Will?”
Ray had come up with a plan to raise money. The Friendship Centre was always needing money for their community programs, and there wasn’t much in yard sales and car washes. Ray’s plan was to produce a calendar that featured prominent Indian people of Canada and maybe a few from the States and sell it to companies in Calgary and Edmonton.