“Go down to the cellar and bring up some of that chokecherry wine, okay?”
“Okay,” they both say and salute.
When Amy remembers that night she recalls Steve sitting beside the fire, the burning cornstalks, which Hank had doused with kerosene and put a match to, going up in a great whoosh of flame, dimming the stars overhead, roaring and crackling, and that they’d had to yell in order to be heard above it. She remembers Steve sitting on an overturned washtub, dabbing perspiration from his face, which shone with the heat of the bonfire. She remembers the story he told about Buddy, a dog he once had. A little fox terrier who could deliver meat. Steve would tie a package of meat to Buddy’s collar and off he’d go without a backward glance. “And the little beggar, he’d never think to even take a sniff of that package, never mind eat it,” Steve had said, pounding his fist against his hand for emphasis. “By gum and that’s a fact,” he repeated over and over.
“He’d just pick up the phone,” Laura says, “and tell them Buddy was on his way and to watch for him.” She crosses her legs and a white high-heeled shoe dangles from her toe as she leans forward, clutching a glass of red wine and laughing uproariously when Steve tells them about an electrician who has a sign in his window that says “Let Us Check Your Shorts.” Even Elaine cackles over this one although she’s probably heard it several times before. Laura’s big square horsey teeth are smudged with lipstick and her white plastic button-earrings dance with the light of the bonfire. Hank stretches out on his chair, full length, feet crossed, and chews on a straw.
And Amy remembers being upstairs later in the attic room after Steve and Laura leave and only Hank remains. He’s downstairs in the kitchen playing gin rummy with Elaine and having the last bit of chokecherry wine. The smell of smoke clings to Amy’s hair and sweater. She watches Marlene open the packages spread on the bed. She holds up a sweater, a skirt, a blouse. Then she unpacks her new school supplies and the room smells like clean paper. Marlene lists the items out loud: loose-leaf paper, binder, geometry set, pencils, ruler. Amy falls silent. She sits on the edge of the bed and counts the cracks between the floorboards. When the school buses arrive, the town will empty and she’ll be alone.
Marlene doesn’t notice Amy’s silence. She carries the stack of supplies over to the bureau. As she sets them down she sees the hole in James Dean’s face. It wasn’t there this morning, she thinks. The old bugger, Marlene rages silently. Tears of anger push behind her eyes as she walks along the wall slowly, checking all the other magazine pin-ups for evidence of the holes that her father makes by slipping the tip of his Swiss army knife between cracks in the wall boards in order to spy on her.
Amy lies beside Marlene and wonders if there’s any way possible for her to get on that school bus too. She has earned enough money at the butcher shop to buy supplies. So what if this is a dull and boring place? she thinks, as she curls onto her side to try and sleep. She feels the pull of sadness, though, because she knows she will not be able to bring herself to speak to Elaine about it. She falls asleep then and doesn’t stir later when Marlene gets out of bed and feels her way around the room for the flashlight. Or when she tears off a corner of her school paper and tapes it over the hole in James Dean’s face.
Amy doesn’t hear Elaine and Hank or the slap of cards against the table as they play game after game of gin rummy. Elaine has heard the creak of Marlene’s step but it’s been quiet upstairs for half an hour. Her hand stops Hank’s hand from dealing cards and she says to him with her eyes, Honey, do you want to? She nods in the direction of the maroon floral curtain which divides the living room in half. She sleeps behind that curtain in a bed that is wide enough for two bodies. The chair legs scrape against the floor as Hank pushes away from the table. He stretches, yawns, feigning tiredness, and says he’ll take off for home.
Elaine begins to understand at last that the reason why Hank has declined her invitations lately to lie beside her in bed and let his penis grow thick against her leg while they listen for a cough or the sound of a footstep against the stairs, before they begin their hurried, stealthy lovemaking, is the girl Amy.
“I hardly got a wink of sleep last night,” Laura complains to Amy the next morning in the shop. “That damned Skinner dog woke me up and I couldn’t get back to sleep.”
“Oh, too bad,” Amy says sympathetically. Probably hung over and that’s why she couldn’t sleep, she thinks, but she feels generous this morning. She feels like singing, only she wouldn’t know what. She stands at the block behind the counter, working. The boning knife’s slim blade moves swiftly as she pares fat and sinew from chunks of stewing meat that she’ll arrange in a tray for the display counter.
“Second night in a row now,” Laura says as she hangs around behind the coffee-bar counter, opening and closing cupboard doors with more force than necessary. “I’ve got a good mind to call Randolph and give him an earful.” Her frown is accentuated by the uneven and heavily pencilled arch of her eyebrows.
Amy’s fingers are tinged red and the apron she wears is streaked with animal blood. Laura’s hands can no longer take the cold, Steve explained when he’d hired Amy. Or the blood, Amy thinks. Amy dislikes the smell of animal blood. Steve has told her that it’s not really blood, but it’s red and it’s in the sinewy tubes she comes across and rips from the meat.
“What do you mean you didn’t sleep a wink?” Steve says. His voice booms out over Amy’s head. He works on a counter behind her, making sausages. “Every time I woke up you were sawing logs.” His fingers loop and twist the meat-filled sheep gut into clusters of breakfast sausages.
“I beg your pardon,” Laura says, in a huff. “I was awake most the night. I know because when I looked at the clock it was two. And then three. It was a quarter to five before I got to sleep.”
Steve snorts. “She’s as blind as a bat without her glasses,” he says under his breath and Amy grins. She knows what’s coming. It’s a ritual, a volley of shots over who slept the least and therefore who is entitled to be more tired in the morning. Laura slaps a cookie sheet against the counter. Amy looks up. Through the slant in the venetian blinds she sees Hank walk towards the bowling alley and work. He’s provided for himself one way or another ever since he was fourteen, Elaine had said to Amy over coffee at breakfast that morning. “I know,” Amy said quickly so that Elaine would spare her the recitation of Hank’s history. Cleared snow. Delivered papers. Ran errands. Set pins at the alley, babysat kids at the Community Centre, and all the while practising, working hard at becoming a country and western singer. Elaine polishing Hank’s halo. When she passed the butter, she looked Amy hard in the face and said, “There’s some people in this world you don’t treat lightly, you know? You don’t fool around with some people’s hearts.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Amy said.
“I mean,” Elaine said as Marlene entered the kitchen, “that life’s a more serious business for some people. They have a lot more to lose than others. And when you start loving them, then you’d damned well better be prepared to keep on loving them for as long as they live.”
When I want a sermon, I’ll ask for one, Amy thought.
“She means Hank,” Marlene said.
“I never said that,” Elaine snapped. “What do you want for breakfast?”
“Nothing,” Marlene said. “I need to talk to you. Upstairs. It’s about the old bugger.”
“Oh,” Elaine said, and her expression grew flat and unreadable. “I’ll be up in a minute.” She turned to Amy once again. “Listen, you’ll have to let me know what you plan on doing.”
Here it comes, Amy thought, I’m getting the big turf.
“Because if you’re going to go to school with Marlene then we’d better get you registered right away.”
This is the reason why Steve and Laura can go at it tooth and nail this morning for all Amy cares; this is why she feels like singing.
Steve clears his throat to prepare for another round with Laura. “
Now look here,” he says energetically, “don’t you let on that you never got a wink of sleep past two o’clock because it was you who woke me up. You were snoring. I was up to the bathroom at a ten to four and you were out like a light.”
“I heard you get up, Steven. And it wasn’t four, either.” Laura has become fully engaged now and stands with her hands on her hips and her jaw thrust forward.
“I said a ten to four.” Amy watches how his fingers never miss a beat as he threads, loops, and twists the bulging casings into sausages.
“No it wasn’t! It was more like one-thirty. The dog was making a racket and you said to me, ‘Skinner must of just got home.’ “
At one-thirty you were still at Elaine’s, Amy wants to interject, but this is their dance. She feels the tickle of laughter inside.
Steve’s voice becomes puffed with indignation. “You think I don’t know the difference between one-thirty and a ten to four? I was up to the bathroom twice.”
“Twice.” Laura winks at Amy. “Now he was up twice. Well, I only heard you the once and it must of been one-thirty because –”
“Ahhh!” Steve groans in frustration.
“Because I took a pill before I went to bed. You know how it knocks me out, and then I woke up around two-thirty and you said to me, ‘Skinner must be just getting home,’ and I remember looking at the clock and saying to you, Steven, ‘Not at this hour. Skinner can’t be getting in at this hour.’ And, Steven, it was two-thirty.”
“Can’t see past her nose without her glasses,” Steve murmurs. “Laura, honey, just what difference does it make?”
“Well, now, it does make a difference,” Laura says and Amy hears the quiver of tears in her voice. “You’re calling me a liar.”
“I did no such thing. And just a darned minute. First you say it was one-thirty and now you say it was two-thirty.”
“I did not. You’re the one who said it was one-thirty when you got up, not me.”
“I give up,” Steve says.
Great, Amy thinks. They’ll be quiet now as they work until Steve goes over and flips the sign on the door to OPEN and by the time the first customer walks in their grievance will have given way to pleasantries.
“Anyway,” Laura says, “I’m so tired I could cry. So I won’t be going to Souris with you tonight. You’ll have to go alone.”
“I wanted to look at shoes. Zack’s got that sale on, you know that.”
“Well, go and look at shoes. You don’t need me,” Laura says briskly.
“I’ve been wanting to go down there all week. But no, we had to go and visit your sister on Tuesday. The grass needed cutting on Wednesday, yesterday I take you to Brandon to do your shopping. Why didn’t you say you didn’t want to go in the first place? The sale ends today.”
“Love, I just can’t go,” Laura says and Amy hears the smile in her voice. “I’m just too darned tired to go traipsing around after you while you stand there gawking at things for hours. My feet won’t take it.”
“But the sale ends today.”
“You go then.”
“But I won’t know what colour to buy.”
“Oxblood.”
“Oxblood?” he asks, astounded. “To go with my blue suit?”
Laura’s answer is cut off by the drone of her electric hand-mixer.
“I’ll go and get the car gassed up at noon!” Steve yells.
Amy wonders if this is what love is. If this is what it comes down to in the end, these exchanges of conversation centring around the previous night’s sleep, white or brown bread, oxblood shoes.
“Turn that danged thing off!” Steve shouts.
The electric mixer stops. Laura is about to protest when the door opens. “We’re not open for business yet,” Steve calls. Amy looks up and her heart jumps.
“Hi ya, Sis.” It’s Mel. Garth stands behind him, staring over his shoulder. They don’t walk, they strut as they enter the butcher shop. Mel’s tan trenchcoat is rumpled and the belt trails down one side. He leans into the showcase and peers across at her. He’s unshaven, and the brown fedora tipped back on his head looks like a poor joke.
“Hi, Cuz,” Garth says. She smells stale whisky and cigarette smoke.
“What’re you guys doing here?” She’s shocked at how Mel brings with him that other world, the shapes of familiar rooms, an inner landscape that she thought had been erased in leaving. Has Margaret sent him? she wonders.
“I thought it was high time I popped in and said hello to my baby sister.”
Stir, Amy thinks. Mel slurs the word and it sounds like “baby stir.” Still half-drunk, which accounts for his careless appearance, his bravado. She feels Laura and Steve listening. She wipes her stained hands against her apron as she rounds the showcase. The apron is too long. It reaches down to her ankles. She suddenly realizes this and feels silly and awkward in their presence.
“How did you know where to find me?”
Garth cackles fiendishly. “Oh, we do have our ways.”
“Actually we were at a dance last night. About twenty miles from here, so we said, Why the heck not?” For a moment Amy thinks Mel will engulf her in a clumsy brotherly hug, and so she steps back.
“Where can we get some breakfast?” Garth asks and glances at the coffee bar where Laura has busied herself plopping spoonfuls of batter onto a cookie sheet so as not to let on that she’s listening.
“You go on,” Steve tells Amy. “I’ll finish putting the counter in. You go and have a visit.”
With a certain stiffness Amy introduces Mel and Garth to Steve and Laura. “Nice place you got here,” Garth says, and Amy sees the snicker in his eyes. Then he tiptoes over to Laura’s counter and rubs his hands together over a plate of dry-looking cookies. She sees Laura colour and simper as she holds the plate up for him to choose one. Amy goes into the bathroom and unties the apron and throws it into the laundry bag. She washes her hands and looks into the mirror and wishes that she’d put on make-up this morning. When she steps back into the shop she sees that Mel is behind the counter now with Steve, who is demonstrating how he makes the links of sausages, how he twists and threads them into clusters of four. “It’s the seasoning,” Steve says to explain the difference in colour between the large and the smaller breakfast sausages.
“Interesting,” Mel says and scratches his chin. “Pretty good little set-up you’ve got here.”
Steve beams. “Oh, we get by.”
“What the hell are you doing in this place?” Mel says under his breath as they leave. “It’s a rat-infested hole.”
As she walks between them heading down towards the town’s only cafe, she wants to say she’s there because she likes Steve and Laura. “It’s a job,” she says, and feels herself stepping away from the people of Spectrail. She sees the shop through Mel’s eyes and realizes how pitiful it really is with its rippled and worn linoleum floor and the paint-by-number landscape pictures Laura has hung on the walls to cover gaping cracks in the plaster, how the building sags in one corner. When she looks down the four blocks of Main Street, which stops so abruptly at the war memorial, she knows how deadend the town really is.
In the cafe she sits across from Mel and Garth, watching as they dab egg yolk from their plates with chunks of toast. Mel has told her about the job he got in the city to begin later that fall, and he’s brought news of Cam who is about to leave for the navy. Gord was just put in a reform school where he will spend half a year being reformed, Mel says, and Amy sees bits of the old world spill down onto the table, the pieces beginning to lock together. “Dumb shit,” Garth says and goes on to tell how Gord was caught red-handed in the office of the town secretary with a batch of birth certificates that he’d planned on selling to others for fake ID’S.
“Not bad,” Mel says as he pushes the plate to one side. He lights a cigarette. He exhales and looks across at her through its smoke. “So why did you leave?”
Amy watches her hands turn the coffee mug around and how moisture from it lea
ves half-circles on the tabletop. “Because I couldn’t take it any longer.” She’s aware of the curiosity in the glances of several people at the tables around them. The same curious looks she was subjected to when she first came. She knows that even though they accept her now, she doesn’t belong here. Nor does she belong with Mel and her cousin Garth.
“What was there to take?” Mel asks, a sudden edge in his voice. “You know what your problem is, don’t you?” He pulls hard on the cigarette. “You were spoiled rotten, that’s what. You always got everything you ever wanted without lifting a finger.”
Amy resists the desire to leap up and run away from his straight-line reasoning. “There’s not much I can do about that, is there?”
“What a loser attitude.”
Garth taps his onyx ring against the coffee mug, signalling impatience.
“How’s Mom?”
“Okay. She’s thinking of going to some creative writing thing. In Saskatchewan.”
Does she ever talk about me? she wants to ask.
“She’s thinking about writing a book,” Mel says, sounding embarrassed.
“A book?” The notion of it makes Amy want to laugh. “What would she write about?”
Mel shrugs and butts his cigarette out. “She’s going to call it ‘The Angels Among Us.’ “ His voice drops. “It’s supposed to help people who are grieving. So I guess it’s about Jill.”
“Who’s the cowboy?” Garth asks.
Amy turns and sees Hank enter the cafe. He glances over at them and then goes and sits at the counter. It’s too early for his break, Amy thinks, and annoyance chews at her. He must have seen them when they passed by the bowling alley. “Oh him,” Amy says. “So how long are you guys staying?”
“This is it,” Mel says. “We have been up all night, you know.”
“But it was worth it.” Garth winks at Mel.
As they leave the cafe Amy is aware of Hank’s heavy-lidded and sideways glance at them and his presence weighs heavily. When she steps outside she notices how the air seems lighter and easier for her to breathe. She has begun to be able to predict when Hank will appear around the corners she turns.
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